S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 136

Special Files – Collector 21 – Collectibles

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Laughing Bird had gone missing, and the location of his cell phone was shown to be inside a haunted house called "Wisteria House".

The whole matter gave off an air of strangeness. Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao asked Little Dolphin whether something had happened when they had streamed live at Wisteria House before.

Little Dolphin hesitated for a moment and, in the end, gave a rather brief explanation. "We've done a lot of haunted-house explorations, but they were basically just atmosphere-building. We had never encountered anything supernatural in a haunted house. But Wisteria House was different... We ran into a string of bizarre incidents in that house. That place really did seem to be a haunted house. And Old Cheng fell into somewhere like a basement for a while and was scared witless. After we pulled him back up, he never dared mention that house again, and he started being terrified of all kinds of vines."

"Fell into a basement?" Bai Yutang asked. "What basement?"

"It was just in the room," Little Dolphin said. "That house was really strange, the swimming pool was in the basement."

Both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang frowned, finding it odd. Aren't swimming pools usually outdoors...? Putting one in a basement means no windows, so no sunlight, right?

"The floor of the upper level was made of glass."

"Oh..." Everyone nodded. In that case, it was still fairly reasonable.

"There was no electricity in the room, and the basement was pitch-black... Old Cheng didn't pay attention and stepped on a spot where the glass gave way, and he fell straight down into the swimming pool. The pool had long since dried up, and fortunately, there was a layer of safety netting spread across it, so Old Cheng didn't fall to his death. But after searching around, we couldn't find a staircase going down, so we had to toss a flashlight down to let him look for an exit below. But whatever Old Cheng saw down there, he suddenly began screaming, then yelled at us to pull him up..."

Little Dolphin remembered that moment and still felt quite exasperated. "We were panicked by his shouting as well. He wouldn't shut up no matter how we told him to, and he acted as though he'd gone mad, as if there was some monster down there. In the end, we had no choice, the cameraman found a roll of fire hose, lowered it down and dragged him back up."

Zhan Zhao recalled that video. "We didn't see any glass floor..."

"That episode wasn't filmed in the haunted house at all." Little Dolphin had no other choice but to be honest. "Wisteria House is a mansion, and it's very large. The murder had happened in only one house, the other houses hadn't had any incidents. We filmed in one of the houses that hadn't had a murder and hadn't been sealed."

Zhan Zhao and Gongsun had just watched the video the previous night, and that particular episode was actually considered one of Laughing Bird's most famous videos. They had not expected it to have been faked...

"So what exactly did he see?" Bai Jintang was also rather curious.

Little Dolphin shook her head. "I don't know..."

She hadn't finished speaking when Bai Yutang's phone rang.

It was the two patrol officers who had gone to check Wisteria House. They said they had just arrived and had found the large iron gate outside the estate standing open.

Bai Yutang asked whether they had gone inside yet. The floor might have broken glass on it, so they should be careful.

"The front door of the house is shut. We haven't gone in, but a lot of the windows are broken, so we're checking from outside first... Wah!"

The police officer suddenly shouted halfway through his sentence, the volume making Bai Yutang's ear ache.

The others heard it as well, and Zhan Zhao asked, "What's wrong?"

"Hello?" Bai Yutang listened to the phone again, but all that came from the other end was the beeping dead tone...

When he dialled again, no one answered.

"This is bad." Bai Yutang felt the situation had become rather serious because the two officers had been patrolling together, and for both of them to go silent at once, they must have encountered something urgent.

Bai Yutang called several more times without getting through, and immediately told Lu Fang to notify nearby patrol officers and the SWAT team to go over and rescue them.

There was no time for further questions. Everyone went downstairs and drove straight to Wisteria House.

......

The SWAT team was not off duty today. Their captain, Xiaofei, and deputy captain, Wen Xiaorou, were leading the members in examining their new equipment, the robot dogs.

Suddenly, Xiaofei's phone rang, and at the same time, the SWAT team alarm sounded. The team members quickly geared up, preparing to deploy.

Wen Xiaorou was putting on her bulletproof vest as she watched Xiaofei answer the phone.

When Xiaofei finished the call, he frowned and said, "We're heading to Wisteria House, two patrol officers may be in danger."

Wen Xiaorou tilted her head. "What's Wisteria House? A flower shop?"

"Wisteria Manor." Xiaofei asked Wen Xiaorou, "Have you heard of it?"

Wen Xiaorou tilted her head again – Huh?

A nearby team member came over to join in. "Sister Rou Rou, you haven't heard of it? Wisteria House is considered the number-one haunted house in S City!"

Wen Xiaorou was even more shocked. "This sort of thing has rankings?"

The team set off quickly, driving towards Wisteria House.

As Wen Xiaorou listened to her teammates briefing her on the legends surrounding the haunted house, she kept glancing at Xiaofei...

Captain Xiao was on the phone with Bai Yutang, confirming the details of the incident and the identities of the two missing officers.

The local police drones had already reached the airspace above Wisteria House ahead of them, and the team members viewed the situation of the manor from the monitoring screen in the car.

"It's this big?" It was the first time the team members had seen an aerial view of the haunted house, and its scale was beyond imagination.

The manor had been built on the top of a hill, surrounded entirely by forest, dense and overgrown.

At the centre stood five large buildings, constructed around three large gardens. In the middle of the three gardens was a smaller garden, in which a huge wisteria tree was planted.

The vines had grown wildly, linking all five buildings together.

A few of the younger team members stared at the aerial view for a while, even rubbing their eyes.

Wen Xiaorou also said, "Is it an illusion?"

Xiaofei shook his head.

Everyone stared at the aerial view – From the air, Wisteria House looked like a gigantic skull.

At the manor's main gate, a patrol car was parked.

Following the route taken by the two officers when they entered, the technicians operated the drone to fly slowly, searching for any trace of the pair.

"Captain Bai said they didn't go inside the building. They were checking the windows from outside, then suddenly shouted once and lost contact," Xiaofei explained as he directed the drone to look for any pits or ground collapses on the ground.

"Do you know something?" Wen Xiaorou suddenly asked Xiaofei.

The other team members also looked over curiously. Given how frequently they worked together, they could all tell when their captain was acting strange.

"This isn't the first time someone has gone missing here." Xiaofei asked Wen Xiaorou, "Do you remember that cave rescue mission we took part in three years ago? There was that female geologist who helped us analyse the terrain..."

"Han Li?" Wen Xiaorou remembered the expert. She hadn't looked very old, about thirty or so, but as long as she heard the air currents inside a cave, she could make basic assessments instantly. She had been incredibly impressive.

Xiaofei nodded. "Han Li and I were neighbours when we were children. She had three great passions in life, diving, caving, and mountain climbing. She would go anywhere dangerous."

Wen Xiaorou stroked her chin. "No wonder she climbed and manoeuvred so professionally and effortlessly."

"Han Li, her father was a murderer."

Xiaofei's sudden remark stunned everyone.

"Her father wasn't just an ordinary murderer, he was a serial killer," Xiaofei recalled the past. "I remember it was about twenty years ago. When I was walking home after school, I saw their family farm surrounded by police. The police dug up a lot of human remains on the farm, and wanted posters with her father's face were plastered all over the streets. At the time, a witness had reported seeing her father fleeing into the mountains on the outskirts of the city..."

As he spoke, Xiaofei pointed at the stretch of forest surrounding Wisteria House. "This mountain area... Back then, a huge number of people were deployed to search it."

"Were they able to catch him in the end?" By coincidence, as Wen Xiaorou asked this question, their car happened to be driving onto the mountain road, entering that very forested area.

From the aerial view, the forest had not looked particularly large, but once they were on the mountain road and glanced to either side, the gaps between the trees were extremely narrow, giving off a sinister feeling.

"He was indeed found later."

