Chapter 260: Chapter 221: The Letter
Having listened to Yang Xiao recite the sequence of events once more, Li Qingxuan only then grasped how terrifying this so-called medical treatment was, including that strange bouncing ball sound.
"I... I didn’t hear any strange sounds, just your footsteps," Li Qingxuan confirmed again.
Yang Xiao nodded and instructed, "There’s one more thing, don’t mention my visit here today to anyone. Continue pretending you don’t know me. There’s an enemy of mine hiding among this group of players. If he learns you have a past with me, it will be bad for you."
"Who is it?"
"I don’t know either, but he knows me," Yang Xiao sighed helplessly. The feeling of being in the light with his enemy in the dark was truly unbearable.
After sharing some experiences from the Nightmare World with Li Qingxuan, Yang Xiao finally left. He first carefully listened at the door, making sure there was no noise, then slowly cracked the door open a sliver. After another careful observation, he stealthily stepped out.
The odd sound of the ball had disappeared, and the corridor had returned to silence. Yang Xiao quickly made his way to the fire escape, pushing open the thick wooden door and quickly descending the stairs.
Not sure if it was due to unstable voltage, the fire escape was much darker than before. Under the dim yellow lighting, many things turned into vague outlines.
But Yang Xiao couldn’t bother with that now. He had declined Li Qingxuan’s kind offer to stay because he knew that the safest place tonight was to return to his own room; staying would only bring trouble to his fellow actor.
The narrow fire escape was pervaded by a weird smell, like something had gone moldy. Worried about not seeing clearly and falling, Yang Xiao had to use one hand to hold the iron railing on the side of the stairs. But as soon as he gripped it, his expression instantly changed.
It was not just cold but also covered in a layer of dust. That wasn’t all; when he lifted his hand and brought it close to his nose, he smelled a strong scent of rust.
The iron railing was actually full of rust and covered with a thick layer of dust, as though no one had been there for many years.
But how could that be? He had just been there shortly before, and at that time, the facilities in the fire escape were much newer than inside the apartment, with the iron handrails freshly painted with anti-rust paint and the lights overhead not these yellow bulbs but bright incandescent ones.
How, in just over half an hour of absence, had this place aged by a full 10 years?
Yang Xiao did not dare to think further and could only quicken his pace. After counting two floors down, he nervously pushed open the fourth floor’s fire escape thick wooden door.
"Whew—"
Yang Xiao let out a breath. The worst scenario had not occurred; he was back. Before him was the apartment’s fourth-floor corridor. He hadn’t encountered the Ghost Hitting the Wall phenomenon.
Quickly arriving at the door of room 4004 and confirming the surroundings were safe, he took out the key and successfully unlocked the door.
The first thing he did upon entering the room was not to immediately close the door but to quickly survey the entire room, especially the bathroom, closet, behind the curtains, and under the bed—these key areas. After completing these tasks at the fastest speed, Yang Xiao then closed the slightly ajar door and locked it.
After all this turmoil, Yang Xiao was already exhausted. With the shadow of what had happened at Old Lady Wu’s place, he directly locked the bedroom door and grabbed a thick blanket, intending to rough it out in the living room for the night. The overhead light was a rare comfort now.
Sitting on the sofa, Yang Xiao began uncontrollably to reminisce about everything that had happened that day. He had previously thought that the first man to die was the Evil Cultivator who had dashed into the fog simply faking his death to make the others let down their guard and then manipulate things from the shadows.
But having seen the man’s corpse with his own eyes, Yang Xiao realized he had thought too much; that was just an ordinary person who had been scared to death.
Old Lady Wu was also not right, treating the deceased man as her son and acting madly throughout. Yang Xiao suspected that her real identity was a ghost.
If that were the case, the situation Fu Changxue faced tonight should also be similar to his own. Despite all the calculations, Yang Xiao hadn’t expected the night to be so dangerous.
As time ticked away by the second, suddenly a wave of sleepiness came over him like a tidal wave. Yang Xiao’s eyelids grew heavier, and although he knew something was not right and tried to resist, he couldn’t at all. Finally, his body swayed from side to side a few times; then, he collapsed onto the sofa, asleep.
"Dang!"
"Dang!"
In a daze, Yang Xiao was woken by the ringing of a bell. It was already daylight outside. He got up from the sofa and noticed that the chiming was coming from the wall clock.
Such old-fashioned pendulum clocks have a time-reporting function. With eight chimes, it was now eight o’clock in the morning.
He drew back the curtains, and, as expected, daylight had broken.
Upon opening the door and stepping out of his room, Yang Xiao passed through the corridor and noticed that the trash bags that had been lying in front of several doors had vanished without a trace. Moreover, the corridor was filthy and strewn with miscellaneous items; it was as if no one had cleaned it for a long time.
Faint footsteps and voices were audible from the emergency exit stairwell. Yang Xiao hurried over, just in time to run into Qu Yi, Li Qingxuan, and Mo Daidai.
