The downward stairs stretched beyond sight, pitch-black.
When he stepped onto them, a clammy sensation came through the soles of his feet, like stepping into half-rotten moss. They even sank slightly, as if he were treading on a thin layer of flesh.
He brought the oil lamp closer. The walls were covered in a dark-brown fungal carpet. Beneath the lamplight, those tiny spores seemed to rise and fall faintly, as though breathing.
Zhou Kai almost thought he had crawled into the intestines of some gigantic monster.
He prodded it with the handle of his axe. The fungal carpet scraped away easily, revealing the normal brickwork beneath, and only then did he let out a breath of relief.
The staircase was far deeper than it looked. He walked for a full two minutes before his feet finally touched level ground.
Darkness.
The light of the oil lamp seemed to strike an invisible black wall. It could not extend even half a meter forward before being completely swallowed.
All around was deathly silence. Even the sound of breathing seemed to have been sucked away.
A sense of weightlessness and dizziness struck him at the same time. He could no longer even distinguish up from down, left from right.
Zhou Kai took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, and turned his gaze toward the only thing ahead that he could make out.
It was a wooden door. A faint red light seeped through the crack.
“Fine. The fireplace gave me one more life. If I die once, I’ll just count it as tuition. Though who knows what I’ll actually learn…”
He tried looking back, but the staircase behind him had already vanished into the darkness. There was no way back.
The panic he had just suppressed began to rise again in his chest.
But he quickly strangled the emotion.
This house was indeed bizarre, deadly at every turn…
But it was still safer than outside.
If he couldn’t even deal with the monsters in the newbie village, what was the point of talking about escaping the nightmare?
Ptooey!
Zhou Kai spat, the saliva landing on the gleaming axe blade.
He wiped it hard with the corner of his clothes. The face reflected in the axe’s surface had its panic forcibly pressed down, leaving only a cold, ruthless edge in its eyes.
Tightening his grip on the axe handle, Zhou Kai softened his footsteps and crept toward that red door.
……
Ding-dong… ding-dong…
“Lalala~ lalala~”
“Lovely Evelyn~ the moon is watching you~ lalala…”
“Come with me to the forest, don’t go home…”
“Oh, Evelyn, you are the luckiest child.”
“Come home with me, don’t stay outside the mountains…”
A brass plaque hung on the wooden door.
【001】
The closer Zhou Kai got, the clearer the piano music and singing behind the door became.
The piano sounded as if it were drifting out of a rusted music box, every note carrying the burr of metal scraping against metal.
The singing voice was sharp and thin, like those castrated boys in a medieval choir. The turns of the melody were especially eerie, making one’s scalp prickle.
The song was about a girl called “Evelyn.” It came in broken fragments, the lyrics jumbled and disordered.
As Zhou Kai listened, every hair on his body stood on end. A chill crawled up his spine.
The oil lamp in his hand seemed to be invaded by that cold. The flame struggled twice, then went out soundlessly.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
Zhou Kai set the extinguished oil lamp by his feet, reached out, and gripped the icy doorknob.
“Clang!”
The piano music stopped abruptly.
Dead silence.
Thump. Thump.
Every beat of his heart seemed deafening, roaring beside his ears.
It was as if someone had slammed both hands onto the piano keys with all their strength, brutally choking off every sound.
Zhou Kai’s hand froze on the doorknob.
Silence… a silence so long it seemed to last a century.
In the next instant, the dead silence was suddenly broken!
“Lalala~”
“Naughty Evelyn, you will always be brought back~”
The singing rang out again. This time, both the piano and the voice were magnified several times over, even carrying a hollow echo, as if they were coming from some enormous cavern.
Zhou Kai’s heart pounded wildly.
He hesitated no longer. He twisted the doorknob open and slipped inside.
Only after his eyes adjusted to the red light within did he finally see the scene before him.
This basement actually contained an entirely different space, divided into two levels.
The upper level was a circular corridor. Every few meters, a strip of blood-red gauze hung down from the ceiling.
The gauze fell over the corridor railing and continued stretching downward, finally converging at the center of the lower level.
In midair, all the red gauze had been bound into a huge cocoon that was still faintly writhing.
Zhou Kai gripped his axe with both hands, turning his body sideways, his gaze fixed tightly on that red gauze cocoon…
Or rather, on the spot directly beneath it.
He stood on tiptoe and moved without a sound.
Moved…
Zhou Kai’s gaze passed through layer upon layer of red gauze, and he finally saw the scene at the center of the lower level.
Thump, thump!
His heart felt as if it had been squeezed twice.
The singing was still echoing. A huge grand piano stood in the very center, its black and white keys rising and falling on their own, producing a sinister and uncanny melody.
“…No monster?”
Zhou Kai let out a long breath. Only then did he realize that the palm gripping the axe handle was already soaked with cold sweat.
He had to go down and take a look.
Zhou Kai lifted aside a strip of red gauze. Sure enough, on the inner side of the corridor was a spiral staircase leading downstairs.
He decided to first go over and examine that piano that could play by itself.
……
Tap, tap.
The sound of footsteps seemed especially heavy in the vast, empty space.
As Zhou Kai went downstairs, he marveled at the acoustics here.
This reverb—what a waste not to use it for concerts.
Could the former owner of this house have been a musician who turned the basement into a private concert hall?
Every step he took landed with an echo that happened to fall on the beat of the piano piece, strangely harmonious.
‘Something’s wrong with the footsteps.’
Zhou Kai’s face turned deathly pale.
He stopped.
But the footsteps did not stop immediately!
As if there were an echo, they sounded twice more before stopping!
No, that wasn’t right… this wasn’t an echo at all…
Goosebumps instantly broke out all over Zhou Kai’s body. He whipped his head around and looked up!
And the “thing” following behind him lowered its head in perfect sync.
Two faces, one upright and one inverted, met head-on at a distance of less than half a meter.
A face hung upside down, staring straight at him.
White paper. Red crayon. A split-open smile.
That smile looked as if an entire red crayon had been used up, smeared over and over again, thick as clotted blood.
“Lalala~”
A piercing chant exploded beside his ear.
Deafening. The world spun.
Zhou Kai’s body strangely lost control and toppled straight backward, falling into the embrace of that black-red paper figure.
He desperately tried to swing the axe, but the blade passed straight through the paper figure’s body as if chopping into fog, without the slightest sense of impact.
The axe failed to hit its target. Instead, because of inertia, the handle scraped hard across his own nose bridge, burning with pain.
The crayon-drawn smiling face grew larger and larger in his vision.
The strength in his body was being drained away at terrifying speed. Bone-piercing cold wrapped around his entire body in an instant.
Every pore on his skin contracted from the cold, goosebumps crawling over him from head to toe.
In that instant, Zhou Kai felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.
Yet at that moment, from the pocket at his waist, a sudden warmth spread.
Zhou Kai subconsciously let go of the axe and reached back into his pocket.
It was that seed sealed inside the sample bag!
Under the dim red light, that tiny green sprout appeared exceptionally full of life.
The instant he saw the green bud, Zhou Kai felt most of the chill on his body recede.
The next moment.
Zhou Kai’s brows knotted together, and a ruthless glare flashed in his eyes!
“I don’t care what kind of ghost or demon you are—die!”
He tore open the sample bag, clenched the paper ball with the green sprout tightly in his fist, turned and locked onto the paper figure, then smashed down with punch after punch with all his might!
Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!
As the fist clutching the grass sprout fell, the paper figure’s illusory body could no longer hold together.
After only a few punches, several transparent holes had been punched through it.
“Ah!!!!”
That crayon-drawn smiling mouth, painted thick as blood, suddenly split open and let out a shriek so sharp it seemed to pierce the eardrums.
Zhou Kai was shaken dizzy by the sound wave, his thoughts nearly coming to a halt.
Fortunately, before his consciousness completely blurred,
he gave up struggling with the monster on the stairs. Instead, he actually hurled himself straight into the paper figure’s arms, using the last of his strength to cling to it as they tumbled over the stair railing!
They smashed straight toward the ground!
Boom!
For some unknown reason, the falling distance and height underwent a bizarre change.
They had originally been less than a meter from the ground, yet now it felt as if they were plummeting from more than a dozen meters up. And they fell without the slightest deviation, straight toward the center below.
Zhou Kai instinctively used the throwing technique Chen Ping had taught him, locking the paper figure’s neck tight and pinning it beneath his own body.
Under the suppression of the tender sprout’s aura, the paper figure’s movements likewise became sluggish.
One man and one paper figure crashed to the ground.
Together, they smashed that grand piano to pieces!
Rustle, rustle…
Black smoke scattered, and the red light flickered violently!
Everything returned to stillness.