Chapter 70
Chapter 70
Yun Jianyue was chased out of the hardware store by the owner.
The owner stood in the doorway cursing, utterly beside himself with rage. “You look like such a pretty young lady, so why are you stealing my stock? And what does a girl like you even want with several crates of chainsaws?”
Yun Jianyue held up her phone. “I’ve transferred the money to you, sir!”
With that, she promptly fled, running an entire block before finally stopping.
“Darling, this is just too miserable. Sure enough, when a woman falls for a bad man, she suffers for the rest of her life.” Lu Changxue seemed to remember how she had been dismembered and started sobbing. “We’re sisters in misery! We both ended up with bad men!”
Yun Jianyue consoled her, “It’s fine. My bad man’s life is linked to mine, while your bad man left you without an intact corpse.”
Lu Changxue wailed even louder.
What kind of best friend said something so devastatingly cruel?
Once Lu Changxue had cried her fill, Yun Jianyue received the report Si Wuming had sent her, along with a message.
[Si Wuming: If there aren’t any problems, I’ll submit it.]
Yun Jianyue opened the report. It contained many details she hadn’t known.
The Hongdou Hotel had caught fire twice.
The first fire occurred in the late 1980s or early 1990s due to faulty wiring, but there were no casualties.
Two years later, a wealthy businessman bought the Hongdou Hotel, renovated it, and reopened it for business.
However, business remained poor, and by 2003, the Hongdou Hotel was on the verge of bankruptcy.
At the same time, Yunyi Middle School needed to renovate its campus due to the rapid expansion of its student body and faculty.
Because the Hongdou Hotel offered a high degree of privacy, the principal of Yunyi Middle School struck a deal with the wealthy businessman. During the renovations, the students were locked inside the Hongdou Hotel for two months.
Then a torrential downpour caused the hotel’s electrical system to malfunction again. The resulting fire killed every student, along with some members of the faculty and staff.
They could have escaped, but the Hongdou Hotel had locked them all inside. On top of that, the fire broke out at night while many of them were still asleep, leading to the second tragedy.
The students had suffered Yunyi Middle School’s abuse while alive, only to become trapped in the Hongdou Hotel after death.
Fei Dan’s resentment ran so deep that she eventually became a vengeful ghost.
She had no consciousness left. Trapped inside the Hongdou Hotel, she sought to kill anyone who entered.
In 2005, the Hongdou Hotel was slated for demolition as part of the city’s development plan. But after Fei Dan killed several people and problems arose with the demolition plans, the project was suspended.
By the time the city’s second development plan was released, the Hongdou Hotel was no longer included. City A had decided to shift its economic center northward and focus on developing the city’s northern districts. The Hongdou Hotel in the south was completely forgotten.
Later, as the internet grew, many urban exploration streamers visited the Hongdou Hotel. Some were lucky. By then, the Inner World had already been formed, but they didn’t accidentally stumble into it and managed to leave alive.
Others weren’t so lucky. They sank into the Inner World forever and eventually became part of it.
It was only through the growth of the internet and the ensuing public discussion that the Hongdou Hotel’s story, albeit in a heavily altered form, became widely known.
Yun Jianyue’s gaze fell on another passage in the report.
[In 2008, yin and yang fell out of balance. The nation’s fortunes faltered, mountain spirits died in great numbers, hordes of ghosts roamed the night, and demons and evil entities preyed upon humanity. Every member of the metaphysical clans took action. Someone reportedly spotted the Evil God near the Hongdou Hotel. Within the Inner World, the Evil God once stated that he had bestowed a wisp of the Evil God’s Power upon the vengeful ghost Fei Dan. Fei Dan later used the Evil God’s Power to construct the Inner World.]
Yin and yang had fallen out of balance. The nation’s fortunes had faltered, mountain spirits had died in great numbers, hordes of ghosts had roamed the night, and demons and evil entities had preyed upon humanity.
She had been young at the time, but she still remembered a few things.
