CNC: Chapter 34 Part 2

Before she said this, the group just thought it was a bit gloomy and weird. Now, several of the sleepwalkers had pale faces and were extremely scared…

“However, the spiral staircase is full of iron chains and the windows are sealed. It should be the ‘trapped’ formation. In other words, if you die in this ‘grave,’ your soul…won’t be able to leave.”

The exhibition hall fell into dead silence.

Everyone silently exchanged looks, their expressions very ugly.

“This… Hey, Chi Nan, where are you doing?” Old Yu was just about to speak when he saw Chi Nan walking toward the long corridor.

“I’m going to see what exhibits there are to enjoy behind the doors,” Chi Nan explained calmly.

Everyone present was shocked about Chi Nan’s natural calmness.

Only Old Yu had seen Chi Nan’s “unreliable” behavior so he muttered, “At times like this, I miss the little streamer’s seemingly inferior talismans.”

He didn’t expect that this high school student Ye, who looked educated, would follow Chi Nan. His expression was calm like the school had organized a visit to the exhibition hall. He was the best student and closely followed the teacher who led the team.

“Student Ye, aren’t you afraid?” Old Yu couldn’t help asking curiously.

“I’m afraid,” Ye Chang replied in an unconvincing, relaxed tone, “However, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to enjoy the exhibits with Brother Nan.”

Old Yu raised an eyebrow and didn’t speak.

At this time, Chi Nan had already entered the long corridor and found that these doors, painted black like gravestones, were closed. Shadowy candlelight leaked out through the cracks in the doors.

He raised his hand and was about to open a door. Then, he paused in mid-air and changed from the action of pulling the door handle to knocking on the door. “Hello.”

The nerves of the group were already stretched to the limit. Now they saw him knocking on the door to greet someone and were so nervous they couldn’t breathe.

Was it necessary to be polite at this time? The stronger the sense of ritual, the creepier it was…

There was no one behind the gravestone door to respond. Instead, there was a very subtle and distorted “creaking” sound. The closed door automatically opened and revealed the situation inside the room.

“Then I will disturb you.”

Chi Nan neatly entered and dozens of palm-sized candle people entered into view.

“Chi Nan, what is inside?” Old Yu stood by the corridor and asked the question. His voice was restrained and somewhat tense.

Chi Nan answered, “Candle people.”

“What? Are they like the ones we made in the morning?”

“Yes, there are around a dozen of them and the workmanship is very good. It is on the level of Room 107.”

The boys of 107 weren’t happy about being praised at all…

These candle people were exquisitely crafted and had lifelike facial features. There was black hair as the wick and they were placed on special booths like exquisite and artistic handicrafts.

Chi Nan noticed that the wax they were made of was also regular wax.

By this time, Old Yu had already walked over. He saw the over a dozen small candle people in the room and exclaimed, “Are these contemporary candle terracotta warriors?”

His words eased the atmosphere of terror. The rest of the people gradually came over to look at the so-called “contemporary candle terracotta warriors.”

Xia Wei complained, “Bah, it is bad luck. The terracotta warriors are funerary objects, right?”

Ye Chang jokingly said to Chi Nan, “Are we going to be turned into candle people and placed in this ‘grave’?”

Due to the unique spatial structure of the exhibition hall, small sounds could be amplified and Ye Chang didn’t deliberately lower his voice. Everyone heard his words and their mood that had just relaxed became tense. The air cooled.

Among them, Bai Chuan and Gu Xiao had the heaviest and most complicated moods.

Only Chi Nan replied calmly, “Maybe they are souvenirs?”

Old Yu wondered, “…Have you ever seen such horrifying souvenirs?”

Chi Nan was seriously confused. “Aren’t they cute?”

Everyone: ……

Ye Chang also joked with him, “If there is a chance, I will give you one as a souvenir.”

“Okay.”

Old Yu couldn’t listen any longer. “…Student Ye, don’t say such unlucky things.”

Ye Chang nodded with a smile and didn’t say anything else.

Old Yu narrowed his eyes slightly. He stared at this strange high school student in confusion but he couldn’t see anything.

The candlelight in the room was very bright but Chi Nan noticed that under this layer of light, the shadows of these little candle people couldn’t be seen.

He looked down at his feet and then at Ye Chang and everyone else. Their shadows were all normal.

It wasn’t a matter of light. Did these little candle people have no shadows?

Ye Chang saw him staring at people’s shadows in a daze and wondered, “Did you find something?”

Chi Nan was silent for a moment. “Let’s count the number of candle people in the house and then compare them to the number of shadows on the outside wall to see if they are the same.

Ye Chang quickly understood what he meant so everyone was allocated rooms and they checked the number of small candle people one by one.

After around 20 minutes, the 10 sleepwalkers finished counting the number of candle people in the areas they were responsible for.

No one wanted to stay in this grave-like exhibition hall for long, so they all left at the fastest speed and headed straight to the ghost wall behind the fountain in the square.

It was already dark by this time, but the entire Candleman Town was full of light. Still, this didn’t affect them from counting the shadows on the wall.

Even in candlelight, these shadows were clearer than in daytime.

“There are 184.” The girl with short, shoulder length hair called Dyson Sen was particularly sensitive to numbers. She counted the shadows on the wall twice as fast as a normal person.

Old Yu’s eyes twitched. “Are you sure you counted correctly?”

Dyson Sen shrugged. “I have never made a mistake when it comes to counting. If you don’t believe me, you can count it yourself.”

