A different world of strange tales

At ten that night, black-clad investigators stood in orderly ranks outside Sishui Apartments on Sishui Street, Hanhai.

The entire street had been sealed off, and the oppressive atmosphere made it hard to breathe.

There was no prebattle rally, no slogans. The selected investigators advanced step by step, silent and resolute.

Overwhelming numbers were no help in resolving Anomaly Events. Ghosts in the Shadow World could impersonate teammates at will, and rookie Investigators would only be a liability in an Anomaly Event. This time, the Investigation Bureau had sent its true elite.

Each investigation team was built around investigators who had survived a level-four anomaly event. They had planned everything before entering, and every one of them was prepared to sacrifice themselves. So that more innocent people could preserve their human dignity, they had volunteered to become expendable tools.

Whatever those investigators had done in the past, at least in this moment, they embodied human fearlessness.

The moving figures disappeared into the apartment buildings. Just seconds later, a heart-rending scream rang out, and boundless shadows began spreading through the buildings!

The Anomaly Event had been triggered!

Compared with the previous night, the anomaly event's reach had tripled. Even the investigators maintaining the perimeter along the street were swept into it.

Watching the shadows wash over his body, Gao Ming, who was hiding in Building C of Sishui Apartments, felt his right eyelid twitch violently. This ghost story game's reach was far too great!

Even hiding in Building C, they had been engulfed outright, without a chance to escape.

A red light flashed on the Black Ring, and all communications went dead. The lights in the corridor began to distort. Every household seemed to have been affected. Looking at the bright red couplets and apartment doors, Gao Ming felt as if he were seeing mouths torn open.

"Something's wrong." Xuan Wen exhaled a breath of cold air and touched the corridor wall, her expression grim. "I thought the Shadow World would reject me, that I wouldn't be able to enter with you, just like last time. But I've become a target of this ghost story game too. The instant those shadows reached us, I was swallowed up!"

Xuan Wen had wanted to hunt Strange Tales, but this time, she had been treated as prey.

"What a strange feeling. Something's calling to me." Yan Hua took off her coat and spread her arms, her explosively powerful muscles bunching together. She let the shadows brush over her entire body. "It feels so good. I've never felt this free. It's as if I belong here."

Compared with those two rather abnormal people, Xuan Wen and Yan Hua, Wan Qiu seemed very withdrawn. He stood beside Gao Ming, clutching the protective charm Uncle Wu had given him, the back of his neck damp with cold sweat.

"Quiet for a moment." Gao Ming motioned for everyone to be silent and listened closely. "Why is there... a heartbeat inside the walls?"

He tried opening the door of a nearby apartment. At first glance, everything inside looked perfectly normal, but standing there, he could constantly hear an inexplicable heartbeat.

As if affected by that sound, Gao Ming's own heartbeat began to quicken, seemingly trying to synchronize with it.

"Let's go check Building B first. This Strange Tale has already begun to spread, after all. Our past experience might not be much use." Xuan Wen took the lead. She looked delicate and frail, but her eyes were bloodshot. From behind, she looked beautiful and demure; from the front, she was terrifying.

When they reached the fifth-floor connecting walkway, Yan Hua moved the barrier aside, and he and Xuan Wen cleared the way ahead.

The walkway spanning the few meters between the apartment buildings resembled a river of shadows, and their little group was like a small boat drifting along it.

Xuan Wen and Yan Hua were the first to cross the walkway and enter Building B. But what unsettled Gao Ming was that they did not stop. The distance between them and him kept growing.

The two seemed not to realize that Gao Ming and Zhu Miaomiao were still behind them. Without looking back, they spoke to the empty air beside them, then began walking faster and faster!

"Xuan Wen!"

Gao Ming called out. Xuan Wen seemed to hear something and turned back in confusion. Her bloodshot eyes scanned the space behind her, but she seemed unable to see Gao Ming.

The two figures were soon swallowed by the shadows. Gao Ming grabbed Zhu Miaomiao's arm and stood in the middle of the walkway. They looked back, only to find that Wan Qiu had disappeared as well.

Only a tattered protective charm remained where Wan Qiu had been standing.

Uncle Wu had given Gao Ming three protective charms. Gao Ming, Zhu Miaomiao, and Wan Qiu had each taken one.

The three teammates who had emerged from the Shadow World had vanished. They seemed to have gone somewhere different from Gao Ming.

