Chapter 46: Chapter 45: No, I Have to Keep Staying (Part 1)
He Xiaotian woke up and lazily glanced around.
The living room lights had gone out at some point.
He pulled out his phone. The time was 12:05.
’Did I just hear a pig oinking?’ he wondered, his gaze falling on the menacing iron hammer beside the sofa.
Other than the hammer, he couldn’t think of anything else in Room 302 with a connection to pigs.
’Could it be that this thing is an anomalous item too?’
Too bad the Experience Points system’s scanning function hadn’t been upgraded. Otherwise, he might have been able to find out if the hammer was truly one of them.
An eerie atmosphere filled the silent room.
He Xiaotian couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t the only one in the apartment.
’Like, there are nine others?’
It was a strange, random thought that stuck in his mind, impossible to shake off.
He picked up the hammer and walked to the security door.
He turned the handle but found the door wouldn’t open.
Of course, if he used his full strength—tens of thousands of pounds of force—the security door might as well have been made of paper.
’But there was no need for that!’
To get the ten-million-yuan prize, he had to stay the whole night.
If he left now, wouldn’t he be breaking his word?
So, he turned and headed for the bedroom.
Yep. Same old trick, same old story. It wouldn’t open.
It was as if something was holding it shut with an unseen force.
DRIP! DRIP!
The sound of dripping water came from the bathroom. He Xiaotian rolled his eyes.
’Come on. Even horror movies don’t use this trope anymore.’
Still, he walked over. He wanted to see just what kind of game this thing hiding in the shadows was playing.
As expected, he opened the bathroom door with ease.
And then, He Xiaotian saw a gush of bloody water pouring from the faucet.
At the same time, a cold, sinister presence began to grow stronger.
SLAM!
Seeing this, he unhesitatingly pulled back the foot he had been about to place inside and slammed the door shut.
The dripping came to an abrupt halt. The cold, sinister presence also vanished instantly.
It was as if the thing had been left completely dumbfounded.
CREAK!
A moment later, He Xiaotian pushed the door open again and stuck one foot out.
DRIP! DRIP!
The faucet started gushing bloody water again, and the cold, sinister presence began to rise once more.
SLAM!
He repeated his previous action, yanking his leg back and shutting the door.
"..."
CREAK!
This time, the faucet wasn’t gushing bloody water, and the sinister presence was gone.
It seemed to have lost all hope for He Xiaotian.
"I’m coming in," he muttered.
Muttering to himself, he placed his right foot on the bathroom floor.
DRIP! DRI—
The instant the dripping sound began, he moved as fast as lightning, repeating his previous maneuver.
SLAM!
"???"
Room 302 fell completely silent.
An indescribable sadness began to permeate the air.
CREAK!
The familiar creak of the opening door echoed, but the bathroom was perfectly still.
He Xiaotian stretched out his right foot and planted it on the floor. Nothing strange happened.
He leaned halfway in. No reaction. The entity was probably just numb to it by now.
He stepped all the way into the bathroom. The faucet was behaving as meekly as a newborn.
After taking a few steps, the cold, sinister presence suddenly skyrocketed in intensity.
It was as if it was afraid He Xiaotian would leave again.
The bathroom door swung shut on its own, intending to trap him inside.
THUD!
But without even turning his head, He Xiaotian shot his left hand out and slapped it flat against the door.
The cold, sinister force couldn’t budge his hand in the slightest.
And so, an awkward scene unfolded.
The thing hiding in the shadows wanted to close the door, but couldn’t.
He Xiaotian, for his part, didn’t leave either. He just held the door open with one hand, craning his neck to look around the room without a hint of fear.
’What the hell?!’
The cold, sinister presence wavered, thrown into chaos.
This was the first time it had ever encountered such a situation, and it had no idea what to do.
CLICK!
He Xiaotian heard the sound and turned to look, only to find that the security door had opened on its own.
