The Devil's Cage

Panda Novel

Tsk Gak!

The door of the mansion was pushed open. Eckart finally recovered from his daze.

“Go, go, go!” he said in a hurry.

In fact, even without his orders, the camera, lighting and other crew members were already moving out.

After all, only Eckart was the ametur in the shooting group.

As for Mei Huasheng?

She was the first to chase after Kieran. She started following Kieran the moment he walked into Edwood Mansion.

In the eyes of Mei Huasheng, what Kieran was doing was all part of his ‘setup’.

Setting up a lie and luring the innocents into a trap, ultimately gaining what he sought after.

Fortune? Fame? Women? All might be his target.

As for her? Mei Huasheng would not let Kieran succeed, because it would only hurt a lot of people.

The first floor of Edwood Mansion consisted of an administration office, a storeroom, a laundry room, two activity rooms, a living hall plus many corridors.

The corridor generally formed a ‘T’ shape.

After walking past the shoe rack, closet and umbrella rack, Kieran saw the wide living hall and the stairs that led upstairs.

One side of the living hall still had a big square table and a ladder along with a paint bucket that was left behind a long time ago.

It seemed like the third owner of the mansion, Yu Narles, wanted to forge the mansion into a warm, cozy family home, but unfortunately…

Mei Huasheng shook her head when she saw Kieran go up the stairs without having the intention of stopping. She quickly chased him.

When the two of them vanished beyond the stairs, Eckart and the crew finally came in.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!”

Eckart didn’t care about what the script wrote anymore. What introduce the first floor, get used to the atmosphere, etc? All were discarded from his mind. He only knew he had to follow Kieran because he had a feeling that he would get something just by following Kieran.

As a matter of fact, that really was the case.

After going up the horizontal V-shaped stairs, Eckart and the crew saw Kieran stop at the second floor corridor.

The second floor differed from the many sections of the first floor in that it housed only guest rooms.

A total of nine guest rooms were divided into two sides. The side near the stairs had four rooms, 201 to 204; opposite it was 205 to 209, with 207 directly in front of the stairs.

Kieran was standing in front of room 207.

“What’s wrong? Found anything?”

Eckart finally did his job as a host, walking over to Kieran with the microphone and asking softly. But despite lowering his voice with the microphone near his mouth, his voice echoed throughout the second floor, causing specks of dust to fall.

Echoes moved around the spacious corridor; the overlapped echoes were very discomforting.

When the crew saw the spots where light couldn’t reach, they felt scared facing the unknown in the dark.

At least the two site supervisors stuck together tightly. They held a wrench from the van and sized up the surroundings nervously as though they were afraid that something would jump out of the dark suddenly.

The scared expressions of the site supervisors was captured by the cameraman as well.

According to the script, the two site supervisors were supposed to act scared, but the effect was amplified when they weren’t acting.

“Em. Some whispers tell me there is something unusual here.”

Kieran’s nasal voice spread through the microphone and what he said entered everyone’s ears.

Whispers? What kind of whispers?

The crew was guessing instinctively. Other than Mei Huasheng, all of them quivered uncontrollably.

Saying something like that in a dark place was really scary. The two site supervisors with the wrench were so scared that they almost dropped the tool.

The two of them unconsciously went closer to the lighting man. They hoped for more light, but when they truly got closer to the light, they realized how scary the darkness really was.

Their little movements didn’t ease their fear at all. Quite the opposite, as it made them more scared.

Wuuu!

Coincidentally, a sudden night breeze entered through the unclosed second floor windows.

The night breeze in July was extra chilly but at this particular moment, it became gloomy and eerie.

Ka, Ka Ka!

The breeze blew over, and the two site supervisors almost stopped breathing. Both of them tried their best to clench their teeth tight, trying not to scream out of shock, but their mouths quivered because of the breeze. Their shivering muscles forbade them from closing their mouths, thus producing the chattering sounds from their teeth.

However, no one would laugh at them at the moment because the others were no better than them.

Fear is infectious. It’s formless and sometimes even more terrifying than the plague.

“T-Then w-what should we do?” Eckart asked in a slightly hoarse voice, adding more depth to the scary atmosphere.

He hadn’t done it on purpose. His throat was tight because of the nervousness and when he spoke, the voice turned hoarse without his control.

Kieran replied with action.

He turned the door handle of room 207. The obviously rusted mechanism produced a squeaky sound, and the door opened.

Then…

“Aaaaaaaah!”

A sharp scream came from the crew.

The two site supervisors ran downstairs while screaming.

The lighting man and cameraman also staggered backwards. The light wobbled and the camera became shaky, thus making the captured shot even more scary.

Under the wobbling light, a face appeared in the camera.

What kind of face? A scarred face! The face was scarred left and right! The scars even overlapped each other repeatedly!

More importantly, the cause of these scars appeared to all be different; some were knife cuts, some were scald wounds and some were obviously burn marks by some acid.

Under the overlapping hideous scars, the face looked even more scary and vicious.

And inside the dark room, the eerie level of the face skyrocketed infinitely.

The fear exploded in everyone’s shivering hearts when they saw the face.

The two site supervisors had run, the light and camera man limped on the floor and Eckart even shrunk behind Kieran at the very first moment.

His instincts told him that Kieran’s back was the safest place in the entire mansion.

Among the crowd, only Kieran and Mei Huasheng acted normally.

With the light, Kieran carefully inspected the face as if some precious treasure was hidden under all those hideous scars.

Mei Huasheng frowned. She hated cowards with cold feet.

Although this wasn’t the battlefield she used to fight on, she already listed the two site supervisors on her ‘no-contact’ blacklist.

As for the others who didn’t run?

Their cowardry reaction landed them on her blacklist as well.

As for Kieran?

Mei Huasheng categorized him on another list.

“He is not one of those ‘things’. He is just a poor, homeless ragpicker,” Mei Huasheng explained with a frown. She was ready to end this little farce with the crew, because it was too funny in her eyes.

Kieran, who has been quiet, spoke. “Is that so?”

He was looking at the ragpicker before his eyes. His gaze turned sharp and a name came out of his mouth.

“Feng De.”