The Bob family placed another emergency call to the precinct, but this time, the police offered no response whatsoever. A crowd of curious onlookers began to gather nearby, some even going out of their way to stroll past the block. Through it all, Li Yunlongs cottage stood in quiet defiance, blazing with bright, continuous light.
By September 28, 2000, mainstream media outlets were still refusing to cover the bizarre phenomenon surrounding Li Yunlongs cottage, determined to save face and avoid reporting on something so blatantly supernatural. The tabloids, however, held no such reservations. Sensationalized stories began flooding their pages, with one rag even going so far as to draw a direct line between the glowing cottage and the haunting at the police station. That night, Li Yunlongs cottage remained illuminated as usual. The Los Angeles Police Department responded aggressively, locking down the surrounding perimeter once more and barring entry to everyone-especially those damned reporters. Meanwhile, paranormal enthusiasts were taking notice.
By September 29, 2000, the mainstream press was still keeping its distance. Freed from facts, the tabloids launched into full-blown fabrications, unleashing a flurry of wild rumors and absurd theories. A spokesperson for the LAPD vehemently rejected the claims, stubbornly insisting that the police station was most definitely not haunted. Yet when night fell, Li Yunlongs cottage blazed as brightly as ever. True to form, the LAPD cordoned off the area again, arresting every single reporter who dared to cross the line. Outside the perimeter, an eerie crowd of onlookers grew larger by the hour.
By September 30, 2000, even the mainstream news outlets could no longer turn a blind eye, burying small blurbs about Li Yunlongs cottage in minor sections. No one was listening to the official police spokesperson anymore. After so many days, even the department couldn't completely stem the flow of internal leaks. Though hard evidence remained elusive, reporters had pieced together the truth about what was happening inside the precinct-including rumors that a homicide detective had been driven completely insane. At noon, LAPD officers mobilized in force, joining a contingent of bizarre outsiders to surround both the cottage and the neighboring streets. The operation dragged on until five in the afternoon. Because of the heavy blockade, no outsider could tell what was happening within, but one thing was certain: by the time the police pulled back, Li Yunlongs cottage had completely vanished. The authorities had brought in heavy excavators-likely intending to destroy the basement as well-leaving behind a deep, gaping pit where the structure once stood. Yet as darkness descended, Li Yunlongs cottage stubbornly materialized right where it had been, its windows ablaze with light once again. Unsurprisingly, the police locked down the perimeter, though this time no reporter was brave enough to break through; the crowd merely watched from a distance, while a few intrepid civilians began conducting cautious, bizarre experiments near the property.
By October 1, 2000, mainstream outlets offered only glossed-over, fleeting mentions of the police operation from the day before. Lacking concrete details, the tabloids resorted to sheer guesswork, spinning wildly fabricated theories out of thin air. The LAPD spokesperson refused to comment. That evening, the police maintained their usual perimeter, though journalists were rapidly losing interest. True to form, Li Yunlongs cottage blazed with light as always. Unable to restrain their curiosity, a few individuals forced their way inside. Roughly ten minutes later, they stumbled back out, completely stripped of their sanity. Striking out at everyone in sight, they engaged in a violent brawl until every last one of them lay dead. They hadn't been killed by the surrounding crowd; rather, because the police refused to respond to calls, the injured men bled to death on the pavement, their organs failing without medical attention. Ever since the initial emergency calls on September 27, the moment dispatchers heard the address of Li Yunlongs cottage, they would instantly hang up. By September 30, the department was actively refusing to take official complaints regarding the site. When one reporter managed to corner a senior LAPD official about the issue, the man talked in circles before making an awkward excuse to flee the interview. The beat cops viewed the area as a complete dead zone, refusing to step anywhere near it, leaving any incidents that occurred there entirely ignored.
From there, events spiraled into an increasingly surreal rhythm. Mainstream media actively suppressed coverage of Li Yunlongs cottage, while the tabloids-despite their feverish reporting-lacked the reach to cause a massive uproar. Official channels adopted a head-in-the-sand approach, choosing to see no evil and hear no evil. They even seemed to have settled on a bizarre solution: on the night of October 4, the LAPD lifted its outer blockade and never reinstated it. In stark contrast to the government's retreat, local thrill-seekers grew bolder, devising increasingly elaborate ways to court disaster. So long as no one set foot inside the house, nothing happened; even when someone blared passages from the Bible through a megaphone on the street, Li Yunlong paid them no mind. But to cross that threshold was to invite madness. No matter how many people entered together, they would emerge after at least five minutes with no visible physical injuries, but completely stripped of their sanity. Transformed into violent maniacs, they attacked anyone within reach, fully capable of murder if not subdued. None of the thrill-seekers who dared enter the house met a good end; they were either beaten to death on the spot or subdued, thrashing wildly, before being hauled off to psychiatric wards. Since no police officer was willing to approach the house at night, the locals were forced to protect themselves, making heavy-handed violence almost inevitable.
