The group seemed intrigued enough by Wu Xiaoming's fake story at first, that he kept running into different corners and then finally found a very strange door, and he woke up just by entering it. But unfortunately, they were not very impressed when he was done.
"Wait - did you - did you guys get anything?" Wu Xiaoming scratched his head. There was no way he would tell anyone here about how the dream actually went down. Not only would it be a safety hazard for him, but also quite disrespectful towards the man who helped him.
"Unfortunately, just your facial expressions. You did seem to be some kind of troubled dream, but the footage was - less than ideal." Leslie McKinsey sighed.
"Meaning - nothing else besides my face?"
"Meaning - the only thing INTERESTING is your face." Leslie McKinsey sighed and laid back on his chair: "Everything else - it's nothing. Nothing jumps out, not even a long enough static so we can claim EM interference."
"Shit." Wu Xiaoming rubbed his face in a bit of feigned frustration. It was still a bit - less than ideal that nothing was captured. But right now he just wanted to check out his gains from that ordeal, and find out where this Shenmue Buddhist Temple was.
"That's okay. That's okay." Leslie McKinsey let out a long exhale: "Just - just take a break for now, okay? And tomorrow we'll ask Andria again about taking shots near where the Queen's Suite's at."
"Okay. Okay, and then that'll be this episode?"
"Mostly, yeah. Maybe we'll need some more footage to pad the length. But we've got enough of that." Leslie McKinsey nodded.
"If not, there's still narration - we're going to record that anyway - " Tammy shrugged.
Leslie McKinsey shook his head and waved his hands immediately: "Maybe not right now, narration is - it's lame and bland. We'll use it only when we absolutely have to. Remember - it should look and feel like a horror movie. It's what the audience wants."
"Okay, but we'll record narration when we need to, right? " Tammy raised an eyebrow: "You know what they say, if it's on TV, there's always someone sleeping in front of it. If there's no narration, then you'd lose at least one third of the audience."
"Yeah - only when we really, REALLY need to." Leslie McKinsey shook his head: "Okay, Xiaoming, thank you. Good work, take a break and try to remember - the more the better. "
"But - why would anyone believe me?" Wu Xiaoming scratched his head: "Most of the previous victims didn't remember much, right? I'm the first one to - "
"We'll cut two versions and see what the test audience says." Tammy shrugged: "Not a problem - what matters is we need to make it entertaining."
"Okay - okay. I'll see what I can remember." Wu Xiaoming nodded then headed back to his chair. The rest of the crew started their work - backing up all the footage and recordings, early editing, and discussing where they could shoot some random filler footage for transitions and trailers. Wu Xiaoming searched "Shenmue Temple" on his phone - and surprise, it was only a few miles from the hotel, at the top of a small hill. A Japanese Buddhist Temple, still running till this day. The next opening hour was 8 in the morning, it was usually a little busy, and had seven reviews with an aggregated 4 star review rating.
If the shoot would wrap tomorrow, then he could simply visit. Judging from the photos on the temple's official website, the style of which reminded him of the early internet days, it was not a big temple, so he could simply walk around and see where the man wanted him to take him.
Content with the plan, he adjusted his posture and began napping - there was still some time for some fight and exploration.
Current currencies: 23555 Spirit Fragments, 99 Vision Slivers. The Mo-sin-a netted him more than two thousand Spirit Fragments and 8 Vision Slivers. And somewhat surprisingly, no experience gained - not visibly from the bar anyway. When he thought about it a little - it might be because the final "kill" was not done by him but the spirit of the man, and the currencies he got were simply tokens of gratitude from the man; or it could be that it was barely a fight.
But no matter, he could always gain experience another way.
The creepy semi-humanoid creature with slender arms in the building was gone. But somehow the interior of the hotel was darker than before. He walked out of the room. The hallway outside was also darker, he could barely see the turns and open doors that were not immediately close to him.
He walked towards the staircase with footsteps as light as he could make do. It was not easy, for the stairs were made of hard concrete, with decorative marble tiles here and there.
