On the basent level, separated by a single door.
Everly released her arms and dropped down from the wall, the question mark above her head only growing larger.
This was strange. Why was the door sealed so tightly…
She had thought that changing her posture might help open it. After all, earlier she had managed to pull the door open a crack using only her hands. She hadn’t expected that this ti—even with her full body weight added—the ergency exit still wouldn’t budge at all, not even a sliver.
Could so mysterious force be at work?
But none of her warning-type items were reacting…
Everly paused, letting her aching arms recover slightly, then gave it one last all-out attempt.
Still, the iron door would not open.
Frustrated, she finally lifted her foot and kicked the door hard.
Bang!
On the other side, unseen by her, the two n who had been pressing their heads against the door to monitor the livestream simultaneously let out silent cries of pain and covered their foreheads.
The brute finally left.
After violently kicking the safety door a few tis, she muttered a string of complaints under her breath, then turned on the spot with her flashlight in hand and headed back toward the pitch-black corridor.
Through the livestream feed, the two n behind the door watched her figure disappear into the distance and, almost in sync, finally let out a breath of relief.
They were relieved—but Everly’s mood was far from pleasant.
Sothing felt wrong.
If the earlier elevator incident could still be explained as a “malfunction,” then this safety exit door was far too strange. No hospital would lock an ergency staircase. Moreover, from her four attempts at pulling the door, it didn’t seem like it was locked at all—it felt more like sothing was pulling it shut from the other side.
The lack of phone signal was strange too. She was only underground, not trapped in so sealed chamber. How could there be no reception at all?
Was it ghosts?
But her warning-type items showed no reaction, and neither Buddy nor her innate danger sense had triggered. If this was supernatural interference, it didn’t quite fit… Could it be human interference instead?
Too little information. She would have to observe further.
Everly turned around with her flashlight and retraced her steps.
Since the right-side ergency exit was unusable, she could only place her hopes on the left corridor.
Because the situation was still unclear, even though she had already carefully scouted the way on her way in, she remained on high alert on her return, not relaxing even for a mont.
After about three minutes, she arrived back at the elevator lobby.
During her absence, the motion-sensor lights had automatically gone out.
Without a strong flashlight, and relying only on a phone light, walking alone through such a dark and narrow passage—where, just a wall away, a morgue full of corpses lay—would easily induce fear and panic.
But Everly had no such problem.
She was already “old acquaintances” with corpses. As long as they didn’t move, and no ghosts popped out to harm her, then corpses were just corpses. While she still found them unsettling, if necessary, she had no issue sharing a room with them.
As for the darkness—well, you really had to admit it—this high-powered flashlight bought online truly deserved its reputation among night-fishing enthusiasts from Xia Country. It was simply too useful!
A small flashlight like this was practically a laser cannon. Wherever the beam landed, no matter how dark it was, everything was illuminated as brightly as daylight. The terrifying atmosphere that had been so carefully built up would dissolve instantly under its light, like snow grains under the sun, vanishing in an instant.
Entering the elevator lobby, Everly stamped her foot to activate the motion-sensor lights overhead. Then she turned off her flashlight and slipped it back into her pocket.
The only downside of this excellent flashlight was its battery life—it could only stay on for about half an hour, so she had to conserve it.
Under the overhead lighting, Everly looked toward the elevator.
It was still in the sa state as when she had left: the car door was wide open, stopped in place. Because the elevator shaft was too deep, the external lighting couldn’t fully illuminate the interior. Standing at the entrance and looking in, she could only see a vague human-shaped figure standing inside the dim car, staring back at her from afar.
Of course, that was just the reflection in the mirrored stainless steel walls.
This cursed elevator—no matter how many tis she looked at it, it always felt unsettling.
Forcing herself to ignore the eerie feeling the “figure” gave her, Everly stepped into the elevator again and tried to get it working once more.
She figured that maybe, like a phone dropped in water, if you left it alone long enough it might sohow fix itself. Then she could just take the elevator upstairs and avoid wandering around the chilly basent.
Unfortunately, reality did not cooperate.
A broken elevator was still a broken elevator—it wouldn’t suddenly “redeem itself” just because it was left alone.
After pressing several buttons to no effect, Everly sighed and accepted defeat, stepping back out of the elevator.
“Target has left the elevator and is heading toward the left corridor. All units, prepare.”
“Roger.”
“Received.”
When the command ca through the earpiece, the people lying in wait in the morgue on the left side of the basent all cracked their knuckles and got ready.
On the outer corridor, separated by a single wall, Everly was moving slowly forward with her flashlight.
The corridor was narrow. It likely didn’t see much traffic under normal circumstances. Except for the areas around the morgue entrances, which were empty, the hallway was filled with cabinets, shelves, trolleys, and even tal gurney fras and various other clutter.
All of it made Everly’s advance painfully slow—because who knew whether there might be traps hidden among the debris, or soone with ill intentions, or even a monster crouching there?
Even though the flashlight was bright, it couldn’t fully illuminate the large shadows behind the objects. As she walked, those shadows twisted and distorted with her movent, creating the illusion that sothing was shifting behind them. It made it impossible not to keep glancing at them, to grow suspicious, and to never fully relax.
Carefully scanning her surroundings, she moved forward step by step. Just as she was about to reach the lit area ahead, Everly suddenly heard another set of footsteps.
They were light—feather-light—neither close nor far, trailing behind her and perfectly matching her pace.
At first, Everly thought it was just an echo of her own steps. She was wearing hard-soled deerskin boots, and even when she tried to move quietly, they inevitably made a faint tap-tap sound.
And that other sound followed right after her own tap, like a formless shadow perfectly mimicking every one of her movents.
However, after taking just a couple more steps, Everly suddenly noticed sothing was wrong:
Just now, because a large cabinet had appeared in front of her, she had briefly slowed down.
But the footsteps behind her still followed the original rhythm—lightly sounding a soft tap behind her.
That was not an echo at all.
Realizing this, cold sweat instantly broke out all over Everly’s back. A chill surged up her spine and shot straight to the top of her head.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks and held her breath.
And at that exact mont, the footsteps behind her also ca to an abrupt halt.
[She stopped! She noticed sothing’s wrong!]
[Here it cos, here it cos—my favorite part!!!]
[I bet 10 coins this girl’s going to scream in panic]
[Cry, cry, cry…]
The livestream chat exploded the instant she froze.
Everly, however, remained completely unaware of all this.
Sensing the abnormality behind her, she reacted quickly. She imdiately found a spot with a wide field of view and pressed her back tightly against the wall. With one hand she gripped the self-defense tool she had obtained from Rebecca, and with the other she held her flashlight. Then she abruptly turned to the right and shone the light toward the direction the sound had co from.
She had been walking for more than two minutes, and the motion-sensor lights in the elevator lobby would have already turned off by now. Before the flashlight illuminated it, everything behind her had been swallowed by thick darkness.
As the bright beam landed, the advancing darkness—like drifting mist—was driven back. What appeared before Everly was an empty corridor, with scattered clutter placed along the passage.
The objects were exactly as they had been when she passed them. Nothing had moved. Nothing had been added or removed. In the air nearby, she could even see dust particles slowly drifting.
The footsteps that had been shadowing her were gone as well.
The corridor was currently silent. Aside from Everly’s slightly rapid breathing and heartbeat, there was no sound at all.
Could it have been her imagination?
Just as Everly began to doubt whether she had been hearing things, a sudden creak-creak of rolling wheels echoed out of nowhere.
She snapped her head to the left.
At the far end of the corridor, only about two ters away from her, beneath the dim and fading light, the closed back door of the morgue had sohow been opened into a gap wide enough for two people.
Beyond the crack was an abyss of darkness—so deep it was impossible to see the bottom, like it connected directly to so underworld.
From that pitch-black opening, a stainless-steel gurney slowly slid out. It was about half a person’s height. Its old tal wheels rolled forward one by one, producing a chilling creak… creak… sound.
Anyone familiar with cri or detective dramas would imdiately recognize it as a body transport cart.
On the cart sat a black rubberized bag. Its size was roughly that of an adult human body, bulging and swollen, resembling an oversized black cocoon.
Given its shape and where it appeared, there was no doubt—it was a body bag.
The zipper was closed, so its contents couldn’t be seen, but judging from its shape, there was clearly sothing inside.
Light from both the flashlight and the ceiling lamp fell onto the gurney at the sa ti, casting long shadows across the floor and walls. As the cart moved forward, those shadows stretched further and further, twisting into grotesque shapes that resembled clawing monsters.
In the air, the sll of disinfectant and formalin grew stronger and stronger. The cold air flowed into her lungs with each breath, chilling her from the inside out and making her involuntarily shiver.
What… what is that… why is a body cart coming out of the morgue?!
Everly’s pupils contracted sharply, and her breathing briefly beca disordered.
She lowered her head and rapidly checked all the protective and warning-type items she carried.
It was strange—truly strange. Even now, they all remained completely inactive. None of them had triggered. This included the spiritually attuned animal entity Buddy, as well as the crisis-warning item gifted by her Lamia mother.
At this point, it was already 100% certain that none of this involved supernatural forces.
—It wasn’t ghosts or monsters. It was human work.
With that thought, the tension in her chest eased slightly.
But she still didn’t dare relax too much. At tis like this, humans could be far more dangerous than anything supernatural. Until she understood the purpose behind whoever was orchestrating this, she would still need to proceed with extre caution.
First, the elevator malfunction had been used to bring her down to the basent level. Then this entire “haunting” setup had been staged in front of her.
What exactly was the goal…? Was it framing soone?
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