Chapter 53 Mutual Identification

Chang Nian took a Wolf-Eye flashlight from her bag, slightly bent over in the lightless, small storage room, and walked toward the male corpse on the right.

The beam of light shone directly onto the ten fingers of the corpse. There was blood on them...

This made no sense.

There was not a shred of blood on the bodies of Xiao Qi’s father or the other male corpse outside.

After all, the entity’s method of killing in this instance was snapping the neck, which was unlikely to cause much bleeding.

Yet beneath the fingernails of this male corpse was a chaotic mixture of white powder and viscous blood clots.

Chang Nian felt a flutter of panic; she could not understand why the situation with this middle-aged man was different.

She leaned closer gently, and the scent of decay and death began to invade her nostrils. The smell grew even more distinct as she stared at his somewhat fractured fingernails.

At the feet of the male corpse lay a patch of pulverized wall plaster.

Chang Nian became even more certain that this man’s situation was extraordinary.

At the very least, right before he died, he had still been scraping at the wall with his ten fingers!

The beam of light shifted bit by bit. Chang Nian’s heart thumped wildly, and at that moment, she recalled what Tong Guan had said.

"Everything lacks only a catalyst..."

Her gaze focused. On the wall in front of the middle-aged man was a line of distorted carved characters, accompanied by streaks of scarlet blood.

One could only imagine how desperate the situation must have been at that time, driving a man to use his own flesh-and-blood fingers to carve such crucial words.

"The thing inside that woman’s phone has come for me!"

The instant Chang Nian saw these words, her brain short-circuited. The flashlight dropped to the ground with a loud thud, leaving her speechless for a long time!

***

"If that's the case, even if Ji Li isn't dead, chances are he can't be found."

Tong Guan looked at the phone Ji Li had dropped, which Fang Shenyan had picked up, and said in a deep voice.

At the same time, Tong Guan immediately heard the commotion coming from Chang Nian’s end.

Almost as the sound echoed out, he rushed straight into the storage room.

With Tong Guan crowding in, the narrow storage room became even more cramped.

"What's going on?"

Chang Nian glanced at the abruptly arrived Tong Guan, her expression turning frantic.

She immediately pulled out her own hotel phone, flipping through it as she said:

"The catalyst! This is the catalyst! A clue we completely overlooked!"

Tong Guan looked toward the location of the middle-aged male corpse and also saw the line of blood-smeared handwriting.

His brow twitched. "The thing inside the woman's phone has come for me!"

From start to finish, Tong Guan had not recognized the identities of the three corpses inside and outside the storage room, nor could he have possibly imagined that this hiding place for corpses would hold such momentous intelligence!

None of the three corpses' identities were known—except for Ji Li!

The name of this middle-aged male corpse should be: "Brother Xu"!

Xiao Li and Brother Xu were the first staff members to realize there was a ghost in the building, and the two of them had worked together to take that terrifying photograph!

This storage room was Brother Xu’s hiding place, and also his burial ground.

Among the three people who knew the secret, he was the first to be silenced by the entity.

Yet before dying, he had left behind an indelible catalyst!

A catalyst that revealed the true content of the mission!

The woman mentioned in the carved text clearly referred to "Chang Nian." If Ji Li were here, he would understand even more clearly.

This mission could actually be approached from two directions to uncover the catalyst for the true assignment.

First was the photograph saved on Xiao Li’s phone; that photo could most concisely expose the entity's location and unravel the true mission.

And second was the warning Brother Xu left before his death.

Now, following Ji Li’s death, it had become vital intelligence for Tong Guan and the others to solve the mystery!

Chang Nian did not know about the photograph, but she could piece together a rough outline.

"Our movements must have been witnessed by these people, which is why they kept evading our search.

During this time, however, they must have done something, and it was through this action that they discovered a secret about the building's ghost!

As for what the secret is, we still do not know.

But it must have something to do with my phone!"

Tong Guan said in a deep voice from the side, "We have always suspected that the root of the curse lies within the hotel phones, and now this male corpse's warning happens to say that the thing inside your phone came after him.

Does that mean... there is a ghost inside our hotel phones?!"

Chang Nian began frantically searching for the mission email on her hotel phone until she tapped open that page...

"Recipient: Chang Nian, employee of the Seventh Branch, Tianhai Hotel.

Duration: 12 hours, starting from 10:00 PM on October 26, 2015.

Upon discovering this true mission content, by any means necessary, correctly identify the location of the entity to successfully guide the entity in.

Note 1: During the first six hours of this mission, the entity cannot inflict physical harm upon the employees;

Note 2: Completion method requires pointing out the exact current location of the entity, otherwise it will be deemed invalid;

Note 3: This mission is special; the entity does not exist in a conventional form, but all six employees must each complete their identification, otherwise return is impossible."

This line of mission content was something she had never seen before.

Ever since she tapped open the email, it had appeared on her phone as if it had always been there this way, never once changing.

Meanwhile, Tong Guan had also opened his phone at the very first moment, but his email—

Had gradually changed from the original fake mission into the true mission!

"Why is the process of our mission transformation different..."

Before he could finish the sentence, he heard an abnormal commotion coming from the doorway where Fang Shenyan was.

Tong Guan and Chang Nian hurriedly squeezed out of the storage room, only to see Fang Shenyan’s body in a state of unnatural rigidity!

His hands were slowly inching upward toward the top of his head, and what was most bizarre was that his eyeballs beneath his glasses were completely immobile.

Even human thought itself seemed to have grown stiff and solidified!

When Yu Guo saw this scene from the other side, his first reaction was to freeze in place.

Having just witnessed the situation over by Tong Guan, he had also opened his own phone to check the true mission content, but at that exact moment, he heard Fang Shenyan let out a cry of surprise.

Following that, Fang Shenyan began to be irresistibly possessed!

Yu Guo’s adrenaline spiked, and the fingers holding his phone trembled slightly.

"Find the exact current location of the entity; every employee must make an identification..."

How to save Fang Shenyan, who was already hopelessly possessed, was a complicated problem, but right now it had become simple.

Before Tong Guan and the others could react, Yu Guo’s arm had already shot up, his index finger pointing straight at Fang Shenyan, whose head had twisted ninety degrees!

"I, Yu Guo, identify: the ghost is inside Fang Shenyan’s body!"

Possession kills were inescapable.

Yet the hotel’s true mission also provided an exceptional method to halt the slaughter: identify the entity's location!

Because if the ghost wanted to kill, it had to possess a body, which also meant its location was thoroughly exposed!

The stiffness in Fang Shenyan’s body instantly vanished, and uniquely human strength surged back into his frame.

The method worked!

The ghost inside Fang Shenyan was successfully extracted by Yu Guo’s identification and handed back to the hotel!

Yet at the same time, the arm Yu Guo had just lowered jerked upward once more, rapidly climbing toward his own head!

He had successfully stripped the ghost from Fang Shenyan through identification, but now there was a ghost inside his own body as well!