Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - Chapter 298

Chapter 298

Gu Huaiwei’s dark eyes shifted slightly. “Sure. As long as you prove you really do have a shortcut to get us up the mountain, I’ll play your game.”

A pale hand lifted one corner of the red velvet curtain.

A beam of light came on inside the Haunted House. It pierced through the darkness and shone out through the Haunted House’s back door, falling on a cable car heading up the mountain.

The dim voice inside the Haunted House trembled with excitement. “If you win, I’ll send you up the mountain. If you lose, you’ll have to stay in the Haunted House forever.

My Haunted House is still missing a ghost bride. You’ll stay here and be my bride.

When the lights are on, I won’t appear before you. But when night falls, you’ll have to stay by my side.”

“What about me?” Xiling Ling asked, her voice shaking a little.

“You’re just an ordinary sacrifice. There are plenty more like you in my Haunted House. As long as she stays, I can let you leave.” With Gu Huaiwei there, the monster in the Haunted House had completely lost interest in Xiling Ling.

Every year, the Xiling Family would send in a batch of offerings.

The Managers living in the Castle had no interest in these offerings. The passage of sealed time over thousands of years had left those Managers terribly bored. They would sit around the dining table placing bets, gambling on whose territory the sacrifices would be devoured in the end.

Xiling Ling fell silent. No matter the outcome, it would be good for her. She secretly studied Gu Huaiwei, wondering what choice she would make.

Once Gu Huaiwei finished investigating her sister’s whereabouts, she would then consider leaving Paradise.

Showing her true merchant colors, she started bargaining. “You have to cover our trip up the mountain and back.”

The monster in the Haunted House seemed to have heard a hilarious joke, and its laughter grew louder. “Heehee, no one who goes up the mountain ever comes back.”

Gu Huaiwei folded her arms and tilted her head slightly. “Maybe I’ll be the exception.”

“I like your confidence. Deal.”

The monster hid inside the Haunted House. Accompanied by a burst of strange music, an arcade machine was pushed out from inside. The monster actually wanted to play a video game with Gu Huaiwei.

The game itself was the usual old-fashioned hero-versus-demon-king level-clearing game.

They bet on who could clear it in less time.

That wasn’t difficult for Gu Huaiwei at all.

She sat on an abandoned low stool nearby, holding the controller and manipulating the little character on the screen. Her hands moved incredibly fast. By the time she was halfway through, victory was basically already guaranteed.

But at that moment, an Old Lady in a cloak came slowly toward them from the direction of Paradise Gate, leaning on a cane.

When Xiling Ling saw the Old Lady, she didn’t dare warn Gu Huaiwei. She was afraid that if she spoke, she would distract her and interrupt the game.

Only a third of Gu Huaiwei’s attention was on the arcade machine.

Part of the rest was focused on the little monster hiding in the Haunted House, and the remainder was on the surrounding environment.

The Old Lady’s presence had appeared in an instant.

And her scent was exactly the same as the Old Lady Gu Huaiwei had encountered each time in the small Dimensions.

So she really was from Paradise as well.

The game in her hands couldn’t stop.

The Old Lady hobbled over. She walked into the Haunted House and began beating the monster inside with her cane. “Take a look at that ugly face of yours. Only what those noble Masters in the Castle reject would ever fall to the likes of you. They haven’t even seen the girl yet, so how dare you stop her here?”

The monster let out a pained howl. “Granny, stop hitting me! She agreed to play a game with me. I didn’t force her. Ahhh! If you keep hitting me, the pus-filled sores on my back are going to burst!”

The sound of the blows still didn’t stop.

The Haunted House was noisy, but Gu Huaiwei’s heart was calm. She didn’t care what was happening behind that red velvet curtain.

The monster’s miserable screams mixed with the sound effects of enemies being killed in the game, making it sound more like accompaniment for Gu Huaiwei’s impending victory.

Before long, the Old Lady dragged an ugly monster out of the Haunted House. It was short, fat, hunched over, and its back was covered in yellow pus-filled blisters.
The game console the monster had been playing flashed Game Over.

Exposed to the sunlight, the monster covered his face in agony. “Don’t drag me out into the sun! Don’t look at me! Ahhh, don’t look at my face!”

Gu Huaiwei was naturally cautious. Worried this might be some trap set up as part of the monster’s game, she didn’t quit halfway through and instead played all the way to the end until she cleared it.

The Old Lady dragged the monster away.

As she left, her wrinkled face beaming, she looked at Gu Huaiwei and said, “Child, hurry along. You’re a great hero of Paradise. The Castle has prepared a welcome Banquet for you and is only waiting for your arrival.”

After they left, the Haunted House fell quiet.

Xiling Ling lifted the velvet curtain and peered inside. “Miss Gu, should we take this shortcut through the Haunted House? It’s pretty dark in there. I can’t see the path clearly.”

“Light a torch. We’ll go through the Haunted House,” Gu Huaiwei said. She closed her eyes and used her spiritual sense to examine the interior. There were no living creatures left inside.

“Sorry, I don’t have a phone.” Xiling Ling spread her hands helplessly.

There was no signal anywhere in Paradise. When Xiling Ling had been brought in, her phone had already been confiscated.

Gu Huaiwei picked up a small branch from the ground, lit it, and handed it to Xiling Ling.

Together, they entered the Haunted House.

By the firelight, Xiling Ling illuminated the inside of the Haunted House, and all manner of strange, monstrous sights in the narrow structure came into view.

In the damp corners of the Haunted House squatted many gray-green toads. Their backs were covered in dense, lumpy bumps, packed tightly together as they sat there blankly, their bulging round eyes utterly motionless.

Xiling Ling accidentally stepped on one. The soft, slimy sensation made her scalp crawl.

She couldn’t help complaining, “What kind of godforsaken place is this?”

Gu Huaiwei kicked aside a toad blocking the way. “That monster who played the game with us just now was probably a toad in its true form.”

The two of them continued deeper inside.

Xiling Ling held up the torch.

She suddenly stopped. Staring at the little objects displayed in the cabinets lining both sides of the Haunted House, she looked utterly incredulous and moved the torch closer to light up that small area.

“These… these are all employee ID badges from our group!”

Ignoring the toads hopping around inside the metal box, she shoved her hand right in and started rummaging.

“The first supervisor who took me under their wing when I joined the group is in here too!”

Xiling Ling’s voice thickened with tears.

“The group clearly told me my supervisor had been assigned to an important project… How could this happen? How could this be?”

She couldn’t accept what was in front of her.

The supervisor who had once cared for her in every possible way, the person she had admired most when she first joined the group, had now died miserably in this Haunted House.

The glorious future the group had talked about, the future they had once dreamed of together, now looked like nothing but a joke.

Gu Huaiwei glanced at the bloodstained employee badges in the box. The blood on them had dried long ago, leaving a dark red stain.

“A lot of the props in this Haunted House are pieced together from real human bodies. If you look around, you might even find your supervisor’s corpse and take it out for burial.”

The faith in Xiling Ling’s heart had already collapsed. “We’ve given so much to our family and the group. How could they treat us like this?”

“Instead of asking why, think about how to get revenge.”

“I have to get out of Paradise alive. I can’t let other people be deceived by the family again!”

Xiling Ling wiped her tears away with her sleeve. She took the employee badge bearing her supervisor’s name out of the metal box, slipped it into her pocket, and followed Gu Huaiwei to the back door of the Haunted House.

Then Xiling Ling used the torch in her hand to set the Haunted House on fire.

The blazing flames roared up in an instant, like the evening sun plunging into the sea and stirring up crimson waves.

“We’re not toys put on display. I’m going to burn every last thing here clean,” Xiling Ling said, throwing in the torch as well, already half-consumed by fire.

The flames would carry away all the filth.

Gu Huaiwei was already seated on the cable car. She looked up at the sky, thick with dark clouds. “Let’s go. It’s going to rain.”