As the houses notoriety grew, a few reckless journalists attempted to document it on camera. By day, the site was nothing more than a deep, empty pit, but as soon as night fell, the hollow earth was covered over, and Li Yunlongs cottage stood stubbornly in its place, virtually indistinguishable from the neighboring homes. Aside from its supernatural resurgence, the only oddity was the glaring, continuous light emanating from its windows all through the night. When reporters tried to photograph the interior through the glass, the scene inside looked like a frozen snapshot: Li Yunlong sitting alone, calmly sipping tea, from dusk till dawn. Naturally, the press formally dubbed the phenomenon «Mr. Ghosts Haunted House.»
As its fame spread, people traveled from afar just to catch a glimpse of the place. Most came to look during the daytime, stole a quick glance after dark, and promptly fled. The few foolish enough to venture inside invariably shared the same fate, returning as mindless maniacs. Had things continued this way, the site might eventually have turned into a morbid tourist attraction. Amelia tracked the paper trail, finding sporadic mentions up until October 9, 2000. But on October 10, every piece of information suddenly vanished, as if systematically wiped from existence.
By this point, Amelias journalistic curiosity was fully ignited. She was certain that something major must have transpired to compel the higher-ups to join forces and suppress the story. Yet, while the authorities could scrub public records and wipe the mainstream slate clean, they couldn't eliminate every eyewitness in such a short window. A newsroom was full of veterans who traded in secrets, and someone was bound to know the truth. After spending two days and shelling out three hundred dollars on drinks and dinners, Amelia finally got the answer she was looking for.
On the night of October 9, 2000, around eight o'clock, a group of over a hundred armed Christian zealots, led by a priest, stormed into Li Yunlongs cottage. How so many people managed to fit inside the modest structure was a mystery in itself. Roughly fifteen minutes later, they filed out in an orderly line, walked into the middle of the street, and began slaughtering one another in a violent frenzy. The leader of the group-the priest-met the grimmest end of all; when the police eventually arrived to clean up the bloodbath, they couldn't even piece his body back together. Only ten people survived the carnage, and three of them died shortly after reaching the hospital. As for the remaining seven, not even Amelia's source knew their ultimate fate. With so many dead in a single night, the scandal was too massive to contain through normal means, forcing high-level officials to step in and bury the news entirely. The police were dispatched once more-not to deal with the house itself, but to disperse anyone who dared gather nearby after dark. Both mainstream outlets and tabloid rags received stern warnings, effectively driving the phenomenon-and the legend of Mr. Ghosts Haunted House-out of the public eye. Everything returned to a dead, suffocating silence.
A cold chill ran down Amelias spine, leaving her scalp tingling with dread. She had known something major must have happened for the authorities to intervene so aggressively, but she had never anticipated a bloodbath of this scale. Now, she felt an immense sense of relief that she had deliberately kept her distance from Li Yunlong, firmly resolving never to do anything so foolish again. Whatever happened, she would never set foot near that house.
While Amelia was treating him like a biohazard and steering clear, what was Li Yunlong actually up to? He was busy analyzing and studying the data he had retrieved from her.
Li Yunlong was hardly the type of man to lose his head over a pretty face. Why else would he go out of his way to find Amelia, knowing full well she was actively avoiding him? Naturally, it was to retrieve the data stored within her body. Back when Captain Wales had forced her onto the Train to Paradise, Amelia had already ingested the potion Li Yunlong gave her. Over time, her body had absorbed and digested the concoction, but the data-recording core at its center had remained intact, operating exactly as he had programmed it. Li Yunlongs sole purpose in tracking her down had been to extract those records with as little interference as possible.
When the Train to Paradise went rampant, its core had been exposed, allowing Li Yunlong to use the potion inside Amelia as a remote conduit to copy the secrets hidden within the train's nucleus. However, unraveling mysteries that touched upon the fundamental nature of the soul and life itself was no trivial matter. Even though the train's core had lost its protective barrier, the entity itself had descended into complete madness. Li Yunlong hadn't dared to replicate the core wholesale; instead, he had been forced to cautiously select fragments he deemed safe, recording them in painstaking batches. The process had been wildly inefficient and deeply impractical for research. It was like taking a master painting, deliberately shattering it into tens of thousands of tiny shards, and then picking out only the pieces that looked appealing. The handful of fragments he retrieved couldn't possibly convey the full essence of the original work-in terms of raw data, he had gathered less than ten percent of the whole, and the structural integrity of the information was likely under one percent.
The data stored inside Amelia, however, was an entirely different story. It was practically a perfect snapshot of the Train to Paradise's core frozen in a single moment. Unburdened by Li Yunlongs caution, the potion had deployed its full power to record everything it could capture. To Li Yunlong, this data was a treasure trove, and the fragments in his possession were the keys to unlock it. With the vault unlocked, unraveling the rest was merely a matter of time. Soon enough, all the secrets of the Train to Paradise would lay bare before him, ready for the taking.