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

"Do you have a flashlight?" Han Yingying asked.

Zhou Lang took out an oil lamp and lit it. The green light illuminated the passage. Han Yingying saw the lamp and remembered something: "Is this from the last dungeon?"

"Yes. It can reveal ghosts."

"Are there ghosts now?"

Zhou Lang held up his lamp and shone it around. The passage was long, with concrete walls on both sides and tracks on the ground—no, not tracks, but real tracks. Two railway tracks stretched out from the depths of darkness, leading even deeper into the darkness.

"This is the cable car track," Zhou Lang said.

Han Yingying squatted down and touched the rails: "They're rusty, but..." She brought her fingers close to her nose and smelled them, "...there's a bloody smell."

Zhou Lang didn't say anything and continued walking forward.

After walking for about three minutes, the passageway widened. They arrived at an underground platform. There were several rows of plastic seats on the platform, and faded "GG" signs were pasted on the walls. Most prominently displayed was a sign that read:

【Starlight Cable Car – Take you to experience the breathtaking scenery atop the city!】

Operating hours: 9:00-21:00

Ticket price: Adults 50 yuan/person, children half price

Below the notice board was a line of smaller print, which Zhou Lang had to look closely to read:

This cable car has passed national safety inspections; please feel free to ride it.

"Passed the safety inspection..." Han Yingying read aloud, "but something still happened."

Zhou Lang went around to the back of the notice board and found a small door on the wall with the words "Employee Passage" written on it. He tried to push it, but it was locked.

Take out the scissors and snip.

The door opened.

Inside was a small office, the desk piled high with documents. Zhou Lang flipped through a few; they were all daily operational records. He continued flipping through, finally finding a document stamped with a red seal at the very bottom of the drawer.

[Cable Car Maintenance Report - Third Quarter]

He quickly skimmed through the report. It stated that the cable car's steel cables were worn beyond acceptable limits and recommended immediate replacement. But at the end of the report, someone had written a line in red pen:

"The cost is too high; implementation should be postponed. —General Manager Li"

"We found it." Zhou Lang handed the file to Han Yingying.

After reading it, Han Yingying frowned: "Skimming, broken steel cables, cable car crash... is this the cause of the accident?"

"One of the reasons," Zhou Lang said, "but knowing that alone isn't enough. The system wants the 'truth,' and there's definitely more to it."

He glanced at the time: 9:20. There was still time.

Zhou Lang continued searching through the office. In a locked metal cabinet, he found the second crucial document.

[Regarding the aftermath of the "October 17th Cable Car Accident"]

The content is brief: the accident resulted in 23 deaths, the company decided to keep the news under wraps, compensate the families, build a shopping mall on the original site, and seal the cable car involved in the accident underground.

"23 people." Han Yingying's voice was a little strained.

Zhou Lang put the documents away and then found a photograph in the corner of the cabinet. The photograph was yellowed and showed two girls, about fifteen or sixteen years old, who looked exactly alike, wearing school uniforms and smiling at the camera.

A line of text was written on the back of the photo:

"Xiaoyu and Xiaoqing, best friends forever."

Zhou Lang stared at the photo for a few seconds. Twins. Could the "unknown factor beyond the rating" mentioned in the system notification be them?

"Let's go." He put the photos away. "It's time to go back."

The two returned the way they came. As they passed the platform, Zhou Lang suddenly stopped.

"What's wrong?" Han Yingying asked.

Listen.

Han Yingying held her breath. Far, far away, deep in the darkness of a tunnel, came the sound of metal scraping against metal.

squeak - squeak -

It looked like something was moving on the tracks.

"The cable car," Zhou Lang said. "Let's go, let's go quickly."

The two quickened their pace, slipping through the roller shutter door back to the first floor of the mall. Zhou Lang glanced back; behind the roller shutter door was complete darkness, and he couldn't see anything. But the sound was still there, faint and indistinct, like a groan coming from underground.

At 9:45, everyone returned to the courtyard.

Meng Hu and Boss Wang arrived first. Boss Wang was pale and sat down heavily on the ground, panting like a dog. Meng Hu, on the other hand, looked normal and held a few sheets of paper in his hand.

"What did you find?" Zhou Lang asked.

"There's a monitoring room on the third floor," Meng Hu said. "The cameras are still working, but they only show the inside of the mall; the floor is all static. These are some images I printed out from the monitoring room."

He handed me the paper. It was a few blurry screenshots from a security camera, taken in the early hours of the morning. In the images, shadowy figures were moving in the mall's corridors—no, not people. The figures' postures were off; some were walking headfirst, others were twisted at impossible angles.

"Is this a previous recording?" Zhou Lang asked.

"It happened early yesterday morning," Meng Hu said. "It happens every night."

Ah Qi and Chen Mo also returned. Ah Qi was holding a notebook with a dirty cover.

"There's a storage room on the fifth floor," Ah Qi said. "This notebook was found in there. It's a diary written by a former inspector."

He turned to one of the pages and read aloud: "On the third day, another colleague went missing. The company said he had resigned, but I saw his name tag still in the locker room. While patrolling at night, I heard sounds coming from underground, like many people crying. I was too scared to go down."

Turning to the last page: "I'm quitting my job. Last night I saw it, in the underpass, a cable car running. It was full of people, all laughing, but their eyes were empty. I ran, only stopping when I reached the top floor. When I looked back, there were two girls standing in the shutter door watching me. Twins. They were laughing."

The diary ends here.

"Twins," Zhou Lang said. "I also found their photos underground."

He took out the photos and showed them to everyone.

"What beautiful young girls," Lin Wei said. "Are they also victims?"

"I'm not sure." Zhou Lang shook his head. "The cable car accident killed 23 people, but these two girls..."

He didn't finish speaking. Because his time was up.

10 o'clock sharp.

All the lights in the mall flickered simultaneously, then returned to normal. But the air had changed; the temperature was dropping, and everyone could feel it.

The first "passenger" has been released.

The system's voice was cold and impersonal.

"Where?" Boss Wang jumped up. "Where's the ghost?"

"Shut up," Meng Hu said in a low voice.

Everyone quieted down and listened attentively.

The shopping mall is huge, five floors, with hundreds of shops. If a ghost were let in, it wouldn't be easy for it to find, but it wouldn't be easy for it to find it either.

Zhou Lang raised the oil lamp, its green light illuminating the area around the courtyard. Nothing seemed amiss.

"It might be on another floor," Ah Qi said.

"Then what do we do?" Boss Wang's voice trembled. "Just wait here?"

"Of course not," Zhou Lang said. "Keep looking for clues. But be careful and always pay attention to your surroundings."

"Are you crazy? There are ghosts outside and you still want to go out?"

Zhou Lang glanced at him: "You can stay here. But I'm warning you, the courtyard is open on all sides. If a ghost comes, you won't even have a place to hide."