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

The car door opened.

There was a person sitting inside.

The man, in his thirties, was dressed in a gray shirt and black trousers—a typical office worker's attire. His face was ashen, his eyes half-open, and his lips were purplish-black. He sat motionless in the cable car, his head swaying gently with the car's movement.

Then he stood up.

He stood up incorrectly—instead of supporting himself with his legs, he was "pulled" off his seat as if lifted up from behind by some force. His feet were about two centimeters off the ground, with a noticeable gap between the soles of his shoes and the ground.

He began wandering around the first floor.

Ma Tiezhu gasped. He had seen ghosts before, but an A-level ghost was a completely different story from those low-level ones. This thing's aura was as heavy as a wall, making one's chest feel suffocated.

"It's looking for us," Zhou Lang said.

The passenger wandered among the shops on the first floor, and the lights in each shop went out as it passed. It walked past women's clothing stores, shoe stores, and jewelry stores, before stopping at the stairwell.

It spotted the shelf roadblock.

Its head slowly turned ninety degrees, facing the second floor. Through the floor, Zhou Lang couldn't see its expression, but he could sense it was smiling.

"Scatter," Zhou Lang commanded in a low voice.

The shelves won't last long against this thing.

Sure enough, the passenger raised a hand, curled his fingers into a claw shape, and grabbed at the shelf. The three metal shelves flew out like pieces of paper, hit the wall twice, and bounced twice.

It went up the stairs.

"Run! To the third floor!" Ma Tiezhu shouted, turning around and rushing off.

The others followed closely behind, with Lin Xiaoxiao running the slowest. Ma Tiezhu turned back and pulled her along. Su Wan's high heel snapped with a "crack" while she was running, so she kicked off both shoes and ran barefoot.

Zhou Lang ran at the back, looking back as he ran.

The passenger went up to the second floor at a moderate speed, maintaining a steady drift without touching the ground.

"Its speed isn't fast, but its endurance might have no limit," Zhou Lang analyzed in his mind. That's the strange characteristic of A-grade items—they don't compete with you on burst damage, they compete on endurance. You'll get tired, but it won't.

The third floor houses the home appliance section and the dining area.

Six people rushed into a closed hot pot restaurant, and Ma Tiezhu blocked the door.

"It won't hold for long; the shelves on the first floor just now—"

"Don't hold it for too long." Zhou Lang took out an oil lamp from his pocket and lit it.

The green light shone.

Su Wan frowned: "What is this?"

"For warding off ghosts."

Zhou Lang held up an oil lamp and walked to the entrance of the hot pot restaurant, looking out through the glass door. Under the green light, the scene in the third-floor corridor was completely different from what he could see with his naked eye—the walls of the corridor were covered with black vine-like substances that were slowly wriggling, like some kind of living pipe system.

The vines all point downwards, towards the underground level.

"This entire shopping mall is contaminated." Zhou Lang put away the oil lamp. "Things underground are seeping upwards through these pipes."

"What is it?" Ma Tiezhu asked.

"twin."

Zhou Lang told him about the photos—two girls who died in this underground area before the mall was built. The cable car passengers were the ghosts that appeared later, but the twins were the source.

"You mean the truth about the cable car accident doesn't matter?" Su Wan asked.

"The truth about the accident is important, but the two girls are even more important," Zhou Lang said. "The cable car passengers were being used by them. If they can't deal with the twins, the passengers will just kill one and another will come."

"But the twins are S-class..." Han Yingying said half a sentence, then stopped.

Of the six people present, none had any experience fighting an S-rank monster. The bandaged ghost at the manor was S-rank, but that was because Zhou Lang fused with it, not because he defeated it.

"Take it one step at a time," Zhou Lang said. "First, we need to survive tonight."

A sound came from outside the door.

The passengers arrived at the third floor.

It drifted down the corridor, stopping briefly as it passed the hot pot restaurant. A pale, gray face pressed against it from outside the glass door.

Lin Xiaoxiao screamed, and Ma Tiezhu immediately covered her mouth.

The passenger rubbed their face against the glass twice, exhaling a puff of gray mist that blurred the glass to a semi-transparent state. It stood there for about thirty seconds, didn't break down the door, then turned and continued floating forward.

"Why doesn't it come in?" Han Yingying asked in a low voice.

Zhou Lang glanced at the door frame of the hot pot restaurant—a string of dried chilies and garlic hung above the door frame, and a red paper with the words "Grand Opening" was pasted below.

"It's a folk talisman for warding off evil spirits," he said. "It has a temporary barrier against Class A ghosts, but it doesn't last long. If it comes back a second time, it can get in."

"Then we have to leave before it comes back."

"Wait until it's far away."

Two minutes later, the passenger floated to the end of the third floor and turned into a mobile phone store. Zhou Lang pushed open the back door of the hot pot restaurant—there was an employee passage in the kitchen leading to the fire escape.

The six people filed out.

There were no lights in the fire escape stairwell; the only light source was the flashlight function of a mobile phone. Zhou Lang walked in front, followed closely by Han Yingying, then Su Wan, Lin Xiaoxiao, Ma Tiezhu, and Chen Lei brought up the rear.

"Up or down?" Ma Tiezhu asked.

"Go," Zhou Lang said. "The strange phenomenon is being released from below; the further we are from underground, the safer we are. We'll investigate B1 at dawn."

"Daylight? How do you know it'll be safe when it's light?"

"The rules say to release one every two hours, but they don't say that the Strange Ones are active 24 hours a day. The cable car accident happened at night, and their mobility is reduced during the day."

This is his speculation, not something he's 100% certain of. But there's no better solution at the moment.

They climbed to the fifth floor—the top floor of the mall, with a cinema and a children's playground.

The movie theater became their temporary base. Ma Tiezhu blocked all the entrances with seats, leaving only one exit. Zhou Lang sat in the last row, beginning to organize the existing clues.

Newspaper scraps: Cable car accident, 17 dead.

Inspection report: Blank signature, never inspected.

Note: They're still downstairs, don't go to B1.

Photo: Twin girls, taken at the current location of the shopping mall.

Four clues pieced together a rough outline. But a crucial piece of the puzzle was missing—the details of the twin sisters' deaths. Knowing they were assaulted wasn't enough. To complete this level, the full truth had to be uncovered.

"Chen Lei," Zhou Lang suddenly called out.

The boy looked up: "Hmm?"

"Your hand."

Chen Lei's right hand remained in his school uniform pocket the entire time, and he hadn't taken it out since entering the dungeon.

"What's wrong?"

"Take it out."

Chen Lei smiled and took his hand out of his pocket.

There is a deep scar on the back of my right hand, extending from the base of my thumb to my wrist. It is dark in color and looks neither like a new wound nor an old one. To be more precise, it doesn't look like a human wound.

Han Yingying took a step back.

Ma Tiezhu stood up: "Brother, your hand—"

"I got the cut before I even entered the dungeon." Chen Lei flipped his hand over. "Don't be nervous, I'm not a ghost."