Book 3, Chapter 101: Anomalous Hotel

Once he ended his call with Qi Gao, Chen Chuan checked the area on his Realm Pass and found through the related links that this accident had appeared on the news yesterday, which was a rare sight.

After all, Central City’s government paid little to no attention to Roaring Victory District. That place was the epitome of old and backward. The people living there had no citizen status, and the area was filled with gangs of various sizes. Even the City Patrol seldom went there.

Due to this, it was one of the places where supernatural beings appeared quite often. Gold Prawn’s headquarters had been here, too. The hotel was located at the southeast side of Roaring Victory District, and its street led to the center of Central City. It might be due to this that this case had attracted attention.

However, based on what Chen Chuan understood, even if this case had caught people’s attention, there was no chance anyone else would deal with this problem. Suppressing all news about this incident was easier than getting someone to willingly tackle the case.

If a supernatural being was really behind the mass disappearances, it was getting stronger. If Chen Chuan didn’t take it out now, soon, it was going to lead to even more deaths and casualties.

After some planning, Chen Chuan decided to head over to get rid of it.

He took some time to prepare and put all that he might need into a bag, including some ritual materials. Then, he changed into casual clothes before going downstairs to grab his car and driving to the hotel.

On the way, Qi Gao sent him a photo of the missing colleague. She was a bespectacled, short-haired woman in her thirties. In the photo, she wore a company uniform and looked like a capable, professional woman. She had gone missing when a client asked her to go to the hotel to check the guests who had checked in last year.

Since the client had offered her a lot of money and she had assumed, based on past cases, that she wouldn’t be in danger if she didn’t stay in the hotel, she had accepted the mission.

But the hotel was no longer the same as before. Even if she didn’t stay in the hotel, she was still in danger. The moment she stepped inside, she was lost forever.

It had been more than half a month since she disappeared, so Qi Gao didn’t think that his colleague had a good chance of still being alive.

Around 2 p.m., Chen Chuan drove down the road until he reached the area. Some people had put a lot of blockades at the center of the road, but they didn’t ward off the entirety of the wide road.

Chen Chuan slowed down and drove into the warded off area through an opening. Without the obstacles, he had a clearer view of the place inside. The street was deserted, making him feel as if he could see the hotel up ahead, but there were some people taking peeks at him from the corners of buildings and alleys.

They should be gang members, so Chen Chuan ignored them. He continued driving further into the area until he saw the hotel.

There was no parking lot nearby. The ground around the hotel was covered in all sorts of things and trash. Fortunately, there was an empty parking lot a hundred meters away from the hotel, so Chen Chuan parked his car there.

With Frost King Saber in hand, he got out of the car, shut the door, and went to the hotel.

In the beginning, he didn’t notice anything strange, but when he was around forty meters away from the hotel, his second self started blurring out a little.

“Hey! Don’t go in!” someone called out to him.

Chen Chuan stopped and turned around to look at the speaker. Behind him, he saw a boy with a dirty face standing on the roof of a residential apartment. When Chen Chuan looked over, the boy shrank back.

Qi Gao had told him that the place was deserted, but Chen Chuan could sense a number of people watching him. It was only when he arrived near the hotel that the stares dwindled in number.

It made sense. People here couldn’t simply give up on their houses. The only ones who could leave were those with a bit of money on them.

“I’m here to deal with the hotel,” Chen Chuan declared.

He then continued forward, but when he was about to walk in, the boy shouted, “Don’t do it!”

Chen Chuan could understand why the boy and the other residents wouldn’t want him to deal with the hotel. While the anomaly was dangerous, few people would dare to extort them or control them with it around. However, if this was the doing of a supernatural being, then its area of effect was going to keep expanding. The people living here were sooner or later going to be in danger.

Once that happened, they might want someone to take care of the problem for them, but compared to dealing with the supernatural being, the anomalous-event experts here thought that taking out the people involved was easier and cost less money. Once the people involved were gone, the supernatural being would naturally disappear as well.

“Stay there and don’t wander around,” Chen Chuan said in return.

As he spoke, he walked up the hotel’s steps and opened the glass door. The moment he stepped through the entrance, his second self began blurring out badly.

He looked around. The hall was deserted, yet the partially drawn curtains and old chandelier were speckless, as if someone had wiped them clean. The tiles, too, were so clean that they could practically be used as mirrors.

