Chapter 213
Chapter 213
After watching from where he stood for a while, Meng Dehua headed deeper into the passage.
The kid didn’t look particularly dangerous.
It had probably just popped out to scare people.
One step, two steps: the devil’s own stride.
Meng Dehua quickly rounded the first corner.
The faint traces of blood on the wall brought him to a brief halt.
Under the dim light, the blood had already congealed, forming what looked like a grotesque smiling face.
Meng Dehua considered it for a moment, then moved closer to the wall.
It really was a smiling face, but why did it look so familiar?
After thinking for a moment, Meng Dehua suddenly smacked his forehead.
Damn it, wasn’t that his face?
Upon closer inspection, he actually found something!
Near the edge of one eye, in a spot that could easily be overlooked, was a tiny symbol.
Meng Dehua committed the symbol to memory and continued forward.
Another dozen or so meters later, a woman appeared ahead of him.
She stood with her back to Meng Dehua, her long hair cascading over her shoulders.
Dressed entirely in bright red, she looked indescribably eerie.
“Miss?”
Meng Dehua didn’t slow down in the slightest as he rapidly approached the red-clad woman.
Hearing his voice, the woman slowly turned her head.
Half of her face was breathtakingly beautiful, while the other half was hideously disfigured.
The beautiful half was a feast for the eyes.
The other half looked as if it had been slashed countless times before being doused in boiling oil.
But he was Meng Dehua!
Since entering this line of work, when had he ever gone a day without seeing a corpse or two?
Forget something like this-he had seen far worse!
There were bodies dragged out from beneath trucks and murder victims dumped in the wilderness.
No matter how gruesome they were, hadn’t they all ended up as a box of ashes after passing through his hands?
Just like the child before her, the woman merely stood there without moving.
Meng Dehua frowned. “I said hello. Shouldn’t you at least respond?”
Zhang Bei stared at the surveillance feed in silence for a long moment.
He desperately wanted to know how this man’s brain was wired!
On the screen, the woman’s lips moved.
An ear-piercing shriek instantly erupted from her mouth.
Meng Dehua felt as if his eardrums were being stabbed through.
He immediately clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Speak properly! Stop screaming!”
When the shrieking finally ceased, Meng Dehua breathed a sigh of relief.
Hah. A female ghost!
Taking advantage of her temporary decision to stop screaming, Meng Dehua strode farther into the passage.
Zhang Bei stretched, picked up his tablet, and left the Monitoring Room.
The recliner was outside, and if he was going to watch the show, he might as well get comfortable.
Not long after leaving the woman behind, Meng Dehua reached a fork in the passage.
The path ahead split into three separate tunnels.
A symbol was displayed above each one.
Meng Dehua knew the correct choice should be the tunnel on the far left.
Only its symbol matched the one he had seen on the wall.
However, the mechanism embedded in the wall clearly caught his attention even more.
There was a recess in the wall, with a Rubik’s Cube placed beneath it.
One face was blank, while the other five were labeled Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth.
The recess in the wall was shaped so that two faces of the cube would make contact with it.
Obviously, he needed to identify the correct two among the Five Elements.
Meng Dehua scratched his head. He had been born under the red flag and raised to reject ghosts, gods, and superstition.
But he really didn’t know anything about the Five Elements!
A few seconds later, Meng Dehua’s eyes suddenly lit up.
He didn’t need to know!
The first ghost had drowned, so Water obviously had to be one of the faces.
Most of the second ghost’s injuries were knife wounds.
Knives were made of iron, weren’t they?
And iron counted as metal, didn’t it?
Having found the correct answer, Meng Dehua placed the cube into the recess.
“Click!”
A crisp sound rang out. The floor slowly opened, revealing a passage leading downward.
Without the slightest hesitation, Meng Dehua entered the passage.
He had taken only two steps when the floor closed behind him again.
Watching through the surveillance feed, Zhang Bei fell silent.
He’d really picked the wrong path!
Not every mechanism was safe to use just because you’d solved it!
This passage was a dead end, though not entirely inescapable.
Like Passage Eighty-Five, it wasn’t affected by the Thirty-Minute Change Principle.
Instead, it exploited the discrepancy between the body’s perception and what the eyes saw.
You thought you were walking uphill, but your eyes were deceiving you.
In reality, you were walking on level ground.
The only way out was to close your eyes and feel your way through the entire passage.
Otherwise, you would be trapped here forever.
But closing your eyes in a place like this?
There was no way Zhang Bei would leave such a large passage empty!
Meng Dehua didn’t think too much about it. He simply followed the steps downward, one at a time.
Five minutes passed. He was still walking.
Ten minutes passed. He was still walking.
After fifteen minutes, Meng Dehua stared at the mark on the wall, his face turning pale.
Was a ghost leading him in circles?
Raised under the red flag to reject all ghosts and monsters as superstition, he stopped in his tracks.
Whatever it was, as long as he could see it, he wasn’t afraid.
But this situation was precisely the kind that made his scalp prickle.
“Heh heh heh heh…”
An icy cackle seemed to echo right beside his ear.
Meng Dehua swallowed nervously. “Come out if you’ve got the guts!”
“Come… come… come…”
The hollow echo answered him.
Meng Dehua suddenly remembered the rules he’d read before entering.
I can’t stop. I have to keep moving!
Meanwhile, near the gates of the Amusement Park, Zhang Bei was drinking tea when he sensed someone watching him.
His gaze instantly snapped toward the entrance.
A figure stood there, stirring memories from a very, very long time ago.
The man looked to be in his fifties. He stood tall and straight, his muscles bulging and his eyes gleaming with a sharp, piercing light.
Zhang Bei shot out of his chair.
He rushed over at almost his top speed.
“Master!”
That’s right. This man was Zhang Bei’s master, Song Xin.
“Where have you been all this time?”
Song Xin stared at Zhang Bei in momentary surprise, then broke into a smile as well.
“I hear you’ve been bullying your youngest junior brother again?”
“I didn’t! That wasn’t me! Don’t make things up!”
Zhang Bei silently took two steps backward.
The smile never left Song Xin’s face. “Come on. Let me see if you’ve forgotten everything I taught you!”
Seeing that his master had already taken off his coat, Zhang Bei felt a sudden chill.
By now, how could he not understand what was happening? This was definitely Heizi’s revenge!
But Zhang Bei wasn’t a coward either.
After all the training he’d done, he considered himself unafraid of anyone in a one-on-one fight!
The two assumed their stances. Zhang Bei stamped one foot against the ground and launched a straight punch at Song Xin.
The fight began, immediately drawing countless gazes.
Zhang Bei’s boxing had been personally taught by Song Xin.
He couldn’t claim to have surpassed his master, but he could at least hold his own.
Youth lent power to Zhang Bei’s fists, forcing even Song Xin to avoid meeting them head-on.
“Bang!”