After finishing her conversation with Shen Huanhuan, Jiang Yan put down her phone.
Little Jiang Yan’s body was warm as a puppy, hugging Jiang Yan’s waist and even resting her little feet on top of her. Jiang Yan didn’t mind and closed her eyes.
She really was tired, but little Jiang Yan, after staying up so late, was fully awake and not sleepy at all.
She kept squirming, hugging her blanket and wriggling around like a caterpillar. By her seventh lap, Jiang Yan finally lost patience and pressed her down on the bed. “Stop moving.”
The little girl opened her mouth to retort, but before she could get a word out, Jiang Yan pinched her cheeks.
“If you don’t sleep, I’ll pinch you all night.”
Little Jiang Yan instantly fell quiet.
She slapped Jiang Yan’s hand away, rolled over in boredom, and buried her face in the pillow. “Now there’s nothing you can do.”
Even with her eyes closed, Jiang Yan knew the girl was just trying to provoke her. She tucked the blanket around her and said no more.
A few minutes later, her mind grew fuzzy and she slid into deep sleep.
Once Jiang Yan fell asleep, little Jiang Yan quietly lifted her head from the pillow.
She carefully groped for Jiang Yan’s phone, turned on the screen, and used its light to peek across at the other bed.
Shen Xiaoxiao was sleeping deeply, but little Xiaoxiao’s face was streaked with tears.
Little Jiang Yan quickly rolled off the bed, tiptoed to the other bedside, and crawled up next to little Xiaoxiao, whispering, “I guessed you weren’t sleeping either—listening to stories is the most important thing in the world.”
Little Xiaoxiao didn’t respond.
Little Jiang Yan pressed on: “I know why you’re crying. Wanna see if I’m right?”
Still no response.
Little Jiang Yan went on earnestly, “You know your parents are about to die. You’re going to be an orphan.”
At that, little Xiaoxiao’s tears flooded forth even harder.
Little Jiang Yan knew she’d guessed right. Satisfied, she climbed off the bed and slipped back into her own warm blankets.
She tried to settle down to sleep as well, but little Xiaoxiao couldn’t hold back her sobs—the noise getting louder and more frequent as she cried. Suddenly, little Jiang Yan understood how annoying her own caterpillar routine must have been earlier.
So she got up and went over to little Xiaoxiao’s pillow.
“What are you crying for? I don’t have parents either, but you can learn from me—we just find new ones ourselves.”
Little Xiaoxiao cried until her face and neck turned red, a striking contrast to her pale skin in the moonlight—almost ghostly.
But little Jiang Yan didn’t care at all.
She began boasting: “Picking new parents is easy—anyone can learn.”
“Listen, when your real parents are gone, just focus on choosing a new home, then go knock on their door. When they ask whose kid you are, just cry like this, snot and all, say you’re a little beggar, homeless, fighting wild dogs for food, whatever you can think to get pity—by hanging around a few days you’ll get accepted as a daughter.”
“Of course, the most important thing is to be naturally lovable.”
At this point, little Jiang Yan frowned in thought. “Oh, right, you can’t be as lovable as me.”
“Forget it, just cry more quietly. I want to sleep.”
Ignoring little Xiaoxiao’s confused, miserable look, little Jiang Yan snuck back to bed, tucked her face into Jiang Yan’s arms, and settled down to sleep.
*
In the middle of the night, Jiang Yan was woken by a strange noise.
It sounded right by her ear, deliberately trying to get her attention. Once awake, she heard rustling behind her, like someone tearing paper.
Jiang Yan slowly opened her eyes, glanced at the clock in the moonlight—three in the morning, deep darkness outside, old tree shadows cast into the room like the gnarled hands of an elderly person reaching to snatch the people inside.
She rolled her eyes toward the sound, but since she slept with her back to the wall, she couldn’t see what was behind her. The tearing sound behind her grew more urgent, as if trying to get something done fast.
Jiang Yan moved her fingers, began to turn her head, but just as she was about to look, the tearing suddenly stopped.
The room fell into silence.
This time, Jiang Yan didn’t hesitate—she turned all the way to look.
At some point, the room’s four walls had turned to white paper. Now, tiny holes were being poked into the paper; right before her eyes, two slender fingers cautiously probed through one of them.
Jiang Yan swiftly shifted to the side, avoiding them. But new holes appeared, three, four, more fingers poking through, feeling around. Jiang Yan sat up, making no extra movement.
After a few minutes, a little boy’s disappointed sigh came from behind the wall: “Where’d she go?”
It was An An’s voice.
Jiang Yan was silent for a moment, then got out of bed and walked to the door. She opened it and looked into the corridor.
An An was crouched obediently on the floor, all ten fingers poked into the wall, calmly scratching away. Hearing the door, he turned, puzzled.
“Sis, why’d you come out?”
“What do you think?” Jiang Yan asked. “What are you doing?”
An An stood up, dejected. “You saved me today. I wanted to give you a head massage.”
Jiang Yan asked bluntly, “Did I still have a head then?”
“Of course,” An An nodded obediently.
“But if you push my hand away, who knows.”
An An’s game was the carousel, and looking at his life, he only wanted to return to his mother’s embrace, not be pushed away.
Sure enough, Jiang Yan had just finished her thought when An An’s soft voice sounded again:
“Because An An hates being pushed away.”
Jiang Yan tugged the corner of her mouth upward. Judging from desire alone, this little boy had no will to hurt her. As a child drawn into the field by the ghost after his death, An An—unlike the highly polluted main ghost—retained some feelings and reason.
So she asked a few more questions.
