Free Web NovelChapter 89: Chapter 7: A Cry from Hell
Gao Tian had spent weeks in the Living Human Apartments, painstakingly hand-crafting his Wind Puppet. Now, he finally had a chance to put on a show and display his skills.
From the looks of it, the summoned Wind Attendant Buddha was identical to him in appearance and height. It moved with perfect ease—no problems whatsoever.
The white-collar workers on the floor watching the "professional from the Spirit Disaster Bureau" let out low gasps of astonishment. Some even pulled out their phones, intending to take photos.
"Hey, hey, no pictures. After this is all over today, we’ll be checking everyone’s phones. You can only clock out after we’ve confirmed that no one recorded any videos."
Supervisor Yao, ever the opportunist, immediately gave the order.
’No wonder he’s a supervisor.’
At the same time, the strange Wind Puppet that the young man had summoned from thin air cemented Supervisor Yao’s certainty. The man was undoubtedly from the Spirit Disaster Bureau; he had no more doubts.
"This puppet will go upstairs in my place," Gao Tian explained. "It will perceive everything that happens on the staircase just as I would, and it will bring back the truth."
At present, this seemed to be the safest method.
Even if a ravenous ghost was hiding on the staircase, the only thing that would be killed and dispersed was the Wind Puppet. It had nothing to do with Gao Tian, who remained safely downstairs.
The two of them shared a field of vision, so if the Wind Attendant Buddha met with any mishap before its demise, he would see it all clearly.
"As expected of a professional."
"I’ll just wait here for you."
Supervisor Yao gave him a thumbs-up.
The Wind Puppet took a flashlight and slowly started up the stairs.
Ten steps, twenty steps, thirty steps... As it continued its ascent, the Wind Attendant Buddha soon reached a height where, looking back, it could no longer see Gao Tian and Supervisor Yao below.
The staircase above stretched endlessly upward, with no end in sight.
The walls on either side began to close in. The Wind Attendant Buddha found it increasingly difficult to move forward in the narrow passage and had to lower its head to avoid hitting the ceiling.
Gao Tian, watching this, doubted if the puppet could continue its ascent if the passage kept shrinking.
Besides, once the passage narrowed to a certain point, a person of normal build would be unable to go on. ’The guard who went up should have had to stop around this height.’
’Why didn’t the guard turn back?’
’Even if he was killed by something on the stairs, I should be able to see a body.’
But now, there was no sign of him, dead or alive. It was as if he had vanished into this pocket dimension.
In the distance, that low, "bestial" roar sounded again, much clearer now than it was at the entrance.
The narrow staircase began to tremble slightly.
Gao Tian finally understood. That sound was not the roar of a lion or a tiger. No ordinary forest animal could produce such a terrifying, indescribable sound that defied all words.
It was the roar of a human.
It was just that the person’s voice was exceedingly deep and came in bursts, like blasts of air. Anyone hearing it from a distance would instinctively assume it was a wild animal.
’What exactly is that person roaring nonstop upstairs? How big must their lungs be?’
Gao Tian had no idea.
If he were here in person, he would be considering leaving the staircase right now.
But since it was the Wind Attendant Buddha climbing the stairs, he might as well let it go up and take a look. Even if it were destroyed by a vengeful spirit, it would still be a net gain.
After struggling for several dozen more steps up the narrowing staircase, the angle of convergence began to decrease.
The flashlight beam revealed, about fifty steps ahead, a dark figure curled into a ball, trembling violently against the wall.
Judging by the way it was shaking, the figure seemed to have been scared witless, no longer in its right mind.
"Hey, who are you?"
"Are you okay? Do you want me to help you get out of here?"
The Wind Attendant Buddha climbed a few more steps, trying to communicate with the figure.
The figure reacted, glancing down for a moment before curling back into a trembling ball.
Suddenly, Gao Tian remembered that he was currently in the form of the Wind Puppet. Anyone with no knowledge of the supernatural certainly wouldn’t mistake it for a person.
It continued up the stairs.
Getting a little closer, the puppet could finally see clearly. It was a young man in a security guard’s uniform. His face was a ghastly white, his eyes were stretched wide in terror, and he stared blankly at the ground, muttering strange, repetitive phrases.
’It must be Xiaoliu, the guard who came up earlier. No wonder he hasn’t come back down. He seems to have lost his mind.’
"Snap out of it! I came up here to rescue you. Don’t mind my appearance—I’m a puppet created by a human. There’s no need to be afraid of how I look."
"Tell me, what did you encounter upstairs? You’ll be able to leave this place soon."
The Wind Attendant Buddha went up and patted Xiaoliu’s cheeks, trying to bring him back to his senses.
