Wu Xiaoming woke up earlier than Malcolm the next day. It was probably the only time where he spent the whole night in the ethereal realm without going through any actual fight. He still had a lot of Spirit Fragments so he could definitely afford a few more nights like this. The main worry he had was still how this place felt - something was lingering in the woods and possibly in this house that made him feel uneasy.
And out of curiosity and caution, he went out of the room just to check around. All the windows were heavily fogged up, and the rest of the house was quite chilly. It was not a big deal to him with his current physical capabilities, but it might just be a bit of an issue to the rest of the crew.
Wu Xiaoming went down to the first floor to look around. Along the way he noticed a lot of cameras were placed around the house - something he had not noticed the day before. Maybe he could check with Malcolm to take a look at the footage and see what they had captured during the night.
The first thing he checked out was the two trees he had encountered when he was in the ethereal realm. Even though the connection between the two realms was not that strong, he would still like to make sure that this area was not as dangerous. If it turned out to be risky, he would try his best to convince the director to give up on shooting at this location - though he was not very confident in his own ability to do so.
The two trees from his memory were actually there - similar looking, even had mostly the same size. And what made them stand out the most was that they were both very sickly looking - almost all of the tree bark had fallen off, while the remaining bits and pieces were heavily corroded, darkened and one could easily peel them off; at the same time, the exposed wood under the bark was completely pale and ashy, with cracks crawling all over.
He pushed his ability to sense and see negative energy and looked the two trees up and down. There was really nothing of note - only that the exposed wood under the bark turned slightly darker with his vision. He had never seen this kind of thing before, and he had to take a few seconds to make sure he was not seeing any dark smoke or fog coming from the trees.
Was it slightly concerning? Yes. But did it warrant him warning the entire crew and try to cancel the shoot? Definitely not.
He circled to the back of the house to check out where the trees that were shaped like human figures frozen in panicking states were. But none such trees were there. He looked around a few times, even lowering his body to study the ground, still nothing stood out.
He checked around the house one more time before going back inside. He adjusted his handheld radio, then checked the laptop in his room - the footage transfer was complete, and it was still at 78% battery.
“Woah, you’re up already?” Malcolm rubbed his eyes: “Everything okay?”
“Yes.” Wu Xiaoming nodded: “Everything looks fine - but if possible, it would be great if we can take a look at the footage captured by the cameras you put outside.”
“Yeah sure thing.” Malcolm yawned: “Let me - take those back in a bit and see - ”
The rest of the group were all up around 6:30 AM, so were the director and Tammy.
“Alright, folks, second day. And the first whole day shoot.” Timothy Manchester sounded quite excited on the radio: “I saw the footage you sent here, and I’ve gotta say it looked really good, we will be reviewing them fully again today. The bear traps are definitely good sources of intrigue. I want you to explore further into the woods and see if you can find anything - of course please be careful.”
“Have you seen the footage from the night cameras?” Malcolm asked: “They should have auto-sync turned on. So you should be able to see some of them already.”
“Um, no - I haven’t received any night camera footage.” Timothy responded: “Not sure what went wrong there - Matthew, can you help me fix that? Since Malcolm will need to go out and shoot …”
“There might be more bear traps in the woods, I need to go with them.” Matthew shook his head.
“Okay, but can you try fixing it before they go further? That would be great. If we cannot see footage from down here, then we can’t really review anything and have to wait here all day.”
“Alright, I’ll try.” Matthew sighed: “But just in case, you might need to be ready to come up here and get a copy yourself - ”
“Only if we have to, Matthew, only if we have to. This is our first test to make sure this setup works, for future episodes there will be more situations like this where more people present will crowd the site and make the show less suspenseful - ”
“I understand. Just sayin’ you might have to come pick it up.” Matthew interrupted: “But let me try first.”
While Matthew was busy fixing the transmission back in the house, Wu Xiaoming, Jake and Malcolm began recording for the second day around the house.
“Alright, it is the second day we’re here, and in some way, officially the first morning. ” Wu Xiaoming treaded along the trees around the house, pointing at all the unhealthy looking trees. “And - I don’t know if those of you watching are familiar with this, but in ancient Chinese folklore, trees are very sensitive to the flow of energy in an area. And when so many trees in an area are all sickly and even distorted looking like this - it means the area sure is not in a good state.
“Some call it Fengshui, some call it other things.” Wu Xiaoming continued, sweeping a pile of fallen leaves to the side to make sure there was not a bear trap underneath: “You know, gotta be careful here - we found so many bear traps yesterday, that I thought this place was infested with large hordes of terrible bears.”
Wu Xiaoming led them to the two abnormal trees he had located earlier, and gestured at Malcolm to focus on the exposed of the trees: “You see this? Have you seen anything like this? I’m no tree expert, but this is definitely bad for trees, right?”
Malcolm pointed the camera at the two trees individually, then took a shot of the two trees with his back facing the house. While doing so, he muttered: “This looks like a gate.”
“Say what now?” Wu Xiaoming turned to the cameraman.
“It looks like a gate.” Malcolm spoke up slightly, trying to make a gesture with his right arm, “You know, from this angle - it looks a bit like - ”
Wu Xiaoming went up to Malcolm’s position and studied the trees. From this angle, the two trees had different distances from him, the tree on the left was closer, and the other one was further. Yet from this angle, the curvature of the trunks and their branches formed a pretty “standard” tall tree arch like one would see in the movies. So, indeed, a gate.
“Holy shit, this is kinda creepy.” Wu Xiaoming looked at the camera and then the two trees, then looked back at the camera a few times: “I think we’ve found something. This is - this is good. Malcolm, can you go left and right so that we can catch them from different angles?”
While Malcolm was switching angles Wu Xiaoming scratched his jaw and deliberated for a moment. Should he go through the “gate” and take a look? It might be better if he did it by himself.
“Malcolm, how far can your camera go?” Wu Xiaoming asked.
“Pretty far, why?”
“Can you stand here in the safe - close to the house, and let the camera follow me through the gate?”
“Uh - yeah, sure!” Malcolm nodded.
“And Jake, no need to follow me, stay here. I wanna get a wider shot.” Wu Xiaoming turned to the sound guy.
“Okay, but let me give you a portable mic.” Jake put his boom mic down and pulled up his backpack.
With a small microphone attached to his collar, Wu Xiaoming waved at the camera: “So - in order to make sure that our crew is safe, I will be checking out this ‘gate’ and see things for myself by myself, while our cameraman and sound guy will stay behind so that if, or
when
something starts influencing me, they will be able to pick it up and help me out.”
He turned around, checked out the two trees, gave the camera two thumbs up and then went through it.
A sudden chill swept through his body, and everything around him got slightly darker just in an instant. And for a brief moment, he could almost hear scattered footsteps and human murmurs coming from different corners of the woods.