You made all the streamers on the internet kneel before you when you were asked to make a game.

Liu Yedao took the key, nodded, and turned to walk towards the stairs.

The second floor of the inn is a long, narrow corridor.

The walls were covered with yellowed newspapers, the words on them long since blurred and illegible. Only the figures dressed in Republican-era clothing could be seen, twisted into eerie shapes under the dim light.

The smell of preservatives, corpse odor, and rotten wood in the air became even stronger.

The top-tier room was at the end of the corridor; Lancet opened the door with his key.

Inside the door, an even colder, musty smell wafted out.

The room was small and the furnishings were extremely simple.

A wooden plank bed, a table with a missing leg, and a chair.

Gone.

Liu Yedao walked to the bedside and reached out to lift the thin, even slightly damp, blankets.

Beneath the bed board, there was a thick layer of dry straw.

The straw had turned black and smelled of rotting fodder; several dark brown human-shaped marks could be vaguely seen on it.

Holy crap, this bed... it definitely held a corpse!

[Host, quickly check under the straw for hair or fingernails!]

[Don't even mention what I just said, I'm getting goosebumps, the details in this game are fucking realistic!]

The live stream chat was instantly flooded with comments, but Lancet's expression remained unchanged.

She simply put on a pair of white gloves provided by the system in her virtual inventory, carefully checked the straw, and only after confirming that nothing was left behind did she restore the bed to its original state.

Then he sat in the only chair, leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, as if he were dozing.

But the ears are picking up all the sounds around them.

Outside the inn, the mountain wind howled, like the wailing of ghosts.

Inside the inn, there was a deathly silence.

After an unknown amount of time, the virtual hands of the clock pointed to midnight.

"Thump."

A muffled thud suddenly came from the next room.

Lancet's eyes snapped open.

The sound was strange; it didn't sound like a person walking, nor did it sound like something falling.

It looked more like a heavy sack, thrown from mid-air onto the floor.

"Thump."

"Thump."

Two more sounds.

It was very rhythmic, with almost identical intervals between each beat.

Liu Yedao stood up and quietly walked to the wooden wall connecting to the next room, gently pressing his ear against it.

This time, she heard it much more clearly.

The sound came from the other side of the wall.

With a jump, with a leap.

It looked like something was moving around the room in a stiff way.

[Classic midnight ghost knocking on the wall! -- Wait a minute, didn't the boss say there was only one top-class room? What's next door?]

[They're corpses! Definitely corpses brought in by a corpse-transporting team! They're not walking, they're hopping!]

The viewers in the live chat were even more nervous than the surgeon himself.

Lancet held his breath and continued listening.

The stiff throbbing continued in the room for about a minute, then stopped.

Immediately afterwards, an even more chilling sound rang out.

"Click...click..."

It looked like someone was using their teeth to gnaw on something hard.

wood?

Or bones?

The sound continued, accompanied by the soft rustling of tiny wood chips or bone fragments falling to the ground.

Lancet's brow furrowed slightly.

She is very sensitive to sound.

Forensic doctors often need to make preliminary judgments by listening to the sounds of bones breaking and tissue tearing.

The sound from next door doesn't sound like they're gnawing on wood.

The sound of wood is crisper.

The sound was muffled, and carried a feeling of resilience being forcibly torn apart.

Just as she was listening intently.

"Click."

The gnawing sound stopped.

An even more intense stillness enveloped the entire inn.

The lancet remained motionless, its ear pressed against the wall.

She could sense something on the other side of the wall.

It is listening too.

It was as if a pair of cold, emotionless eyes were staring at her through the thin wooden board.

one second.

two seconds.

ten seconds.

In the live stream, the viewers held their breath.

They were terrified that a hand might suddenly reach out from the wall, or a ghostly face might appear.

But nothing happened.

After an unknown amount of time, the feeling of being watched slowly subsided, and Liu Yedao slowly straightened up.

She glanced at the wall, then at the door; the "guest" next door had fallen silent.

But it wasn't completely quiet.

"bite--"

A clear, crisp bell rang out in the quiet corridor.

The hunchbacked old man's warning instantly came to everyone's mind.

—At night, no matter what noise you hear, don't go out.

—Especially the sound of bells.

—Those are guests, on their way.

The bell rang, one ring after another.

"bite--"

"bite--"

Accompanied by the ringing of a bell, a hoarse, aged, and emotionless voice echoed softly in the corridor.

"The Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches have arrived, the time has come..."

"When the dead travel, the living must avoid them—"

It's that hunchbacked old man!

Lancet stood in the center of the room, his expression indifferent.

She walked slowly to the door, squatted down, and peered through the narrow crack in the door.

From this angle, you can see the floor of the hallway outside the door.

"Thump."

"Thump."

The stiff, throbbing sound rang out again.

This time, it wasn't next door, but in the hallway.

A pair of feet appeared in the view through the crack in the door.

Those were the feet of a corpse, wearing tattered cloth shoes and tightly bound at the ankles with straw rope.

The skin of the corpse feet was a deathly gray color, covered with lividity.

They hop and skip forward, their toes barely touching the ground.

A pair.

Two pairs.

Three pairs.

A line of "guests" was queuing up as they passed in front of the Lancet.

The scalpel calmly swept over each pair of feet that jumped across the doorway, noting their number, the style of their shoes, and the degree of decomposition of the corpses.

This is a forensic doctor's instinct.

Just then, a pair of red embroidered shoes came into her view.

The shoes stopped.

It stopped right in front of her door, motionless.

The shoes were exquisite, with a pair of lifelike mandarin ducks embroidered in gold thread on the red silk upper.

But the feet wearing these shoes were deathly pale, with slender ankles that looked as if they would break at the slightest touch.

Those shoes, like the ones worn by the previous passing corpses, were worn on tiptoe.

Only the very tip of the shoe is in contact with the ground.

The entire heel was eerily suspended in mid-air, like a ballet dancer.

One, a dead dancer.

In the corridor, the hunchbacked old man's chanting and the throbbing of the corpse had faded into the distance.

Only these red embroidered shoes remained in place.

Liu Yedao's breathing slowed unconsciously; the shoes were clearly aimed at her.

She remembered the handkerchief.

The handkerchief that had fallen from the sleeve of the female corpse earlier on the mountain path.

Although she didn't pick up the lancet, she did walk past the handkerchief.

The faint scent of corpse clung to her body.

For ghosts, this is an indelible mark.

"My...handkerchief..."

A plaintive, mournful woman's voice, as if it came from the deepest hell, slipped in through the crack in the door.

"Did you...see it...?"