It was known that the Vivid Red Hotel had ghosts.
It was also known that the ghosts in the Vivid Red Hotel had killed many people.
Moreover, Qi Xu was just an ordinary person.
Therefore, it was perfectly normal for Qi Xu to fear the ghosts in the Vivid Red Hotel.
Qi Xu swallowed after hearing Xia Zhiming’s words. “Hasn’t the Vivid Red Hotel already closed down for rectification?”
Xia Zhiming glanced at her. “You’re pig-brained too.”
Qi Xu lowered her head and didn’t dare make a sound. Xia Zhiming sat in the car, staring blankly at the stack of documents in front of her, lost in thought. After a long while, she put down the documents in her hand, tossed them onto the back seat, and didn’t look at them anymore.
She started the car but didn’t step on the accelerator right away. Instead, she took out a lollipop, stuck it in her mouth, and then answered Qi Xu’s question. “Do you think those people who were killed were idiots? I just said it—either it’s an earthbound spirit, or it gave up its earthbound spirit status to target people specifically. But the situation at the Vivid Red Hotel is clearly that of an earthbound spirit. It can only stay in the Vivid Red Hotel. The hotel shut down for rectification at the beginning of the year, so over these past few months, were the people who died in the Vivid Red Hotel just too stupid to avoid going there?”
“Oh, right.”
Qi Xu was stunned for a moment before she snapped out of it. The Vivid Red Hotel had closed for rectification and wasn’t open, so why would they go there? If it had been ruled as suicides before, they probably went there intending to kill themselves. But they weren’t suicides—they were murdered. So why would they go to a place that had already shut down?
Thinking from another angle, why go to a hotel? Of course, for lodging. They simply didn’t know the Vivid Red Hotel had closed, so that’s why they went.
Qi Xu instinctively pulled out her phone and searched for the Vivid Red Hotel on a review site. Since she was in this town, it quickly brought up the hotel’s page. Contrary to her expectations, it said “Open for Business” in three big characters.
“They… got tricked?”
The lollipop in Xia Zhiming’s mouth shifted position, sliding from the left side to the right, bulging her cheek a bit on that side.
Qi Xu’s mind went into overdrive as she started thinking. “The permanent residents in this town barely change. This group definitely knew about the Vivid Red Hotel and that it had closed. They absolutely wouldn’t stay there. The hotel’s issues have been going on for a long time. People who come back occasionally to visit family and friends, or those whose homes have places to stay, also know about it and wouldn’t go there.”
“There are no tourist spots here either, so there’s basically only one type of person who would stay at a hotel—people whose ancestral home is here but whose whole family has moved away. They only come back occasionally to see family and have nowhere to stay, so they choose a hotel.”
“And because they haven’t been back in a long time, they know there’s a Vivid Red Hotel but not what’s happened to it, so they pick it.”
Following this line of thinking made a lot of things clear. Without any “closed” notice, people would definitely still go to the Vivid Red Hotel. As for why they could stay even after it had shut down, it was probably because this ghost had a Ghost Domain that made the Vivid Red Hotel look like it was still in business.
Just like the Stone Spirit from before.
“You’re not too stupid.”
Xia Zhiming smiled.
Having received approval, Qi Xu grew even more excited and continued thinking aloud. “This ghost has been killing more frequently lately. Maybe it’s realized the hotel’s closure is getting harder to hide. Afraid it won’t be able to kill anymore in the future, it’s striking more often, leading to more deaths.”
And that was indeed the case. The documents showed that the police had discovered the Vivid Red Hotel was still listed online as “open for business” in reality. They planned to order the owner to change the information. That investigator wasn’t completely useless either—just confused about the ghost’s true nature. Everything else was pretty reliable.
The investigator had also guessed the ghost’s method of luring the living. To avoid alerting it, he specifically instructed the city investigators not to change the info until they arrived.
When they reached the entrance of the Vivid Red Hotel, Qi Xu was somewhat surprised. The Vivid Red Hotel in front of her was a five-story building that looked quite spacious, just like the biggest hotel in every small town. Nothing special about it.
The entire structure used a lot of red wall paint, which blended into a dark red in the darkness, giving off an eerie vibe. Above the doorway hung the four characters “Vivid Red Hotel,” announcing its name to passersby.
In the night, the hotel looked a bit creepy, but overall, it was in the style of the late 20th century.
What surprised Qi Xu was that the building had no lights at all—not even the sign above the door. It didn’t seem like it was pretending to be open for business to lure unsuspecting guests to their deaths, as she had guessed.
