Friday, 6 January 2023

684 Xiao Jia, Best Employee

 

Room 444 didn’t look different from any other room. However, the place was filled with dust because people rarely came here. In fact, not many people used the right passage due to the existence of this room.

“The key is here.” The man removed the key from his neck. He had Han Fei open the door. He was too weak to do anything.

“You can’t fall yet. We need to help you recover your memory.” Han Fei helped the man to get to the door of Room 444. He opened the door and walked in with the brain. Perhaps it was the old circuit. All the lights in Room 444 couldn’t be switched on. Thankfully, Han Fei still had the white candles from the wedding ritual. The candlelight chased away the darkness, and Han Fei saw what was inside the room.

The room had no future. The walls, ceiling, and floor were filled with horrid curses as well as bloody handprints and footprints. The strangest thing was some of the handprints and footprints were on the ceiling. It was as if a four-legged monster had crawled all over the room. The size of the handprints was similar to Yan Yue’s hands. “This is the place that turned my daughter into a monster. They stuffed other things into my daughter’s body. The thing that returned was not my daughter anymore.”

“Your daughter should be the closest thing to success. If we know what happened to you and your daughter, we’ll be able to deal with Dream.” Han Fei placed the white candles around the door and moved over a chair to tie Yan Yue to it.

“Close the door. We shan’t leave this room tonight. This neighborhood is 100 times more dangerous at night.” The man pointed at the dark corridor outside. It did feel like something was approaching from the dark. “The remaining tenants are the theme park’s original batch of workers. Most of them are night workers. Their bodies are corrupted and their souls even more so.” After closing the door, the man signaled for Han Fei to move away from Yan Yue. “You have to be careful too. Her mother is suppressing endless resentment. When she is awakened, the resentment and curses will explode too. Also, we need to be careful of Dream. When I touched Yan Yue’s stomach earlier, I felt something moving inside.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You have to. Dream can direct evil and darkness. He can turn a person’s deepest fear into nightmares.”

“But I have amnesia. Doesn’t that mean his power is useless to me?” Han Fei felt like he could open his heart to welcome Dream. He believed he had done something similar in the past.

“If you think you can sustain the pain, it might help you recover some memories. But there’s a 90 percent chance you’d end up as his puppet.” The man shook his head. “There are too few people who are willing to help us. The more people are affected, the weaker the nightmare. He can weave individual nightmares for each of us. But his power will be split. In any case, my advice is for you to be careful.”

“Does that mean we’ll be in less danger if there are more of us?” Han Fei asked, “Then why aren’t we inviting the other neighbors? Or even some pedestrians from the street?”

The police siren shattered the silence on the city outskirts. The siren flashed as several police cruisers followed behind a black taxi.

“Captain Zhang, what’s up with that car? The criminal’s driving skill is ridiculous. How can they escape when the whole cavalcade is trying to stop it?” The officer in the passenger seat stared at the taxi that slithered through the night like a ghost. The taxi was a normal car but none of the police could catch up to it.

“Damn it. We have to capture him today!” The officer in the driver’s seat was furious. Originally, it was the younger officer who drove the car. But after they failed to catch up to the taxi, the officer asked for a place swap. Then, he realized the taxi was really too fast!

The chase had gone from afternoon to night. Whenever they were close, the taxi would shake them off. It felt like the taxi was alive, and it knew when danger was enclosing. They confirmed there was a fugitive inside the taxi. More cruisers participated in the chase. But as the night darkened, the taxi appeared to melt into the dark. The outskirts also started to mist. It made the chase very hard.

“Captain Zhang, the situation in the city is chaotic too. We need to send some officers back. Many people are acting strangely, doing inexplicable things…”

“Shush! The fugitive is right in front of us. If we let him go, how many more innocent victims will there be?” Captain Zhang gritted his teeth. After 10 minutes, the taxi suddenly slowed.

