Volume 1: Breaking Ground Chapter 6: 402 Story
In room 402, there were strange marks of a fire.
The ceiling and walls of the room were blackened by smoke, but the other furniture and furnishings were not affected at all.
The room was dimly lit, and the large window facing the street was also blocked by a concrete wall. Most people did not look surprised by this, except Wei Dong and Zhu Haowen, who were obviously horrified and puzzled by the strange concrete wall.
On the big bed in the inner room, two-thirds of the bedding was burned to ashes, while the other one-third was intact.
Wei Dong's face turned pale as he stood beside Ke Xun: "How...how did it catch fire? Did the bedding catch fire? This is too weird."
Mu Yiran looked at the intact half candle on the table next to him and felt that something was wrong.
Everyone soon discovered this strange phenomenon. Zhitiao picked up the half candle in the small tea bowl. A lot of solidified wax had accumulated in the tea bowl: "This... the candle is not the source of the fire?"
Qin Ci looked up at the blackened ceiling and walls: "Judging from the walls, the fire last night must have been very large, and even spread to the outer room."
——“No, these walls have always been black.” The speaker was Xinmiao who had just appeared at the door, and Shaliu was standing beside him.
"It's always been black?" Qin Ci was puzzled.
Xinmiao, however, looked certain: "The three of us... the three of us opened the door to look at the house yesterday evening, and the house was dark. Later we went downstairs to find the doorman, but he said the house could not be changed and we could choose to live there or not... We asked him to open the door for us to leave, but he refused."
"Apart from the black walls, is there anything else strange?" Mu Yiran asked.
Xinmiao was forcing himself to remain calm. After Shaliu's persuasion, his instinctive desire to survive finally outweighed his fear. He just wanted to cooperate with everyone to find shelter. "We just looked around the house, and then went to the small restaurant downstairs to eat..." Xinmiao looked at the room in front of him again, and saw the half-burned bed. He couldn't help shivering. "They are braver than me. They always thought they had traveled through time last night, and they are better at adapting than me."
"We returned to the room after turning off the lights and played mobile games for a while. Later...they both had to go to the bathroom, and when they came back, things were not good..." Xinmiao recalled what happened yesterday.
Sha Liu asked beside him, "What's wrong?"
"When they came back, they said there was a ghost face outside the window of the public toilet... Because Tina loves to play pranks and scare people, and she also likes to tell ghost stories. I'm timid, so I thought they were trying to scare me on purpose," Xinmiao said as she sobbed again, "They said they couldn't live here anymore, and they wanted to go out and discuss it with you, and then we'll all go together to find the old man at the door..."
"I half believed and half doubted what they said. I was also very scared. It was dark outside, so I didn't dare to go out! None of us three could remember which room you lived in. I only vaguely remembered that the other two women seemed to live in room 410..."
So they went to knock on the door of 410 last night, but when there was no response, perhaps out of fear, they had no choice but to leave, planning to stay there for the night and leave the apartment tomorrow morning.
Everyone heard them knocking on the door last night, and if the angle of the room was right, some people could also see the candlelight coming out of the window of Room 402.
"What happens after they go back to the room?" Ke Xun thought of Tina, who dyed her hair gray-blue. She seemed to be fearless and had a feeling that this person would not be able to stay quiet after returning to the room.
Sure enough, Xinmiao continued, "None of us could sleep. We were all a little restless. Then Tina started packing her backpack and planned to leave overnight. In fact, we did leave the room again..."
Xinmiao's expression began to turn ugly, and his eyes involuntarily looked in the direction of the public toilet: "That staircase...we went up from that side before lights out, and the staircase was clearly next to the public toilet...who knew that when we wanted to leave in the middle of the night, the staircase disappeared."
"What?!" Qiu Lu was the first to express surprise, "The stairs are gone?!"
Xinmiao's lips turned pale with fear: "Now it's here again... It really disappeared last night! The public toilet is still there, but where there should be stairs is flat ground! It's as if there have never been stairs there..."
"Then you panicked so much that you returned to your room?" Ke Xun asked.
"Yes, we didn't dare go anywhere. We locked the door tightly but still felt unsafe. Later, we all slept together tightly... until the next morning..."
Sha Liu patted Xin Miao's back to comfort him, and looked at Mu Yiran and Ke Xun: "Qiu Lu and I will go to the women's bathroom to see if that ghost face is still there."
Qiu Lu was a little scared and hesitated to move forward.
Shouzhu said, "If there's no one in the ladies' room right now, let's go in and take a look together."
No one else had any objection, so Xinmiao followed everyone, feeling that only places with many people were the safest, even in broad daylight.
Mu Yiran walked behind and did not go in. Instead, she walked towards the stairs. Ke Xun stood behind her and said, "I believe her. The stairs may have really disappeared last night."
The stairs are now clearly visible, with Saint Seiya stickers made by children on the paint-chipped handrails.
But who can explain what is happening in the painting?
Mu Yiran stood at the stairs, as if thinking about something.
Ke Xun looked at the four points in the circle of the apartment. Each point was an exit. The stairs were solid exits, and the toilet was a liquid exit.
"You said that all the stairs disappeared after the lights were turned off last night? If that was true, then there was no need for the doorman to remind us not to go up and down the stairs at will." Ke Xun expressed his opinion.
