Translator: CinderTL
"Stay calm." Jiang Cheng paused and said, "Did you hear the knocking sound?"
"I did."
"You said it's behind you. How close is it?"
"Very close," Chen Yi said urgently, "and it's getting closer."
"If it fully touches you, it might be dangerous," Jiang Cheng said bluntly. "The priority now is to find its exact location."
After a moment of hesitation, Jiang Cheng spoke up, "I have a method, but it might be risky. It's up to you to decide."
"Tell me!"
"Leave the bed, stand on the floor, spread your legs, bend down, and look backward between your legs," Jiang Cheng said. "It's a saying from my hometown that when a person is bewitched by a ghost, doing this allows them to see the ghost following them."
He spoke very quickly, clearly aware of how tense Chen Yi was.
Although Jiang Cheng's suggestion was rather bizarre, at this point, there was no better option. She could already feel the ghost getting closer.
The chilling sensation almost paralyzed her.
And one thing Jiang Cheng was right about: if that ghost fully touched her, she would be dead.
She held the phone with one hand, took a deep breath, and slowly bent down. The next second, her heart felt as if it had been yanked violently, and her entire body began to tremble uncontrollably.
She saw a pair of straight, bluish-black legs on the floor half a meter behind her.
Staring at the phone, Jiang Cheng's face was grim, and he remained silent.
About a minute ago, a call had come in. The number displayed was Chen Yi's from Room 710 upstairs. Jiang Cheng waited until the third ring before answering.
He held his breath, not saying a word, even trying to avoid making any sound. On the other end, there was only meaningless noise.
After a moment, Jiang Cheng hung up the phone.
From start to finish, he hadn't uttered a word, not even a "hello."
He was already certain.
Chen Yi was in trouble.
He just wasn't sure which ghost had targeted her, and whether she would survive.
The next morning, everyone gathered as planned. At a glance, Jiang Cheng noticed Chen Yi was absent, while Chu Jiu, who lived on the same floor, had red eyes.
"I went to knock on Sister Chen Yi's door this morning, but there was no sound inside," Chu Jiu said anxiously. "I thought she might have found something and went downstairs to look for you all."
But that wasn't the case.
After Jiang Cheng told everyone about the phone call last night, Liu Guo's face immediately darkened. "Let's go up and check."
The group bypassed the elevator and took the fire escape stairs upstairs. They knocked on the door for a while, but there was still no sound inside—it was as quiet as death.
The door didn't look very sturdy, but breaking it down with brute force wasn't easy.
"Should we ask the landlord for a spare key?" Banana Wolf suggested.
This was clearly not a good idea, as they were already suspicious of the landlord, but there was no better option.
Now everyone knew that Chen Yi was likely dead.
But if they could see her body, they could gather more direct clues, such as which ghost had killed her.
And how.
"What are you doing?" Hua Luo, standing at the back, suddenly said.
Everyone turned around and saw Hua Luo glaring at Wei Jinting with wide eyes, one hand clutching her long hair as if it had been pulled.
"Heh heh," Wei Jinting didn't seem to mind. He skillfully dismantled the metal wire from a hairpin in his hand and bent it into the shape he wanted.
He gestured for everyone to step back and make room for him.
Looking at him, Fatty couldn't help but be surprised. "You know how to do this?"
"I've had some bad luck in the past, so I've done some robbing the rich to help the poor," Wei Jinting explained with a flourish.
Then, everyone watched as Wei Jinting inserted the metal wire into the lock and lifted it upward.
"Click."
The door opened.
Wei Jinting immediately stepped back, and Liu Guo, along with Banana Wolf, who was carrying a large knife, exchanged glances before walking in together.
Jiang Cheng pulled Fatty along, following the group.
They first headed to the bathroom, then the living room, and finally the bedroom.
As soon as they reached the bedroom door, Liu Guo stopped and whispered to the others, "Found her."
Indeed, they had found her.
When Jiang Cheng squeezed past, he saw a pair of shoes sticking out from under the bed.
They were Chen Yi's shoes.
Chen Yi's entire body was under the bed, with only her shoes sticking out. Liu Guo and Banana Wolf each grabbed one of her legs and were slowly pulling her out.
They were moving slowly, as no one wanted to be startled by a sudden bloody scene.
Chu Jiu was already panicking, her eyes filled with tears that seemed ready to burst at any moment.
"Was it the Long-Haired Ghost again?" Hua Luo asked.
After all, in the previous briefing, Chu Jiu had mentioned that the Long-Haired Ghost had first crawled out from under the bed, and it was also in Building 1.
Among the three ghosts that had appeared so far, the Long-Haired Ghost had the advantage of familiarity with the location.
Wan Yuanning shook her head and said softly, "Not necessarily. That ghost only has a precedent of crawling out from under the bed, but it doesn't mean it would drag someone under the bed after killing them."
She paused, "These are two different things."
Before she finished speaking, Liu Guo had just pulled Chen Yi's body out. She was face down, her hands still in the position of desperately trying to crawl out, indicating that she had been dragged under the bed by the ghost while still alive.
When they flipped Chen Yi over, everyone saw blood on her face, with some hair stuck to her face by the thick blood.
Banana Wolf suddenly froze, then hesitated for a moment before, under everyone's puzzled gaze, reaching his hand to the side of Chen Yi's neck.
A moment later—
"Holy shit!" Banana Wolf's face changed drastically, and he shouted, "She's not dead! She's still alive!"
After some commotion, Chen Yi actually woke up and then explained what had happened last night in fragments.
At this point, she knew she had been tricked by the ghost.
The Jiang Cheng on the other end of the phone... was the ghost in disguise.
"Miss Chen," Wu's voice sounded calm but carried a strong sense of aggression. "Since you fell into the ghost's trap, I want to know... how exactly did you survive?"
Chen Yi nodded, recalling the events with a fearful expression. "Actually, the moment I bent down, I knew I had been tricked. The person on the phone told me to leave the bed, but how did he know I was on the bed? I never told him."
"So when I saw those legs, I roughly guessed that this ghost probably didn't have the ability to attack directly unless certain conditions were met."
"Bending down," Jiang Cheng interjected, "and seeing it."
Chen Yi nodded, "Right, so I made up my mind and just went with it, lying down and quickly crawling under the bed."
"Before, I had observed that the gap under the bed was very small, and it shouldn't be able to accommodate an adult bending down."
(End of the Chapter)
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