"Come and get me!"
Li Xijiu kicked things off with a full-throated shout.
Qin Manjiang had just tucked himself against the restroom wall when he saw Li Xijiu charge out, looking ready to die. A moment later, something scraped rapidly along the wall.
It was the three-meter-tall monster. He really had followed them.
"Aaaah!!!"
Li Xijiu screamed as he ran. The anguish and terror in his cries were so vivid that anyone listening could have felt them.
The scene looked a little ridiculous, but their lives were at stake. Li Xijiu veered into an empty screening room.
As soon as Qin Manjiang heard the horrific scraping pass the restroom door, he dashed out and sprinted toward the stairs!
Faster...
I have to hurry. Once Li Xijiu runs out of strength, he's dead.
That kid had incredible stamina, but their pursuer clearly wasn't a normal human. Ordinary logic didn't apply.
The faster, the better!
With that thought, Qin Manjiang picked up his pace.
But just as Qin Manjiang was about to reach the stairs and head down to the first floor, a small, charred head slowly rose into view on the staircase.
Someone's coming up?!
No... that's not a person!
The completely burned corpse of a child was climbing the stairs. First came the whole head, then the neck, a little blue outfit, and exposed limbs burned to charcoal...
It stood silently at the top of the stairs, its eye sockets pitch-black as it watched Qin Manjiang without a sound.
There are two ghosts?
He had already taken it for granted that the three-meter-tall man was a ghost, too.
Looks like... I oversimplified things.
Without a moment's hesitation, Qin Manjiang turned and ran.
Apparently, the first floor really did hold the key to solving this ghost story and getting them both out of the game. Otherwise, two ghosts wouldn't have been blocking the way.
This little ghost was probably the one that had left the handprints on the glass... Qin Manjiang had thought it was just a decoy meant to scare them. He hadn't expected it to get involved when things turned serious, too...
I miscalculated...
Sure enough, the only reason plans existed was to be shattered.
"Aaaaah!!!!!"
Meanwhile, Li Xijiu was still screaming his head off.
His stamina was much better than Qin Manjiang's. Even after leading the fairly fast three-meter monster through several screening rooms, he still had the energy to wail. It looked like he wouldn't die anytime soon.
Qin Manjiang couldn't manage that.
Unless something went wrong, he would definitely be the first one something went wrong for.
With a ghost chasing each of them, the two darted back and forth through the screening rooms on the second floor.
At last, they met, one at the entrance to one screening room and the other at the exit of the next.
"Aaaah!!! Bro, why are you still messing around on the second floor? Aaaah!!!"
He squeezed the question in between screams.
Qin Manjiang said nothing, merely pointing behind himself with his thumb.
Li Xijiu glanced at the little ghost with the pitch-black eye sockets, and his face instantly drained of color.
With perfect unspoken coordination, they ducked into the next screening room.
"What do we do, what do we do? Why are there two ghosts?"
Who the hell knows?
With both ghosts relentlessly pursuing them, Qin Manjiang and Li Xijiu had begun panting. Qin Manjiang was breathing much harder.
"Their posture, their causes of death, the logic behind their behavior-everything is a clue for us. Otherwise, we'd have no chance of surviving this game..." Qin Manjiang said quietly.
He suddenly asked, "Which screening room were you watching the movie in earlier?"
"Huh? I was in theater three. Brother Qin, you're not thinking of going back, are you? Every single person in there was..."
"Did they do anything to you?" Qin Manjiang asked.
"They didn't actually do anything, but they obviously weren't human..."
"Yeah, I know..."
Qin Manjiang asked no more questions.
Just then, Li Xijiu suddenly shoved Qin Manjiang hard. "Watch out!"
Both of them stumbled forward, and a gleaming machete swept through the spot where they had just been standing.
Qin Manjiang looked back. The three-meter-tall monster had already caught up with them!
The charred little ghost, however, stood at the screening room's entrance without coming inside.
"Catch."
Qin Manjiang tossed the wrench back to Li Xijiu.
Li Xijiu gripped it tightly. The terrifying three-meter-tall Vengeful Ghost stood only two meters away, the machete in its hand glinting coldly in the darkness. The sight was chilling. Li Xijiu wasn't afraid of fighting, and he was pretty good at it, too—but only if his opponent was human.
His heart pounded faster, his breathing grew heavier, and sweat seeped from the hand clenched around the wrench.
Qin Manjiang also stared fixedly at the towering Vengeful Ghost. Unlike the monsters in typical horror films, this thing didn't deliberately try to frighten or startle them. It simply chased them in silence, then stood, swung its blade, and tried to cut them down.
He hadn't made a single strange sound the entire time. He simply wanted to send the two of them to hell.
In the blink of an eye, the screening room's lights came on.
The Tall Wraith held its machete, the light behind it casting a vast shadow over Qin Manjiang and Li Xijiu.
The sight was terrifying. The three-meter-tall Vengeful Ghost slowly raised its blade again and brought it down at them without hesitation.
Clang-
Li Xijiu swung the wrench and barely blocked the machete, but the impact felt like a boulder had struck him. His knee buckled, and he dropped to one knee.
His eyes widened in disbelief. The skin between the thumb and forefinger of the hand gripping the wrench had split, and blood seeped out.
