On the cotton pillow, blood had drawn the shape of a baby, exposed absurdly to everyone’s eyes.
Ye Xun’s chest surged with uncontrollable anger. His fingers trembled slightly from rage. “You were faking being pregnant?!”
Wenren Lian’s face slowly turned expressionless. He lifted his head from staring at the pillow, coldly looking at the woman, and suddenly punched the elevator wall.
Even Kuang Zheng, usually the most mild-tempered, now wore a grim expression.
The woman flinched but then, as if regaining confidence, lifted her chin and shouted proudly, “What, you want to kill me? Go ahead if you’ve got the guts!”
Since she’d been exposed, there was no need to keep pretending. She tidied her messy hair and, having already seen through their personalities, didn’t believe any of them would actually harm her.
The only one she was wary of was the strange long-haired youth. But since all he had done was expose her without actually hurting her, she now felt emboldened again. She even pulled out a powder puff from her pocket and began touching up her makeup in a small mirror, sneering, “So what if I was pretending? What, you four big men want to bully a lone woman?”
After finishing her powder, she pulled out a lipstick. “They’re the dumb ones. I cried for help and they came running—how is that my fault? Did I drag them here and force them to save me?”
With every word she said, Ye Xun and the others were so furious their chests heaved and their eyes blazed with fury. But they couldn’t deny she was right.
Even knowing she had caused their companions’ deaths—even knowing this was all a dream—their upbringing and moral bottom line stopped them from raising a hand against a seemingly weak and real woman.
Were they really going to kill her?
But this was just a dream.
Yet even if it was a dream, the anger and grief in their hearts didn’t lessen.
In the heavy silence of this deadlock, Jiang Luo moved.
As he approached, the woman screamed in terror. Her back pressed against the wall, fear swirling in her chest as if she were facing some kind of vicious ghost. “Stay away from me! Do you know who’s waiting on the top floor? He’s waiting for me! If you dare touch me, once I get up there, I’ll make sure you regret it!”
“The top floor?” Jiang Luo curved his lips into a strange smile. “So that’s where you’re trying to go.”
Cornered, the woman stared at him in horror.
The handsome black-haired young man leaned in slightly. His lips curled, his pale skin flawless. He lowered his head, his faint scent drifting into the woman’s nose. Jiang Luo’s gaze was tender and lingering, as if facing a lover. He whispered to her, “But what a shame. You might not live long enough to reach the top floor.”
The woman shrieked, “You’re threatening me?! You want to kill me?!”
Her heart was beating faster and faster. An unknown terror gnawed at her insides. A sense of impending death overwhelmed her. In panic, she shouted at the three companions behind Jiang Luo, “He’s going to kill me! Aren’t you going to stop him?! You’re going to let him become a murderer?!”
Wenren Lian folded his arms and watched her. At her words, he let out a cold laugh and blocked Ye Xun and Kuang Zheng, who were unsure whether they should intervene.
“How could I possibly kill you?” Jiang Luo raised his hand and gently brushed her cheek. The woman trembled uncontrollably in fear. “But I’m guessing the person—or ghost—you wanted to meet… he’s probably not going to let you live long.”
A growing sense of dread surged in the woman. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She reflexively denied it: “Impossible. You’re lying!”
Jiang Luo smiled at her, speaking to himself, “Originally, it was impossible. But now… well, who knows.”
Just as his hand was about to touch her earlobe, a bluish-white ghost hand suddenly stretched out from the wall behind her. It clutched the woman’s throat. As disbelief filled her expression, she was yanked into the wall in an instant.
It all happened as fast as a gust of wind. Jiang Luo quickly stepped back, staring at the reflective elevator wall that still mirrored his figure.
His gaze was deep.
As expected, Chi You had been watching him every second.
All it took was him getting a little closer to the woman, and Chi You had been provoked into acting—killing her instantly.
Jiang Luo lowered his eyes, then turned to look at his companions. “Did you all see clearly what just happened?”
Ye Xun and Kuang Zheng’s burning anger hung suspended in midair. They stiffly shook their heads.
Wenren Lian, now understanding, let out a chuckle.
“Don’t stand against the walls,” Jiang Luo warned. “Let’s stand in the middle. There are ghosts hidden in this elevator too.”
The four of them stood back-to-back in the center. There was no time to grieve anymore. After careful observation, Ye Xun said, “There are a lot of little black dots in the walls. Are those the people who got swallowed?”
At his words, Jiang Luo finally noticed those seemingly insignificant black specks in the walls. As he stared at them, he was reminded of the shattered mirror in the hotel bathroom. As the elevator climbed, were those black dots drawing closer to them too?
The elevator dinged and came to a stop.
They had reached the tenth floor.
The elevator doors opened—outside was empty. Wenren Lian felt something was off and cautiously looked out. “Should we go out?”
Jiang Luo said, “Wait a little longer.”
Soon, the elevator doors closed again.
