Chapter Nine: The Backroom, Ordinary People, and Sacrifice

"Hey! Where is this place?" She drew the gun at her waist and aimed it at the only two living people in sight.

"The place where they harm people," came the reply.

"What exactly is this place?"

He looked at Jiang Wan, his expression calm and unconcerned; even with the gun barrel pointed right at him, he remained composed, as if searching for something in the surroundings.

"Where on earth are we?" she shouted, her voice hoarse but clearly suppressed.

She clenched her teeth, and Chen Qing could see her lips trembling.

"This is the Back Room," he said.

"And where is that?"

"It's where they kill people."

"They? Who are they?"

"Haven’t you seen for yourself?" He lifted his eyelids, his gaze lingering on a mark on the handrail.

It was a triangle, with one side slightly elongated. Beside the mark, there were scratches left by human nails, dried blood nestled in the grooves—not fresh.

He thought to himself, "A long, long time ago... I was here before."

"You! You know what will happen here?" she demanded.

Chen Qing shook his head. "Have you ever heard of... or read about urban legends?"

She hesitated, lowering her gun. "Slit-mouthed women, black cat old ladies and the like. Or maybe the Five Chang Immortals, mountain temple spirits. Or perhaps those midnight tales: at midnight, you line up in your school building, step forward every five minutes, and when you reach the restroom, you find yourself in another world."

A chill crept through her heart, unease rising swiftly after.

"I’ve heard them, but those are just—" She wanted to say "impossible," but looking around at the scene before her, she hesitated.

"This is what those places are like," he said. His expression grew heavy. "But logically... a place like this shouldn’t be so easy to enter."

"I don’t care how easy it is to enter... so many people have died here. This is already far beyond what we agreed on." Jiang Wan shook her head, holstering her gun; she was about to back out, but Chen Qing’s untroubled demeanor unnerved her even more.

"There’s no signal here," he said.

She pulled a radio from her pocket, but the static that came through only confirmed his words.

Chen Qing managed a small smile. "No satellite, no radio—how could there be signal?"

"I want to leave," she said, looking at him. But the youth only shook his head, unmoved.

"It’s not that easy to leave. In these stories, you have to satisfy the conditions before you can escape, right?"

He looked at the "tree" hung with corpses and asked, "Do you know how to perform an autopsy?"

She blanched and shook her head. "We... I... haven’t dealt with many corpses."

"I see." He switched on a flashlight, searching for something below waist height. After a while, Jiang Wan’s tension eased a little.

She finally took the time to survey their surroundings.

Behind them, the staircase stretched hundreds of meters away into a shroud of mist—mist that hadn’t been there before, adding a bone-chilling chill to the scene.

She climbed the stairs step by step, but as she reached the top, a stabbing pain accompanied the cold, forcing her to stop. Gritting her teeth, she tried to ascend further, but the pain only intensified.

Abandoning her attempt, she returned to the lobby at the base of the stairs.

The tree was still there, hundreds of bodies bound in straitjackets, all pointing toward several open doors. The rooms beyond appeared empty—or at least, she couldn’t tell if anyone was inside.

She moved to Chen Qing’s side. The boy’s demeanor was far more cautious now; she’d expected this strangely mature youth to remain as calm as ever.

What she didn’t know was that the things Chen Qing had noticed were simply too disturbingly out of the ordinary.

He brushed dust from his hand and handed Jiang Wan a slip of paper.

On it was written:

"The living, alive. The dead, should die as the living do. Those who yearn to live shall become but blood. Those who pursue life will be crowned with sleepless wailing through the night."

She stared at it, perplexed. "I... don't really understand. What's it mean?"

Chen Qing shook his head. "The Back Room is a very peculiar place... Some people have been here before; they leave clues behind. Think carefully—this note might save our lives."

He muttered to himself, glancing about the lobby.

Within the arched room, doors lined the walls, their interiors shrouded in darkness. The wooden doorframes were covered with scratches—some looked like they were made by fingertips, others by some animal.

He frowned and counted from left to right: four doors in total.

"Should we split up?"

"Are you insane?" she shot back.

"Forget it."

Jiang Wan frowned deeply, eyeing the boy with suspicion. He wants to ditch me? What’s he planning? Does he think he can survive alone?

She touched the gun at her waist, the gesture calming her nerves.

"Let's go. The first door."

At the sound of his voice, Jiang Wan hurried to catch up.

She wanted to utter a threat, but a creaking sound behind them silenced her.

The noise fell like grains of sand, accumulating on the floor. Something—like a human shadow—seemed to be forming from the movement, the sound wriggling and gathering into a corner of the lobby.

Soon, the sound became viscous, as though something sticky was oozing, the room filled with the din of a thick liquid flowing—not like water, but like some syrupy solution.

