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

She had no tongue—it had been cut off. But she made a sound. Not from her throat, but from the vibration of the lantern itself, like a drum being struck, producing a low hum.

buzzing-

"He sold your daughter. He drowned your replacement. And then he sat here and continued running his shop." Zhou Lang's voice wasn't loud, but every word was like a nail hammering into the air.

The humming of the lanterns grew louder and louder. The walls began to shake, the vibrations spreading from the first floor to the second and third floors, making the entire inn sway.

A muffled roar came from beneath the floor.

It wasn't a human voice. It was the sound of pipes, cement, and steel bars—the roar of the building itself. The boss sensed the lantern's eerie emotional fluctuations; it was issuing a warning.

Zhou Lang raised his head with a muffled roar, looking at the ceiling.

"You heard that too?" he asked the ceiling, his tone as casual as if he were chatting with a neighbor.

Dust fell from the ceiling. The gurgling sound from the pipes became more rapid, like a giant snake writhing in the wall's crevices.

Zhou Lang smiled.

He raised the oil lamp and pointed it at the floor beneath his feet.

"I know you're down there," he said. "The whole building is your body, every pipe is your blood vessel. You hid yourself in the sewers, thinking no one could find you."

The floor suddenly arched upwards.

Zhou Lang took a step back, and a crack appeared in the floor in front of his feet. Black liquid gushed from the crack, thick and foul-smelling, not water, but more like rotting blood. The liquid spread across the floor, forming an irregular shape—like a face.

A face without features. Only an outline. But that outline is writhing, reorganizing, trying to form a complete face.

Zhou Lang looked down at that face.

Then he crouched down and looked at it at eye level.

"No wonder you get rejected because you're so ugly."

The black liquid exploded.

The entire building let out a sharp roar, all the windows shattered, and shards of glass flew like raindrops. The floors shook violently, cracks appeared in the walls, and grayish-white cement fragments rained down.

A system notification popped up: [Triggering the keyword "Scare the Ghost" - Target: Mysterious Behind-the-Scenes - Effect Check in Progress -]

Zhou Lang didn't have time to see the judgment result.

A giant hand emerged from a crack in the floor—not a human hand, but a deformed limb made of pipes, cement, and steel bars, with each finger as thick as a water pipe and black liquid seeping from the joints.

It lunged at Zhou Lang.

Zhou Lang rolled backward, his chainsaw already on fire. The roar of the chainsaw echoed through the hall as he swung it, aiming to chop at the fingers of the hand.

chap——

The chainsaw cut into the mixture of cement and steel bars, sparks flying. The finger was severed, twitched twice on the ground, and then turned into a puddle of black liquid.

But more fingers emerged from the crack.

It wasn't just the floor. Cracks were appearing everywhere—on the walls, on the ceiling—and pipes, like tentacles, were reaching out from the cracks, enveloping Zhou Lang.

The entire building was attacking him.

"Damn it," Zhou Lang cursed, then turned and ran.

When I reached the stairwell, it was already deformed. The steps were gaping open like a mouth, each revealing rusty steel bars inside, like jagged teeth.

He can't go upstairs. Going upstairs means going into its mouth.

Zhou Lang turned to look at the door. The door had been sealed shut by a black liquid, which had solidified into a hard shell, sticking the door frame and the door panel together.

The front door is blocked, and the stairs are blocked.

His only way out is—

window.

He swung the chainsaw at the nearest window. The window frame shattered, and he tumbled out through the broken window, landing on the muddy ground outside the inn, where he rolled over and got up.

A continuous crackling sound, like bones breaking, came from the inn behind them. Black liquid seeped from every window and every crack, flowing down the outer wall and gathering around the foundation.

Zhou Lang retreated twenty meters away and looked back at the inn.

Under the cover of night, the Giant's Inn no longer resembled a building. It writhed, it breathed; cracks on its exterior walls spread like blood vessels, through which flowed black liquid. It was alive.

Han Yingying and the others are still inside.

The system notification arrived late: [The entry "Scare Ghosts" was successfully determined—Target: The Mysterious Behind the Scenes (Amalgamation)—Effect: Forces the target to reveal their true form, lasting 15 minutes—Reward: Pending settlement—]

Zhou Lang stared at the prompt for three seconds.

Fifteen minutes.

He has fifteen minutes to rescue the people from the revived building.

He gripped the chainsaw tightly and ran back to the inn. #Chapter Seventeen: The Giant's View of the Inn

Three days after Zhou Lang emerged from the previous instance, a notification popped up on his phone.

It wasn't a game system notification; it was a news push notification.

"The death rate in the horror game instance 'Giant's Inn' in East China has exceeded 87%, and the authorities are investigating."

He scrolled past the news, opened the refrigerator and rummaged through it; there were only two cartons of expired yogurt and half a cucumber left. The moment the refrigerator door closed, the system panel popped up.

[Anomaly detected: Giant's Inn (Difficulty: S-rank)]

Mortality rate: 87.3%, continuing to rise.

Should we use the item "Eye of the Spy" to investigate dungeon vulnerabilities?

[Cost: 800 points]

Eight hundred points. Zhou Lang glanced at his points balance—1200. Most of the points he'd accumulated from the last manor raid were gone in an instant.

Without hesitation, he clicked "confirm".

The screen flickered, and a blurry image appeared before my eyes.

A lakeside inn, a three-story wooden building, with a faded sign. During the day, it looks quite normal, even somewhat like a secluded paradise. But at night, the scene drastically distorts; black liquid begins to seep from the inn's walls, and the sound of heavy objects being dragged can be heard in the corridor.

The video only lasted for a dozen seconds before it cut off.

[Investigation Results: This instance has underlying rule conflicts, and the number of strange occurrences exceeds the instance's capacity. Players are advised to avoid it.]

Avoidance?

Zhou Lang put his phone in his pocket and went out to buy two buckets of instant noodles.

It wasn't that he wanted to play the hero. The Eye of Peeping provided too little information, but one thing was crucial—a rule conflict. A rule conflict meant there was a problem with the instance itself, and problematic instances often contained the most valuable items.

Moreover, if the mortality rate of 87% continues to rise, the system will forcibly transfer high-level players. Rather than passively being slaughtered, it's better to proactively investigate.

He sent Zhao Qiang a message: "Don't enter the dungeon these next few days."

Zhao Qiang replied instantly: "What's wrong?"

"There's a problem with the Giant's Inn instance; I'll go check it out."

"Are you crazy?! You're going to jump in with an 87% mortality rate?"

"That's precisely why we need to go. Once it rises to 95%, the system will force allocation, and neither of us can escape it."

There was a long silence on Zhao Qiang's end, before he finally sent a single word: "Fuck."

Then he added another message: "If I come back alive, I'll treat you to barbecue."