Her mother had still been alive back then. Once, her mother said she needed to travel elsewhere to purchase stock and left Yun Jianyue with her maternal grandparents for several months. When her mother finally returned, she had lost a great deal of weight, and even her vitality and spirits were much worse than before.
Could her mother have known all along that she was a Goddess? Had she stepped forward back then, when evil spirits were preying on people?
“Darling? Your phone screen’s gone dark. What are you thinking about?” Lu Changxue asked.
Yun Jianyue snapped out of her thoughts and continued reading the report.
According to the report, the person using the online alias “Enter Hongdou Hotel and Die” had been traced through their IP address and identified as Fei Dan’s mother.
Fei Dan’s mother was already sixty years old. Ever since losing her daughter, her mental state had deteriorated, and the neighbors often said she had gone mad.
In truth, Fei Dan’s resentment was so intense that she constantly appeared in her mother’s dreams. Devastated by what had happened, Fei Dan’s mother had gone to the Hongdou Hotel several times, hoping to die there with her daughter, but no matter what she did, she could not die.
She understood that this was her daughter’s punishment: forcing her to live on in loneliness and pain, spending the rest of her life in repentance.
Many streamers broadcast their explorations of the Hongdou Hotel live. Fei Dan’s mother would send them donations to encourage them to go inside, hoping to see whether anyone else could see her daughter.
She had also donated to Hu Qi’s stream that night.
After hearing Fei Dan recount what had happened to her in the detention room, the shock and fury overwhelmed her. She died in her own home.
Fei Dan, who had created the Inner World, had also been captured by the Paranormal Bureau.
A transcript of Fei Dan’s statement was attached to the end of the report.
Yun Jianyue sent Si Wuming a message.
[Yun Jianyue: Is Fei Dan at the Paranormal Bureau now?]
Si Wuming seemed to have been holding his phone, because his reply came almost instantly.
[Si Wuming: If you come now, you can still see her one last time.]
[Yun Jianyue: She’s going to be executed?]
[Si Wuming: She has taken human lives. According to regulations, she must receive the ultimate punishment.]
Yun Jianyue had no grounds to defend Fei Dan.
While alive, Fei Dan had indeed endured suffering beyond anything an ordinary person could imagine. But after her death, she had also killed many innocent people.
When all was said and done, there was no such thing as a perfect victim.
Yun Jianyue took a cab to the Paranormal Bureau. Fei Dan was being held in a room covered entirely in runes. She was still wearing Yunyi Middle School’s summer uniform, and her jet-black hair hung loose without a hair tie, falling in a tangled mess across her face.
“Be careful in there.” Du Minghao was guarding Fei Dan. When he saw that Yun Jianyue wanted to enter, he made sure she had brought her chainsaw, gave her a brief warning, and let her inside.
The door opened and closed again. Fei Dan did not even raise her head.
“Fei Dan,” Yun Jianyue called softly.
At the sound of Yun Jianyue’s voice, Fei Dan slowly lifted her head and looked at her.
The woman and the ghost stared at each other in silence for a long time before Fei Dan’s lips finally curved into a faint smile. “I remember you. After all these years, you’re the only person who ever killed them.”
“I made you a promise,” Yun Jianyue said.
Fei Dan tilted her head. “That was me when I was alive. I wasn’t in the Inner World.”
Yun Jianyue merely gazed at Fei Dan as though she could see straight through every part of her ghostly form.
After a long while, Fei Dan looked away in distress, no longer daring to meet Yun Jianyue’s eyes. “You’re human, and I’m a ghost. I tried to hurt you. There’s nothing for us to talk about. Get out!”
Yun Jianyue walked over to Fei Dan and gently stroked her hair, just as she had done in the detention room.
“Goodbye.”
After Yun Jianyue left the room, Fei Dan wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. Her long black hair concealed her cheeks and the bloody tears streaming down her face.
In the empty cell, a softly spoken word of gratitude faded into the air, unheard by anyone.
“Thank you.”