That terrifying force continued pressing down on him through the machete.
I... can't hold on...
Both of Li Xijiu's knees were about to hit the floor. He desperately braced against the downward pressure of the blade, his entire body trembling uncontrollably.
Just then, Qin Manjiang did something no one would have expected.
He neither attacked the Tall Wraith nor helped Li Xijiu hold off the blade. Instead, he grabbed the Tall Wraith's clothes and yanked hard!
Riiip-
The Tall Wraith's clothes tore.
Then they heard the most horrifying howl they had heard so far!
"Raaagh!!!"
The Vengeful Ghost threw away its machete in agony. Its towering body dropped to its knees as it frantically searched the floor for the pieces of clothing Qin Manjiang had torn off.
Seizing the opportunity, Qin Manjiang grabbed the collar of the half-kneeling Li Xijiu and dragged him away.
"Cough... cough, cough..."
"Bro... Brother Qin..."
Li Xijiu's face grew redder and redder as he choked, but Qin Manjiang didn't dare stop for even a moment. He kept hauling the stumbling Li Xijiu along, charging all the way down the stairs!
They had finally reached the first floor!
Up in the second-floor screening room, the Tall Wraith was still roaring and howling. The sound was especially chilling.
"You're not dead yet, are you?" Qin Manjiang asked, leaning against a pillar in the middle of the first-floor lobby and gasping for breath.
"Not yet. Drag me around a little longer, though, and who knows."
Li Xijiu stuck out his tongue, his head drenched in sweat.
"Brother Qin... you're incredible. How did you know its weakness was its clothes? That ghost must've been really shy when it was alive." Li Xijiu soon caught his breath, leaving Qin Manjiang envious. Wild animals really did have a different level of stamina.
"Father and son."
Qin Manjiang kept it brief.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Li Xijiu looked bewildered.
"I mean those two ghosts are father and son."
"Did you hear the kid call him Dad?"
Li Xijiu's questions were always so ill-timed.
"Their clothes. Matching father-and-son outfits," Qin Manjiang said between breaths. "The kid was burned to charcoal, but his clothes, pants, and shoes are all still there. If he's deliberately keeping them that way, it means they're important to him."
"The three-meter-tall monster is the same. He keeps curling up and hunching over. He never stands straight. Why?"
"The ceiling's too low for him to stand straight?" Li Xijiu looked eager to learn.
"If he stood straight, he'd tear his clothes." Qin Manjiang seemed to be explaining it to Li Xijiu, but he was really just organizing his own thoughts. "They're father and son... a father and son who died in a fire ten years ago."
"They were close. They wore matching outfits to see a movie, only to die in an accident. Those outfits meant something special to both of them. Even after becoming ghosts, they still instinctively cared about them."
"So that's it..." Realization dawned on Li Xijiu. "That's why he couldn't be bothered with us and immediately went looking for the scraps you tore off..."
"That's how it looks so far." Qin Manjiang stopped short of making a definitive claim.
"Hey?!" Li Xijiu suddenly slapped his thigh and asked, "If they both died in the fire, why does the ghost kid look so horribly burned, while the father doesn't have any burn marks?"
A flicker of surprise crossed Qin Manjiang's eyes, and he studied Li Xijiu carefully.
"You haven't said anything, but I'm suddenly a little pissed off, bro." Li Xijiu folded his arms, then his expression abruptly changed. Grimacing in pain, he quickly lowered his head and blew on the split skin between his thumb and forefinger.
"Exactly. The father and son both died, but not from the same cause. They might not even have died on the same day," Qin Manjiang said. "That's a question we should have considered the moment we first saw what those two ghosts looked like."
By then, Qin Manjiang had finally recovered his breath. He didn't know how long he could keep that ghost occupied, but this wasn't the time to keep chatting.
"Where are the first-floor staff?" Qin Manjiang glanced around.
The entrance, reception desk, ticket counter, snack stand-every area was deserted.
"Then can we just run straight out of this damned place?"
Li Xijiu asked, his eyes lighting up.
Qin Manjiang nodded. "It's stupid, but we might as well try."
Both were men of action, and they charged straight toward the cinema's entrance. But what lay outside left them dumbfounded.
The doors were indeed open, and they could indeed leave.
But... outside wasn't Fu City!
The world beyond was completely shrouded in darkness, like an endless abyss!
An uncontrollable panic welled up within them. They felt like two little mice placed in a cage, thinking everything would be over once they escaped, only to find another boundless, unimaginably terrifying world waiting outside...
"Looks like this isn't the right way to clear the game."
Qin Manjiang turned around, refusing to keep looking at that despairingly deep, pitch-black expanse outside.
True horror existed beyond the bounds of conventional horror. Like the darkness outside-the smarter someone was, the more their own imagination would terrify them.
Li Xijiu still stared blankly at the inexplicably deep darkness outside the cinema, apparently shaken to his core.
Qin Manjiang patted his shoulder. "I'll get you home."
"No, Brother Qin, I got too excited when I rushed out and threw my back out... I can't turn around..."
Li Xijiu sounded rather aggrieved.
"..."
Hearing Qin Manjiang's footsteps recede, Li Xijiu panicked.
"Hey! Bro, Brother Qin! Wait for me... I'm scared!"
(End of chapter)
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