A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

The basement was much larger than I had imagined.

The place they landed was a passageway with an iron door on each side. The rust was similar to that of the lock upstairs, suggesting they were from the same era. Zhou Lang walked in, holding an oil lamp. The green light shone on the damp brick wall, the halo of light swaying. There was water on the ground, a thin layer that had seeped in from somewhere, casting shadows overhead.

Zhao Qiang followed behind, and with a stomp of his shoe, splashed water all over his trouser leg.

He glanced down, said nothing, and continued walking.

Han Yingying walked to the first iron gate, put her ear to it and listened. "No sound."

"That doesn't mean there's nothing there." Zhou Lang pushed open the door and shone the oil lamp inside.

In the storage room, rows of bottles and jars lined the shelves, some broken, their contents dried on the shelves in various shapes. Some were barely recognizable as powders, some as oils, and others as brownish-black lumps, whose names I couldn't identify. At the bottom of the shelf were several burlap sacks, their openings tightly tied, bulging and bulging; judging by their shape, they didn't look like they were for storing grain.

Zhao Qiang glanced at the burlap sack, then looked away. "I'll just pretend it's for sugar."

Zhou Lang ignored him, kicked the nearest one, and heard a "clang" from inside—it was a hard object. He squatted down, untied the knot, and turned the bag upside down—dozens of iron plaques clattered to the ground, each one larger than a copper coin, cast with different human faces, each with a different expression, but all with one thing in common: their eyes were closed.

He picked one up, turned it over, and saw the words "Keep" engraved on the back.

Han Yingying leaned down and took a look. "What is this thing?"

"I don't know, I'll take it with me and we'll see." Zhou Lang put the sign in his pocket, stood up, and continued walking inside, pushing open the second iron gate.

This is the real basement.

The space suddenly opened up, and the green light of the oil lamp couldn't reach the opposite wall; only the area underfoot and a few meters around it were visible. Seven or eight people were huddled in the corner, wearing the same employee uniforms as them, their chests rising and falling—alive, but unconscious, their faces ashen, their bodies limp, as if something had been drained from them.

Han Yingying walked over and squatted down, pressing her finger on the carotid artery of one of the people. "The pulse is normal; he's unconscious."

"How long have you been locked up?" Zhao Qiang asked.

There's no way to estimate this kind of thing. Time in the game instance isn't necessarily synchronized with reality. Zhou Lang scanned the area but didn't find any obvious chains or ropes. Those people just couldn't get up, as if they were being pressed down by something, but that thing wasn't a physical object.

He raised the oil lamp and shone it into the depths of the shadows.

There is something.

It stood pressed against the wall, its color almost identical to the brickwork, even the patterns matched perfectly. It remained completely still; had he not noticed an unnatural bulge in its outline when he scanned it earlier, he would have been completely oblivious. But now, as the green light of the oil lamp shone upon it, the thing shifted to the side, avoiding the light.

It has no eyes, no nose, and its mouth extends from ear to ear, with its teeth growing outwards, uneven and densely packed.

Zhao Qiang took a step back and stepped into the puddle; this time, both of his trouser legs were soaked. He glanced down and gave up.

Zhou Lang stood still, measuring the thing from head to toe. Strange—it didn't attack proactively, but kept avoiding the light. It wasn't being forced back by the light; it was actively hiding. The wandering ghosts in the manor would shrink back when they encountered this lamp out of fear, but this one was different. Its movements were more like discomfort, as if the light made it uncomfortable, not to the point of causing harm, just blinding.

One more thing: it didn't attack the unconscious players in the corner, it just kept them there and didn't go any further.

Zhou Lang thought for a moment and then took the chainsaw out of his backpack.

"Are you going to saw it?" Zhao Qiang asked.

"No sawing."

The chainsaw started up, its buzzing echoing through the basement, causing ripples in the water and making the shelves on the walls sway slightly. The thing tilted its head, emitting a low, fricative sound, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. Then the sound began to change pitch, rising from low to high, finally becoming human speech, each word carrying a hollow echo, as if emanating from a very, very deep place.

"Go—go—go—"

Zhou Lang turned off the chainsaw. The echo slowly faded away.

"Where to?"

The thing turned its head to face a brick wall and began to make some kind of rhythmic sounds, faster and faster, until the bricks vibrated and fell off one by one, revealing the hollow inside.

The metal box, embedded in the wall, was covered in layers of rust. When I pried it out, my hands were covered in rust powder.

Zhou Lang opened it, and inside was a small glass bottle containing a black liquid with a thin, hair-like object suspended in it.

[System notification: You have discovered the core item for the dungeon—"Grievance".]

[A grudge: A medium that confines a being to a specific space. Upon destruction, the confined being will be released.]

[Should it be destroyed?]

destroy.

The glass bottle burned in my palm, its temperature rising rapidly. The sound of it shattering was faint; the black liquid seeped into the floor and disappeared. The object, pressed against the wall, emitted a final, high-pitched, thin cry, like a long-stretched string suddenly snapping, and then—

It's quiet now.

Utter silence.

The thing was gone, and the people in the corner started to move. Their fingers twitched, and one of them opened his eyes, sat up blankly, looked around, and had an expression of not knowing what had happened.

[System notification: Main quest for the dungeon is complete. Please prepare to complete the process.]

Zhao Qiang let out a long sigh and sat down directly on the floor. The water had soaked the back of his pants, but he didn't care. "...Is it over?"

"it's over."

"That thing..." He glanced at the wall with the exposed hole, "Where did it go?"

"It's been released." Zhou Lang put the oil lamp into his pocket. "The ghost in this instance wasn't bad; it was just locked up. Once the grudge was broken, it naturally left."

How do you know it's not broken?

"It told us where the box was."

Zhao Qiang thought for a moment, unable to refute it, so he changed his angle, "Then why did you bring the chainsaw in the first place? Didn't you say you wanted to communicate with it?"

"Before communicating, I need to let it know that I can be more mischievous than it."

"..."

Han Yingying, standing nearby, pushed the scissors back into her pocket; she hadn't used them at all. The few players who had woken up started walking out on their own, their steps unsteady. They had clearly been trapped here for a long time and were in poor mental condition, but having someone was better than having no one. Zhou Lang didn't bother with them and followed them toward the stairs.

The settlement interface unfolds before your eyes:

[Zhao Qiang: Survival reward 500, main quest reward 300, total 800.]

[Han Yingying: Survival reward 500, main quest reward 300, total 800.]

[Waves: Survival reward 500, Main quest reward 1000, Special behavior reward [Effective communication with the eerie entity] 500, Eerie entity intimidation reward 200, Total 2200.]

Zhao Qiang glanced at it and said, "Why do you get a special reward?"

"Effective communication".

"What you're doing is—"

"It works."