The elevator resumed its slow ascent, this time skipping the eleventh and twelfth floors entirely. Wenren Lian pondered aloud, “There’s no pattern to which floors the elevator stops at.”
“Right,” Ye Xun nodded. Having already lost hope in this world, his eyes carried a new wariness and coldness. “And every time the elevator stops, there’s never anyone waiting outside.”
Kuang Zheng tried to analyze with them, “Then why does it stop?”
Everyone fell silent.
Because they had all simultaneously thought of the worst—and most likely—possibility.
This was a ghost building. The elevator didn’t necessarily serve only humans—it might serve ghosts as well.
Jiang Luo said, “How delightful…”
Wenren Lian sighed. “Starting from the first floor, the elevator has stopped four times—on the third, seventh, eighth, and just now the tenth floor. If a ghost entered at each of those stops, that means we might be accompanied by at least four ghosts.”
Jiang Luo added, “And one elevator ghost.”
Wenren Lian let out a bitter laugh. “Right, one elevator ghost too.”
Ye Xun thought bitterly, If only Little Pink were here—it could eat all these ghosts in one bite.
Kuang Zheng considered, “Not every stop necessarily means a ghost got on. Maybe some ghosts were getting off.”
“This elevator doesn’t have any buttons,” Jiang Luo disagreed. “Unless the ghosts getting on have some way of controlling which floor to get off on, I lean toward the idea that the elevator stops because a ghost is waiting outside. And these aren’t the kind of ghosts you can get along with.” The memory of Ge Zhu’s severed head in the shopping mall flashed in Jiang Luo’s mind, and his gaze darkened. “If they didn’t act against us, would they really just peacefully leave?”
Jiang Luo didn’t think so.
The elevator stopped again on the fifteenth floor.
As the doors slowly opened and the four of them braced for another ghost to enter, the lights inside the elevator suddenly went out.
Sensing something, Jiang Luo immediately looked around. In the darkness, seven or eight pairs of green, eerie, greedy eyes appeared—ghosts that had previously been invisible now revealed their forms. They grinned viciously at them and lunged.
Jiang Luo made a snap decision: “Run!”
All four bolted out. As soon as they were all out, the elevator doors closed again. The ghosts left inside wore twisted, unwilling expressions, watching them escape.
Until the doors fully shut, none of the ghosts stepped out.
It had been a close call. The group let out a collective sigh of relief and turned to the wall signage.
“This is the fifteenth floor. There are five elevators on this floor. Please select one to reach the top floor.”
Beneath the sign were five elevator doors—identical in color and size.
“Why split us up again?” Ye Xun frowned, inspecting each elevator. “Are they trying to separate us?”
Jiang Luo actually found the setup quite interesting. If he weren’t still holding in the grief and frustration of losing three teammates, he might’ve even applauded Chi You.
He crossed his arms and sneered. “Yeah. They want to separate us.”
Ye Xun’s indecisiveness kicked in again, his face full of pain. “If only Lu Youyi were here.”
Ye Xun didn’t know which elevator to choose. Jiang Luo didn’t dare to choose carelessly either. After careful observation, he avoided the first and last elevators and chose the one right in the middle.
Wenren Lian thought for a moment and then walked to the first elevator.
Seeing them take their positions, Kuang Zheng followed Wenren Lian and stood beside him. Two spots remained. Ye Xun still struggled with his choice, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper. Suddenly, he looked up and asked Jiang Luo, “Jiang Luo, pick one for me.”
Jiang Luo propped his chin, thought for a while, and solemnly chose the last elevator for him.
Ye Xun’s brows relaxed slightly, and without hesitation, he walked to the other remaining elevator.
Jiang Luo: “…”
Ye Xun explained tactfully, “You know… your luck…”
Jiang Luo cast him a long, dark look and pressed his elevator button.
The elevator was clean inside, with only a single LCD screen hanging on the wall. Jiang Luo stared at the screen for a while. Suddenly, it lit up.
Wenren Lian’s figure appeared on it.
—
Wenren Lian felt like the moment he stepped into the elevator, he was transported somewhere else. A door from the depths of his memory appeared in front of him.
A familiar, old apartment staircase. Faded Spring Festival couplets. He was back at the house he’d lived in as a child.
He stood in front of the door. Back then, security doors were still the old-fashioned kind—two layers: a wooden door on the inside, and a metal gate on the outside. The silver paint was half peeled, revealing the grimy original color beneath.
Wenren Lian understood immediately. “A dream within a dream, huh?”
Inside the room, he heard faint voices.
A falsely kind yet foul and malicious middle-aged male voice rang out: “Wasn’t your child a boy? Why does he look so much like a girl? Look at that soft, pale little face—so cute.”
Wenren Lian listened quietly.
That was the voice of his stepfather. The words had been spoken back when his mother had just remarried and brought him into the new family.
The room went silent for a moment, as though the scene had shifted.
The greasy middle-aged man’s voice continued: “I bought your son a dress. Let him wear it from now on. He looks good in dresses.”
