The biggest difference between the surface and the underground at the Ziggurat was the lingering black mist. Everything underground was touched by death and reeked horribly.
The lights in the 4th floor basement appeared to be broken, but it was not completely dark thanks to the weak lights that emitted out from the gaps between the tenants’ room doors. These little bits of light provided the only comfort in the dark corridor.
Han Fei held the boy by his hand, they looked like father and son. But in reality, one of them was ready to grab the knife while the other had the stench deep within his soul slowly pouring out. As Han Fei walked down the corridor, the male student in the elevator booth chased after him with Firefly and Lai Sheng.
“Han Fei, wait for me!” The male student shouted but Han Fei appeared to be purposely maintaining a fixed distance between them. On this floor, the doors of the tenants were fixed with white couplets. The centres of the door were painted with the caricature of a small child. He had a very cute face and wore a shirt with colourful patches.
“Is there anything special around your house? That might help us find it faster.” Han Fei kept maintaining his speed, so that he was not too far from the male student but he didn’t disappear from his view either.
The boy lowered his head to think. “My house has my father and mother… and a big dresser.”
“That’s all?” Han Fei wasn’t really that concerned about the boy. He had already figured out another way to take advantage of the boy. He slowed down to observe the half-closed doors beside him. There were many such rooms in the 4th floor basement. These appeared to be the Soul Chasers’ home.
“Let’s see if this is your home.” Han Fei pushed the door open and gently urged the boy into the room. After the boy didn’t trigger anything dangerous, Han Fei walked in after him. The living room was very tidy. There were fresh fruits on the coffee table, ready for guests. ‘How come the rooms here look even more normal than the ones on the surface?’ Han Fei saw no ghost, there was not even a trace of Yin energy, it was like he was back in real life. Studying the fresh fruits on the table, Han Fei slowly approached. This was the first time he saw actual fruits in the cryptic world.
He reached out to grab one but before his hand could touch it, the fruit’s brilliant skin started to peel as several bugs crawled out from within. The gorgeous fruit plate was a cultivator bed for bugs. It looked pretty but venture too close and you’d be bitten by poisonous bugs.
Once they entered the room, Han Fei noticed the boy’s mannerism change drastically. He hunched his back and looked defeated like a beaten dog. As if afraid of dirtying the floor, the boy only dared to inch along the wall to approach the bedroom door. He rubbed his hands on his clothes before he dared to grab the bedroom door handle and pushed it open.
A heady scent of perfume wafted out from the room. The bedroom was huge and extremely luxurious. The biggest furniture was the big bed and a big dresser with reinforced doors. The dresser faced the bed so if one hid inside the dresser, one could spy everything that happened in bed.
The boy stuck his back to the door. He didn’t dare to enter the bedroom until he was slowly nudged into it by Han Fei.
“It appears to be a normal bedroom.” Han Fei scanned the room. There was rug on the floor, a big vanity table beside the bed, a projector at the end of the bed and a minibar at the corner of the room. It was clear that the couple that lived here enjoyed the finer things in life. But perhaps they weren’t that exclusively rich, instead they spent their money on the décor to create the impression that they were. While Han Fei examined the room, the boy wandered to the dresser like something inside was calling him.
“Shall we open it?” Han Fei coaxed the boy to grab at the dresser door. The pair of small hands opened the door. Black mist with a stinging smell leaked out immediately and overwhelmed the perfume scent. Strange sounds echoed inside the dresser. After the black mist faded away, Han Fei realized a boy with a ruined face was trapped inside the dresser. The boy was about the same age as the boy beside Han Fei, but his face was seriously disfigured, and his limbs were bloated. He couldn’t break out from the dresser on his own.
Seeing this horrible scene, Han Fei frowned. He then spotted a few more pictures inside the dresser. In the first picture, the boy looked very cute and normal. His eyes glowed with curiosity and idealism about the world.
The second picture was still the same boy but his expression had gotten duller. Tears flowed freely down his face. His limbs were injected with something. Compared to a person, he looked more like an object.
In the third picture, the boy was no longer recognizable. His limbs and face had completely changed, even the tears had stopped.
‘Why would they do such a thing to a cute boy?’ Han Fei took out the red paper doll from his inventory and tried to save the boy. But once he got close, the boy’s skin started to crack. Black vessels crawled around his heart like vines. The moment the boy left the dresser, the vines would crush his heart.
The boy’s skin was almost translucent. Han Fei saw that he no longer had flesh but instead the skin was wrapped around many different expanding nightmares. Han Fei stopped and didn’t dare to move too recklessly but the boy beside him ran forward actively. He reached out to try to yank the boy out from the dresser.
Maybe the boy did it on purpose or maybe he just wanted to save the boy in the dresser.
Regardless, the vines crushed the boy’s heart and the boy’s body exploded. The boy turned into a ball of black memory. The memory was constructed from the boy’s pain. It was weaving into a nightmare… or at least it tried to.
This was something that was extremely rare. The boy’s memory failed to become anything. It disintegrated and was consumed by the dresser. The smell from the dresser thickened. All the living traces of the boy became part of the dresser.
The boy beside Han Fei looked perfectly stunned like he didn’t expect this to happen.
‘This boy is extremely cunning.’ Han Fei failed to save the boy but he took away the 3 pictures of him. The boy was already dead, the least he could do was to bring his pictures away from this place that imprisoned him.
When Han Fei touched the pictures, the robotic voice announced, “Notification for Player 0000, you’ve found the hidden quest item for the Death Curse Mission—One of Butterfly’s Twisted Hatred.”
‘These pictures contain Butterfly’s hatred? The bastard replicated the things that had happened to it on other innocent children?’
Putting away the picture, Han Fei exited the room. Looking at the rooms that led down the corridor, he had chills running up his spine. He tried the room next door. All the rooms in the underground appeared to have the same layout and furniture, as if they were modelled after one person’s memory. But to Han Fei’s consternation, this bedroom also had a giant dresser.
Opening the door, there was an immobilized boy wearing a girl’s flowery dress. His face was deformed. These kids had lost their sentience. Even if they felt pain, they couldn’t clearly express it.
