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

The basement was much larger than I had imagined.

The green light of the oil lamp only illuminated a few steps ahead; beyond that, it was all darkness. Zhao Qiang tugged at Zhou Lang's sleeve, while Han Yingying was calmer than expected. The three of them groped their way forward along the corridor.

At the end of the path was a wooden door, its panels so rotten that half of it crumbled with a gentle push.

Inside is a study.

To be precise, it was an abandoned study. A thick layer of dust covered the table, and most of the books on the bookshelves were rotten with insects. Zhou Lang approached and shone the oil lamp on it—a portrait hung on the wall.

The person in the painting is dressed as a butler, with a dignified face and gentle eyes.

He was completely different from the butler upstairs with his empty-eyed look.

"That's a real butler," Zhao Qiang muttered from the side.

Zhou Lang didn't reply, his attention focused on the desk drawer. The drawer wasn't locked; he pulled it open, revealing a notebook with a sheepskin cover. Opening the first page, the handwriting was messy, detailing the history of the manor—

The real owner of the manor was a madman.

He was obsessed with something called "substitution magic," killing numerous servants for experiments in an attempt to transfer his soul into other people's bodies. When the butler discovered this and tried to stop him, he was killed by the manor owner, and his soul was sealed in the basement.

"So that housekeeper upstairs..." Han Yingying's expression turned sour after reading the diary.

"It's a puppet created by the manor owner using the butler's body." Zhou Lang turned to the last page, where there was only one line of text.

"The key is in the master's study."

The three exchanged a glance.

The master's study was on the second floor, east side. They had seen it during the day when they were cleaning, but the door was always locked.

"Go up." Zhou Lang put away his diary.

When they returned to the first floor, the ghosts in the corridor reappeared. They were densely packed on the walls and ceiling, tilting their heads and staring at the three of them. The green light of the oil lamp enveloped the three of them, and the ghosts dared not approach, but they did not move either, just hanging there.

Zhao Qiang wasn't as scared as he was on the first day. Or rather, he was still scared, but he had gotten used to it.

That's how people are; the more they experience something, the higher their threshold becomes.

Upon reaching the second floor, Zhou Lang walked to the door of the study on the east side. The door was made of ironwood, much sturdier than the one in the basement. Unable to cut the lock with scissors, he thought for a moment and then pulled out a chainsaw.

hum-

The sound of the chainsaw starting up was particularly jarring in the manor late at night. The ghosts hanging on the walls all shuddered, and some of those nearby even shrank back.

Zhao Qiang: "...Are you opening the door or scaring a ghost?"

"Yes, I have both." Zhou Lang said calmly, aiming the chainsaw at the door lock and cutting down.

Sparks flew, the lock was cut in two, and the door creaked open.

The study was much more luxurious than the basement, with a huge mahogany desk, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a locked safe in the corner.

Zhou Lang's gaze swept across the room and locked onto a small wooden box on the desk.

Open the wooden box; inside is a brass key. Underneath the key is a note that reads: This key can open the burial chamber in the east garden of the manor. Find the butler's remains and place them back in the basement study, and the curse on the manor will be lifted.

My thoughts are now clear.

"Let's go to the East Garden."

The East Garden was outside the manor, bathed in the pale moonlight of a desolate flowerbed. In the center of the flowerbed stood a stone platform, beneath which lay the entrance to a secret passage. Zhou Lang used a copper key to open the iron door of the passage, and the three of them went inside, finding a skeleton at its deepest point.

Beside the skeleton was a stone tablet with the steward's name engraved on it.

Zhao Qiang's hands were trembling when he went to move the bones—not out of fear, but simply because he found them dirty.

"You've washed the clothes of over a dozen ghosts, and you're still complaining about how dirty they are?" Zhou Lang turned and glanced at him.

"That's different! At least ghosts have a layer of skin covering them!"

Han Yingying held back her laughter.

The three men moved the remains back to the basement study and placed them directly below the portrait.

The change happened in an instant.

The entire manor began to shake, and the ghosts on the walls emitted sharp shrieks as they shattered and dissipated one by one. Green light spread from the basement, and the butler's portrait lit up.

A shadowy figure emerged from the painting; it was the gentle-faced butler depicted in the painting.

"Finally... I'm free."

The butler's illusory figure bowed to the three of them before turning into specks of light and disappearing.

at the same time--

[Ding! The "Terror Manor" instance has been cleared!]

Overall Rating: S

[Completion rewards have been issued. Please check your inventory.]

Zhou Lang opened his inventory. The reward was an "Identity Disguise Card" and 2000 points. The effect of the Identity Disguise Card was to disguise oneself as any NPC in the dungeon for 30 minutes.

Zhao Qiang's reward was 1500 points and a "recovery potion".

Suddenly, everything went black, and the three of them returned to the real world.

They were still in their own rooms.

Zhou Lang glanced at his phone; it was 2 AM, almost a week had passed since he entered the instance. But in real time, less than six hours had passed.

There were several unread messages on my phone, all sent by Zhao Qiang.

"Brother Lang, are you back yet?"

"I'm back. I almost jumped out of bed just now."

"Do you think we'll be grouped together for the next dungeon?"

Zhou Lang replied with three words: I don't know.

Then I turned off my phone.

He flipped through his inventory and sorted through his new acquisitions. He'd gotten quite a few things from the haunted manor—an oil lamp, scissors, a chainsaw, an identity disguise card, plus his previous bandaged ghost fusion body.

Their possessions are growing, but they are still a long way from finding their sister.

He turned off the light and lay down.

-

No new dungeons were opened for the next three days.

Zhou Lang used this time to do two things. The first was to go to the black market and exchange the extra points in the manor for some intelligence. The person selling the intelligence was a skinny man wearing sunglasses who called himself a "know-it-all," and his price wasn't cheap.

"You want to check for missing persons?" The know-it-all sat with his legs crossed on a folding chair in the dark alley. "Give me a name."

"Zhou Wan".

The expert typed on his laptop for a long time, then shook his head.

"You haven't appeared on any known copy of the death list."

Zhou Lang remained silent for a moment. If someone wasn't on the death list, they were either still alive or had died in some unrecorded instance.

"There's another piece of news you might be interested in," the know-it-all pushed up his sunglasses. "Recently, there have been rumors that some of the missing persons are trapped in high-level dungeons and can't get out. We don't know exactly which dungeon it is, but it's related to the source of the strange occurrences."

"Where is the source?"

"This intelligence is expensive." The know-it-all held up five fingers. "Five thousand points."

Zhou Lang didn't have that many. He noted down the number and turned to leave.

The second thing was that Han Yingying asked him to meet.

The location was a milk tea shop behind the school. Han Yingying arrived earlier than him and had already ordered two drinks, one for herself and one placed opposite Zhou Lang's seat.

"I ordered it for you. I didn't know what you liked to drink, so I just got an Americano."

"Okay." Zhou Lang sat down, took a sip, and found it bitter.

Han Yingying was drinking milk tea. She stirred it twice with the straw before speaking: "After the incident at the manor, I did some statistics. Currently, the known dungeon difficulties range from D to S, and the average player mortality rate is over 60%."