Chapter 7: Chapter 7: Coming
As the evening drew near, Yang Xiao checked into a guesthouse in the town. Actually, he had intended to look around at a few more places to compare, but the overly enthusiastic landlady outside practically dragged him into her own guesthouse, "Handsome, don't leave, our guesthouse is the most unique in town. Look, I'll give you the best room. The original price is 500, but I'll give it to you for a 50% discount!"
"100, or I'll look elsewhere."
Yang Xiao pulled out a red banknote with an indifferent attitude. The landlady was clearly treating him as a fat sheep; there were hardly any tourists in the town, and during the off-season, the prices for guesthouses were very low.
However, seeing the landlady snatch the banknote, her smile almost reaching the roots of her ears, Yang Xiao knew he had still given too much.
Feeling elated with business coming in, the landlady was in a great mood. Yang Xiao wasn't in a hurry to enter his room and sat downstairs chit-chatting with the landlady, subtly seeking out information.
The landlady poured them each a cup of tea, and once the floodgates of conversation had opened, she began, "Ah~, Fengmen Town is actually a treasure of a place, with mountains and water. But for some reason, it just doesn't develop."
"Those in charge here haven't spared any effort in attracting investments. A few years back, they started agrotourism in the town and got quite a few businesses going. But just when it was booming, the biggest one caught fire overnight, killing a lot of people. Then came one safety inspection after another from the province and city. By the time those were done, the agrotourism trend had also passed, and city dwellers had moved on to new fads."
"Then some clever folks started secretly selling stones. The town is next to a mountain, we don't have much, but we've got plenty of stones. In theory, if everyone's doing it on the sly, it shouldn't be a big deal. But, wouldn't you know it, an accident happened."
"A stone mountain at the quarry collapsed, sending many large boulders tumbling down, destroying machinery and vehicles, and killing people. The incident couldn't be covered up and got leaked to the province by the victims' relatives. After that, selling stones was off the table too, and several people got penalized."
"With agrotourism and the stone quarry both flops, the town thought to play it safe and attract some stable investment. There's plenty of empty land in town, so they figured, let's build a factory. After much effort, they finally enticed a big investor. After much back and forth, everything was almost settled—the location of the factory, the scale of investment, and so on. But guess what happened? Heh, on the way back from the town, the investor's car rolled over, plunged off a cliff. Along with the big investor, five people, all dead."
The landlady sighed, "They say it was a ghastly scene, the bodies were mangled together; you couldn't tell who was who without looking at their clothes. With the investor dead, naturally, the factory plans came to nothing."
Seeming to get carried away, the landlady winked at Yang Xiao and spoke in a mysteriously hushed tone, "Young man, do you know where this investor had chosen for the factory?"
Yang Xiao had probably guessed already, but he still went along with the landlady, "I don't know."
"Oh my, it was the ruins of the flour mill on the west side of town!" Having said this, the landlady, somewhat frightened, covered her chest and looked warily outside, "There are things you outsiders don't know the dangers of. But let me tell you, wander around town all you like, but never go to the ruined factory in the west. That place is evil; even the locals avoid it."
"Don't ask me why. Now that it's dark, I'm scared to talk about these things too. If you're interested, you can search online yourself. I can only tell you that there are not so many coincidences in this world, and a lot of what's online is true."
Yang Xiao put on a façade of fear mixed with curiosity, "So... those incidents you just told me about—the agrotourism, the stone quarry, and the investor who fell off the cliff..."
Nodding her head, the landlady subconsciously wrapped her wool coat tighter around her, speaking even more softly, "Some say it's all because of that ruined factory. The resentment there is too strong, it's ruined the town's feng shui. Rumor has it that several feng shui masters have been called in to look at it, but none had a real solution, just temporarily sealed a couple of wells inside and buried a few protective objects."
Recalling the well he had seen, with a "Buddha head" pressing down on its mouth, Yang Xiao knew the landlady was not fabricating lies.
It was clear that the landlady had become scared by this point in the conversation, and she quickly ended the chat, urging Yang Xiao to go upstairs to rest earlier. She also reminded him that the shower was broken upstairs and couldn't be used for the time being, but she would boil a couple of kettles of water and bring them up.
Mentioning the broken shower, the landlady seemed somewhat embarrassed; after all, she hadn't mentioned it when she initially persuaded Yang Xiao to come in. However, what puzzled her was that Yang Xiao's complexion surprisingly looked good, "The shower is broken? No problem, no problem."
Walking up the creaky wooden staircase to his room, Yang Xiao was quite surprised. The guest room was decorated in an antique style, with old-fashioned double wooden doors. Directly opposite the doors was a square wooden table, flanked by two old stools.
Further inside, against the wall, there was a wooden bed covered with a quilt of the kind seen in period dramas, made of brocade-like fabric, embroidered with red and green mandarin ducks.
After setting down his backpack and sitting on the bed, Yang Xiao charged his phone while pondering the information he had gathered. The things mentioned in that eerie script murder game were slowly appearing around him, Fengmen Town, the opera, and that woman...
No, it should be a ghost, to be precise, after all, it was the Fengmen Ghost Opera.
There was no chance he would sleep tonight, not only because he was worried about that elusive woman reappearing, but he now had a new concern.
That fake security guard.
Who exactly was he?
Shortly after realizing there was something off about the fake security guard, a conjecture immediately surfaced in Yang Xiao's mind. If he considered himself a player in the script of Fengmen Ghost Opera, could it be that the fake security guard was also a player who had received the ghost script?
After some thought, Yang Xiao believed this possibility was highly probable, and if this assumption were true, it would mean that besides the two of them, there were five other people in this terrifying game.
Who were these people?
And where were they now?
Could all seven people be in this town, and he just hadn't discovered the others yet?
Yang Xiao was not fond of this uncertainty looming before him. Based on his understanding of script murder games, the players inside were not necessarily on the same team. In some extreme situations, they might even have to eradicate players from other teams to win in the end.
Yang Xiao was unclear about the other players, but that fake security guard was obviously well-prepared; either he was an experienced player or someone had brought him along. Either situation was not good news for himself as it stood.
With insufficient clues, Yang Xiao could only speculate this much. The deeper he thought, the more restless he became. He hadn't been careful to conceal his identity when investigating during the day, which likely meant that he had already been exposed and was being watched. He couldn't predict what might happen next.
The only thing to do now was to play it by ear.
The very next second, Yang Xiao abruptly lifted his head as the room door suddenly made a sound. Someone was knocking on the door outside, again and again.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone