Soul Lock: The Ghost City Tycoon

Chapter 3 — The Nine-Turn Coffin Lock

Rain started falling the moment Alex left the shop.

Not a gentle drizzle — a cold shower that slapped the pavement and turned the night into a sheet of silver.

Mei Lin walked beside him, her umbrella useless against the wind. She spoke without looking at him.

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes,” Alex answered. “The Nine-Turn Lock wakes early. It’s the first artifact that responds to spiritual pressure.”

“And it’s sitting in a museum basement.”

“Exactly.”

Mei Lin’s shoes clicked on the wet sidewalk. She didn’t rush. She didn’t panic. She simply calculated, adjusting her pace, her breathing, the safest side of the road — as if her mind ran numbers even in the rain.

“How did the Triad get it last time?” she asked.

“They broke in,” Alex said. “Eight men, two died. After the Haunting began, the security systems failed. But someone got there first. That someone got the Lock.”

He didn’t add the final detail:

He had seen that Lock from the other side.

On the day he died.

They turned a corner. The grand stone museum loomed ahead, its windows glowing faintly behind the storm.

Mei Lin stopped.

“Tell me the plan.”

Alex wiped rain from his eyes and pointed upward.

“There’s a maintenance ledge two floors up. Climb the drainpipe, then enter through the cracked ventilation window.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I did this at thirty-five years old with a shattered knee.” His voice dropped. “This body is new. It will hold.”

Mei Lin exhaled slowly. “And my part?”

“Cameras,” Alex said. “You’re handling the cameras. You run a loop on the east wing. No alarms, no lights. Ten minutes.”

Mei Lin unlocked her phone and tapped quickly. “I can piggyback on the museum’s guest Wi-Fi, but only for a short time. Their system’s old. Easy to crack, but easy to detect.”

“That’s fine.”

She glanced up at the dark windows. “If you die, I lose a business partner.”

“I won’t die.”

“Confidence is charming,” she said dryly. “But reality is profitable.”

Thunder shook the sky.

Alex grabbed the drainpipe.

“Start the loop,” he said over his shoulder.

Mei Lin’s voice came through his phone seconds later.

“Loop active. You have exactly ten minutes. If you’re not out by then, the system resets.”

“Understood.”

Alex climbed.

The drainpipe rattled, but held. His fingers burned, muscles straining, rain beating down like a warning. He moved slowly, carefully—each motion deliberate.

This wasn’t the trained body he remembered.

This was a soft, malnourished, half-sleeping student body.

Weak. Human.

But the mind inside it was not.

He reached the ledge. Pushed the cracked ventilation window. Slipped inside.

The museum swallowed him in cold darkness.

His phone buzzed once.

Mei Lin: You have eight minutes.

Alex slipped down a maintenance hallway, guided by memory. He knew every turn, every display, every case. Down the stairs. Past the mannequins dressed in traditional garb. Past the ghost masks that would later gain the ability to move.

Down to the basement.

Where Exhibit Twelve waited.

He inhaled.

This room had killed people last time.

The air was stale. Cold. Thick.

The display sat in the center.

A coffin of dark wood.

And on it—

The Nine-Turn Coffin Lock.

Twisted. Black. Coiled with strange engravings that looked like snakes biting their own tails. Its metal seemed to swallow the lantern light around it.

Alex stepped forward.

Three minutes left.

He wrapped his jacket sleeve around his fist and smashed the glass.

The case shattered.

Instantly, the air shifted.

A deep, low whisper brushed his ear.

Something moved in the corner of the room.

Alex ignored it.

He focused on the lock.

He reached toward it, but the moment his fingers brushed the metal—

Cold punched through him.

Like falling into deep water.

He staggered, teeth clenching from the shock. His breath froze. His blood slowed. His vision flickered.

The lock… screamed.

Not out loud.

In his skull.

Centuries of fear and mourning poured into him — the trapped echo of death rituals long forgotten. The weight of every spirit the lock had restrained. A storm of old grief.

His hand shook.

Then—

Blood dripped from his palm onto the metal.

The screaming stopped.

The cold folded into itself.

The lock pulsed once.

Like a heart.

Alex sucked in a breath, panting, gasping.

It had accepted him.

He tore it free from the coffin.

His phone buzzed violently.

Mei Lin: One minute. Someone just noticed the loop.

“Dammit,” Alex whispered.

He turned—

And froze.

A security guard stood in the doorway.

Or rather—

What used to be a guard.

His neck bent sideways, like it had been twisted until bone snapped. His face pale, eyes glazed over, mouth bubbling with something dark.

“You… shouldn’t… be here…” the guard gurgled.

Alex’s blood turned cold.

The Haunting wasn’t supposed to start yet.

This was too early.

Too wrong.

But Alex recognized the tremor in the air.

The same he felt ten years ago when ghosts first crossed the boundary.

The Underworld had begun bleeding through.

“Move,” Alex whispered.

The guard lunged.

Alex dodged, slipped in the dark, crashed into a display case.

The lock hummed violently in his grip.

He rolled aside just as the guard smashed down where his head had been.

Alex surged to his feet, adrenaline burning through weakness.

He didn’t punch the guard.

He hit the lock against the guard’s chest.

The effect was immediate.

The ghost inside the body convulsed violently, shrieking soundlessly, ripping free like mist tearing from skin.

The guard collapsed, unconscious but alive.

Alex stared in shock.

“This… lock purifies.”

That wasn’t in the last life.

That wasn’t written anywhere.

He didn’t have time to think.

He ran.

Up the stairs.

Down the hall.

Out the ventilation window.

The rain hit him like a slap, washing the cold from his skin.

He jumped down to the nearest awning, rolled, landed in a puddle.

His phone buzzed again.

Mei Lin: You’re alive?

He sent a single reply.

I have the Lock.

Mei Lin replied instantly.

Good. Now get back. We have work to do.

Alex pushed to his feet, dripping, shivering, clutching the Nine-Turn Coffin Lock like salvation.

The world was already changing.

And he had the first key.

End of Chapter 3