’Is it... showing me the door?’
"I’m not leaving. Dawn is just a few hours away. Then I’ll get my ten million. Why would I leave now?"
FLICK!
The living room lights suddenly flashed on.
’You’re not leaving, are you?’
’Fine, I’ll leave!’
The cold presence at the bathroom door vanished, and the room returned to normal.
This was a development that not even He Xiaotian had anticipated.
’I only messed with you a few times, and you just... ran away?’
’Don’t you have any professional pride?’
’You’re the most pathetic ghost I’ve ever seen!’
This time, it was He Xiaotian’s turn to feel awkward.
If it had been something like the Pig Grudge, he could have just smashed it with his hammer and been done with it.
If one swing didn’t work, he’d just use two.
He’d hammer it into submission, guaranteed, until it was kneeling on the ground, begging for mercy.
’But what was he supposed to do about a ghost?’
If it refused to show itself, there was nothing He Xiaotian could do.
’Since it’s come to this, what else is there to do?’
’Go to sleep, I guess!’
’It’s not like he could just yell a few times and get the ghost to come back, right?’
He set the hammer back on the floor, lay down on the sofa, and went back to sleep.
「The rest of the night passed peacefully.」
Early the next morning, the security door clicked open.
He Xiaotian groggily opened his eyes and saw the group leader, a woman who stood nearly six feet tall, walking in with Huang Mao and Green Hair.
As soon as the three of them were inside, their eyes immediately fell on the menacing iron hammer.
’One swing from that thing could probably make an elephant kneel and beg for mercy, right?’
"What are you guys doing here?"
"B-Brought... brought you breakfast..." Huang Mao stammered, holding up a takeout container.
The previous day, He Xiaotian had arrived in the Ghost Car, scaring them all half to death.
Now, seeing this brutal-looking hammer, they were terrified to the core.
"Not interested."
’Was breakfast as important as ten million yuan?’
The group leader, who called herself a "real man," walked toward the TV set.
Then He Xiaotian saw her pull a pinhole camera out of the cabinet?!
"You were secretly filming me?"
"G-Great... Great Sir, M-Ma... Master, I... I..."
"If we didn’t plant a camera, how would we know if you were trying to cheat us?" Sister Nan said, taking a small memory card from the device and inserting it into her phone.
He Xiaotian thought about it. ’Fair enough,’ he conceded.
’What if I hadn’t come in at all and just slept in the hallway all night?’
They might be super-rich kids, but you couldn’t just treat them like total morons.
’Good thing I forgot to take off my mask yesterday,’ he thought.
The three of them huddled together and began to review last night’s recording.
When the clock struck midnight and the lights went out,
the hearts of the three onlookers began to pound furiously.
The sight of the bloody liquid gushing from the bathroom, in particular, sent their adrenaline into overdrive.
’This is intense!!’
But then a pig’s oink startled the liquid back into the bathroom. What followed was He Xiaotian repeatedly opening and closing the door, mercilessly trolling the entity in the haunted house. As he single-handedly turned what should have been a horror film into a slapstick comedy, the three of them could only stare, dumbfounded.
’Y-Y-You... you can do that?!’
’Is this what you’d expect from the man who dared to ride the Ghost Car?’
His nerve was on another level.
When the footage showed the click and the security door swinging wide open in a gesture of seeing a guest out, they suddenly thought that ghosts weren’t so scary after all.
Finally, the lights came back on, and He Xiaotian slept peacefully until dawn.
"My two million!!" Huang Mao cried, clutching his head in anguish.
"What the hell are you crying about? I put up five million, you hear me complaining?" Green Hair looked like he wanted to strangle his friend. "You’re heartbroken over a measly two million? Laozi lost more than double what you did."
Sister Nan, by contrast, was ecstatic.
Her eyes lit up as if she’d discovered a new world. A man who dared to troll a ghost—who wouldn’t be interested in someone like that?
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