Super Thrilling Live Broadcast

Earlier in the day, I had made an inference that the bathroom was deliberately renovated and that the landlord was intentionally concealing something.

The hidden, unspeakable thing, which has been covered by time, was likely related to other criminal cases.

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I organized the clues in my mind and came to the conclusion that the Peace of Mind Inn was not a place where anyone could live with a peace of mind in. The balding taxi driver had mentioned that someone had disappeared in the area a few years ago.

I was not sure of the exact reasons, but all evidence pointed to this dilapidated inn.

As I scrolled through my phone’s inbox, I recalled the call I received from an unfamiliar woman at the start of the mission. She had mentioned being hidden inside the walls, under the floor, and behind the bathtub….

A chill ran down my spine. Could that call have been from a vengeful ghost?

Looking at the bathtub half-fixed to the wall, I mustered up enough courage to go back to the room to find scissors and pry it apart piece by piece, along with the cracks in the tiles.

“This is the darkest and most humid area of the whole house, a breeding ground for filthy creatures. It’s not surprising that spirits would take refuge here,” advised Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain, on the other end of the screen, reminding me not to let my guard down.

All of the tiles were pried open, revealing a dark space beneath the bathtub. Only the four corners were supported by tiles, while the center was empty.

“Half-Immortal, do you think that fierce ghost will call for backup? Can an amateur like me handle it?” I held the bottom of the tub with both hands, feeling hesitant. “The color of the thunder talisman has faded, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to use it more than a few times. If I’m surrounded by the ghosts of the wronged deceased, the consequences would be unimaginable.”

“No worries, the thunder talisman is made from the thunder calamity of heaven and earth, a pure and extreme yang object. As long as you keep it with you, self-protection won’t be a problem.” Since half-immortal said so, I couldn’t refuse any further. I slowly increased my strength and lifted the bathtub.

“What is this?”

Underneath the bathtub was not the corpse I had originally suspected, but rather a dark and unknown hole. It was one and a half feet wide and one foot long, just big enough for an adult to fit through.

“Where does it lead?” I wondered, as the architectural style inside the Peace of Mind Inn was very peculiar, with no logical numbering system for the rooms. The first floor was unoccupied, while the second and third floors were guest rooms. Even though I was currently staying in Room 203, I couldn’t be sure if I was standing on top of Room 103 at this moment.

I shone my phone’s light into the hole and found it to be deep. The walls of the hole were lined with long-dried fabric scraps that were nearly the same color as the soil. “It’s synthetic fiber,” I thought, “probably from someone’s clothing that was accidentally cut.”

This was a deliberately concealed hole that had been abandoned for some time. So, the question remained: who had dug this hole, and what was their purpose for doing so?

The buried truth might lie within the hole. Standing at the edge of the hole, I decided to investigate further.

The camera was too cumbersome, and I knew I couldn’t bring it along with me into the hole. So, I set it aside and addressed the audience: “To all my viewers, I want to reiterate that this is not a prank or a prearranged program. If I don’t return within one hour, please remember this address and call the police immediately.”

I had no idea if there would be a spirit inside the hole or if I would encounter any danger. There were too many unknowns, and I was reliant on the help of my viewers in the live stream.

“Go ahead, host. Don’t worry, I’ll call 119 for you,” one of my viewers reassured me.

“Did a ghost appear? Speak up, dude! I just woke up,” another viewer chimed in, a little less sympathetic.

“The host is so dedicated to acting. Have you considered joining our King of Horrible Movies production crew?”

“You may be acting, but soliciting prostitution on a live stream is definitely not right. You can wait to be arrested because I already reported you to the police half an hour ago!” replied the girl who loves handsome and talented men.

“Hey, upstairs, stop it. This room is really haunted. We saw it just now! Although we didn’t see the face clearly, I am sure it was a female ghost,” another viewer chimed in.

The girl who loves handsome and talented men, “It’s either special effects or extras—just some cheap tricks. Let’s wait for the host to pack up and leave with the police.”

After hearing that someone had already reported me to the police, I couldn’t help but laugh and feel helpless at the same time. “Since someone has already reported this to the autorities, I have nothing to worry about now.”

I held onto the things I needed and slowly slid into the hole, bracing myself against the walls with both hands…

“The host is gone.”

“Yes, he’s down there in the hole…”

After a few seconds, I finally touched solid ground with my feet. The hole was almost 90 degrees vertical and about three meters deep. There were small pits carved into the walls for climbing.

“I should be on the first floor now.” The space at the bottom of the hole was cramped, but I could hear the wind, so I wasn’t worried about suffocating.

