Jianmen walked towards one of the pods, and examined the wooden door closely, then he clenched his middle finger and index finger from his right hand on the metal nail impaling the wooden doll’s left wrist, which was also somewhat loose and rusty: “Okay, folks, I am going to do something that’s probably stupid or dangerous, be prepared.”

“Huh, what a surprise.” Tze Cha hovered his left hand over the keyboard to sense possible memory remnant if there was any, “Did anyone think it’s gonna be me to do it first?”

“I’m doing it for a good reason.” two thin streams of orange and golden energy came from Jianmen’s fingers and wrapped around the loose nail, then Jianmen raised his left hand, and conjured a nail made of stone that was roughly the same size as the metal nail.

“Mr. Yu, this monk trusts that you’ve considered the consequences, please enlighten us on what you are planning to do.”

“I am going to collect this nail, with which the evil scientists used to collect the energy of memory.” Jianmen said: “We should be able to collect some residual curse energy from it, or even pieces of memory if we’re lucky. This could serve all of us a great deal, even you, Tze Cha.”

With the stone nail in one hand and the metal nail in the other, Jianmen took a long breath and started slowly and carefully removing the metal nail, while holding the stone nail right beside the hole. The two streams of orange and golden energy were not only there to maintain the stability of the nail, but were also there to “read” its energy signatures, which would then feed into the stone nail to make sure that when the metal nail was replaced with it, the change would not cause much disruption and disturbance.

The metal nail was pulled out by Jianmen’s fingers bit by bit, though it was loose already, Jianmen did not dare to pull it out right away. When all that remained was the tip of the metal nail, Jianmen pushed the tip of the stone nail close to the nail hole. Then, after a short wait, with lightning speed, he pulled the metal nail out and pushed the stone nail in.

The room shook, then some smoke came from under the pod and all the holes with nails inside. Some shadows of human faces appeared on the wooden doll’s face, seizing and screaming.

The four in this room were ready to deal with changes in the room due to Jianmen’s warning. But the changes died down soon with no additional changes to the environment in this room or in this entire underground lab structure.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Okay, nice.” Jianmen let out a breath of relief, then handed the nail to Josephine Wong: “Let’s proceed.”

“Who is there?” shortly after leaving this room with the pods and wooden dolls, they heard a mumbling and hoarse voice coming from the depths of the hallway - it seemed to be two voices asking in complete unison, something not at all dissimilar to Jianmen or Josephine Wong: “Who’s there? Come - come to me!”

“That’s no human voice.” Nameless lowered his zen staff and was ready to fight: “It’s trying to hypnotize and disorient us.”

“The baldie’s right, I smell something tasty.” Tze Cha chuckled and started running down the hallway, “Come stop me if you want.”

“God dammit, Tze Cha! Hold up!” fearing that Tze Cha would be unable to help himself when faced with the temptation of high density instances of clustered malice, Josephine Wong immediately started running after him to the best of her abilities - in a speed that was fast enough to not lose him and not too fast so as to cause disturbances in the room. Jianmen and Nameless followed her as well. Along the way, they saw many more rooms on both sides of the hallway that also had pods and desks like the one they were just in, the biggest of which even had a pod that was as tall as a two story house and with a wooden doll of respective size inside, and with many more metal nails impaling many more spots on its body.

Before long, Tze Cha stopped at a room that looked like a spacious office break room, with chairs, snack tables, a broken TV and an open kitchen. This room was not devoid of anything living like all the other rooms, instead, it had one huge seemingly living creature inside.

It was a huge “painting” whose wide side spanned across the whole room, just that it was by no means a regular painting - its canvas seemed to be a piece pale and stretched out human skin, the major shapes and large spots of “paint” were cleanly sliced pieces of human still moving internal organs and bones, the linings thin “strokes” were made from veins and human intestines, and lastly, the left and right sides of the frame were made of two half naked humans who had been cleanly separated from the middle of their bodies and were clearly not one person’s two halves but the left and right half of two separate humans, whose eyes, noses, and mouths were still moving.

“Who’s there?” the two half humans said in unison, and their eyes looked around as if they were scanning the room for any traces of abnormalities, “Come to me! Come to me! I am here … I am waiting!”

Jianmen stared at the picture with a frown on his face, it was only partially because of disgust, and more of the fact that he could tell the “painting” was manually made, which would have taken quite a long time for anyone. Also, it had a pretty tight connection to almost all of the malice in this underground structure, as if the clustered will of the malice was manifesting through it.

“You better confirm your findings soon.” Tze Cha rubbed his hands: “Or else I just won’t be able to help myself.”

“I don’t think you would be able to take it.” Josephine Wong shook her head: “Careful, it still hasn’t noticed that we’re here.”

Jianmen knelt down by the corner of the room, and when he ran his finger through the surface of the floor, he picked up some very fine grey dust.

“Fuck, Ash of Oblivion.” Jianmen sighed and said to himself and Josephine Wong.