...Through the thick fog, a beat-up bus came rolling slowly down an endless highway.
There were seven people aboard—three women, four men.
They sat in their seats, staring out through the windows at the fog, each wearing a different expression.
Confusion. Bewilderment. Fear...
But beyond that, their faces all shared the same pallor.
As if, somewhere along the road, they had been through something terrible.
The bus drove on and on, until at last it came to a stop outside an ancient, weathered villa.
The villa was wrapped in the surrounding fog, black from top to bottom, mysterious and eerie.
The door swung open, as if telling the passengers inside... time to get off.
The seven passengers slowly disembarked. They glanced back, an indescribable fear in their eyes.
Because in the driver's seat of the bus, where a driver should have been... there was nothing at all.
That's right. This bus... had no driver.
When the last passenger stepped off, the bus door closed on its own, and the bus drove away until it vanished into the depths of the fog...
The seven people standing outside the black villa looked at one another and saw how ghastly everyone else's face was.
"Let's go..."
"I don't think we have any other choice."
At the critical moment, a thin man in the group spoke up. He wore square, dark-brown wooden-framed glasses, and his refined face showed a composure the others lacked.
"Do we... do we really have to go in?"
The beautiful woman with the gold earrings spoke with a trembling voice.
She was dressed in very little, so she was cold.
Her hands clutched her arms, rubbing them constantly.
"What if it isn't... safe in there?"
The others stayed silent.
They'd assumed at first that this was some kind of prank, or that somebody had invited them out to film a show...
But when they discovered the bus had no driver at all, they sank into deep dread!
Every one of them had once been a staunch materialist, yet the things that had happened earlier... were simply too far beyond explanation!
"Then are you going to walk into the fog?"
Ning Qiushui took a deep breath, forcing himself to appear calm.
In truth, his heart was pounding.
From the moment he received that mysterious letter to his arrival at this place, less than an hour had passed.
But that one hour had shaken his entire view of the world!
"Have you forgotten the fat man who jumped off the bus at the intersection?"
At the mention of the fat man, immense terror flooded the woman's beautiful eyes!
Her legs went weak, and she nearly lost her footing!
Earlier, there had been eight people on the bus.
Every one of them had fallen asleep and suddenly woken up aboard it.
Among them was a fat man who cursed and grumbled the whole way, insisting that some shady production company must have brought them out for a reality show.
Their phones had surely been swapped out, he said impatiently; the real driver was steering the bus from beneath their feet; the fog outside was manufactured with dry ice; and so on...
Finally, when the bus paused at an intersection, the fat man threw open a window, jumped off, and walked alone into the fog...
Up to that point, things had still seemed more or less normal.
But when they reached the next intersection, they saw something drifting from the fog-shrouded traffic light...
Only as the bus crept closer did they see clearly what had been fluttering on that traffic light... it was the fat man's bloody, flayed skin!
The skin had been peeled off in one piece. They could even see his expression, twisted in extreme terror, as if he had witnessed something unspeakably horrifying before he died!
And down the pole of the traffic light streamed sheets of scarlet blood!
That sight scared the wits out of everyone on the bus!
Someone refused to believe it and pulled open a window—and the stench of blood, nauseating just to smell, flooded the whole bus...
***
At the mention of the fat man, everyone's face turned ugly; some began to dry-heave.
"...Since no one dares to walk into that fog, our only option is this black villa..."
Ning Qiushui drew a deep breath.
He was afraid too.
Yet for some reason, whether at the sight of that bloody human skin hanging from the traffic light or at the smell of blood, his reaction had been nowhere near as strong as the others'.
Besides, he was deeply curious about that mysterious letter.
What exactly had its sender... been trying to tell him?
With Ning Qiushui leading the way, the group followed behind him, pushed open the iron gate of the black villa, and entered the front garden.
Their surroundings were silent.
Terribly silent.
They had no choice but to huddle close together. The pretty woman with the gold earrings in the middle felt someone cop a feel, but she only frowned and said nothing.
Let them grope... better that than being skinned for no reason!
And so they came to the door of the black villa, and Ning Qiushui knocked.
Knock, knock, knock—
At the sound, footsteps soon approached from behind the door. The people behind him couldn't help retreating a few steps, eyeing the door warily, visibly tense!
Creak—
The door opened.
But the horrifying scene they'd imagined didn't appear.
The one who opened the door was an exquisite, beautiful young girl.
She looked only fifteen or sixteen.
"You're here?"
"Come in."
Only when the girl spoke did everyone realize that she was actually... a boy.
A very beautiful boy.
But his voice was cold and indifferent.
With hardly any feeling in it.
They watched Ning Qiushui follow the boy inside, and for a moment they just looked at one another, unsure whether to follow.
"You'd better hurry in..."
As they hesitated, the youth's voice drifted out from inside the house again.
"That fog... is not safe."
At the mention of the fog, they remembered the fat man's miserable death, shuddered in fright, and scrambled over one another to get inside.
