656 Bride Sedan

Lee Guo Er looked at Han Fei in a daze. This man was completely different from the one she met initially. In just two days, this amnesiac had not only gotten used to the night but also become a beast in this concrete jungle. He radiated the presence of a predator, but his eyes shone with sadness and pity. He felt like the only living being in this city of death.

“I know you’re Han Fei.” Lee Guo Er saw a familiar shadow on Han Fei, but she shook her head to chase away that improbable thought. Every individual was unique. Lee Guo Er wouldn’t say those things to confuse Han Fei.

“How much your points have gained after we killed the boy?” Han Fei put his mask back on.

“I gained 6 points, so I’m at 23 points now.”

“When the boy left the classroom, the term Lingering Spirit popped into my mind. Lingering Spirits should be stronger than normal ghosts. We gained one point from dealing with the ghosts inside the taxi. In other words, the normal ghosts are only worth one point. And Lingering Spirits are worth more than five points.” Han Fei remembered the clown at Happiness Neighborhood. “You gained 10 points after the clown’s childhood memory crumbled. He might be a ghost stronger than a Lingering Spirit.”

“Let’s not aim so high for now. We should start with the weaker ghosts.” Lee Guo Er reminded kindly.

“F has a large army. They will collect points faster than we do. If we want to clear the game before they do, we have to take risks. After all, the scarier the ghost, the higher the points they’ll give.” Han Fei’s team only had three people, and one of them was not even a fighter. They were no match for the professional players.

“Is there a special prize for the first person to clear the game?” Lee Guo Er looked at Han Fei. She had a feeling that Han Fei might be that person. He lost his memory before he had cleared the game.

“I don’t know, but my instinct tells me it’s very important.” The eyes under Han Fei’s mask looked at Lee Guo Er, “You can do it.”

“That’s such immense pressure.” Lee Guo Er reached for the taxi door. But she had just touched the door when something strange happened. Human faces appeared on the car window. Then, Lee Guo Er felt like something had bitten her hand. She quickly pulled her hand back. The taxi looked normal from the outside, but upon closer inspection, one could see ten bodies squeezed inside the car. Their bodies were connected to the car. They were like fish swimming inside the car. After absorbing the boy’s essence, the taxi became a scary cursed object.

“Why aren’t you getting in?” Han Fei walked to the taxi. He opened the door easily. “We need to leave this place.” Han Fei didn’t want to stay close to the bus. Once the theme park knew that something had happened to the hearse, they would send people over. After Han Fei got into the car, the conversation in the car dwindled. Lee Guo Er and Xiao Jia weren’t attacked anymore.

“Why do the ghosts love you so much? It feels like they treat you different from how they treat us.” Lee Guo Er started the engine.

“This might be related to personal charm. I appear to have very high charm.” Xiao Jia scratched his forehead, thinking  Han Fei might be joking.

“Where should we go next?”

“Do you know about any dangerous urban legends? We can compare them to the scripts to select our next target.” Han Fei lost his memory, so he had to rely on his teammates.

“There are many urban legends, but the most famous and the most dangerous should be the one related to Yama.” Lee Guo Er slowed down. “Your script has mentioned it too. According to legend, there is a neighborhood that exists at the border of life and death. It is a normal neighborhood in the day, but people might accidentally walk to hell at night. Yama is there.”

Han Fei flipped through the script and found the 90th story—eight-armed Yama.

“I didn’t believe in the existence of hell until I met her. She hid in the building named after happiness, and she had the scariest look. Yes, I have never seen a ghost scarier than her. She has two faces and eight arms. She is the guardian of hell. Be careful before you approach her.”

The script alone described the uniqueness of this monster. Han Fei believed this was something scarier than a Lingering Spirit.

“She lives in a building named after happiness? So she’s at Happiness Neighborhood too? The clown hinted at me to find my own happiness, to see what kind of monstrous shape it has taken.” When they entered the neighborhood covered in red, Han Fei stopped before Building One for a long time. He felt something calling him.

“Eight-armed Yama…” After some consideration, Han Fei turned to Lee Guo Er. “Shall we return to Happiness Neighborhood?”

“Have you lost your mind? It’s not easy for us to escape from that place. Why are we going back?” Lee Guo Er couldn’t understand Han Fei.

“The clown is No. 11. His bliss was hidden in Building 11. I have my own number too, so my bliss might be hidden there as well.” Han Fei said truthfully.

“Both you and the clown came from the orphanage? Didn’t you say you can’t remember your past?” Lee Guo Er was shocked.

“I can remember my number—zero.”

“But there’s no Building 0 at that neighborhood.” Xiao Jia felt that Han Fei was sometimes reliable but sometimes strangely unpredictable.

“The living neighborhood doesn’t have it, but what about the neighborhood for the dead?” Han Fei insisted.

“It’s getting late, so we can go and take a look from the outside. However, we can’t go in too deep. Dawn is coming. The ghosts are…” At that moment, Lee Guo Er paused because a dark red flash exploded in the sky.

