Chapter 17

Zhu Ming shot upright immediately.

The voice outside didn’t stop, continuing its relentless chant: “Mingming, I’m so scared. Why won’t you answer me? Mingming, don’t you want to see me? Mingming…”

Bang!

A deafening crash cut the voice off. Zhu Ming had leapt off the bed and, with savage force, swung a wooden chair against the door panel.

“Are you done yet?!” she roared.

Using Yin Yu’s form to taunt her, time and again—Zhu Ming’s patience, no matter how vast, was now utterly spent.

“Get lost.” Zhu Ming kicked the door with a heavy thud. “Get the hell away from me!”

Sometimes, Zhu Ming used to imagine what her reaction would be if she ever saw Yin Yu again.

But the reality was, they were separated. Yin Yu had vanished, as if she’d never even existed. The damage she’d inflicted, the hope she’d offered—all of it remained trapped in the past with her.

Zhu Ming could admit it: in the beginning, she still loved Yin Yu. But she had gradually learned not to care, had learned to crush that name deep into the bottom of her heart. She never spoke of it to anyone, only dug it out to chew on in the dead of night.

The chair, rebounding off the door, lay lopsided on the floor. Zhu Ming pounced on it, hefted it high, and smashed it against the door again. She was a wounded beast, her lacerations prodded, wild with rage and pain.

The sound of wood splintering against the door panel echoed throughout the villa in the dead of night. The force was so immense the chair disintegrated into a mess of shattered pieces on the ground.

But soon, everything fell silent.

The ghost haunting the corridor suddenly felt a maddening, gut-wrenching curiosity claw at him. He desperately wanted to know what demon had seized this person’s heart. It was a power the rules granted him: to create illusions that would lure participants out of their rooms. But he couldn’t see what those illusions were.

This was his territory, darkness his stage. Yet, a sense of dread washed over him, a chilling, palpable crisis emanating from behind that door, baring its fangs and claws.

H-how was this possible?

He moved closer silently, pressing his eye to the peephole. Hehe. He could see all of them, secretly, furtively, leaving them nowhere to hide… Suddenly, a bloodshot eyeball filled his entire field of vision. Its inky black pupil was an abyss, utterly terrifying.

The eyeball twitched, lunging forward as if trying to squeeze through the peephole.

He recoiled in panic. It was the most horrifying sight he’d ever witnessed in his existence. His ice-cold heart nearly leapt out of his throat. In that moment, he forgot that he was the ghost; he was frightened of the darkness itself.

Inside the guest room, the woman pressed against the door’s inner side offered a vicious grin. She only pulled back from the peephole after watching the ghost’s crimson eyeball retreat in haste.

“I see you.”

She flipped the bird at the peephole. “You bastard. Just you wait. I’ll flay your skin off, or my name isn’t Zhu Ming!”

He jolted in shock, then fury blazed through him. This was his trick, the one he used to terrify the living! How dare a living person frighten him instead?

No, this was absurd! He was a ghost, a powerful ghost! Everyone here was his plaything, meant to tremble in fear under his machinations!

So he lunged at the door of Room 2004, determined to repel its occupant with his most terrifying gaze.

But he didn’t get to lock eyes with the occupant.

He saw a raised middle finger instead.

He nearly exploded with rage.

…

In this pitch-black night, Room 2004 wasn’t the only one whose secrets were laid bare. None of the other guest rooms escaped this temptation.

Inside Room 2005, Yun Zouchuan spoke to the door panel, “Don’t bother pretending. There’s no way my mom would be here. She never even left the mountain.”

Inside Room 2006, Xiao Xue unscrewed a bottle of water and drank with a sigh. She heard the sounds of her parents urging her to open the door. She heard the voice of her little sister, scared but bravely holding back her fear. And she heard the arrogant command of her older sister:

“Get over here and open the door!”

She responded with silence. Knowing full well it was a lie, there was nothing left to say.

