This place... it felt familiar.
Wang Chuan struggled to get up and realized he was lying on a wooden floor, with a single bed behind him.
This was a bedroom, with an open door directly in sight. Faint light from the window outside allowed him to see the room's layout.
There was a wooden bed covered with a light-yellow striped sheet, and a light-pink comforter was folded at the head of the bed.
Next to the bed was a plastic woven basket filled with n's clothes.
By the bedroom door, there was a desk with a desktop computer on it, and so won's magazines stood beside it.
The setup was sohow familiar to Wang Chuan, but he couldn't rember where he had seen this room before.
"What is this place?"
He looked around but found no sign of the ghost.
The sky outside was beginning to whiten; daylight was imminent.
After ensuring there was no danger nearby, Wang Chuan quickly went to the desk and flipped through the magazines, but found nothing exceptional—just ordinary reading materials.
He then squatted beside the plastic woven basket and searched through the clothes, hoping to find so clues.
To his surprise, he found sothing.
A hard, card-like object seed to be in the pocket of a pair of trousers. He pulled it out and saw that it was an ID card; the na "Sun Zihao" was boldly written in the na field.
Only then did Wang Chuan understand why the place felt so familiar.
"Is this the employee dormitory? Sun Zihao's dormitory?" Holding the ID card, he stood up and looked out the bedroom doorway in amazent. The structure of the room was indeed identical to the employee dormitory he lived in.
Why didn't the ghost kill ? Why did it bring here?
Puzzled, he quickly walked out of the bedroom. To the left of the exit was the bathroom. The bathroom door was open, revealing a mirror facing it. Wang Chuan's reflection was visible in it, but he had no ti to look at himself; his attention was drawn to the array of bottles and jars below the mirror.
Although he was a man, he recognized most of the items.
Toner, face cream, eye cream, foundation, hair removal cream, blush, mascara...
Toner and such were understandable, but would a grown man like Sun Zihao use things like mascara and hair removal cream?
The more Wang Chuan thought about it, the more sothing felt off. He went back into the bedroom and looked at the pink bedding on the bed—that also wasn't a color Sun Zihao would likely use.
Frowning, a thought struck him. He rushed to the wardrobe, pulled it open, and found it full of won's clothes, mostly dresses and stockings.
Wang Chuan didn't imdiately jump to the conclusion that Sun Zihao had a cross-dressing fetish.
His first reaction was that this was actually a woman's place, and Sun Zihao's clothes were here because he would spend the night here.
This wasn't Zhao Shuang's room.
In other words, Sun Zihao, Zhao Shuang's boyfriend, was spending nights in another woman's room, and this woman was their colleague.
Wang Chuan closed the wardrobe and walked toward the living room.
In the living room, a gray sofa and a glass coffee table were arranged in an orderly manner. It was here in the living room that he finally found a clue to the room's owner.
A few family photos were stuck on the wall above the sofa. Wang Chuan leaned in to take a closer look and saw a young woman with a middle-aged couple in the photos.
The young woman looked familiar.
"Jiang i?" Wang Chuan dredged the face up from his mory.
Jiang i, a colleague of Zhao Shuang and Sun Zihao, was in the finance departnt.
She was also one of the eight missing people.
Now, it seed she was also Sun Zihao's secret lover.
Seeing this, Wang Chuan suddenly understood sothing about the chat logs on Xia Jianren's phone from when they first entered the instance.
Zhao Shuang had questioned Xia Jianren about whether he already knew about "that matter." "That matter" must be Sun Zihao and Jiang i's affair.
He rembered Zhao Shuang recently recalling so things, saying they had argued in the car.
Presumably, the argunt was also about this.
Wang Chuan furrowed his brows, an idea forming in his mind: Could it be that Zhao Shuang, after finding out about Sun Zihao and Jiang i, tampered with the car, then deliberately started an argunt midway and got off, ensuring her own survival while leaving them to die? But there were more than thirty other colleagues in the car at that ti who had nothing to do with this. If that's true, then Zhao Shuang is too terrifying.
The chirping of birds outside the window pulled Wang Chuan back from his thoughts. He touched the mobile phone he had kept in his pocket. It was almost seven o'clock now.
He had possessed the phone since they entered the instance and had always kept it with him. Of course, Wang Chuan had set it to silent mode long ago, afraid it would ring at the wrong ti.
The contact information for the other players was in his phone book. He thought for a mont, then dialed a number.
Cang Yue couldn't believe it when she received Wang Chuan's call.
They all knew Wang Chuan had vanished into thin air and was most likely dead or in grave danger, so she never expected to receive a call from him.
The bus had just stopped midway up Fenshan Mountain, and they were preparing to get off.
Xia Jianren also saw the caller ID on Cang Yue's phone screen. Clutching his fan, he backed away slightly and said, "Don't tell Wang Chuan was killed by the ghost, and the ghost is calling us with his phone?"
The sa thought crossed Cang Yue's mind.
