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

At 7 p.m., the butler came to pay salaries as usual.

"Xiong Batian, good rating, salary 200."

and many more.

Zhou Lang looked around; Xiong Batian was not in the hall.

"Kill the butler, and then domineering over the heavens?" he asked.

The butler turned his head ninety degrees to look at him, and green light flashed in his empty eye sockets.

"The player 'Xiong Ba Tian' has logged out of the instance this morning."

"Quit? How did you quit?" Zhao Qiang asked anxiously.

The butler didn't answer the question. It continued calling out names.

"Zhao Qiang, good rating, salary 200. Han Yingying, excellent rating, salary 300. Langligelang, perfect rating, salary 500."

After distributing salaries, the butler added, "Starting tonight, please make sure to lock all doors and windows. Do not respond to any knocking. Do not respond to any other sounds."

It emphasizes "any" twice.

Then it left.

"What does it mean that Xiong Batian has withdrawn?" Zhao Qiang asked in a low voice. "Does he mean he's dead?"

"He might be dead, or he might have been forced out," Zhou Lang said. "We can't worry about him, let's worry about ourselves first."

At 9:30 p.m., the three of them went back to their rooms.

Zhou Lang locked the door from the inside and used the bed to barricade it. He checked the faucets and made sure they were all turned off tightly. He also locked the windows.

He sat on the bed, placing the oil lamp beside him, but did not light it. (Wait.)

At 10:00 AM sharp, footsteps began to echo in the corridor.

Unlike the previous two nights, my steps were chaotic and aimless. Tonight, my steps were rhythmic, slow and deliberate, like I was taking a walk.

The footsteps stopped in front of Zhou Lang's door.

Then came the knocking on the door.

Thump, thump, thump. Three very light taps.

Zhou Lang didn't move.

"Hello, is anyone home?"

It was a woman's voice, very gentle, with a polite tone.

Zhou Lang still didn't move.

"I'm the guest next door. The water pipe in my room is broken. Could I use your bathroom?"

The voice was perfectly normal, completely like that of a living person. If the butler hadn't warned him not to respond to any sounds, Zhou Lang might have actually opened the door to take a look.

He didn't say anything.

There was a moment of silence outside the door.

Then the woman laughed. The laughter was very soft, and through the door, it sounded like a sigh.

"It's alright, sorry to bother you."

The footsteps faded away.

But Zhou Lang noticed a detail—the footsteps were heading towards the other end of the corridor, which was the direction of Zhao Qiang's room.

He took out his phone and sent Zhao Qiang a message: "Don't open the door."

Zhao Qiang replied instantly: "I'm not stupid."

About ten minutes later, the corridor became quiet again.

Then, the water pipes started making noise.

It wasn't the gurgling sound from last night. It was the sound of flowing water, coming from inside the wall, getting closer, like something moving inside a pipe.

The sound grew closer and closer, finally stopping at the location of the restroom.

Zhou Lang's gaze shifted to the bathroom door. The door was closed, and the floor beneath the door was dry.

The faucet started dripping.

He clearly tightened it.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Zhou Lang lit the oil lamp.

The moment the green light came on, a faint sound came from the bathroom, as if something had shrunk back. The dripping of the faucet stopped.

He held up the oil lamp, walked to the bathroom door, and pushed it open.

There was nothing in the bathroom. But there was a layer of condensation on the mirror, and above the condensation was a line of text:

"Help."

The handwriting was crooked and messy, written with a finger.

Zhou Lang stared at the mirror for a few seconds. The green light shone on the water vapor, and the writing reflected a dim light.

He erased the line of text with his hand.

"Not tonight," he said softly to himself in the mirror.

There was no response from behind the mirror.

He closed the bathroom door and sat back down on the bed. An oil lamp sat on the bedside table, its green light illuminating half the room.

There were sounds in the hallway again. This time it wasn't footsteps, it was crying. A very quiet, suppressed sob, as if someone didn't want to be heard.

The crying continued for a long time, about an hour. Zhou Lang could distinguish at least three different sources of sound—one in the corridor, one downstairs, and one outside, towards the lake.

Around 2 a.m., all sounds stopped.

Zhou Lang waited for half an hour before lying down, making sure it was safe. He left the oil lamp burning.

Green light cast swaying shadows on the ceiling.

He closed his eyes, his mind racing with plans for tomorrow.

On the fourth day, the ghost will attack. In other words, he only has one day left, tomorrow.

He needs to figure out two things before nightfall: how to help those ghosts resolve their grievances, and how to deal with the thing under the manhole cover.

The former might solve the latter. If the resentment of the six ghosts dissipates, Sun Dacheng will lose the basis for trapping them, and his control will weaken. We can figure out a way to deal with him then.

However, the resentment of the six ghosts is different, and it is unrealistic to resolve them all in one day.

We need to pick the most crucial ones first.

Who is the most crucial?

Zhou Lang thought for a moment.

Zhang Xiulan's resentment stems from her daughter's abduction. The key to resolving this resentment might be that pink shoe.

The woman with the human skin lantern—her resentment stems from being murdered by her husband. The key to resolving this resentment might be… making Qian Fugui pay the price? But Qian Fugui is also a ghost; how can a ghost pay the price?

The couple—who were implicated and burned to death—were victims of an undeserved tragedy. Their resentment was likely directed at Sun Dacheng.

Chen Hui—a migrant worker who was raped and murdered. Her resentment was also directed at Sun Dacheng.

All the clues eventually point to the same person.

Sun Dacheng.

Solving him is solving the root of everything.

But he's an S-class weirdo, completely integrated into the guesthouse. A head-on confrontation? Zhou Lang glanced at the items in his inventory—an oil lamp, scissors, and a chainsaw.

Can a chainsaw saw ghosts?

He suddenly felt he could give it a try.

The morning of the fourth day came especially quickly.

Zhou Lang got up at six o'clock. When he opened the door, the sunlight in the corridor made him squint. He looked down at the threshold—there was a water stain under the door, stretching from the corridor all the way to the bathroom, turning a corner at his door and then retreating.

Last night, that thing tried to squeeze in through the crack in the door, but the light from the oil lamp drove it away.

The door gap wasn't wide enough, and the space inside the pipes was limited, so last night it could only lure people in with its voice. But tonight, the butler had said the ghost could appear fully in the room on the third day—he calculated that it could make its move on the fourth day.

When I went downstairs, Zhao Qiang's door was open, but he was no longer in the room.

When Zhou Lang arrived at the lobby, he saw Zhao Qiang squatting behind the front desk, rummaging through the cabinets.

"What are you looking for?"

"I thought about it all night," Zhao Qiang said, pulling a notebook from the cabinet. "Since this place used to be a real guesthouse, there should be floor plans of the rooms. Look—"

He opened the notebook, and sure enough, there was a yellowed architectural floor plan tucked inside.

The blueprints showed the overall structure of the guesthouse: two floors above ground and one below. But Zhou Lang noticed a detail he hadn't seen before—the basement on the blueprints was much larger than the area they had walked through the previous night.