"A ghost maze?" Zhu Miaomiao gripped her Fire Axe. She had never seen anything like this. Less than three minutes after entering the anomaly event, more than half their teammates had already disappeared.

"There's no way back." Gao Ming reassured her softly. "Keep going. Don't be afraid."

Once they crossed the walkway, they found two large red lanterns hanging in Building B's fifth-floor corridor. Each lantern bore the character for double happiness.

The faint red glow dispelled the darkness, but rather than easing, the terrifying atmosphere only grew stronger.

"This... looks like Building B from many years ago." Gao Ming had visited the apartment building during the day. Back then, the corridors had been piled with junk, and the walls were yellowed and cracked. Now, the walls were clean and eerily white.

"The building still has the sound-activated lights from over twenty years ago. And there's no patchy rust on these apartment doors anymore."

The old-fashioned elevator, long abandoned and out of service in reality, was running again. Creaking sounds came from the middle of the corridor. As its metal gate was pushed open, a fat woman with a bulging belly stepped out.

In her left hand, she carried a large bag of badly rotted vegetable leaves. In her right arm, she held a heap of rags.

"Fat Sister-in-Law?" Gao Ming recognized the woman immediately. He had met her at the noodle shop that morning and even visited her home.

But compared with how she had looked during the day, Fat Sister-in-Law's belly was much larger within the anomaly event, leaving her whole body grotesquely misshapen.

Struggling with her load, Fat Sister-in-Law spotted Gao Ming and Zhu Miaomiao as well. She greeted them with a beaming smile. "Are you two planning to move into Sishui Apartments too?"

Her obese body shuffled forward, and foul-smelling black water leaked from her belly.

"Be careful." Zhu Miaomiao did not dare look at Fat Sister-in-Law and tightened her grip on the Fire Axe.

"Don't act out of the ordinary. Just treat her like a normal person."

After giving those instructions in a low voice, Gao Ming walked over with an enthusiastic air.

Clutching the protective charm in his palm, Gao Ming walked right up to Fat Sister-in-Law. The charm showed no reaction. "Let me carry that for you. Are the children all still at home?"

"If I'd known raising children would be so much trouble, I never should have given birth to them. They suffer, and so do I." The fat on Fat Sister-in-Law's neck folded over itself. With every step she took, more foul water seeped from her belly. "Would you like to come in for a while?"

"Sure. We were just hoping to have a look at the apartments."

"You're right to take my advice. Buying a haunted apartment is a real bargain." Fat Sister-in-Law handed Gao Ming the large bag of rotten vegetable leaves. They walked together to the entrance of the walkway connecting Building B to Building A. Her home was right there.

She opened the blood-red security door and was about to squeeze inside when the door of the neighboring apartment suddenly opened.

Zhu Miaomiao instinctively looked over and nearly screamed in fright.

A middle-aged woman in her forties poked her head out. She wore a floral dress and had kept her figure in good shape, but her face had no eyes or nose, only four mouths.

"Always telling people to buy haunted apartments. Aren't you afraid of getting what's coming to you? Of being struck by lightning?"

Her mouths opened and closed. The woman seemed unaware of how supernatural she looked. Leaning against the door, she went on and on. "Go on in. Once you enter her home, you probably won't get back out. That old woman's belly is full of rotten schemes. You'd better be careful!"

"Gossip! Keep running your mouths, and I'll tear them off!" Fat Sister-in-Law suddenly became furious.

"I'm not making anything up." Gossip looked as though she had never gossiped in her life. "You're the one sneaking around every day, collecting other people's worn clothes. Does your eldest son need another change of skin?"

Fat Sister-in-Law was holding a heap of old clothes, yet Gossip claimed she had collected them to change her eldest son's skin. Just then, a withered, yellowish arm reached out from inside the apartment.

"Looks like your eldest son can't wait." All four of Gossip's mouths laughed at once. Fat Sister-in-Law stopped arguing, carried the clothes inside, and shut the security door.

Before long, a child's cries and the sound of fabric being torn came from inside at the same time.

"You two are lucky you ran into me." Gossip folded her arms across her chest. "If you want to stay here forever, just pick any apartment and move in. If you still want to leave, don't enter a single room."

"We can't go inside?"

"There's an old woman on the first floor who might be able to help you, but watch out for the building manager." The corners of Gossip's mouths curled upward. "One more thing. Never tell anyone I told you any of this. I'm very good at keeping my mouth shut."

(End of chapter)