Together, they descended the stairs. As agreed upon the night before, everyone was to meet in front of the security room first thing in the morning.
By the time the four of them, including Yang Xiao, arrived, others were already waiting. Upon seeing each other, everyone breathed a sigh of relief—all nine people were present, with no one missing from the night before.
Seeing that those tasked with executing missions—Fu Changxue, Yang Xiao, Tong Han, and Wang Longhui—were all present, the newcomer Xu Xinyi couldn’t wait to ask, "How... how did it go last night? Was the mission successful?"
Since the other three showed no intention of speaking first, Yang Xiao was the first to recount the harrowing experiences of the previous night, turning the others’ faces pale with his tale.
"Good heavens, this... the mission actually involved treating a corpse," Li Qingxuan said, his face turning white with fear. His acting skills were now on par with Yang Xiao’s.
After Yang Xiao, it was Fu Changxue’s turn to speak. Today, he had lost his arrogance from the day before, looking somewhat pale. His task had been to repair the blocked toilet in Old Man Lü’s home at 11 p.m. Initially, he said, things were normal; the drainage pipe in Old Man Lü’s home was clogged, so he extended a hooked wire into the pipe, hoping to pull out the blockage. To his surprise, he fished out a tangled mass of hair.
Moreover, Fu Changxue noted that the hair was very long, likely belonging to a woman.
Since Old Man Lü was bald, lived alone with no children or spouse, Fu Changxue began to suspect the origins of the hair.
The blockage in the pipe was much worse than imagined. Soon, Fu Changxue made another discovery—at the end of a tuft of hair, there was a small piece of flesh attached.
Fu Changxue’s heart skipped a beat. He ventured a bold guess: Old Man Lü was not as benign as he seemed. This guy was a murderer; he had killed a woman—a young woman at that—and had chopped up her body and flushed it down the drain.
The reason he suspected the victim was a young woman was because the clump of flesh Fu Changxue hooked out contained a fragment of a fingertip, which, despite being rotted from the sewage, had red nail polish that still glared vividly.
That was just the beginning. More and more pieces of human flesh appeared: chopped fingers, a half ear, and several teeth. What terrified Fu Changxue even more was that, at some point, the previously talkative and seemingly kind-hearted Old Man Lü had stopped talking. He stood silently behind Fu Changxue, subtly closing the bathroom door.
But Fu Changxue, an experienced player with excellent composure, acted as if he had noticed nothing. Over and over again, he extracted the blocked human tissue from the drain and silently disposed of them into the trash bin. Before long, the bin was full.
Despite the fetid stench of decayed flesh, Fu Changxue didn’t turn around. With an unwavering expression, he shifted the trash bin, calmly instructing Old Man Lü behind him to help dispose of it.
Old Man Lü didn’t speak, but reached out, took away the black trash bin filled with human tissue. Using his peripheral vision, Fu Changxue saw that in Old Man Lü’s hand was a sharp boning knife, still coated with bits of flesh.
Crouching beside the drainpipe, Fu Changxue didn’t dare lift his head, his legs going numb from squatting, his hands continuously performing the same action, hooking out the blockages over and over again. Finally, the drain was cleared, and by his side, the trash bin had been filled five times over.
Only when the drain was cleared did Fu Changxue slowly stand up. By this time, Old Man Lü had resumed his kind demeanor, thanking him profusely and even enthusiastically offering to make him tea.
However, Fu Changxue dared not accept, for he noticed a strand of a woman’s hair hanging from the rim of the tea cup Old Man Lü brought, with a small piece of flesh attached to its end.
Fu Changxue didn’t continue his story from there, but judging by his complexion, it was clear he had indeed drunk the tea—after all, not drinking would have made it difficult for Old Man Lü to let him leave.
Initially, everyone was hungry as they had not eaten, but after hearing Fu Changxue’s story, their hunger was quickly replaced by a wave of indescribable nausea. Now, they didn’t want to eat anything.
Next in line were the two security guards on duty. Tong Han didn’t immediately share her experience but led everyone to the outside of the security room. The other guard, Wang Longhui, followed silently, his face ashen. When they arrived, two envelopes were seen sticking to the door.
Chillingly, the envelopes bore half of a bloody handprint.
"What’s this about?" Qu Yi couldn’t help but ask.
Tong Han shook her head and took a deep breath, "I don’t know. Last night, Wang Longhui was the first to go on patrol, and I was left alone on duty in the security room. Around... around two o’clock in the morning, I heard footsteps outside the door."
"At first, I thought Wang Longhui had returned, but I soon realized it wasn’t him. The footsteps were very light, as if whoever it was tiptoed or... or was barefoot."
"That thing was fast. By the time I realized something was off, it had already appeared outside the security room door. Then... then it started knocking, methodically, with a muffled sound, as if the hand knocking had no bones."
