The walls were smoothed with plaster and painted a fresh color. The corners were decorated with Baroque-style marble pillars. The window frames were elegant, the glass was polished to a shine, and the flowerbeds beneath them were filled with white lilies of the valley.
She pushed the door open to find Persian rugs on the floor and a marble fireplace against the wall. Before the hearth sat a wide, soft velvet sofa.
Near the window stood a mahogany desk. A broad-shouldered man sat in a high-backed chair, signing documents.
Another one who isn’t afraid of ghosts, Wang Yue thought privately.
She walked inside, but the man ignored her, his quill pen scratching across the paper as he wrote.
He was a middle-aged man with a stern face and sharp eyes. He was impeccably groomed, wearing glasses over amber eyes, and possessed a golden mustache that curled upward like tusks.
The gold watch chain peeking from his vest pocket, the shell-inlaid cufflinks, and his tortoiseshell glasses all spoke of his status. This man was either the owner or the director of the Almshouse.
Wang Yue noticed that the man wore four rings across his hands—some with gemstones, some plain gold bands—but one of his fingers bore only a pale indentation where a ring used to be.
Since he wasn’t speaking, she didn’t stand on ceremony.
Wang Yue circled the room. She found a Lantern on the mantelpiece, then discovered that the desk drawers could be opened. Searching them one by one, she found the “wages” and the Head of a God Statue.
The top-right drawer of the desk was locked, requiring a specific key.
“Money probably has a fixed spawn point in this desk, since ‘Uncle Golden-Beard’ is the only rich person in the Almshouse,” Wang Yue analyzed.
She took the money and headed straight for the White Shed. She handed over the daily wage, and the Overseer immediately stopped paying attention to her.
She searched the White Shed and found Lamp Oil, the final component for the lantern.
She unscrewed the cap, poured the oil in, and tossed the empty container aside. With the matches she’d found at the start, she finally had a complete set.
It was time to face the Shadow Crawler.
Since she could just reset if she died, it was time to show off some real skill!
She struck a match and lit the lantern. Light radiated outward, surrounding her in a large circle of safety like a stage spotlight. With a surge of confidence, she headed for the washroom.
The washroom and the Long-house Dormitory were thick with a sinister atmosphere.
Every time she passed through here, her heart tightened.
The people sitting among the ruins all bore burn marks—some on their limbs, others on their faces. Their burned skin looked like melted wax, possessing an eerie, unnatural smoothness.
The most severely burned victims had deformed faces; their eyelids and lips had vanished, leaving eyeballs and teeth tragically exposed.
They sat motionless, their eyes dead and glassy. The atmosphere was truly hellish.
Wang Yue stepped into the washroom.
The foul smell of water-mold hit her, and the sound of dripping water was piercing in the silence.
She slowed her pace, searching everywhere for the “Crawler.”
The white cloths draped over the toilet stalls moved without a breeze, as if something were wriggling behind them.
Wang Yue ignored the fluttering cloths and focused on finding the Shadow Crawler’s trail.
She shone her light into all four corners but found nothing. She stood still for a moment, then, as if sensing something, she spun around!
As the light swept across the floor, a fast-moving shadow let out a shrill hiss. It reacted as if it had been doused in boiling oil, its entire body erupting in disgusting, frothing bubbles!
The Shadow Crawler writhed violently in the light, clearly taking massive damage as it scrambled along the corners to escape!
Wang Yue didn’t chase it.
The creature was simply too fast; it vanished in the blink of an eye. There was no catching it.
She paused to think, piecing together the Crawler’s behavior.
The Shadow Crawler was extremely photophobic; it could only move within shadows.
Earlier, as she held the lantern, her own shadow had formed a dark path behind her. The Crawler had used that path to launch its attack.
She also noticed that the Crawler’s escape route hugged the shadows cast by the eaves, never venturing into the open.
This meant that even moonlight was effective against it.
Having driven the Crawler away, she continued searching the washroom. Finding nothing else, her attention finally turned to the sewer.
She didn’t know how deep the sewer went, but the entrance was a semi-circular tunnel that looked traversable.
Peering down, she could see a faint glimmer of light at the far end.
Maybe this is the third exit.
However, Wang Yue had no desire to wade through sewage. She turned and left.
She went to search the Long-house Dormitory and found an Elephant Man Set inside a chest.
The Elephant Man Set consisted of the Elephant Man Mask and a sealed wetsuit made of soft leather. Once worn, the chest and collar could be zipped tight, and an air purification box hung from the waist, providing total protection from contaminated water.
