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

A huge space unfolded under the light of an oil lamp.

The basement was much more spacious than I had imagined. The corridor stretched forward in a Y-shape, with three rusty iron doors on each side, ending at a solid stone wall—at least it appeared to be. The wall was covered with a dense array of strange patterns that resembled neither Chinese nor English characters.

"What...what are these things?" Zhao Qiang leaned closer for a look, then instinctively pulled his neck back.

"It's a divine rune," Han Yingying blurted out.

As soon as she said it, she was stunned.

Zhou Lang and Zhao Qiang turned their heads at the same time.

"Do you know him?"

Han Yingying frowned and thought for a moment, then shook her head: "I don't know why, but these two words suddenly popped into my head."

Zhou Lang didn't ask any further questions, and turned around to push open the first door on the left.

Behind the door was a storage room, less than ten square meters. Most of the bottles and jars on the shelves were broken, and the dried liquid had solidified into a black crust on the floor. In the corner huddled several human-shaped specimens—their facial features were sewn shut with black thread, their limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, and their skin was dry, cracked, and yellow.

Zhao Qiang took two steps back, almost stepping on Han Yingying's foot.

"Relax, it's a ghost specimen." Zhou Lang squatted down and fiddled with it a few times. "Interesting. No external injuries, yet the body is so shriveled up. Someone has drained its contents."

"What was taken away?" Han Yingying walked over and squatted down next to him.

"Ghostly energy? Spiritual power? Whatever you call it, it's all gone." Zhou Lang stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, and said, "Someone is experimenting on ghosts."

"Or the other way around," Han Yingying added.

"Um?"

"Someone experimented on the manor owner, so the manor owner started experimenting on ghosts—in order to protect himself."

Zhou Lang glanced at her without saying anything, but there was something more in his eyes.

The second room was empty. A table was overturned, and scraps of paper were scattered all over the floor. Zhou Lang picked up a few pieces; the writing was so blurred that it was almost illegible, but he could barely make out a few words—"fusion," "container," and "fourth failure."

He stuffed the shredded paper into his pocket.

When Zhou Lang reached the door of the third room, he stopped.

The door was locked from the inside.

He knocked. No response. He knocked twice more and then pressed his ear against the surface.

Breathing sounds.

Zhao Qiang's face had turned pale, and he grabbed Zhou Lang's sleeve, trying to pull him back. Zhou Lang shook him off and asked in a casual tone, "Is what's inside a person or a ghost?"

There was a silence of five or six seconds.

"……people."

A hoarse male voice came from behind the door.

Zhou Lang took out a pair of scissors and tossed them in his hand: "Should you cut it yourself, or should I do it?"

A dozen seconds later, the lock clicked, and the door opened a crack.

A man stepped out. He was about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, with a sallow complexion and chapped, dry lips, as if he hadn't touched water for days. He was wearing the same work clothes as them, but they were so dirty that their original color was unrecognizable.

"Who are you?" Zhao Qiang stood in front of Zhou Lang and Han Yingying, his legs trembling, but he maintained a very open posture.

"Different paths." The man gave his game name, his voice hoarse but clear. "I entered this instance three days ago. I came down from the secret passage by the fireplace in the bedroom, then the entrance collapsed, and I've been trapped here ever since."

Zhao Qiang didn't believe it. "Three days? What have you eaten and drunk to survive this long?"

Shutu pointed into the room. Sure enough, there were several empty water bottles and compressed biscuit wrappers lying in the corner. "I found half a box of supplies; we used them all yesterday."

Zhou Lang sized him up.

Despite being confined for three days, his mental state remained relatively stable. He spoke logically, observed methodically, and although his eyes were covered in dark circles, his gaze was not unfocused. Either this person had extremely strong resilience, or—he hadn't been idle during those three days in the basement.

"You've been here for three days, and you've just been sitting here?"

Shutu twitched the corner of his mouth and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket.

A hand-drawn map. The lines are rough, but the markings are extremely detailed, showing the locations of the six rooms, the length of the corridor, the direction of the cracks in the walls, and even the direction of airflow. More importantly—a second layer is drawn below the map, labeled "Speculation - Second Layer," with a large question mark in the center.

"There's something behind that wall at the end of the corridor." Shutu put away the map. "The airflow is leaking from the cracks in the wall, which means there's space on the other side. Those symbols on the wall are probably mechanisms, but I've tried for three days and haven't been able to open them."

"You were locked in a dark room for three days, and you still had the mood to draw maps and do research?" Zhao Qiang's tone was full of incomprehension.

"If I don't do research, I'll just be waiting to die. I choose to do research."

Zhou Lang reached out and took the map, staring at it for a long time in the green light of the oil lamp.

Zhao Qiang crept closer and whispered, "You don't actually believe him, do you? What if he's a ghost in disguise?"

Zhou Lang raised the oil lamp in his hand. The green light shone on Shu Tu, and there was nothing unusual about him—ghosts would reveal their true forms under the light of an oil lamp, and this person was clean and tidy, a living person.

"Trust him." Zhou Lang returned the map.

"It's that simple?"

"What he said is exactly what I thought. The core of the manor is underground, not above. As long as the direction is right, that's enough."

Zhao Qiang was about to say something when Zhou Lang slapped him on the back of the head.

"Enough talk, let's go break down the wall."

-

The four people walked to the end of the corridor.

Zhou Lang raised the oil lamp and shone it on the stone wall. The moment the green light fell on the runes, the patterns began to writhe—it wasn't an illusion; the engravings were indeed moving. The lines intersected, rotated, and recombine, eventually forming a complete pattern.

An open eye.

Vertical pupils, with no whites in the eyes, as if they were being gazed upon by some inhuman being.

Han Yingying stood rooted to the spot as if struck by lightning.

She had seen this pattern before.

Not in this instance. It's somewhere deeper, in a corner of the deepest recesses of memory. A sealed-off memory, so distant it's almost nonexistent.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Lang's voice rang in my ears.

"...It's nothing." She shook her head, but her hand had already risen uncontrollably and pressed against the center of the stone eye.

The stone wall splits open right in the middle.

The two stone slabs slid to the left and right, revealing the entrance behind them. A damp, cold wind rushed up from below. There was another set of stairs, much narrower than the first, barely wide enough for one person to pass through.

"So the key was your lamp." Shutu's voice changed. "Green light can activate runes. I tried it in the dark for three days, no wonder I couldn't open it."

"You lack a lamp, I lack a map." Zhou Lang shook the oil lamp in his hand. "We're even. Let's go."

-

There is only one room on the second floor.

The stone chamber, less than thirty square meters in size, had smooth walls and no decorations. In the center of the room stood a chest-high stone pillar, with a palm-sized black stone slab embedded at its top.

The edges of the stone slab were engraved with the same runes as those on the wall. The central symbol was surprisingly simple.

An intersecting "X".

Something in Han Yingying's mind seemed to shatter with a "crack".

It wasn't pain. It was a flood of images, sounds, and smells rushing in.

She saw herself—not the current version of herself, but another version of Han Yingying. Dressed in black armor, wielding a long, lacquered silver sword, she stood before hundreds of players.