Chapter 15 : Chapter 15
Chapter 15: Guess Who I Am
“The world is already different from the normal one, so the key to opening this door must be in the husband’s room. Only the husband could enter Room 506. When that ghost heard the sound of me going upstairs earlier, he chased after me, so the door should still be open.”
Zhao Mingyue completed her analysis in a very short time. She looked at Bai Yu.
“Sister Bai, if I go downstairs now, I’ll run into the husband’s ghost, right?”
“You want me to deal with him?” Bai Yu immediately understood Zhao Mingyue’s meaning.
“Yes. Otherwise, facing two ghosts at once will be hard for us to handle.”
The backward-walking figure and the husband’s ghost were both waiting somewhere on the fourth floor and around the staircase. She definitely did not dare to go down there herself.
When she was climbing the stairs earlier, she had heard Bai Yu shout angrily at the ghost, and then the ghost fled. That meant Bai Yu had attacked it. This also meant Bai Yu was capable of killing that ghost.
“I can do that. Not only can I kill that ghost, I could kill every ghost in this building. But doing so would affect the progress of your mission. Besides, you don’t only have this one option.”
Bai Yu’s abyss-like eyes looked toward the staircase.
“Lu Liangting has arrived.”
“Lu Liangting? He’s only arriving now?”
“Yes.”
Bai Yu could sense three living presences entering the building. The first two were obviously Lu Liangting and his cousin. But the third one was uncertain. The only thing Bai Yu could confirm was that this third person was definitely another participant in the game.
“So what should we do now?” Zhao Mingyue blinked and gripped her magic staff tightly with both hands. At this moment she already understood Bai Yu’s meaning. The so-called second path was simply to let Lu Liangting lure the ghosts away.
“Circle around. Go around to the other side and hide.”
The building was structured like the Chinese character “日,” so walking in a loop would eventually lead back to the staircase area.
Zhao Mingyue nodded. Standing outside Room 506, she could clearly hear something inside scratching at the door. There was also a faint cry for help mixed in, distorted by pain.
Holding her breath, Zhao Mingyue circled around and positioned herself in a blind spot where no one coming up the stairs could see her.
Just when she thought she would have to wait for Lu Liangting to come upstairs, Bai Yu suddenly controlled strands of blood-red threads and lifted the small incense burner placed outside Room 503. She then slammed it violently onto the ground.
In the dark and silent corridor, the sound of the ceramic incense burner shattering was extremely loud—like a sudden clap of thunder.
The echo lingered. Zhao Mingyue clearly heard the backward-walking figure on the stairs quicken its pace as it began climbing up.
At the same time, some movement came from the fourth floor. After the headless old man reached the fifth floor, a second set of footsteps appeared.
Those footsteps quickly drew the headless old man’s attention away. Once they disappeared on the fourth floor, another person began coming upstairs.
It was that set of footsteps that awakened the man hiding on the fourth floor once again.
“No one is allowed upstairs!”
The hoarse and venomous voice echoed through the corridor.
Sure enough, when that shout rang out, the person climbing the stairs quickened his pace. Zhao Mingyue glanced sideways and saw that it was indeed Lu Liangting.
Behind him followed another figure.
The figure was pitch black. Its clothes had melted from burning and stuck to large patches of flesh, releasing waves of foul odor. Thick drops of black pus and blood fell to the ground, sizzling faintly as they touched the floor.
“No one is allowed upstairs!”
Zhao Mingyue swallowed nervously and silently prayed for Lu Liangting. She had not intended to use this method to lure him upstairs.
Without Bai Yu needing to say anything, Zhao Mingyue saw that both the man and the ghost had disappeared around the corridor corner. She immediately moved and ran downstairs.
However, the moment she reached the fourth floor, something caught the corner of her eye.
The person being chased by the headless old man had gone down to the third floor, but for some unknown reason had turned back and returned.
The current situation was dangerous.
Downstairs, the headless old man was about to come up. Upstairs, it was unclear how long Lu Liangting could hold on. And the husband’s ghost could return at any moment. If she moved any slower, she might end up trapped inside one of the fourth-floor rooms.
When she reached the fourth floor, the atmosphere was the same as the fifth floor—everything was covered by a faint blood-red filter.
The smell in the air was no longer just disinfectant. It was mixed with the stench of decay and the smell of burning.
Just as Bai Yu had said, one of the rooms on the fourth floor had indeed been opened.
If her guess was correct, this room had once belonged to the landlord.
Zhao Mingyue sighed in relief for no particular reason. At least it was not her own room. If she had come out and discovered that her own door was open, that would have been terrifying—because it would mean she had been living with a ghost the entire time.
She quickly approached the room. The interior was still charred and sealed from the fire, never properly repaired. Zhao Mingyue practically forced herself to walk inside.
What she did not notice was that Bai Yu had already disappeared.
When lightning split the sky and illuminated everything for a brief moment, Zhao Mingyue’s shadow no longer resembled the long-haired girl in the white dress.
The ghost that had been inside this room was gone. It was currently being held back by Lu Liangting and could not return for the moment. Meanwhile, the female ghost in Room 506 remained inside her own room.
In other words, although Zhao Mingyue had entered a “haunted house,” she had actually reached the safest place in the building.
For the moment, Zhao Mingyue’s safety was not a concern. Bai Yu herself had something she needed to handle.
The graceful figure in the white dress appeared in the corridor of the fourth floor. Step by step, she walked toward the staircase.
She intended to meet an “old friend.”
She wanted this old friend to know that the ghost stories within this building were not limited to those weak ghosts.
At that moment, Xia Han was being chased by the headless old man.
She had originally reached the third floor and planned to deal with the headless old man there, but something was wrong.
The intelligence had been incorrect.
There was another lunatic living in this building.
The man wearing rain boots and a raincoat was completely insane. Starting from the second floor, he had been knocking on every door, asking every household the same question.
“Have you seen my wife?”
Xia Han had indeed seen the man’s wife.
She was right on his back.
The man was carrying the swollen corpse of a woman soaked in water, yet he was asking people whether they had seen his wife.
His wife had died in this building. She had been one of the tenants from last year.
Xia Han hurried upstairs. Behind her, a Fierce Ghost was chasing relentlessly, and there was also a madman carrying his wife’s corpse.
In such a situation, most women would already be terrified. But Xia Han wore a smile on her face, as if she were playing an interesting game.
However, when she reached the corner of the stairs between the third and fourth floors and stepped onto the first stair, Her body froze.
Looking up, she saw a long-haired girl in a white dress.
The girl was beautiful. In the darkness, her figure resembled a butterfly dancing in the night.
But the aura emanating from that girl made Xia Han’s entire body tremble uncontrollably.
This thing definitely did not belong to this building.
Xia Han’s pupils shrank. She turned to leave immediately, but the dark-red chain tipped with a sharp spike was faster.
With a wet sound, the chain pierced through Xia Han’s heart.
Her body stiffened as she turned her head. She discovered that the girl in the white dress had somehow appeared right beside her.
Below the staircase, the headless old man had been about to climb up. But after seeing Bai Yu kill his prey, he paused briefly, silently turned around, and walked away. His cowardice was absolute.
“Jason… guess who I am?”