Xia Zhiming didn’t care at all. She drove her rugged off-road vehicle straight through the gate to the marked parking spot at the Vivid Red Hotel’s entrance, turned off the engine, switched on the interior lights, tidied up the car a bit, then called Qi Xu to get out. She turned to the back of the car to grab the luggage.
Qi Xu hurried after her. When she reached the trunk, she quietly asked what was going on.
Xia Zhiming glanced at her. “You’re not as dumb as I thought, but you’re still pretty dumb. We’re not its targets, so it naturally won’t unfold its Ghost Domain to light up for us. Besides, it’s no idiot. We look like we’re here for it. It doesn’t know what we’re capable of, and it hasn’t seen us before, so it’s definitely hiding quietly, pretending it doesn’t exist.”
“Oh… I see.” But after thinking it over, Qi Xu still didn’t quite get one thing. “How does it know we’re here for it?”
“By scent. We’ve been with that investigator for so long—it’s impossible not to pick up his smell. That guy’s been investigating here a lot lately, probably using some family spells too. It’d be weird if it didn’t recognize the scent.”
After this explanation, Qi Xu finally understood. Xia Zhiming opened the trunk but didn’t move. Qi Xu froze for a second, then obediently pulled out a large and a small suitcase from the trunk. The small one was hers; the large one was Xia Zhiming’s.
Who else would carry them? Xia Zhiming had just given her a lesson—this was her tuition.
Xia Zhiming wasn’t the type to kindly explain things to others.
With two suitcases, Qi Xu had to wheel one in each hand as she pushed forward. The eight wheels together made a harsh scraping sound on the ground. The Vivid Red Hotel had been open for too long, and the road at the entrance had become potholed over time. Though patched multiple times, the uneven repairs made it even harder for the suitcases to roll smoothly.
With nothing around, the wheel noise echoed loudly, grating on Qi Xu’s nerves.
To distract herself, she chatted lightly with Xia Zhiming. “If it keeps hiding like this, what do we do with it? Or do you have some powerful spell to force it out?”
Xia Zhiming was a Rank 1 investigator, after all. The previous one was only Rank 5. With such a big gap, Xia Zhiming had to be much stronger!
Xia Zhiming walked slowly ahead, looking completely at ease unlike the struggling Qi Xu. Hearing the question, she chuckled and replied, “Didn’t I tell you? At most two or three days, and it’ll come out.”
“Huh? Why?”
“If you don’t understand, learn more. Go home, flip through the old almanac and the I Ching—smarter than standing here with your mouth open asking ‘why.’” Xia Zhiming dissed her first, then continued. “Because in two days it’ll be the fourteenth. Even better, the fifteenth follows, and the day after that is the Summer Solstice.”
“With those three days in a row, if it doesn’t come out to cause trouble, it’s just a fart of a ghost.”
It was already June 16th. The fourteenth and fifteenth Xia Zhiming mentioned were definitely lunar dates. Qi Xu wanted to pull out her phone to check what was special about the fourteenth, fifteenth, and Summer Solstice, but her hands were full with the suitcases. She could only follow Xia Zhiming toward the hotel first.
At the hotel entrance, there were two steps. Xia Zhiming went up first. Qi Xu summoned her college-student strength to drag the suitcases up. At the door, they faced a glass door. Just as Qi Xu was about to ask how to get in, she saw Xia Zhiming pull out a key from her pocket.
She calmly unlocked the padlocked door. The chain and lock clattered noisily before dropping to the ground. Xia Zhiming had always been lacking in manners. Back at the temple fair, she’d tossed her lollipop wrapper everywhere—even if it vanished with the Ghost Domain, it didn’t change Qi Xu’s view of her as ill-mannered.
Now, even more so.
She just left the chain on the ground without a care.
Xia Zhiming pushed the door open and went in. Qi Xu lifted the suitcases over the chain and followed.
Close to the fifteenth, the moon was quite large. It hadn’t seemed so outside, but now inside the pitch-black lobby, she couldn’t see a thing—only the outside remained bright. The sudden darkness made Qi Xu uncomfortable.
Luckily, Xia Zhiming had a shred of manners. She took out her phone, turned on the flashlight, went behind the front desk, and pulled a room key card from a drawer.
“Let’s go, Room 8301.”
Hotels loved prefixing with 8 to make room numbers sound auspicious. At that moment, Qi Xu suddenly realized something. “We, uh, are we staying here?” She asked, feeling tense.
Xia Zhiming glanced at her with a silent retort: What else? Where do you think you’d stay?