The dining tables in the hall were positioned neatly, and Chen Chuan could see the guests’ clothes on the chairs. The bowls, chopsticks, and food on the tables seemed to have only been recently placed. Chen Chuan even saw a cut butter cake and could smell the buttery aroma from it.

But the mass disappearance had happened last month, and with the current weather, the food should have rotted away a long time ago. However, it still looked fresh.

Chen Chuan touched his Realm Pass. Since his second self was blurring out so badly, he could no longer use his Realm Pass, which was what he had expected.

He first checked the first floor. Aside from the things the guests had left behind, there was nothing else. So, he went upstairs.

Just then, he noticed that the elevator was still lit and could be used. After considering it, he didn’t go in, but took the stairs instead.

Soon after Chen Chuan went into the hotel, five cars drove into the street. The passengers had their hair fashioned like moss and dyed all sorts of colors, which made it clear that they were all from the Moss Gang.

After driving into the area, the cars came to a stop. The gang leader in the first car went outside and waved at an alley. Two people immediately ran over. When the leader put a cigarette in his mouth, his lackey immediately lit it up for him. With a drag of the cigarette, he asked, “Nothing happened over the past two days, right?”

“Those pieces of trash behaved, and no one dared to cause any trouble. But someone drove inside just now. He looked like he was headed to the hotel.”

“Someone actually went there to die?” The gang leader was surprised.

“He might be an agent from some company. Those guys are fearless, as long as you pay them enough,” the lackey answered.

The gang leader spat on the ground and sneered, “I don’t care where he came from. If he wants to die, let him. We just need to act according to what our boss told us. We can’t allow anyone who went in to come out. Set up a proper blockade.”

He picked a few lackeys for the task.

“Got it!”

As the lackeys got to work, one of the confidants asked, “How long do we have to keep an eye on this place?”

The gang leader exhaled and said, “At least two months. The tournament is about to start, so plenty of people from other Central Cities have come over. If this place causes trouble, the government officials will be humiliated. The boss said that as long as we keep this place in check, we’ll get paid handsomely.”

The confidant took a look at the twelve-story-tall hotel. It was the tallest building on the street. He then asked, “Say, if the hotel is really a problem, why can’t we just blow it to kingdom come? Won’t that save us the trouble?”

The gang leader gave him the stinkeye. “Who’s going to do the bombing? You or me? Didn’t you hear that the moment someone gets close to the entrance, they end up walking in as if they’re possessed?”

“No way it’s that damn weird.”

“It’s precisely that damn weird.” Once the gang leader finished his cigarette, he seemed to have realized something and called a few of his lackeys.

“We’re going over to take a look.”

When they arrived in front of the armored car in the parking lot, the gang leader circled it once and gasped in amazement. “It’s just been a few days, and we already got a new car. Call someone to hot-wire it.”

Just then, one of the lackeys noticed a child sneaking a peek at them. He took out his gun and aimed at him.

“Bang!” he shouted. The boy immediately shrank behind the wall, and all of them laughed.

One of the lackeys checked the car and said, “It must belong to that agent. If he was given this mission, he must be someone pretty amazing.”

The gang leader rolled his eyes. “Are you dumb? Do you think there’s anyone who can leave the hotel alive? Just hot-wire it, and we can leave with it.”

But even after fiddling around with the car for a long time, the lackeys weren’t able to figure out how to hot-wire it. One of them said, “This is a modified car. The glass is bulletproof, and the car lock is a heavy rotating disc. We can’t open it.”

The gang leader refused to believe it and went over to check the lock before cursing, because the car lock was really just a shallow, two-millimeter-wide rotating disc.

Phantom Form had made sure that when he modified his car, he also changed the lock according to the special characteristics of his body. Without a certain degree of finger strength and refined force, no one could turn open the car lock. Of course, that was no problem for Chen Chuan. He could open the door with a casual twist, but without special tools, an average person would be stumped.

“I refuse to admit that I can’t take the car. Damn it! Drive a car over. We’re pulling it with us.”

***

Chen Chuan went up to the twelfth floor. The rooms and corridors were all empty. Everything in the hotel had been frozen in time, as if the people inside had just recently left the hotel.

Also, from the moment he stepped inside, he felt a pair of eyes watching him.

At this point, Chen Chuan had explored almost every corner of the hotel, even the roof. There was only one more place he hadn’t checked—the basement.

Since this was a heritage hotel, it didn’t have an underground parking lot. Based on its blueprint, the basement should be the place where the backup generator and cold storage were located.

Chen Chuan went down, opened the two security doors, and entered the basement.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep