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

The shop owner took the pastries, his attitude more polite than he had towards everyone else: "Sister Wang, thank you for your trouble again."

"No trouble at all," the woman said with a smile, her gaze sweeping over the eight players before lingering for a moment on Zhou Lang's face.

Six now.

Zhou Lang counted in his mind. The instance notification said there were seven strange entities. The NPCs he could see now were: the boss, the boss's wife, the female college student Xiao Xu who worked part-time, the couple traveling, and Sister Wang who delivered pastries.

Six.

One more is needed.

"Boss Zhang, are there any other residents in this town besides you?" Zhou Lang asked.

The shopkeeper wiped the counter without looking up: "Yes, we do have some, but they're all over town. Around here, it's just my shop and Sister Wang's place; there aren't any others."

"And what about tonight?"

The boss stopped.

"At night?" He looked up, his smile freezing on his face. "You can stay in your rooms at night. There are no streetlights in town, it's very dark, and you might slip and fall if you go out."

This is almost identical to the system message.

Zhou Lang chose the innermost room on the second floor. Zhao Qiang chose the one next to him. Han Yingying was opposite him. Lin Yuanshan chose a spot near the stairwell, saying it would be "easy to observe."

The room wasn't big, containing a bed, a table, a chair, and a wardrobe. The window faced the backyard and offered a view of the lake. The window was an old-fashioned wooden one, the latches were rusty, and the locks wouldn't stay on properly.

Interestingly, there was a faucet in the room—connected to an iron pipe that extended from the wall, leading to a white porcelain washbasin. Zhou Lang turned it on, and the faucet spewed out rusty red water, intermittently, with a muffled sound coming from the pipe inside the wall.

He crouched down and pressed his ear against the pipe.

Deep inside the pipe, a sticky, rustling sound came from, as if something was wriggling inside.

Zhao Qiang pushed the door open and came in: "Brother Lang, this dungeon seems pretty normal to me, it's C-rank, we can just grind through it in seven days—"

"Go check the third floor," Zhou Lang interrupted him.

"Huh? Didn't they say the third floor was leaking?"

"Let's go take a look."

Zhao Qiang left reluctantly. Three minutes later, he ran back, his face paler than before.

"The third floor... the entire third floor was burned! The walls are black, the floor is mostly charred, and there's a rusty iron chain nailed to the door of one of the rooms, locked from the outside."

"Lock the door and set it on fire from the outside," Zhou Lang said.

Zhao Qiang shivered.

"This guesthouse has been the site of a fire that killed someone."

It got dark very quickly. Just after six o'clock in the afternoon, the sun seemed to have been pulled behind the mountains, and the light changed from orange to grayish-blue in less than ten minutes.

The landlady cooked dinner. Four dishes and a soup, the taste was alright, but the woman didn't say a word the whole time. She put the dishes on the table and left, going back to the backyard. Through the window, I could see her standing by the lake, staring motionlessly at the water.

"Isn't your wife eating with us?" Ma Dong asked.

The owner picked up a piece of food and said, "She's not hungry."

The atmosphere at the dinner table was tense. Lin Yuanshan took a few bites, put down his chopsticks, and began to outline his plan: "I've been into the dungeon six times, and I know the patterns of C-rank dungeons. We'll investigate and gather information during the day, and stay in our rooms at night. There shouldn't be any problems. Seven days will pass quickly."

"And the strange ones? There are seven." Fang Xuewen pushed up his glasses.

"How strong can a C-level anomaly be?" Lin Yuanshan said. "As long as you don't provoke it and follow the rules, you won't die."

Zhou Lang remained silent. He was observing the couple of NPCs opposite him. The girl kept smiling, but the smile was fixed on her face, as if it were painted on. The boy's movements as he chopped vegetables were mechanical and precise, each cut made at the same angle and with the same force.

They are repeating themselves.

It's like a pre-recorded program playing on a loop.

After dinner, the eight people returned to their respective rooms. Zhou Lang called out to Han Yingying and Zhao Qiang at the door.

"No matter what you hear tonight, don't open the door."

Han Yingying nodded. Zhao Qiang readily agreed.

"Also," Zhou Lang paused, "tighten the faucet."

The door closed and the latch went down.

Zhou Lang didn't turn on the light. He sat in the dark, leaning against the headboard, with the chainsaw and scissors beside him and the oil lamp in his hand.

At nine o'clock, there were footsteps in the corridor. They were from a living person—Lin Yuanshan was on patrol. The footsteps circled the room and then returned, closing the door behind them.

At ten o'clock, footsteps sounded again.

But this time it wasn't a living person.

The sound was very soft, like bare feet walking on a wooden floor, with a damp, sticky feel. It wasn't just one person, but several. They came up the stairs and walked back and forth in the hallway.

Something stopped outside Zhou Lang's door.

A breathing sound came from the other side of the door—no, not breathing, but a gurgling sound, like someone was blowing bubbles with water in their mouth.

Zhou Lang glanced down at the crack in the door.

A dark green light shone through the crack in the door and fell onto the floor.

The thing outside the door stayed for about thirty seconds, then left.

The footsteps continued forward, pausing briefly in front of Han Yingying's door before moving on. They paused longest in front of Zhao Qiang's door—probably because the sound of Zhao Qiang gasping for breath inside was too obvious.

At 11:30, the corridor finally quieted down.

Zhou Lang waited for ten minutes, and after confirming that there was no further movement, he lit the oil lamp.

The moment the green flame lit up, the temperature in the entire room plummeted.

He opened the door.

The corridor was empty, but the light from the oil lamp revealed something that shouldn't be there—a trail of wet footprints on the floor, stretching from the stairwell to the end of the corridor, the water still damp. The footprints were misshapen; the toes were too long, and there were only four of them.

Zhou Lang followed the footprints toward the stairwell.

As I passed Lin Yuanshan's room, a low voice came from under the door: "Are you crazy? What are you doing going out?"

Zhou Lang did not answer.

He walked down the stairs.

There were no lights in the lobby on the first floor. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, casting long, crooked shadows of the tables and chairs.

The paper lantern was still in the corner, but now it was lit.

There were no candles inside, yet a dim, yellow light emanated from it. The woman in the painting had changed her pose—she was standing in the afternoon, but now she was smiling.

It's not a smile that's drawn on.

It's the kind of smile that stretches from the mouth to the ears.

Zhou Lang raised the oil lamp a little higher, and the green light spread out.

Then he saw that thing.

A woman was lying on the ceiling of the hall.

Her long, curly hair hung down, almost touching the table. She wore a floral dress, but the dress was covered in dark stains. Her skin didn't look like skin—it was so thin it was translucent, and you could vaguely see the lines of muscles and veins underneath. She looked like a human-shaped lampshade that had been stretched out.

Human skin lantern.

She tilted her head, hanging upside down from the ceiling, looking at Zhou Lang.

Zhou Lang and she stared at each other for two seconds.

Then he noticed a problem—her resentment was off.

Zhou Lang had witnessed the eerie resentment of Grade C before. That level of resentment was like a cold wind to him, easily dissipated with a breath. But what emanated from this woman far exceeded the scope of Grade C. It was a resentment so thick it was impossible to dissipate, accumulated over countless layers.