The mother hesitated. “That’s not really appropriate…”
“What’s not appropriate!” the man’s tone grew heavy, edged with anger. “After you remarried me, your belly hasn’t moved for a year. I’m raising your son for you—don’t tell me a girl’s dress that costs a few dozen yuan is any cheaper than a boy’s clothes? If you won’t let him wear it, then he might as well not wear anything and run around bare-*ssed!”
The mother fell silent.
Wenren Lian tilted his head slightly, the wig brushing gently against his ear, bringing out a faint, almost imperceptible smile.
The hem of the skirt at his feet laid quietly against his body.
The scene changed again.
A childish but guarded voice rang out coldly, “What are you doing?”
The man’s voice was dripping with disgusting greed. He rubbed his hands together. “Little Wen, how about uncle helps you take a bath?”
Little Wenren Lian shouted harshly, “Get out!”
After a brief silence, a cacophony of crashing sounds rang out—many things clattering to the ground.
Wenren Lian had heard enough. He gripped the doorknob and pushed it open without hesitation.
Inside was a damp and messy bathroom. A wall was stacked with a bathing basin, towels, and scrub brushes. In the middle of the floor, a slovenly, beer-bellied man in his forties was pressing down on a boy in a dress.
The boy was struggling fiercely, his eyes full of rage and despair. But his thin arms couldn’t resist the strength of an adult. The dress he should never have been wearing was torn apart, soaked in dirty water on the floor, and now being lifted by the man in his lust.
Gradually, the boy seemed to give up resisting. The man let his guard down, releasing the boy’s arms and impatiently fumbling with his own belt. At that moment, the boy’s hands groped along the floor—he seized a shampoo bottle made of glass and smashed it down hard on the man’s body.
Blood mixed with white shampoo oozed from the top of the man’s head. He stared at the boy in disbelief and collapsed heavily to the ground.
Wenren Lian, watching this scene, laughed aloud. He raised his hand and gave his younger self a round of applause.
In the bathroom, the boy was gasping for breath. He painstakingly crawled out from under the man, walked to his head, and checked him.
A sharp shard of glass was embedded in the man’s skull. The boy tested his breathing—he was dead.
A flash of confusion and fear passed across the boy’s face, but it gradually turned calm.
He hugged his knees and sat by the corpse against the wall. He stayed like that until evening, when his mother returned and found him in the bathroom—clothes in tatters, and the corpse cold.
Wenren Lian watched his mother clutch his younger self, crying bitterly. After the sobs, she stared blankly at the corpse for a while, her expression slowly turning resolute.
She fetched a clean set of clothes and helped Wenren Lian change, gently stroking his head. “Mom will send you to Grandma’s for a few days, okay? I’ll take care of things here with your dad. Don’t be afraid, son.”
Then, her expression changed. It became severe, almost terrifying in its distortion. “You are not allowed to tell anyone about what happened today! Not even Grandma or Grandpa! Do you hear me?! You were out playing all day today—you didn’t come home at all, and you never saw your dad! Wenren Lian, you remember this! No matter who asks, you’re not allowed to say a word about today. Forget it—forget everything. Not a single detail. Understand?!”
Little Wenren Lian said uneasily, “Mom…”
Though only in her thirties, her temples were already graying, and she looked more like someone in her fifties. Her eyes shimmered with tears as she hugged Wenren Lian tightly. “I’m sorry, son… Mom is so sorry…”
The light in the room dimmed, like the curtain falling at the end of a play.
The corpse with the smashed head suddenly opened its eyes and stood up, a sinister smile on its face. It picked up the glass bottle from the floor and walked straight toward the doorway where Wenren Lian stood.
Wenren Lian looked at the corpse and sighed. “This is the nightmare I’ve had the most growing up.”
“I always felt like I didn’t really kill him,” he murmured, “or I was afraid that if he died, he’d become a ghost and come for revenge. And now, this nightmare has turned into reality.”
At that moment, the blood left on the ground formed a line of text: [Close the door and leave. You can pass this level and reach the eighteenth floor.]
Wenren Lian was thoughtful. “So this is the final level. I can win just by closing the door and ignoring him.”
He sighed, stepped inside, and closed the bathroom door behind him. Facing the corpse, he easily dodged its attack. Then, with a fierce counterattack, he snatched the glass bottle from its hand. His expression blank, but his eyes sharp.
“But even if I lose,” he said, “I want to kill him again.”
The glass bottle in his hand stabbed deep into the corpse.
Wenren Lian stabbed it more than a dozen times. Blood splattered onto his face. When the broken body could no longer rise and fell to the ground, Wenren Lian threw away the beer bottle and burst into wild laughter.
The air in the bathroom grew increasingly thin. Wenren Lian’s face turned bluish-purple.
His features and limbs stiffened, but his gaze was full of satisfaction. With a laughing expression still frozen on his face, he finally suffocated to death in the bathroom.
