"Shit!" Wu Xiaoming fell from his chair and almost hit his head on the floor. The rest of the crew were startled and turned to Wu Xiaoming, concerned and confused.
"Are you okay? " Tammy asked, frowning.
"Wait, did you just have another one of those dreams?" The cameraman asked, his eyes widened.
"Yeah - maybe?" Wu Xiaoming sat back on his chair. His forehead and back were covered in sweat, a few droplets even dripped from to the ground in front of him. His heart was pounding his chest, and his arms were trembling uncontrollably.
He checked his own character panel - nothing was out of the ordinary, except for his currency count: 15233 Spirit Fragments. Just by dying from that strange ghost fire explosion, he lost more than 7 thousand Spirit Fragments, which was more than 30 percent of his previous total. He double checked his Vision Slivers - the count was still 99. What could have caused this? Maybe it was the overwhelming darkness of the place, or it could be the strange ghost fire. "Sorry - sorry, I'm just - a bit dizzy right now."
"Okay, want some water?" Tammy asked as she stood up and walked to a water cooler sitting in the corner of the room: "Or beer? Soft drink?"
"Water, thank you." Wu Xiaoming rubbed his temples. The death was too swift, he barely felt the shockwave and the heat of the fire. The thing that bothered him the most right now was that apparently, the penalty for death could very well be way more than what he previously imagined - this meant he could face additional risk when exploring the ethereal realm in this place.
With some chilled water down his throat, his heart beat finally slowed down by a bit, and the shaking stopped. He took a deep breath before looking up - everyone else in the room was still looking at him. The cameraman even pointed a handheld camera at him.
"Well - it was another weird dream." Wu Xiaoming let out another long exhale before coming up with a relatively sanitized version of his "dream": "I was stuck in this hotel, and I was wandering - wandering from place to place, right. And then I ran into a man - I'm pretty sure he was a ghost or a spirit, because he was floating and had no shadow on the ground. He was yelling like 'No' and 'Why', before he - he just killed me."
Everyone paused for a moment, either waiting for more, or confused at the simplicity of the story.
"Wait - that's it?" Tammy asked.
"I was out for only a few - a few minutes, right? That was it." Wu Xiaoming scratched his head.
"Yeah, just about twenty five minutes." Leslie McKinsey nodded, frowning: "What else? Can you describe the surroundings a little? What did the ghost look like?"
"The surrounding is just this hotel - I was in a hallway, I think somewhere upstairs. And the man - " Wu Xiaoming hesitated, he was able to recognize the shadow as a man, but he was just unsure how to describe his looks beyond looking kinda European with a somewhat stylish mustache - "Wait." He frowned, then he asked: "Can someone show me a picture of Sproutlinger? I mean the original builder of this hotel."
"Sure." Tammy picked up her laptop and did a quick search, before long she was able to pull up an online encyclopedia page, with a few black and white pictures of Norman Sproutlinger, the first builder and owner of the Sproutlinger Hotel.
Norman Sproutlinger was a pretty chubby man, with a big beard, wide chin and apparently a fondness for cigars. But that was definitely not the man.
"Hmm - that's not him." Wu Xiaoming shook his head.
"How about his first son, Nicolas Sproutlinger?" Tammy immediately switched to another page.
Pale in the face, a stylish mustache, thinner than his father - it seemed to just be him.
"That's him!" Wu Xiaoming's eyes opened wide with this realization: "But how did you - "
"He's the first and only son of Norman Sproutlinger. He came to the US with his father, and ended up helping his father manage the hotel. But unfortunately, he died of illness when he was around forty years old." Tammy sighed: "And this might be the primary reason Norman Sproutlinger ended up selling it in his later years."
"Did the first death of the hotel happen before or after the passing of his son?" Wu Xiaoming asked, almost out of instinct.
"Hmm, never thought of that." Tammy scratched her nose: "Let me take a look - "
"Dude." Jake the sound guy raised his voice slightly: "Are you saying - what I think you're saying?"
"Huh? What do you think I'm saying?" Wu Xiaoming was a bit confused at first, then immediately realized how his question sounded.
"I think you're saying, there's some kind of magical ritual." Jake the sound guy raised his right hand, with his index finger standing straight and pointing up: "That Norman Sproutlinger used a ritual to try to revive his son, but then something went wrong - "
"Jake, we're making a reality show, not an actual horror movie." The cameraman groaned.
"Yeah, but - we're trying to make it look like a horror movie, right?" Jake shrugged.
"That's a cool idea, but I don't think they'll let us run it." Leslie McKinsey sighed: "But boy wouldn't that be a good story to tell. It's like - paranormal true crime."
"But - that COULD be the case, right?" Wu Xiaoming frowned: "But - do things like this really exist?"
"You're on a paranormal investigation show." Tammy couldn't control her laugh.
"Well yeah. But ghosts are one thing, evil revival ritual's another." Wu Xiaoming sighed: "Like Jake said - what if Norman Sproutlinger DID try something, and it backfired? What if - well, the evil ritual was real, and so was its effect? It could explain all these deaths - the ghost in the 404 and even the Wandering Dream."
"That is gonna be worrisome, if it were true." Leslie McKinsey sighed and laid back on his chair: "But - let's not worry about it, alright? Let's just wrap up the first episode first and worry about - about other things later."
"Okay, okay." Wu Xiaoming took a deep breath and laid back on his chair as well: "Sorry guys, please carry on. "
"Let us know if you remember anything new, huh?" Leslie McKinsey nodded at Wu Xiaoming and went back to his work.
"Also, I'll check on Nicolas Sproutlinger more - see if we can dig up more information about him." Tammy smiled and turned back to his computer as well.
Wu Xiaoming did not want to get back into the ethereal realm just yet, so he had to sit in the room and play with his phone for the rest of the night. It was as boring as it sounded, so he ended up sitting on the floor and meditating for a brief moment - it was not something he liked or really knew how to do, but it beat scrolling on his almost out of battery phone.
When the morning finally came, Andria was the first one to meet and greet them when the crew left the control room - apparently, the upper management of the hotel, meaning the delegate assigned by the current owner and possibly his children, granted them a limited approval for shots in the hall in front of the blank wall that was once the entrance to the Queen's Suite. And conditional approval meant - the shots must be approved by the hotel management before releasing into the public, and should not contain any allusion to graphic details of past incidents.
The director agreed without a question.
Yet, when they were actually doing the shoot, Wu Xiaoming finally realized the unintended accuracy of Jake's theory. Even with the entrance sealed and the entire entrance blocked behind a thick wall, he could see the black smoke seeping through the cracks and crevices along the wall and sense the chilling energy radiating from behind.
"Do people work on this floor?" Before they would start shooting, Wu Xiaoming asked Andria as he was getting ready.
"Of course. But people tend not to stay long, because - maybe because of the changed layout and its blockage of the airflow, this area is always cold, even during summer, so - " Andria shook her head: "Yeah - it's why I didn't want you to shoot here - most people think it's bad luck, and we wouldn't want anything to jeopardize your show and get bad PR."
"Well, it's a risk worth taking." Wu Xiaoming chuckled, acting like a real actor hungry for fame.