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The memories in his mind were dyed red. The horrors the paper doll had experienced started to affect Han Fei. If he had not died so many times during the Manager Mission, his mind would have collapsed by now. The multiple deaths strengthened his resolve. Han Fei gritted his teeth and ignored the visions before his eyes. He focused on making the doll squeeze deeper into the grave. While Lee Huo made a mess of the grave, the doll infiltrated into it. The biggest weakness of the thing buried deep underground was its immobility. The doll eventually reached the core of the grave. There was an old man residing at the centre of the grave. His body was shrivelled. Blood red phone lines bound around him. His eyes were filled with pain and regret.

‘The real owner of the hostel is this old man?’ Regardless, Han Fei had no time to waste. If he hesitated, Drake would die. Han Fei gave the final order to the paper doll which was to cut through the phone lines that circulated around the old man. The smell of blood dispersed around the room. A scary smile lit up the doll’s face as it plunged its paper hands into the old man’s chest. The doll did not follow Han Fei’s order. It was distracted by something. It laughed soundlessly as its hands gouged out a hole at the old man’s chest. As blood coursed through its body, the doll jumped into the old man’s chest. At that moment, every ghost inside the hostel stopped.

Seconds later, the doll crawled out from the old man’s chest carrying a still-beating heart. All the phone lines originated from this heart, that was the source of everything!

The guests started to slow. The excited paper doll opened its maw to consume the heart. Han Fei used a lot of energy to stop it.

An old lady’s cries could be heard coming out from the wounded heart. It appeared to be a cursed object. “Lee Huo, enough! That’s an ally! Lee Zai! I need you to stop your little brother!” Han Fei shouted. Lee Huo was a rampaging tank. He was about to slam into the paper doll. Han Fei needed to control the paper doll, stop Lee Huo and be cautious about the other guests. One wrong move and he’d die. Under Han Fei’s urging, Lee Huo’s body started to change. The mist around his arms dispersed until the tall ghost returned. Han Fei sighed in relief when he saw Lee Zai. Then he could fully focus on controlling the paper doll to bring the heart back. To his consternation, once the paper doll tried to move the heart, all the cursed ghosts inside the hostel would be affected. They were all connected to the heart.

‘This is bad. Drake cannot suffer anymore torment.’ Han Fei did not want to lose this employee. He held Weep’s hand and jumped through the hole and into the grave. ‘The way to undo the curse is to destroy the cursed object. But this thing knows how to transfer damage inflicted onto it. If it dies, it will pull the rest of the guests down with it.’ Han Fei frowned. At that moment, the heavily shrunken old man turned his neck to look at Han Fei. “Please don’t hurt her, this is all my fault. Kill me instead. I will atone her sins.” The old man’s voice came intermittently. He was barely present.

“What do you mean?”

“I am the boss of this hostel, my wife of 40 plus years lives inside this heart.” The old man continued pleadingly, “We used to run a hostel together but I fell sick and she was left with the burden of running it alone.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know either. One night, I woke up and realized I was no longer at the hospital but on this street. I was so afraid until I stumbled into this hostel.” The old man crawled over the bodies to try to reach the heart. “At the time, the hostel was abandoned. I started to turn it into a business. I wanted to keep everything the same so that she’d not feel uncomfortable when she returned. Unfortunately, she never did, that is until one night, I received a phone call from her…”

Han Fei got the gist of the story now. The old man used to run a hostel in his life and he died at the hospital. When he woke up, he was already in the cryptic world. But his situation was unique, because he retained the memories about his wife and the hostel. “I was so excited when I got her call. I was so afraid I wouldn’t get the chance to hear her voice again. I told her that I wish to see her but she said that it was not yet time. She told me to be patient.” The old man’s eyes softened. “As always, I listened to her. I waited, but I was also weirdly afraid to see her in person… To be honest, a phone call a day was good enough for me.

“We talked about everything, there were inexhaustible topics. I talked to her about our life together while she shared with me the tales of our guests. Her temper was as incalcitrant as I remembered. Such a nagger, she was. Sometimes, she would chew my ears off but the next day, I would find myself waiting beside the phone waiting for it to ring. With her voice accompanying me every day, I no longer felt so fearful.

“But as the hostel started to accept more guests, she suddenly told me she felt very afraid. She could feel herself changing, she had been exposed to too many despair, horrors and unimaginable terror. Her voice was pained, I wanted to comfort her in person but she refused to meet me.

“One night not too long after that, she called to tell me she was leaving, she might not be able to call me anymore.

“Can you imagine the pain I was in when I heard that? I could not understand it. I told her I was ready to give up everything just to see her one last time. That day, she finally agreed. She told me to carry the phone with me into the hostel basement. Walking through the basement covered in phone lines, I maintained a conversation with her on the phone. I asked for her location. Suddenly she told me to turn around…”

The old man’s wrinkles folded together. His eyes dimmed.

“I did and realized the phone was not connected to anything. The phone lines had been snipped. The voice never came from the phone to begin with. It was from inside my heart. The phone never rang, it was not connected, it could not have rung! I have been talking to myself. Do you know… when a person’s desire crosses a certain threshold, it will change. My yearning morphed into a curse and manifested on this hostel’s phones. It went out of control. Through the phone lines, it fed on the guests’ despair and regurgitated it back onto me, stripping me of my kindness. Like what I told myself, there was no hope in this world. She never did reach out to me, I was only fooling myself.”

Tears slid down the old man’s face, he started to bawl like a child. Han Fei had no idea how long the old man had been trapped here, perhaps there were many souls in the same state as he was in the cryptic world.

“Sir, honestly, I have no idea whether there is hope in this world or not.” Squatting down, Han Fei studied the old man quietly, “But if there is no hope in this world, then we shall create one on our own!’

He ordered the paper doll to replace the heart back into the old man’s chest. “I will return to you your desire and I hope that you’ll return my friends back to me.”

The old man’s face colored with complicated emotions. The heart that was connected to all the phone lines beat in his heart again. The old man’s hands went to his chest. He pulled back all the phone lines that weaved through the mass grave. Each of the phone lines carried the voice of a despairing soul.

“Big brother!” Firefly rushed to Drake’s side. The weak Drake caressed Firefly’s face. He crawled up with difficulty. His only eye was filled with appreciation as he turned to Han Fei.

“There’s no need to thank me.” Han Fei used Soul-Depth Touch to help Drake up from the ground. “There’s no need for that between families.”

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