NOVEL WEB Chapter 7: Chapter 7: The First Call: Twenty-Year Cold Case of the Stolen Life-Registry Solved!
The thunderous slam of the phone booth's metal door, courtesy of Sister Meng, still reverberated in the cramped space. Her hand, nails lacquered a violent crimson, had just jammed an octopus-like tangle of wires—a converter head—into the so-called "Phantom-Audio Headphones v1.5" plastered against my temple. Near my temple, a corroded, plastic-shelled XLR connector clung, its cold touch and pungent reek of cheap metal mixed with dark oil sludge making my head pound.
Deep within my ear canal, the grating, static-like glass-scraping sound ("Shaa… shaa…") forcibly cut off earlier still lingered. Like dead flies wedged under fingernails—irritating and unsettling.
Just as the trailing echo of Sister Meng's "helpful tip"—"High power consumption… lets you see more wonderful things"—faded—
*BWOMMMM—!!!*
A seismic bass boom, orders of magnitude more potent and violently percussive than before, detonated from the heart of the over-ear headphones! No longer surrounding my ears; it drilled directly through eardrum and cranium into my brain! As if a dozen subwoofers pressed against my skull, cranked to maximum! My entire skull tingled and vibrated!
The scene within the already dim and oppressive phone booth was instantly splashed with a viscous, ink-green sludge!
The entire space warped and rippled violently!
Mold stains and flaking paint on the concrete walls seemed to writhe to life, twisting and swelling into ghastly, blue-grey faces etched with folds of agony! The wall surfaces appeared draped in a translucent, undulating membrane of flesh!
The cold metal chair ceased to be a chair, morphing into a puddle of melting, viscous black petroleum pitch, exuding the stench of scorching brimstone!
Airborne dust motes were grotesquely magnified hundreds of times, each transforming into miniscule, spore-like monstrosities with needle-like teeth and slimy limbs, slowly rotating!
The solid concrete floor beneath my feet softened like marshland, bubbling upward with sticky, black globules! Each bursting bubble released a potent wave of cadaverous rot!
The physical world and spiritual perception were forcibly shattered, blended, and kneaded into a churning cauldron of phantasmagoric, terrifying stew by this damned "v1.5" headset!
My eyes seared with agony from the chaotic, maddening sights; my brain buzzed numbly from the low-frequency assault; my stomach churned violently!
"Urgh…" I clutched the armrest of the shifting, sticky "metal chair" (cold and slimy, like clutching amphibian skin), retching violently, my body trembling like a tattered rag in the wind.
"Tch!" Sister Meng leaned against the equally distorted metal doorframe, her meticulously lined, ice-pick eyes reflecting the warped spiritual phosphorescence flickering wildly around us. Her perfectly sculpted brow furrowed in extreme displeasure as she glared at the exposed, oil-dripping XLR connector near my temple. "Piece of junk! Gains cranked so high! Using it like a poker? Would conserving power kill you?"
Muttering curses under her breath, she lifted her crimson-lacquered hand with utter impatience, her movement brutally efficient, like a mechanic forcing a seized wrench.
*THWACK! THWACK!*
She delivered two sharp, solid slaps directly onto the exposed, thick, rust-pocked plastic shell of the XLR connector jutting from my hair! A swift, decisive action—like disciplining a mule!
"Ummmmm…" The apocalyptic drone inside the headphones choked, as if throttled by the physical blows! The frequency plummeted drastically! Though still oppressively heavy, it no longer threatened to blast my soul from my body!
The grotesquely magnified horrors—the "flesh-membrane walls," "pitch-monster chair," "spore filaments"—instantly contracted like an image viewed through a telescope suddenly zoomed out! They spun and shrank manically, reverting to more recognizable, though still subjectively warped, forms: peeling paint, cold iron chair, floating dust.
The hellish scenery receded slightly, but the intense discomfort lingered.
"Useless twig can't even withstand a minor field boost…" Sister Meng scoffed, withdrawing her hand to symbolically brush non-existent dust from her scarlet cheongsam. Her gaze swept over my ashen face. "Already maxed out? The main event hasn't even…"
*RIIIIINNNNGGGG—!!!*
Her words were brutally cut off by a sudden, ear-splitting cacophony—like a vintage alarm clock shrieking at its breaking point!
The source?
Not the sonic torture device on my head!
Not the ancient yellow telephone that had just buzzed half the afternoon!
It came from beside the phone—lying shattered on the cold concrete floor where I'd dropped it, its screen a spiderweb of cracks, its heart punctured by the "Judge-Pen"—the Pineapple 14 Pro Max!
Right now! Around the puncture hole at the center of its shattered screen, chaotic colors flickered wildly through the cracks! The entire device vibrated violently on the floor as if electrocuted!