"I surely grew a lot of guts." Wu Xiaoming shook his head and laughed at himself. If not for the fact that he was already quite familiar with this realm, he would have never kept wandering around like this. Right now, what drove him was more than the survival instinct of needing to earn enough currencies to sustain him, he also grew fond of the adventure, the thrill of battle and the mystery behind this world with at least two separate but mirroring realms.
He went up two floors before exiting the staircase - not because it was chosen at random but because on this very floor, he saw a glimmer of fire or light at the far end of the hallway, giving off a red and orange glow.
From where he was, he could not make out whether it was fire or some other source of light. The darkness around was so thick and heavy he could almost feel it with his fingers. He suppressed his "energy vision" for a brief moment - the surrounding area grew brighter, which proved to be even more stressful and worrisome.
After walking by three or four doors, he finally got a clear look at the source of red and orange light - a small ball of flame floating in the air, a ghost fire, if one would.
And he was not the only one drawn to it. Around ten or fifteen steps ahead of Wu Xiaoming, was an almost completely transparent shadow of a woman, levitating, whose feet were at least half an arm's length above the ground.
The ghost fire was floating at the junction of the hallway Wu Xiaoming was in and another hallway vertical to it. From both sides of the ghost fire, came other shadows floating towards it as well.
With a quick count, there were maybe four or five of these vague shadows being drawn. Four OR five, because at a distance there was one particularly big, and he could not tell if it was that of one big person or of two people close together.
Caution and curiosity battled in Wu Xiaoming's mind - eventually curiosity won by a slim margin, and eventually he decided to inch forward step by step.
"Why?" A male voice coming from the right part of the intersecting hallway. Wu Xiaoming froze and readied his morningstar.
A whiter shadow with some kind of pale glow around its silhouette floated towards the ghost fire, zig-zagging its way across the space. It was clearly a man, with his hands on his head. The other shadows tried to get out of the way, but apparently this glowing pale shadow had some kind of invisible pull, and just by passing by these other fainter and less colorful shadows were sucked into its body.
"Why!? OH! WHY!" The shadow glowed brighter after swallowing the others, but its cries just seemed louder, sadder and more desperate. It scratched its head, its face, its neck and chest, then with bleeding eyes, it saw Wu Xiaoming.
A beam of golden light shot from Wu Xiaoming's left hand, cutting straight into the shadow's chest area. The very next moment, his morningstar swung right into the shadow's face.
It was as if hitting a very light balloon with thin skin. The shadow was already heavily burned by the golden light, and the impact from the spiked mace head simply exploded it into tiny smithereens.
"Huh?" Wu Xiaoming looked around after rolling on the ground and getting away from a potential counter attack, only nothing came after him - the shadow simply perished.
He checked his currency counts, 23579 Spirit Fragments, the white shadow was not even worth twenty Spirit Fragments.
"NO! PLEASE NO!" The very next moment, another shadow, with a similar appearance to the previous one, appeared from the left part of the intersecting hallway. This shadow was even whiter and had a brighter glow - and more importantly, its body was orbited by several traces of dark red air. And almost in an instant, this shadow, also scratching his head and his other upper body parts, opened his mouth and swallowed the ghost fire.
The ghost fire burned the shadow, gray smoke arose from its eyes, nostrils and ears as it made its way into the shadow's chest area and stomach. The shadow screamed, squirmed and rolled in the air, as if it was suffering from the burns.
Yet, at the same time, the traces of dark red air grew in sizes, as well as brightness. The red glow seeped into the body of the shadow, dying it red, a little bit at a time. Beyond obviously, it was not a good sign for anyone present.
Wu Xiaoming concentrated and readied his morningstar again.
"NO! PLEASE NO!" The shadow screamed once more, this time its voice was almost deafening, even the walls shook along with it. The very next moment, its entire body exploded from the ghost fire, turbulent and scorching flames swallowed Wu Xiaoming whole.