Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Pierce, Proofreader-adjective
Although Ji Dong and the others were being controlled by an unknown force to play a game called “24 Points,” this was not an online game world where you could simply step on a teleportation gate or use a magical ability to travel instantly.
Participants must physically travel to the locations they want to go to just like in the real world.
On top of that, it was unrealistic to reach both paranormal locations—which were situated at opposite ends of the city—in just one night.
Unless… they split up.
Ji Dong and the others did consider splitting up, but soon after, they completely dismissed the idea.
Because they found online the urban legends of the locations where the ‘4’ and ‘A’ playing cards were located.
Yes, even though they couldn’t leave the villa, they could freely access the internet, read books, and watch TV, and at exactly 9 a.m., a newspaper would be delivered through the mail slot in the entrance hall.
So they opened the computer in the study and searched using keywords, quickly finding a lot of information.
The ‘4’ playing card was located on the old campus of a prestigious university with a hundred years of history. According to the legend circulating online, there was an old air-raid shelter to the south of the campus.
During the war era over 70 years ago, when the enemy launched an air strike, the entire city sounded the alarm, and nearly 300 teachers and students took shelter in the air-raid shelter.
Unfortunately, the dam in the mountains behind the school collapsed during the flood season, causing the torrential water to rush down the mountain and flood the air-raid shelter.
The students and teachers couldn’t escape in time and almost all of them drowned inside. After the tragedy, the school completely sealed off the shelter.
However, despite this, many students claimed that when they passed by the locked gates of the shelter at night, they would occasionally hear the screams, cries for help, and wails of many people coming from inside, which was particularly chilling.
Not only that, Ji Dong and his friends also discovered a rumor that said that a student from the university’s liberal arts department would mysteriously disappear every year.
It was the kind where a student completely vanished without a trace, and not even a single strand of hair could be found.
However, as long as you wait for about 10 days or half a month and send someone to explore the abandoned air-raid shelter, you could find one or two items left behind by the missing individuals deep inside the shelter, such as a shoe or a scrap of clothing.
But what was even more eerie was that when the school authorities discovered these scattered items in the air-raid shelter, the entrance gate was tightly closed.
Moreover, the security guards solemnly claimed that they had carefully inspected the door before opening it. The lock was covered in dust, which indicated that it hadn’t been touched for at least a year or more, accumulating a thick layer of dust.
That air-raid shelter only had one entrance. The entire structure was made of solid reinforced concrete. Unless the missing person could turn into a piece of paper and squeeze through the crack under the door, it was impossible to enter without unlocking it.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Later, there was a popular rumor in the school that during the tragedy, it was the president of the liberal arts department’s student union who proposed and organized everyone to take shelter in the air-raid shelter.
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But for some reason, this “preparation” has been going on for more than 10 years.
The vice dean who decided to demolish it had a heart attack, and the several officials who replaced him came and went for various reasons. In short, it has dragged on until now. This abandoned air-raid shelter remained on campus, and students continued to go missing every year…
…….
After reading the rumors online, Ji Dong and the others fell silent.
Everyone had the same thoughts in their minds.
——This is too scary!
——How is it possible to conquer a dungeon map of this difficulty in just one or two hours?
“This…after all, it’s just an urban legend. There must be some exaggeration. This is just a B-level [Film]. They wouldn’t make us face 300 drowned ghosts, right?”
Mo Tiangen swallowed his saliva and forced himself to be optimistic, “Anyway, let’s see how things are on the ‘A’ side!”
The haunted location of ‘A’ was in an abandoned hospital called “Tzu Chi Hospital.”
When they found photos of the hospital, Ji Xiao’niao couldn’t help but complain.
The city they were in was supposed to be a prime location where every square meter could cost around 50-60 thousand yuan. How could they allow an abandoned old hospital to occupy that space for 10 whole years without demolishing it!?
——Just for the sake of haunting, they don’t care about basic laws!
However, no matter how many flaws and unreasonable settings there were, they still had to face it.
After a thorough search, they found that the legends about this abandoned hospital that they could find online were not as detailed and specific as the ones about the university bomb shelter.
Instead, they seemed more like rumors and exaggerated stories.
There was a forum dedicated to collecting urban legends, and they made a post about the paranormal events at Tzu Chi Hospital.
Ji Dong and the others took a look and found that most of the strange stories about the abandoned hospital could be divided into two types.
