"Little girl, find a place to stay outside. The Muyuan District doesn't accept guests."
The blind old man sat by the entrance of the inn and shook his head at Tao Qingqing.
Others might have left, but Tao Qingqing had followed Wen Wen for so long that she was thick-skinned enough. She directly stuffed some banknotes into his hand, expecting him to give her a room.
If it weren't for the fact that the old man was blind, Tao Qingqing would have already hypnotized him.
The old man sighed, then fumbled through a small bag in front of him and took out a key. He only took one banknote, returning the rest along with some change to Tao Qingqing.
Tao Qingqing counted the money and found that the old man had charged the same price as a normal inn. She didn't know how he managed it.
Entering the inn, despite a gloomy aura, it was surprisingly clean, as if it were constantly tidied. However, there was only the old man in the entire establishment; no other staff members were visible.
After finding her room, Tao Qingqing checked it over and then lay on the bed, using the bats she had released to observe the people with unusual expressions she had spotted in the market earlier.
Everything appeared normal during the day, but as evening approached, Tao Qingqing noticed several men emerging from their homes, carrying cleavers, axes, and other sharp weapons, their expressions somewhat ferocious.
They seemed to know where Tao Qingqing was, heading directly in her direction without taking any detours.
Judging by their menacing demeanor, they clearly had no good intentions when they found Tao Qingqing.
Perhaps this was how some ordinary people who stayed here overnight disappeared.
At the same time, two other people were searching for Tao Qingqing: the two security guards stationed at the entrance of the Muyuan District. Like the others in the district, they wore vacant expressions, but their mission was to prevent outsiders from staying here.
The two groups met at the entrance of the inn. There was no conflict; instead, they tacitly watched the inn, remaining silent.
When the sun was half-hidden below the horizon, both groups departed from the inn in unison, and ultimately, nothing happened.
Tao Qingqing stood by the window, gazing at the disappearing sun. She knew that when night fell, bad things would occur.
The reason the two groups left must have been related to the coming darkness. Besides the night, the inn itself likely had issues, as it was the only place in the entire Muyuan District that exuded even a trace of negative energy.
Night finally descended. The stars in the sky were clearly visible, and the entire Muyuan District was eerily quiet.
Then, the room's telephone rang. The sudden sound startled Tao Qingqing, who took a deep breath to compose herself.
It wasn't that the phone call was unexpected, but rather that the ringtone was the same song she had heard in the market earlier that day...
'Jing Lei's transcendent cultivation, Heaven-Shaking Earth-Splitting Violet Gold Hammer...'
Tao Qingqing rolled her eyes. This kind of phone didn't have a ringtone feature, so this sound was definitely not a coincidence but a sign of something sinister at play. Thus, Tao Qingqing picked up the phone and put it on speaker.
"Zzzzt, zzzzt... You shouldn't be alive in this world, you impolite little b*tch, f***..."
The sound of static and a venomous curse came from the other end of the line, accompanied by faint, mournful music, sending shivers down one's spine.
It felt as if an invisible hand reached out, intending to seize Tao Qingqing's heart and shatter her emotions, but for a vampire, these were less frightening than the song from earlier.
Seeing that Tao Qingqing showed no reaction, the voice seemed insulted, growing louder. Simultaneously, a pale hand with sharp black fingernails emerged from the phone, scratching rapidly.
If Tao Qingqing had held the phone to her ear, she would have been caught. Fortunately, she had put it on speaker.
Failing to grab her, the voice became even more enraged and attempted to force its entire body out of the phone to personally punish Tao Qingqing.
It was a woman with thick black hair, wearing a blood-red robe, her face covered in countless tiny holes, a sight that made one's scalp crawl.
But as she half-climbed out, Tao Qingqing pulled the phone line.
The woman's upper body was instantly severed. She looked behind her blankly, then showed a look of horror.
Her two arms flailed rapidly, crawling around the room like a lizard, staining every corner of the room with black blood.
Then, her presence gradually weakened and with a snap, she completely died.
Tao Qingqing pursed her lips. Her first enemy had been dealt with so easily.
However, what had severed her body wasn't the phone line itself but Tao Qingqing's own power, which had severed the phone's entrance. If an ordinary person encountered a spirit like this and dealt with it the same way Tao Qingqing did, they would likely be doomed.
But the appearance of this spirit was a signal, a signal that the inn had begun to become dangerous.
A dense negative energy permeated the entire inn. Unlike during the day, it no longer felt empty. Tao Qingqing could sense that in addition to herself, there were at least a dozen other guests in the inn.
Whether these guests were human or not... that was something Tao Qingqing would have to see for herself.
She pushed open the door and walked out, seeing a young woman in an apron holding a rag and cleaning the corridor floor with meticulous care, as if polishing a mirror.
As Tao Qingqing passed by, the young woman looked up, revealing a horrifying, rotten face. Only half of her lips remained, and her eyeballs had long since fallen out of their sockets, hanging on either side of her nose.
However, Tao Qingqing paid no mind to this woman, as she was a minor character and showed no aggressive intent towards her.
She explored the inn and encountered several similar cleaning staff, each either missing limbs or possessing ghastly appearances. However, they were all too weak to draw her attention.
It wasn't until Tao Qingqing reached the first floor, standing by the restroom entrance, that she saw a man with a strange appearance, from whom she sensed a subtle threat.
This man didn't have long hair, but his face and front teeth were very long, twice the length of a normal human head. While his ghastly appearance only indicated he was strange-looking, what truly perplexed Tao Qingqing was that this man was standing by the restroom entrance, staring intently at the toilet and swallowing saliva.
The inns here were built a long time ago, so only the first floor had public restrooms, with separate entrances for men and women.
Upon seeing Tao Qingqing, the man spoke, "My name is Oudernet. What do you think is the most delicious thing about this incident?"
Tao Qingqing thought to say, "Blood!"
The man shook his head and pointed at the restroom, "No, it's what's in here."