Chapter 14 : Chapter 14
Chapter 14: No One Is Allowed Upstairs!
11:45 PM.
Zhao Mingyue arrived at the turning point between the fourth and fifth floors. With her back facing the fifth floor, she tightly closed her eyes. She knew that once she stepped across these thirteen stairs, she would come into contact with another world.
“Don’t be afraid. Just keep walking upward. No matter what you hear, don’t open your eyes.”
Two slender arms appeared beside her and gently embraced her in a hugging gesture. Zhao Mingyue opened her eyes slightly and glanced sideways, seeing Bai Yu’s profile. She thought to herself that she must be completely crazy—playing such a game in the middle of the night, with a Fierce Ghost hugging her from behind.
She closed her eyes again and tried her best to ignore the icy chill at the back of her neck. In fact, that chill made her feel calmer. At the very least, the ghost behind her was one she was familiar with, not some unknown ghost.
Bai Yu’s hands covered Zhao Mingyue’s eyes. The moment Zhao Mingyue stepped backward onto the first stair, everything around them changed instantly.
The pale, frightening walls gradually became replaced by black burn marks. The air filled with a choking smell of scorched smoke. It felt as if a red cloth had been placed over her vision, adding a blood-red filter to everything. Under that crimson tint, the black stains on the walls twisted strangely.
It became impossible to tell whether they were burn marks or fresh blood splashed across the surface.
As Zhao Mingyue stepped backward to the fifth step, gray-black flakes began appearing in the air. Countless blood-red threads surged from cracks in the walls, writhing like maggots as they clung to the walls and the stair railings.
Bai Yu heard the crackling of flames. She also heard the sound of fingernails scratching at a door coming from a room on the fifth floor. The thing inside seemed frantic. When scratching failed, it began pounding on the door, as if something even more terrifying existed inside the room.
It was like returning to the day of the fire.
The room had caught fire, yet the door refused to open. In despair, someone could only keep pounding and scratching at the wooden door while helplessly watching themselves burn to death.
Bai Yu’s eyes showed a trace of excitement. It had been a long time since she had felt such stimulation.
Her small arms still covered Zhao Mingyue’s eyes while holding her from behind. To put it bluntly, this was “ghost covering the eyes,” but in reality she was protecting Zhao Mingyue. At least it made the girl feel a little better. If Zhao Mingyue actually saw this blood-red world, her fragile heart might not be able to endure it.
The fourth and fifth floors were completely different worlds.
Especially for someone walking backward up the thirteenth stair.
During this backward ascent, the movement absolutely could not be interrupted. And since it was midnight, things were very different from daytime.
Bai Yu suspected that something filthy might try to interfere.
Sixth step. Seventh step.
When Zhao Mingyue placed her eighth step, one of the rooms on the fourth floor suddenly exploded open with a loud bang.
The door had been kicked open from the inside.
Footsteps rushed rapidly toward the staircase. The most obvious sign was a wave of foul stench approaching quickly.
Drip.
Blood dripped onto the ground.
It was a man whose face could not be clearly seen. He stood at the corner of the staircase. If not for the constant dripping blood from the hem of his clothes and the stench emanating from him, one might have mistaken him for an ordinary tenant.
The man wore a heavy black cotton nightgown. He had no hair, and his entire face had been severely disfigured by the fire.
Grabbing the stair railing, the man rushed upstairs. As soon as he reached the corner, he looked up and saw Zhao Mingyue walking backward up the stairs, with the girl in a white dress holding her from behind.
“No one is allowed upstairs!” the man rasped hoarsely.
He took several large strides upward. His blackened hand almost grabbed Zhao Mingyue’s wrist.
“Get lost!”
At that moment, Bai Yu suddenly opened her eyes. Chains formed from blood-red threads burst from behind her, their ends shaped like sharp spikes. With tremendous force, the man was violently thrown down the staircase.
With a fierce shout, the man vanished from the corridor. The foul stench also retreated rapidly.
“No one is allowed upstairs!”
Zhao Mingyue did not know what had happened outside, but the sudden noise made her body tremble. She climbed the stairs even faster.
Each floor normally had twelve steps. She had noticed that when casually going upstairs before.
But the fifth floor had a thirteenth step.
When the final step landed, Zhao Mingyue suddenly felt an even colder sensation enveloping her body, as if she had been submerged in icy water. Remembering her previous experience, she dared not touch the stair railing with her hand. She was afraid of feeling that sticky, slimy sensation again.
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“You can.”
Bai Yu released her hands. Zhao Mingyue’s eyelids trembled as she opened her eyes.
What greeted her was a world that looked as if it had been covered with a blood-red filter.
The layout of the fifth floor was not very different from the fourth floor, but the oppressive atmosphere was on an entirely different level.
Feeling uneasy, Zhao Mingyue took out her phone and checked the time. In her perception, less than five minutes had passed, but the time had already become 12:03 AM.
“Don’t stand there. Find the room. Locate that woman’s corpse.”
“The room?”
Being reminded, Zhao Mingyue suddenly remembered something.
One of the side missions listed on the black phone’s task list was called “Room No. 6.”
From what they had discovered downstairs, there was blood beneath the walls. That blood had soaked through from a corpse. That corpse was most likely the key to the mission. If she found the body, the mission completion rate would certainly increase.
Bai Yu had said the corpse was inside one of the rooms.
That meant Room 506 was most likely the room she needed to find.
Just as she took a step forward, lightning flashed outside the corridor. The pale light briefly illuminated the dark hallway.
Using that flash of light, she saw someone standing on the fourth floor.
Zhao Mingyue gathered her courage and leaned over the railing to look down.
Suddenly, a wrinkled elderly hand covered with age spots appeared on the cold railing.
Judging by the position of the hand, its owner should have been going downstairs—the fingers were pointing downward. Yet the person was slowly climbing upward.
“A person walking backward…”
Zhao Mingyue suddenly remembered a post she had once seen online.
She immediately turned and walked away, trying to make her movements as quiet as possible.
Her retreat had already been blocked.
The only option left was to find Room 6.
Zhao Mingyue moved quickly. She noticed something along the way.
Every room along the corridor had a small incense burner placed outside the door. Inside were burnt incense sticks.
Rooms 501 through 504 all had them.
Only Rooms 505 and 506 did not.
“506.”
“It’s inside there.” Bai Yu appeared beside Zhao Mingyue. She could already sense something.
There was definitely something inside that room.
“But the door is locked. Bai Yu, can you go inside?”
Zhao Mingyue grabbed the outer iron grille door with both hands and shook it hard. Unfortunately, the iron door did not move at all.
The cold sensation grew stronger and stronger. The sound of approaching footsteps was getting closer.
“The key… I have to find the key. Do I need to go downstairs and ask the landlord?”
“No. Just go to the fourth floor. The key to this door should be in one of the rooms on the fourth floor. That door is open.”
Hearing Bai Yu’s words, Zhao Mingyue immediately realized something.
“The husband’s room!”
The woman had been locked there by her husband before being burned to death.
Her husband forbade anyone from going upstairs. Whenever food was delivered, he personally took it up.
And the hoarse male voice Zhao Mingyue had heard earlier while climbing the stairs.
Most likely belonged to the husband who had died in the fire.