The first type involved sightings of things that “shouldn’t” exist in Tzu Chi Hospital, which were often talked about by people. For example, there would be a stranger standing outside the window on the fourth floor, or a figure in white wandering in the corridors late at night. These stories were similar to typical ghost stories in most hospitals.
The second type was even more peculiar.
It was said that for some time, all sorts of inexplicable accidents would happen in the hospital. For example, the phototherapy machine would leak electricity, the ceiling would collapse, and people would mysteriously fall from the building.
These accidents appeared to happen coincidentally, and most of them resulted in deaths.
However, no clear reason could be found, so the hospital would just apologize and compensate for the damages.
But as these incidents occurred more frequently, rumors started circulating in the hospital. People said that these were not just accidents, but the work of something sinister.
There were also people claiming that the victims who died in those accidents exhibited paranoia earlier, telling those around them that a man wanted to kill them…
“You guys, look at this…”
Fan Luming found a blog that hadn’t been updated for many years. The author’s bio mentioned being a doctor in the radiology department and mentioned Tzu Chi Hospital multiple times, indicating that the blogger had worked there in the past.
“This blog is very interesting.”
The younger brother maximized the page so that everyone could see the content. Mo Tiangen, Fan Hemian, and Ren Jianmo gathered around.
Meanwhile, Ji Dong’s fingers were plugged into the socket, charging himself up. His entire body was in an electrostatically charged state, occasionally sparklingly with electricity.
Therefore, it was impossible to get too close; he could only stretch his neck and use his exceptional vision to peek through the cracks of the human wall.
That blog post wasn’t long. It described a strange incident that the blogger encountered while working at Tzu Chi Hospital.
One day, the doctor was on the night shift when they suddenly received a call from the emergency department, asking them to perform a bedside examination.
So the doctor hurriedly went to the emergency department on the first floor.
He pushed the instrument into the elevator, then pressed the door close button and watched as the elevator doors slowly closed. However, just as the two doors were about to completely shut—with only a fist’s distance in between—the doors suddenly seemed to hit something.
The central plastic pad violently bounced back and then abruptly reopened. Seeing this scene, the poor doctor was so scared that his whole body stiffened, his mind went blank, and he didn’t have time to think.
He pushed the machine and rushed out of the elevator.
[Oh my goodness, that scared me!]
The blogger wrote.
[I never expected to actually encounter an invisible person this time!]
At the end, he added a short ending.
[Then, the next day, I heard that someone died in the emergency room again!]
[Among the two young men who were brought in after a fight, one of them only had a cut on his forehead from glass shards. But after getting stitches, he mysteriously drowned himself in the bathroom sink!]
[This place is definitely haunted!]
Finally, Ji Dong and the others pondered and felt that compared to the more than 300 restless ghosts drowned in the underground air-raid shelter, the invisible person in the abandoned hospital might be slightly easier to deal with.
So they decided to go to the old site of the Tzu Chi Hospital and try to unravel the strange story of the playing card ‘A.’
“Shall we drive there ourselves tonight?”
Mo Tiangen suggested during dinner. Except for Ji Xiao’niao, who had just come of age, the other four all had driver’s licenses.
The [Film] they were currently in, whether it was the environment or level of technology, was extremely similar to the world they used to live in.
Even the car models and driving methods were not different. Having the ability to use the navigation system and driving themselves should be the fastest and safest way.
The other four also thought this was a good suggestion.
Their dinner was cooked by Fan Luming.
Although he was a boy, he was very skilled in cooking. He made grilled fish and vegetable soup with the ingredients in the refrigerator.
Ji Dong tasted it and thought that based on the taste alone, the Fan’s younger brother could definitely get married.
The five of them spent all their daytime collecting clues and studying the map. They just had a few biscuits for lunch.
At this time, they were so hungry that they felt like they could eat a whole cow. The food was delicious, and by the end, they even poured the sauce from the grilled fish onto their rice, eating an extra half bowl.
“It’s still early before midnight. Let’s all take a nap and energize ourselves,” Fan Hemian suggested to the others after finishing their meal.
However, Ji Dong, Mo Tiangen, and her brother just looked at each other and then shook their heads with a bitter smile.
Although they all knew they had to rest and gather their strength for the all-nighter tonight, just the thought of breaking into an abandoned hospital in a few hours and facing unknown monsters…
Seriously, who could sleep?!
———————
The author has something to say:
Actually, urban legends online contain clues to solving the cases!
Help, I’m scared. Reading this in the dark was a mistake. T^T