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

At the end of the stairs was a wooden door, so rotten that it was covered with grayish-green mold.

Zhou Lang pushed the door, but it didn't budge.

I pushed again, but it still didn't move.

"Let me do it." Zhao Qiang rolled up his sleeves and kicked him.

bang——

The door fell over, and Zhao Qiang's foot got stuck in the door panel.

"I……"

"Don't talk, just pull your foot out first." Zhou Lang squatted down to help him.

Han Yingying stood to the side, pursing her lips, but managed not to laugh out loud.

Zhao Qiang pulled his foot out; his shoe was covered in wood chips. He looked down at it and muttered, "This lousy door, a shoddy construction project."

The three of them went inside.

The green light of the oil lamp illuminated the entire room. It wasn't large, about twenty square meters, with four walls made of blue bricks, damp and seeping water. Against the wall were several iron shelves filled with glass jars containing liquids of various colors.

Zhao Qiang took a closer look, and his face immediately fell: "What is this thing?"

Zhou Lang saw it too. The jars contained organs—hearts, livers, eyeballs, and some other things he couldn't identify. Each jar had a note attached with the date and name written on it.

"This is... a former player?" Han Yingying's voice was very soft.

Zhou Lang didn't answer. He picked up a jar and turned it around. The note on it read, "Seventh Gardener, Heart, Rating A."

The seventh.

Which term were they?

"Never mind that." Zhou Lang put down the jar. "Let's look for clues."

In the center of the room was a table covered with a blackened cloth. When the cloth was lifted, a booklet was revealed underneath.

Zhou Lang turned to the first page.

The handwriting was crooked and the ink had bled through most of it, but it was still barely legible:

"Day 1. I arrived at the manor, and the butler said I was the new chef. Everything was normal."

"On the third day, the gardener disappeared. The housekeeper said he had resigned, but I heard screams coming from the basement."

"On the fifth day, I opened the basement door."

The handwriting became messy afterward, and in some places it was soaked through with liquid and illegible. Zhou Lang flipped through a few more pages and found a few lines of relatively complete text on the last page:

"The secret of the manor lies in the garden. Killing the butler isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is the thing they worship. Don't dig under the third cypress tree."

No.

Please don't.

The writing stopped here.

"If they won't let us dig, does that mean we have to dig anyway?" Zhao Qiang said.

Zhou Lang closed the booklet and glanced at Zhao Qiang: "When did you become smart?"

"I'm not stupid, I'm just timid."

"Okay, okay." Zhou Lang stuffed the booklet into his pocket and continued searching the room.

There was an iron cabinet in the corner with a second lock on it. This lock was much newer than the one on the door, with very little rust. Zhou Lang took out a pair of scissors, snipped it off, and pulled open the cabinet door.

There was only one thing in the cabinet—a mirror.

It was round, about the size of a palm, with strange patterns engraved on the back. Zhou Lang picked it up and held it up to the oil lamp; the mirror surface gleamed with a dim luster.

A system notification suddenly popped up.

You have discovered the item: Spirit-Seeing Mirror (Rank B)

[Effect: Reveals a bizarre, true form. Lasts 30 seconds per use, 10-minute cooldown.]

Zhou Lang put the mirror away. It was a B-grade item, which was pretty good for this dungeon.

"What else?" Han Yingying asked.

"That's all."

The three searched the basement thoroughly, but found no other clues besides the jars containing organs and the booklets on the table.

Zhou Lang stood at the top of the stairs, raising the oil lamp to shine upwards. The green light illuminated two ghosts lying on the stairs, head down, hanging upside down, staring at him with their mouths stretched to their ears.

"Go back," he said.

As he went upstairs, the ghosts still automatically gave way. But Zhou Lang noticed that they were giving way a shorter distance than when he came down—two meters when he came down, but only a little over one meter when he went up.

The light from the oil lamp is getting weaker.

He quickened his pace. When he returned to the lobby on the first floor, the oil lamp only had about a quarter of its oil left. This was a consumable item; once it was used up, it was gone.

"That's all for tonight," Zhou Lang said. "We'll go to the garden tomorrow during the day."

Zhao Qiang breathed a sigh of relief: "Finally back. My underwear was almost soaked."

Han Yingying finally couldn't help but chuckle.

Zhao Qiang realized what he meant and quickly waved his hands, "That's not what I meant! It was cold sweat! Cold sweat!"

After returning to their respective rooms, Zhou Lang locked the door and sat on the edge of the bed to sort out the day's findings.

The records in the booklet confirmed one thing—the manor's personnel system was cyclical. Each batch of servants would be "replaced" after a certain period of service, their organs removed and preserved in the basement. The criteria for replacement were unclear, but what was certain was that the butler was the one who carried out the replacement.

What is that "thing they worship"?

The third cypress tree.

Zhou Lang recalled the layout of the garden. The area where he planted flowers every day was on the east side of the garden, and the cypress trees were on the west side, a total of five trees, arranged from north to south. The third tree was in the very center.

When he passed by there during the day, he noticed that the third cypress tree was two sections shorter than the other four, and its crown was much sparser. The grass on the ground was also exceptionally lush, as if it were covering something.

The person who wrote the booklet said not to dig it up.

We definitely have to dig.

But he couldn't act rashly. The butler would patrol the garden during the day, and the ghosts would appear at night. He needed to find a time window.

Zhou Lang thought for a moment and decided that the most suitable time was between six and seven in the evening—work had just ended, the butler hadn't come out to pay salaries yet, and it wasn't completely dark yet.

He lay down and closed his eyes.

The sound of light footsteps echoed down the corridor, approaching and then receding repeatedly. Three evenly spaced knocks were heard on the door of the next room.

Zhou Lang rolled over.

got used to.

-

The three met at the restaurant the next morning.

Breakfast consisted of black bread and a bowl of grayish porridge with a few unidentified particles floating in it. Zhao Qiang stirred it with his spoon, staring at it for a long time before he dared not take a bite.

"Eat up." Zhou Lang had already drunk most of the bowl. "It won't kill you."

"How can you eat everything?" Zhao Qiang looked at him with a complicated expression.

"Hungry."

Han Yingying was also drinking porridge; she had already learned not to identify the ingredients.

After dinner, everyone went to work.

Xiong Batian did not appear at the restaurant today.

When Zhou Lang arrived at the garden, he took a look around. The door to the tool shed on the north side of the garden was open, but no one was inside. The gardener's seat was empty—yes, the previous gardener had died on the first night.

As he planted the flowers, he observed the area around the third cypress tree.

Around noon, Butler Killer emerged from the manor and surveyed the garden along the stone path. When he reached the third cypress tree, he paused for a few seconds, glanced down at the ground, and then continued walking.

The pause felt unnatural.

Around three o'clock in the afternoon, Zhou Lang heard a muffled thud coming from the second floor of the manor. He looked up and saw that the window in the second-floor corridor was open, and something inside shook.

Ten minutes later, Xiong Batian walked out of the main gate of the manor.