Nightmare Apostle

Chapter 110: Chapter 110: We Came to Find You

Not long ago, Yang Xiao had looked outside, where someone stood guard around this building, with lights still on atop towers akin to lookout posts. Now everything had vanished.

Outside, Yan Junyang and Le Zhengshan also noticed the anomaly. Yan Junyang strode over, no longer concealing his concern. "Captain Yang, we haven’t received the scheduled report from the technical department outside."

Following where Yang Xiao pointed outside, Yan Junyang took a deep breath. "It’s true, the paranormal event has really come."

Le Zhengshan squatted down on the other side and took out a black box from under the bed, similar to the one Da Xiong had carried, only smaller.

Opening the box, Le Zhengshan quickly assembled the equipment, and soon, a detection device resembling a minesweeper was put together.

"Captain Yang?" Su Tingting looked at Yang Xiao with surprise.

"Su Tingting, I am here to protect you. This matter is targeting all of us survivors, including Kuang," Yang Xiao stared into Su Tingting’s eyes. "I don’t have time to explain now, do you believe me?"

"I believe." Su Tingting didn’t hesitate. If it weren’t for Yang Xiao, she would have been dead during the last mission; he had saved her more than once.

Half a minute later, Le Zhengshan took off his headset, his face turning sour. "The signals here are a mess, I can’t track the precise source, but it’s definitely those things."

Yan Junyang sent a message to the medical staff and the guards inside the building, but after waiting a minute, there was no reply.

As the person in charge of this mission, Yan Junyang’s capabilities were certainly not lacking. Shortly after, he made a decision. "Let’s not contact that thing for now, we need to figure out a way to leave this place."

Gently pushing the door open, the group was stunned by the sight. The corridor outside had become disturbingly dim, the bright incandescent lights on the ceiling had changed; most were extinguished, with only a few left flickering feebly, casting a half-dead yellow glow.

The air was thick with a cold, damp smell that made Yang Xiao feel uneasy and somewhat familiar.

Inside the building, it was very quiet, the night was as silent as death. Su Tingting’s complexion was pale; she could even hear her own heartbeat.

Yan Junyang took the lead, moving to a room a few doors down. The door was ajar, and darkness filled the room beyond.

Yang Xiao looked up; guided by the dim light, he could see a new sign on the door that read ’Medical Room.’

Yan Junyang held his flashlight in one hand and gently pushed the door with the other. The light dispelled the darkness, and the room was empty, with only two pieces of clothing hanging on the wall and half-eaten self-heating food on the table. The room was clean, showing no signs of struggle.

Yan Junyang carefully approached and touched the half-eaten food, stealing looks around before quickly returning. "The food is still warm. They haven’t left long ago, and there are no signs that the windows have been opened."

Su Tingting spoke in a low, trembling voice, the atmosphere reminding her of the Nightmare World. "Couldn’t they have warned us when they left?"

"If they could have, they wouldn’t have disappeared without a trace." Beibei answered for Yang Xiao while handing him a flashlight.

Leaving the room, they crossed the corridor, where the silence easily spawned dark thoughts. Yang Xiao kept his eyes fixed on every door, dreading that something terrible might burst out of one of them.

"There’s someone!"

At Da Xiong’s exclamation from the rear, everyone turned, and three flashlights aimed at the corridor behind them.

"Where is someone?" Beibei, looking over the empty corridor, couldn’t help but tense up.

"I saw it there just now. No, that’s not right. I didn’t see anyone, but I saw a shadow, and then it disappeared." Da Xiong pointed to a spot, stammering an explanation. "It...it just flashed there, like a small child."

They had just passed that spot but hadn’t seen any child. Without hesitation, the group moved to where Da Xiong had pointed. Flashlights swept around, finding nothing unusual.

Yang Xiao looked up. "Here? Are you sure?"

Da Xiong nodded firmly. "Right here. The shadow just flickered and was gone, toward the wall."

The door near Da Xiong’s indicated spot was covered with dust on its handle, showing it had not been opened for a long time.

Yang Xiao handed the flashlight to Su Tingting, "Captain Yan, help me open this door."

The door wasn’t locked, but it had rusted shut at the seams. It took a great deal of effort for the two to open it, and as they did, they quickly pulled back as a musty smell rushed out.

Covering their noses and mouths with their sleeves, they shone their flashlights inside, and the air was filled with countless tiny dust particles.

"Hiss—"

As the flashlight illuminated the ground, their faces changed instantly. A trail of clear footprints was visible in the layer of dust, extending all the way to the window.

The footprints were small; they were unmistakably those of a child!

Peering out the window, the night outside was as still as death, with neither stars nor moon in the sky. The longer they looked, the more chilling the sense became, as if something lurked in the darkness.

