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

The staircase leads to a large hall.

It wasn't too big, but it was definitely not small. The four walls were exposed brick and stone, damp and moldy, with black water seeping out in some places. When the green light of the oil lamp shone on it, you could see things piled up in the corner—bottles and jars, some broken, some intact, filled with an unknown liquid, the color of which was as dark as congealed blood.

Han Yingying stepped on something, looked down, and saw it was a broken bone.

She didn't cry out, but simply moved half a step to the side.

"What was this place used for before?" Zhao Qiang's voice was very low.

Zhou Lang walked inside, holding an oil lamp, and scanned the area. In the center of the hall was a stone platform with a groove leading to a drain hole in the floor. The hole was rusted, thoroughly rusted, as if it had been used for many years.

"The laboratory," Zhou Lang said.

Zhao Qiang: "..."

Han Yingying looked away from the bone on the ground and followed.

Deep inside the hall was a door, smaller than the iron door at the top of the stairs, but much thicker. It had three horizontal bolts, all bolted from the outside. Zhou Lang pulled the bolts open one by one, and a blast of cold air wafted out, carrying a stench of decay and disinfectant mixed together—it was hard to say which was more pungent.

The door opened.

Inside was a small room with only one chair, and a person was sitting on the chair.

No, it's not a person.

It was a corpse, but it wasn't rotting—the skin was a waxy yellow color, and the facial features were still discernible. It was an old man with gray hair, wearing a faded vest, and there was a hole in his chest; the edges of the wound had long since dried out.

The old man was clutching a booklet in his hand.

Zhou Lang walked over and pulled the booklet from the stiff hand. It took some effort, and the knuckles made a slight cracking sound.

Zhao Qiang remained standing at the doorway, his gaze darting back and forth between the old man and Zhou Lang. "You're just... taking it like that?"

"Dead people don't get angry."

Zhao Qiang: "...Okay, that makes sense."

The booklet was opened, revealing dense handwriting, the characters somewhat messy but still legible. Zhou Lang glanced through it, then looked up. "This is the manor owner's diary."

Han Yingying walked in and leaned over to take a look.

The diary entries were short, but they explained the whole story very clearly. The owner's name wasn't important; what mattered was that he bought the land twenty years ago, not knowing what he intended to do with it, but later discovered something underground. He dug up the foundation and found a deeper space containing something sealed away—he didn't know what it was, but that thing would talk to him every night.

There was a passage in the diary written with great force, the handwriting leaving marks on the paper:

"It said that as long as I did what it asked, it would give me everything I wanted. I believed it."

As I turned the pages further, the handwriting became messy. Some parts were crossed out and rewritten, some were half-finished and then left blank for several pages, and then suddenly I continued writing.

The last page contains only one line of text:

"I want to stop it, but I'm already a part of it. People who come here, don't let it out."

Zhou Lang closed the booklet and put it in his pocket.

"So the manor owner was killed by that thing?" Zhao Qiang asked.

"No," Han Yingying pointed to the hole in the old man's chest, "he was stabbed to death."

There was a moment of silence.

"Where is that thing?" Zhao Qiang asked again, his voice noticeably lower.

Zhou Lang didn't speak, but held up the oil lamp and looked behind the chair. There was a crack in the wall behind the chair, and light shone through the crack. It wasn't firelight, but a cold, bluish-white light, like the color that seeps out after a glow stick is broken.

He put his hand on it and pushed it.

The wall moved.

It was a hidden door; when it opened inward, it made a dull, scraping sound.

Inside was an even smaller space, so small that only one person could stand up at a time. There was a pit in the ground, and inside the pit was a cage. The cage was made of iron, but the iron bars were bent, and several were broken. The cage was empty.

Zhou Lang squatted down and looked at the situation in the pit.

"They ran away," he said.

Zhao Qiang: "What? You ran away?"

"That thing."

Zhao Qiang took a step back and bumped into the door frame. "Where is it now?"

Zhou Lang stood up, glanced back at the direction of the hall, and said, "It should be in the manor."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a sound came from the other end of the stairs.

It wasn't footsteps, but a low-frequency vibration, like something crawling, its claws scraping across the bricks, rhythmically and patiently, all the way down from the top of the stairs.

Zhao Qiang: "...What do we do now?"

Zhou Lang looked at the oil lamp in his hand, then at the chainsaw in his pocket.

"beat."

Zhao Qiang: "...Just this one word?"

"How many more words are needed?"

Han Yingying rolled up her sleeves a bit. "He's right, enough with the nonsense."

Zhao Qiang glanced at Han Yingying on his left, then at Zhou Lang on his right, and sighed, "Fine, I don't have any other choice anyway."

The crawling sound grew closer.

The green light from the oil lamp began to waver, casting long, distorted shadows of the three people against the wall.

Then that thing appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

It wasn't tall, but it was wide, on all fours, with dark gray skin. It had no eyes, only a mouth on its face, filled with black teeth arranged in rows like a saw. It stopped at the top of the stairs, turning its head towards Zhou Lang, its eyeless face facing him as if it were looking at him.

Zhou Lang pulled the chainsaw back.

The sawing echoed in the basement, shaking dust off the walls.

The thing moved, very fast, its limbs moving in quick succession, and it pounced straight at you.

Zhou Lang turned to the side, and the chainsaw slashed across its back, leaving a black mark. It wasn't blood, but a black, sticky substance that fell to the ground and corroded a small pit.

Without stopping, he turned around and pounced again.

This time, Zhao Qiang kicked it from the side, deflecting its trajectory slightly. Taking advantage of this opening, Zhou Lang aimed the chainsaw at its neck and pressed it down.

The voice is unpleasant.

Slime splattered all over me.

The thing struggled a few times, then stopped.

The hall fell silent again, with only the aftershocks of the chainsaw and the breathing of the three people remaining.

Han Yingying looked down at the sticky substance on her shoes. "...This stuff must be corrosive, right?"

"have."

"Then why didn't you say so beforehand?"

"You didn't ask either."

Han Yingying: "..."

Zhao Qiang squatted down and poked the corpse. "That's it? Is that all?"

Zhou Lang put away the chainsaw, wiped his hands, and said, "The end notification for the dungeon hasn't appeared yet, which means it's not over yet."

The system notification sounded as soon as I finished speaking.

[Congratulations to the player for completing the hidden quest: Sealing the Truth. Reward: 500 extra coins and one special item.]

[Dungeon cleared.]

[Dungeon rating: S.]

Zhao Qiang stood up, looked at the ceiling, and said, "...That's it?"

Zhou Lang took the item given to him by the system; it was a small bottle, the contents of which were not labeled. He shook it; the liquid was transparent.