When she didn’t answer, the voice outside changed tactics, cajoling her in various ways. That haughty voice suddenly became clingy and pitiful: “Dear little sister, I won’t lose my temper anymore. I promise I’ll treat you well. I love you the most! Have you become disobedient too? Just open the door, quickly!”

Xiao Xue couldn’t help but smile. Even though it was fake, hearing her sister speak to her like that was a rather novel experience.

Then, it moved to the door of Room 2007.

The ghost, seething with resentment after a completely fruitless night, arrived at his last hope. Inside was the occupant he resented most yet could do absolutely nothing about.

What obsessions did she harbor? What kind of panicked reaction would she have?

He pressed his eye curiously to the peephole, ready to look. But he saw nothing at all.

In a daze, he seemed to hear a vast, desolate wind. But it was an illusion. Here, it was silent as a graveyard. There was no shift in emotion, heartbeat, or breathing. There wasn’t a single response.

It was as if the guest in Room 2007 was a block of ice that could never be melted, her heart impenetrable to anyone.

…

In the lightless night, Zhu Ming walked barefoot across a floor littered with debris. The room’s only chair was destroyed. She sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes drooping, unable to sleep.

They said that as time passed, the ghosts’ powers grew stronger. Just look—even a ghost now knew to use Yin Yu to tempt her.

Zhu Ming stared ahead, expressionless, her pupils slightly dilated. She began to replay every single event since entering the dungeon, every detail, not sparing a single one.

She had said it: she would kill that ghost.

After an unknown amount of time, Zhu Ming finally moved. She walked to the window and suddenly pulled back the curtain.

Outside, layered shadows of trees loomed. There was no wind. Everything stood silent, still, like countless corpses waiting for burial.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Swollen, ghastly white arms extended from the window’s edge, trailing wet, viscous fluid, reeking of decay. Soft, waterlogged, putrid flesh pressed against the glass, squirming and rubbing as it crawled.

A distorted, deformed face appeared outside the window. Its nose, mouth, and eyes were sunken deep into a flat, shapeless visage like clay. She stared at her with a gluttonous hunger. The swimsuit on her body was red as blood. Her skin was white as paper.

The window rattled with a clicking sound. Water and flesh friction produced a squelching, tiny squeaking noise. The waterlogged, drowned, resentful ghost clung stickily to the glass, slithering and winding like a mollusk. She guarded the prey within the safe house, waiting for the moment to strike her kill.

Zhu Ming tilted her head, staring at her, and suddenly smiled. “I’ve always been curious. Why did you die in the water? You two loving dogs couldn’t possibly have killed each other over a lover’s quarrel, right?”

Zhu Ming opened the butler’s phone. The screen suddenly lit up, its light harsh and glaring.

She looked at the photo in the multimedia message. After a moment, her gaze shifted to the time.

5:17 AM.

Ah, so time had slipped by unnoticed to this point already.

In a normal summer, the sun would be preparing to rise. But here, everything followed the rules, including sunrise and sunset.

Every morning, the sun rose at exactly six o’clock. Every afternoon, it set at three o’clock.

Day and night were sharply divided, with a three-minute gray zone between them.

Half an hour later, Zhu Ming opened the phone again.

The time was 5:45 AM.

Zhu Ming walked into the bathroom. She saw her reflection in the mirror beginning to shift into the drowned female corpse.

She spoke coldly: “I thought about it last night while washing my hands. Tricking Old Gao into turning off the lights to shower was actually quite clever. It works well on people under high mental stress.”

In truth, Old Gao’s cause of death was easy to deduce.

The Water Ghost had killed him.

Old Gao was meticulous about his appearance and in poor health. He’d also gone down to the swimming pool and gotten covered in that disgusting stench. Under those circumstances, it was natural to want to clean up. As long as he remained cautious, it wasn’t a guaranteed death.

