Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Fear was a contagious emotion.

Since there was a lot of commotion, they found themselves unable to stay cool anymore.

The female authors who were chatting exchanged glances with each other.

“Why not…” one of them suggested, “Let’s go for a look as well?”

“Let’s go!”

“I don’t feel safe staying here.”

“… Yeah, I’m not sure what is happening outside.”

They spoke in a low tone and sounded slightly frightened. That could make the people around them feel nervous.

Xiang Wan looked at them. “There must be a huge crowd outside now. It’s not safe to leave at this moment.”

This frightened Qing Dai and her face had gone pale. “Xiang Gongzi, you don’t seem worried at all, do you?”

Xiang Wan was just good at controlling her emotions, that was all. This entire ordeal was worrying her too.

For a girl in her twenties, her calm state and reaction definitely did not seem normal in the eyes of her peers.

Everyone was looking at Xiang Wan without a word.

Of course… they had reacted this way since they did not know what Xiang Wan had gone through.

If she were to be so nervous like them despite experiencing so much, what would that make her?

Fang Yuanyuan also agreed with Xiang Wan. “Xiang Gongzi is right. Even if we want to find out what is happening, it’s better to wait for a while more. What if there’s a stampede…”

They were inside a big shopping mall that could accommodate many people. There were also a lot of customers inside kebab eatery. People liked to find out what was happening and would crowd around. Just one look from their spot and they could see people running to find out what was happening…

In a circumstance like this, it would be more dangerous for them to join the crowd recklessly.

“Alright then…” Xuan Yue looked around the eatery. “This eatery is almost empty now.”

She was clenching her fist.

Compared to Qing Dai and the other female authors, she was more familiar with Xiang Wan.

Since she was also sitting beside the latter, she kept glancing over at Xiang Wan.

“Xiang Gongzi… I… I’m really scared.”

She whispered the words “really scared”.

Besides Xiang Wan, there should be no else who heard her.

Xiang Wan saw her face which had gone ashen and thought of what she had been telling her recently. She gave Xuan Yue a consoling look before turning to Fang Yuanyuan.

“Let’s settle the bill first.”

It was more convenient this way.

Fang Yuanyuan then left the table and Xuan Yue muttered something under her breath in an even softer tone.

“Why did someone die again? The last time was when we were out singing, and this time is when we’re out eating kebab…”

Xiang Wan was a little dazed; she didn’t look too good either.

‘Who’s the one with the Conan Effect here then? Me or Xuan Yue?’ Xiang Wan thought.

…

Fang Yuanyuan came back in a short while.

The commotion died down a little. It was not as rowdy as earlier.

“The police are here,” said Fang Yuanyuan, “they’re trying to maintain order and calm the crowd down…”

Xiang Wan paused for a moment and got up from her seat. “We can go outside to see what’s happening now.”

When the police were now in control, it should be quite safe.

The female authors already couldn’t wait to leave. Their curiosity almost jumped out from their throat.

Not waiting for Xiang Wan and Fang Yuanyuan, they walked right in front of them toward where the crowd gathered.

However, when they arrived near the incident site, they were probably a little too scared to go closer.

Xiang Wan was ambling. She saw the crowd pointing and talking about what happened.

She tried squeezing to the front slowly and asked a casual question. “What’s going on here?”

A middle-aged uncle, who was standing beside her, turned for a glance when he heard that. He furrowed his eyebrows when he saw that it was a young woman. “Don’t squeeze to the front anymore. If you get frightened by what you see, you will get nightmares…”

The uncle was actually quite humorous.

Xiang Wan craned her neck a little. “I want to go further upfront, but I can’t squeeze through anymore!”

The incident had taken place in a cinema located near another store between them, so the claim of a customer earlier that it was the next-door “neighbor” of the kebab eatery was false…

The scale of the cinema was not big. There was a huge screen and a door other than the sales counters. A toy store was beside it. At this time, the police had cordoned off the area. The crowd could only watch from afar while they discussed the incident. Part of the crowd who came out of the cinema earlier was telling others about what they saw. There were some who seemed so appalled that their faces looked as if colored had drained out of their bodies; they might have witnessed something horrible there after all.

Xiang Wan observed for a while but could not hear clearly what they were talking about.

She wondered what had happened while her eyebrows knitted together in curiosity.

“What exactly happened…”

The uncle turned his head again. “You’re not one of those who came out from the movie theater?”

Xiang Wan shook her head. “I was eating over there earlier.”

“I see,” replied the uncle, “then it’s better that you don’t know about it…”

Xiang Wan felt like laughing when she saw that he actually looked serious when he said so. “Why?”

“I’m worried that after you listen to it, you might vomit whatever you’ve eaten earlier.”

“…”

Xiang Wan thought he might have exaggerated!

If it was Xiang Wan about half a year ago, then maybe she really would vomit.

However, the current Xiang Wan was no longer as timid as her younger self.

She lifted her chin and gave up asking the uncle for an explanation as she continued to look in front.

“I heard someone practically gnawed on another’s face, and then someone had bitten that person to death in one bite…”

She was unsure when Fang Yuanyuan had squeezed over to her and said that terrifying sentence out of nowhere. Xiang Wan immediately felt discomfort in her stomach when she just thought earlier in her head that she would definitely not feel uncomfortable about it at all…

She turned to her. “Who said that?”

“Hur!” Fang Yuanyuan pointed a direction. “This is called social skills, understand?”

