“Okay. Looks like this way it is.” Wu Xiaoming couldn’t hide his surprise, but he maintained his composure and spoke directly to the camera: “Follow me. And watch your steps - I think we already swept this area and removed the bear traps, but - just in case.”

He pressed forward, scanning the ground as he moved. The trees surrounding the group were not as decayed or sickly at first. Then after only a few seconds, the “corruption” and “illness” became more apparent. The trees had more darkened, moldy and peeled off bark as they moved forward, and more barren trees began showing up.

“Looks like more sick trees.” Wu Xiaoming pointed the pattern out, then pointed at the ground: “As you can see, more dead grass and - unhealthy bushes.”

Malcolm turned the camera as Wu Xiaoming pointed, then focused back on his face.

“Now, again, I am no expert in trees or vegetation in general. But this kind of disease-like pattern has become pretty obvious. And dare I say, pretty aggressive.” Wu Xiaoming knelt down by a tree, while holding the now silent EMF reader: “Yet, even though things did not look good here, I still need to remind everyone, that after the initial blare, our EMF reader has stopped beeping.”

The reader began beeping almost immediately.

“Oh - well.” Wu Xiaoming scratched his head and smiled at the camera: “I guess we have a good reason to continue forward.”

He moved forward with the reader in hand. The bar graphs on the screen kept jumping and flashing, while its alarms kept beeping. The signal strength was weak at first, but as he headed further into the woods, it grew stronger - at the same time, the trees and vegetation around them only became worse looking. After a while, they even saw some patches of land where there was practically nothing alive, and littered with only dried up grass and fallen trees.

When they were about to step into one of those dried up “dead patches”, Malcolm stopped and spoke with a trembling voice: “Wait wait wait. Wait - ”

“What happened?” Jake asked, frowning.

Wu Xiaoming walked to Malcolm’s side and fixed his sight on the tiny screen on Malcolm’s camera. It was purely out of instinct, or maybe due to its being pretty common cliche in horror movies.

“This tree.” Malcolm held the camera steady with one hand and pointed at the screen using the other, his voice still trembling: “Look - look at this tree.”

When his finger moved away, Wu Xiaoming instantly recognized what Malcolm was pointing at: a hand-like pattern on a tree quite a distance away in front of them, it was like a person with pale skin was hiding behind the tree while leaving one hand on the front of the trunk.

He immediately looked up and fixed his eyes on the tree. Without trouble he located it, but there was no hand on it. What was there, however, was a small cloud of black smoke hovering behind the tree.

“Holy fuck - Xiaoming do you know what it is?” Jake asked, his voice was also trembling, yet filled with excitement. “It’s - it’s only in the camera! I can’t see it! Xiaoming can you see it?”

“No. But let’s stop here. Malcolm, keep your camera pointed at it.” Wu Xiaoming frowned and took out his phone: “Jake, can you try and see if you can see the hand on your phone?”

“On it.” Jake put the boom mic on a tree next to him and pulled out his phone.

The hand did not show up on Wu Xiaoming’s phone screen. And from the look on Jake’s face, it wasn’t on his phone screen either.

“Shit! It’s gone!” Before Wu Xiaoming could take another look at Malcolm's camera, Malcolm already voiced his disappointment: “I don’t know man - the screen just flashed and - it’s gone.”

“The screen just flashed, you say?” Wu Xiaoming frowned.

“Well - yeah, it’s like a blip of - you know.”

“Hey guys! I need some help here!” Matthew’s voice came from the handheld radio.

“Matthew! You alright!?” Wu Xiaoming responded, while waving at Jake and Malcolm to follow him back towards the house: “What happened?”

“Some kind of animal tried to break in, I don’t know what it is.” Matthew’s voice was shaking, and full of fear: “Please - I need help here.”

“Go go go!” Wu Xiaoming accelerated towards the house, while barking into the hand held radio: “Hang tight there! We’ll be right there!”