She mulled it over for a good while before deciding to answer the call. However, when she answered, she held the phone slightly away from her ear, afraid of hearing so strange sound from the other end.
Unexpectedly, Wang Chuan's voice actually ca from the receiver.
"Cang Yue?"
"Wang Chuan? You're not dead?" Cang Yue exclaid in surprise.
"Is anyone else there listening to your call?"
Hearing this, Cang Yue realized sothing. Glancing at the people around her, she stepped back a few paces. "No one can hear what you're saying."
Only then did Wang Chuan continue, "Listen, I'm in Jiang i's dorm right now."
Jiang i? Cang Yue rembered that na was on the list of missing people.
"I found out about Sun Zihao and Jiang i..."
Cang Yue listened quietly to Wang Chuan's account. Then, she glanced at Zhao Shuang, who was staring blankly at the base not far away, apparently not paying any attention to her.
She whispered into the microphone, "So, is it highly likely that the bus crash has sothing to do with her?"
"Yes," Wang Chuan's voice ca through the receiver. "You guys must be with her now. Be careful. If things are really as I suspect, then that person is truly malicious."
To make the entire company die with them just to get revenge on Sun Zihao and Jiang i... that was indeed malicious. But if that's really the case, then finding a way out would be much simpler. The resentnt of those ghosts cos from Zhao Shuang. As long as Zhao Shuang dies, they can live.
Cang Yue clutched her pocket.
"By the way, where are you guys?" Wang Chuan's voice continued from the receiver.
Cang Yue looked toward the base in the distance. "Fenshan Mountain, where the police found Zhao Shuang. Gu Mian drove us up here, hoping to stimulate Zhao Shuang's mory. Are you coming over?"
Wang Chuan on the other end was silent for a few seconds. "I don't know why the ghost brought to the employee dormitory but didn't kill . I want to search for more clues here. If I find anything else, I'll call you. If I can't reach you by phone, I'll send you a text ssage."
"Okay," Cang Yue nodded. "Then you be careful."
With that, they ended the call.
At this mont, Xia Jianren, holding his small fan, sidled up. "Was that Wang Chuan?"
"Yes," Cang Yue nodded. "He's still alive."
The ghost actually didn't kill him. Cang Yue found this very strange too.
Xia Jianren tossed the fan, which was printed with an advertisent and which he had brought from the bus, back through the bus window. "What did he say?"
Cang Yue turned to look at Zhao Shuang in the distance. "He told us to be careful of Zhao Shuang."
But even the most malicious person fears a knife. As long as it was confird that Zhao Shuang had caused the deaths of those thirty-odd people, then a single stab would be enough to end this instance safely. Cang Yue guessed the ghost had taken Wang Chuan to Sun Zihao's dorm to let him learn the truth.
The base halfway up the mountain was simply a row of small earthen huts, with a few tables and chairs arranged inside. No one was usually here; only people tired from climbing would rest here for a bit.
Zhao Shuang had already gone into this row of small earthen huts. It seed she was also very eager to recall the events of that day.
But the others watched her try hard to rember for a long ti, yet in the end, she still recalled nothing.
"I have absolutely no mory of this place," Zhao Shuang said, clutching her aching head as the others exchanged looks.
Zhao Shuang had gotten off the bus here. She hadn't gone any further up, so the places higher up probably wouldn't stimulate her mory.
"Why don't we go a bit further up?" Xia Jianren suggested. "Maybe we'll find sothing at the crash site. Besides, aren't there still a few people missing? We might find clues about them too."
With no other option, everyone agreed.
It was already fully daylight, and more hikers began appearing on the mountain. To avoid causing a commotion, Gu Mian had parked the bus in a secluded place and hidden it.
If they wanted to continue upwards from here, they would have to walk.
Fortunately, a main concrete road had been built on this mountain, so climbing wasn't too tiring.
「anwhile」
Wang Chuan had long finished searching Jiang i's ho. Now he stood once more at the entrance to Zhao Shuang's room. Their escape the previous night had been hasty, and they hadn't had ti to shut the door, so it was still open, conveniently allowing him to enter and investigate.
He cautiously pushed the door open and searched the room ticulously, looking for any clues related to Sun Zihao and Jiang i.
But a thorough search yielded nothing.
He did, however, find a fan with an advertisent for "Treating Kidney Deficiency" printed on it. Staring at the pile of useless items before him, he sank into deep thought.
"It's been twelve hours already," Xia Jianren said, looking up at the brightening sky.
One-third of the mission ti had passed; another twenty-four hours of suffering remained. If they could find a way out, their next twenty-four hours wouldn't be such an ordeal.
Mountain climbing was physically demanding. Before they even reached the bus crash site, the group was exhausted and out of breath, unable to walk any further. Fortunately, there was a pavilion ahead, so they stopped, planning to rest there for a while.
They had originally planned to discuss their next steps while resting, but unexpectedly, a man with graying hair was already sitting in the pavilion, so they could only keep quiet and rest silently.
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