The putty was applied so frequently that when she shined her flashlight on it, she could clearly see varying thicknesses. Some patches were deep, others were shallow, as if it had been smeared on haphazardly. The spot she had scraped was at the base of the wall, a thicker patch.
Beneath the ghastly white putty was a black wall. Zhao Mingyue could tell at a glance that it was the mark of a fire.
Here’s the creepy part: when she used her fingers to scratch off some of the black carbon ash and rubbed it between her fingertips, the coarse, soil-like black ash turned a dark red!
She brought her fingers close to her nose and sniffed lightly. An acrid stench with a hint of decay hit her. It smelled like a freezer that had lost power in the summer, the frozen blood-water inside rotting in the heat, mixed with an earthy smell and the scent of disinfectant.
“What in the world is this…”
Zhao Mingyue frantically called out to Bai Yu in her mind, desperate to know what was on her hands. Was it blood or something else? If it was blood, was it human?
“Don’t bother asking. It’s blood. Human blood,” Bai Yu quickly answered.
“Hu… human blood?” Zhao Mingyue’s pupils constricted. To say she wasn’t scared would be a lie. No matter how mentally tough she was, this was her first quest.
“Wha-wha-what should I do? Should I call the police?”
Learning there was human blood in the walls, Zhao Mingyue’s first instinct was to call the police.
“Don’t panic. Steady yourself. Listen to me. Now, take a few steps forward. With every step, scrape another line into the wall.”
“Alright!”
Though she was terrified, Zhao Mingyue gritted her teeth, gripped the magic staff tightly with both hands, and shuffled forward in a crouch. She dragged the staff across the wall with each step, stopping only after six steps when Bai Yu told her to halt.
“It’s all blood?” she swallowed hard. Using the flashlight, she could clearly see the results of each scrape. Every single one was the same: the black burn marks were laced with a dark, bloody crimson.
“This blood has been here for a very long time. In other words, the corpse that produced it is very old. Actually, it’s not just blood in there. There are… other things as well.”
Bai Yu’s voice echoed in Zhao Mingyue’s mind, and its contents made her hair stand on end.
“If I’m not mistaken, in one of the rooms in this building, a corpse has been soaking. And that corpse is most likely a victim of the fire. The greatest possibility is the woman who lived on the fifth floor back then.”
“Bl… blood from a corpse? But then… how did the blood get into the walls?”
“The blood certainly didn’t appear here on its own. I can also tell you this: the female ghost definitely didn’t do it. Someone else did it, deliberately.”
Zhao Mingyue was dumbstruck. “You mean… a living person deliberately smeared this blood on the walls?”
“Correct.”
“Wh… why would they do that?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Is the disinfectant meant to cover up that smell?” The realization hit Zhao Mingyue like a bolt of lightning. “But why is it only on the fourth and fifth floors? I haven’t seen it on the first through third floors.”
“I don’t know. But you will find out tonight. Continue.”
The game hadn’t even officially started, and it was still just the preparation phase, but Zhao Mingyue had already been hit with a sledgehammer. She had been sticking close to the wall, but after Bai Yu told her that, she leaped away as if she’d been shocked. She no longer dared to walk next to it.
Gritting her teeth, she made her way to Room 405. Still unoccupied. It wasn’t until she reached the very end, Room 408, that she saw signs of habitation.
She tried knocking. The sound was starkly loud in the silent, dark hallway.
When no one answered, she mustered her courage and knocked a few more times. Suddenly, the inner wooden door behind the iron gate swung open, and a deeply wrinkled, haggard face appeared out of nowhere. It was a middle-aged man.
The man reached out to grab Zhao Mingyue’s wrist, but she had quick reflexes and dodged away.
“If you’ve got something to say, spit it out,” the man snapped impatiently.
“Nothing… I’m a tenant. I was just wondering, do you know when the power will be back on in the building?” Zhao Mingyue took a subtle step back, her hand behind her back tightening around the shaft of her magic staff.
This man had already been standing behind the door when she first knocked. On her second knock, he’d been peering at her through the peephole. And as she knocked again, he had quickly opened the door to try and grab her wrist.
“Do you need something? We can talk inside. I could lend you some candles or a flashlight,” the man’s attitude did a complete 180. He tried his best to force a smile, but it sent a chill of pure terror down Zhao Mingyue’s spine.
The room behind the man was a complete mess, littered with liquor bottles, takeout containers, and moldy, stinking instant noodle cups. There was barely any space to stand in the cramped rental.
“No, no, no. That won’t be necessary. Candles… I have some at home.”
Just as Zhao Mingyue turned to leave, the man slammed the door shut with a bang. But as her footsteps retreated, the door creaked open a crack, and a pair of eyes in the gap watched her back as she left.
Having scouted the fourth-floor residents, Zhao Mingyue arrived back at the stairwell.
She hadn’t found much on the fourth floor. As for the fifth floor… she hadn’t been up there even once.
Her heart was pounding. Judging by the sub-quests of her main task, things wouldn’t be that simple. Maybe the truly terrifying things were all on the fifth floor.
“There’s only one occupied room on the fourth floor, and the tenant isn’t very communicative. Does anyone live on the fifth floor?”
The stairwell leading up to the fifth floor seemed completely swallowed by darkness. In that darkness, who knew if a pair of eyes wasn’t hiding there, watching her?
Just as she put her foot on the first step, a sound of footsteps came from below.
She knew these footsteps well. It was the sound of someone walking in a pair of water-filled boots, each step producing a faint, squelching noise.
Wasn’t that the new tenant?
Zhao Mingyue stepped back, but the sound of knocking echoed through the hallway. The man was knocking on doors, one by one!
She had two options: go back to her room immediately and wait for the man to work his way upstairs. But that would waste time, and it was already 11:35.
If she opened and closed her door at the wrong moment, she might run right into this strange man.
The other option was to go straight up to the fifth floor now. If the man followed, she could lose him in the layout. If he didn’t, even better.
The knocking downstairs was violent and urgent. It was as if the man had something desperately important to do. Yet, the creepy thing was, with all that urgency and banging, why wasn’t he saying a single word?
Another notable detail: the man had already knocked on three doors, yet not a single person had opened their door to see what was going on.
“I can’t wait any longer. The game’s about to start. I have to reach the Thirteenth Step of the Fifth Floor before midnight.”
