Chapter 134: Chapter 52: The Memory of the Sixth Floor
When Gao Tian first encountered the Smashed-Face Ghost and trapped it in the urn, a photo of a little girl with a chubby, round face had dropped out.
That photo was a Supernatural Artifact. The little girl in the picture had winked at Gao Tian, which altered his memories and left him in a daze, causing him to unconsciously walk up to the fourth floor of the Live-in Apartment.
Later, because the Children’s Home had the ability to summon children upstairs, Gao Tian and the others had simply assumed after the Children’s Home incident that the little girl had been lured away by it.
Looking back now, that theory didn’t hold up at all.
If the little girl had gone to the Children’s Home, why would she possess an ability similar to a Memory Ghost?
Now, Xia Ta had also confirmed this by taking a headcount. There was no trace of the girl among the children taken in by the Children’s Home.
This meant the "family’s voice" that had led her upstairs wasn’t from the Children’s Home at all, but from another room.
For now, the matter was an unsolved mystery.
’Maybe I’ll go upstairs again when I have time.’
Xia Ta:
"The second matter is the clue left behind by Wang Wenbo."
She slowly turned Wang Wenbo’s laptop screen to face Gao Tian and the other two.
"I know it’s not very polite to look at someone’s laptop without permission. But this is the Live-in Apartment. When a resident leaves their computer in the first-floor lobby before a mission, it’s an unspoken rule that anyone can look at it."
Wang Wenbo hadn’t put any kind of password on his laptop either.
In fact, he had already accepted that he would die on this green-text mission. Even in death, he hoped the translated contents of his laptop would be seen by those who came after him.
It was that post.
Back when Xu Yuan was alive, he had published a post discussing the Live-in Apartment. It used extremely complex encryption. Wang Wenbo had started trying to crack it the moment he arrived, but the green-text mission came up right after. The group was forced to leave, leaving the laptop behind to continue its work via an AI system.
Then, when Xia Ta returned to the apartment and found the laptop, the decryption process was already more than halfway complete.
By now, she must have seen the full contents of Xu Yuan’s post.
However, judging by Xia Ta’s expression...
She was very confused.
It was as if she couldn’t comprehend what the post was trying to say at all.
Jiang Yang asked patiently,
"What did the post say?"
Xia Ta:
"It starts out in the style of a log. The contents are rather convoluted, so I’ll skip most of it and just get to the important parts."
"The author of the log is a resident who calls himself Xu Yuan. We can’t be certain that he’s the same Xu Yuan who completed ten green-text missions thirteen years ago, but it’s about ninety percent likely."
"When he wrote this post, he had already completed eight or nine green-text missions. His writing style is quite arrogant; he treated going up to the ghost-filled corridors as if it were a casual stroll. At the time, Xu Yuan figured the green-text missions were no longer much of a challenge for him and that he would clear all ten within another six months."
"He was quite looking forward to seeing what kind of reward the apartment would give him for the final mission."
Gao Tian already knew all this.
When he was alive, Xu Yuan had cleared ten green-text missions, and he did it even after his Ghost Eye was gouged out. The man was a true supernatural genius, terrifyingly strong.
And yet, after he became an undying ghost who could even manifest a Ghost Realm, he was still afraid of Old Man Sun. That just went to show what level of being Old Man Sun was, someone who could cow a legion of demons.
’There’s always a bigger fish.’
Xia Ta:
"But before his last two missions, there were still many mysteries about the Live-in Apartment left unsolved. Xu Yuan wasn’t willing to leave the place knowing nothing."
"He made an incredibly arrogant decision. He was going to voluntarily enter the apartment’s sixth floor. That place is an absolute restricted area in the Live-in Apartment. The sign up there clearly states, ’Entry by private individuals without state-level administrative authority is strictly prohibited.’"
"Of course, Xu Yuan at the time paid no mind to these warnings. He didn’t believe there was any ghost in this world that could kill him."
"Right here, the log should have detailed Xu Yuan’s venture onto the sixth floor, but it cuts off."
"Xu Yuan himself wasn’t sure what happened on the sixth floor, so he couldn’t record it. He just wrote that by the time he came to his senses, he was already in the first-floor lobby. His skin was festering and turning purple in multiple places, his body was twitching uncontrollably, he was utterly exhausted, and his heart was pounding nonstop, as if he had just narrowly escaped death."
"On a slip of paper hastily torn and placed on the coffee table before him was a single, scrawled line of text: ’Don’t think about what happened on the sixth floor.’"
Xia Ta took a sip of tea, pausing for a moment.
"Although the handwriting was extremely messy and chaotic, Xu Yuan recognized it at a glance as his own, written in a state of extreme panic."
"He made a deduction."
"He originally had a single-use Supernatural Artifact that could erase a segment of a target’s memory. This Supernatural Artifact had an extremely short range and a very obvious activation process, so it was basically impossible to use on a person or a ghost under normal circumstances."
"But it could be used on himself."