The two exchanged glances; the girl’s gun was already trained on the source of the noise.

They stared into the darkness, barely making out a human figure.

They moved forward—the sound grew clearer.

But when they reached the "person," all they found was a floor littered with shattered bones and a pool of gelatinous blood.

Fallen bone fragments, sticky with blood, were scattered everywhere, the splinters mingling with the viscous fluid.

Disgust rising in their chests, they began to back away, but at that moment, the blood coalesced.

Those bones became the blood’s few weapons—a half-meter-long femur snapped in half, its sharp end pointed outward.

"Slime?" Chen Qing’s expression lightened; this was far less shocking than what he’d seen earlier.

Even though the thing’s body was packed with human bones, and its volume seemed to be growing, he patted Jiang Wan’s hand, signaling her to put away her gun.

"Let’s go," he said.

"What about it?" she asked, frowning.

"Are you sure you can kill it with one shot? I don’t even know what it is. It’s not attacking us—let’s get out of here."

Chen Qing shrugged and quickened his pace, heading for the center of the first door.

As they passed through, the creature beneath the tree gradually quieted.

Inside, a weak lamp glowed.

Before them lay a miniature version of the lobby—thirty square meters, filled with instruments and equipment, and a medical bed with a patient lying upon it.

The bedding was soaked with dirty black liquid, staining what should have been blue sheets.

He hurried over, straightening the patient’s face for a closer look.

"Hey! What are you doing? He’s still alive!"

"I’m not blind," he replied, frowning. The man’s face was emaciated beyond recognition, but Chen Qing discerned his identity from the bones of his face.

"Are you... Mr. Sun Zhengyang?"

Chen Qing frowned, not really waiting for a reply. Jiang Wan rushed over, pushing his hand away and glaring at him before checking the patient’s vital signs.

But the more she examined the withered man, the paler she became. "No... it’s over."

"What? You want to say he’s barely hanging on?" Chen Qing didn’t look back, busying himself at the edge of the bed.

She glared at him, confusion and shock in her voice. "You knew?!"

The complexity of her feelings was hard to untangle; she’d never seen someone so calmly accept another’s impending death, so composed in pronouncing a fellow human’s end.

He was too calm.

"Isn’t it obvious? Look at the numbers on the monitor—his heart rate’s almost lower than my sanity, and he’s still breathing?"

Chen Qing bent down to check, but suddenly his eyes lit up. "Those who yearn to live... sleepless wailing..."

He turned to focus on the patient.

"But he’s unconscious now. Does he really feel pain?"

Chen Qing pondered—it felt like he was missing something.

"Is he one of the entities in this Back Room? Or is he a victim who’s survived after being dragged in?"

He didn’t have time to consider further—the sound at the entrance interrupted his thoughts.

It was footsteps, unmistakably heavy. The person must weigh over 250 pounds, but wasn’t tall.

Chen Qing’s face changed; Jiang Wan’s reaction was just as swift. But before she could utter a word, Chen Qing clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Raise—mmph—mmph!"

She didn’t even have time to struggle; Chen Qing had already dragged her under the bed.

Beneath the reeking, black-liquid-dripping bed, their composure finally broke.

They saw the newcomer. They saw the creature ducking its head to squeeze through the door.

Its limbs were grotesquely swollen, its body round as a ball, yet it moved with ease. It had no face—or rather, its face had been dissolved away. It lumbered to the bedside, blood squeezed from its feet by its own weight, staining the floor.

It grabbed Sun Zhengyang’s arm with both hands—and with a snap, tore it off at the joint.

But he didn’t cry out.

He remained unconscious.

It broke both knees—still silence. It snapped the spine—he barely gasped.

The thing left, carrying four bones in its hands, like toys, each barely the length of its palm.

"No... something’s wrong," Chen Qing muttered, frowning. The information on the note didn’t seem to fit.

"But that’s impossible..." he whispered.

Jiang Wan was puzzled. "Why couldn’t it be wrong? The person who wrote the note wasn’t a god, were they?"

"He managed to get out with the information on that note."

"Or maybe he just thought he could, wrote the note, and died here," she replied.

Chen Qing glanced at her but didn’t explain further.

He shook his head, and the two crawled out from under the bed and returned to the bedside.

Looking at the man on the bed, Chen Qing froze.

"His limbs... they were broken at the joints, weren't they?"

He hadn’t finished speaking when he saw it.

Blood trickling from the man’s eyes; an empty mouth; a torn, newly-healed scar at the corner of his lips.

Then, from Sun Zhengyang’s throat, a hellish, despairing wail began to sound.

He understood, then: pain from injury is something one can become accustomed to. But the terror and agony from resurrection, the pessimism and despair of facing the future—

It all far surpassed the mere torment of the flesh.