“If you didn’t finish the massage, shouldn’t you give me some other reward?”
An An tilted his head, thought it over, and decided, “You don’t need to know too much, sis.”
“And I’ve already given you a reward.”
Jiang Yan frowned, wanting to probe further, but just then two little girls appeared at the end of the corridor.
One had tousled brown curls, holding a puppy and balancing a yellow duck on her head; the other wore a washed-out white dress with loose black hair and walked lightly, a trail of blood trickling from her palm.
Looking closer, the curly-haired girl’s neck was ringed with purplish marks.
It was Jiang Suisui and Meng Jinru.
The two girls greeted Jiang Yan, then took Luo An away with them.
Probably due to rolling down a hill, An An limped with a dislocated wrist and ankle. Jiang Suisui, having strangled herself with a ribbon in the hospital bathroom, always moved with her head lolling back; even from behind, Jiang Yan could see her jutting chin, her head held on by nearly nothing.
Meng Jinru seemed slightly better off, but her right arm, blood continuing to stream from the wrist, hung limply at her side and swung lightly as she walked.
All three had mortal injuries; the awkwardness of their walk made them look like corpses.
Watching the three go, Jiang Yan closed the door and returned to her room.
She slept dreamlessly the rest of the night.
At seven in the morning, everyone was woken by the cheerful, lively park announcement. With too little rest, little Jiang Yan lay sprawled hopelessly on the bed until Jiang Yan rolled a cold, wet towel across her face, finally reviving her.
Everyone struggled with sleepiness. When they gathered, Yu Renwan couldn’t help but yawn.
She said she’d faintly heard a duck’s quacking in her dreams last night. Worst of all, a girl kept asking if she wanted duck meat—even after refusing, the girl kept following her with a pot, chasing after her to ask again. Yu Renwan ran from mountaintops to valleys in her dream, running all night long.
After hearing Yu Renwan’s story, everyone looked at Mu Wang and Zhao Kepu.
Both shrugged it off.
Zhao Kefu scratched his head. “I sleep like a log. Didn’t hear a thing—must not have come to me.”
Mu Wang thought so too, but while eating, he noticed a shallow cut in the palm of his right hand—not deep, just a faint mark.
Mu Wang, who did not feel pain, just mentioned it in passing and continued shoveling food into his mouth.
Zhao Kepu gave Mu Wang a look of deep admiration, sighing heavily, unclear what kind of drama he’d just concocted in his head.
At exactly eight a.m., Tongyuan Amusement Park officially opened.
The doll carcasses that had hung in the corridors last night were now lively. No trace of yesterday’s raggedness remained; the costumes were spotless and vibrant, faces exuding cheerful innocence.
A two-meter-tall frog mascot led them to the haunted house area.
The haunted house was about ten meters from the game area, where they had cleared yesterday. Now it stood empty and overgrown, all equipment covered in white cloth, scattered with pieces of corpses. Several broken, ghostly white legs were draped over the fence between the game area and the haunted house; in the grass, decayed eyeballs and tiny human teeth were clutched in the mouths of birds and bugs.
The desolate remains of the play area starkly contrasted with the din of the other zones.
Noticing this, Shen Xiaoxiao remarked, “Imagine how many NPCs it’d take to make up all those body parts.”
Shen Huanhuan shot her a wry look. “The urgent thing is to check out the haunted house.”
Shen Xiaoxiao hastily agreed, “Right, right.”
Since the haunted house was for adults only, for safety, everyone paid to have their child selves supervised elsewhere. After all, the park clearly warned that any child alone was in danger, and only supervision would guarantee safety.
The haunted house theme was black.
The whole area was dominated by a sleek, apartment-style villa—two stories, painted jet-black. Standing at the door was a tall, thin man in a crow mask, his back slightly bent. Upon seeing them, he opened the iron gate.
Dust billowed instantly, black bug corpses tumbling down. Mu Wang, racing in last, darted in front of Jiang Yan to block all the dust before falling back to the rear of the team.
Here and gone, just like the wind.
Jiang Yan curled her lips and asked the masked man a few questions, but he wouldn’t reply, only stressing that this room had a three-hour time limit.
“Are you entering now?” he asked.
They’d already decided—no sense wasting time outside, better to finish quickly and return to the hotel to hunt for clues or sleep. Jiang Yan nodded.
The man gestured them in.
Jiang Yan led the way. After all six entered, the iron door slammed shut behind them, the sound of the lock ominous.
Zhao Kepu, nervous, glanced back and immediately threw his moon-shaped turtle shell to the floor.
He waited and observed, then nodded. “Ten minutes ahead seems fine… not bad, not bad.”
Shen Xiaoxiao was exasperated. “Of course we’re fine—we just got in! No one’s going to die the second we step in.”
Zhao Kepu wiped off his sweat with a handkerchief.
The garden wasn’t large; half a minute brought them to the front door of the house. When they knocked, a man in his thirties answered quickly.
He was so flustered he wasn’t even wearing slippers.
“You’re finally here!”
He was bright with excitement on seeing them. “I’ve been waiting since last night. You arrived so early—you must be able to help me!”
Jiang Yan didn’t rush to reply.
She looked around—the whole house reeked of damp rot, with takeout boxes piled everywhere. Unnamed beetles crawled across the floor. Worst of all, on the walls, in stinking, blood-red letters, was a message:
“ALL OF YOU GET OUT!!”
The group exchanged glances and Jiang Yan’s face showed deep thought.
After a moment, she asked, “What do you need from us?”
At this, the man’s eyes filled with overwhelming misery. “Please, help me catch my wife. Her aggression is getting worse and worse.”