It was so easy for her to find out what was going on. That was indeed skillful of her.

In this aspect, Xiang Wan really couldn’t hold a candle to her.

She gave Fang Yuanyuan an approving look and continued watching the police work.

Qing Dai and the other female authors were holding each other’s arms and stuck to Fang Yuanyuan closely. They were frightened but curious at the same time. They were clearly nervous yet unwilling to leave the place…

Most people were like them since they all had the same mentality.

Fang Yuanyuan showed a nervous and nauseated expression while she pointed to a direction. “A man told me he was in theater four which was where the incident took place. He was sitting behind the perpetrator and had witnessed the entire scene… The police had just brought the man and his girlfriend aside for questioning. His girlfriend was so shaken that she had trouble walking…”

Xiang Wan felt a tight squeeze in her heart.

“Zombie…”

“Doomsday has arrived…”

“Resident Evil…”

“… When a person went crazy, it’s too horrifying.”

“…”

In the crowd, they could make out the keywords that were being mentioned on and off.

Zombie, Doomsday, Resident Evil… they then received even more information.

Everyone had those uncomfortable expressions as if they were hearing a ghost story. They were so scared, yet they wanted to hear what was happening although their faces were turning pale from the fright.

Xiang Wan was also feeling tense. Nonetheless, she did not really believe what she had heard.

At this moment, that middle-aged uncle turned his head when he heard what these few young women were saying.

“They are right. I’m also in theater four earlier; it’s just that I’m sitting much farther away.”

Xiang Wan was dazed for a moment. “You saw that too?”

The uncle’s eyebrows knitted closely together while showing a troubled and nauseated expression like his face scrunched up together into a bundle. “I did. However, it was very dark inside the movie theater, so I couldn’t see clearly. I only know that the one who screamed sounded so terrified that you could feel all your skin and scalp going numb! I only saw a silhouette of two people. One of them was biting another’s neck… and the victim got bitten to death… the perpetrator was even slurping the blood like he was crazy…”

“…”

Such a description…

They could feel goosebumps all over.

The female authors huddled closely together.

Xiang Wan’s tension also increased a little.

She firmly believed that when everyone was in a frightened state, that was all the more reason why she had to stay calm.

This was something Bai Muchuan had taught her.

It was not the end of the world, and there wouldn’t be any zombies. However, there was over one person talking about what happened in the movie theater, and they couldn’t all be lying about it too.

The police officers were busy working within the cordoned area. There was a bloody smell coming from the movie theater, and that made people feel uncomfortable while Xiang Wan felt nauseous.

Actually, it was so far away, and the incident took place inside the theater; it was difficult to smell something. Rather, it was actually a psychological reaction, a work of fear, to be exact, that had conquered her senses.

That feeling of fear seemed to have loosened her pores.

“Are there anyone else who was inside theater four earlier? Please come up to me.”

A police officer came to ask the crowd which caused more curious onlookers to come forward.

“Those uninvolved in the case, please move back further.”

“Please do not gather here anymore. There’s nothing interesting to see about a dead person. Disperse, disperse…”

…

Xiang Wan took two steps back and wanted to convince the female authors to leave too.

However, at this moment, the police officers carried a stretcher out of the theater with a large white cloth covering the body.

Two personnel wearing white coats were following behind.

Since they covered the face with a white cloth, this meant that the victim had died.

That scene made the onlookers start to create a commotion once more.

More police officers came to help maintain order. “Please step back, please step back! Don’t block the way!”

Every time an incident happened, the onlookers were usually the ones that made the job of law enforcers or life-savers more difficult than it should be.

The police officers tried to secure a path so they could get the deceased out of the cinema.

There were too many onlookers. The escalator was in the middle of the floor, and it was necessary to pass through the huge crowd of onlookers to get the body out of there.

Yet, there were even more people who wanted to come down or go up to find out what was happening.

It was jam-packed.

The police officers started to run out of patience, and they kept asking the crowd to move out but to no avail.

Xiang Wan tried to pull Fang Yuanyuan and the others to move out of the way.

“Let’s go, we shouldn’t stay here to watch anymore…”

Well, besides obstructing “traffic”, they really had nothing else to do.

Fang Yuanyuan let out a gasp after seeing the corpse covered with the cloth which had blood permeating from its body onto the cloth. Her face turned ashen at that sight. She nodded her head and held onto Qing Dai and others.

“Let’s go, let’s go. There’s nothing to see already, let’s go for another round of kebab…”

“…”

After watching that terrifying sight, she still wanted to go for more kebab?

She was really a brave girl.

Watching the expressions of the female authors that had turned strange, Xiang Wan pondered for a moment.

“Why not go for a coffee at the cafe downstairs? If we’re hungry, we can go for supper.”

“Sure, I like that!”

Qing Dai immediately agreed with her suggestion.

Fang Yuanyuan was okay with it too.

Thus, the female authors held hands as they prepared to leave…

Just when they turned away, Xuan Yue let out a scream out of the blue.

“AH—”

That scream of hers was really loud and was spine-chilling.

Since she screamed in such a situation, not only did it alarmed Xiang Wan, Fang Yuanyuan, and the female authors, it also alerted the police. Some surrounding onlookers were so shocked that they also screamed.

Xiang Wan quickly held Xuan Yue’s arm. “What happened?”

Xuan Yue covered her mouth and looked at the stretcher that was drifting from them in consternation.

“It’s him… it’s him…”