Free Web NovelChapter 582: Chapter 501: Do you like it? I just bought it this afternoon.
Judging from the time on the video, the female ghost only appeared after Zhao and the others had all left the script room, which meant that Zhao hadn’t been switched out.
There was no surveillance in the boss’s office. Yang Xiao quickly dragged the progress bar, wanting to see where the female ghost went last, but for a long time afterward, the lobby surveillance was just empty shots, until near the end of the video when someone walked into the frame, heading straight for the service counter. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
And that person was Yang Xiao himself.
Cold sweat broke out on his back, the surveillance showed that the white-dressed female ghost had not come out since entering the boss’s office, which meant, it was still here!
The cold sweat on his back was not entirely from the fear within, but also because the temperature here was dropping sharply, and the clothes he was wearing seemed completely unable to ward off the chill. Yang Xiao was all too familiar with this cold, ghostly aura.
The ghost was here, and... right behind him!
Yang Xiao could even pinpoint the ghost’s location based on the video from the script room—it was very close behind him, its ghostly face almost pressed against the back of his head.
But Yang Xiao didn’t turn around, nor did he plan to. He guessed that the ghost had not yet struck because it was waiting for him to turn around, then it would go for a face-to-face kill.
This was likely this ghost’s ability, to put someone to death in the instant they looked back.
Yang Xiao slowly, slowly, slowly tightened his grip on the lantern, then suddenly lifted his left hand, channeling a large amount of spiritual power into it. The green light emitted by the Ghost Lantern enveloped the entire room in an instant, and as he turned, his right hand swung the Human Bone Staff towards his back.
He saw a pale and semi-transparent ghostly face, but before the Human Bone Staff could connect, the ghost face vanished in a flash.
The hasty swing led to a wrong posture when exerting force, and Yang Xiao stumbled, nearly twisting his waist.
Yang Xiao supported himself against the wall with one hand and held his waist with the other, gritting his teeth in pain. He hadn’t expected this entity to be so weak that it would flee at the first confrontation.
After resting for a while, Yang Xiao went to script room number 7 and turned on all the lights. This room was specially designed for the Fengmen Ghost Play. The female ghost had appeared twice, and each time this place was the origin. This was unlikely to be a coincidence. free𝑤ebnovel.com
Yang Xiao had been involved in the construction of the script room last time and knew the layout like the back of his hand. He suspected that the source of the haunting was the room itself.
He first thoroughly inspected all the props in the room, under the bed, in the wardrobes, and under the desks—places that are easily overlooked. However, his search turned up nothing.
"Nothing?"
Yang Xiao began to doubt himself. He sat on the long wooden table, his gaze sweeping inch by inch across every corner of the room until it rested on the floor beneath his feet.
To facilitate NPCs blending undetected among the players, the room’s floor was covered with a layer of soundproofing mats. However, due to budget constraints, the mats were of average quality and assembled from several large pieces, with some edges slightly raised.
Yang Xiao squatted down and lifted the mat. The first piece was fine, the second piece also had no issues, but when he lifted the third piece, Yang Xiao’s pupils shrank. There was a ghastly white face under the mat—no, wrong, it was a white facial mask.
Wrapping his hand with the sleeve of his Drama Robe, he picked up the dried-out mask. Upon touching it, Yang Xiao was more convinced of his guess; this mask was the Resentful Eye, and it was the culprit behind the supernatural events.
It had been deliberately placed here by someone.
After securing the mask, Yang Xiao exited the room without drawing attention. When he walked out of the script room’s entrance, Zhao was already picking up his phone, getting ready to make a call.
"It’s all sorted out now," Yang Xiao said with a smile to comfort Zhao, speaking loudly enough so that the nearby employees could hear clearly, "Someone set up a nightmare array in your office, Zhao. I found and broke the Array Eye, which was a slaughtering knife."
"Where?" Zhao was startled.
"In the very back of your office drawer, wrapped in the yellow paper used for offerings to the dead. Zhao, did you offend someone?" Yang Xiao asked, feigning ignorance.
"But now that the nightmare array has been broken, there should be no more issues. Zhao, you can rest easy and focus on business, everyone can relax and work—it’s a minor issue." Turning his head, Yang Xiao comforted the several employees who were still in shock, especially the female clerk whose face had turned deathly pale.
"Is it really true?" A staff member with dyed yellow hair, small eyes, and a flat nose asked, seemingly skeptical.
"Of course it’s true." Yang Xiao reassured everyone. They could clean up and leave for today, and after dinner, they should come back to work as usual since script shops generally do better business at night.
After most people had left, Yang Xiao took Zhao back to the boss’s office. The two closed the door, and Yang Xiao explained his discovery to Zhao. He did not mention technical terms like Resentful Eye but tried to explain it in a way that Zhao would understand more easily, like the evil sorcery of a nightmare array.
In short, someone had set up a nightmare array in the script room, and now that the formation had been broken, the female ghost would not appear anymore. However, they needed to find out who was behind the Nightmare Array, or else such incidents might occur again in the future.
Hearing this, Zhao faced a dilemma. "Recently, Fengmen Ghost Play has gained fame, and now business is booming. During this period, we’ve had hundreds of customers coming to play due to the reputation. We also opened up a less frightening photo-taking experience, so counting that, there must be at least 300 or 400 people."
Theoretically, all these people had the opportunity to commit the act, but script murder games don’t involve checking household registrations. The personal information left by customers is very limited, and following this lead to investigate would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
