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

But it didn't go any further.

"Can this light block it?" Han Yingying asked breathlessly.

"It won't hold out for long." Zhou Lang observed the thing's reaction. "It's just hesitating."

Chen Tiejun and the others had already run to the other end of the parking lot and were climbing up the fire escape stairs. Zhou Lang, holding the oil lamp, slowly retreated, and together with Han Yingying, they retreated to the stairwell, then slammed the fire door shut.

The door had just closed when a heavy thud came from the other side.

Once. Twice. Three times.

A fist-sized bulge appeared on the iron gate.

Zhou Lang didn't linger and pulled Han Yingying upstairs.

Back in the central hall, everyone was panting. Lin Xiaoxiao collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Chen Tiejun leaned against the wall, his expression grim. Su Wan knelt beside Lin Xiaoxiao, trying to comfort her, her own hands trembling.

Only Liu Hao.

He stood beside the crowd, breathing steadily, without even breaking a sweat.

Zhou Lang kept this detail in mind.

"A-level is bizarre." Chen Tiejun's voice was a little hoarse. "The first one is A-level. What about the others? S-level?"

No one answered him.

System time: 02:03:17.

There are one hour and fifty-seven minutes left until the next bizarre release.

The air in the atrium on the first floor was heavy.

Six people sat around a circular bench in the lobby, no one speaking. Occasionally, a muffled thud echoed from the fire door in the basement; the passenger with the broken neck hadn't given up.

Zhou Lang broke the silence. "Tell me what you found."

Chen Tiejun rubbed his face, his tone less aggressive than before. "Liu Hao and I walked about 300 meters in the other direction of the tunnel and found a control room. There was surveillance equipment inside, but it was all smashed, and the hard drives were removed. We only saw a line of handwritten words on the whiteboard on the wall—'Line 3 is decommissioned and must not be disclosed to the public.'"

"The surveillance hard drive was unplugged?" Zhou Lang asked.

"It's spotless, even the loose threads have been cut off."

Deliberately destroying evidence. Oceanwide Holdings is ruthless in its actions.

"It's even worse for Xiaoxiao and me," Su Wan continued. "We found a storage room filled with personal belongings—backpacks, handbags, cell phones—all submerged in water. We couldn't read anything after taking them out."

"Personal belongings?" Han Yingying frowned. "The passenger's belongings?"

"Probably. There were more than a dozen backpacks, different styles, but none of them had identification." Su Wan paused, "But there was one thing that was quite strange."

She pulled a hair clip from her pocket. It was a pink, plastic bow hair clip, the kind little girls usually wear.

"Handpin?"

"This hair clip wasn't in the water," Su Wan said. "It was on the floor by the storage room door, clean and tidy, as if someone had just put it down."

Zhou Lang reached out and took it. The hair clip was ordinary, but his [Eye of Truth] started to heat up again. He secretly squeezed his eyeball in his pocket, feeling the direction of the vertical pupil's rotation—downward.

It's facing downwards again.

All the clues point to a deeper underground.

"The twins," he whispered to Han Yingying, at a volume only the two of them could hear.

Han Yingying looked at the hair clip and nodded.

"The problem now is," Zhou Lang stood up, "that Class A anomaly has blocked the underground entrance, so we can't get back anytime soon. But all the clues are down there."

"What if we wait for it to leave?" Lin Xiaoxiao asked, her voice still nasal.

"It won't leave," Zhou Lang said. "It was released to obstruct the investigation. We can't get around it."

"Then let's fight." Chen Tiejun clenched his fist. "A-rank, it's not like we can't beat them. My skill is physical enhancement, if I go all out—"

"You can beat the Neck-Breaking Monster, but there are eleven more to come," Zhou Lang interrupted him. "Can you fight them twelve times?"

Chen Tiejun opened his mouth, but swallowed his words.

At this moment, Liu Hao, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke up.

"Actually, there's no need to go back underground."

Everyone looked at him.

Liu Hao adjusted his school uniform collar, his expression calm. "There should be clues on the upper floors of the mall as well. The aftermath of the accident, compensation documents, and even internal documents of the Ocean Group aren't necessarily all underground."

He makes a good point.

However, Zhou Lang noticed a problem—this was the first sentence Liu Hao uttered after entering the instance that exceeded five words, and the logic was clear and the analysis was reasonable.

A high school student who claimed to be entering the instance for the first time judged the direction of the investigation more accurately than a veteran.

"You're right," Zhou Lang said, showing no outward sign of anything amiss. "Then let's go up and look. The fifth floor is the office area; there might be some archives from Ocean Group there."

"I'll lead the way," Liu Hao said.

"No need, let's go together."

The six people went up the now-defunct escalator. Every floor of the mall was the same – the roller shutters were closed, the emergency lights were dim, and the air smelled musty.

When she reached the third floor, Su Wan paused as she passed the entrance of the movie theater.

"What's wrong?" Chen Tiejun asked.

"There are sounds inside."

The crowd quieted down.

From behind the tightly closed doors of the movie theater, faint sounds drifted out. Not ghostly screams, not strange noises—it was the sound of the movie. Dialogue, background music, and explosion sound effects mingled together, seeping through the cracks in the doors.

"Is someone showing a movie?" Lin Xiaoxiao shrank behind Su Wan.

"In the middle of the night, in an abandoned shopping mall, an automatic movie is playing," Chen Tiejun said expressionlessly, stating a pointless statement. "Who wants to go see it?"

No one responded.

"Never mind it, let's keep going upstairs," Zhou Lang said.

But as he passed the movie theater, he caught a glimpse of light coming from under the door—not the white light from the projector, but red.

He did not stop.

Upon reaching the fifth-floor office area, the roller shutter door was unlocked. Zhou Lang pulled one open, revealing an open-plan office. The workstations and computers were still there, but documents were scattered all over the floor.

"Search separately," Zhou Lang said. "Focus on finding internal documents from Sino-Ocean Group, especially those related to the cable car project."

Everyone searched through the documents. Zhou Lang walked to the innermost private office, with a sign that read "Project Department." He pushed the door open and saw that the stack of documents on the desk was thicker than anywhere else.

After flipping through the documents for more than ten minutes, he found an encrypted internal memo. The envelope was stamped with a red "Top Secret" seal, and inside were three pages of paper.

The first page is the initial draft of the accident report.

「20XX年X月15日14时32分，远洋缆车三号线1号车厢在运行过程中钢缆断裂，车厢坠落至谷底，造成车内19名乘客全部死亡。事故原因初步判定为钢缆疲劳断裂。」

The second page is a list of 19 names, followed by their age and occupation. The two youngest—

Li Sisi, 15 years old.

Li Niannian, 15 years old.

Twin sisters.

The contents of the third page made Zhou Lang stop.

This page was not printed; it was handwritten, and the handwriting was messy.

"The cause of death of Li Sisi and Li Niannian is different from that of the other passengers. According to the preliminary forensic examination, there were obvious signs of external injury on their bodies, which were not caused by a fall. There were ligature marks on their necks and wrists, and their clothing was incomplete."