Among the nine survivors, six admitted to being old players: Yang Xiao, Fu Changxue, Tong Han, Mo Daidai, Wang Longhui, and Qu Yi.
And that strange Li Qingxuan claid to be a newcor, also completely unaware of Nightmare World, which Yang Xiao did not quite believe.
The petite Xu Xinyi hid a little distance from Li Qingxuan, her voice weak as she spoke up, "You... you’re the Supernatural Explorer Blogger, and you haven’t seen a ghost either?"
"What are you talking about, if I really t a ghost, do you think I’d dare continue being the Supernatural Explorer Blogger?" Li Qingxuan rolled his eyes, "I’m in it for the money, not to gamble with my life."
"Alright, no matter what everyone does, this ti we’re all going to see ghosts," Yang Xiao stood out to comfort everyone.
Yang Xiao’s peripheral vision swept outside the window when he suddenly saw the distant fog churning. Before long, a figure erged, a man holding a black umbrella and carrying a briefcase, but his attire was quite antiquated, and his old suit didn’t particularly fit well.
"Soone’s coming." Everyone crowded around the window, staring at the man in the suit in the distance.
The man in the suit walked briskly toward Dongzhou Apartnt, and soon started climbing the steps outside the door, entering through the grand entrance.
Dongzhou Apartnt lay like a savage behemoth under the dim night sky, with so windows lit in its rooms, like malicious eyes looming over them, the uninvited guests.
Before long, soone else walked out from the distant fog. This ti it was an elderly man with a stooped figure, using a cane. His faltering steps and white, wind-blown hair made Yang Xiao worry that he might fall on the muddy water underfoot, but in the end, the old man also safely entered the apartnt, his hunched silhouette disappearing into the door.
Soon, as if a switch had been flipped, it grew lively beneath the curtain of rain. Periodically, people erged from the fog to enter the apartnt; there were harmonious families of three, loving couples, and kind elderly individuals with backpacks, holding the hands of their grandchildren.
anwhile, the storm outside intensified, greatly limiting everyone’s visibility, and more dangerously, the tin shack they were in began to shake even more violently.
A mont later, two more people erged from the fog: a young woman in a floral dress accompanied by a child around four or five years old. The child, wearing a blue cartoon backpack and sandals that sank unevenly into the mud, splashed water around incessantly.
They appeared to be mother and child, likely just after school pickup.
"Let’s follow them," Fu Changxue suggested.
At these words, Xu Xinyi’s face showed panic, her pale complexion full of fear of the unknown, "Now? But we... we don’t even know these people."
Fu Changxue glanced at her dismissively, ignoring her and instead looking to Yang Xiao, Tong Han, and the other more dependable folks, "Everyone, this shelter can’t hold much longer, we must get out. And you see, that fog is getting closer to us."
Yang Xiao knew he was right. Previously, the fog had been at least a hundred ters away from them, but in just this short ti, it had drawn nearer, now about only 60 to 70 ters away.
Once the fog engulfed them, they feared they might follow in the footsteps of that man before. What exactly was in the fog, no one knew. Instinctively, Yang Xiao thought of the big black figure that had knocked him unconscious with a slap.
Just as Yang Xiao and the group rushed out the door, before they had gotten far, they heard a loud noise from behind. Turning back, they saw the tin shack collapse outright.
Now with no other choice, they ran towards the mother and child. The mother quickly noticed Yang Xiao’s group and began to quicken her pace, eventually abandoning her umbrella, picking up the child, and sprinting toward the apartnt in the rain.
"Ma’am, please wait!" Fu Changxue shouted, but his voice was soon drowned out by the rain. By the ti Yang Xiao and the others got into the apartnt, they just caught sight of the woman and child dashing into the elevator, and in her haste, she even left one of her high heels outside.
Yang Xiao, following close behind Fu Changxue, was the second to rush into the apartnt, so he managed to see the mother tightly embracing her child, looking back at them with an expression of terror, just before the elevator doors closed.
"What are they running for?" Wang Longhui, propping his waist and panting heavily, said, "We’re not ghosts."
When things are abnormal, there must be demons-at-foot. Yang Xiao and his companions did not act rashly and instead took in their surroundings in the apartnt. The apartnt was large, but its decoration and layout were quite old-fashioned. The dark green waterproof paint on the walls was peeling severely, and overhead were rows of lights emitting a dim yellow glow.
From previous information, Yang Xiao knew that this apartnt had been built before the founding of the country, and it seed to have retained its architectural style from that ti.
Before long, they found a security room in the spacious hall, oddly placed not near the entrance but in a nondescript corner.
The wall opposite the security room was plastered with small ads, and even the iron door of the room wasn’t spared; other than that, there were chaotic doodles of unidentifiable things.
