WTNL Chapter 380

Xingwang Hotel
Chapter 380: Friendly Tips

Front Desk.

A faint, eerie glow enveloped the young man, casting a red, sinister hue over the half of his face that was hidden behind a mask.

Before him, the hotel manager’s figure gradually dissipated, like a reflection in water after a stone is thrown, fading into nothingness.

Neither the Red nor the Black team had expected this scene to unfold.

None of them had anticipated that someone would actually take action against this NPC, which was almost like a “safe zone” within the instance…

And yet, somehow, it had actually succeeded!

They stood frozen, staring in shock at the direction of Wen Jianyan, while the darkness around them remained deathly silent.

With the hotel manager gone, some invisible rule seemed to have been broken.

Since earlier, the “guests” who had been standing motionless at the door, waiting without moving, suddenly took a step forward, walking towards the door without any warning.

A chilling aura spread throughout the room.

The faces of the guests were deathly pale, their movements stiff and unnatural.

“Why are you still frozen?”

Wen Jianyan slowly put away the now-cleaned brass knife and glanced at the Red team members still standing there in a daze.

His voice was calm, as though he had already predicted this would happen, and he even chuckled lightly.

“They won’t move against you.”

Although there was little emotion in his gaze, the moment the Red team members made eye contact with him, they all felt an inexplicable chill run through them.

They suddenly came to their senses.

“Get up, get up!”

Despite not fully processing what was happening, the Red team anchors instinctively began to act under their leader’s command.

What followed was not surprising.

The gentlemen, Anise, and the others had already taken most of the main forces, while the majority of the Red team anchors were still stuck at the front desk.

The Black team had been caught off guard and hadn’t organized any effective resistance; the battle had already been decided.

Or rather…

They all knew the situation so well—the banquet was near its end, and the strength disparity between the two sides was unshakable. In such a situation, only a fool would keep fighting to the death.

In the blink of an eye, the dust had settled.

Wen Jianyan walked over and crouched down in front of one of the restrained Red team anchors.

“What do you want?” The anchor, pressed to the ground, struggled to lift his head and looked at the young man through the gap in the mask.

“Very simple,” Wen Jianyan looked down at him, his face hidden behind the mask, making his expression unreadable. “You should all have ghost money, right?”

All of the Red team’s ghost money were now in Wen Jianyan’s possession, but the Black team hadn’t taken this step.

Moreover, this was the final round.

Even if it was just to be cautious, the Black team would certainly leave a substantial amount of ghost money at the front desk, in case important members died. They might even leave the largest amount.

The anchor was taken aback but nodded.

“Give them to me.” Wen Jianyan extended his hand with a smile in his voice.

In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room barrage:

[…]

[Damn, this is the first time I’ve seen someone rob so blatantly…]

[Still, what does he need the ghost money for? It seems useless. Doesn’t he already have that crucial item?]

The Black team anchors were also surprised, but under the threat of Wen Jianyan’s force, they obediently took out all of their ghost money and handed them to him.

Wen Jianyan lowered his head and quickly counted the money with expert precision.

In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room barrage:

[…]

[Come on, anchor, tell the truth. This isn’t your first time doing this, is it?]

Soon, Wen Jianyan had counted all the money.

Quite a lot.

But definitely not enough.

He looked at the anchor pressed in front of him.

“What about the rest?”

“There’s nothing else!” the anchor, still partially pinned to the ground, hastily explained. “We only have these, the rest are with the gentlemen…”

“Ah…”

Wen Jianyan stretched out the word, neither affirming nor denying it, but somehow it sent a shiver down their spines.

Beside him, Xi Zi couldn’t help but speak up: “What do you need the ghost money for now? The hotel manager has already disappeared.”

And he was killed by Wen Jianyan himself.

Everything had moved so quickly that they hadn’t had time to react. By the time things had settled, they realized the gravity of what Wen Jianyan had done—the disappearance of the hotel manager meant that all the ghost money had lost their effectiveness. Anyone who had already died couldn’t be revived.

“Don’t worry, it hasn’t disappeared.”

Wen Jianyan briefly glanced back at Xi Zi and spoke.

“Huh?” Xi Zi was stunned.

“It’s neither human nor ghost. It just looks like one,” Wen Jianyan kindly explained. “To be precise, it’s part of the instance—or the live broadcast room’s will.”

He made a pointed remark:

“Aside from the first time we arrived here, didn’t we all basically arrive with no time difference?”

Everyone paused.

It seemed… that was indeed the case.

Wen Jianyan had the deepest understanding of this.

When their team arrived at the “staff break room,” they found that the Black team had already been there ahead of them and even ambushed them.