“Did he run out of fuel? This is our chance!” Captain Zhang stepped on the gas. The other cruisers also accelerated. They drew closer to the taxi. The officer in the passenger seat could even see the driver inside the taxi!

“Let’s see how you’re going to escape this time!” The furious police planned to surround the taxi. At this crucial moment, the driver of the taxi did something unexpected. He pulled his hands off the steering wheel to open the door, but the door refused to open.

“What is he doing? What is the criminal doing?” As the cruisers gathered, the taxi suddenly turned a direction and drove into an alley.

“I want to get down! Stop!” Xiao Jia stepped on the brake, but it was pointless. Nine human faces had curses on them. The victims had taken over the car. When they separated in the morning, Han Fei fed his blood to the victims. He mixed Xu Qin’s curse in it. The curse was not lethal, but the victims didn’t know that. The victims only knew that they had to find Han Fei before midnight to cure the curse.

Actually, Han Fei’s thought was that Xiao Jia wouldn’t be able to shake off the police. After Xiao Jia was captured, the taxi would be compounded. However, the taxi would come on its own to find Han Fei. Who would have thought Xiao Jia and the taxi were so capable. They managed to avoid capture for so long.

The time was almost up. The victims didn’t care about the rest. They needed Han Fei to cure the curse. They turned the car around and moved towards the source of the curse!

Xiao Jia, in the passenger seat, glanced at the long trail of police cars behind him. He was scared. “They will never believe that I’m not even in control of this car.” The black taxi cut through the night, leading a group of police. They sped towards Xin Lu Theme Park Family Housing Facility.

In the city, humans were responsible for the night. However, the sirens of the police cruisers lit up the night. After the police cruisers left, several vans moved out of the dark. Thousand Nights in the driver’s seat extinguished the cigarette. He turned to look at F. “Are you sure we should go and kill that Han Fei instead of continuing to hunt ghosts?”

“He will kill all of us in the future I see.” F can see the future. Most of his predictions came true, so the players couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.

“But with so many police pursuing him, he won’t be able to escape.”

“I need to kill him personally.” F held the black knife. “I should have made my move when we first met. The sympathy in my humanity made me hesitate. If I were as ruthless as he was, we would have cleared the game already.”

“At least 20 people have died because of you.” Worm at the back said coldly, “And you want to talk about humanity?”

“I know you have harsh opinions against me, but I only pushed you out because I saw the future, and I knew you wouldn’t die,” F said without even turning around.

“I didn’t die because he didn’t kill me, not because of the future you saw!” Worm was agitated. But it was understandable. At that moment, Qiang Wei, beside Worm, patted his shoulders. Qiang Wei, who always stayed behind, had also made his move. F wanted to gather the power of all the players to eliminate the dangerous factor, which was Han Fei. But the players had differing opinions. Worm objected to this, and Qiang Wei seemed to have his own plan too.

The vans followed the police cars from behind. They were all heading to the family compound. At 11. 45 pm, the black taxi ran through the unlocked gate and entered the compound.

The shrill sirens of the cruisers behind it woke up many people from their nightmares. The taxi stopped before Building 4. The car door was unlocked. Xiao Jia hurriedly ran out. He only took a few steps when he saw the police arriving at the compound too.

“Don’t move!”

“Hands behind your head! Kneel!”

Xiao Jia froze. He hadn’t been through something like this before.

“Haha. Please don’t misunderstand.” Xiao Jia raised his hands and leaned on the car window. “I was actually a hostage taken by this taxi. Have you considered that?”

 

For some reason, Google decided that my blog has suspicious traffic and banned me from applying for Google ads. Hence, all ads are gone. My only income is kofi and Patreon. Not going to lie, income from Patreon is also dropping. It is what it is, I guess. 

Support me via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lonelyman

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2 comments:

ThabithTheYinglet said...

thank you the chapter, Lonelytree!!

and I hope google can solve the "suspicious activity" soon, i would help you with other things but I don't have money

Anonymous said...

Dam, good luck with google.