The iron door of the security room was ajar, allowing a dim yellow light to spill through the crack and cast a narrow patch of light on the floor.
To be precise, had it not been for this sliver of light, they might not have noticed it at all.
"Thud."
"Thump, thump."
Fu Changxue knocked on the door politely, "Is anyone there? We are the new tenants." Everyone had already checked before, and the content in the script boxes they received was nearly the sa—they were required to live in the apartnt for a week.
The security room was eerily silent. Fu Changxue took a deep breath, did not touch the rust-covered iron door directly with his hand but used the long-handled flashlight to push it open gradually, and a piercing screech accompanied the movent of the door.
Fu Xuechang imdiately stepped back cautiously until he could clearly see the room’s layout. There was a single bed, a table, two wooden chairs, and a large wardrobe standing against the wall. Besides that, there were only a few small items; the arrangent was very simple.
There were no lights on in the room, only an old-fashioned table lamp with a lampshade on the desk that emitted a faint, lifeless glow.
The wooden table was spacious and covered with a large piece of glass. Under the glass, a few old photos were pressed down, along with a handwritten letter.
The photos looked quite dated, with yellowed edges. Except for one that clearly showed Dongzhou Apartnt building, the rest were mostly blurred. One also had a brown water stain, as though it had been soaked in sothing like tea.
What really caught everyone’s attention was the handwritten letter, which seed to have been written in a panic, with its ssy handwriting; so words required close scrutiny to be deciphered.
After looking at it, Yang Xiao then realized that the letter was actually left for them.
The letter said that they were invited to stay temporarily in this apartnt, but not for free. The condition was that they needed to help the tenants of the apartnt solve various problems they faced in their daily lives.
It also reminded them that the apartnt had not been peaceful recently. There were suspicions of dangerous outsiders infiltrating, causing unease among the residents. The apartnt’s manager hoped they could investigate the matter in private, and there would be a reward afterward.
Upon reading this, Tong Han nodded in understanding. "No wonder that mother and son were so scared of us. They must have mistaken us for the so-called dangerous individuals."
"Huh—" Fu Changxue sighed, implying, "I just hope it’s only dangerous individuals."
Upon hearing this, everyone’s expression changed subtly; they all understood that what Fu Changxue was truly worried about was that the so-called dangerous outsiders might not be human at all.
The second half of the letter detailed the tasks they needed to complete.
First, they were to undertake at least two commissions from tenants within the apartnt every day, emphasizing that each team mber could undertake a maximum of one per day.
Additionally, between midnight and 4 a.m. every day, they were to select any two people not involved in the commissions to stay behind in the security room. While ensuring soone was always in the security room, each person was to go out at least once, alone, to patrol any three floors of the whole apartnt, making sure that the tenants were not hard by dangerous individuals.
Patrolling was understandable, but the restrictions regarding accepting commissions were concerning. The instructions were specially marked in bold red text stating that once a commission is accepted, there can be no backing out, and that they must fulfill every requirent of the work content. Any violation would have its consequences.
After reading the entire letter, Cheng Ya didn’t find any specific penalties for breaching the contract. She had no choice but to seek help from the leader, Fu Changxue, "Fu... Mr. Fu, what happens if we violate the terms?"
"You die," Yang Xiao said succinctly.
Cheng Ya shivered, her lips turned pale, and she didn’t say another word.
As an experienced old player, Yang Xiao quickly sensed the hidden dangers in this mission. The letter stated that they had to undertake at least two missions every day, which would require at least two people. Besides that, two additional people were needed for the standby patrol duties, which were the bare minimum requirents of the mission.
In other words, unless the mission’s content changed, they had to ensure at least four people survived, or else the mission would be considered a failure outright.
When he looked up at Fu Changxue and the other veteran players, their complexion wasn’t great either; what Yang Xiao thought of, they had thought of too.
These old hands adept at dealing with horror and killing in the Nightmare World found saving people truly challenging.
In the bottom corner of the letter, without any signature or date written, there was a note in small letters indicating the ti when new commissions would be available.
Two o’clock in the morning.
Who in their right mind refreshes commission tasks at two in the morning?
The location to check for commissions was right outside the security room, among the various chaotic small advertisents.
Soon, under Fu Changxue and Yang Xiao’s lead, the group found the so-called commission tasks outside the door. There were five pieces of paper, seemingly haphazardly stuck on the wall outside. If not for the clear "commission" characters on them, they would have been hard to notice.
Yang Xiao looked at one of them; it read, "Ms. Wu from room 6037 is unable to move around easily and urgently requires a doctor for a house call at 11:45 p.m."
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