Chapter 215: That Amusement Park

The air in the small shop seemed to freeze. I held my breath, waiting for an answer.

"I'm sorry, you guessed wrong!" It was still Tie Ningxiang's voice, but by the end, it turned manic and deranged. It grew sharp and piercing, like fingernails scraping across frosted glass.

"Who exactly are you?!"

Instead of an answer, bizarre laughter rang out from the phone. The voices of men and women constantly shifted and overlapped until the call dropped.

Listening to the dial tone, sweat broke out on the palm gripping my phone. I was completely clueless, fear washing over me like a tidal wave.

"Ding!"

The moment the call ended, a new text message popped into my inbox.

"Be it good emotions or bad, they are like the sediment in wine, overlapping in that place. They act as bait, gathering anguished souls."

"That Amusement Park was built upon a graveyard. The laughter of the living rings out amidst the sighs of the dead. They heard it, and so they have returned..."

"Live broadcast task: Find Tie Ningxiang before midnight."

"Optional task one: Protect Tie Ningxiang and ensure she survives until dawn. Reward: 5 points."

"Optional task two: Kill Tie Ningxiang by any means necessary. Reward: 5 points."

"Optional task three: Guess 'my' true identity. Reward: 5 points."

"Attention: The Underworld Live Show Phone's special SOS calling feature has been activated. When you encounter an inescapable death trap, you may dial this mysterious number. The answering party might help you escape, or they might drag you into deeper despair. The first call is free, with a time limit of three minutes. Every subsequent call will cost 10 points."

Staring at the text message, I grew uneasy. The main broadcast task was relatively normal. But reading further down, the first optional task was to protect Tie Ningxiang, while the second was to kill her. These two diametrically opposed objectives made me restless.

'Why would they give such contradictory optional tasks?' I wondered. I was well aware of the Underworld Live Show's habits. They would never take a Streamer's side to lower a task's difficulty, let alone hand out free points. There had to be a deeper meaning hidden in these two seemingly opposite objectives.

'In the past, every broadcast task provided an address. This time, it only told me to find Tie Ningxiang. Could it be that the location isn't fixed? Or is the place where Tie Ningxiang is currently located the true broadcast venue?'

I glanced at my watch: 8:05. I packed up all my broadcasting equipment and Talisman Paper. Nestled securely in my jacket was the Brocade Box holding the United Heart Jade, alongside the Embroidered Cloth Bag containing the Fate Ghost.

With everything ready, I wasted no more time. I pulled out my personal phone and dialed Tie Ningxiang's number.

"Sorry, the subscriber you have dialed is powered off. Please try again later."

'Of all times, her phone is turned off now?' I dialed a few more times, but it remained powered off. Left with no other choice, I hailed a cab and rushed over to the Municipal Sub-bureau.

Zhao Bin was working the night shift at the Municipal Sub-bureau. After asking him, I learned that Tie Ningxiang had been penalized again for bringing an outsider into the police archives during her suspension. The higher-ups had stripped her of her police rank and sent her home to rest.

From Zhao Bin's tone, it was obvious that someone had intentionally snitched on her, and nine times out of ten, that person was Chen Feng.

"Gao Jian, Captain Tie should be at her parents' place. If it's urgent, you should look for her there." Zhao Bin pointed me in the right direction. Ignoring any potential awkwardness, I hurried over to the residential complex where Tie Ningxiang's parents lived.

I brazenly knocked on Deputy Bureau Chief Tie's door, and Mother Tie warmly invited me inside.

"Little Gao, don't take what happened last time to heart. My old man just has a foul temper. Have you eaten yet? Do you want me to whip up a few hearty dishes for you?"

I waved my hands repeatedly. "No need. I'm looking for Tie Ningxiang; it's an emergency. The police at the Municipal Sub-bureau said she was here."

"Yes, it would be good for you to spend more time with her. She's twenty-seven or twenty-eight and doesn't even have a boyfriend. All she cares about is her work, and look what happened—she got stripped of her rank. When you see her later, you have to talk some sense into her and help her look on the bright side." Mother Tie hadn't realized the severity of the situation at all and was still agonizing over Tie Ningxiang's marriage prospects.

"Auntie, this is a matter of life and death! Just tell me where she is right now!" Going from the Municipal Sub-bureau to here had wasted over forty minutes. It was nearly nine o'clock, yet I still hadn't caught a glimpse of Tie Ningxiang.

