The motel staircase creaked under their feet, each step groaning like a warning. Lu Feng followed behind Kai Lin, tension wound tight in his chest. The air grew colder, heavier—like something was pressing down on them the higher they went.
"Do you feel anything?" Kai Lin asked without turning.
Lu Feng nodded. "Something's watching us. And it doesn't want us upstairs."
"Spiritual resistance," she said calmly. "It fears what we'll uncover."
The second-floor hallway was pitch black. At the far end, Room 203's door stood ajar, flickering light spilling out from inside—almost like an invitation.
"Why not just break in?" Lu Feng asked.
"Each spirit builds its own rules around its domain. Break them, and we risk becoming part of the haunting."
Kai Lin took a small bronze mirror from her coat and pressed it against the wall. Ripples shimmered across its surface, revealing a ghostly image.
A short-haired girl huddled in the corner of Room 203, clutching a tattered doll. Her lips moved in silence, as if humming.
The image twisted.
Now the girl hung from the ceiling, a towel around her neck, tongue out, eyes wide—and her mouth still moving.
"Her name was Fang Keqing, seventeen, high school student. Two months ago, she allegedly committed suicide in this room," Kai Lin explained. "Her family insists she was cheerful. They say she mentioned someone called 'Big Sister' who told her to come live here."
"This motel draws people with issues," Lu Feng murmured.
"It's a low-level summoning field. It magnifies loneliness and despair."
Kai Lin touched the doorknob. "Once we enter, don't believe what you see."
The door creaked open.
The room was pink, cheerful stickers peeling from the walls. Books lined the desk. The air, though, was ice.
Then came the song.
> "Big Sister says—no talking,
> No crying,
> Or your tongue will be bitten off."
Lu Feng whipped around—Kai Lin was gone.
"Kai Lin?" he called out.
Nothing.
The walls turned red. Tiny handprints emerged on the floor, inching toward him.
"Big Sister says—no escape."
A shrill voice filled his head.
"Careful—it's a mind trap!"
A talisman exploded overhead, blasting away the hallucination. Kai Lin stepped through a veil of light.
"You nearly got pulled into the dream layer."
"I saw children," Lu Feng whispered. "All of them said they had a 'Big Sister.'"
"She's a Dream Revenant—lonely in life, now hunting for eternal playmates."
Kai Lin rang a small bell.
A pale girl in white appeared by the bed, eyes hollow, lips curved in a smile. "Big Sister says… we can all stay together…"
Kai Lin summoned a seal formation. "Fang Keqing. Your parents miss you. It's time to go."
The ghost shrieked and lunged.
Lu Feng instinctively stepped in front of Kai Lin, and light surged from within him. A white chain of spirit energy erupted from his hand.
Kai Lin blinked. "That's not normal."
The chain wrapped around the ghost, pulling it into the formation.
"Dreams are prisons. You're free now," Kai Lin whispered.
Silence returned.
Lu Feng fell to his knees, heart pounding.
"She's gone?"
Kai Lin nodded, then looked at him with new eyes.
"You just used a Soul-Bound Chain. Only elite spiritualists can summon that. And yours… it responded to instinct."
Lu Feng looked at his hands. "What am I?"
Kai Lin's expression darkened.
"The fate of this Bureau may have just changed."