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

Zhou Lang opened the door. Xiao Chen stood outside, holding a plate of cut fruit, looking flustered.

"The boss asked me to deliver it."

She placed the plate on the table, turned to leave, but paused.

"Um..." She didn't turn around, her voice very low, "Don't turn on the tap at night."

Finished talking and left.

Zhao Qiang: "What do you mean?"

Zhou Lang watched Xiao Chen's figure disappear at the stairwell, without answering immediately.

A tap. Water. A lake. Drowning. The landlady.

He went into the bathroom and checked the faucet. It was tightly shut and there was no dripping.

Han Yingying followed her in and squatted down to examine the pipes under the sink. There were dark red water stains at the pipe joints, dried and conspicuously visible on the white tiles.

"It's not rust," Han Yingying said.

"no."

This is blood.

I spent the afternoon doing two things.

The first thing they did was pry open the patched-up cement wall at the far end of the second floor.

Zhou Lang used a chainsaw to cut a hole in the wall—it made quite a commotion. Zhao Qiang kept watch at the top of the stairs, while Han Yingying helped move the broken pieces.

Behind the cement wall was a hidden compartment of less than two square meters. There was nothing in the compartment except for an old wall.

A human-shaped mark is imprinted on the old wall.

The entire human figure is concave, as if a person has been forcibly pressed into a wall and then sealed with cement. The figure's posture is one of struggle—arms outstretched, legs bent, mouth wide open, screaming silently.

"This is fucking..." Zhao Qiang's voice changed.

The humanoid figure was very large. Extremely large. One and a half times larger than a normal person.

It matched the size of the shadow at the bottom of the lake.

"It's the boss's wife," Zhou Lang said.

The second thing he did was go to see Alan.

Alan was washing dishes in the kitchen on the first floor when she saw Zhou Lang come in, and she almost dropped the bowl in her hand.

"I only have one question," Zhou Lang said, leaning against the doorframe. "Where is your husband?"

Alan's face turned deathly pale.

I don't have a husband.

She spoke too quickly. There's only one explanation for that speed—she'd already prepared the lines and was just waiting for someone to ask.

"Fine, you don't have a husband." Zhou Lang didn't press her and turned to leave.

I ate dinner as usual.

The amazing thing is that the dishes were still the same few dishes, exactly the same as yesterday. Even the order in which they were plated was the same.

Zhao Qiang picked up a piece of stir-fried green peppers and pork.

"No," he chewed twice, "this taste... exactly the same as yesterday, not just similar, but completely the same."

Zhou Lang put down his chopsticks.

Reincarnation instance.

The dates in the diary, the exact same dinner, the same menu. These people—or rather, these ghosts—are repeating the same seven days. Over and over again.

Death, returning to day one, death again, and returning again.

They're trapped in this cycle forever.

That's why they turn evil. The initial resentment is not enough to describe it—countless repetitions of the same pain will grind anything down to pure malice.

"Tonight is the second night," Zhou Lang said to the two of them. "According to the pattern... they will go further."

"How do we proceed further?" Zhao Qiang asked.

"Don't turn on the tap, don't go near the door crack, and don't respond to any sound."

It's 11 p.m.

The sound came earlier than last night.

This time, there was more than just the dragging sound.

wow-

The bathroom faucet turned on by itself.

Zhou Lang lay on the bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. The sound of water was clear, rushing and flowing. He didn't move.

The water flowed for about three minutes, then stopped.

Then the bathroom door opened by itself.

A stream of water flowed from the bathroom doorway, spilling over the floor and slowly spreading towards the bed. The water was icy cold, and when it touched Zhou Lang's fingers dangling from the edge of the bed, he finally moved—pulling his hand back.

The water gradually accumulated on the floor, stopping at ankle height.

Then a face floated to the surface of the water.

A huge, pale, swollen face.

It was the landlady. No, it was what the landlady looked like after she drowned. Her features were swollen and distorted from being submerged, her lips were purple and black, one eye was open, and the other was gone.

She didn't fully appear; only her face and a hand emerged from beneath the water. The hand was groping for something—it touched the foot of the bed and gripped it.

But it didn't continue.

After clenching his fist for a while, he pulled his hand back into the water, and his face darkened.

The water receded slowly. The floor dried again. It was as if nothing had happened.

But it's different on the other side of the door.

The human skin lantern in the corridor stood in front of his door for a long time. Dark red light seeped in from the crack at the bottom of the door, and five thin, long things were slowly reaching in from the edge of the light—fingers.

Dry, skin-covered fingers.

My fingertips stopped just past the crack in the door, as if they had hit an invisible wall.

He twisted his fingers a few times in the crack of the door, then withdrew them.

Zhou Lang stared blankly at the crack in the door for a while, then took out his phone and glanced at it.

Zhao Qiang's message frequency has increased from once per minute to once every ten seconds:

"The tap is on! It's on! It's on!"

"What if I turned it off and then on again—"

"There's water on the ground! There ...!"

"Damn it, something's watching me from underwater—"

"It's gone, it's gone, it's gone—"

"Zhou Lang, are you still alive?!"

Zhou Lang replied: "Stay alive. Don't step in the water."

Han Yingying only sent one message: "There was something in the crack of the door, so it didn't come in. I plugged the faucet with a towel beforehand."

clever.

This night was much longer than the previous night. The noise in the corridor didn't completely stop until four in the morning.

After daybreak, the first thing Zhou Lang did was check all the faucets in the rooms.

Everything was closed. The floor was dry.

It's as if that water never existed.

However, there was a fingerprint on the foot of Zhao Qiang's bed.

It's wet.

On the third day, Zhou Lang did not leave the inn.

He sat in the lobby drinking tea, watching the "people" coming and going.

The boss was calculating accounts at the front desk, the boss's wife was busy in the kitchen, Alan was quietly wiping the table, Xiao Chen was mopping the floor, and the young couple was whispering in a corner.

The seven people, including the three of them, followed the same activity patterns as the previous two days.

Even the time it took Xiao Chen to bend down and pick up fallen leaves was accurate to the second.

"Zhao Qiang".

Zhao Qiang came over yawning: "Hmm?"

"Go talk to that couple. Ask them how many days they've been here."

"Why me?"

"Because you talk too much."

Zhao Qiang was unconvinced, but he went anyway. He sat down at the couples' table and within three sentences, he was already arm in arm with Li Yi. This guy's social skills were really good, except when it came to ghosts.

Ten minutes later, Zhao Qiang returned with a strange expression.

He said they just arrived yesterday.

"Is it the same as what he wrote in his diary?"

"We arrived on June 3rd, and today is June 4th," Zhao Qiang said in a low voice, "but we've clearly been here for three days already."

"Their time is in a loop," Zhou Lang said, holding his teacup. "It cycles every seven days. After the seventh day, everything resets, returning to the first day. They don't remember what happened before."

"So...they've died countless times already?"

"Yes. They are alive during the day, and switch to dead at night. The way they die depends on how they died."