That hysterical ringtone screeched from deep within its broken screen fissures, like high-pressure steam escaping, piercing and frantic!
Accompanying the lethal ringtone!
The phone's back—where I'd ignored the subtly raised, dark-gold "NetherNav Pro" demon-head icon—was pulsing! Brightening! Dimming! Brightening! Dimming! Like breathing!
Each pulse seemed to make the icon's chain motifs writhe and constrict! An increasingly soul-chilling pressure radiated from it!
Alerting?! Or being forcibly called?!
What the hell?! What madness had possessed my own busted phone?!
I was about to bend down to investigate—
*"SILENCE!"*
A command, icy cold and imbued with implacable will!
Sister Meng moved!
A crimson blur! Not towards the shrieking phone! But lunging forward!
*CRUNCH!*
Her right foot, clad in a yellow rubber duck slipper, swept down like a thunderbolt! With brutal, crushing precision—like stamping out a cigarette butt—it landed dead center on the screen of the convulsing, shrieking phone!
The motion was clean, final, radiating destructive force!
*POP! ZZZAP—!!!!*
A grotesque sound—a hideous blend of shattering glass, short-circuiting electronics, and rubbery plastic being violently compacted—exploded into the booth!
The screen's web of cracks instantly spiderwebbed across the entire panel! Shards of glass sprayed! The casing buckled! Components ground into fragments!
That ear-piercing, demonic screech!
Like a strangled squeaky toy—
Instantly—STOPPED!
Sweet fucking silence finally washed over the world!
However!
Before I could even exhale in relief for this precious calm—
*Buzz... zap... zap-zap...*
A faint, almost inaudible electronic crackle sounded in the heavy headphones—in the exact millisecond the hysterical ringtone was physically stomped out! Faint, yet unnervingly clear!
Following the crackle—
Came that cold, synthetic broadcast voice—the one mimicking my own, which had revived after the connection was severed earlier! But this time, its tone wasn't monotone! It was saturated with human-like horror, disbelief, and a sliver of fiercely suppressed ecstatic triumph!
That broadcast voice, in my tones, tinged with an electronic tremor, articulated distinctly, word by brutal word, deep within my ear canal:
"...Huff... Incoming... Priority Override Encrypted Signal!!"
"Relay Encoding ID:... Hei... Black Impermanence Bureau - Torture Unit Alpha!!"
"Internal Passphrase: 'The Torn Life-Registry Hid for Twenty Years'... VERIFIED CLEAR!!!"
*BOOM!!!*
Black Impermanence?! Life-Registry?! Torn?! Twenty Years?!!
These words detonated like grenades within my scrambled brain! Storms surged! My master's mountain-path voice message seemed to buzz anew in the depths of memory!
*Zzzzzz... "Hello?!"* Almost the instant the broadcast voice landed!
A man's voice, raw with urgency, choked by barely contained panting—as if he'd just fought for his life—exploded through the headphones, shredding the ever-present glass-scraping background static!
The voice was hoarse, exhausted, laden with desperation and disbelief, each syllable squeezed out like bloody foam:
"...I-Is... is it You?! My Lord!!"
"Lo... Lock-on!! Confirmed lock-on!!! Vital signature MATCH!! It's that cursed little ghost from back then!! He... that coordinate he exposed moments ago! Right near the comms node just used!!!"
Coordinate?! Near the comms node?!
The spectral cry about "hiding the Life-Registry"?!
Was that what leaked its position?!
The hoarse voice inside the headphones, now in near-frenzy, wheezed like a punctured bellows, its excitement palpable:
"...Tw-twenty... twenty years! Finally... finally grabbed the sneaky bastard by the tail!!"
"My Lord! Authorization!! Grant pursuit authorization immediately!! I'll rip that motherfucker apart myself! Dig the shredded pages of that Life-Registry right out of his fucking asshole!!"
That final word, "dig," was screamed with venomous brutality, saturated with two decades of pent-up bloodlust! The constant static ("Shaa...") behind it surged, amplified as if legions dragged heavy chains across fields of shattered glass!
Information assaulted me like a firehose blast! A twenty-year Life-Registry theft cold case?! The key clue?! Moments ago?!
My brain, hammered by consecutive bombshells, blanked. I remained frozen mid-crouch, reaching for the phone, rigid, barely breathing.
In the corner of the iron booth, amidst the Pineapple phone's remains—utterly demolished by Sister Meng's heel, screen a kaleidoscope of fractures—the dark-gold NetherNav Pro demon-head icon flickered its last, feeble pulses. Each flicker seemed a desperate attempt to convey a final, dying signal, pointing towards that ghostly coordinate, just locked on, now severed...
At that moment!
