The entire room was enveloped in dark energy, all light completely devoured.
Han Fei stood alone in the haunted house’s living room, listening to the system’s prompts.
"You have successfully summoned a wandering soul!"
"Player number 0000, please take note! A player with an F-grade manager’s soul-summoning talent has an extremely low success rate, and there’s a certain chance of summoning something else. Moreover, since a soul-summoning ceremony can’t be held, the location of the summoned wandering soul is uncertain and will appear randomly within a hundred meters centered around you!"
"Player number 0000, please take note! Some wandering souls are extremely dangerous, please use your soul-summoning talent cautiously!"
The soul-summoning had been successful, but Han Fei felt that what he had called forth wasn’t Mingmei’s father.
Mingmei’s father’s name was nearly colorless in blood, and when it left the Blood Sea, it shattered immediately. In contrast, another name with a deep blood color, a ghost face, broke out and ran.
Frankly speaking, Han Fei also didn’t know what exactly he had called forth this time.
"According to the system’s prompts, soul-summoning can summon players, but it can also bring forth other things, and might even call upon some very ominous entities."
He still remembered the trembling feeling he experienced while summoning, the countless ghost faces that turned into a blood sea hiding a terrifying presence.
"The summoned wandering soul will appear randomly within a hundred meters centered on me. It seems that the other party should be within this apartment building."
Han Fei wanted to punish the murderer, but he was also afraid of involving the innocent.
For whatever reason, he needed to find the wandering soul he had summoned quickly.
"I vaguely remember the last name that escaped had a heavy color of blood, obviously that of a person with a supernatural physique, not ordinary."
The apartment building was still relatively safe for now, so Han Fei couldn’t care less about spending three hours in the haunted house anymore.
With the Building Chief’s spare keys in hand, he fled the 1044 haunted house, rallied the neighbors he had good relations with, and began searching for that lone soul.
Starting from the first floor, Han Fei left no door unchecked, taking the opportunity also to scavenge through rooms in the building he had never visited before.
Searching floor by floor, Han Fei had reached the eighth floor without catching sight of the wandering soul, and just as he started to think it may have been devoured by some neighbor, a sudden scream rang out from outside Apartment Building No. 1!
Han Fei hurried to the window to check and discovered that the scream had come from inside Building No. 2 of the Happiness Residential Community!
"Why does that scream sound somewhat familiar?"
"Where is this? Wasn’t I just coloring the toilet? How could it be that the moment I left the bathroom... my home is gone?"
Chilly, damp, with a faint moldy smell drifting through the air, Huang Ying remained dazed for a good ten seconds before realizing, "Could this be a hidden map? My bathroom actually leads to a hidden map! Damn!"
Hidden maps were even rarer than hidden quests. According to the official information, within hidden maps, one could obtain unique exclusive items, and only people with astronomical luck could possibly enter.
"My luck value is only 1! Have my ancestors’ graves started to smoke? I’ve actually come across a hidden map!"
Excitement surged through Huang Ying as he was about to search the room for items when suddenly there was a knocking at the door.
"Could this be a quest within the hidden map? A hidden quest that presents itself to you?"
Hurrying to the door of the living room, Huang Ying didn’t think too much and flung the door open, eagerly looking outside.
In the foul-smelling corridor, a middle-aged woman, covered in bruises and blood, clung to the security door, craning her neck to peer inside.
Huang Ying’s hand moved faster than his brain; he instinctively slammed the door shut.
His brain still in a frozen state, Huang Ying was somewhat uncertain.
Did I open it the wrong way?
Taking a deep breath, Huang Ying peered through the peephole at the hallway. There was nothing outside the door, not a single person.
Cracking the living room door open cautiously, Huang Ying found no one in the corridor.
The woman seemed as if she had never been there, and even the foul smell in the hallway had vanished.
"Have I started hallucinating because I’ve been staying up late playing games?"
The corridor was filthy, cluttered with various items and trash; the iron railings were covered in rust spots, and the walls on both sides were plastered with lots of small ads and an abundance of children’s graffiti.
This was just a very ordinary residential community hallway.
"Every hidden map in ’Perfect Life’ is meticulously crafted, chock-full of Easter eggs. However, no one has ever actually seen what the hidden maps look like," Huang Ying stomped his foot, causing the corridor’s emergency light to come on. He walked over to room 2041 across the hall and knocked gently, "Is anyone home?"
There was no response from inside the room, but footsteps sounded from above in the hallway.
Huang Ying followed the sound to the corner of the corridor, where a teenage girl stood.
Her skin was unnaturally pale, her figure frail, and under her collar, a deep purple mark could just be made out.
"An NPC from the hidden map? Even the modeling is different from the regular NPCs!"
The girl’s face wore an expression of surprise; she seemingly hadn’t expected that someone in this building would talk to her.
"Did you just see a middle-aged woman covered in blood?" Huang Ying, quite handsome, displayed an adult man’s confident smile, intending to make a good impression on her.
The girl silently shook her head.
Her soft, fragile, pitiable appearance gradually eased Huang Ying’s anxiety as he took a closer look and found the girl to be extremely pretty, despite her overly pale skin.
"You shouldn’t play in the hallway; hurry on home. There seems to be a crazy woman around; be careful she doesn’t hurt you." Huang Ying was a kind and gentle soul at heart, and he did not pick on her just because she was an NPC.
"I can’t go home yet; I need to find the things I’ve lost," the girl said timidly.
"Looking for something? A game mission?" Years of gaming experience made Huang Ying immediately realize that he might have triggered a hidden quest. His smile brightened, "It’s very unsafe for you to be searching for something alone in the hallway this late at night. How about I help you look for it?"
The girl was even more surprised upon hearing Huang Ying’s words; she couldn’t understand why he would be so eager to help.
Furrowing her brows slightly, the girl thought for a while before finally nodding.
Feeling secretly pleased, yet Huang Ying waited and did not receive any system notification. He stopped and looked at the girl, "What are you looking for?"
Helping NPCs find their lost items was one of the most common missions in many games; sometimes Huang Ying even wondered if the NPCs all had such poor memories.
Huang Ying’s enthusiasm made the girl puzzled; after hesitating for a long time, she spoke slowly, "The residents in this building all dislike me, thinking I’m not normal, but all I want is to become complete."
As she spoke, she lifted her arms, which she had been hiding behind her back. The ends of her slender arms were covered in blood.
"Can you help me find my hands? I know someone hid them in this building."