This Taoist priest is so unprofessional!

The moment Zhang Chen finished speaking, the air on the second floor seemed to freeze once again.

"Dead...people have died?"

Li Hao's voice trembled violently, and his face, which had just regained some color, turned deathly pale again in an instant.

He leaned against the wall, his legs weak, and he could barely stand.

"Master, you...you're scaring me! I've been managing this place for almost half a year, and I've never heard of anything like this before!"

Zhao Qiang was even more exaggerated; his eyes rolled back, and he almost fainted again.

Zhang Chen glanced at him but ignored him.

He walked up to the computer that caused the accident and gently ran his hand over the cold case.

"This 'thing' is filled with too much resentment."

His voice deepened, as if he were talking to himself, or perhaps explaining to Wang Xiaoer and Li Hao.

"It is so tightly bound to this old game that its obsession is inextricably linked to the game itself."

"Those who develop this kind of obsession often suffer immense resentment and pain during their lives."

Zhang Chen turned around, his gaze sharp as lightning, and stared directly at Li Hao.

"If you want to live, go and investigate the 'past and present' of this internet cafe, dig up its ancestors for eighteen generations!"

Li Hao was startled by his gaze, and his survival instinct overcame his fear.

He scrambled to his feet and fumbled to pick up his flip phone from the ground, his fingers trembling as he opened it.

"I...I'll ask right now! I'll ask right now!"

His first call was to the previous owner who had transferred the internet cafe to him.

The phone rang for a long time before it was answered.

"Hello, who is it?" came a sleepy voice from the other end of the line.

"Brother Wang! It's me, Li Hao! The one who took over the internet cafe from you!" Li Hao's voice was urgent and distorted.

"Oh, it's you. What's the matter so late?" The tone on the other end sounded a little impatient.

Li Hao took a deep breath and asked in a trembling voice, "Brother Wang, I just want to ask, has anything happened at this shop before? Like... like someone died or something?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Dead silence.

Five or six seconds passed before Brother Wang's voice rang out again, but it was now cold and wary.

"What nonsense are you spouting! I don't know anything! Don't bother me!"

"Beep...beep...beep..."

The call was abruptly ended.

Li Hao stood frozen in place, holding his phone, his hands and feet ice-cold.

Wang Xiaoer leaned closer, frowning. "His reaction is strange."

Zhang Chen sneered.

"If you have something to hide, of course something's wrong."

He patted Li Hao on the shoulder.

"Contact the landlord; he definitely knows something."

Li Hao suddenly realized what was happening and quickly pulled out the contract again, finding the landlord's contact information.

This time, the call went through very quickly.

But when Li Hao asked the same question, the other party's reaction was even more intense than the first boss's.

"Are you crazy?! You're cursing me in the middle of the night, wishing someone had died in my house? Get out!"

Another busy signal.

Li Hao was completely at a loss, his face filled with despair.

"Master... what... what should we do?"

Zhang Chen's gaze grew even sharper.

"The more they act like this, the more it indicates that something is going on."

He hesitated for a moment, then said to Li Hao, "Call the first guy surnamed Wang again and tell him that things have gotten out of hand, that someone has died. If he doesn't tell the truth, the police will come after him first."

Li Hao dared not disobey, so he had no choice but to grit his teeth and dial the number again.

This time, the other side didn't get hooked.

Under Li Hao's combination of deception and intimidation, Brother Wang finally couldn't take it anymore and revealed a name and phone number.

"I took over this shop from a guy named Uncle Liu. He ran it the longest, about seven or eight years. I don't know anything before that, you'll have to ask him yourself! Don't come looking for me again!"

Getting this phone number felt like grasping at the last straw.

Li Hao's fingers were trembling as he quickly dialed the number.

The call connected, and an old, hoarse voice came through.

"Feed?"

"Hello, is this Grandpa Liu?" Li Hao's voice carried a barely perceptible sob.

"It's me, who are you?"

Li Hao dared not beat around the bush any longer, and poured out everything, including the strange things that happened in the internet cafe and his own speculations.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

Just when Li Hao thought the other party was about to hang up, a long sigh, as if it had exhausted all their strength, came through the receiver.

"Sigh... what's meant to happen will happen eventually."

The old man's voice was filled with weariness and a sense of vicissitude.

"Young man, you're right."

"People died in that place ten years ago."

Li Hao almost dropped his phone.

The old man seemed to have opened up and began to slowly recount that long-forgotten past.

"Back then, my internet cafe was called 'Speed ​​Space,' and it was the first internet cafe in the area with broadband."

"There was a boy named Song Wen, who was about eighteen or nineteen years old, and he spent all his time at my place."

"That kid doesn't talk much and is very thin, but he's really talented at playing games. Especially that game called 'Tales of the Underworld,' he's famous throughout the entire server for his skill in it."

"I remember, the day it happened, um... it was the final of the server-wide championship in the game. I heard that if he won, he would get the first artifact on the entire server, called something like 'Netherworld Demon Blade'."

The old man paused, seemingly lost in memories.

"That afternoon, he got into an argument with another guy over a machine. That guy was also a brat; his family had a little money, and he was always bossy."

"The two started arguing and then came to blows. They pushed and shoved each other all the way from the private room to the stairwell."

"I was settling accounts at the bar when I heard a muffled thud at the bottom of the stairs, followed by screams."

"I ran up there and saw...it's all over."

"Song Wen hit the back of his head on the corner of the stairs. He lay there bleeding profusely and died on the spot."

Li Hao felt a chill run down his spine. He subconsciously glanced at the stairwell behind him, a place he knew all too well.

"Then...and what happened next?" he pressed.

"And then?" The old man's voice was filled with a deep sense of powerlessness and mockery.

"Later, the police came and asked a few questions. The kid who pushed the other boy had pulled some strings and spent a lot of money. In the end, the incident was classified as an 'accident,' saying that two children were playing around and accidentally fell down the stairs."

"It was left unresolved."

The old man let out another long sigh.

"Song Wen's parents were just ordinary workers. They received some compensation, cried a few times, but what else could they do? They couldn't fight back."

"Since then, strange things have been happening at my internet cafe. First, I would always hear someone crying on the second floor at night. Then, the computers would inexplicably crash with blue screens, especially the ones on the second floor."

"I consulted several 'masters,' but none of them helped. In the end, I couldn't hold on any longer, so I sold the shop."

"Oh dear! What a tragedy, such a young man."