Chapter 718: Burning Wax Figures in the Cremation Furnace
In an instant, Xu Huo's entire body tensed. As "Moving Metal" and "Absolute Safe Distance" activated, he launched himself like a projectile toward a corner of the room. The trait "Straight-Line Distance" allowed him to maximize his speed. Mid-flight, he swung his sword toward his original position. Only after completing this series of actions did he use his vision to catch sight of the "thing" that had tapped his shoulder.
After the second evolution of his spiritual realm, his perception of space had improved. Under normal circumstances, he could sense two or three nearby spaces. For example, standing now in the funeral parlor, he knew there were no moving people in the farewell room behind him, while Bai Wenxian was pacing in the room ahead. The spaces to his left and right, separated only by a wall, should have been outside the venue, but they had vanished, replaced by solid walls...
Yet in the same room, the other party had come right up behind him without him sensing a thing. If his perception wasn't malfunctioning, then the other's ability far surpassed his own!
His first suspicion fell on the fellow players. If Xu Ruosi and the other two had also come up to this floor, they should have been visible. The Wax Figure Hall was only so big. If living people weren't visible, corpses should have been. Besides, this room wasn't particularly soundproof—fighting noises should have been audible. None of the three had made a sound. If they hadn't been wiped out, they were likely hiding.
Coming out to regroup would be fine, but hiding probably meant they were cooking up no good.
"Smack!"
With a cracking sound, the upper half of a wax figure toppled to the floor and shattered, its hand still reaching forward.
Xu Huo slowly straightened his body, his brow gradually furrowing.
Bai Wenxian, who had found nothing ahead, came back. Seeing the broken wax figure, he asked, "It moved again?"
"Unclear what the other party's motive is," Xu Huo said.
The clues given and the sounds made could only scare people, not cause any real damage.
"If it's the behavior of an item, it might not have an immediate effect. Since we haven't seen anyone else and the other party doesn't seem intent on harming us, let's ignore it for now." Bai Wenxian urged him to leave.
They had thoroughly inspected the Wax Figure Hall when they arrived. There were no so-called clue dolls mentioned on the letter paper. Besides, it wasn't even certain whether the clue was real. Wasting time searching here was pointless.
"Let's just open the wall." Xu Huo raised his hand and slashed several times, cutting an entire wall panel down. He kicked it over, stepped into the mourning hall, walked a few steps to the opposite side, and repeated the process to cut down the other wall.
"Wait!" Bai Wenxian quickly stopped him. "You might make things worse!"
Sure enough, no sooner had he spoken than the wax figures in the coffins sat up. Clumsily climbing out, they reached out like zombies to strangle Xu Huo.
Xu Huo had already switched his sword to "Eye of the Dead." With a horizontal sweep, the foremost wax figures were cut in half!
The severed halves didn't lose all mobility. Their upper bodies struggled to grab Xu Huo's legs, clawing and climbing upward.
Expressionlessly crushing one's head underfoot, Xu Huo took out a lighter. With a "click," the wax figures ahead caught fire.
The wax figures felt no pain. They crowded together, and soon the flames spread from one to two, linking into a sheet.
The room was brightly lit by the fire. Seeing this, Bai Wenxian frowned, abandoned the cooperation, and was the first to enter the room ahead, quickly disappearing around a corner.
Xu Huo finished setting the fire. After half the wax figures had burned without any new developments, he looked up at the ceiling. Just as he was about to act, a woman's laughter suddenly came from ahead. He looked down and saw a red skirt drifting past from the direction of the funeral parlor.
The red skirt was what the protagonist in Bai Wenxian's story wore.
Without hesitation, Xu Huo gave chase, following the shadow back to the farewell room behind. The room hadn't changed. He circled to the lounge, only to see two children's figures running into the horror room from the left and right entrances respectively.
Trying to lure him back?
Xu Huo turned around at the entrance and walked back.
The horror room would descend more than ten meters underground. At that depth, if the room couldn't come back up and the lift passage was blocked, escape would be very difficult. Staying above was the safest.
Even though this wasn't the surface either.
When Xu Ruosi was the first to go out, Xu Huo had noticed that the elevator's lift height wasn't equal. Although the lift time was the same, the speed had subtle changes. Simply put, they had come down from the surface, but when going up, they were slightly lower. So they hadn't returned to the ground-level Wax Figure Hall but were directly beneath it.
And this underground-level Wax Figure Hall was identical to the place they had passed through before. Most likely, the entire venue used lifts.
If the Wax Figure Hall always operated this way, it would be too easy to make a few people disappear using this place.
However, he couldn't sense any secret rooms or hidden passages nearby. To move people, at least a hiding place was needed...
Xu Huo thought briefly and quickly returned to the funeral parlor ahead. The bed surface that had just been burned was moving toward the cremation furnace again. On the metal bed frame covered in wax oil lay another Jie Ling.
His gaze swept over her, and he slashed through the track beneath the bed surface from a distance. With a toss and a pull of the kite string, he lifted the person on the bed surface!
Catching her, he gently tapped her wax face. A thin layer of wax shell cracked and fell off, revealing real human skin beneath.
"Wake up." Xu Huo patted Jie Ling's face.
Suffocated and unconscious, Jie Ling gasped sharply and woke up within seconds. Just then, Bai Wenxian hurried back from ahead. Seeing the two, he paused and said, "The Wax Figure Hall has a problem. The way out ahead is blocked."
"What do you mean, blocked?" Jie Ling snapped to full alertness.
Xu Huo let go and let her stand on her own. Bai Wenxian explained, "The main door of the Wax Figure Hall is sealed with a layer of metal. I used my items, but I couldn't completely destroy the barrier."
It was normal that he couldn't destroy it. Even if the metal was removed, the outside was either stone or dirt—still no way out.
Xu Huo wasn't in a hurry to leave now. He asked Jie Ling, "What happened to you?"
A trace of fear appeared in Jie Ling's eyes. "The horror story I told seems to have come true."
"The twins?"
"Yes! You saw them too?" Jie Ling said excitedly. "When I came out and got the envelope, I was startled. There was a drawing of a pair of twins on the paper..."
"I saw the clue." Xu Huo took out the letter paper.
"This is it!" Jie Ling said.