"After stumbling down from the sixth floor, Xu Yuan sat on the sofa and wrote that line with a trembling hand. Then, he used the artifact on himself to erase his memories of what had happened on the sixth floor."
Hearing this, Gao Tian couldn’t help but interrupt.
"Let me confirm something."
"So, after Xu Yuan came down from the sixth floor alive, he voluntarily erased his own memories of what happened up there so he wouldn’t remember it, is that right?"
Xia Ta nodded affirmatively.
"Yes. Xu Yuan confirmed that in his log."
Gao Tian frowned.
’That’s strange. Wasn’t Xu Yuan’s original goal to find out the secrets of the apartment and what was hidden on the sixth floor?’
’He barely escaped the sixth floor with his life. Logically, even if he didn’t uncover the apartment’s ultimate secrets, he must have seen a lot of things up there.’
’So why would he turn around and erase his own memory, preventing himself from recalling what happened?’
’What was on the sixth floor that was so terrible it exceeded even Xu Yuan’s ability to cope? What could force him to destroy his own memories in a desperate act of self-preservation?’
’Or maybe there’s some kind of memetic ghost up there, and Xu Yuan was already infected.’
Xia Ta continued,
"Although most of Xu Yuan’s memories of the sixth floor were gone, by forcing himself to remember, he managed to recall a few minor details about what was up there."
"First, the sixth floor was filled with corpses. Some were ancient, others modern. Some were completely decomposed down to white bone; some had rotted into piles of black flesh, their original features unrecognizable; and some looked as if they had been frozen, their faces still lifelike, as if they were merely sleeping."
"The identities of those corpses were anything but ordinary. Just recalling the slightest detail made Xu Yuan’s temples POUND, his chest tighten, and his head throb with excruciating pain."
"At the end of the sixth-floor corridor, there was a small, lit room. Inside, a figure was making a sound, beckoning Xu Yuan to come closer."
"Many other bizarre things happened, but all those memories were erased. The only thing Xu Yuan could remember was turning to flee the sixth floor. As he passed a corpse, he impulsively snatched a large urn from its arms and then used the black card."
"Then, he was back in the first-floor lobby, using his last ounce of strength to write the note to himself before erasing his memory of the sixth floor."
"After putting down the slip of paper, Xu Yuan turned his head and saw a huge, blood-red urn at his feet. Inside the urn was something incredibly strange."
After Xia Ta finished reading, Jiang Yang cut in,
"That blood-red urn from the sixth floor—what was the strange thing inside it?"
Xia Ta shrugged, indicating that Xu Yuan’s log didn’t say.
Of everyone present, only Gao Tian knew what that blood-red urn was.
It was the Future-Predicting Urn—the one containing Master Yunshan’s skeleton, which had been discovered at Xu Yuan’s old home.
’So, after all this, it turns out the Future-Predicting Urn was something Xu Yuan brought down from the sixth floor.’
’Did that mean he saw Master Yunshan’s original corpse back then?’
Gao Tian didn’t know.
Xu Yuan’s log was drawing to a close, but it wasn’t over yet.
Xia Ta continued reading.
"For the next few days, as a precaution, Xu Yuan moved into the first-floor lobby to sleep, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the bizarre sixth floor above him."
"But strange things kept happening to him."
"Xu Yuan often sleepwalked. In his sleep, he would repeatedly write the same words on slips of paper—"
"I have never been to the sixth floor. I know nothing."
"I have never been to the sixth floor. I know nothing."
"I have never been up there. I know nothing."
"..."
"The handwriting was neat and tidy, not his own. It looked like it was printed."
"At the same time, the more Xu Yuan thought about it, the more unwilling he was to let it go. Over the next few months, he made thorough preparations to explore the sixth floor a second time. He acquired several very special Supernatural Artifacts specifically designed to counter mental contamination. He remained convinced that his memory had been erased because he had encountered a memetic supernatural event."
"Unfortunately, a sudden event interrupted his plan."
Outside the apartment, a fierce wind began to blow. The early morning sky grew dark once more.
"What event?"
Xia Ta:
"After coming down from the sixth floor, Xu Yuan constantly felt unwell. Large patches of rotting flesh were peeling off his body. This corrosion was irreversible; even using restorative or resurrection-type Supernatural Artifacts couldn’t stop the change."
"As a last resort, Xu Yuan did something rather embarrassing."
"He went to a hospital and saw a doctor."
"Of course, that’s how he described it."
"What actually happened was that Xu Yuan went into a hospital, stole an X-ray machine, took some scans of himself, and brought them home to study."
People in the Supernatural Community rarely go to hospitals.
From the common cold to amputations and terminal illnesses, various Supernatural Artifacts could provide a cure.
A big shot like Xu Yuan surely had resurrection-type artifacts as well.
If something was truly incurable, you could just die and start over with a brand-new body.
The fact that he’d resort to a hospital check-up just showed how bizarre the curse from the sixth floor was. It had pushed the living Xu Yuan to his wit’s end.
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