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

Seven eerie things are scattered throughout the guesthouse. You won't notice them during the day, but they're there, seeping into the walls, and they'll come out as soon as night falls.

The problem is that even in a C-level dungeon, the seven anomalies are not evenly distributed; some are clustered together, some are scattered, and some are strong while others are weak. The real test will come when they all unleash their power after the fourth day.

The bigger problem is the information he found before registering—there's something "that doesn't belong to this instance." A C-rank instance being invaded by an S-rank anomaly is a harbinger of instance collapse. Collapsed instance rules become invalid, turning a potentially viable situation into a dead end.

He didn't come to clear the gate; he came to see that thing.

At 9:50, the guesthouse owner dimmed the lights on the first floor, leaving only one light at the very beginning and one at the very end of the corridor, with a dim, yellowish light in the middle section, which was not bright enough.

The players gradually returned to their rooms, even the tall boy packed up his easel and went inside. The courtyard was deserted and quiet; the sound of leaves rustling in the wind could be heard.

At exactly nine o'clock, an unseen switch was flipped, and the temperature in the corridor dropped.

Zhou Lang sat on the edge of the bed, without turning on the light, and looked through the crack in the door. Light was shining in from outside, and shadows were moving in the light—irregular, slowly moving along the wall, one, two, and more and more.

The system silently popped up a notification:

[The first night begins. Strange things have appeared in the corridor. Current stage: Unable to enter the room.]

[Note to players: Please do not open the door on your own.]

Zhou Lang finished reading the message, leaned back in his chair, and thought for a while.

He stood up and opened the door.

There are seven things in the corridor.

They were of various shapes and heights; some stood, some hung in mid-air, and some lay on the ceiling with their heads drooping. The green light of the oil lamp revealed them all. All eyes converged on him, lingering for about two seconds, before the closest gaze began to move towards him, slowly and tentatively.

The system popped up again:

[WARNING: Player "浪里个浪" has opened the door. This action is highly dangerous; please close the door immediately.]

Zhou Lang ignored the warning; he was measuring the seven items one by one, classifying them in his mind. The closest one lacked a complete outline, its edges blurred, like a solidified dark mass. As it moved forward, the floor temperature dropped, which he could feel directly. The one on the ceiling had excessively long hair that hung down to the floor, like something crawling out of an old movie. However, its movements were paused; it stopped after each step closer, not as if it were attacking, but more like it was confirming something.

Then there was the smallest one near the window, huddled in the corner at the very end of the corridor, not moving toward him; it was the only one out of seven that didn't move at all.

The other six are all leaning towards him to some extent.

This one, no.

Zhou Lang raised his right hand and snapped his fingers at the nearest one.

The thing trembled, then stopped, its edges crumbled, and it moved a step to the side.

The head on the ceiling turned around, recalibrating itself from its original orientation towards him, as if reassessing the player's intentions.

Zhao Qiang opened the door a crack from the inside, pressed his face against the gap, and whispered, "Brother Lang... what are you doing? I thought you were asleep. Why did you open the door? Didn't you see the system said not to open the door on your own?"

"I saw it."

"You saw it and then you opened it?"

"right."

Zhao Qiang paused for a second, then asked, "...Did you gain anything?"

"There is one that doesn't move."

"What do you mean 'immovable'? What do you mean 'immovable'?" Zhao Qiang's voice was slightly off-key because he lowered it too much. "What do you mean? You dare to open the door if nothing in the hallway is walking towards you?"

"I opened the door because one of them didn't move."

"I don't understand this logic, I'm closing the door."

The door was sewn up.

The seven figures in the corridor were disrupted by a snap of fingers. Some of the closer ones slowly retreated, while the one on the ceiling curled its hair upwards, as if reassessing the situation. They had clearly never encountered a player who would proactively open a door and snap their fingers before; their frame of reference had failed, and they needed to rethink their next move.

The system was silent for a moment, then a new prompt appeared:

[Player "Langligelang" has been detected to have engaged in unusual interaction with "Weird".]

[Special actions have been recorded and will be included in the reward calculation at settlement.]

It is worth noting that this notification did not appear in Zhao Qiang's and Han Yingying's interfaces; it was only sent to Zhou Lang.

He closed the door, returned to the bedside and sat down, placing the oil lamp on the table. The green light cast a cold glow over the entire room.

A thread still ran through his mind—just now in the hallway, before the seven things could react, he had scanned the closest one by one to confirm their existence, not just to "see" them. Seven strange creatures, six moving, one still. The one that hadn't moved was the smallest, curled up in the corner. It possessed something on it, not the reflection of the hallway light, but a different color, extremely faint, almost an aura, something not visually perceptible, but Zhou Lang recognized.

He had seen that color before.

To be precise, that color was left behind by his sister before she disappeared. It was a thin layer on the wall of his bedroom, on the window that he could no longer open. It disappeared so quickly that it was gone by the time he realized it.

He initially thought it was a remnant of some game system, but later realized it wasn't.

That's not part of the system; it's a mark left by some S-class being after they passed by. It can't be copied and won't appear naturally.

Now, the same thing appears on the smallest eerie creature in the corner of the corridor.

Zhou Lang took out his sketchbook, turned to the line "Day 4, do not open the door," and under it, he wrote another line:

It's not seven, it's six plus one.

He closed the sketchbook, blew out the oil lamp, and the room became completely dark, with only the shadows of the trees outside the window swaying on the wall. The sound of wind came from the yard, and the tree in the backyard rustled, with something else mixed in, tiny, like some kind of breathing, very steady, very slow, not like a living thing.

Zhou Lang leaned against the headboard, his eyes open.

If that mark is real, then the S-class anomaly isn't outside, it's already here, in the guesthouse, on one of the seven anomalies, or perhaps it's the smallest, motionless one curled up in that corner.

The collapse of this instance has already begun.

The corridor grew quieter and quieter, the outside temperature continued to drop, and a chill seeped in through the cracks in the walls. Zhou Lang pulled his coat up even higher.

The first night, six days to go.

The bottom of the stairs is a narrow corridor.