“That comes from the theme park. Someone is releasing fireworks?” The car slowed down, and Han Fei poked his head out to look. Endless blood-red fireworks exploded above the theme park. They didn’t look pretty, and they looked like giant eyeballs opening in the sky. They burst and dripped blood.

“What’s going on?”

“That was what I was trying to say. The front half of Ghost Night is people capturing ghosts, but when the night is at its thickest, and when the ghosts are the strongest, ghosts uncontrollable by the theme park will appear.” Lee Guo Er changed the direction of the taxi. “After these ghosts appear, the game will change. It’s no longer human capturing ghosts but the other way around. We need to find a safe place to hide soon.”

“Ghosts uncontrollable by the theme park?”

“They will not stay at a fixed location. They wander around to hunt their prey. They are ruthless and represent pure evil. It is why some players call them Malice.” Lee Guo Er explained, “You better pray that we don’t run into Malice. People who do are dead. We only have legends of them.”

“We’ll have to face them eventually. Instead of hiding, we should make use of our mobility to find out more about them.” Han Fei was thinking of the future. To clear the game, some hurdles had to be faced.

With Han Fei prompting, the taxi returned to Happiness Neighborhood around 4 am. When they were still far away from the neighborhood, the paper eye in Han Fei’s pocket started to bleed. He took the piece of paper out. The reflection in the eye was no longer Han Fei but its heavily ruined body. “The paper doll is responding. Part of its ruined body should be at Happiness Neighborhood.”

Caressing the eye, Han Fei’s heart pounded. He had no idea why he was so nervous. It was like this paper doll represented something he couldn’t lose.

“The sun is coming up soon. We’ll die if we go there now.” Lee Guo Er glanced at Han Fei through the rearview mirror. The calm Han Fei would become very sentimental when it was related to the paper doll. It seemed like his emotions were stored in that small piece of paper. “I can’t believe someone as brutal as you treasure a paper doll so much.”

Lee Guo Er locked the door as she slowly drove towards Happiness Neighborhood. They returned to the alley between Building 1 and Building 10. The paper money was scattered on the ground. There were rushing footsteps everywhere.

“We can’t go any further.”

The three looked down the narrow alley. The buildings arranged like a well were highly oppressive. The bloody moonlight washed down the building walls like a waterfall. In this dark alley, there were two rows of heavily made-up flower children. In the middle of them was a blood-red bridal sedan carried by four large ghosts.

“Minghun?” If not for the ghosts, this would be a celebratory wedding. The sedan was carried carefully into Happiness Neighborhood. Just as it was about to be swallowed by the darkness, the wedding music stopped. The two rows of flower children had their heads slowly turned and the four large ghosts paused.

The blood-red sedan floated above the white paper money. The curtain was pulled back a gap. The interior was bloody and the view was blurry.

“What kind of ritual is this?” Xiao Jia asked Han Fei, but Han Fei was staring at Lee Guo Er. When the curtain was pulled back, Lee Guo Er’s eyes blurred. Her hands on the steering wheel turned. Then, she accelerated. She wanted to drive into the alley and follow the sedan into Happiness Neighborhood.

“Lee Guo Er!” Han Fei shouted and Lee Guo Er gave no response. The car doors were locked. He had to rely on the ghosts inside the car to stop the taxi. Seeing that the taxi had stopped, the curtain of the sedan closed again. The bloody thing inside moved on and disappeared into the darkness.

“Lee Guo Er! Wake up!” It was dangerous to park there. Han Fei shouted for a few times before Lee Guo Er came back to her senses. She looked around, and she gasped in fear. “Why am I here?”

“You appeared to have lost your soul earlier. You planned to drive us into the neighborhood.” Xiao Jia was covered in a cold sweat.

“It’s strange. When I looked into the sedan, I felt like I had become the bride. I know my lover is dead, but I still plan to marry him and live with him. I want to stay together with him forever!” Lee Guo Er hadn’t fully recovered from the curse.

“There is no ghost related to a sedan in my scripts. She doesn’t exist in the 99 stories. It looks like my script only records most of the ghost stories. They might lose some…” Han Fei suddenly stopped. He didn’t find anything related to the sedan ghost, but he did find an incomplete script.

The script was very short. It was very blank. It was mixed among the many ghost stories. It could be easily missed.

“I’ve tried to write this 100th story many times. I tried it for 99 times and every time I fail.

“All the stories start on the day I met her, and all the stories end on the day she left me. I love her, but we can’t continue this relationship.

“99 deaths tell me one thing. She has always accompanied me. I will write this story well. At least this time, I’ll give her a good ending.”

 

For some reason, Google has decided to pull ads from my blog due to suspicious activity. So, there's no more ads. Yay. On that note, I'd really appreciate it if you can support me on Patreon or kofi to keep the project going. Happy reading.