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

The cotton-padded jacket slowly opened—without a mouth, the voice seeped out from the very center of the face.

"What are you looking for?"

Rule number three: Do not respond.

Zhou Lang held up the lamp in one hand and used the other to push Han Yingying behind him. The movement was very smooth, as if he had done it many times before.

The cotton-padded jacket tilted its head slightly.

"Not going to say anything? Then I'll ask you another question—"

Zhou Lang stepped forward.

He did not answer the question. He did something that surprised everyone—he blew on the face of the man in the cotton-padded jacket with the oil lamp in his hand.

The flame of the oil lamp shot out and turned into a green light.

The man in the cotton-padded jacket took three steps back. Ripples spread across the smooth skin of that faceless figure, like pebbles thrown into water. He retreated to the stairs and disappeared.

Han Yingying looked at the oil lamp in Zhou Lang's hand. The green flame had returned to its normal, faint glow.

"What kind of light is that?"

"Tools." Zhou Lang put away the lamp. "Let's go, it's getting dark."

The two emerged from the basement and returned to the lobby. Zhang Chuang stopped them.

What's underground?

"Old data." Zhou Lang didn't say much more.

"What old data? Can you share it?"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow. Let's all go to our rooms tonight."

Zhang Chuang's expression was not good, but Zhou Lang had already gone upstairs. He didn't know whether to follow or not, so he cursed and followed.

At 10 p.m., Han Yingying was lying in bed.

She pulled out her sketchbook and drew another picture. This time, it was of the cotton-padded jacket in the basement.

After the drawing was finished, the lines twisted and rearranged as before. Facial features emerged from the faceless face—

It was the face of an elderly man. He looked exactly like the person standing in the center of the "opening ceremony group photo".

Chen Shouwang. Guesthouse owner.

Text appears at the bottom of the screen:

"You've found me. But you haven't found the truth yet. The truth lies in—"

The text suddenly began to tremble, as if something was interfering with it.

"Here—here—"

The handwriting is blurred.

"He won't let me say. You only have 48 hours left."

The image scorched, and ashes fell softly onto the blanket.

Han Yingying closed her sketchbook.

The events of the second and third days were intense and packed with activity. Zhou Lang barely slept, spending his days searching for clues in every corner of the guesthouse and his nights organizing information in his room. Han Yingying used her con artist skills to extract crucial information from two other returning guests—an S-level anomaly existed in the guesthouse, but it wasn't the "BOSS" of this instance; rather, it was a parasite attached to the instance.

This information caused Zhou Lang's expression to change for the first time.

"S-rank?" he repeated, "In a dungeon of this rank?"

"That's what the old residents said. They said this thing didn't belong here; it 'grew' up here later."

Zhou Lang pondered for a long time.

The third afternoon, the last twelve hours.

Zhou Lang laid out all the clues on the table—diaries, photos, fragments of information drawn by Han Yingying, and items collected from various rooms. He spent two hours piecing them together.

The truth is this: Chen Shouwang opened this guesthouse in 1987. Three years after it opened, an unidentified traveler checked into room 302 and never checked out. The traveler died in the closet of room 302—not murder, but suicide. But his death caused some kind of anomaly; his "resentment" seeped into every wall and every floor of the guesthouse, eventually turning the entire building into a bizarre space.

Chen Shouwang attempted to seal this power, but the price was that he himself was trapped inside. He transformed into the faceless man in the cotton-padded jacket.

The way to find the truth is to find the suicide passenger's belongings—a hand mirror—in the closet of room 302, and then smash it.

Han Yingying and Zhou Lang arrived at room 302 at 9:50 PM on the third night. Han Yingying opened the wardrobe again, and this time there was an oval-shaped bronze mirror behind the clothes. The mirror was black and reflected nothing.

But when Han Yingying reached out to take it, a face appeared in the mirror.

That face didn't belong to any of the old residents. It was pale, swollen, and rotting, with sunken eye sockets and a mouth stretched all the way to its ears.

These are the passengers on 302.

Or rather—that S-level weirdness.

It reached out its hand from the mirror.

Han Yingying had no time to react. A hand grabbed her wrist, icy cold, with such force that the bones cracked. She was dragged into the mirror—

Zhou Lang's scissors cut off that hand.

This wasn't a metaphor. He took the ordinary pair of scissors, aimed them at the grayish-green wrist, and snipped it off with a sharp snip. The hand was severed, and black liquid splattered out, scalding the floor and causing it to hiss and steam.

The severed hand released Han Yingying's wrist and retracted back into the mirror.

Zhou Lang kicked the bronze mirror and shattered it.

The moment the mirror shattered, the entire guesthouse shook. Cracks appeared in the walls, dust fell from the ceiling, and a sharp scream echoed through the corridor—not a human voice, but more like some kind of extremely high-frequency shockwave.

System prompts kept popping up:

The instance core has been destroyed.

[Customs clearance assessment in progress...]

[Player Han Yingying: Rating S. Reward has been issued.]

[Player Zhou Lang: Rating SSS. Rewards have been issued.]

[Anomaly detected in the copy: S-level parasitic remnant. Origin unknown. Marked as an event pending investigation.]

[Bonus Reward: Participation reward for fixing dungeon bugs.]

Han Yingying looked at the purplish-blue scratch on her wrist, still feeling lingering fear.

Zhou Lang stood amidst the shattered glass, staring at the last message. The words "Source Unknown" made him frown.

An S-rank anomaly wouldn't appear in a low-level dungeon for no reason. How did it "grow" there? Who put it in? Or did it get in on its own?

These questions have no answers.

The white light engulfed everything.

Han Yingying was woken up by her alarm clock.

She sat up abruptly.

The ceiling. White. Fluorescent light tubes humming.

The alarm clock on the bedside table showed 7:15 a.m. The phone was next to the pillow, with dozens of contacts in the address book—not the previously emptied one.

The window was open. Sunlight streamed in, falling warmly onto the blankets.

She looked at her wrist.

It was spotless, without a single scratch.

There were no irregularities or scorch marks on the wall, and the pink curtains fluttered slightly in the breeze. The sound of a television came from the living room, broadcasting yesterday's sporting events.

"Was it a dream?"

She sat on the edge of the bed in a daze for a long time. When she stepped on her slippers, she felt something was wrong—the slippers were in a different place than they had been yesterday.

She bent down to look at the soles of her slippers.

A small pebble was stuck to the sole of my shoe. It was grayish-white, exactly the same pebble as the one on the ground at the bus stop near the haunted guesthouse.

Han Yingying held the piece of gravel and looked at it for a long time.

Finally, she stuffed the pebble into the bedside table drawer and closed it.

Then I washed my face and went out to class.