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

The third day after leaving the haunted manor.

Zhou Lang was sitting on the folding bed in his rented room, eating a steamed bun, when the system panel popped up without warning, with a red background for the notification bar.

He paused for a moment while eating the steamed bun.

The last time I saw a red alert was on the day a global horror game was released.

[Urgent Notice: The survival rate of instance #2047, "Midnight Cable Car in the Mall's Underground," has dropped to 11% in the past seven days, suspected to be due to an unknown variable (bug). We are now recruiting players with investigation items. Rewards will be calculated based on the investigation results. Do you accept?]

11% survival rate.

In other words, out of ten people who go in, only one can come out standing up.

Zhou Lang pulled something out of his pocket—a glass eyeball, completely transparent, with vertical pupils like a snake. This was an extra reward he received upon completing the Terror Manor dungeon, called the [Eye of Truth], whose function was to mark hidden key information nodes within the dungeon.

In layman's terms, it comes with built-in highlighting.

He thought for a moment and then clicked "accept".

He finished the half-eaten steamed bun in three bites and patted the crumbs off his hands.

The system has given the time to enter the instance—8 PM tonight.

Six hours left.

Zhou Lang took out his phone and browsed the game forums. There were quite a few posts about this dungeon, but not much of value; most were fragmented descriptions from survivors, pieced together to be something like this:

The instance setting is an abandoned shopping mall.

There is a cable car underground.

A strange phenomenon is released every two hours.

If you find out the truth about the cable car accident within 24 hours, you'll pass the test.

A post caught Zhou Lang's attention. The poster's ID was "It's Good to Be Alive," and the content consisted of only one line—

"Don't trust the one in the school uniform."

There are zero replies to the post, which was posted at 3 a.m. yesterday.

Zhou Lang took a screenshot and put his phone back in his pocket.

7:50 PM.

Zhou Lang stood in the center of the rented room, the system countdown ticking before his eyes. He checked his inventory: [Eye of Truth], the oil lamp he brought from the haunted manor, and scissors and a chainsaw.

He had a little over 800 yuan left, so he bought two more bottles of emergency spray at the store, each costing 200 yuan, which stung.

The countdown has reached zero.

When his vision went black and he opened his eyes again, Zhou Lang found himself standing in the atrium of a shopping mall.

The shopping mall was huge, at least five stories high, with a double-height atrium. The glass dome overhead was covered by something, letting in no light. All the shops on all sides had their roller shutters drawn, and the emergency lights emitted a pale white glow, barely enough to make out the floor tiles underfoot.

There's a smell in the air.

It wasn't rotten, but rather that smell of an underground parking lot—damp, stuffy, mixed with gasoline and mold.

Zhou Lang looked around and saw that there were already five people standing in the courtyard.

The closest person to him was a tall, middle-aged man with a buzz cut, a scar on his neck, and arms thicker than Zhou Lang's thighs. This man was looking around with his arms crossed, exuding an air of confidence that he could go anywhere without fear.

Standing nearby was a woman in a deep red dress, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, with exquisite makeup and bright red lips. She was leaning against a pillar, playing with her hair with her fingertips.

A little further away, a girl with pigtails was squatting on the ground, hugging her knees, curled up in a ball. She was wearing a pink hoodie, looked no more than seventeen or eighteen years old, and her eyes were red, as if she had just been crying.

There was also a boy in a school uniform standing in the corner, his head down, so his face was not visible.

The last person—

"Zhou Lang?"

Han Yingying stood next to the escalator, staring at him with wide eyes.

Zhou Lang was also taken aback. "What are you doing here?"

"I was randomly assigned here," Han Yingying said as she walked over quickly, lowering her voice. "The system only said it was a C-level instance, but once I got here, I realized something was wrong—the sense of oppression here is too strong; it doesn't feel like a C-level instance at all."

"It's not C-level," Zhou Lang said. "This dungeon has a bug; its actual difficulty far exceeds the stated level."

Han Yingying's face paled for a moment.

"Alright, stop standing there." The middle-aged man with the buzz cut strode to the center of the courtyard, his voice booming like someone shouting prices at a market. "Since we've been thrown together, let me introduce myself first. My name is Chen Tiejun. This is my fourth time entering the dungeon. My skill is Constitution Enhancement. When it comes to fighting, if I say I'm second, nobody dares to say they're first."

He scanned the group, his gaze lingering on Zhou Lang for a second longer. "How many experiences do you guys have?"

The woman in the red dress straightened up and smiled slightly. "Su Wan, the third time."

She didn't mention her skills.

The girl with pigtails timidly raised her hand. "Lin, Lin Xiaoxiao, this is the second time... I almost didn't survive last time, and this time I've been assigned to a place like this again..." As she spoke, her nose turned red again.

Chen Tiejun frowned, then softened his tone. "Don't be afraid, just follow me."

The boy in the school uniform in the corner looked up. He was quite handsome, but his complexion was pale and bluish. "Liu Hao. First time."

"Getting into this kind of dungeon on your first try?" Chen Tiejun took a breath. "That's pretty bad luck."

It was Zhou Lang and Han Yingying's turn.

"Like a wave in the wind," Zhou Lang said.

Chen Tiejun waited two seconds. "And then? How many times? What about the skill?"

"Keep it a secret."

Chen Tiejun's expression was not good.

Han Yingying quickly replied, "My name is Han Yingying, and I was also randomly assigned here."

When the atmosphere became a bit tense, the system panel popped up simultaneously in front of everyone.

[Instance: The Midnight Cable Car in the Mall's Underground]

[Background: A cable car company's shoddy construction led to a fatal accident. To cover up the truth, a conglomerate built a shopping mall at the accident site to suppress the dead. The deceased are trapped in the cable car, endlessly cycling through the rooms, and have yet to find peace.]

[Mission: Find out the whole truth behind the cable car accident within 24 hours.]

[Rule: One anomaly is released every 2 hours. The anomaly is a crashed passenger and possesses high levels of aggression.]

[WARNING: This copy contains unknown variables. Investigators should exercise extreme caution.]

Current time: 00:00:00

[Countdown begins.]

After the panel disappeared, the emergency lights in the mall flashed once, and then two of them went out.

"One weird thing every two hours..." Chen Tiejun counted on his fingers, "That's twelve in twenty-four hours. Is this some kind of monster-hunting challenge?"

Su Wan smoothed her hair. "That depends on the quality of the monster."

"It says above that these are passengers from the accident," Han Yingying recalled the panel's contents. "A cable car accident like this will surely result in a high death toll."

"Let's ignore the strangeness for now," Zhou Lang said. "Two hours is plenty of time for us to get things done. Our top priority is to find the underground entrance."

Chen Tiejun glanced at him. "What's the rush? Figure out the situation in the mall first—"

Zhou Lang ignored him and turned to walk towards the mall's map. A faded floor plan was still hanging on the wall of the atrium, and he leaned closer to take a look.

The first floor is a clothing section, the second floor is restaurants, the third floor is a cinema and entertainment area, the fourth floor is home furnishings, and the fifth floor is office space. There is a parking garage on the first basement level, and a second basement level...

blank.