Ke Xun felt a sense of satisfaction, but deep down he remained tense until the old man did the same thing to 616 and slowly left, at which point he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The old man didn't go downstairs, and no one knew where he went; perhaps, as Mu Yiran said, the old man himself was a kind of field.
Just as Ke Xun was about to lie down for a nap, a series of urgent knocks suddenly sounded at the door of 410 next door. This knocking was very strange, almost completely unexpected
. Immediately afterward, a piercing scream came
from next door. The scream was familiar, seemingly coming from Sha Liu.
His relaxed heart suddenly tightened again. Ke Xun tiptoed to the window, only to find no one at the door of 410.
Then, another terrified scream came from next door, Sha Liu and Qiu Lu's voices rising and falling, various noises coming from inside the house, wondering what danger the two had encountered.
Finally, Ke Xun heard the sound of the large window next door opening; it was the window next to the concrete wall… As
soon as it was light, the first thing everyone did when they rushed out of their rooms was to lean over the railings and look down to see if there was a body covered with a white sheet in the courtyard.
Ke Xun's first glance revealed that everything in the courtyard was normal, and he felt a sense of relief followed by a quickly complicated feeling.
Mu Yiran's gaze, however, was fixed on something hanging on the clothesline in front of room 410—a red plastic whistle tied with a dirty, thin nylon rope.
Although it was daytime, the blood-red whistle only added to the horror. Sha Liu opened the door and was clearly startled by the whistle as well.
"What's going on? This must have been left by that ghost last night!" Sha Liu stared at the whistle swaying slightly in the wind, then cautiously walked away. "Why would someone tie a whistle to our door?!"
Mu Yiran's voice was cold and deep: "Because someone knocked on your door last night, probably wanting to leave the whistle for you."
Sha Liu was terrified by this explanation, and then heard Ke Xun ask, "What happened last night? Where's Qiu Lu?"
Sha Liu shuddered: "Qiu Lu? The knocking last night was terrifying, it sounded like someone entered our room and knocked over a lot of things... Qiu Lu... she jumped out of the fourth-floor window..."
Ke Xun's first reaction was to rush into 410. Looking down through the open window, the dark gray cement wall still stood narrowly in front of him, a distance of about half an arm's length wide enough for one person to jump down. Ke Xun shone his phone light into the dark depths below, but saw nothing.
"Someone entered your room last night?" Mu Yiran's tone was somewhat accusatory.
Sha Liu swallowed and nodded.
"What happened? What were you doing after Qiu Lu jumped?"
"I... I don't know anything," Sha Liu shook her head, then looked at the red whistle swaying in front of the door. "I fainted, and when I woke up it was already dawn."
Mu Yiran looked at Sha Liu with a probing gaze, but said nothing more.
Everyone went downstairs and gathered in the courtyard. Wei Dong and Zhu Haowen came down last. Wei Dong was still complaining, "If he gets involved with some big-bodied, big-faced guy again, I'll never forgive him! I was wondering why he took the curtains off us..."
Before Wei Dong could finish speaking, several people carried in a body covered with a white sheet. Everyone's heart sank. Qin Ci asked, "Why was the body brought in from outside?"
One of the people carrying the body said, "The body was found at the base of the cement wall. Check if it's one of yours."
Everyone subconsciously took a step back, especially Sha Liu, who hid far away, too afraid to come closer.
Finally, Qin Ci lifted the white sheet: "It's Qiu Lu."
Qiu Lu was ultimately dead.
"Did she fall to her death?" Ke Xun asked.
Qin Ci's expression was somewhat puzzled as he lifted the white sheet completely for a thorough examination.
Mu Yiran stepped forward, followed by Ke Xun. Having experienced too many life-and-death situations, they had long since lost their previous fear and resistance towards the corpse.
Qiu Lu's expression was peaceful; if she hadn't stopped breathing, she would have looked like she was fast asleep.
Qiu Lu was covered in dirt, as if she had been pulled from the ground, her clothes and shoes filled with it.
Qin Ci gently pressed Qiu Lu's chin, noticing that her mouth was also full of dirt, and upon closer inspection of her ears, they were also filled with dirt.
The soil was very loose, mixed with plant roots, and occasionally a few insects would crawl out.
"No wonder we didn't hear her jump last night; she was buried in the ground." Ke Xun's eyes glanced at Sha Liu, who was hiding in the distance, his gaze cold.
"Alright, carry her out." The gatekeeper's voice rang out.
Soon, Qiu Lu's body was carried out of the gate.
Wei Dong looked at everyone present: "Where's Xin Miao?"
Everyone then realized that Xin Miao hadn't shown up since dawn.
"Let's go check 402." Mu Yiran went upstairs first, and everyone followed.
Except for Zhu Haowen and Sha Liu.
Zhu Haowen looked up from his phone: "Why aren't you going?"
Sha Liu forced a strong tone: "You didn't go either, did you?"
Zhu Haowen looked at Sha Liu with a complicated expression, then didn't say anything more and continued playing his game.
Sha Liu, however, turned and went upstairs, her steps somewhat hurried.
The door to 402 was locked from the inside. They knocked, but no one answered. Finally, they forced it open, but the room was empty.
"Xin Miao? Are you there?" Wei Dong called twice, but there was no response.
Room 402, like before, was covered in the marks of the fire. Two-thirds of the wooden planks on a large bed were charred black, and Xin Miao's single mattress was placed against the wall at the far end.
It was a mystery how this girl had endured two terrifying nights alone.
