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

The handwriting was very messy, as if it had been written in a hurry.

"Day 1. Arrived at the inn, the owner was very nice. The room was clean."

"On the third day, I heard crying coming from inside the wall at night. I asked the boss, and he said it was the wind."

"The fifth day. I saw it. There was something inside the wall. Someone was—"

The last half of the sentence was erased with ink, so hard that the paper almost tore.

There was another page with only one sentence written on it—

She kept smiling.

Zhou Lang put the notebook in his pocket and knocked on Han Yingying's door.

"Take a look at this." He handed over the notebook.

Han Yingying flipped through a few pages, her expression grim: "Is there something in the wall?"

"Boss Feng said not to rummage through the storage room," Zhou Lang said, "so we had to go and search it."

"Now?"

"It's daytime now. Although there's no safe period, the advice is that day and night are not the same world. Daytime is at least a little better than nighttime."

Han Yingying thought for a moment and nodded: "I'll go with you."

The two ran into Brother Liu as they went downstairs.

Where are you going?

"The storage room in the back." Zhou Lang didn't hide it.

Brother Liu's eyes lit up: "I was just thinking of going to check it out too. Let's go together."

The three of them went around to the back of the inn and found the door to the storage room. The door wasn't locked, so they pushed it open and went inside.

The room was filled with all sorts of odds and ends—old furniture, broken boxes, rolled-up carpets, and dusty wine bottles. In one corner was a cement wall, completely different from the wooden walls in the rest of the inn, clearly built up later.

Zhou Lang walked over and tapped the wall with his knuckles.

"It's empty," he said.

Brother Liu walked over and knocked twice, his expression changing: "There's space behind the wall. This wall is used to seal off a certain place."

Han Yingying was rummaging through boxes nearby when she suddenly called out, "Come and take a look."

The box contained a stack of photos.

The old photos are yellowed at the edges and some are even curled. They show a family of three: Mr. Feng, a middle-aged woman with a round face, and a little girl of about seven or eight years old. The little girl has her hair in pigtails and is smiling happily.

The further you flip through the photos, the fewer people appear in them. First, the little girl disappears, leaving only Boss Feng and the woman. Then, the woman also disappears, leaving only Boss Feng standing alone at the inn's entrance, his expression blank.

The last photo is a close-up of the red lantern hanging at the entrance of the inn.

The texture on the surface of the lantern—

Zhou Lang felt something was wrong when he entered the room, and now, looking at the photos up close, he finally saw it clearly.

That's not a pattern.

It refers to the five facial features.

The eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth were stretched and distorted, sticking to the surface of the lantern.

Han Yingying's hand trembled, and the photo fell to the ground.

"Human skin." Zhou Lang picked up the photo. "The lantern was made of human skin."

Brother Liu gasped, "Damn. That woman—"

"She's most likely Boss Feng's wife."

The storage room was quiet for a few seconds.

Brother Liu clenched his fists. He was a strong man, but in this kind of situation, no amount of strength mattered.

"Where's the little girl?" Han Yingying asked.

Zhou Lang flipped through the remaining photos but found no further clues. However, he noticed a detail—dates were written in pencil on the back of the photos, spanning approximately three years from the earliest to the latest. The little girl disappeared earlier than the woman.

"Let's get out of here first." Zhou Lang stuffed all the photos into his pocket. "It'll be troublesome if Boss Feng finds out we've gone through here."

When the three returned to the lobby, the older woman and the girl with the ponytail were chatting at the table. The boy in the school uniform was leaning against the wall, playing with his fingers, and didn't react much when he saw them.

"Where did you go?" the older woman asked.

"Just wander around and get familiar with the surroundings," Brother Liu said.

The mature woman raised an eyebrow but didn't press the matter.

The girl with the ponytail glanced timidly at Zhou Lang, then quickly lowered her head again.

Zhou Lang caught something in the instant she lowered her head.

The angle at which this girl looked down was perfect. Her bangs just happened to cover half her face, while revealing the other half, a profile with an innocent expression. Most people couldn't achieve such a smooth angle—unless she knew exactly which angle would evoke the strongest protective instincts.

Are the players in the second instance really that cunning?

Zhou Lang remained calm and sat down at the table.

There are still three hours until dark.

He needs to figure out two things in these three hours.

First, how many strange things are there in this instance?

Second, among these six people, are there any who are no longer human?

Boss Feng started serving dinner promptly at six o'clock.

It was supposed to be a meal, but it was really just a pot of stew and a few bowls of white rice. Surprisingly, it tasted pretty good, at least better than instant noodles.

Six players sat around a large round table, while Boss Feng wiped cups behind the counter, glancing up at them every now and then.

"Boss Feng, how's business at this inn usually?" Brother Liu asked while eating.

"It's alright, occasionally backpackers come to stay for a couple of days." Boss Feng's movements as he wiped the cups were very mechanical, each stroke and each pressure exactly the same. "But things haven't been so good lately, the road is under construction, so fewer people are coming."

"You run it all by yourself?"

"Yes, alone."

"Where are your wife and children?"

Mr. Feng paused for a moment while wiping the cup, then continued wiping.

"I'm gone."

Brother Liu wanted to ask more questions, but Zhou Lang kicked him under the table.

"The food is good," Zhou Lang said, changing the subject.

Boss Feng smiled, that standard business smile.

After dinner, everyone went back to their rooms. Zhou Lang didn't leave immediately; he waited until everyone else had gone upstairs before standing up.

"Boss Feng."

"Um?"

"Did you make that lantern by the door yourself?"

Boss Feng put down his cup and looked at Zhou Lang. During the day, he looked like an ordinary middle-aged man, slightly overweight, kind, with fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

"It's a craft passed down from my ancestors," he said. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"It looks pretty good," Zhou Lang said.

Back on the second-floor corridor, Han Yingying's door was ajar.

"What did you find out?" Her voice came from under the door.

He said the lantern making was a family heirloom.

"You believe it?"

What do you think?

Han Yingying did not respond.

After returning to his room, Zhou Lang began organizing the information he had gathered: the contents of his notebook, the photos, Boss Feng's reaction, and the system's prompts. He drew a simple relationship diagram on a piece of paper—

Boss Feng. Wife (a human skin lantern?). Little girl (missing).

There's something in the wall. That cement wall.

"Day and night are not the same world."

It takes on a human form during the day—but what about at night?

He placed the oil lamp by his bedside and checked the oil level. There was enough for a few more uses.

Time flew by, and the sky outside the window darkened. Mist began to rise from the lake, grayish-white, like a giant hand slowly closing.

At 7:30, there was a knock on the door in the corridor.

"Brother Lang—" It was Brother Liu's voice, very low, "Come out for a moment."

Zhou Lang opened the door, and Brother Liu was standing in the corridor, looking rather grim.

"Go and take a look in the lobby on the first floor."

The two went downstairs.