*Tap... Tap... Tap...*
Feet clad in red plastic high-heeled slippers shifted leisurely from the wreckage, soles speckled with glass shards and grimy oil sludge.
Sister Meng straightened.
She didn't look at me. All trace of languor, mockery, contempt, or even irritation vanished from her exquisitely made-up face, replaced by a glacial, petrifying chill!
Her gaze locked onto the XLR connector jutting near my temple—the one she'd forced the converter into, still oozing black sludge. She stared as if it were red-hot iron ready to explode!
Her right hand, adorned with crimson lacquer, had formed into an oddly intricate mudra! Little finger, ring finger, middle finger curled inward; thumb and index finger poised but not touching. Her trembling fingertips aimed at the exposed, rusted connector. Between them pulsed a wisp of air—dreadfully cold, unnaturally concentrated, solid as frozen mist!
"...Heh... Twenty years... Cold case?" Her flame-red lips parted slightly. The whisper that emerged scraped like a cold knife on steel, chilling to the marrow. "...The mouse that steals, always trips the scale..."
The instant "scale" left her lips—
Mutiny erupted!
*BWOMMMM—!!!*
From the headphones' core! The low, heavy drone, only recently subdued by Sister Meng's slaps, detonated with tenfold ferocity! My head bucked violently! Darkness surged! Control of my body vanished!
Simultaneously!
The panting, victorious communication from the hoarse voice within the headphones!
*ZZZZZZTTTTT—CRACKLE!!*
Was drowned by an avalanche of sound—like a billion ball bearings exploding inside a steel drum! Instantly severed!
Only the glass-scraping background static ("Shaa shaa shaa shaa...") remained, amplified to maddening levels! Like countless feet dragging iron shackles over shards of broken glass! Soul-shatteringly shrill!
And as that horrific noise peaked—
Something more bizarre, more terrifying occurred!
The constant scraping sound!
It began to warp! Twist!
Like a sound clip played backwards, stretched, pitch-shifted!
After a sickening strip of noise—like faulty tape mangled—
*"Shaa... shaa... I... hid in... I... hid in..."*
A tiny, viscous, bubble-laced, fragmented synthetic voice forced its way into the "shaa" audio track! It stuttered, distorted, endlessly repeating a shred of itself!
That bubble-laced texture... that stutter... it was unmistakably the sound-signature of the ghost whose SOS had been cut earlier! Captured and "replayed" by the headphones!
What was it saying?!
*"...Hid in—! The Scale!! Scale Ash! Ash weighing scales!!"*
*BWOMMMMMM!!!*
A chord inside my brain snapped violently under this reconstructed intelligence! A detonation powerful enough to blow the crown off my skull!
Scale! Scale Ash!!!
The phrase from my master's recording blazed like lightning through my chaotic brain!
*"Dig open your master's grave! A surprise awaits you!"*
Cremated ashes?! False-death elixir?! The electronic scale weighing bone ash?!
The hiding place of the ghost's Life-Registry fragment?!
Countless shards of information fused like iron filings drawn to a magnetic storm, crystallizing into a horrifying silhouette!
*THUD!*
My legs buckled. I collapsed back onto the cold, sticky (in spirit-vision), yet still physically chair-like seat! My heart hammered wildly against my ribs! Cold sweat gushed like a torrent!
*"Huuuh—"*
A soft expulsion of breath sounded near my ear.
Sister Meng.
The bone-white mist condensing at her fingertips vanished instantly. That expression of fierce tension melted away like snow.
She lowered her mudra-forming right hand.
The movement fluid and casual, as if merely adjusting her wrist.
Then, those sharp, lined eyes slanted towards my face, contorted by profound horror. Her thick, false eyelashes fluttered. Her scarlet lips curled into a devastatingly beautiful—and utterly mocking, malicious grin.
"Well, well? Looking a bit peaky?" Her voice dragged out, saturated with open scorn. "Seems that trash heap of an upgrade wasn't a total bust... Flipped up a little rodent turd or two in that brain of yours?"
My mind was chaos incarnate—thousands of flies buzzing. The forcibly captured "Scale Ash... Electronic Scale..." stuttering bubble-voice clung to my soul's core, intertwined with the master's haunting "Dig open my grave!" command, making my very spirit tremble!
"The scale! Ashes! And my master...!" I mumbled, words mangled, each syllable burning like a hot coal on my tongue.
"Tsk tsk tsk..." Sister Meng folded her arms, gazing down at me. The slit of her cheongsam revealed a flash of pale, toned calf, its tension betraying unease beneath her veneer of nonchalance. "Rookie. Know why the Underworld Comms Division couldn't catch that registry-shredding poltergeist in twenty years?"
