11:45 PM.
Zhao Mingyue reached the stairway landing between the fourth and fifth floors, her back leaning against the wall of the fifth floor as she tightly shut her eyes. She knew that once she ascended those thirteen steps backward, she would come into contact with another world.
“Don’t be afraid, just keep walking up. No matter what sounds you hear, don’t open your eyes.”
Two slender, lotus-like arms appeared at her sides, wrapping around her in a gentle, embracing posture. Zhao Mingyue opened her eyes a crack and glanced sideways, catching the profile of Bai Yu’s face. She thought to herself how truly crazy she was, playing this kind of game in the middle of the night with a Fierce Ghost hugging her from behind.
She closed her eyes again, trying her best to ignore the icy cold sensation at the back of her neck. In truth, it steadied her heart quite a bit. After all, the ghost behind her was a ghost she knew, not a strange one.
Two small hands covered Zhao Mingyue’s eyes. The moment she backed onto the first step, the world around her instantly changed.
The sickly, pallid, and terrifying walls began to be slowly replaced by black scorch marks. A choking, acrid smell of burning filled the air, and her vision felt as if it had been covered by a piece of red cloth, overlaid with a blood-red filter. Under the influence of this crimson filter, the blackness emanating from the walls seemed sinister and distorted.
It was utterly impossible to tell if these were scorch marks or simply splattered blood.
By the time Zhao Mingyue took her fifth step backward, wisps of grayish-black, flocculent matter began to appear in the air. Countless blood threads surged forth from the cracks in the walls, like so many maggots, crawling over the walls and handrails of the staircase.
Bai Yu heard the sound of flames crackling and the noise of fingernails scratching against a door in one of the rooms on the fifth floor. The thing inside seemed to be in a great hurry; when clawing at the door didn’t work, it started pounding on it, as if something utterly terrifying was inside the room.
It was like being back on the day of the fire, trapped inside a room as flames raged, the door impossible to open. In despair, the only thing left to do was to keep slapping and scratching at the wooden door, watching helplessly as you were burned alive.
Bai Yu’s eyes held a hint of excitement. It had been a long time since she had felt this kind of thrill.
Her small hands still encircled Zhao Mingyue in a hugging posture, covering her eyes. To put it crudely, this was a form of “Phantom Blindness,” but in reality, she was protecting Zhao Mingyue. At least it helped the girl feel a bit better. Letting her see this blood-red world might be more than her little heart could take.
The fourth floor and the fifth floor were two completely different worlds, especially for someone walking backward up to the thirteenth step.
This backward process absolutely could not be interrupted. And it being midnight made things vastly different from the daytime.
Bai Yu suspected that something unclean would come to interfere.
Sixth step, seventh step… Just as Zhao Mingyue’s eighth step landed, a thunderous “Bang!” erupted from one of the rooms on the fourth floor. The door was kicked open forcefully from the inside, and the sound of footsteps rushing rapidly toward the staircase echoed. The most immediate sensation was a foul stench closing in fast.
“Drip.”
Blood splattered onto the ground. It was a man whose face couldn’t be seen clearly. If not for the blood endlessly dripping from the hem of his clothes and the putrid smell on him, one might have mistaken him for just another tenant standing at the bend of the stairs.
The man wore thick black cotton pajamas. He had no hair, and his entire face was severely disfigured by a massive fire.
He seized the stair handrail and rushed up quickly. As he reached the landing, he looked up and saw Zhao Mingyue walking backward up the stairs, and the girl in the white dress holding her from behind.
“No one is allowed upstairs!” The man’s voice, ripped from his throat, was incredibly hoarse and grating.
He lunged forward, taking several giant strides to ascend, his pitch-black hand nearly grasping Zhao Mingyue’s wrist.
“Scram!” Bai Yu’s eyes snapped open abruptly. Behind her, chains formed of blood threads, their ends tipped with sharp cones, shot out. With tremendous force, the man was violently flung down the stairs.
With that sharp shout, the man vanished into the corridor, and the vile stench rapidly receded into the distance.
“No one is allowed upstairs!”
Zhao Mingyue didn’t know what was happening outside, but the sound made her delicate body tremble, and she quickened her pace upstairs.
On every floor, the staircase had twelve steps. She had idly counted them before when going upstairs. Yet the fifth floor had a thirteenth step.
As her final step landed, Zhao Mingyue only felt the cold intensify, a sensation as if her body was soaking in ice water. Having learned from her previous experience, she didn’t dare touch the stair railing, afraid she might feel that sticky, slimy, disgusting thing again.
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“Yes, you can.” Bai Yu released her hands. Zhao Mingyue’s eyelids fluttered lightly as she opened her eyes, greeted by a world seemingly overlaid with a blood-red filter.
The layout of the fifth floor wasn’t much different from the fourth, but the sense of pressure was on a completely different level.
Her heart fluttered with panic. Zhao Mingyue took out her mobile phone to check. It had felt like less than five minutes had passed, but the time was already 12:03 AM.
“Don’t just stand there. Find the room, find that woman’s body.”
“Room?”
Jogged by the reminder, Zhao Mingyue remembered something. The quest on the black phone had a sub-quest: Room Number Six.
Information gathered from the lower floor pointed to blood beneath the walls, blood that had soaked a corpse. This corpse was almost certainly key to the quest. Finding it would definitely increase her quest completion rate.
Bai Yu had said the body was in a specific room. This Room 506 was most likely the room she needed to find.
She had just taken a step forward when a flash of lightning outside the corridor streaked across the sky. The ghastly white light briefly illuminated the dark corridor, and by its glow, she saw someone standing on the fourth floor.
Summoning her courage, Zhao Mingyue leaned over the railing to look down. Suddenly, an old, age-spotted hand appeared on the ice-cold railing. Judging by its posture, the hand’s owner was supposed to be going down the stairs—the fingers were oriented downward—but this person was crawling upward at an agonizingly slow speed!
“The Backward Walker…”
Recalling a post she had read online, Zhao Mingyue turned and walked away, trying to make her movements as light as possible.
Her retreat was cut off. Her only option was to find that Room Number Six.
Moving quickly, Zhao Mingyue noticed something: outside the doors in this corridor, small incense burners were placed, filled with burned-out incense sticks.
She saw them from Room 501 to 504. Only outside 505 and 506 were they missing.
“506.”
“It’s inside.” Bai Yu materialized beside Zhao Mingyue, having already sensed something. There was definitely something in this room.
“But the door is locked. Bai Yu, can you get in?”
Zhao Mingyue grabbed the outer iron-barred gate and yanked it hard, shaking it several times, but it didn’t budge an inch.
The icy chill grew stronger, and the sound of footsteps drew closer.
“A key, I need to find the key. Do I have to go downstairs and ask the landlord?”
“No, just go to the fourth floor. The key to this door should be in a room on the fourth floor. That door is already open.”
Hearing Bai Yu’s words, a thought struck Zhao Mingyue.
“The husband’s room!”
The woman had been locked inside here by her husband and burned to death. The husband forbade anyone from going upstairs; he always delivered the meals himself.
And the hoarse male voice she had heard while coming upstairs was likely the husband who had died in the fire.