The villa's main hall was spacious, decorated in a very classical style: neatly arranged bookshelves on the left, a wooden staircase leading up on the right, and three large sofas in the resting area at the center.
In the middle of the sofas burned a brazier.
Inside the room, four people were gathered around it.
They stared blankly into the flames, lost in thought, saying nothing.
And in that silence, the atmosphere... grew colder and colder.
"Excuse me... where is this place?"
"Why have we been brought here?"
"What's going on with the fog and the bus outside?"
"..."
Finally, after a moment's thought, Ning Qiushui asked his three questions.
But still, no one answered him.
The four warming themselves by the fire didn't even spare him a glance.
At that point, the man with the bushy beard behind Ning Qiushui—Liu Chengfeng—couldn't hold back:
"We're asking you a question!"
"Are you all mute?"
His voice was enormous, booming through the room until everyone's eardrums ached.
At last, the man in the suit warming himself on the sofa directly across from Ning Qiushui spoke:
"I know you have many questions..."
"If you come back alive from your first Blood Door, I will tell you the answers."
At those words, an ominous feeling spread through everyone's heart.
"Blood Door? What's that?"
Something stirred in Ning Qiushui as he thought of the mysterious letter he'd received, and he asked.
Without even raising his head, the suited man pointed a finger toward the villa's third floor.
"You don't have much time. The Blood Door opens in less than five minutes. When it does, you'll enter the horror world beyond it to complete the task written on the door."
"Once the task is complete, the bus will come pick you up."
When he finished, a short, skinny girl with twin ponytails—Yan Youping—asked timidly:
"What happens... if we fail the task?"
At that, the suited man slowly raised his head and met Yan Youping's eyes.
Those calm, indifferent eyes made her heart tremble.
"You die."
"And you die... horribly."
The strength drained out of everyone at his words.
They desperately wanted to believe this was all a joke.
But... the suited man's grave expression snuffed out the last flicker of wishful thinking in their hearts.
"Can we... n-not go?"
Another young man, his hair dyed blond, swallowed and asked.
The suited man glanced at him.
"You can."
"But... you'd best never sleep again."
The blond man froze:
"Wh-why?"
The suited man smiled without a trace of warmth:
"Because if you don't go beyond the Blood Door to complete the task, then... 'things' will come out from behind it to find you."
"No matter where you run, they will find you."
"And then..."
He didn't go on, but everyone already knew the ending.
Ning Qiushui glanced up toward the third floor, then asked the suited man one last question:
"Before we go in—is there anything you'd advise us?"
The suited man paused slightly, then shifted his gaze to Ning Qiushui. Seeing in him a composure the others lacked, a barely perceptible flash of appreciation crossed his eyes.
"Advice... yes."
"The stories behind the Blood Door are terribly dangerous, but there is always more than one path to survival. As long as you find a path, completing the task and staying alive... is not that hard."
Ning Qiushui nodded.
"Thank you."
Then, of all of them, he was the first to step forward, walking toward the stairs.
Seeing him move so decisively, the bushy-bearded Liu Chengfeng fought a fierce battle behind his eyes, then gritted his teeth and followed.
"Damn, bro... you've really got some guts!"
Coming up behind Ning Qiushui, Liu Chengfeng muttered in a low voice.
He had, in fact, noticed Ning Qiushui back on the road.
Hard not to.
Whether at the discovery of the fat man's skin or the thick stench of blood, Ning Qiushui had barely reacted.
"Guts?"
Ning Qiushui laughed at himself.
"Do you think we have a choice?"
Liu Chengfeng was tall and broad, so even standing a step below Ning Qiushui, he was only slightly shorter.
"When you saw that fat guy's skin back there, you didn't so much as blink. Were you... in that line of work, before?"
"Which line?"
"A hitman."
"You've read too many novels. Where would all these hitmen come from in real life?"
"Uh... then..."
"I'm a doctor."
"Ohh, no wonder. A forensic examiner?"
"Close. A vet."
Liu Chengfeng: "..."
Chatting, the two of them reached the villa's third floor.
The moment they arrived, their conversation stopped.
A thick smell of blood spread through the air, mingled with the heavy odor of rotting wood.
The third floor of the villa held nothing at all—nothing but a wooden door soaked scarlet with blood.
On the door, a line of characters was written in glistening red:
【Care for the paralyzed old woman in her bed for five days】
"Care for an old woman... so that's our task this time."
Ning Qiushui's eyes flickered.
The others came up one after another. When they saw the bloody words on the door, they all froze.
"That's... it? That simple?"
Wang Yuning, the woman with the gold earrings, could hardly believe it.
Everyone whispered among themselves—then suddenly stopped, as if seized by the same intuition, and turned as one to look at the wooden door.
Creak—creak—
From behind the door came the sound of something pushing against it.
Soon, a pair of deathly pale hands pushed the wooden door open!
As the blood-stained door slowly swung open, everyone's vision suddenly went black, and they lost consciousness...