CHAPTER 63: CHAPTER 46: FRAMING THE GHOST

As soon as they stepped onto the third floor, day turned into night again, and this time, they couldn’t see the first-floor ground from the railing; shrouded in black mist, the light couldn’t penetrate, and there hung the same strange full moon.

Sang Que squinted at the clock hanging above the public restroom in the distance, the hands still pointed to 1 o’clock.

One in the morning!

"Mulan, Little Heizi is gone, that cat." Xu Yichao nervously scanned the stairs behind them; it had just been following, and in the blink of an eye, it disappeared.

Sang Que, taking Xu Yichao, returned to the stairs and went down to the second floor to search, but the black cat was nowhere to be found. The second floor had also turned into the black night of 1 a.m., and from there the ground of the first floor was also invisible.

Sang Que had a faint sense of foreboding but said nothing to avoid scaring Xu Yichao, maintaining a calm demeanor.

"It’s clever, it’ll be fine. Let’s save time and head upstairs to see if there’s really no fourth floor."

Walking up the stairs, Sang Que thought for a moment and said to Xu Yichao, "I just checked the room numbers on the second floor. Following the sequence from the first room on the left corridor, there’s 201, 202, 203, then the public restroom, followed by rooms 205, 206, and 207 next to the stairs. In this order, the public restroom is considered number 4 on each floor."

Xu Yichao’s eyes lit up, "Yes, so should we try the public restroom upstairs? But it’s a restroom!"

Sang Que, being a seasoned horror movie fan, knew well that restrooms were a hub for supernatural activities.

"We have to go, even if the room numbers upstairs start with 5, it’s still technically the fourth floor. I’ll go into the public restroom alone, and you wait outside. If anything happens, just run. Don’t worry about me; I have an escape plan."

Xu Yichao’s aspiration to be a hero got stuck in his throat; restrooms were indeed his ultimate fear.

Going up another flight, the corridor was pitch-black again, and the nearest room number was indeed ’501’.

The two headed from the left corridor towards the public restroom; in front of room 502 were two large black trash bags piled up. Uncontrollably, Sang Que envisioned the image of ’Kayako’ from horror movies and hurried her pace.

Past room 502, blood handprints suddenly started appearing on the walls, one more with each step Sang Que took.

Sang Que stopped, and the handprints ceased increasing, keeping at her level.

"These look like children’s handprints. Show me the tenant registration form," Xu Yichao said, rubbing the goosebumps on his arms.

Sang Que took out the registration form and handed it to Xu Yichao. She tentatively took a step forward, and another handprint appeared, but nothing further happened.

"Room 502 is occupied by Liang Qiao Min, a somewhat effeminate middle-aged man who’s good at making cheongsams and likes creating clay figurines. He once went to Grandma Shufen, lifted the red cloth covering the Mountain God statue when she wasn’t looking, got beaten by the villagers, and was driven out of the village."

"I later heard from my grandma that not long after being expelled, he went mad. He’s still in a mental hospital now, constantly digging clay to make indescribably bizarre clay figures, allegedly driving other patients even more insane!"

"Your grandma’s intelligence is impressive!" Sang Que praised, "By the way, do you know what the Mountain God statue looks like under that red cloth?"

In fact, Sang Que was quite curious about this point. Why did Xu Family Village’s Mountain God’s statue have to be covered with a red cloth? Was the statue’s original appearance different from what she saw that day?

Xu Yichao shook his head, "When I was a kid, I almost lifted that red cloth too, but my grandpa caught me. That’s the worst I remember getting beat by him."

After passing room 503, Sang Que suddenly stretched an arm in front of Xu Yichao. A disheveled woman in a red dress, whom they’d seen sleepwalking, walked out of the public restroom.

She tilted her head, eyes closed, arms dangling, hair covering her face, and swayed unsteadily toward them.

Xu Yichao’s heart leapt into his throat, and he instinctively stepped back. The corridor was barely a meter wide, and with the way she swayed, she’d definitely bump into them.

Sang Que glanced to the right, signaling Xu Yichao to retreat to the stairs and go around from the right corridor to the restroom.

They quietly turned and moved backward, halfway through hearing the grinding sound of rusty gears.

An old stroller, somehow appearing behind them, was the one from the first-floor 103 entrance.

