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

Zhou Lang sat behind the door, and through the thin wooden board, he could clearly hear the sounds outside.

"It hurts so much... my skin was peeled off... it hurts so much..."

The doorknob began to turn violently, making a clanging metallic sound. Nothing from the outside could get in; they could only futilely try to break the lock.

"That's a human skin lantern," the bandaged man explained in his mind. "A woman who was skinned alive and made into a lantern before she died. On the first day, she could only wander in the corridor, using sound and light to lure her prey to open the door."

"It's quite noisy," Zhou Lang commented.

The woman outside seemed to sense the indifference of the person inside; her voice suddenly rose, turning into a piercing scream. A bright red light shone, and thick blood began to seep from the door, dripping down the wood grain.

Zhou Lang stood up, walked to the sink, filled a basin with cold water, carried it to the door, and splashed it out through the crack in the door.

"Sizzle—"

A sound like embers being extinguished came from outside, accompanied by a woman's increasingly vicious curses. The red light flickered a few times before finally going out completely. The dragging sound resumed, slowly moving away downstairs.

"Your approach to this is really simple and straightforward," the bandaged man commented.

"Physical cooling." Zhou Lang tossed the basin back into the bathroom. "Saving up supplies for the tough battles later. The rules will change starting tomorrow."

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. In this Colosseum of Reincarnation, sealed off by an S-class entity, the real terror had only just begun.

The morning sunlight was pale and weak, barely penetrating the greasy glass windows of the guesthouse.

Zhou Lang opened his eyes precisely at six o'clock. The countdown on the system panel flashed and changed to [Remaining survival time: 6 days].

The clattering of pots and pans echoed from downstairs, mixed with the clamor of students' complaints. Zhou Lang finished washing up and pushed open the door to 304. The dark red carpet in the corridor looked older than it had last night, and on the carpet outside 304, there was a dried black stain with charred, curled edges.

In the first-floor cafeteria, several students were sitting around a long wooden table eating breakfast. There was plain congee, pickled vegetables, and a few baskets of dark-colored steamed buns.

"What kind of filling is this bun? It smells weird." The girl in the red beret poked at the bun with her chopsticks, looking disgusted.

"Eat it or don't, it's up to you." The guesthouse owner came out of the kitchen carrying a large aluminum basin. "This is the kind of place we have."

Zhou Lang sat down in an empty seat in the corner and ladled out a bowl of plain porridge. He observed the owner discreetly. The chilling, deathly aura of last night had been cleverly concealed during the day; now he looked like just a grumpy, unkempt old country man. But Zhou Lang noticed that when the owner carried the aluminum basin, his right ring and little fingers were bent at an unnatural, twisted angle, as if they had been broken and not properly reattached, simply growing back dead.

"Boss, what kind of flowers do you grow in your backyard? I think I smelled a really nice fragrance last night," a guy sitting across from me suddenly asked. He was the guy in the young couple, wearing a trendy hoodie and with his hair styled very neatly.

The shopkeeper abruptly stopped serving the porridge. He looked up, his cloudy eyes fixed on the boy, the whites of his eyes bloodshot.

"The backyard is locked. Nobody is allowed to go there." He said each word clearly, his voice revealing an undisguised ferocity.

The boy was startled by that look and awkwardly shut his mouth.

After breakfast, the students, carrying their drawing boards, went out in groups to sketch in town. Zhou Lang didn't go with them; instead, he went around to the side of the guesthouse.

The characteristic of the Reincarnation Dungeon lies in its "repetition". If the root of these strange obsessions is not found, when the demons run rampant on the fifth day, not to mention C-rank players, even A-rank players will perish here.

The side wall was very high, with broken glass stuck in it. Zhou Lang found an abandoned oil drum to stand on, flipped over and jumped onto the top of the wall, and saw the scene in the backyard.

The backyard was overgrown with weeds, and in one corner lay several bags of hardened cement and a pile of rusty steel bars. Most striking was a cement wall directly opposite the main building. The wall was clearly added later; its color was darker than the surrounding walls, and its surface was pitted and unevenly plastered.

Zhou Lang jumped off the wall and walked through the ankle-deep weeds to the cement wall.

A pungent, fishy stench filled the air—a mixture of rotting seaweed and dead rats. He leaned closer to the wall, examining it closely. Among the smears left by the undried cement, he could vaguely see some tiny bumps.

He pulled out a dagger and gently scraped away the surface cement along a raised area.

The dust settled, revealing a small patch of bluish-purple. It was a human fingernail, its edges deeply embedded in the cement, with dried blood still visible around it. One could imagine that the person inside had frantically scratched at the wall with their fingers before being sealed off.

"The innkeeper was a patriarchal man who sold his daughter and drowned his wife. In the end, his wife, after her death, plastered his body onto a cement wall." The details from the intelligence report flashed through Zhou Lang's mind.

That's interesting. If the boss was plastered inside the wall, then what was that thing serving the porridge in front of us?

"It's an afterimage, or rather, a manifestation of obsession," the bandaged man explained. "In this cycle of reincarnation, he is both the perpetrator and the victim. During the day, he plays the role of a living person, keeping the guesthouse running; at night, he has to relive the fear of being sealed into the wall by his wife."

Just as I was thinking, a commotion suddenly came from the front yard.

Zhou Lang quickly climbed out of the backyard. There he saw the boy in the trendy hoodie being helped in by several classmates. He was soaking wet, pale, and trembling like a leaf.

"What happened?" the girl in the red beret asked anxiously.

"There's something in the lake... there's something in the lake." The boy's teeth chattered. "I was washing my paintbrushes by the lake when suddenly a hand reached out from the water. It was deathly pale, swollen like a big bun, and it grabbed my ankle and dragged me into the water! If Dawei hadn't pulled me back, I would be dead!"

Zhou Lang glanced at the boy's ankle. There was indeed a clear blue handprint there, the flesh sunken inward, exuding a chilling aura of death.

The drowned giant, Lady Guan.

It seems that these strange activity ranges and abilities are gradually being unlocked over time.

Night fell again.

The rule for the second day: parts of the body can enter through faucets and door gaps.

Zhou Lang returned to room 304. Instead of sitting idly like he had the night before, he took out a roll of strong industrial tape from his backpack and sealed all the gaps in the windows. He left the door gap untouched. These things needed an outlet; sealing them all might intensify their resentment and cause the system to break down prematurely.

It was 11:30. A strange noise came from the bathroom.

"Tick-tock...tick-tock..."

The faucet, which was originally tightly turned on, began to drip water slowly.

Zhou Lang carried an iron rod and walked to the bathroom door. The mirror on the sink was covered with a thick layer of condensation, and the water from the faucet was flowing harder and harder, gradually becoming murky and carrying a nauseating, fishy stench.