She didn't wait for an answer (I couldn't form one), replying with a scornful curve to her lips:
"Because that ghastly thing hid a fragment of its soul—one soul, two spirits!—in the 'calibration error' of an object! Imprinted onto the very vibration frequency of physical particles! Burrowed in like a tick! Not even the First Judge himself, scouring the Eighteen Hells inch by inch with his Demon-Slaying Sword, could root it out!"
Her crimson-tipped finger jabbed towards my temple, near the oily connector:
"But this junk-heap upgrade of yours... Dumb as a rock, sure. Power-hungry enough to broil your grey matter... But it's relentless!"
Her ice-pick eyes narrowed, seeming to pierce my scrambled consciousness, stabbing into the churned morass of my thoughts:
"A thought in your head... some obsession potent enough to overload the system, potent enough to perturb spacetime frequencies... it just resonated! Locked onto the frequency of that fragment hidden in the scale ash! Like..."
She paused, seeking the perfect simile, gave up, and rolled her eyes:
"...Like two pilfering rats bumping heads digging in the same garbage pit!"
So... that skull-shattering bass? The forced patchwork of ghost-talk from the static? My obsession with my master's "dig grave, get ashes" message acted like a homing beacon? Locked onto the ghost's soul fragment hiding in the scale's calibration error? Finally assembling the "Scale Ash" clue?!
"And... the Life-Registry fragment..." My voice grated like sandpaper on stone.
*SMACK!*
An ear-stinging clap of thunderous force! Sister Meng brought her finely boned hands together sharply before my face! Air swirled, carrying her perfume mixed with the acrid stink of burning electronics.
"Bingo!"
Her face bloomed with the brilliant (and equally predatory) grin of a hunter watching the trap spring shut. A scarlet nail pointed squarely at my forehead.
"A rodent dropping flew from your brainpan! And smack onto the greasy tail of that twenty-year pilfering pest!"
She threw her head back with a burst of genuine, almost scandalous, laughter:
*"HAHAHAHAHA! TWENTY YEARS! Neck collared, tail caught!"* Her laughter ricocheted off the narrow iron walls, blending with the heavy, persistent drone inside my headphones (reduced, but still grating)—an utterly mad tableau.
Yet! Her mirth was fleeting!
*KA-BOOM!!!!!!*
The entire phone booth! No! The entire concrete room! The very space! Was hammered as if struck by a titanic, invisible sledgehammer from a higher dimension! A terrifying wave of pure, raw spiritual energy exploded outward!
*SCREEEE—!!!*
My headphones wailed an agonized death cry! The bass roar became a skull-drilling shriek! Reality shattered into a kaleidoscope; lines, colours, light fragmented and spun wildly!
Sister Meng's triumphant laugh froze mid-peal! Her pupils shrank to pinpricks! Her head snapped up—not to the ceiling—but through layers of twisted light, into a void higher up, as if beholding unspeakable horror!
An indescribable, primal, soul-crushing terror seized my heart!
Simultaneous with Sister Meng's gaze snapping skyward!
Outside the phone booth! Deep within the filthy, dim alley!
*THUD! THUD! THUD!*
A series of heavy, dull impacts echoed—the unmistakable sound of knee caps slamming onto cold, hard concrete with bone-breaking force!
Through the distorted slit of the metal door flung open by Sister Meng!
I saw! Deep in the alley! Three figures in identical, stark white robes, tall pointed caps!
Three—White Impermanence officers?!!
They had manifested like spectres at the alley's end!
Now, they simultaneously! Without warning!
Facing this tiny, grimy concrete room! Aimed at the iron phone booth!
Like puppets with severed strings!
Collapsed! Prostrated themselves! Foreheads pressed rigidly into the cold, grimy, garbage-strewn pavement!
Their bodies shuddered violently! Unmindful of the filth staining their pristine white robes! Radiating sheer, abject terror and submission!
WHAT?! What force could make the White Impermanence squad—reapers whose mere presence chills mortal souls—instantly prostrate themselves?!
The answer seemed terrifyingly obvious!
*Huuuuummmmm... Hmmmm...*
The persistent headphone drone began to carry a strange, alien quality—like the buzzing of a colossal, rapidly approaching swarm!
My rigid, terror-frozen eyeballs strained upwards in their sockets—
Above the claustrophobic phone booth! Within the sickly yellow glow of the naked bulb!
A point of light!
Minuscule! Yet impossibly pure crimson light! Ignited!
As if a point impossibly distant, infinitely high, was heating to white-hot incandescence! Watched by something terrifying!
The quality of that light... like molten steel! Like blood flung across the heavens!
It hung incalculably high! Soundless!
Then... like the laser sight on a sniper scope! Impossibly cold! Infinitely precise! Devoid of mercy!
Locked onto! The phone booth! Onto me! Slumped in the chair!
ME!!!