"Wife, let me listen to our son’s voice again."
"I know he can’t talk yet, I just miss him."
"He can’t make any noise anymore? How much time has passed?"
"Wife, don’t cry! I’m not scolding you, it’s okay, I will bring another son home in a few days."
"Hug, hug. How could I have the heart to lock you up all alone in such a dark place? You need company."
"Stop crying! Rest assured, the son I bring will indeed be your own flesh and blood, I already know you’ve hidden him in the hotel."
In the dimly lit front desk of the hotel, a man in a raincoat squatted by the phone, constantly mumbling something as if he were on a call.
His tone was very gentle, and it seemed like his wife was on the other end of the phone.
The brim of the raincoat’s hood obscured most of his face, and the man’s voice was filled with love as he occasionally acted coquettishly towards his wife on the phone, appearing to be very much in love.
The clock on the wall pointed to one o’clock in the morning, yet the man was still on the call, continuously comforting his still crying wife when footsteps suddenly echoed at the entrance of the hotel.
A young man, with a fine figure and a touch of decadent charm, entered the hotel, carrying the Spiritual Altar in his arms.
Nonchalantly wiping the blood off his palm, the man in the raincoat reluctantly hung up the phone and looked towards the young man who arrived at the Midnight Inn: "Staying the night?"
"Hmm." The man pulled out a key from under the counter: "Let me have your name, we need to register guests here."
"Chang’an? Nice name." The man handed the key to the young man: "Room 202, come to check out at this time tomorrow night."
"Is that all? I haven’t paid yet?"
"Someone has already paid for you, get some rest early, and I wish you sweet dreams."
"Thank you, you’ve been working hard too." The young man was polite, but he didn’t leave immediately with the key, instead, he looked at the wall of the hotel, where an advertising board hung, plastered with various adverts and notices.
There were lost and found announcements, as well as missing persons alerts.
The young man looked for a long time, and he also spotted an ad for a tutor wanted to provide extra lessons for a child.
"Boss, may I ask, who left this information? Is the child in need of tutoring a student from Yimin Middle School across the street?"
"Yeah, he’s a student from that school, but he dropped out for some reasons. His mom has been trying to get him to return to his studies. To keep him from falling behind, she left the information hoping to find a tutor." The boss’s voice was very gentle, like a person with a very agreeable character.
"Do that mother and son live here as well?"
"They live in 301. If you would like to apply to be their tutor, I can call them for you."
"That would be great, thank you." The young man headed towards the staircase, crossing the mildew-scented corridor. As he reached the stairs, he glanced back.
The man in the raincoat was standing behind the counter, still watching him.
Walking up the creaky wooden stairs to the second floor, the young man heard the voice of the man downstairs once again; he seemed to be calling his wife again.
"Are they really husband and wife? This hotel is a bit different from what I had expected."
The young man carrying the Spiritual Altar was none other than Han Fei. He had initially planned to attack the hotel owner on entry, to take down as many as he could.
But when he actually met the owner, he noticed something was off.
The owner seemed as if Under Curse, displaying a state similar to the One-eyed employee previously manipulated by Paperman.
Seeing this, Han Fei decided not to act rashly. He didn’t reveal Cry or Li Zai, concealed within the Spiritual Altar, but instead played the role of a hotel guest.
Using the key, he opened room 202.
Han Fei shook his head at the Spiritual Altar in his arms, then looked around.
The furniture inside the room was very worn, next to the small TV there was even a teapot, and lifting the lid, one could see several damp Paper Moneys stuffed inside.
"You never know what has been brewed in a hotel’s teapot."
After carefully checking the window and bed, Han Fei didn’t find anything wrong, he just saw some Paper Money Fragments in the corner of the room and in the closet.
"I always feel room is prepared for the dead, but then again, the Deep World is not much different from the Underworld."
Sitting on the bed, Han Fei organized the information he had, "The hotel is divided into three floors, each floor has four rooms, among them room 101 on the first floor has ’Manager’ written on it."
Looking at the key in his hand, Han Fei listened carefully; the hotel’s soundproofing was very poor, and from the adjacent room 201, he could faintly hear the sound of teeth grinding.
"The hotel isn’t very large, Yinghuo must be hiding in one of the rooms." Closing his eyes, Han Fei recalled, "The person who threw a Flower Pot at me lived on the third floor, judging by the layout of the rooms on the second floor, she should be in room 302, directly above."
Standing up, Han Fei could hear the sound of snoring coming from above: "Sleeping rather soundly."
"Dinglingling! Dinglingling!..."
The phone by the bed suddenly rang, and Han Fei frowned slightly, he had thought the phone was just for show before.
"If I don’t answer it, will it keep ringing?"
Han Fei stared at the phone, and he noticed another interesting thing—when the phone rang, the grinding of teeth and the snoring sounds disappeared altogether.
Picking up the phone, Han Fei didn’t speak.
In the silence, a woman’s voice came through the phone: "Please, stop tormenting me, just kill me, why don’t you kill me directly..."
The woman’s voice was full of tears, seemingly very weak.
"Tell me your location," Han Fei spoke in a low voice, but his enunciation was very clear.
"Stop tormenting me, kill me, kill me..." the woman kept repeating these words, but just at that moment, sounds of falling chains came from the other side of the phone, followed by the noise of a door being pushed open, and then the Boss’s voice came through: "Baby, who are you talking to?"
The phone was hung up instantly, Han Fei’s eyes moved swiftly, and he decisively replaced the phone in its original spot, then he quietly opened the door to room 202.
He did not know where the woman was hidden by the Boss, but he knew that the Boss definitely wasn’t at the counter now.
Leaving the room as quickly as possible, Han Fei went down to the first floor.
At the moment, the first floor was empty, not a soul in sight.
Without a second thought, Han Fei immediately took all the remaining keys from the counter, then he started searching through the counter and pocketed the registration form the Boss had left on the table as well.
Ensuring he hadn’t missed anything, Han Fei quickly ran back.
He walked softly, stealing a listen at each room as he passed by for any sounds within.
Having returned to room 202 without any trouble, Han Fei got his hands on six keys marked with room numbers.
He noted down the codes on the keys then opened up the register.
Meng Chang’an’s name was written at the very end; turning a page back, he directly found Yinglong’s name.
"Yinglong checked into room 304?" Han Fei compared the keys he had borrowed, and there wasn’t a key for room 304 among them: "Yinglong hasn’t checked out, could he still be in room 304?"
As Han Fei was looking through the register, footsteps suddenly came from outside in the corridor; at the same time, the System’s voice rang in Han Fei’s Brain Sea.
"Player number 0000, please note! You have successfully triggered a G-level Normal Mission—Find the missing clerk!"
"Find the missing clerk: Your only clerk has disappeared! Finding him can greatly increase your Amicability!"
"Player number 0000, please note! You have successfully triggered a G-level Hidden Mission—Midnight Inn!"
"Midnight Inn: The Boss of the inn once wrote four words in blood on the billboard—’Strangers, Stay Away!’ But as the Boss has disappeared, increasingly strange and terrifying things have begun to occur inside the inn."