Players, Please Board the Train

Things on Dr. Deng’s end could wait for now. After Xu Huo visited the Duchess, it was time for the Rose Castle banquet.

The day before the banquet, Xu Huo’s female companion, Angel, arrived at the castle ahead of time, mainly to practice the dance together.

After their test dance, Xu Huo intended to send Angel back, but she didn’t want to leave. She pouted and begged to stay at the castle for a night, wanting to see the garden maze in the evening.

Xu Huo didn’t force her to leave. He asked Mr. Dong to show her around while he returned to the study.

Accompanied by Mr. Dong, Angel pursed her lips and said, ”I didn’t expect the Baron to be so unromantic. He won’t even accompany a guest. What could be more important than his female companion?”

Mr. Dong was well-versed in dealing with noble young ladies. ”Sir is preparing for tomorrow’s banquet. With so many guests, the host can’t afford to be discourteous.”

The cute and charming Angel reluctantly accepted this excuse. She yawned and said, ”Whatever. I don’t feel like wandering around anyway. Where’s my room?”

Mr. Dong led her to a guest room on the second floor. After preparing everything she requested, he said at the door, ”Miss Angel, the castle has recently been renovated and is easy to get lost in. It’s best not to wander around after dark. If you need anything, you can ring the bell.”

Angel waved her hand impatiently, indicating she understood.

Mr. Dong left.Night fell quickly. Perhaps because the weather had changed too rapidly, it began to rain outside, accompanied by fog, plunging the castle—which had most of its lights turned off—into thick darkness.

After midnight, the door to the second-floor guest room suddenly opened. Angel, having shed her cumbersome long dress and wearing comfortable pajamas, appeared barefoot in the hallway.

She carried no lighting tool, creeping along the dimly lit corridor toward the stairway.

”Crack!” The lights flickered suddenly. Angel nervously turned around, only to see the flickering lamp sputter a few times before brightening again. She let out a breath and turned to move forward, only to sense a dark shadow flash past her side!

Her eyes widened as she stared at the wall opposite her—it was still the same wall, ornately decorated with beautiful patterns.

Rubbing her eyes, she dismissed her suspicions and continued forward. But after walking a short distance, she felt something was off. She stopped under a hallway lamp and looked back and forth: Was the castle’s hallway really this long? And the stairway was far too dark!

Angel hesitated, but soon steeled her resolve. She grabbed a lamp and held it up as she found the stairs.

When she saw the staircase, her heart relaxed—but before she could even exhale, all the lights in the hallway suddenly went out!

Not just the second-floor corridor, but the faint glimmers of light from the first and third floors were all extinguished too. Now, only the lamp in her hand was still lit.

Darkness surged in from all directions. Angel instinctively stood frozen for a few seconds before springing into action.

Fortunately, a faint, dim glow from outside still seeped through, keeping the castle from being completely pitch-black.

But just as she started walking toward the third floor, she looked up and seemed to catch a skirt hem fluttering past the stairway landing.

”Miss Xu, is that you?” Angel whispered.

There was no response from the third floor, nor any sound at all. When she finally reached the top, she saw a beauty portrait pasted against the wall by the corridor’s edge, its edges white.

So that’s what she’d seen—a painting.

Angel glanced at it and moved on. But the moment her gaze shifted away, the painting on the wall floated down on its own, landing on the floor and transforming into a young woman in a white nightgown.

The Painting Woman looked slightly different from when she’d seen her during the day. Curious, she followed behind Angel for a few steps. Watching her lift her lamp and peer left and right, the Painting Woman quickly lost interest and turned back to her own room.

As the paper slid through the crack in the door, it made a faint rustling sound, startling Angel into spinning around. She raised her lamp high to scan the distance.

The stairway was too far to make out anything clearly, but there was nothing nearby.

She took two uncertain steps back, confirming that nothing was in the hallway before turning around. But then she realized—the painting on the wall was gone!

Angel jerked back a step, but a second later she stepped forward again to check. That painting had been strange. All the decorations in the castle hallway were uniform; even the hanging paintings were framed. Though the art style was a bit eerie, there was no way a loose piece of paper would be pasted here alone.

A faint sense of dread crept in. She turned her head to look down the corridor, only to find in shock that the hallway seemed to have no end. The same patterns stretched on endlessly, with symmetrical decorations and paintings repeating over and over. The entire corridor had suddenly become utterly grotesque!

Angel turned to leave, but as she set foot on the stairs, she saw something writhing inside one of the picture frames nearby...

The dim lamplight shifted toward it, and the thing inside the frame turned at the same time: long black hair hung limply down, a face with barely discernible features covered in red splotches, bulging eyeballs that looked like they might fall out at any moment... and when they caught the light, those eyeballs abruptly swiveled to the side!

Angel screamed, dropped her lamp, and ran. She kept glancing back as she fled, only to see more writhing objects emerge from the picture frames behind her, even strange hands and feet reaching out from within!

”Ahhh!” She couldn’t hold back her screams any longer, frantically slapping and twisting at the doors on both sides. But the castle seemed empty—no one came out. When she finally managed to open a door, she pushed it open only to find a solid wall behind it!

”Bang! Bang! Bang!” Angel kept opening doors in a frenzy, but the ones she could open either led to oddly cramped spaces or normal rooms that were also hung with the same frames.

And so, running for her life, she finally spotted a window at the end!

Without a second thought, she leaped out from the third floor!

It was a significant drop. Angel landed hard, but her physical condition was decent. Glancing back to see the ghostly face still plastered to the wall, she scrambled on all fours into the garden.

The castle was connected first to a greenhouse area, then to the garden maze. The paths in the greenhouse had been recently altered, and there were plenty of tall plants. Angel got lost as soon as she entered, wandering around without finding an exit. But she was clever enough to find a slightly open space, look toward the castle, and run in the opposite direction.

Through sheer perseverance, she finally made it into the garden maze before long.

Though the maze’s paths were laid out before her, there were far too many forks. After just a few turns, Angel realized she was lost again. She tried to backtrack but couldn’t find the right way. The endless stairs here seemed to go on forever, and the uneven steps were much harder to navigate than flat ground. In her panic, she had already fallen several times!