"The landlord’s little son!"

Step! Step! Step!

Footsteps from behind got closer. The sleepwalking woman had reached the entrance of room 503.

The stroller creaked forward, speeding straight toward them past room 501.

"Little Heizi, where are you?" Xu Yichao muttered internally, knowing the landlord’s son feared cats, and the black cat was nowhere during critical moments.

Meow~

A cat’s meow sounded. Xu Yichao was surprised to see Sang Que playing a video on her phone, where a woman sitting in a wheelchair was surrounded by a group of stray cats, meowing as they devoured the dishes of cat food.

At the sound of the meow, the stroller zooming toward them disintegrated into black mist and vanished.

Truly, a master is always prepared.

Xu Yichao had just breathed a sigh of relief and was about to run when he suddenly felt a chill on his neck, body stiffening.

The sleepwalking woman’s footsteps had unknowingly stopped!

Feeling the chill, Xu Yichao turned his head, encountering a pale face close to his, eyes wide and staring at him.

The moment their eyes met, the sound of an ear-piercing ring occupied his mind. Xu Yichao felt a vertiginous whirl, countless twisting shadows encroached from the periphery of his vision, feeling something ’lifting’ him, ’observing’ the back of his own head.

Suddenly, a cold hand slapped his shoulder hard, jolting Xu Yichao back to reality.

Sang Que, holding a bottle of water filled with rooster blood, splashed it on the face of the sleepwalking woman, yanking Xu Yichao away and hurling a trash bag at her.

The trash bag burst open, showering rotten, bloody, stinking meat chunks all over the sleepwalking woman.

Another trash bag was hurled down the stairs by Sang Que.

Drip!

Cold liquid dripping on Xu Yichao’s neck made him shiver and look up. Above, blood seeped massively, the shadow of security guard Old Tian appeared, and a hand emerged from the blood, angrily reaching for them.

Sang Que quickly opened the door to 502, pulling Xu Yichao inside.

Bam!

The door closed, and the chilling feeling made their hair stand on end; outside was deathly quiet without any sound, yet blood surged in through the door gap.

Xu Yichao realized, rental guidelines prohibited littering and hurling items from high places; Sang Que was...

Framing a ghost! Using ghosts against ghosts!

A moment later, the blood flew underfoot vanished in a flash as if it were never there, leaving only the sound of security guard Old Tian walking and keys clashing outside.

"The sleepwalking woman was handled by security Old Tian?" Xu Yichao whispered.

Sang Que stayed silent; the room was very dark, with both front and back windows covered in black cloth, allowing only a bit of moonlight through the door gap.

Gradually adjusting to the darkness inside, Sang Que slowly saw the room was filled with...

Many people!

"Don’t move!"

Xu Yichao was about to step back when Sang Que quietly warned him, making him freeze in place without even lowering his heels to the floor.

He couldn’t see as well as Sang Que in the dark, all he saw was the faint light under the door.

"Wh... what’s happening?"

"Don’t look around now. Slowly walk forward, open the door and leave quietly," Sang Que whispered.

In the darkness, Xu Yichao swallowed hard, tense all over, moving awkwardly forward, following Sang Que’s instructions without glancing aside.

Sang Que sensed that those around were likely not real people but humanoid clay figures wearing cheongsams.

It was too dark to see clearly, but Sang Que had a vague feeling that the faces and bodies of those clay figures were weird and twisted.

All the humanoid clay figures were facing them, triggering an uncontrolled memory of the ’lovely’ nurses from the Silent Hill movie.

Earlier, Xu Yichao mentioned the resident here was Liang Qiao Min from Aunt Qiao’s Tailor Shop, fond of making humanoid clay figures, gone mad after glimpsing the true form of the Mountain God statue.

Luckily, they didn’t enter with flashlights, for once they saw these clay figures, their mental state might not remain stable.

Following Xu Yichao, Sang Que, holding a fruit knife and a pry bar, cautiously advanced, noticing those clay figures rotating slowly, yet always facing them.

The room was cramped, the atmosphere tense, even the typically composed Sang Que breaking out in a cold sweat.

She no longer feared visible malicious ghosts, including security Old Tian; if cornered, she’d even dare strike him with a blunt object.

Yet this utterly inscrutable and unseen entity thrust upon them a heavy psychological burden.