Time was running out.
Detective Chen Rui's body was weak, trapped between the physical and digital realms.
But his mind—his will—remained sharp.
He had found the origin of the curse, and now there was only one mission left: Find and destroy the cursed rattan chair.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a group of survivors calling themselves "The Last Witnesses" had gathered.
They were people who had all narrowly escaped the curse—some through luck,
others by making the unthinkable choice…
sacrificing someone else.
Leading them was Yun Qi, a former hacker who specialized in tracing digital anomalies.
Using dark web data and hidden livestream patterns, she had located a possible physical manifestation of the chair—hidden deep beneath Bukit Tunku, in an abandoned colonial-era mansion sealed for decades.
But no one who had ever entered that mansion… had come back out.
"We either end this tonight, or none of us will survive the next livestream," Yun Qi said, her voice cold but steady.
They prepared.
Salt circles.
Protective talismans.
Cameras recording every step—not to livestream, but to document the truth should they fail.
At exactly 11:30 p.m., they stepped beyond the rusted gates of the mansion.
The air was thick with the scent of rotting wood… and jasmine.
The house seemed to breathe around them, floorboards creaking like an ancient beast stirring in its sleep.
And then they saw it—
A grand staircase leading to a locked cellar door.
Carved into the wood above the doorframe was a single word, written in the same faded dialect Chen Rui had seen before:
"代嫁" – Substitute Bride.
The door creaked open with a low, groaning sound.
Cold air rushed out, carrying with it the overpowering scent of jasmine.
At the center of the dark cellar sat the chair.
Old.
Cracked.
But somehow… pulsing as if alive.
And then came the whispers.
"Take a seat…"
One by one, the survivors began to feel an irresistible pull toward the chair.
Yun Qi fought against the urge, her fists clenched, eyes locked on the chair.
"Destroy it! Now!" she screamed.
One of the survivors, Amir, raised a sledgehammer.
Just as he brought it down—
A pale, ice-cold hand reached out from beneath the chair and grabbed his ankle.
The woman in white rose from the shadows, her face fully visible for the first time.
Her stitched mouth slowly tore open,
releasing a chilling scream that echoed through both the mansion… and every active device connected to the cursed network worldwide.
In that moment, every phone, every screen, every livestream app went live.
The viewers saw everything.
The real origin.
The real horror.
And then—
The stream cut to black.
End of Chapter 17