The large window in the bedroom, facing the concrete wall, was wide open. Mu Yiran stepped forward: "He's here."
Xinmiao was stuck in the narrow gap between the second and third floors. Perhaps the concrete wall wasn't perfectly straight, with uneven spots, causing him to get stuck after jumping down.
"He's still alive." Mu Yiran's words roused everyone, except for Sha Liu, who was drifting further and further away, her face growing paler.
Rescuing him would be difficult, so Ke Xun volunteered. He had people tie ropes around his waist and slowly climb down, while another rope was tied around Xinmiao's waist. They managed to pull him up little by little.
Xinmiao was completely dazed, his eyes lifeless.
"This child is terrified," said the elderly Li Taiyong, who had also come up with the others out of concern.
If I'm not mistaken, Xinmiao must have jumped out of the window last night out of fear when the old man appeared there. That means she was trapped in the narrow, dark crevice for almost the entire night, unable to go up or down, suffocating and terrified.
No matter what anyone said, Xinmiao remained blankly dazed.
Weidong suddenly became angry: "Why did she jump out of the window?"
He was met with silence from everyone and Xinmiao's stunned expression.
"Ya Fen knocked on the door of 402 the night before last, and the terror she felt was no less than last night's. Xin Miao didn't even think about jumping out the window then, so why did she do it last night?!" Wei Dong felt something was amiss.
Ke Xun looked at Sha Liu standing at the door: "Coincidentally, Qiu Lu also jumped out the window last night. —Sometimes it's like that. When there's no way out, people can grit their teeth and endure it. But once they have a way out in their minds, most people will choose to retreat to the end of that way."
Sha Liu suddenly became angry and glared at Ke Xun: "Why are you looking at me? I didn't tell them to jump out the window! We just discussed jumping out the window because we were scared."
Wei Dong walked directly in front of Sha Liu: "Then why didn't you jump?!"
Sha Liu was forced back two steps by Wei Dong and suddenly shouted with tears in her eyes: "I'm scared too! I don't dare to jump! What are you doing? Are you trying to force me to jump too?!"
Suddenly, a giggle came from inside the room. It was Xin Miao.
Xinmiao stood up with a grin, as if she couldn't see anyone, humming a song as she walked out the door. She even struck a few very professional ballet poses in the hallway before running and skipping downstairs.
Xinmiao had gone mad.
Everyone else followed suit and came downstairs one after another.
The doorman, holding a large key tray, waited for them: "The lock on 402 is fixed, take the key back."
"Why take the key back? Someone's still living in 402!" Weidong said.
"No one's here."
"But..." Weidong glanced at Xinmiao, who was dancing gracefully on the second floor, "We haven't checked out yet!"
The doorman, as if he hadn't heard, started counting heads: "Seven people in total, everyone's here, let's go eat."
Ke Xun looked at the people around him; there were indeed seven, but if you included Xinmiao, it would be eight.
Everyone seemed to have realized something, but no one said anything.
Wei Dong's eyes were a little red. Ke Xun stepped forward and put his arm around Wei Dong's shoulder: "Xin Miao's journey in the painting is over."
Wei Dong looked at Xin Miao on the second floor: "But she's still here! She can breathe and dance!"
"But in the real world, Xin Miao is dead." Qin Ci's tone was also heavy.
"Perhaps this is a kind of relief." Ke Xun pulled Wei Dong into the restaurant.
In the end, everyone had to accept this fact and silently entered the restaurant to eat.
Sha Liu seemed to adjust her emotions quickly and cleared her throat at the table: "Don't you guys find it strange? The doorman didn't tell us about 307 today."
Everyone also found it strange. According to custom, after the incident last night, the doorman would gather everyone to talk about the events before the incident in the room, or you could say the origin of last night's death.
And this talk usually took place before breakfast, but today was an exception.
"This only proves one thing," Zhu Haowen chewed his steamed bun expressionlessly, "last night's deaths have nothing to do with 307."
Everyone was clearly surprised by this conclusion, but after thinking about it, it seemed to be the only reasonable explanation.
"Then how did those two die?" Wei Dong asked directly.
"They scared themselves to death." Zhu Haowen remained expressionless.
Sha Liu didn't want to dwell on this question and analyzed directly, "If the matter of 307 isn't resolved, will it happen again tonight?"
Everyone remembered the giant face outside the window last night, and some were afraid, and some were impatient.
Sha Liu continued, "There was no death summoning event last night. Is it possible that if no doors are knocked on, then the horror of last night will repeat itself indefinitely?"
Ke Xun sneered, cracking the egg in his hand, and said nothing. —Sha Liu was trying to convince everyone that the reason the NPCs hadn't explained the death was because no member knocked on the door to summon them last night, not because of anything else…
"This explanation seems to fit the rules," Zhu Haowen glanced at Sha Liu, "However, the old man last night didn't cause any real harm. Unless an enhanced version appears tonight, we'll truly be stuck in an infinite loop."
"The horror room is secondary; the important thing is breaking ground," Mu Yiran's voice rang out, "We've been here for four days, and if I'm not mistaken, breaking ground should be completed on the seventh day." Yes
, breaking ground is the biggest event in the entire painting.
Zhu Haowen said, "The deformation of 616 is more severe; the house is no longer a cube, and the entire courtyard opening has visibly shrunk."
"But we've searched everywhere we should," Qin Ci said.
"We can't be too hasty about this," the old man Li Taiyong also spoke up, "Didn't Xiao Ke discover some bamboo shoot painting yesterday? There must still be some nooks and crannies we haven't searched."