The time difference was incredibly subtle.

Having a sequence of arrivals was normal; after all, their teams weren’t in the same positions when the lights went out, so it made sense they might have arrived at different times. The problem was that, in the mirrored instance earlier, when the lights dimmed, the hotel manager had appeared and guided them without any opportunity to separate.

So, why had the Black team arrived ahead of them?

Was there more than one hotel manager?

Or was it simply a tool, not a specific entity… just appearing before them like an NPC?

“It has only temporarily disappeared,” Wen Jianyan glanced at the constantly entering ghosts in the banquet hall. “I think it will reappear after some time.”

But how long that would take, he couldn’t say.

However…

How could you be so sure?

Xi Zi opened her mouth but ultimately swallowed her question.

Her intuition told her that Wen Jianyan’s conclusion, and his extreme actions in killing the hotel manager, were based on more than just a simple “time difference.”

Wen Jianyan lowered his head and sent a message on his phone.

He then looked back up, casually tapping the stack of ghost money in his hand against the face of the Black team anchor in front of him.

“You have their contact information, right?”

The man, unsure of Wen Jianyan’s intentions, could only nod cautiously.

Wen Jianyan waved at the Red team anchor holding him down.

The anchor released him.

The Black team anchor hesitated, shakily getting to his feet.

“Take out your phone,” Wen Jianyan raised his chin, his voice lazy and indifferent, with a hint of playful amusement. “Go ahead, you make the call.”

---

Near the banquet table.

In the darkness, countless vengeful spirits lurked, while a silent and bloody battle continued.

The Black team’s main forces had entered, surrounding the Red team for a massacre. The Red team, clearly aware of this, moved cautiously, but despite their efforts, they were being pushed back, struggling as though their throats were being squeezed, losing their space to maneuver.

Things had escalated to a critical point. A moment’s distraction could shift the balance of the battle.

“Buzz.”

Someone’s phone vibrated.

Under the mask, Gentleman Anis furrowed his brow.

In this situation?

He ignored it.

“Bzzz, bzzz.”

More buzzing sounds rang out, as if everyone had just received the same message at once.

Even the Gentleman himself.

He instantly sensed something was wrong.

The Gentleman pulled out his phone.

The screen lit up slightly, and the text appeared before his eyes.

“I hope you haven’t killed any of my teammates yet by the time you see this message.
Just a friendly reminder: things on your end are about to get chaotic.
— Sincerely,
Pinocchio.”

“……”

The Gentleman froze. His fingers instinctively tightened, and a flicker of light passed through his eyes beneath the mask.

In an instant, he’d already gleaned enough information from the message.

It came from one of the team members they’d left at the front desk. Clearly, the Red Team captain, who had mysteriously disappeared in the last round of service, had not only returned, but had used some unknown method to take control of the remaining team members at the front.

And more importantly…

The Gentleman’s gaze fell on the last line of the message, and he frowned slightly.

What did “things are about to get chaotic” really mean?

As he pondered this, sudden footsteps echoed behind him from the darkness—without any warning.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The cadence of the steps was unnervingly precise, as if calculated by some intricate device, each footfall landing like a strike on the human heart, making it clench tight.

“?!”

The Gentleman was startled. He instinctively turned his head in the direction of the sound.

From the shadows, a ghastly pale face emerged.

A cold, lifeless body. A stiff expression. Hollow eyes. A putrid stench…

A guest.

A second footstep followed. Then a third, a fourth…

More and more cold, eerie figures began to appear in the darkness, shambling stiffly forward in his direction.

The Gentleman’s pupils shrank suddenly.

Damn it!

That bastard… somehow disrupted the banquet’s rules, even allowing the guests—who were originally barred from entering the banquet hall—to come in!

If there were still available seats, it wouldn’t be a problem. But their main task was to hunt the Red Team. This round, they had hardly sent off any guests.

Which meant… these unsent guests were now wandering, uncontrollable vengeful spirits in this area. With parts of the rules already failing, no one knew when the fragile balance would fully collapse and turn this into a massacre ruled by ghosts.

The Gentleman gripped his phone tightly, his knuckles turning white, his teeth grinding audibly.

…Damn it.

---

Front Desk.

Under the dim red glow, the entire area was blanketed in deathly silence.

Guests marched forward with stiff steps, one after another, entering endlessly.

All the surviving streamers instinctively held their breath, motionless, fearing that even the slightest movement might provoke the increasingly dense horde of vengeful spirits.

Wen Jianyan stood by the door, eyes locked onto the corridor outside.

Finally, from within the red-lit hallway, a familiar figure slowly emerged.

The woman in white.

