Human-faced spider
"A spider with a human face."
Wen Dai held her phone, pointed the flashlight at the ceiling, and looked up. As expected, the ceiling they had overlooked was teeming with spiders, large and small, huddled together, and you could vaguely see their four eyeballs in a row.
Not only did Wen Dai get goosebumps all over her body, but her scalp also tingled. The other three felt the same way. Even though Chen Sizhe was wearing a mask, the disgust expressed in his fox-like eyes was clear enough. Lai Wenyi was so frightened that she squatted on the ground and covered her head. She pretended to want to disappear into the ground and said in horror, "Have we entered a spider cave? It's so scary. I can't take it. I'm terrified of spiders, and I also have trypophobia."
Choosing to avoid seeing it altogether, Wen Dai moved the flashlight beam away from the ceiling. She glanced at Lai Wenyi, who was burying her head in her hands, trying to escape reality, and said, half-soothing, half-threatening, "I understand how you feel, because I have trypophobia too. But you can't just squat here like this, or what if they suddenly want to bungee jump? They might fall directly onto your head or face, or worse, into your collar—these ones that haven't even grown human faces yet are only moderately scary. If it were a spider with a human face pressed against your body…"
"Ah!—" A scream burst from Lai Wenyi's mouth. She ran behind Wen Dai with tears in her eyes and tightly grabbed Wen Dai's clothes with her outstretched hand. "Don't talk anymore, let's go. We can't get out anyway... Let's just hurry up and move forward. If we can deal with this, we should be able to leave."
Wen Dai slowly turned a corner, carrying her phone as she continued forward. She glanced around, observing her surroundings, and said calmly, "Of course we can leave, but as you know, the prerequisite is that we have to deal with the matter first. Don't be too afraid, because the matter will definitely have to be dealt with in the end. If we don't deal with it, we won't be able to get out."
Having entertained the thought of running away, Lai Wenyi gripped her phone with the flashlight on. She opened the page to ask her mother for help, but found that there was no signal at all. Undeterred, she sent her mother several text messages, each of which received a red exclamation mark. Dejected, she muttered with a bitter face, "I don't understand. This is just a basement, how can there be no signal?"
“This isn’t the basement.” Chen Sizhe, who was walking slowly behind Wen Dai, suddenly spoke up. He casually glanced around and cruelly laid out the facts: “The sudden closing of the entrance door was a signal. The staircase is a passage connecting two worlds. Once we went down the stairs, it was impossible for us to contact the previous world again. Now, we probably can’t go back to the original staircase either. If you don’t believe me, you can go back and take a look.”
Just as Chen Sizhe came down the stairs, he turned around and looked back at the stairs behind him. They seemed unchanged, but the sound made when stepping on or kicking them was different.
Threatened by the spiders on the ceiling, Lai Wenyi didn't dare to turn back. She looked at Wen Dai, whom she trusted more, tugged at the corner of Wen Dai's coat, and asked, "How can there be two worlds? Which world are we in now?"
"To put it simply, there can be two worlds, but to be precise, it would be more appropriate to call the place we are in now a 'plane,' because it's only this big, but—it can also be made infinitely large by its master." Wen Dai turned her head and looked at Lai Wenyi for a moment. "But don't worry, this place is not the same as in the movies. It's not that mystical. It's just that the vengeful spirits here are too resentful. You can think of what we're experiencing as a ghost wall, a rather severe ghost wall."
She turned her head back and then suddenly stopped, for there was nothing in front of her.
The toes of my shoes barely touched the last bit of ground; beyond that, there was only bottomless darkness—no path at all.
Wen Dai shrugged, her attitude quite nonchalant. "Look, do you think it's possible for someone in the real world to build a cliff in your basement and cut off the path halfway through? Actually, there's no need to be too afraid if you encounter this situation. As I said, this place can only be considered a 'plane'."
Lai Wenyi, who was holding onto Wen Dai's clothes, suddenly had a bad feeling. She instinctively let go and wanted to back away, but Wen Dai's peach blossom eyes curved into a smile as she looked at her. She reached out and grabbed Lai Wenyi's arm, pulling her towards the cliff and jumping off.
"Ah!—" A scream burst from Lai Wenyi's mouth. It was as if she had been brought back to her senses. Her raised arm was clearly still covering her head. In front of her was a gray floor. She was still in the corridor, and she was even squatting down.
The bell jingled crisply as it was shaken. Wen Dai returned the Three Pure Bells to Chen Sizhe, one hand on her hip. Her eyes, which had just met Lai Wenyi's raised face, held a smile that was exactly the same as the smiling eyes Lai Wenyi had just seen. Wen Dai leaned forward slightly and said with concern, "Oh dear, I really need to watch my mouth. Just now, a spider with a human face really did fall on you and even bit you. As a result, you've been stuck in this position without moving. Were you scared? Hehe, the best way to get you out of the illusion is to scare you."
"Actually, the cliff just now was Chen Sizhe's doing. He and I were working together. The cliff appeared because he broke the illusion array, so it couldn't continue, and of course there would be a cliff. I pulled you down to jump off to scare you awake."
Still in a daze, Lai Wenyi was pulled up by Lai Yuan beside her. With Lai Yuan supporting her arm, Lai Yuan looked at his stunned daughter and asked anxiously, "What's wrong? Were you scared? Does it hurt where you were bitten?"
Swallowing hard, Lai Wenyi shook her head gently. She looked at Wen Dai and Chen Sizhe with a belly full of questions, "Is what you just said about this being a 'plane' true? Or is the 'plane' just an illusion I was in?"
“We are in a space. You were in a ‘plane’ just now, that’s true, but we are in a space now, or rather, a world that can be designed at will.” Wen Dai raised her finger and pointed behind Lai Wenyi. “If you go back now, you’ll find that the stairs are indeed wrong. They are no longer the ones we came down from, because we have entered the world created by that vengeful ghost. Chen Sizhe was right about the two worlds he mentioned at the beginning—you might be a little confused by what I’ve said, right?”
Lai Wenyi and Lai Yuan both nodded.
A helpless sigh escaped Wen Dai's throat. Fortunately, Chen Sizhe took over her role as the guide. He raised his chin and pointed towards the direction of the wall bricks. "The locked coffin diagram that Wen Dai mentioned earlier—the world we entered is this locked coffin. Inside the coffin is this space, or rather, the creator of this world. For them, this is their world, because they can only move within this space, and this space can indeed allow them to do whatever they want."
With his gaze falling on Lai Wenyi, Chen Sizhe continued his explanation: "You were just bitten by the face spider, so you entered the illusion. The illusion can only be called a 'plane'. There are no face spiders in reality. Face spiders are a product of this world. Being poisoned is like entering an illusion, which is equivalent to..." He subconsciously lowered his gaze and glanced at Wen Dai on the other side.
Unbeknownst to her, they had reached a state of perfect harmony. Wen Dai was squatting on the ground, wrapping a finger in paper and drawing several circles on the dusty ground. "The big circle is this space, which is 'inside the coffin,' and the illusion within this space is the smaller circle contained within this big circle, which is the plane I told you about in the illusion—be careful not to get bitten again, or we'll have to carry you forward. Being trapped in the illusion is okay, as long as we eventually break this locked 'coffin,' or get the coffin owner to open the coffin and let us out, you will still wake up. It's actually just a high-level ghost wall, a bit like a series of traps."
“I understand.” Lai Yuan nodded slowly, letting out a long sigh. The wrinkles on his face changed with his expression. He shook his head and lamented, “The wonders of this world are indeed countless. Although I didn’t trust it before, I respected it in my heart; or perhaps I did trust it before, but I just refused to admit it, otherwise I wouldn’t have intentionally done good deeds. But I never expected that after living here for so many years, I would never have discovered that there was a soul trapped underground, deprived of its freedom. Even though this place can be created at will, it will still suffer. It’s a pitiful soul.”
The wrist, still swirling in the black mist, began to throb again. Wen Dai straightened up, removed the tissue from her fingers, shook the hand still covered in the black mist, and whispered, "Give me a trash can, or I'll litter. I'm rude."
