Nightmare Apostle

Chapter 242: Chapter 204: Father and Son

This child was undoubtedly a ghost.

As soon as he saw the child in the raincoat, Lu Youdao immediately rummaged through his worn work clothes and eventually pulled out a very small paper bag from the inner pocket.

From its yellowed edges, it was clear that this thing had been inside his clothes for a very long time. After tearing it open, to his surprise, there was a red balloon inside.

After giving Yang Xiao a complex look, Lu Youdao put the balloon to his lips and blew air into it forcefully, inflating the balloon at an extremely fast pace.

Yang Xiao subconsciously thought the balloon might be a Resentful Eye, similar to the Human Head Balloon that the late Captain Yan Junyang once held.

But it wasn’t until Lu Youdao had blown up the balloon and used a thin string pulled from the paper bag to tie it shut that Yang Xiao realized he had thought too much; it was just an ordinary balloon, as ordinary as could be.

"What’s the use of this balloon?" Yang Xiao asked, realizing that in such a critical moment, Lu Youdao would not be doing something useless.

"The child outside has come to ask for a balloon," Lu Youdao said, not letting go of the balloon but instead winding the string around his right middle finger.

"So, if we give him the balloon, will the ghost child leave?" Yang Xiao felt a bit more at ease after learning the truth and thought to himself, it’s no wonder Lu Youdao always carried a balloon.

But before Yang Xiao could take a breath of relief, Lu Youdao doused him with a bucket of cold water, his raspy voice tinged with indifference, "That’s true, but one balloon can only exchange for one person’s safety."

The relief Yang Xiao felt at his miraculous reprieve was swept away in an instant, "What?!"

"Then... what will happen to those without a balloon?" Yang Xiao asked quickly, coming to his senses.

"They will be taken away by this child," Lu Youdao said.

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Lu Youdao paused for a moment and then shook his head, "I don’t know. Those who were taken away disappeared without a trace and never came back."

Now Yang Xiao realized the gravity of the situation. What made him even more desperate was that he didn’t have his backpack with him, nor did he have the Drama Robe inside it—it was still in the office.

It wasn’t that Yang Xiao was careless; who would have thought that attending a training session in the building would involve a paranormal event?

Yang Xiao forced himself to calm down and began to carefully recall the series of events that had recently occurred. Just a few days ago, the director had sent someone to test him, and today this strange man, Lu Youdao, had called him for a class. That would have been fine, but to encounter a supernatural event on top of that... all these occurrences seemed too coincidental to be true, didn’t they?

Could it be that the director, in order to test me, conspired with Lu Youdao to set this trap, all just to force me to use the Drama Robe?

They wanted to know the specific capabilities of the Drama Robe so they could decide whether my staying in the office was a threat to them or not.

With this thought, Yang Xiao gradually regained his confidence, "Mr. Lu, you’re not setting me up, are you? I’ll have you know, I don’t have anything on me, just a gun."

Lu Youdao was taken aback and then stared at Yang Xiao as if looking at an idiot, "You can go and open the door; I won’t stop you."

The risk was too great; Yang Xiao immediately gave up the idea. It was only then that he realized what a blessing it was to have the Drama Robe.

"Mr. Lu, can the ghost child... can he come in?" Yang Xiao asked.

Lu Youdao glanced at Yang Xiao, "If no idiot opens the door for him, I don’t think so."

Now relying on this strange man to help him survive, Yang Xiao just bore with it, "Since that’s the case, it’s easy to handle. I remember supernatural events have a duration, so as long as we don’t open the door and hold out against him, we could even stay here for the night if need be."

But this seemingly solid plan was outright rejected by Lu Youdao, whose disfigured face was filled with resolve, "No, we must deliver the balloon as soon as possible to put him back to sleep. Otherwise, if other things are awakened, then it would be bad."

"Other things..." Yang Xiao suddenly thought of the odd doors lining the corridor, wondering if each door hid a Resentful Eye.

"Thump."

"Thump, thump."

This time, not only did Yang Xiao hear the knock, but Lu Youdao evidently did too, "There’s no time to waste, follow me, close your eyes, don’t look at anything, don’t think about anything, and don’t say anything. Remember, control your thoughts!"

"This ghost’s power will greatly interfere with your thinking, making you succumb to it. The more active and imaginative your mind, the more severe the effect," Lu Youdao said with a stern look at Yang Xiao, "How’s your imagination?"

Yang Xiao almost cried; as a scriptwriter for murder mystery games, this was his area of top expertise. Give him a ghost, and he could write a whole script.

"Mr. Lu, how is your imagination?" Yang Xiao fixed his gaze eagerly on the balloon in Lu Youdao’s hand.

Feeling Yang Xiao’s eyes brimming with eagerness, Lu Youdao placed the balloon behind his back, stepping away from Yang Xiao, and plainly said, "My abilities in this regard are average, but I’m not going to give the balloon to you."

"Then what should we do? I’ll listen to you," Yang Xiao conceded.

Lu Youdao moved quickly, tearing off a piece of thin string, tying one end to his own left wrist and the other end to the middle finger of Yang Xiao’s right hand. Then, he tore a strip of cloth from his clothing and wrapped it around Yang Xiao’s eyes, tying a knot at the back of his head.

As Lu Youdao walked forward, Yang Xiao felt a tug on his right middle finger and followed, walking behind the door. Lu then turned his head back and cautioned in a low voice, "I’m about to open the door. Remember what I told you: control your thoughts, clear your mind, don’t think about anything. You must not think about anything."

Yang Xiao took a deep breath, and the next second, he heard the sound of several locks being opened, followed by a "creak," and the wooden door finally swung open.

In that instant, Yang Xiao felt a damp breeze on his face, along with the faint scent of mud mixed with the fragrance of flowers.

After roughly ten seconds, Yang Xiao, like a blind man, was led forward, the pulling on his middle finger providing the only sense of security he had left.

But soon, Yang Xiao felt something was off. He had only walked a few steps when he was spun around on the spot by the force of the string. At first, he could barely distinguish left from right, but after spinning around more than a dozen times, he became disoriented.

Eventually, the pulling force stopped and began to move slowly in another direction.

"What on earth is going on?" Yang Xiao grew increasingly nervous. Had Lu Youdao encountered something? Why was he spinning on the spot?

Thinking about problems is a human instinct, at least it was for Yang Xiao. Moreover, this kind of thinking wasn’t under his control. He was desperate to understand what Lu Youdao was doing and where he was being taken.

After perhaps two minutes, maybe longer, Yang Xiao’s breathing became rapid. He realized that something was wrong—the hallway on the second floor underground shouldn’t be this long.

Yang Xiao wanted to stop, but he didn’t dare. He was blind now, and if the string tied to his middle finger broke, he couldn’t even imagine what might happen next. But if he kept walking like this, he worried he might enter another world.

"Drip."

A chill touched Yang Xiao’s cheek as a droplet landed obliquely on his face.

But that was just the beginning. The next second, more and more droplets fell on him, cool and refreshing. Yang Xiao realized it was rain.

It was raining...

It was actually raining!

How could it rain inside the corridor on the second floor underground of the official building? Where had he walked to?

A more terrifying speculation took root in Yang Xiao’s mind, "Could I have been deceived? Was Lu Youdao tricking me, with no truth to the statement about balloons taking away ghosts? Did Lu Youdao say that just to keep me calm, to use me to lure the ghost away so that he could have a chance to escape?"

The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Yang Xiao paused in his step, suddenly realizing something—the ghost child was wearing a yellow raincoat.

A raincoat—and it was raining here. No doubt, this must be the ghost child’s world.

Yang Xiao forced himself to stay calm. Meanwhile, what had been silence beside his ears gradually became noisy, with many strange sounds drilling into them. At first, there was music, along with the noisy voices of people.

But soon, as more sounds emerged, clearer and clearer, and with massive roars occasionally zipping over his head accompanied by the excited screams of people, Yang Xiao finally understood that he must be in an amusement park.

The roaring noises circling overhead must be from the Roller Coaster. Yang Xiao was afraid of heights; he had never been on one, but he couldn’t be mistaken about the sound.

To his left, the gentle, soothing music must be from the merry-go-round, and to his right, a scent wafted over. Yang Xiao sniffed, identifying it as the smell of grilled sausages and popcorn.

He had arrived, unknowingly, in an amusement park shrouded in a curtain of rain.

The cloth blindfolding his eyes became damp from the rain. In a daze, he noticed shadowy figures of various shapes and colors passing by him—mostly young couples with intimate gestures, or friends, occasionally a warm family, or elderly people with their grandchildren.

And in front of Yang Xiao, there was a hunched, blurry, yet familiar silhouette—Lu Youdao, leading him against the flow of people.

The sky here was dark, and the amusement park under the night sky had a different flavor. On the left, a girl on the merry-go-round was holding a glow stick, her smile bright and beaming. On the right, a family of three—a man pushing a stroller, a woman holding the man’s arm, with the only umbrella angled into the stroller, sheltering the child from wind and rain—painted a heartwarmingly tender scene.

But amid these scenes of warmth everywhere, Yang Xiao keenly noticed a discordant sight. It was at the fork in the road to the front left, about 20 meters away, where a man in a brown leather jacket with disheveled hair stood.

The man’s condition didn’t seem very good, with a scruffy beard and swollen, bloodshot eyes. The old-fashioned leather jacket he wore looked like it had been worn for years, the cuffs frayed. Beside the man stood a little boy.

The boy was dressed in a bright yellow raincoat, obediently staying by the man’s side with a large hole in his right sports shoe, revealing bare skin underneath.

Yang Xiao guessed that the two were likely father and son.