Mu Yiran's slightly cold eyes lingered on Ke Xun's face for a moment: "If we talk about time, does this disappearance happen every night, or only on certain nights?"
Ke Xun felt as if the other party had sprinkled a face full of mint candy, refreshing everywhere, and his mind seemed to be much clearer: "In other words, the disappearance of the stairs may be closely related to the death incident that night. The death last night was designed to be a fire. Once the two girls who were burned woke up in time, they would most likely push the door and escape. The stairs are people's first choice as an emergency exit."
The mints in Mu Yiran's eyes rippled again, and he nodded slightly, "By analogy, the entire apartment is involved in the death design. Adjustments will be made for each death incident. This time, only the hardware facilities of the apartment will be changed. In the future, maybe more people will be involved."
Mu Yiran's tone was calm, but the content of his words made people feel horrified from head to toe.
Others had already come out of the public toilet, and the result was: there was indeed a ghost face outside the window of the women's toilet. It was graffiti painted on the cement wall outside. The whole face was almost as big as the window, and it was indeed creepy at first glance.
"Ke'er, why is there a cement wall outside the window?" Wei Dong came to Ke Xun's side, "Is it like this on your fourth floor?"
Ke Xun nodded: "Are you all right on the sixth floor?"
Everyone went downstairs while talking. It was time to gather at Wumei Restaurant.
"The windows on the sixth floor are quite bright, but I feel suffocated," Wei Dong looked at Zhu Haowen who was walking in front of him, "My roommate kept complaining of a headache last night, and I felt chest tightness and a sense of suffocation. Fortunately, I had the Eight Immortals Blood Flow Tube you gave me, otherwise I would have to be sent to the hospital for oxygen."
As Wei Dong spoke, he took out the Eight Immortals Candle in his hand, unscrewed it and took a deep breath: "No wonder the doorman said that living on the sixth floor is stressful. I finally understand how it feels."
Mu Yiran suddenly asked, "Besides the physical discomfort last night, was there anything else unusual in your room?"
Wei Dong scratched his head and said, "We both slept like dead last night. When I woke up in the morning, I still felt a headache and chest tightness, so I left the room immediately."
"Are you still feeling uncomfortable now?" Ke Xun asked.
"Strange, it got better as soon as I left the sixth floor." Wei Dong himself couldn't explain why.
When Qin Ci passed the third floor, he went to room 307 where he lived and helped old man Li Taiyong out. Since the old man was too old, no one let him know about the death for the time being.
The doorman was already waiting for everyone at the entrance of Wumei Restaurant: "Before we eat, let me tell you about 402."
Is the NPC going to confess his crime last night?
The doorman shook the big key chain in his hand and said, "Ever since Liao Xinchuan told us to cut off the power at night, we have to grope in the dark. Xiaobai, who used to live in 402 and was a college entrance examination student, could only study by candlelight every night. One day, he was too tired from reading and fell asleep. As a result, the candle touched the book and ignited it, causing a fire. - Of course, this happened last year."
Everyone was analyzing the purpose of the NPC's explanation when they heard the doorman say, "So we must pay attention to fire safety and have fire safety knowledge! Forget about that , let's go eat."
Wei Dong couldn't help but ask: "So what tasks do we have during the day?"
"You tenants can do whatever you want, it's none of my business!"
"Then can we go out the door?" Qiu Lu asked hurriedly.
The doorman's face turned cold: "The gate has been blocked by the developers, and even the cement wall has been built. Whoever goes out will be a traitor to Chunshui Dormitory!"
Everyone hurried into the restaurant laughing. Sha Liu reminded Qiu Lu: "Our goal is to find the seal. Only by finding the seal can we leave this world!"
Qiu Lu was also forced to believe this weird thing: "But there are so many people living here, do we still have to search every house?"
"The seal can't be in someone else's house. We must connect these deaths and find the main thread or trigger point. The seal can only be hidden in a place related to these." Shaliu's voice gradually became louder so that those who entered the painting for the first time could hear it.
The proprietress Wu Mei led everyone into the only standard room in the hotel, where there was a large round table with a simple breakfast prepared on it - millet porridge, steamed buns, and cold dishes.
After having to endure the hardships of his first two paintings, Ke Xunweidong felt that the treatment here was quite good.
Wu Mei also said, "If you want to order something a la carte, you can pay extra. We also have eggs, fried cakes, steamed buns, and preserved egg and lean meat porridge."
No one had an appetite to eat, let alone order food.
Ke Xun glanced at the fifth sister and said, "How about one boiled egg each? How much?"
It is even more important to eat well at this time, as finding a seal is a very tiring task.
"An egg costs fifty cents, so for 11 people it'll be five dollars!" The fifth sister is a straightforward person.
Ke Xun took out the money and gave it to the fifth sister, then asked with a smile: "Who is the Liao Xinchuan that the old man just mentioned?"
The fifth sister answered while keeping accounts: "It's the former factory director Liao!"
This answer surprised everyone. They originally thought that Liao Xinchuan should be the so-called Hong Kong developer, but they didn't expect that this factory director would suddenly appear.
The person who spoke this time was the always silent old man Li Taiyong: "Girl, is our factory still in existence?"
"Yes, but it's different from before. I don't understand the principles of the shareholding system. After so many twists and turns, the whole factory now belongs to those shareholders! Even the factory land and our Chunsun dormitory belong to them! Director Liao takes the biggest share!"
Li Taiyong fell silent again .