Wen Jianyan’s breath hitched.

As expected.

She hadn’t been sent off.

Before everyone’s eyes, the woman in white walked stiffly step by step toward the banquet hall. She soon crossed from the crimson hallway into the room.

Her dark, empty eye sockets locked forward… and then fixed onto Wen Jianyan.

“……”

Wen Jianyan’s heart leapt to his throat.

His body and nerves tensed to the limit, cold sweat beading on his back again.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The woman in white kept walking.

She didn’t stop, slowly brushing past Wen Jianyan until she disappeared into the darkness.

“Whew.”

Wen Jianyan exhaled silently, his taut shoulders relaxing slightly.

The others clearly did the same.

There was something cold and bloody about that woman in white, something different from the other guests. Even if they didn’t know what role she played in this instance, they could sense that her horror was on a completely different level.

“Wait… that guest just now,” Xi Zi said uncertainly, “hasn’t she appeared before?”

“Yes.”

Wen Jianyan nodded.

“But… didn’t you send her off?”

Xi Zi lowered her voice. “So why is she…”

“I didn’t.”

Wen Jianyan turned his head toward the darkness where the woman in white had disappeared, and gave a slow smile—though there was no mirth in his voice, only a deep, heavy chill. “She’s not a guest. So how could she be sent off?”

That’s right. The woman in white… wasn’t a guest.

And she wasn’t a ghost either.

She was something far more sinister and twisted—an entity that had possessed the original body and invaded this world.

She belonged to that monstrous force that had constructed the hotel from flesh and eyeballs, the one that had turned the town into a dead city.

Even the original host’s suicide by jumping into a well hadn’t truly stopped her.

She didn’t die with the body but remained in the hotel, lingering with the appearance of the original, roaming relentlessly, waiting for the right moment… to guide everything back onto the correct path.

“?”

Xi Zi was stunned, glancing at Wen Jianyan’s side profile.

His face was obscured by a mask, his real expression hidden, but somehow… an icy chill crept up Xi Zi’s spine, making her shudder uncontrollably.

While they were talking, the red glow behind the front desk suddenly twisted without warning.

Everyone jumped, snapping their heads around to look.

Just as Wen Jianyan had described, from behind the front desk, as the air warped, a familiar figure appeared before them.

A sharp suit. A pale face. Lips curved in an eerie smile.

It stood perfectly still, the red glow illuminating its face—cold and chilling.

The hotel manager had returned to the front desk, his chest pristine once again, showing no trace of having been stabbed directly through earlier.

He said nothing. Took no action. Didn’t hold Wen Jianyan accountable for what had just happened—as if none of it had ever occurred.

A pure puppet. A tool.

With the manager’s reappearance, some invisible rule seemed to take hold once more.

The guests, who had been endlessly entering the banquet hall, stopped. They no longer proceeded forward. But… the gap in time could no longer be erased. The entire hall now reeked of decay, a stench so foul it made one nauseous, starkly revealing one fact:

The number of ghosts had already exceeded capacity.

And…

Even that terrifying woman, who had already left, had taken advantage of this gap to return.

The darkness that had once only shrouded the long banquet table had now—somehow—spread to engulf the entire hall.

You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

Only a faint red glow flickered from the front desk.

No one felt at ease.

There were only four minutes left until the banquet ended.

“What do we do now?” someone asked.

Wen Jianyan shook his head, eyes fixed on the darkness. His lips moved slightly as he uttered a short word:

“Wait.”

Three minutes and thirty seconds remaining.

Only thirty seconds until the agreed time when they could finally use their props.

But Wen Jianyan didn’t look relieved—if anything, his expression had grown even more grim.

Three minutes and twenty seconds.

The temperature dropped. A cold, bone-chilling wind seeped into their flesh.

In the darkness, pale faces flickered in and out of view—the vengeful spirits were now wandering near the front desk.

Three minutes and fifteen seconds.

Finally, just as it neared the three-minute mark, hurried footsteps rang out from the shadows.

Before they could even make out the figure, the voice reached them first.

“You’ve been waiting for a while, haven’t you?”

The voice was still polite and measured, but carried an undercurrent of something darker, heavier.

Wen Jianyan’s eyes lit up.

They’re here!

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The footsteps drew closer.

A group of masked figures emerged from the red glow.

At the front was clearly the Gentleman.

“There are less than five seconds left until the agreed time,” he glanced at the clock, “but I suggest you don’t make any rash moves. Especially don’t try to activate your props.”

As he spoke, the Gentleman stepped aside slightly, revealing the people behind him.

He gave a soft laugh and said:

“If you still want them all to stay alive.”

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