The tightening black mist seemed to freeze briefly, and then a trash can actually appeared out of thin air in front of the wall. Wen Dai threw the tissue into the trash can, turned to look at Lai Yuan, raised her eyebrows and said, "Uncle Lai's soul is very kind. Actually, you are very blessed. I can feel it from what you just said. Ordinary people would not say that a vengeful ghost that might kill people is pitiful, nor would they say that a vengeful ghost is a pitiful person."
She stared intently into Lai Yuan's eyes, but unfortunately, eyes can't speak, so she could only try to see if Lai Yuan would receive the hints she was giving him.
As expected, Lai Yuan didn't receive it. He took a deep breath and said solemnly, "Those people just can't put themselves in others' shoes. Vengeful ghosts were also human beings in life, and they don't suddenly become vengeful ghosts. If they hadn't been harmed, if they hadn't harbored resentment, how could they become vengeful ghosts? We don't know what they went through in life, but to be restricted in their freedom and unable to reincarnate after death, such suffering is unbearable for anyone."
Even though Lai Yuan failed to receive her hints, his own empathy came into play.
A subtle smile played on Wen Dai's lips as she looked down at the black mist on her wrist, the wisps of mist sometimes loosening and sometimes tightening. After a while, the seemingly endless corridor they had been walking through suddenly transformed. The spiders that had densely covered the ceiling disappeared, replaced by a ceiling with intricate carvings and an expensive crystal chandelier.
The dim scene instantly transformed into a bright one. The yellowish light had the charm of the Republic of China era, and the floor seemed to still be made of luxurious stone. It was hard to imagine how wealthy the first owner of this villa must have been.
Suddenly, rooms appeared in the walls that had previously been devoid of doors. The reddish-brown doors seemed to have been embedded in the walls in an instant. Wen Dai chose the nearest door and tried to open it. She grasped the doorknob, but no matter what she did, she couldn't push it open. It was as if there was still a wall inside the door.
"The existence of this place... seems to satisfy and acknowledge what you said, Uncle Lai, but—" She let go of his hand, turned around, and looked at the door that stretched all the way to the end, "Now we still need to find the room that it wants us to find."
Without the demons and spiders covering the ceiling, Lai Wenyi's courage returned. She took two steps forward and gazed into the distance, saying, "But it feels like there's no end in sight. It's pitch black at the very front; and with so many doors, opening one after another, how long will it take? I feel like we've been here long enough."
She turned her head and looked back at the road she had come from. The road had probably just changed along with the environment, and it was no different from the road ahead, with no end in sight, only a small black dot in the distance. Lai Wenyi's tone became discouraged: "This is it, we're doomed. We can't go back. I wonder if my mother is waiting anxiously outside."
“Time is frozen here, I’m guessing. Even if it’s not frozen, time flows at an extremely slow pace.” Wen Dai shook her phone, turned on the screen, and pointed to the time on it, saying, “It hasn’t changed since we came here.”
Chen Sizhe, who was standing in front of another door nearby, raised his hand and knocked. His eyelids drooped, as if he was trying to make out the sound of the knocking. "The third door from where I am, Wen Dai, you go over there." He glanced at Wen Dai with the corner of his fox-like eyes.
"Okay." Wen Dai moved forward and walked to the door on the same side as Chen Sizhe. She put her hand on the doorknob and looked up at Chen Sizhe before turning the lock after seeing him nod.
The two doors opened at the same moment, and Chen Sizhe turned his head to look at the two people standing in the corridor. He raised his chin and said, "Lai Wenyi, you go through Wen Dai's door and follow her; Uncle Lai, you come with me."
Following Chen Sizhe's instructions, the two groups of people, who had been divided equally, entered a dark room.
After they had only taken a couple of steps inside, the open door slammed shut. Wen Dai's room and Chen Sizhe's room should have been separated by two rooms, but after the door closed, she and Lai Wenyi could see Chen Sizhe and Lai Yuan in another room through a completely transparent space.
The only light source came from the transparent space between them, which was like a huge block of glass. Wen Dai raised her hand and pressed it down; it was as hard as iron.
Lai Wenyi, who was standing next to her, tried to call out to Lai Yuan across the way: "Dad! Dad! Dad, can you hear me?" They knew the answer as soon as the voice came out of their mouths.
Wen Dai and Lai Wenyi exchanged a glance, then tapped the transparent material in front of them with their raised hands—but no sound came out.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
