325 Zhuang Wen

The yellow talismans were written in bloody words. The peeling paint hid black symbols. Burnt paper money littered the living room and various pictures scattered the ground. Han Fei picked up a picture closest to him. It had a woman in shackles, the shackles around her ankles were tied to chains. Her stomach was bulging. She kept her head lowered so her hair covered her face. With one hand supporting her body, her other hand reached towards the camera, as if to snatch it away.

The blackened mattress, the fair skin; the thick shackles, the thin arms; the model didn’t want to be on camera, the photographer clicked the shutter endlessly. It was just a picture but everything was exposed so clearly and brutally.

The sound of metal clashing came from the bedroom. The thin thread tied to the axle moved, causing the bells that strung from it to jingle. A man’s croaks came from inside the room. Underlining the man’s voice was a woman’s scream. It was so gut-wrenching that the pain couldn’t be measured by normal standards anymore. Holding the picture in his hand, Han Fei slowly moved around the living room, he couldn’t be sure if the jumper woman was inside the room or not.

“This place is bizarre.” Strange and incoherent sentences were written all over the walls. The walls were also covered with talismans. The doors of the furniture were all left open, they looked like open caskets in the dark. Han Fei had been to Room 1244 in the Ziggurat game and in real life but neither places were as oppressive as the room in the cryptic world. The moment he stepped through the door, Han Fei immediately noticed the difference about this room. Every single object in this room was leaden with something scary. The horrifying wails were still ongoing. The jingling of the bells was maddening and the man chanted faster and louder. Avoiding the pictures on the ground, Han Fei slowly approached the main bedroom.

A voodoo doll made from human hair dangled above the door. The bedroom door wasn’t fully closed so Han Fei stood outside and glanced through the gap. The main bedroom was decorated like a ceremonial altar. The picture of Zhuang Wen’s mother hung on the wall. Zhuang Wen, who was just a child, knelt on the ground, crying. Her head was pressed to the ground by an extremely ugly man. The man was writing some kind of strange characters on her back. As he wrote, he mumbled incoherently on his lips. His wording was unusual but Han Fei got the meaning for part of it. The gist was that the ghost who possessed Zhuang Wen’s mother had now moved to Zhuang Wen and she had to be ‘purified’. What happened next was suffocatingly inhuman. Han Fei saw the man take out a carving knife. He knew this was a virtual recollection of Zhuang Wen’s memory but he still pushed open the door to stop the ceremony.

As Han Fei opened the door, a girl’s voice came from behind him. “Who are you?”

Han Fei who was incredibly tense was startled and he whipped his head around. A little girl stood behind him. She was very cute, especially her eyes, they were bright and soft, they showed interest towards everything in the world.

“I’m going to save the girl being bullied in there.” Han Fei answered honestly. The girl scrunched up her face in confusion, “Is there another girl here?”

“Wasn’t she…” Han Fei turned back to the main bedroom. The picture on the wall no longer featured Zhuang Wen’s mother but Zhuang Wen herself. The portrait of Zhuang Wen in the bedroom was different from other pictures of her that scattered the living room. Zhuang Wen in the black and white portrait looked relatively normal. Underneath the portrait were 2 human-sized paper dolls, they were covered in symbols and words. Before the paper dolls knelt a pair of male and female.

A middle-aged man who was extremely ugly was carving something into their flesh. The words he carved were similar to the ones on the paper dolls. The middle-aged man was probably performing some kind of ritual to transfer the 2 children’s tragedy onto the pair of paper dolls. The man mumbled things that he once said to Zhuang Wen. The middle-aged man dipped the tip of the carving knife into the cinnabar and slowly carved the evil-warding words on the man and woman’s bodies. The pair kept screaming in pain, the man’s ugly face was filled with heartache but he had to do this. Seeing the exorcist’s children being punished, Han Fei’s expression hardened.

The girl beside Han Fei was confused. She assumed Han Fei didn’t know about the details so she explained, “They are all bad guys, don’t feel sorry for them.”

“I’m not feeling sorry for them, I just felt unsettled because that woman was also once treated like this.” Han Fei silently closed the main bedroom door. As he chatted with the girl, he roamed around to explore the other rooms. Soon he discovered something interesting. Behind every door was Zhuang Wen’s painful memories, Han Fei could see the many horrible things that Zhuang Wen had been put through. But whenever the little girl came close, the events inside the room would change and it would instead show the exorcist’s family being punished.

The room at Ziggurat was an anchor for its tenant’s memory, but Heart Room 1244 didn’t seem to want to show those bad memories to this little girl. After taking a tour of all the rooms, Han Fei stopped before the balcony. He was reminded of the conversation he had with the girl inside the Ziggurat game. He turned to study the innocent girl. Han Fei’s lips opened but he couldn’t bring himself to follow the script written in the Ziggurat game. He ruffled the girl’s hair, “Are you really happy staying here, watching these things day in and day out?”

Blinking her eyes, the girl didn’t seem to understand Han Fei. She thought for a long time before shaking her head.

“Since you’re not happy here, why not leave this place to see the world outside? There are many things that you haven’t seen before outside the door. I cannot guarantee that they will all be good but at least some of them will be able to bring you true happiness.” Han Fei couldn’t change what had already happened in the real world, all he could do was to comfort the little girl in the cryptic world.

“Leave this place?” The girl hesitated. As she pondered that, the talismans on the balcony door started to tremble before they started to peel off and fall. Han Fei knew the source of the jumper woman’s hatred was outside in the balcony so this reaction was probably due to what he said. He immediately grabbed the girl’s hand and backed away. The bells that strung all over the room jiggled crazily. The normal-looking balcony door started to vibrate like it was about to shatter.

“This room is too dangerous, I will bring you somewhere safe.” Picking up the girl, Han Fei didn’t go out into the balcony but started to run out of Room 1244!

As he left the room, the notification sang in his head, “Notification for Player 0000! The mission reward that you’ve selected in Room 1244 is—Zhuang Wen!

“After Zhuang Wen’s child died, unable to accept the truth, she manifested the last of her humanity as a little girl and perhaps this little girl is the real Zhuang Wen. This is Zhuang Wen’s motherly instinct kicking in, even though she has become a monster dominated by hatred, she was willing to give up everything pure and good within her to her child.

“Warning! You’ve taken the last piece of Zhuang Wen’s humanity, you will be forever haunted by Zhuang Wen until you die!”

Before the system even finished, the talismans on the balcony door were reduced to ashes and an eerie voice announced from behind it. “If I touch you, you’ll die!”