I bent down and crawled forward cautiously, keeping the talisman close to my clothes.

Without the camera, Half-Immortal Liu couldn’t know what was happening to me in real-time, so I was on my own.

I raised my arm and used the shallow light of my phone screen as my only guide. The visible distance was only a few centimeters, and I was really afraid that I would suddenly see a face appear out of nowhere or something of the sort.

After crawling for a while, the wall beside me caved inward. I turned my head to look and saw a two-faced Buddha statue carved into the wall.

One face had a benevolent expression, while the other was fierce and malevolent. I had no idea which deity it represented. I took a photo of it with my phone and continued on.

I crawled for about ten meters before I finally saw some light. I turned off my phone and quietly approached the source of the light while I kept hiding in the darkness.

“Old man, things are stirring up at room 203. That young man is probably in big trouble.”

“Serves him right. Who told him to hook up with that worthless woman who only brings trouble?”

“Ah, what a tragic fate…”

Their conversation was barely audible, and as I approached a few meters closer, I saw that the path ahead forked into two directions: one leading into deeper darkness and the other connecting to the first floor of the inn.

Meanwhile, the elderly couple stood on the first floor, mixing cement to completely seal off the passage connecting that floor to the tunnel.

“We’ve sealed the path. We shouldn’t do this kind of thing again in the future.”

“But, dear, I still want to catch a glimpse of our son.”

“That little scoundrel won’t be coming back, sigh…”

I crouched in the underground tunnel, barely daring to breathe out loud. “It’s obvious that this elderly couple dug out the tunnel, but why would they do something like that?”

After the old couple left, I stood up and opened my phone’s flashlight, walking towards the other side of the fork in the path.

The ground was muddy and damp, and at the end of the path was a shallow well covered with a wooden board.

I lifted the heavy board, and an overpowering stench filled my nostrils. “Oh my god!”

The inside of the well was pitch black, and an ordinary person would have immediately closed the lid and left, but not me. I recognized the foul odor from crime scenes I have seen before; it was the smell of a decomposing body.

I adjusted my phone’s brightness to the maximum, and the dark mass became clear. It wasn’t seaweed or moss, but rather tangled and grotesque hair and skeletal remains that were highly corroded.

My face turned pale, and based on the skulls vaguely visible in the pile of hair, I could roughly estimate the number of victims.

“There must be no fewer than four people!” My scalp went numb, and I suppressed the urge to vomit as I covered the wooden board and retraced my steps. “I must call the police! This is a serious case!”

Stumbling and running back, I climbed desperately upward along the vertical hole, stepping on the grooves. However, before I even made it halfway up, I heard the sound of a door opening above me.

“Xiao Feng?” I looked up in confusion, only to be met with a face at the opening of the hole. A striking scar was embedded in the face. “It’s that old man!”

“Holy crap!” With no way out, I let go and jumped back into the tunnel. Turning around, I ran towards the fork in the road. “The passage to the first floor is not completely blocked yet. Let’s run out from there!”

Sprinting as fast as I could, I kicked open the wooden board that the old man had used to block the gap and entered the room connected to the tunnel.

The room was cluttered with miscellaneous items, and two sealed metal barrels were placed in the corners of the walls. Without taking a closer look, I rushed straight to the door and exclaimed, “I must escape!”

I grabbed the doorknob and pulled with all my might, but to my surprise, the only passage out was blocked by a short, chubby old woman.

“I wondered why I smelled something foul earlier. It turns out you lifted the manhole cover,” she said, holding a cleaver behind her back. The tip of the blade was already visible. “I’m waiting for my son here, so I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to keep quiet.”

The old woman brandished the cleaver, and with a loud bang, I shut the door as fast as I could. “It’s over. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m not dying at the hands of a ghost, but instead, I’m going to fall into the hands of a human being.”

With a loud thud, the old woman outside went berserk and hacked away at the lock with her cleaver. Footsteps of another person could be heard from the tunnel, and I was completely at a loss as to what to do in the face of an attack from both sides, having already been exhausted.

As time passed, desperation fermented within me. Just as the scar-faced old man walked out of the tunnel, the sound of a police siren suddenly blared outside the Peace of Mind Inn, which was only a wall away!

“Listen up, everyone inside! We have received a reliable report that illegal activities are taking place in here!”

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TN: In live streaming in China, viewers may use the term “upstairs” to refer to the previous comment or commenter and direct their response or message to them. I didn’t find a translation for this, so I left it be and it makes sense…

TN: Sometimes I add text that isn’t in the original work but only to make the meaning more apparent…like when someone talks and it isn’t clear who is talking or who is commenting.