Chapter 14 - 14 14 Level 2

14: Chapter 14 Level 2 14: Chapter 14 Level 2 Shared fortune, shared hardship; that’s how it should be with good friends, and with neighbors as well. Watching TV at the haunted house at three in the morning was such a thrilling experience that it would be a waste to enjoy it all by myself, so Han Fei decided to invite his neighbors to join him. He would start to change his solitary nature from today on, to become a person who is both righteous and warm-hearted. His eyes were still fixed on the TV, but Han Fei’s body began to move slowly. Actually, when that hand appeared behind him, Han Fei had resolved to take a gamble. Compared to the ghost that suddenly appeared, the blood-soaked neighbor outside the door seemed somewhat more acceptable to him. Adjusting his position little by little, Han Fei’s brain worked feverishly as he came up with several plans. The neighbor from the sixth floor was hiding just outside the door, shrinking in the blind spot to avoid detection by the peephole. Han Fei felt that if he suddenly opened the door, considering the neighbor’s crazed behavior, they would probably attack without bothering to identify whom they were confronting. Therefore, to shift the ghost’s grudge inside the haunted house onto someone else, he could only let the ghost go out first. The plan in his mind was perfect, but Han Fei realized the extreme difficulty when he actually started to execute it. His body was engulfed by darkness, a cold breath permeating every nerve, and even minor movements filled him with a sense of utter dread. The cold light emitted by the TV screen twisted, and the little figures with incomplete bodies on the screen fought for freedom only to be caught again and again; no one knew who was seizing them, only that they could not escape. The silent screams of the figures seemed to foretell something; their futile struggles ended as they were dragged by an invisible hand into a black house. They tried every way to resist, using everything in the house, and they always managed to escape the room by the skin of their teeth. However, each time they left that black house, their bodies were missing parts. With increasingly severe mutilation, the figures’ speed slowed down. By the seventh escape from the black room, it seemed to have realized its fate. This time it did not wait for those invisible hands to come after it; halfway through its run it turned back to look behind. The view on the screen shifted, and a monster made up of mismatched human body parts appeared, continually following the figure with the incomplete body. The cobbled-together arm turned into black smoke, caught the figure, and once again dragged it back to the black room. Not long after, the room door opened, and the figure, now missing another part of its body, stepped out. This time the figure did not run away but stopped despairingly at the doorway of the black room, gazing into the pitch-black threshold before slowly walking in. For the first time, the animation moved inside the black room. Han Fei held his breath; he too was eager to know what exactly resided within that nightmarish black room. Instead of the gruesome scene he imagined, the inside of the black room looked quite ordinary – a shoe cabinet by the door, a floor with slight cracks, and occasional stains of black and crimson on the walls. An old electronic clock showed it was three-fifteen. “This room layout...” In the not-so-large living room, there was a sofa in the center with a TV in front of it that seemed to be playing something. The figure, heart heavy as lead, did not run away again and instead sat down on the sofa in despair. The TV was on, and the figure with the incomplete body watched the screen, as if it were staring at Han Fei outside the screen. With a lurch in his heart, Han Fei was certain that the nightmarish black room in the animation was the very room he was now in! In the animation, the little figure silently watched the TV as a face, then a neck, and finally a body suddenly emerged from the bedroom behind it. The size of the monster made from human parts seemed to have grown even larger. This monster approached, stood behind the figure on the sofa, and placed its hands over the figure’s left shoulder; then its other hand was placed on the right. A cold feeling made Han Fei’s neck bristle with goosebumps, and his right shoulder abruptly sank down. Damn it! The tiny figure in the animation seemed to be Han Fei himself, with the Human-body Puzzle Monster appearing to stand right behind him. His shoulders were grasped, and the sense of desperation from the little person in the animation seemed to transmit to Han Fei’s body. Time and again, futile escape attempts ensued, with continual dismemberment of the body—an inescapable nightmare. In the animation, the little figure gave up struggling. The body of the Monster behind it started to split open, revealing faces hidden within its body. With skin tearing and bones misplacing, a gut-wrenching sound arose behind Han Fei. His predicament mirrored that of the tiny figure in the animation, the only difference being that the figure had given up, while Han Fei was still intently watching the Monster in the animation, fixating on the several human faces beneath its grotesque exterior. Before logging into the game, he had researched the Human-body Puzzle case, looked at the photos of all the victims, and realized that the faces in the body of the Monster were those victims’, including Wei Youfu and his wife, Amay. With his shoulders locked, tension so high he couldn’t breathe, Han Fei felt a chill spreading from his shoulders, as a tremendous force seemed to try to drag him away. In the television animation, the little character was torn apart, and blood seeped out from the screen. The already eerie room underwent another change. Han Fei also felt a pain in his shoulders, having never been so close to death before. His body was firmly gripped by those hands, unable to break free. The tiny figure in the TV was dismembered, which seemed to foreshadow Han Fei’s own end. Under the immense pressure of death, Han Fei made his final attempt. “You will kill me, I’m not surprised at all,” he said. “Just, if it’s somehow possible, could you let me hear my wife’s voice one more time? She’s waiting for me to come home. I promised her a wedding ceremony.” Clenching his teeth, with eyes already moist, at the brink of life and death, the man before him cared not for his own life but for the promise he made to his wife. His simple words seemed to contain a certain power, as the pallid arms, assembled from human bodies, hesitated. “I work tirelessly, always staying late until dawn, but I’ve never felt tired because I know there’s a light still on at home.” “I truly am not afraid of dying. I’m afraid she’ll keep waiting. Could you let me say goodbye to her?” Tears held back, his eyes swollen, that ordinary face now bore an earnestness. In the television animation, the two faces in the body of the Monster that looked very much like Wei Youfu and Amay began to regain normal expressions. Their hostility faded as they gazed at Han Fei, as if for a moment they saw themselves. The Monster stopped in its tracks, and the seven human faces within its body seemed to be at odds with each other. Han Fei had been sitting on the couch from the very beginning, not daring to move, his eyes constantly fixed on the TV. The words he had just spoken were from the perspective of Wei Youfu. Back then, no one gave Wei Youfu a chance. Now, the choice was in Wei Youfu’s hands. Time ticked away second by second; the faces in the Monster’s body grew increasingly restless. But just as they were about to attack Han Fei again, the face that looked honest and simple, Wei Youfu’s face, suddenly went berserk, biting at a nearby face. The room seemed to tremble; the legs behind the TV cabinet disappeared swiftly, and something appeared to have happened behind Han Fei. Suppressing the curiosity within, Han Fei continued to focus on the TV, his hands clasped tightly together. Soon the half-hour was up, and the oppressive feeling in the room gradually vanished. “Attention, player number 0000! You have successfully completed the Level G beginner’s task—watching TV!” “Attention, player number 0000! You have successfully advanced to Level Two!”