"Let’s leave this place first, the range of this paranormal event is quite extensive, it could be the entire building, who knows whether the people outside have encountered it, too." The seriousness of the situation was evident from Yan Junyang’s expression.

When everyone reached the main staircase on the third floor, there was light; the source of the light was a duty room, and looking inside through the glass window, it was empty.

The light in the duty room had been extinguished long ago, what was on was an old-fashioned desk lamp with a deep green casing, sitting on the table.

They pushed open the door and entered, besides a duty desk, there was also a bed with a security guard’s jacket thrown on it.

Just like the previous medical room, everything seemed normal, only the people were missing.

"How many people were originally in this room?"

"Two, they were security personnel deployed by the station." Le Zhengshan replied. After answering, she put the headset back on and used the detector again.

Walking up to the duty desk, underneath the desk lamp was an open logbook. The first vertical column marked the time, recording every 20 minutes, followed by the exploration signal and some peculiar parameters that Yang Xiao couldn’t understand, but he knew, surely they must be related to whether a paranormal event had been detected or not.

Yang Xiao noticed that the last recorded time was at 5:40 a.m.; the corresponding cell at the end of that line was filled with ’no anomalies detected.’

He took out his phone, the current time was 6:50 a.m., which meant that these guards had encountered some unknown attack earlier than he had imagined, probably the paranormal event had already been going on by the time he realized something was wrong.

Yang Xiao turned around, intending to share his discovery with others, but he suddenly realized that the atmosphere at the scene had become eerie, everyone’s gaze fixed on a corner.

There was a relatively large metal box in that corner, inconspicuous, just like the ones used in old archives, and at the moment, blood was dripping along the seams of the box.

Beibei had already unsheathed her knife, and Yan Junyang had pulled out a black baton from his waist. He approached the metal box step by step, pressed down on the handle, and yanked it open with force.

The next second, the sight before them deeply shocked Su Tingting, and the scent of blood immediately permeated the air; inside were two contorted corpses.

The limbs of the corpses were broken, and in an indescribable way, they had been forcibly stuffed into the metal box; by their clothes, they were the missing guards.

What sent chills down everyone’s spine, however, was that both guards had their faces severely damaged, their eyeballs gouged out, random large black coffin nails hammered into their skulls, teeth scattered, and if Yang Xiao wasn’t mistaken, their tongues were probably cut off as well.

Drawing a connection to the children that Da Xiong had seen before, Yang Xiao immediately realized what kind of ’Ghost’ they had encountered—it was those ghost children!

The tortured ghost children from the Feng Family Mansion!

They had come back!

Place was not safe for a stay, they left quickly, and on the way, Yang Xiao explained to Yan Junyang as succinctly as possible about those ghost children. Learning that these ghost children had also once pursued Yang Xiao and another, Yan Junyang realized they had encountered a tough nut to crack.

Suddenly, Yan Junyang’s phone screen lit up for a moment; someone had sent a message, it was the two medical staff from before, saying they were trapped in a utility room at the end of the corridor on the second floor.

After Yan Junyang replied to the message, the group arrived on the second floor and moved forward cautiously. The other party responded quickly, but this time, Yan Junyang stretched out his hand, signaling everyone to stop.

"What’s wrong?"

Yan Junyang gestured for everyone to slowly retreat without making noise, and only after they had moved back quite a distance did he explain in a low voice, "I just asked if Dr. Chen was there, they said he’s not, and that everyone had scattered. But I know every doctor here, and there’s no one with the surname Chen."

"There’s something off about the person on the other side." Yan Junyang said this while not forgetting to send a message to the other side: Stay put, I’m bringing people over.

Finally, they made it to the lobby on the first floor, which was equally deserted, the duty desk unoccupied. The next moment, when everyone turned to look at the main door, the scene before them left them stunned. freewēbnoveℓ.com

The main door had disappeared, and in its place was a wall, where the door used to be. Beibei, not giving up, pounded the wall with her hand, but the wall didn’t budge at all.

Yang Xiao stepped forward to touch the wall, punching it a few times to confirm it was real, not an illusion; it was solid and substantial, made of green bricks. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

Touching the bricks with his hand, they felt ice cold, carrying a deep chill. Most crucially, he recognized this wall—it was the courtyard wall of the Feng Family Mansion.

They were trapped inside a real building by the courtyard wall of the Feng Family Mansion, which was unimaginable, both time and space had become severely distorted.

Su Tingting was in despair, her pupils dimmed, and she even doubted whether she should have died in the Feng Family Mansion, sparing others from being involved.

"Creak—"

A sudden sound made everyone snap back to attention, the noise was above their heads, some distance away, as if a heavy door was being slowly pulled open... And that door felt very thick.

"It’s the blast door of the second-floor utility room." Le Zhengshan suddenly realized.

No sooner had she spoken than Yan Junyang’s phone screen lit up once again, with just a brief message of five words: We’re coming to find you.