My House of Horrors

“Did you hear? There are rumors that a ghost visited the male dormitory last night! There was a student who always bullied his roommate found dazed in his bed. Both pee and poop were found staining his shorts!”“How come I heard it was the female dormitory that had a problem last night? The surveillance camera was covered by a black shadow, but the manager said she saw many different human faces flutter into the dormitory through the blurry camera! There was a female student who was found in the corridor. She was incognizant. People said she was sleep walking!”

“Yes, yes. This morning, I saw someone was sent to the hospital. The ambulance stopped for a while before the female dormitory. Now, everyone is talking about how the students who often bully their classmates are being cursed! This is karma rearing her ugly head!”

A few girls were standing together, whispering and gossiping among themselves. The most beautiful among them did not say anything; she just looked at the rest of them with derision in her eyes.

“Chen Wen, you’d better take this as a warning. If you continue to go cause trouble, be careful. You might also run into a ghost at night.” A female student with a coarse voice and a rather unisexual appearance turned to warn the student who had not spoken.

“Do you think I’ll believe these ridiculous stories?” Chen Wen crossed her arms. She guarded at the backdoor of the class like she was waiting for someone. The bell for class rang. Most of the students returned to their seats, and at that moment, a female student who was very casually dressed stepped into the class. She was wearing clothes that were bought at the market. She did not know how to dress herself. Her eyes darted everywhere but her deskmate, Chen Wen. The first class of the day was over. The girl did not dare leave her seat even though she wanted to go to the toilet. She kept herself glued to her seat, as if the moment she left the classroom, something bad would happen to her.

“You seem to have some issues with me, huh?” Chen Wen moved her chair to the girl’s side. If one was not close enough to hear the content of her voice and the tone of her voice, just looking at them, one might think they were very close friends.

“No.” The girl held her pen and kept flipping through her notes.

“Where are your manners? I am talking to you. Look at me. Look at me!” Chen wen’s arm landed on the girl’s shoulder. “How about we go to play together after school? Don’t be such a good two shoes. You’ve been wanting to make friends, right? After this afternoon, we will be friends.”

“But I have something to do…”

“Okay, so that is a promise. If you dare skip out on me, there will be hell to pay. I will see you later.” Chen Wen let go of her arm and took out her phone to start chatting with someone.

Her deskmate gripped the pen in her hand tightly. She was very afraid, but she did not know who to share her problem with. She did not know what Chen Wen wanted from her, but she was sure it was nothing good. Without any actual evidence, even if she went to the teacher, the school would not intervene to deal with Chen Wen. Furthermore, even if the teacher did choose to believe her, all the school could do was leave Chen Wen a warning. As long as they did not kick her out of school, Chen Wen and her friends would only make it their mission to make the girl’s school life more miserable.

This was the saddest point about the victims of school bullies. They were the victims, but they were the ones being ostracized, and sometimes, they might even suffer secondary damage from their family and the school. Her head was filled with what Chen Wen had said; the girl could not even pay attention in class. She did not dare speak up, so she stared at her textbook quietly. During the physical education class, the girl requested a break from the teacher with the excuse that she was not feeling well. She returned to the classroom to rest on her own.

“Should I tell the teacher? The girls being targeted by Chen Wen either become her friend or transfer from this school. She appears to come from a very powerful family.” The girl’s family had just moved to Xin Hai not that long ago. She had the feeling of self-deprecation of a newcomer. “I cannot create more trouble for my parents anymore, but… what should I do?”

“Chang Wenwen?”

The girl suddenly heard someone calling her name. She turned her head to the source of the voice. There was a young man standing at the classroom window with a smile. The sun created a halo around the young man, and the young man’s smile was as warm as the sun.

“That should be her! Quick! Pull me back into the comic! My body is about to dissolve under the sun already!” There was a shadow behind the young man who was struggling and pleading, but of course, the girl could not see that.

Pulling Chang Gu back into the comic, Chen Ge pushed open the backdoor of the classroom. “Please do not be afraid. I am completing a request for a friend, and I am here because I need a favor from you.”

The girl was utterly confused. She had no idea what Chen Ge was talking about at all.

“Have you ever had this dream before?” Chen Ge stood at the backdoor and softly spoke. “You dreamed about a blood red door. Inside the door, there was a school that only had its classes at night. All the students and teachers at the school were ghosts. When you were lost and in despair, a female senior appeared to help you.”

The words jogged the girl’s memory, and her face was overwhelmed by surprise. “How do you know about that?”

“Do you still remember what kind of promise you made that female senior?” Chen Ge followed what Chang Gu said and was slowly leading the girl step by step.

“She would help me escape from the nightmare, and in exchange, I would help her look after something.” The female student was very innocent, and she did not even consider hiding any information from Chen Ge.

“I am that female senior’s friend. She asked me to come to you to reclaim that item.”

