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

[WARNING: This copy contains uncontrollable risks. Please proceed with caution.]

Zhou Lang read the briefing twice, folded it, and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Ready?"

Zhao Qiang exclaimed—no, Zhao Qiang slapped his face twice: "Ready? It's not the first time I've gone to my death with you anyway."

A white light appeared.

When they opened their eyes again, the three of them were standing on a muddy road.

All around were rolling mountains, covered in dense, almost black, trees. It was dusk, the sun hanging over the mountaintops, half-submerged.

Fifty meters ahead, a two-story wooden building stood quietly. Two red lanterns hung in front of the building, and the plaque above read four characters: Yunlai Inn.

It was exactly the same as in the photo. But what the photo couldn't capture was the smell of the air. It was damp and cold, with a rotten sweetness, like fruit fermenting in the soil.

"Welcome, welcome."

A middle-aged man walked out of the inn. He was on the heavier side, wearing a gray vest, and his eyes narrowed into slits when he smiled.

"The three of you are staying at the inn? Excellent, excellent! It's rare to have guests come up the mountain. Please come in, please come in."

His enthusiasm went too far and made people uncomfortable.

Zhou Lang glanced at the innkeeper's face. The smile was genuine, but the hazy look in his eyes wasn't something a living person should have.

The three were led into the inn's lobby. The lobby wasn't large; four square tables were placed against the wall, and six room keys hung behind the counter.

"How many people are currently living here?" Zhou Lang asked.

"Including the three of you, there are eight in total." The boss counted on his fingers. "There's a young couple who came for tourism, and a young girl who works here, so she's a permanent resident."

"Where's the proprietress?"

The boss's smile froze for less than half a second before returning to normal.

"Busy in the kitchen."

"Oh." Zhou Lang took the key. "Which room number?"

"Rooms 201, 202, and 203 on the second floor, three rooms right next to each other."

As Zhou Lang went upstairs, he passed by a room with the door open and glanced at it.

A young woman sat in the room, wearing a faded plaid shirt, staring blankly out the window. Her face was thin, her cheekbones supported by a thin layer of skin, and her eyes were large but lacked luster.

Sensing someone watching her, she turned around, nodded to Zhou Lang, and smiled.

That smile was so light, as light as the wind blowing across paper.

"That's a female college student working part-time," the boss said from behind. "Her name is Xiao Chen. She's been working here for almost half a year. She's very hardworking."

Zhou Lang didn't reply and went into room 201.

The room was small, with a bed, a table, and a chair. The window faced the back mountain. On the table was an oil lamp—not his, but one provided by the inn.

Zhao Qiang and Han Yingying's rooms were next to each other. Zhao Qiang came over for a visit and leaned against the door frame.

"Have you noticed? There are only six guest rooms in total. Including the owner and his wife, that's eight people in six rooms. Two of them are empty."

"When did you become smart?" Zhou Lang asked.

"I'm actually smart, it's just that you make me look stupid." Zhao Qiang rolled his eyes and lowered his voice, "But Brother Lang, I always feel like there's something off about these people."

"Something's not right?"

"I can't quite put my finger on it. It's just... the way they look at people."

Zhou Lang didn't respond to that. He was counting the time.

They entered the instance at dusk; the sun was already setting. According to the briefing, daytime was safe, nighttime was dangerous. They had very little time left for their investigation.

"Eat first, lock the door tonight, and don't come out."

We ate dinner in the lobby on the first floor. The owner cooked six dishes himself, a mix of meat and vegetables, and surprisingly, they tasted pretty good.

At the dinner table, Zhou Lang finally met everyone.

The young couple, the man named Li Yi and the woman named Song Tiantian, held hands the whole time. Li Yi was talkative and could chat with anyone he could get his hands on, while Song Tiantian sat quietly beside him, occasionally chiming in with a few words.

Xiao Chen sat in the corner, eating very slowly, his chopsticks moving with a cautious and disciplined manner.

When the proprietress brought out the dishes, Zhou Lang glanced at them a few more times.

She was a large woman, half a head taller than the boss, with a broad frame and rough hands. Her face wasn't fierce; rather, it had a somewhat honest and simple look. Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she had been crying.

There were bruises on the back of her hand when she put the dishes on the table.

"My wife isn't a great cook, so please make do with this," the owner said with a grin.

The proprietress kept her head down and didn't say a word.

Zhou Lang had mixed feelings about the meal—not the taste of the food, but the taste of the people.

The eight people sat at a table, laughing and talking, but each of them had an invisible shadow trailing behind them. The shadows swayed under the lamplight, like something pressing down beneath the surface of water.

By the time we finished eating, it was completely dark.

Zhou Lang returned to his room, locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat on the edge of the bed. Zhao Qiang sent a message from next door: "Do you think something bad will happen tonight?"

"I don't know. Just don't fall asleep."

10 o'clock sharp.

The corridor was quiet for about fifteen minutes, and then the sound started again.

It wasn't footsteps. It was the sound of dragging.

It was like a very heavy thing being slowly dragged across the floor, from one end of the corridor to the other.

Zhou Lang sat on the bed without moving, his ears perked up.

The dragging sound stopped in front of his door.

It paused for five seconds.

Then continue dragging forward.

After passing 201, then 202, then 203, it finally disappeared at the end of the corridor.

My phone vibrated: Zhao Qiang sent three words: "Holy shit, holy shit."

The second one is from Han Yingying: "The door didn't move; I was just passing by."

Zhou Lang replied: "First night, a test. Don't open the door."

He turned off his phone, walked to the door, squatted down, and looked out through the crack at the bottom of the door.

A lamp was lit in the corridor—no, it wasn't a lamp.

The object hovered in the center of the corridor, about the height of a person. It glowed with a dark red light and was shaped like a lantern, but the outlines of facial features were faintly visible on its surface.

Mouth, nose, eyes.

A human face.

It was pasted onto the surface of the lantern.

It's a woman's face.

The human-skin lantern drifted back and forth in the corridor, pausing at each door as if sniffing something. But it didn't try to touch the doors, nor did it make a sound.

Zhou Lang withdrew his gaze from the crack in the door and sat back on the bed.

"As expected, it's not a C-grade." He muttered to himself.

The eeriness of a C-level dungeon wouldn't have this kind of oppressive feeling. The chill emanating from that human skin lantern genuinely lowered the room temperature by several degrees, and that face—Zhou Lang remembered a woman wiping tables on the first floor during the day.

He never saw the woman speak to anyone. She just silently wiped the tables, mopped the floor, and washed the dishes. The boss would occasionally call her "Alan" in a casual tone.

Alan.

The face on the human skin lantern looked exactly like Alan's.

The noise in the corridor continued until 3 a.m. that night.

Zhou Lang noted down the patterns of all the sounds: dragging sounds every twenty minutes, the human skin lantern patrolling back and forth between 201 and 206, and occasionally the sound of water coming from downstairs—very faint, like something struggling in the water.