Old Yu pursed his lips. “It seems that Chi Nan’s conjecture is correct. The number of shadows on the wall is the same as the number of small candle people.”

There were 184 shadows on the wall and 184 candle people in the exhibition hall.

Chi Nan took out his phone and aimed the camera at the ghost wall to take a panoramic shot.

Old Yu, who was standing next to him, was curious. “Why do you want to take a photo? Isn’t the number already known?”

Chi Nan seemed dissatisfied with the photo he had just taken so he changed positions and took the photo again. “I’m seeing if the position of these shadows will change.”

Then he looked at the photo he had just taken, but he still wasn’t satisfied.

There was no way. He was particularly bad at taking photos. Forget shooting well, even clearly focusing the photo was difficult for him.

Ye Chang saw him frowning and staring at the screen and took the initiative to come over. “Do you need me to help you take a photo?”

“Thank you.” Chi Nan directly handed the phone to Ye Chang. In any case, anyone could take photos better than him.

Ye Chang received Chi Nan’s phone and murmured softly, “I accidentally pressed the side button and locked the screen.”

He held out the phone to Chi Nan. “Can I trouble you to help me unlock it?”

“1220,” Chi Nan directly told Ye Chang the password.

“Huh?” Ye Chang’s hand paused. Fortunately, the candlelight in the square was bright enough and the slight refraction on his lens covered the fleeting surprise in his eyes.

Chi Nan thought that the other person didn’t understand and repeated it again, “The password to my phone is 1220.”

Ye Chang hummed lightly and lowered his eyes to unlock the phone and open the camera.

Old Yu was standing close by and accidentally heard the password for Chi Nan’s phone. He always felt that these four numbers were familiar. Where did he hear them before?

He frowned and finally remembered it…

This was the number in You Yu’s Dream that finally opened the lockbox. 1220 was 0:20 and it represented the time of You Yu’s death in that instance.

Old Yu remembered this and his heart thumped. He looked at Chi Nan, who had no ups and downs in his expression, and frowned even more.

Soon, Ye Chang took a clear photo of the details of the shadow wall. Chi Nan took back the phone to look at it and his finger accidentally slipped and changed to the photo of the bathtub corpse that Hei Cha had taken for him in You Yu’s Dream.

Of course, Ye Chang also saw it and smiled briefly.

Chi Nan was stiff and he immediately turned off the screen of the phone. “Hei Cha took the photo.”

Ordinary people who saw this type of photo in the photo album would think that the owner of the mobile phone was abnormal, right? Chi Nan reasonably speculated.

Ye Chang’s lips curved up. “Can I ask about the story behind that photo just now?”

“It was a task for a previous instance so I was in that outfit.”

He paused and added, “At that time, I still couldn’t see so I let Hei Cha take a photo as a souvenir.”

He couldn’t see so he had an even stronger desire to keep a souvenir of his appearance at that time, waiting for a day when he could see it.

Chi Nan didn’t mention the process of these wonderful psychological changes but Ye Chang seemed to understand immediately. “It is really good that you can see it now.”

“…Yes.”

Ye Chang added, “It is a good photo and the makeup is cute.”

“…Yes.”

Chi Nan himself thought that this appearance was very good but normal people didn’t have the same aesthetics as him, right? Ye Chang was a really rare person, he thought.

Ye Chang put his hands in his pockets and instinctively rubbed against the cold shell of his pocket watch. “Brother Nan, are you satisfied after gaining a pair of eyes and seeing this world?”

His voice was very low and soft. Chi Nan couldn’t hear it clearly. “What?”

Ye Chang smiled gently. “It’s nothing.”

---

After night fell, everyone ate dinner at the cafeteria and looked around for clues at the dormitory of the candle factory staff members. Perhaps it was because everyone had spent the first night safely, but no one had any clues about this nightmare instance.

They didn’t even know the death conditions. They had just gone to that weird exhibition hall and found that the number of candle people was the same as the number of shadows. There was no other useful information.

It was useless to know key information if they couldn’t find a breakthrough in the dream.

“Perhaps the mission this time is to simply let us prepare for the festival well.” Xia Wei used chopsticks to pick out the pork belly in the bowl, his face full of disgust.

Old Yu sneered. “Do you really think of yourself as a volunteer?”

Xia Wei stuck out his tongue and made a face.

“By the way, what do the candle people have to do with the ghost wall? Those candle people…” Gu Xiao looked at Bai Chuan in the same room as him and stopped talking.

“Who knows…” Bai Chuan replied absent-mindedly. Ever since finding out the box with the reward for being an “excellent volunteer” was empty, he had been brooding over it. Later, he went to the exhibition hall and saw the small candle people who were like funerary items and he became even more uneasy.

“Is it possible that this instance will turn volunteers into candle people so it is called Candleman Festival?”

Rui Rui pointed out everyone’s worries and the atmosphere suddenly dropped.

“Even so, we don’t know the rules for volunteers to become candle people and there is no way to make an effective guess.” The girl called Wu Ying shook her head with a serious expression.

Dyson Sen nodded. “Yes, guessing will just raise our awakening value. It won’t be any good for us.”

The young mother kept looking worried. “So how do we figure out the rules? How did you do it in the past?”

The newcomer’s unique innocence made it hard to answer. The cafeteria was suddenly enveloped in an awkward and serious silence.

Finally, Old Yu put out his cigarette and sighed deeply. “In the past…it was all discovered after victims appeared.”

It was the answer that no one wanted to hear, but it was the clearest answer.

Proofreader: Kat