As they approached the house, Wu Xiaoming immediately caught the shining glass shards scattered around the window of their room. They charged in, just in time to see Matthew backed into a corner of their room, with bear mace and a camping hand axe in hand.

“Dude!” Matthew, pale and sweaty in the face, almost collapsed onto the ground when they came in: “Fuck me - finally!”

“What happened?” Jake and Malcolm rushed over and held Matthew up, while Wu Xiaoming rushed to the broken window. There was more broken glass inside than outside, and the entire window was shattered. No traces of blood, though.

“Some kind of fucking animal - I don’t know. ” Matthew wiped his forehead.

“Was it a deer?” Wu Xiaoming asked.

The room went silent for a moment, then Matthew answered: “It - it might be. I - I didn’t get a clear view, I just saw something brown and covered in fur. It bashed the window and then ran away.”

“But - this is the second floor! Can deers even jump this high?” Malcolm frowned. Too bad, no one could answer him.

“Okay.” Wu Xiaoming thought for a moment: “Let’s switch rooms.”

“What?” Malcolm asked.

“Switch rooms for now. And let’s try and see if we can get a hold of the director - ”

“No! No! I can manage. It’s fine!” Matthew interrupted: “No need to alarm the director - I’m fine! Just - just need a bit of time to process.”

“But - if we’re being attacked by animals, it means the surrounding area might not be as safe as we thought.” Jake cautioned: “It’s best to at least let the director know.”

“Okay - okay, but please, I can definitely keep going, so no need to mention anything like that, alright?” Matthew sighed.

“Tim? Are you there?” Wu Xiaoming spoke into the hand held radio.

No response for a while.

“Tim? You there? We have some updates. ” Wu Xiaoming tried again: “Repeat. We have some updates. You probably want to hear about this.”

Still, no answer.

“Let’s start switching rooms first, I’ll keep trying.” Wu Xiaoming sighed at the other crew members, shaking his head.

They proceeded to move to the neighboring empty bedroom - the temporary work station, the sleeping bags, their personal items and supplies. As for the salt and other anti-evil material scattered on the ground, they had no means of transporting those without making a mess.

“You still have enough salt, right?” Jake asked Wu Xiaoming while looking at the salt circle on the ground.

“Not a lot. ” Wu Xiaoming shook his head: “As for other stuff - I don’t think we have enough of them either. So - we must reuse.”

“Do you happen to know if the salt - say, if the salt is mixed with dust and other unclean stuff, if it still works?” Jake scratched his head.

“I am not sure - but I think - as long as there’s a continuous ‘line’ of some sort completely made of salt, we should be fine, right?” Wu Xiaoming also scratched his head.

“Umm - this might be a stupid question, but does the cinnamon barks and sage count as contaminants or ‘additional buffs’?”

“I am not sure either. But - just to be safe let’s not mix them?” Wu Xiaoming sighed.

They found some empty folders and scooped as much salt as they could using pieces of paper and folders. They scattered the salvaged salt mixed with dust and other anti-evil materials around to form a thin, temporary circle. Then they laid out the salt and materials they still had in containers ready for use: an unopened small paper canister of salt, one half bag of cinnamon bark, one small plastic bag of dried sage leaves, one small plastic bag of rosemary, a string of garlic brought by Jake, and lastly, the canister of black dog urine

“Okay. This time, let’s put a ‘pure’ salt circle first.” Wu Xiaoming suggested: “I know - we don’t have enough clean salt, but we have some from the other room, so let’s do double circle, and leave the sage and other stuff in the outer ring.”

“But - do we even know either will work?” Malcolm frowned.

“No. That’s why I’m thinking double circle - if either works, it works.” Wu Xiaoming nodded: “Alright, let me try the director once again. ”

While Jake and Malcolm laid a new, smaller salt circle around the area where they would sleep and rest, Wu Xiaoming tried to contact the director again. But yet, no answers.

Just as the salt circle was almost done, a crack of thunder shocked the room, and the sky grew darker in a matter of seconds.