The three bottles of medicine represented three different dreams. The hints above the boxes told Gao Ming that he could only ingest one of them. Different from the other guests, Gao Ming fully ignored the white medicine in the middle. He took the black that represented despair in his left hand and the red that represented the truth in his right.
“After the car accident, I had a long and scary dream. That was the most despairing experience I have ever had. If I drink the black medicine, will I return to that dream?” Gao Ming was intrigued. “However, the red medicine is critical to me. Compared to the past, figuring out the truth should be more important.”
As Gao Ming hesitated, Dong Guo was extremely busy. She frantically messaged the control centre to get assistance. She couldn’t handle Gao Ming alone. The control centre also didn’t know what to do. The visitors who were frightened by Gao Ming needed to be consoled. There were some issues with the unexplored zones. The biggest problem was they realised someone had tempered with their haunted house. The dream medicine that was placed in the director’s office had been swapped. In their memory, there were only the black and white medicines. There wasn’t supposed to be a red bottle.
The control centre told Dong Guo to just handle the situation. Dong Guo looked at Gao Ming with hesitation. She watched in shock as Gao Ming opened the red bottle and finished the content in one gulp!
“Wait!” Dong Guo’s warning came too late. The newbie rushed forward and grabbed at nothing. Gao Ming had participated in Immortal Pharma’s Brain Realm Game. He entered the chamber expertly. He fearlessly placed his head into the black box.
“Sir!” Dong Guo, who worked there, was scared. She had no idea how Gao Ming managed to be so calm. The black boxes looked sinister. How could he put his head into one of them just like that?
The taste of blood lingered on his lips. Gao Ming chose the red drug that represented the truth. After drinking it, he realised the medicine tasted like remedied blood. It was hard to swallow compared to fake blood.
Gao Ming was assaulted by dizziness. Before he closed his eyes, he saw Dong Guo slamming her hands on the chamber. She seemed to be saying something. Then, the black box slowly closed, like an altar shutting its doors.
There was a sharp pain from the back of his brain. This was similar to what Gao Ming experienced on Immortal Pharma’s vehicle.
Gao Ming pushed open the chamber door. He saw the wrinkles on the walls. However, there were a lot less of the patterns. “No. The girl who likes to crawl on the ground is gone. I should be in a dream, but the dream features the same haunted house.”
Gao Ming exited the chamber and landed on uneven ground.
Shadows flickered outside the window. Extremely realistic blood capillaries snaked through the grooves in the wall. They pulsed under Gao Ming’s touch. The haunted house outside the dream didn’t bring Gao Ming any sense of fear. However, it was completely different after he entered the dream. The moment he left the test chamber, Gao Ming was assailed by a strong sense of unease. His heart jumped as if he knew something very dangerous was hidden there.
He pushed open the door. The mottled wall of Shanghai Haunted House became clean and shiny, like half-transparent glass. Gao Ming could see the children and semi-human specimens floating inside the walls. Their bodies were punctured with tubes. Their expressions were one of pain.
“Where is the truth hiding?” Gao Ming remembered Doctor Ce from the second floor. He tried to find his way back to that toilet. The second floor had expanded multiple times. This place felt like a specialised hospital. The haunted house in real life was a mere downsized replica. This was the real deal.
“Here! Shush! Don’t wake up those things!”
A familiar voice came from a gap in the door. Gao Ming slowed down and inched over to the corner.
“Is this the toilet?”
Gao Ming pushed open the door. He realised the fourth booth was open. He looked in. A middle-aged man with severe hair loss and wearing slippers sat on the toilet. There were many newspaper articles about murders around him.
“Doctor Ce?” Gao Ming asked.
“You finally came for me! This place is so scary. Our boss, that bastard, dropped me here and told me to gather information. I only know how to drink tea and read newspapers. I haven’t done anything before!” Doctor Ce’s identity was mysterious. He was unwilling to leave the toilet, not even one step.
“The Boss of Jiujiang Haunted House fed you the drug to enter the dream and left?!” Gao Ming was tickled by the competition between the two businesses.
“Nonsense! The strong ones can’t get in here… Only specific people can come here. That’s why I was picked.” Doctor Ce closed the booth door. He whispered to Gao Ming, “Since you know what is behind the door, you must be an ally. I won’t hide anything from you. This haunted house is hiding a big secret. It is related to the taboo event that happened in Xin Lu many years ago!”
“The taboo event?” Gao Ming focused.
“There was a game called Perfect Life that was introduced in Xin Ly many years ago. An Unmentionable used that game to create a stable passage that could lead to the world behind the door. For some reason, he led all the Unmentionables deeper into that world. In the fourth year after he disappeared, big changes happened to Xin Lu. The passage collapsed, and all the information related to him became confidential. More than ten thousand people were forced to undergo brain surgery. That game was also banned due to various reasons.” Doctor Ce revealed a big secret.
“Can a game have such a big influence?”
“What if that game can connect the realms of reality, dream and death?” Doctor Ce handed a stack of newspapers to Gao Ming, signalling him to sit down. “Our Boss came from Jiujiang and didn’t really care about Xin Lu. However, he discovered things were unravelling in Xin Lu’s world behind the door. The way he does things can always be misunderstood, so he has been sending people out to gather more information.”
“Your boss is quite careful.”
“He has to be because the way he deals with things is rather direct. It can be summed up with one word: kill.” Doctor Ce’s newspapers seemed to be bleeding. “He’ll kill until the blood cities have all collapsed.”