Xiaoliu looked up at the Wind Attendant Buddha again. Faced with this humanoid figure made of air currents, he showed no emotion at all—not surprise, not relief, not fear. Completely lost in his own world, he just lowered his head and resumed his delirious muttering.
Helpless, the Wind Attendant Buddha leaned in beside him and listened for a moment.
It picked up strange phrases like "hallway upstairs," "a crazy woman is locked up," "like a mental hospital," and "some Americans told me to get lost."
’What is all this nonsense? And how did Americans get involved?’
Gao Tian could accept that the end of the staircase might indeed lead to a hallway where a "crazy woman" was locked up.
’Whatever the case, I should get him out of here first. After he’s safe, I can explore further up.’
The Wind Attendant Buddha pulled the guard to his feet, preparing to drag him away.
Unexpectedly, this action triggered a defensive reaction. The guard lunged forward and punched the Wind Attendant Buddha in the face, his own face contorted like a demon’s.
"We can’t get out! None of us can get out!"
"We can only survive a little longer by staying here! You go die! Don’t drag me down with you!"
...
The Wind Attendant Buddha was shoved into a corner, its constituent air currents flickering as it nearly dispersed on the spot.
Thankfully, it managed to stabilize its humanoid form at the last second.
After shoving the Wind Attendant Buddha, Xiaoliu showed no sign of pressing the attack. He simply retreated to the corner, trembling like a turtle hiding in its shell.
’It seems that as long as the puppet doesn’t try to forcibly move him, he won’t have a violent reaction.’
Witnessing this, Gao Tian, who was controlling the puppet from the eleventh floor, had no choice but to turn and helplessly inform Supervisor Yao and the several other Jin Hai executives who had gathered around:
"I’ve found Xiaoliu, about two hundred steps up."
"But his mental state is extremely unstable. Any attempt to forcibly remove him triggers hostility and attacks."
"This puppet I’ve made is rather fragile and easily dispersed, so I can’t bring him down for now."
Supervisor Yao wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief:
"Thank you for your hard work."
"Just focus on investigating the rest of the staircase for now. As for Xiaoliu, let him cool off in the corner. You can bring him along when you come back down."
Gao Tian thought about it. ’This was the only option.’
Step by step, the Wind Attendant Buddha continued its advance up the seemingly endless staircase.
A long time passed. Before it knew it, the puppet had climbed to a height of three or four hundred steps.
The black, unchanging stairwell finally began to show some variation.
A light appeared up ahead.
A brightly lit entrance appeared at the top of the endless steps.
At that same moment, the woman’s rumbling roar, which had been ever-present, fell silent.
Gao Tian knew the end of the staircase was finally here.
’It seems that even though Xiaoliu went mad, the things he was muttering about are real. This bizarre staircase really does lead to a hallway.’
’I just wonder what this "locked-up crazy woman" he mentioned is. A vengeful spirit?’
...
...
The scene before it changed, revealing a milky-white corridor.
The floor was white, the walls were white, and the ceiling was white. Pendant lights hung at intervals in the distance, and the hallway was lined with rows of Black Gates.
’How should I put it?’
’This place looked a bit like a hospital, but that couldn’t be right.’
’It was as if some creature had crudely imitated the interior of a human hospital, cobbling together a budget version of a corridor.’
For now, there was no telling what kind of building this corridor belonged in.
In the distance, the terrifying woman’s roar began to rumble once more.
The Wind Attendant Buddha kept to the side of the corridor and took a few steps in the direction of the roar, trying to figure out who could be making such a deafening noise.
Just then, footsteps echoed from around a corner. Before the Wind Attendant Buddha could react, a Caucasian man emerged. He wore goggles and a bulletproof vest and was armed to the teeth. He had clearly sensed that someone else was in the hallway.
The man took off his goggles, looking extremely annoyed, and began to complain incessantly:
"What the hell?! How did another random nobody manage to stumble into our spatial channel? Nancy, where the hell did you set our extraction channel? Are we even still in North America? I’d hate to clear this shithole op only to have to book a damn plane ticket back to my five-thousand-square-foot mansion in California just to take a decent bath."
Upon seeing that the "person" before him was a humanoid puppet made of air currents, the American soldier panicked. Assuming it was just another monster from the hallway, he raised his submachine gun and took aim at the Wind Attendant Buddha, ready to fire.
Luckily, Gao Tian’s English was decent, so he had a rough idea of what the American was complaining about.
He immediately had the puppet raise its hands, signaling for the man to relax, and replied in English:
"Easy there. Take a closer look. I’m a puppet controlled by a human."
"Your... *spatial channel*... it opened up on the eleventh floor of our building and created this weird staircase. I just came up to see what was going on."
"Let’s just talk. It’s clear neither of us really understands the current situation."
