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

At the bottom of the stairs was a wooden door, the door panel covered with nails, each nail head engraved with strange symbols.

Zhou Lang brought the oil lamp closer, and the symbols floated in the green light, twisting and turning like living things.

"What are these?" Zhao Qiang's voice came from behind, trembling noticeably.

"A seal," Han Yingying said. "And a very old one at that."

Zhou Lang glanced back at her. Han Yingying's knowledge in this area far exceeded that of ordinary people, which was related to her "big boss" status—although she never brought it up herself.

"Can it be opened?" Zhou Lang asked.

"Just pull out the nails." Han Yingying hesitated for a moment, "But the fact that it's sealed here means that what's inside is no pushover."

"Do these easy targets need us to deal with them?" Zhou Lang had already gripped the chainsaw in his hand.

Zhao Qiang wanted to say something, opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had known Zhou Lang for far too long; once this guy made up his mind, nothing could stop him. Besides, it was Zhou Lang who had originally proposed this.

Zhou Lang used scissors to pry open the nails. When the first nail came out, the door shook. The second nail caused an even stronger tremor. By the time he pulled out the fifth nail, a deep roar came from behind the door.

Zhao Qiang took two steps back.

Han Yingying stood still, but her hand had already gripped her weapon—a strangely shaped short blade.

Zhou Lang pulled out the last nail.

The wooden door exploded.

It wasn't pushed open; it exploded from the inside. Splinters of wood flew everywhere. Zhou Lang dodged to the side, and a piece of wood the size of a palm flew past his ear and embedded itself in the wall behind him.

Behind the door was a huge basement, even more spacious than the manor above. The floor was paved with black stone bricks, and in the very center sat a coffin. The coffin was cast in iron, completely black, and wrapped with chains.

The coffin was moving.

To be precise, it was the thing inside the coffin that was moving. The chains rattled and clanged, and the entire coffin moved across the ground, leaving behind a grating scraping sound.

"So this is what's buried under the manor." Zhou Lang surveyed the basement layout. Various portraits hung on the walls, all depicting the same person—a man in a black tuxedo, his face blurred. Each painting had a different style, some realistic, some abstract, but they all shared the same somber atmosphere.

Han Yingying walked up to the nearest painting and squinted at it for a long time.

"This is the former owner of the manor." She pointed to a line of small print at the bottom of the frame: "Edward Grey, died 130 years ago."

"How did he die?"

"He was killed by his butler."

The three of them fell silent for a second.

Zhao Qiang spoke up: "Kill the butler?"

Han Yingying nodded: "The name will be Kill the Butler."

Zhou Lang suddenly chuckled. He finally understood why the butler was called "The Butler Killer." It wasn't just his job title plus his surname; it was because he had actually killed his master's butler. Or rather, he had killed his master's butler.

"Wait, something's not right." Zhou Lang walked towards the coffin. "The butler killed the master, and the master is sealed underground. So now this manor..."

"It's the butler's," Han Yingying continued. "It killed its master, seized the manor, and hired living people as servants."

"We are not servants," Zhao Qiang said, raising his voice slightly. "We are tools."

The coffin was hitting the ground more and more frequently. Cracks began to appear on the chains.

Zhou Lang made a decision.

"Let it out."

"Are you crazy?!" Zhao Qiang exclaimed, his eyes wide.

"Think about it, why did the butler seal up its master?" Zhou Lang squatted down to examine the chains. "Because the master wasn't completely dead. It was afraid the master would come back to haunt it after being resurrected."

Han Yingying understood what he meant: "The enemy of my enemy—"

"Just a friend of someone who's just a tool." Zhou Lang took Han Yingying's words in a roundabout way.

The chain was too thick for the scissors to cut. Zhou Lang started the chainsaw, the whirring of the saw teeth echoing in the basement. He aimed the chainsaw at the thickest chain, sparks flying everywhere.

Zhao Qiang stood in the farthest corner, arms crossed, muttering to himself. Zhou Lang listened for a while and realized he was reciting the multiplication table.

The first chain broke.

The coffin shook violently.

The second one.

A crack appeared in the coffin, and black mist poured out from the gap.

When the third piece broke, the coffin lid flew off and smashed into the ceiling, shattering into several pieces.

A hand reached out from the coffin.

It was a withered hand, the skin clinging to the bone, the fingernails half a foot long, glossy black. Then, a figure sat up.

Edward Grey, the former owner of the plantation.

His face was as blurry as the portrait, like a crumpled piece of paper; the features were all there, but his exact appearance was unclear. He wore that black tuxedo, and even after 130 years, there wasn't a single wrinkle on it.

He looked at Zhou Lang.

Zhou Lang looked at him.

The two people—one human and one ghost—stared at each other for three seconds.

Then Edward Gray spoke, his voice seeming to come from the bottom of a deep well: "You've let me out."

"Yes," Zhou Lang said, "your housekeeper should be laid off."

Gray stood up. His height, over two meters, made him appear particularly imposing in the basement. He looked down at Zhou Lang, whose face was blurred, a slight smile playing on his lips.

He's laughing.

"One hundred and thirty years," Gray said. "It thought the chains would keep me bound forever."

He strode towards the door. With each step, a crack appeared in the stone bricks beneath his feet. Zhao Qiang quickly pressed himself against the wall to make way for him, almost embedding himself into the wall.

Gray paused as he passed by him, glancing sideways at Zhao Qiang.

"You carry the aura of this manor."

Zhao Qiang's face turned pale: "Um... I can explain..."

"You've replaced one of the ghosts upstairs." Gray's tone held no anger, but rather a hint of interest. "Interesting."

He continued walking uphill. Zhou Lang and the other two followed behind.

When they returned to the lobby on the first floor, the butler was already standing there.

It faced Gray, and the air between the two ghosts trembled.

The butler suddenly had a kitchen knife in his hand—not the kind he usually used for cooking, but a larger one with a dark red blade.

"Master," the butler said, his voice completely flat, "you shouldn't have been released."

"You shouldn't have killed me," Gray replied.

Then the two ghosts started fighting.

Zhao Qiang had never seen anything like it in his twenty years of life. The two ghosts were so fast that they could only be seen as afterimages. The cleaver and Gray's long fingernails collided, each time exploding into a cloud of black smoke. The shockwave overturned the furniture in the hall, sending tables and chairs flying everywhere.

Zhou Lang pulled Zhao Qiang and Han Yingying to a corner.

"Are we just going to watch?" Zhao Qiang asked loudly, his voice mostly drowned out by the loud noise of the fight.

"Otherwise what? Which side are you going to help?"

Zhao Qiang thought about it and felt that Zhou Lang's words made sense.