Chen Ge did not look like a bad person. After a moment’s hesitation, the female student undid the first button of her blouse and took out something that looked like a pouch from around her neck. “All this time, I have been wondering whether that was a dream or not. If it was not a dream, how come I cannot remember more details about it? If it was a dream, how I do explain this thing that appeared in my grasp after I woke up that night?”

The girl opened the pouch. Inside was a red stone, and in the middle of the stone was a strand of hair that had been balled up.

“This should be the thing.” Chen Ge accepted the stone. The several Red Specters inside the comic gave him warnings at the same time as if this thing was extremely dangerous. “Thank you, I shall take this with me. From now on, your luck will slowly become better.”

Before the school security arrived, carrying the stone, Chen Ge hurriedly left the grounds of Xin Hai First High.

“Chang Gu, I have already obtained the object. What should I do next?” Chen Ge carried his backpack to the shadows of a large tree. It was as if he was talking to himself.

A shadow behind Chen Ge opened his lips to say, “That strand of hair is the last lingering spirit of my little sister. The red stone is formed from the blood of her heart, the most important drop of blood for a Top Red Specter.”

“Are you not afraid that I’ll have the other Red Specters consume her by revealing to me such an important information?”

“Naturally, I am afraid of that, but there is nothing I can do about it,” Chang Gu said with a bitter smile. “Even if I hid that information from you, your other Red Specters employees would notice it.”

“Don’t worry, I will fulfil the promise that I have made. I just hope that you siblings will do the same for me.” Chen Ge tossed the blood stone lightly into the air, and that caused Chang Gu to get immensely worried. “With just this lingering spirit and blood stone, your younger sister can come back to life?”

“She still need to consume some Specters first, but I have no idea the exact number of ghosts that she needs to consume.” Chang Gu lowered his head. He did not dare look at Chen Ge.

“In other words, you two planned to rope me into the role of her nanny, huh? I think I finally understand Chang Wenyu’s plan now. Her enemies are all in Jiujiang, so she chose a girl who just moved to Xin Hai and left her last shred of lingering spirit with her. After she awakens, she can consume the ghosts in Xin Hai to recover her power, and when she is at her full strength again, she can easily return to Jiujiang.”

Chang Wenyu was indeed very clever, but she had seriously underestimated Zhang Ya. She had failed to anticipate that Chen Ge would have a Demon God with him.

“Boss, we were indeed in the wrong at the School of the Afterlife. I hope you will help her one more time.” Chang Gu was basically begging Chen Ge. During this period when they were together, his opinion of Chen Ge had kept improving. He felt like Chen Ge was someone trustworthy.

“Don’t worry.” Chen Ge put away the blood stone and creased his brows. “To awaken Chang Wenyu, she needs to feed on ghosts. To improve my employees’ abilities, I also need ghosts and Specters.” After giving it some thought, Chen Ge took out his phone and started to search for ghost stories related to Xin Hai. He created a throwaway account and snuck into a local supernatural forum. Inside a pinned thread, he found the thing that he was looking for.

‘The collection thread for the ghost stories in Xin Hai! Come and review and vote your top ten scariest ghost stories from Xin Hai!’

Chen Ge surveyed the thread post by post. His pupils slowly narrowed as he silently recorded all the information. Chang Gu, who stood next to him, did not dare speak. When his boss looked through these ghost stories, it was like a customer looking over the menu at the restaurant. The serious expression on the man’s face caused his heart to shiver with fear.

“This thread is still updating. The latest post was posted about two minutes ago. Looks like I have come across a treasure of a thread.” Chen Ge bookmarked the page. He had already memorized the addresses of some of the ghost stories, and he planned to visit them that night.

Returning to the Nightmare Academy, Chen Ge did not have time to greet his employees but directly rush back into the headmaster’s office. He asked Chi Ren some questions again and confirmed some information about Doctor Fang and people with the surname Chi before he left.

“Failure to plan is planning to fail, but sometimes, luck plays a huge part of it as well. Xiao Sun, you will run into many kinds of danger on this journey of yours, but I believe in you because you are different from the others.” Chen Ge personally inspected the final result of Xiao Sun’s special training and taught Xiao Sun a few more tricks.

Once the sky darkened, Chen Ge, who was all prepared, carried the ‘heavily injured’ Xiao Sun to the countryside of Xin Hai. The secret of the people with the surname Chi was only known to the people with the surname Chi, and this secret was one that they could not share. Due to the curse of the Demon God, once the person revealed the secret, not only would they die, the Demon God would be apprised of the situation there almost immediately.

The cursed hospital did not expect the red high heels to inherit everything that belonged to the ghost fetus and become a Top Red Specter, and Chen Ge was currently making use of this. Chen Ge created an accident so that the people with the surname Chi who lived at the countryside very coincidentally run into Patient 101 Xiao Sun, who was about to dissipate. After using some words and actions to convince the man, Chen Ge watched the man carry Xiao Sun out of Xin Hai with his own eyes. The place that they were heading to was the border between Xin Hai and Jiujiang. There were many ghost buildings and barren lands there. It had been abandoned for many years already.

