Chapter Twenty-Four: Rescue

  Su Tong didn't know how long he had been unconscious, only that when he came to, his throat was swollen and sore, as if something was stuck in it. His whole body ached all over, with no place not hurting, his bones seeming to have been disassembled piece by piece and reassembled again, the pain unrelenting, and refusing to obey him.

  "Are you awake?" a man's voice asked beside him.

  Su Tong was shocked, and his mind recalled the events that had occurred before he fainted. He struggled to get up, but a pair of hands pressed down on his shoulders, holding him steady. It was only then that he realized he was no longer lying on the ground, but rather in bed, propped up against a pillow. And the face in front of him belonged to none other than Tang Ao, someone who shouldn't be here at all.

  As soon as she saw Tang Ao, all the fear and grievance in Su Tong's heart were suddenly opened, tears burst out of her eyes, and in an instant, she cried so hard that she couldn't control herself. She realized that she was safe now, and the fragmented memories before she fell into a coma also resurfaced, making it impossible for her to control her emotions.

  That loud crash was the sound of Tang Ao bursting open the door. Fortunately, Su Tong had already opened the door earlier because he wanted to leave, so when Zhang Min pulled and tugged at it, he only managed to close it again, which was equivalent to just locking it with a simple latch. Moreover, the small hotels in the county town have limited conditions, whether it's the door or the lock, they are all somewhat old-fashioned. Otherwise, Tang Ao would have had a much harder time rushing in on time.

  After Tang Ao rushed into the house, he clearly saw the situation in the room and rushed forward to pull Zhang Min away from Su Tong. He gave him a heavy punch, knocking Zhang Min to the ground. What was strange was that under normal circumstances, one would either choose to flee and escape capture or engage in close combat with Tang Ao, even going so far as to kill him to silence him. The only thing one wouldn't do is still think about Su Tong and try to pounce on her again.

  Zhang Min was indeed doing just that, he slowly got up, his eyes red, and rushed back to tear at Su Tong, only to be knocked down again by Tang Ao. At first, Tang Ao also thought that Su Tong had encountered a wolf in sheep's clothing, but when he had already knocked Zhang Min down four times, the latter did not engage with him, but instead kept thinking of Su Tong, which made him feel something was off.

  Su Tong vaguely remembered that Tang Ao seemed to have taken something and pressed it hard on Zhang Min's head, after which she had no impression at all.

  She wanted to speak, but her throat was burning and she couldn't make a sound. This made Su Tong anxious, Tang Ao hurriedly comforted her, signaling her not to worry, carefully helping Su Tong up from the bed, letting her drink some water. Tang Ao's expression was extremely tense with concern, thinking that Su Tong was uncomfortable somewhere, so he anxiously opened his mouth, and softly asked while she drank: "Is it uncomfortable somewhere? Just look at me."

  Su Tong slowly shook his head, to say that he was uncomfortable, there were almost no comfortable places on him now, but those curiosity and doubts in his heart could be put aside for the time being, and he didn't have the mind to care about them at the moment.

  "How... did you get here?" Su Tong asked with great effort.

  "This question will be answered later, I'll ask you a question first. How do you feel about your body now? Can you hold on? If you can hold on, I'll take you back home. It's not good to stay here, it's...not very clean, and there's also someone who just fainted over there, with no place to put them." Tang Ao pointed to the side.

  Su Tong tilted her head and only then discovered that Zhang Min was lying on the floor beside another bed, unconscious with several bruises on his face. She estimated that these were left over from when he had fought with Tang Ao earlier. She hastily looked at Tang Ao again and finally let out a sigh of relief. It seemed that the difference in fighting strength between these two people was still quite large. Tang Ao's face didn't have any external injuries, just the back of the hand that was propping him up against the bed had some red swelling. This wasn't strange at all, it clearly showed that he had used too much force when hitting Zhang Min earlier, so his hand was now red and swollen.

  "Help me call the police." Su Tong said in a low voice, seeing Zhang Min still there, she felt both angry and scared. She was angry that if Tang Hao hadn't arrived just in time like a godly soldier descending from heaven, something terrible would have happened to her already. She was afraid of what to do if he woke up again later, should she knock him out once more?

  "It's okay, he won't wake up until tomorrow morning, you don't have to be afraid," Tang Ao comforted Su Tong, as if seeing through her concerns. "And there's no need to call the police either. Just now when I was dealing with him, I found that his whole body was a bit strange, his pupils were dilated and his eyes were unfocused. We'll think about this later. You definitely can't stay in this room anymore. Did you encounter anything else unusual tonight, aside from this guy? I mean, anything related to...that aspect."

  Su Tong didn't dare to hide from Tang Ao, nodding her head. Her throat was very sore, so she couldn't say too much for the time being. Otherwise, she would have liked to immediately pour out all her experiences to Tang Ao.

  "Don't worry, don't say anything for now, save some energy. Let that man stay here, I'm not so kind-hearted to let him treat you like that and then bring him back with me." Tang Ao said half-jokingly to Su Tong, then reached out to help her up, supporting her as she slowly got up and walked out of the room door.

  After a fierce struggle, Su Tong was thoroughly exhausted and walked along the winding corridor with Tang Ao almost half-supporting her. Although she didn't need to exert much effort, she still stopped several times before reaching the front hall. Once inside, Su Tong signaled for Tang Ao to wait a moment while she recounted in a barely audible voice everything that had happened since her arrival, from check-in to the strange occurrences afterwards.

