Chapter 3

The next day Jiang Shan was woken again by the loud chime of the clock. The wall clock showed 9:30 a.m. If she remembered right, their group had a noon flight—they should have left by now. So why hadn’t guide Xiao Chen come to wake her?
She shot up, didn’t even wash her face, and ran to the lobby with her hair a mess. The lobby was empty. Not a soul.
Her heart went cold. Had they left without her? She pulled out her phone to call Xiao Chen, then noticed a pink suitcase beside the front desk.
A female guest had left it there yesterday so she could catch the morning flight. The case hadn’t moved an inch.
Jiang Shan’s hand froze. Not just because of the suitcase—the signal bar on her phone was gone.
No signal.
As she calmed down, she noticed something wrong. It wasn’t only the guests; there was no one at the front desk. Even if the guests had left, staff should still be there.
But the whole lobby was empty. And now that she thought about it, she hadn’t run into anyone on her way here.
What was going on? Where was everyone?
She stood in the lobby in her slippers, bare feet.
After she didn’t know how long, she thought of something and ran back to the guest rooms, knocking on doors one by one. “Anyone there?”
“Anyone there?”
“Anyone there?”
…
Her voice echoed through the cave corridors.
She tried each door. The rooms were empty, bedding neatly folded, no sign anyone had slept there.
When she reached the last room, she saw Xiao Chen’s suitcase inside, and his guide badge, passport and other things thrown on the bed.
As if everyone had stayed exactly as they were when they’d first checked in. Nothing had changed.
For a moment she wondered if the medication was giving her hallucinations, or if she was still asleep in a dream.
She went to the hotel restaurant. A sign by the door said: Dining hours 7–10 a.m. Please show your room key.
She walked in. It was a large buffet. All the trays were empty; only one table seemed to have food.
She went over. It was a rotten apple—black around the edges, almost seeming to writhe…
Before she could feel sick, she saw a glass freezer next to it: Ice cream and dessert buffet.
Inside the glass, everything had turned into a black, ugly mess; some was oozing dark liquid…
Her heart raced. She turned and left the restaurant.
She rushed out of the lobby. Outside, the cave hotel kept its strange, striking look, but the rock walls that were supposed to have formed over millennia already looked mottled after just one night.
She saw that the hotel grounds were ringed with barbed wire—the way to the back mountain was marked off limits.
She walked along the fence and spotted a hidden spot where the wire had been cut.
The cut looked fresh. No surprise: Xiao Chen’s group had done it.
Through the gap she could see a trail of messy footprints leading up the mountain. They’d not only broken the fence; they’d thrown basic decency aside.
But when she looked around, she saw no footprints coming back down.