“God will smile on the faithful. Hopefully, Xiao Sun will make something of himself at the cursed hospital.” For some unknown reason, after sending Xiao Sun away, Chen Ge unconsciously sighed in great relief.

“What I need to do next is improve my employees’ ability as fast as I can and try to get the red high heels to become a Demon God.” It was extremely difficult for a Red Specter become a Demon God, but Chen Ge had no other choice. Only by having the red high heels become the Demon God would he have the right to fight the cursed hospital.

Logging back into the supernatural forum, Chen Ge noticed that the thread was still updating. The forum users had gotten into an argument about the ranking of the ghost stories. No party wished to back down. In the end, some of them even swore that they would go to the locations of the ghost stories to record a video to show the other users how scary the place was.

“Ultimately, the place is a big city. The people are always busy.” Jiujiang had similar forums, but the number of active users was pitiably small. The populations of both cities were not on the same level. “The place with more people will have more despair and thus more ghost stories. Theoretically, that should be the case, but it appears like Jiujiang is an exception to the rule.”

Chen Ge had also had noticed that the number of ghost stories in Jiujiang was abnormally high. If he was to relate a city to a person, then Jiujiang was like Sun Xiaojun. It had the love of a thousand Specters.

“It has been quite a few days since I arrived in Xin Hai. It is about time I go pay them a visit.” Chen Ge hailed a cab to head to his destinations. “Sir, please drive faster. I am in a hurry. I have to visit a few places tonight.”

…

By 11 pm, of the top ten Xin Hai Ghost Stories, Chen Ge had already visited three of them, but unfortunately, he was not rewarded. He also slowly realized that the ghost stories with great word of mouth in reality would have a very low chance of actually hiding a Red Specter. If an actual Red Specter with great resentment was behind these ghost stories, there would not be any survivors to spread the ghost stories. Without any survivors, there naturally would not be any witnesses, and the ghost story would not even be known.

With a spirit of not wanting to miss anything, Chen Ge had recorded all the ghost stories on the pinned thread. Among them, he had found a few special ghost stories. The descriptions were not that detailed, but he could pick out specific terms like bloody clothes and red.

“Xin Hai Ghost Stories Rank Twenty-Seven. A crying well in a developing part of the city—it was supposed to be an abandoned well, but there was a crying sound coming from inside it. And there were witnesses claiming they saw bloody hair crawling out from inside the well. This sounds promising. It is worth a visit.”

Placing his phone on his knee, Chen Ge used his pen and some paper to help with his note-making. Those who did not know better probably thought he was really reviewing these places.

Ten minutes later, Chen Ge arrived at a developing construction site. Due to many reasons, the construction progress was halted, and the well was at the foot of the hill behind the construction site. Walking through the bushes and trees, Chen Ge finally found the well. The well was made from stone, and not far away from the well were a few old and abandoned houses.

“This should be the place.” Before Chen Ge even got near, he could hear a wispy crying sound. “It’s coming from inside the well?”

There was a magical power about the crying. Chen Ge appeared to lose control of his body as he slowly moved to the mouth of the well. The pale moonlight shone on the surface of the water. Chen Ge looked into the well. There was endless black hair floating on the surface of the water. Without any attempt at communication, the black hair gathered together and tried to grab Chen Ge around his neck, intending to drag him into the well!

“You asked for it!” His palm flipped through the comic. The moon turned red as blood flushed right into the well. Moments later, the water ghost reappeared beside Chen Ge holding Chang Wenyu’s blood stone.

“There was a Half Red Specter inside the well, but it appeared to have been cursed. It cannot be rationally communicated with. It did not even seem to realize it was a ghost.”

“It was cursed?” Whenever Chen Ge heard the term ‘curse’, he was immediately reminded of the cursed hospital.

“After swallowing the Half Red Specter, the blood stone has deepened in color. I predict it will need to swallow at least two more Red Specters before she can awaken. Other than that, there’s something else at the bottom of the well. I think you’d better go and look at it yourself.”

The water ghost and Xu Yin led Chen Ge into the old well. At the bottom of the well, they encountered a tomb. Inside the tomb was a set of well-preserved clothing, and among the folds of the clothes, there was a patient record. On the back of the patient record was written—’This is a sickened world. Why have you not discovered that fact? I vow to cure you!’

“This statement again?” Chen Ge had once seen this sentence before at Lan Xiaochen’s home. “This is a sickened world. Why have you not discovered that fact? I have a feeling that question is meant for me.”

Putting away the patient record, Chen Ge crawled out from the old well. “It’s pointless to think about it now. We should hurry to the next location of ghost stories instead.”