But he had been fooled by the illusion in the mirror. He’d thought he was safe inside the guest room, and that bad things only happened when the flashlight was on. So, he chose to shower in the dark.

Clearly, the water system here was interconnected. Aside from the bottled drinking water and the water in the rooftop water lily pond, all water carried the same nauseating taste. This was the Water Ghost’s pathway into the rooms.

She’d follow the flowing water system. The moment the showerhead sprayed, she’d descend from above, drowning Old Gao in her long hair…

After a person died, the guest room door automatically opened. The butler would push his cleaning cart in, clearing out the trash in Old Gao’s room and the water stains and hair in the bathroom. Eventually, he’d go to the public restroom on the first floor to rinse his mop, and those cold, sleek, long strands would once again clog the drain plug he’d just cleared the day before.

By morning, when everyone discovered Old Gao’s death, the bathroom would be dry. They’d assume Old Gao had gone into the pool and been killed by the Water Ghost in revenge, never realizing that entering the pool wasn’t a prerequisite for death.

It killed two birds with one stone: it prevented participants from exploring the pool further, and made everyone overlook Old Gao’s true cause of death.

This way, some unlucky soul might fall for the mirror illusion again, choosing to shower in darkness.

Zhu Ming decided to do exactly that. She turned off her flashlight and turned on the shower.

“Tonight, I’d like to invite you inside for a chat.”

The water streamed down, and Zhu Ming, fully clothed, stepped underneath it. The icy water held a strange, off odor, not entirely pleasant.

When did the change begin? When the water flow started to hitch, or when the strange smell intensified?

Zhu Ming turned off the tap, wiped her face. She knew that once the change started, it wouldn’t stop easily.

Zhu Ming walked out, soaking wet, leaving a trail of water on the floor.

When the phone screen lit up again, the time was 5:51 AM.

A dragging, heavy crawling sound came from behind her. Squelching, wet noises of soft flesh scraping the floor. Something cool and stringy followed the wet footprints, coiling around Zhu Ming’s leg.

Zhu Ming stepped forward and turned on her flashlight. Click. The beam appeared.

The strange movement stopped, but didn’t disappear.

Click. The sole source of light vanished.

Those strands of cold, decayed black hair, as if alive, began writhing again. They spiraled upwards, their clumsy, bulky main body slithering like a slug, while the individual strands were far more nimble and quick.

Zhu Ming switched her flashlight on, tore the hair tangled around her leg away, and took a step back toward the door.

Zhu Ming turned her flashlight off, waiting for the sodden, rotting resentful ghost to appear. The retreating black hair pressed forward again.

The room gradually filled with a putrid, fishy stench. There was no human sound inside, only the rustling whisper of the hair, the dripping of water droplets, the squelching of flesh scraping the floor, the sharp click-clack of the flashlight switching on and off, and an endless, internal shriek of torment.

The beam of light appeared and disappeared in a fixed rhythm. The darkness, with unyielding resolve, slowly encroached.

Zhu Ming watched it happen, unblinking.

Finally, the nightmarish ghost-thing brushed against Zhu Ming’s calf. Cold, slimy, waterlogged and rotting in the heat, its flesh squelched and squirmed, attempting to swallow her alive.

Perhaps she really could. Once entangled by her, no one could escape.

But Zhu Ming flipped the flashlight back on.

Disgusting.

The resentful ghost wanted to surge forward, paralyzed in the light. Zhu Ming helped her along. She reached out, grabbed the ghost’s wildly growing hair, and yanked her head upwards violently.

A sharp, acrid, hospital-scented wave of decay hit her in the face. But Zhu Ming didn’t flinch, didn’t hold her breath. She just looked at the ghost’s terrifying face with an expression of pitying coldness. “How pathetic,” she said. “So this is how you died.”

Then, she let go. She coldly watched as the female corpse slammed heavily to the ground.

Zhu Ming turned around, opened the door, and walked out.