Wen Xiaorou sharply noticed that Xiaofei had said found, not caught.

"They found her father's corpse... and it was headless," Xiaofei said. "The corpse had its foot tangled by a vine and was hanging upside down from a tree, and the head had been chopped off."

"So you're saying a serial killer entered this forest and was killed by someone, is that it?" Wen Xiaorou glanced again at the dense woods on either side. "Meaning there's an expert hiding in the forest?"

Xiaofei shook his head. "It wasn't just that... One of the people sent into the mountain to search also went missing."

The team members all looked over. "What do you mean someone went missing?"

"One of the search party members disappeared... There were more than three hundred people searching the mountain. Besides the two hundred police officers, there were over a hundred volunteers, villagers living at the foot of the mountain who knew the terrain well. The search party members were all in groups of at least two and weren't allowed to act alone." Xiaofei continued, "Among them were two searchers, one surnamed Wang, one surnamed Gao. After the two of them went up the mountain, only Old Gao returned, Old Wang didn't. According to Old Gao, halfway up, he felt the urge to urinate, so he stepped aside to relieve himself and told Old Wang to wait where he was. But when he came back, Old Wang was gone... After the search ended and they counted the numbers, they realised someone was missing. There were all sorts of conspiracy theories at the time, but this missing Old Wang was apparently a gambler who owed huge debts. Some people said he took the opportunity to run away from his creditors, and the matter was eventually dropped."

Everyone stared at Xiaofei – He seems to know quite a lot.

"I heard all this from Han Li, she continued investigating that incident," Xiaofei said. "Ever since what happened to her father, Han Li basically had no friends. No one dared get close to her. I kept in touch with her occasionally, and later on, she asked me to help her find Dr Zhan."

Wen Xiaorou was curious. "What did she want with Zhan Zhao?"

"She asked Zhan Zhao to run some tests for her, and the results showed she had indeed inherited something from her father, she exhibited a classic antisocial personality."

The team members all widened their eyes.

"Even with antisocial personality disorder, it doesn't necessarily mean someone will become a criminal, right?" Wen Xiaorou asked. "What did Zhan Zhao say?"

"Zhan Zhao said the same thing. He set some guidelines for her and taught her how to control herself. So she put all her energy into extreme sports, basically trying to wreck herself rather than wreck others."

"Also, she once told me something."

By then, the car had reached the area near the mountaintop, and through the windows, everyone could already see the massive Wisteria Manor ahead.

"What did she tell you?" Wen Xiaorou was genuinely intrigued.

"She said that when she was a child, she once saw her father studying a map. Based on her recollection, it should have been a topographic map of this forested area." Xiaofei pointed at the map on the display screen. "Her father once warned her not to come near here, unless she wanted to become a collectable."

"Collectable?" The team members didn't understand.

Xiaofei shrugged – He didn't understand either.

At that moment, the car stopped.

As the team members got out, they saw two more vehicles arriving behind them. The SCI members had also just arrived.

Xiaofei greeted Bai Yutang when suddenly the voice of the drone operator came through his earpiece. "Captain, we've found a hole in the ground!"

"Which direction?"

"Shit..."

In the earpiece, the operator suddenly swore.

"What's wrong?" Xiaofei asked, puzzled.

"Captain, the drone's lost contact. The final footage looks really bizarre, you should take a look for yourselves!"

Wen Xiaorou took out the monitor and played the final recording from the drone.

Bai Yutang and the others had also arrived at that moment and gathered around to watch.

They saw the drone discover a pitch-black hole in the ground in front of a section of floor-to-ceiling windows in the manor. It was filming directly towards the hole when the footage suddenly jolted...

The last image captured was of a black vine stretching towards the drone.

Silence fell over the group. Xiaofei and Wen Xiaorou both looked at Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao. "You guys... what exactly are you dealing with? What is this thing? A tree spirit?"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: November 25, 2025 by Angel

Edited: November 27, 2025 by Angel