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

Zhao Qiang muttered to himself, "Why is she everywhere?"

"You know them?" Li Zheng looked at the two of them.

"We did it together in the last dungeon." Han Yingying straightened her backpack straps and stood next to Zhou Lang. "This is such good luck."

Zhou Lang didn't reply. He was thinking about something else—was Han Yingying also from the art academy?

He hadn't noticed before. True, the school is so big.

Everyone was there, so they boarded the bus. The bus swayed and rattled for two hours. Zhou Lang sat by the window, dozing with his eyes closed. Zhao Qiang ate potato chips next to him, while Han Yingying sat in the back, glancing forward every now and then.

We arrived at Fengshui Town.

The town is small, with one main street lined with low-rise houses on both sides. It's autumn, and there aren't many people on the street; a few trees have lost half their leaves.

Li Zheng led the way: "The guesthouse is at the east end of town, it's called Li Family Guesthouse. I've been here once before."

After walking for about ten minutes, the guesthouse came into view.

The two-story building has white walls and gray tiles, and several osmanthus trees are planted in the courtyard. A wooden sign hangs at the entrance: "Li Family Homestay".

It looks perfectly normal.

A system notification popped up:

You have entered the instance: The Mysterious House (Rank C)

[Clearance Requirements: Survive for 7 days]

[Note: Daytime is safe; please make the most of your investigation time.]

[Note: Please stay indoors at night and keep doors and windows closed.]

【Good luck.】

Six people stood at the doorway, and the air was silent for a few seconds.

"Go in." Li Zheng pushed open the courtyard gate.

The courtyard wasn't large, and the ground was paved with stone slabs. The osmanthus flowers were in bloom, and their fragrance was so strong it was almost overpowering.

A woman in her fifties came out of the house to greet us. She had a round face, wore an apron, and was all smiles, looking much like the middle-aged women selling vegetables at the market.

"Oh, they're here! Teacher Li has brought her students?"

Li Zheng smiled and shook her hand: "Sister Wang, there are six of us this time. Are the rooms the same as last time?"

"That's enough, all six rooms on the second floor are reserved for you." Sister Wang warmly invited everyone into the house. "Leave your luggage upstairs, come down for dinner, the food is freshly cooked."

Zhao Qiang perked up when he smelled the aroma of food: "There really is food to eat!"

"You think I'm lying to you?" Zhou Lang said.

Six people went upstairs to choose rooms. There was a corridor on the second floor with three rooms on each side. Numbers were posted on the doors—201 to 206.

Zhou Lang chose room 206, which was at the very back of the corridor.

This location has two advantages: first, it allows you to observe the activity along the entire corridor; second, it's close to the window at the stairwell, making it convenient to escape.

Zhao Qiang then chose 205, which was right next to his.

Han Yingying chose 204.

Of the three rooms remaining, Li Zheng took room 201, Chen Mo took room 202, and Fang Yuan took room 203.

The room wasn't big; it contained a bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a window facing out. It was clean, nothing special.

Zhou Lang put down his schoolbag and looked around. He opened the wardrobe—empty. The desk drawer—empty. Under the bed—clean.

He crouched down and touched the floor, noticing several scratches under the bed against the wall. They looked like something had repeatedly scraped against it.

He noted this detail down.

We went downstairs for dinner. Sister Wang had prepared a large table of dishes: braised pork, stir-fried vegetables, and egg drop soup—like the standard setup for a farmhouse restaurant.

"It's worth it to be able to eat this kind of food in a dungeon." Zhao Qiang had already filled his second bowl.

Zhou Lang didn't eat much. He noticed something—aside from Sister Wang, there were no other staff members at the guesthouse.

"Sister Wang, are you looking after this guesthouse all by yourself?" he asked.

Sister Wang was tidying up the kitchen when she heard this. She turned around and smiled, "My husband went to town to buy some things. He'll be back tonight. It's just the two of us usually."

"Where are the previous guests?"

"You had a group of guests before you, who stayed for a few days and then left." Sister Wang said this with the same smile on her face.

Zhou Lang nodded and didn't ask any more questions.

After dinner, Li Zheng gathered everyone in the living room on the first floor. The six of them sat around the sofa for a meeting.

"Everyone has seen the information." Li Zheng cleared his throat. "It's a C-level dungeon, seven days to complete. It's safe during the day, dangerous at night. My plan is for us to split up and investigate the guesthouse and town during the day, and then go back to our rooms and lock our doors at night."

"To put it bluntly, it means working during the day and hiding under the covers at night," Fang Yuan said, arms crossed.

"That's roughly the idea." Li Zheng didn't deny it, "But I have to mention something—this dungeon has been acting strangely lately. Two teams failed to clear it before, and in one of them, only two out of six people survived."

The atmosphere suddenly became heavy. Zhao Qiang's chopsticks were still stuck in the bowl.

Chen Mo pushed up his glasses: "What's the reason?"

"I don't know. The survivors said this instance is much more bizarre than a normal C-rank instance." Li Zheng's expression turned serious. "That's why I specified generous compensation when I recruited. Consider it risk compensation."

Zhou Lang leaned back on the sofa without saying a word.

he was thinking.

Neither team cleared the dungeon, which is strangely beyond the C-level difficulty. There are two possibilities: either the dungeon itself was misclassified, or something unexpected happened that increased the difficulty.

Neither option makes much difference to him. His purpose here is to level up, accumulate resources, and find his sister. As long as it's not an unsolvable situation, there's always a way to deal with it.

Moreover, he has two unique attributes: the passive ability to "reduce eerie hostility" from the Bandaged Ghost Fusion, and the Ghost Scarer attribute.

The former made him safer than others, and the latter made him earn more than others.

"There are still a few hours left this afternoon, so everyone can familiarize themselves with the surroundings first." Li Zheng stood up. "Be back before 7 p.m.

The meeting is over.

Fang Yuan and Chen Mo went to town together. Li Zheng wandered around the guesthouse with his camera. Han Yingying took out her easel and sat on a stone bench in the courtyard.

Zhao Qiang sidled up to Zhou Lang: "What are you planning to do?"

"Let's figure out this building first."

The two began to explore the guesthouse. First floor: living room, dining room, kitchen, and a storage room. The storage room door was locked, and the key wasn't on the door.

Zhou Lang tested the lock; it was a regular padlock, of average quality. He could use a tool to open it, but there was no need now, as nothing would happen during the day.

There was a storage shed in the backyard, filled with farm tools—shovels, hoes, and a bundle of rope. In the corner of the shed was a cellar entrance, covered by wooden planks and weighed down with a large stone.

"This cellar..." Zhao Qiang glanced at it and took two steps back.

Zhou Lang squatted down to observe. There were fresh traces of soil on the edge of the wooden board, indicating that someone had moved it recently.

He didn't open it.

No rush on the first day. First, figure out the overall layout, see what the eerie things look like at night, and then make a plan.

He went back to the second floor and looked at the door of every room.

The door locks are old-fashioned bolt-and-lock systems, the kind that lock from the inside. They're not very sturdy, but they should be enough for the first day—based on the dungeon rules, it's assumed that you can't directly enter the room on the first day.

He noticed another detail: a small symbol was engraved above the door frame of each room. Different symbols.

The door frame of 206 has a circle engraved with a horizontal line inside.

205 is a triangle. 204 is a square. The numbers before that are different.