Horror Game Designer-Chapter 644: Second Memory Anchor
“Run! I cannot stop! He probably hanged the mad woman to death here! It has to be him!” Fear injected Tang Hanlu’s weak body with a new surge of energy. She grabbed the rusted railing and crawled up the stairs in a strange posture.
“The nightmare was not as scary as things are now! I wish I am in a nightmare!” Tang Hanlu ran back to the tenth floor from the eighth floor. When she ran past the floral arrangements and the death portraits, needles pierced into her brain. The two faces on the portraits sent her into spirals of fear. The fear didn’t come from the sense of danger but resistance towards sad memory. She refused to remember certain things but was forced to face them.
“They are so familiar. Why would I feel such a thing facing this pair of middle-aged couple from the tenth floor?” Tang Hanlu was reminded of the half-eaten cake on the ninth floor. The writing on the cake amplified in her brain, “Wish our baby daughter to get healthy.”
“Get healthy? Why is that? Is their daughter sick? Did their daughter fall ill after seeing something scary?”
Her brain started to imagine horrible things. Tang Hanlu heard footsteps coming from behind him. The pervert was very close to her!
She didn’t dare to turn back to look. Even though she was running out of breath, she raced up the steps. As she went up, more trash appeared in the corridor. There were things that were inexplicable. Tang Hanlu’s home was on the 14th floor. Starting from the 15th floor, the building became unusual. It looked less like a typical residential building and more like a poisonous pus in a patient’s heart.
The fifteenth floor's walls were stained by paint. The owner probably owed the workers money, and they wrote horrible things on the walls.
Heavy scent of disinfectant permeated the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th floors. The rooms there looked more like sick rooms. The trash in the corridors were medicine and vials. The place looked more like a black market clinic. Tang Hanlu was already scared. She became more unsettled when she saw these things. She was averse to hospitals and clinics, even though she had no idea why.
“Did I spend my childhood in a hospital?”
The smell of disinfectant disappeared on the 20th floor. The rooms on the sides had many numbers and names. The window at the end of the corridor was open. This was the only open window she had seen in the entire building. Tang Hanlu ran towards the window. She sucked in the fresh air and cried for help. The only response was the approaching footsteps.
Tang Hanlu grabbed the windowsill and looked down. It was so tall. The night breeze was bone-chillingly cold. With the smell of medicine, it blew into her pyjamas. It felt like a pair of formalin-soaked hands rubbing her body. Tang Hanlu couldn’t jump out the window, so she was forced to run up the stairs.
The footsteps slowed down, and the owner stopped at the window where Tang Hanlu was. A man’s voice flowed through the wind. He appeared to be mumbling to himself.
“She encountered the door for the first time when she was eight. She became unhinged after that. She joined the hospital to try Immortal Pharma’s new drugs. She reunited with her parents at nine. Coincidentally, her parents died when she was ten. However, that didn’t break her. If anything, it made her stronger. She had won a lot of prizes and competitions.
“Unfortunately, she still needed Immortal Pharma’s drugs for treatment. After she exhausted her family’s savings, she was officially accepted by Immortal Pharma’s charity when she was 14 to be cultivated and raised.
“Every room represents a living person. She competed with so many children and finally rose to the top.
“When she was 20, she finally had a chance to escape Immortal Pharma…” The young man glanced up the stairs. “But she didn’t choose to leave.”
Tang Hanlu tried her best to fly up the stairs. With each of the steps, she received a breakthrough in her constitution. However, the higher she went, the more unsettled she felt. She didn’t know how to deal with it other than to keep climbing higher.
The lights on the 21st floor dimmed. The walls were covered in cracks. Tang Hanlu looked at everything in shock. She thought her place was sturdy. It turned out she had been staying in a dangerous building. Her fingers caressed the cracks. Tang Hanlu accidentally scratched her fingers. Then, she saw something even more horrifying. Her blood morphed into needles to sew together the cracks. The building was like a person. The cracks were wounds. The building required the tenant’s blood and life to heal so that it wouldn’t collapse. When Tang Hanlu reached the 24th floor, she could barely move anymore.
She knocked on the doors. She cried for help. She looked pitiable. Her throat was hoarse, and her hair stuck to her face. Her shoes were gone. Her limbs were rife with cuts.
No one answered her. When Tang Hanlu’s heart was about to sink into despair, a door slowly opened. A kind-looking old lady stood inside the door. Her hair was silver, and her eyes were aged. However, the wrinkles on her face were not noticeable. Her back was straight, and her posture was rigid.
Before the elder could say anything, Tang Hanlu crawled into the room like a wounded animal.
“Close the door, granny! Close it!”
The heavy door slammed shut. The man who chased after Tang Hanlu stood at the door. He glanced at the room number, July 15th.
“After joining Immortal Pharma, she realised how corrupted the place was. It was almost crumbling. She tried her best to save the place, but it was pointless. The second memory anchor appeared on 15th July when she was 24. It brought changes to her life.”
The door closed. Tang Hanlu collapsed to the ground. She gasped for air and finally recovered.
Tang Hanlu opened her eyes and saw a squat, circular table in the small living room surrounded by small chairs. Each chair had an ugly and deformed child seated on it. However, the children had pure eyes. Some of them held crayons, and others were quietly nibbling on cakes. A few stared at Tang Hanlu with open curiosity.
“Are you the girl from the 14th floor?” The old lady was careful to make sure that Tang Hanlu was not frightened by the kids. She offered, “My name is Du Jing. I’m these kids’ teacher.”
With her life on the line, Tang Hanlu didn’t care about that. She moved away from the front door. “Granny, lock the door! There’s a crazed murderer outside!”
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Chapter 644: Second Memory Anchor
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