  "I think the waiters here know something, I want to ask them clearly." She said to Tang Ao.

  Tang Ao listened and furrowed his brow, nodding as he led Su Tong to the front desk of the small hotel in the county town. The service staff wouldn't be at the front desk all night, it was already past 10pm, so they had gone back to the duty room to rest. Tang Ao pressed the call bell.

  After a while, the older service staff who had taken Su Tong to check in earlier walked out of the duty room with a yawn, her expression still slightly impatient. However, when she saw that it was Su Tong standing beside the front desk, looking particularly haggard and being supported by someone else, with a purplish-red mark on his neck that hadn't faded yet, she was startled and immediately became tense, forcing a smile as she asked, "Is there something?"

  "What's going on with that room?" Tang Ao asked seriously, seeing the older waitress's expression change. Before she could speak, he cut off her retreat, "You don't need to make excuses, just look at her and you should know something happened. If I hadn't arrived in time, the consequences would have been irreparable. You knew that room had problems, yet you still let guests stay there. Isn't this making a joke of other people's safety?"

  The older waiter awkwardly smiled and stuttered, saying: "Actually, it's a misunderstanding. I've heard something about it, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes, and I don't know if it's true or not. Then there's a new kid who just started working here, she handled the check-in for your girlfriend. When I saw it, everything was already done, so I didn't dare to stop her, afraid that your girlfriend would be unhappy. This reason, even if I say it out loud, people may not believe it. And if our manager finds out, I'll be in trouble too, so I just kept quiet."

  She was clearly watching Tang Wei carefully supporting Su Tong, while Su Tong's weakness almost entirely relied on Tang Wei. This posture looked very intimate, so she automatically assumed they were a couple. Su Tong felt a bit embarrassed, but it wasn't the right time to clarify their relationship with the other party. Tang Wei seemed to think the same way, he ignored the older waiter's misunderstanding of their relationship and remained expressionless, asking: "What's going on? What happened in that room before? The things inside are very fierce, do you know?"

  "Oh, it's really true! It's not just a rumor...". The older waiter shuddered. "I've only heard about this through hearsay, but apparently, the location of this hotel used to be a factory many years ago. There was a young and beautiful female worker who was liked by many men, which made her particularly unpopular among her female colleagues. One night, she was working overtime and didn't follow safety protocols - she didn't tie up her hair or wear a hat, and her long black hair got caught in the machine. She screamed for help, but the other women were either too scared or unwilling to assist her, and it took them a while to finally turn off the machine. By then, the woman's scalp had been ripped off along with her hair, and she was bleeding profusely. In an attempt to free herself, her fingers got caught in the machine as well, and her bones were crushed. She died shortly after being taken to the hospital.

  After that incident, the factory became haunted - the machine would turn on by itself at night, even though no one dared to use it again. Eventually, the factory went bankrupt and was demolished, and this hotel was built in its place. The room where the accident happened is now a guest room, but apparently, it's cursed. Many people have tried to stay there, but strange things always happen, so we've left it as a storage room instead. I didn't believe the rumors either... until today."

  He raised his hand to signal her not to continue, then instructed her: "From now on, try not to let anyone live in that room. If someone must stay there, arrange for a young and strong man, but not a single person, and do not allow women to enter that room. This is very important. If you don't strictly follow this, just because nothing happened this time doesn't mean nothing will happen next time. If something really happens, I'm afraid the hotel staff won't be able to bear such great responsibility, and there's no way to explain it to outsiders."

  The older waiter didn't expect Tang Wei, a young man in his prime, to talk about this kind of thing with such confidence and fluency, and was taken aback. After nodding repeatedly, he thought to ask tentatively: "If you go before dawn... will there be any danger?"

  Tang Ao didn't say yes or no, he furrowed his brow and asked instead: "What do you think?"

  "Oh, I see, I understand," the older servant nodded repeatedly. "Then we'll go back tomorrow at noon around twelve o'clock, is that safer? Forget it, no one will live in that house again anyway, so just leave it there. I don't dare to go collect it, let someone else do it, what if they really run into something..."

  She shuddered again and didn't dare say any more, probably thinking it was terrifying herself.

  Su Tong listened on the side, feeling that the older waiter's so-called legends should all be true. The female ghost he had encountered was exactly as she described - with black and long hair, torn off from her scalp, and even the tips of her fingers were crushed by the machine, every detail matched.

  However, she still had a question. The female ghost originally wanted her hair, but suddenly said something even more severe out of the blue and then disappeared. What was that something even more severe?

  These doubts, Su Tong finally gathered enough strength on his way back and poured them out to Tang Ao all at once.

  "Don't rush, ask one by one. First pick the one you're most interested in, and then ask the rest along the way." Tang Ao glanced at Su Tong through the rearview mirror as she lay on the back seat, her physical strength still weak, unable to support her body even when sitting up, so she was arranged to lie down in the back. To be honest, this girl was actually one of the few girls he had come into contact with who had a strong personality, if it were an ordinary person, after experiencing so many things in these few days, they would probably not have collapsed or gone crazy, but also wouldn't still be as rational as she was.

  "So, how did you manage to get here?" Su Tong hesitated for a moment before asking the question that he most wanted an answer to at this point.

  Tang Ao listened and then fell silent for a while before asking: "If I said telepathy, would you believe me?"

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