"She took Yi Yi to the New Century Amusement Park. It's a newly opened, large-scale amusement park." At the crucial moment, Deputy Bureau Chief Tie finally stepped up.

"When is she coming back?"

"It's hard to say. One of Yi Yi's classmates gave her two night-session tickets to the amusement park. They said there's a parade tonight, so it probably won't end until ten-thirty. Plus, that amusement park is located in a very remote area. If you head east out of Jiangcheng, it's basically right on the border of Xinhu City."

'Near Xinhu City?' I quickly calculated the distance in my head. Even by taxi, it would take over forty minutes to get there. That made my timeframe even tighter.

"Thank you both for letting me know. I won't intrude any longer." Bidding farewell to Tie Ningxiang's parents, I hurried downstairs and hailed a taxi, preparing to head straight to the amusement park Deputy Bureau Chief Tie had mentioned.

"To the New Century Amusement Park in the eastern suburbs of Jiangcheng."

"Young man, what are you doing heading out to a place like that so late at night?" the driver asked, looking rather reluctant.

I caught the strange tone in the driver's voice and immediately pressed him. "Why? Do very few people go there? I heard it's a newly opened, large-scale amusement park. It should be booming, shouldn't it?"

"Booming, my ass. That amusement park was shut down five years ago. It only just reopened, and they're still using all the old equipment. They just gave it a safety check and a fresh coat of paint, that's all." These taxi drivers drove around the city every day; they knew the local history better than anyone else.

"It was shut down five years ago? Why?"

"Why else? Accidents kept happening!" The driver started the car and chatted with me as he drove. "That was the very first large-scale amusement park in Jiangcheng. On weekends, it was almost completely packed. If you wanted to go on any ride, you had to wait in a massive line. Later on, besides normal daytime operations, they specifically added a night session. At first, the night session only ran from five in the afternoon until seven-thirty. But demand kept exceeding supply. Ticket prices kept going up, and the night hours kept getting extended. In the end, they didn't close the park until eleven at night."

"Now, extending the night sessions wouldn't be a big deal on its own, but the weird part was that all sorts of freak incidents would happen whenever the night session rolled around."

"In the beginning, the staff working in the Haunted House suddenly ran out, claiming that something else had sneaked inside with them. There were also instances in the maze where staff members couldn't find their way out, even while holding a map."

"Of course, those were still minor incidents. The main reason it was eventually shut down was because of a few horrific, fatal accidents."

"The first accident happened on the drop tower. A woman with long hair was on the ride, and her hair got tangled in the top bearing. When the drop tower plummeted down, her hair and her head... never mind, I won't go into the gory details. You can look it up online yourself. This is all true."

"Several other accidents happened in between, but it was finally shut down because of a coaster derailment. A high-speed tunnel coaster derailed for completely unknown reasons and smashed right into the tunnel. What was even more tragic was that the coaster was taking a ninety-degree turn at the time. All dozen or so people in that car were suspended headfirst with zero protective measures holding them up."

"I watched the news reports later. Out of that entire car, only a single child survived. A dozen or so seconds before the accident, the boy claimed that an older sister sitting next to him had told him to cover his head and curl up."

"But when the police checked the ticketing records and the boarding footage, the person sitting next to the child was his dad. There was no older sister there at all."

"It's pitiful. He must have been deeply traumatized by the shock, causing him to go a little crazy and start spouting nonsense."

After listening to the driver, my heart leapt into my throat, feeling as though someone were squeezing it tightly. "With so many accidents in its past, how do they dare to reopen?"

"To make money, of course. Besides, there are plenty of people out there who, just like you, don't believe in the supernatural and aren't afraid of death." The driver didn't forget to poke fun at me right at the end. He had absolutely no idea how complicated my feelings were right now.

'The venue for this broadcast must be the New Century Amusement Park. But what connection does an amusement park have with those overlapping voices on the phone?'

I couldn't figure it out. Shielding the screen from the taxi driver's view, I pulled out the Underworld Live Show Phone and reread the text message on it: "That Amusement Park was built upon a graveyard. The laughter of the living rings out amidst the sighs of the dead..."

'What does this line mean, exactly?' I used my personal phone to search online. After digging for quite a while, I finally uncovered a news article from several years ago: "Shocking! The Original Site of Jiangcheng's Brand-New, 500-Million-Yuan Amusement Park is Actually a Mass Grave!"