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

Pushing open the door, one finds a deeper passageway. Iron hooks are nailed to the walls on both sides of the passageway, with various tools hanging from them—hammers, axes, saws, and some torture instruments whose names are unknown.

"Something's getting weird here." Zhao Qiang swallowed.

Zhou Lang walked ahead, the light of the oil lamp illuminating the passage. After walking about twenty meters, a room came into view. A sign hung on the door of the room, which read:

"No entry."

Zhou Lang pushed open the door.

The room was filled with boxes of all sizes, neatly stacked. Zhou Lang walked to the nearest box and opened the lid.

There are clothes inside.

Children's clothes, all styles and sizes. Zhou Lang opened several more boxes, all filled with clothes.

"These are..." Han Yingying's voice trembled slightly.

Zhou Lang didn't speak. He walked to the back of the room, where there was a table. On the table was an account book. Zhou Lang opened it; it was filled with densely packed transaction information.

"March 1998, boy, five years old, priced at 3."

"July 1999, girl, three years old, priced at 7."

"October 2001, boy, six years old, priced at 10."

……

The ledger recorded dozens of transactions, all involving child trafficking. The date of the last transaction matched the date the child disappeared, as recorded in the diary.

"Madam Guan's husband didn't just sell his own children," Zhou Lang said. "He was a human trafficker."

Zhao Qiang's face turned pale: "Then these clothes..."

"They were all left behind by abducted children."

Silence fell over the room. After a while, Han Yingying spoke up: "We need to take this evidence out of the room."

"You can't take it out," Zhou Lang said. "This is a dungeon, not reality."

He put the ledger into his inventory and turned to leave. The three returned to the pool, where Zhou Lang stood staring at the black liquid inside.

"Madam Guan's obsession is with her child," he said. "But the child has already been sold and can't be found. So her resentment can't dissipate, and she's stuck here."

"What should we do then?" Zhao Qiang asked.

Zhou Lang was silent for a few seconds, then said, "Give her an answer."

He took out the ledger from his inventory, turned to the last page, which recorded the transaction information of Madam Guan's children. Zhou Lang tore off that page, walked to the pool, and placed the paper on the edge of the pool.

"Your child was sold to the south," Zhou Lang said to the pool. "The buyer's surname is Li, and he's a businessman. Your husband received 50,000 yuan."

The liquid in the pool began to churn.

The black liquid seemed to be boiling, bubbling and gurgling. The hair twisted and turned wildly in the liquid, as if it had come alive.

Then, a hand emerged from the water.

Pale, swollen, with all her fingernails fallen off. Grabbing the edge of the pool, she pushed herself up and climbed out of the water.

Lady Guan.

She was wearing a cheongsam, her wet hair plastered to her face, obscuring her features. She stood motionless by the pool, like a statue.

Zhou Lang held up the oil lamp, its green light shining on Madam Guan.

"Your husband is dead," Zhou Lang continued. "He was burned to death in this building."

Madam Guan's body trembled. She raised her head, her hair slipping down her face to reveal a rotting one. Her eyes were gone, leaving only two black holes, and her mouth was wide open, filled with water.

"My child..." she uttered in a hoarse voice, "my child..."

"It's gone," Zhou Lang said. "But you can go and take revenge on your husband."

Madam Guan stared at Zhou Lang, her eyes filled with intense resentment. She opened her mouth and let out a scream, a sound so piercing it sent chills down one's spine.

Then she turned and walked deeper into the passage.

After taking a few steps, she stopped and glanced back at Zhou Lang. Her eyes held no gratitude, only endless sorrow and anger.

She disappeared into the darkness.

[Ding! Successfully appeased Madam Guan, reward: Fear Value +300, item "Soaked Cheongsam".]

Zhou Lang breathed a sigh of relief and put the cheongsam into his inventory. The item's stats were pretty good; it granted immunity to one water-type attack.

"Let's go," he said. "There are other ghosts to deal with."

The three of them retraced their steps, climbed the stairs, and returned to the lobby on the first floor. It was already 11 p.m., seven hours before dawn.

"Where to next?" Zhao Qiang asked.

Zhou Lang thought for a moment: "The second floor."

The second-floor corridor was even more gloomy than the first-floor corridor.

Large patches of wallpaper had peeled off the walls, revealing the moldy wall underneath. Several old-fashioned chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their bulbs long since broken, leaving only empty lampshades swaying in the wind.

Zhou Lang walked ahead, holding an oil lamp, its green light illuminating the corridor. The ghosts were still there, clinging to the walls and hanging from the ceiling, their eyes fixed on the three of them.

"Why are there so many ghosts?" Zhao Qiang asked in a low voice.

"Because many people have died in this building," Zhou Lang said, "not just those seven."

He remembered the housekeeper saying that the building used to be a guesthouse, but a fire broke out there. The fire not only killed the couple and the female college student who was working there, but also affected other guests.

Therefore, there are far more than seven ghosts here.

The three arrived at the room at the far end of the second floor. A sign hung on the door: "Room 201". Zhou Lang pushed open the door; inside was an ordinary guest room.

A bed, a table, and a wardrobe.

But everything in the room was charred. The blankets on the bed had turned to black ash, the table was down to half its original size, and the wardrobe door hung askew.

The wall was covered with large burn marks, resembling a menacing monster.

"Is this where the fire started?" Han Yingying asked.

Zhou Lang shook his head: "No."

He walked to the window and looked outside. It was pitch black outside; he couldn't see anything. Zhou Lang turned around and searched the room, finally finding an iron box under the bed.

The box was locked, so Zhou Lang used scissors to cut the lock and open the lid.

Inside were some photos and letters.

The photo shows a young couple; the man wears glasses, and the woman has her hair in a ponytail. They are both smiling happily. Zhou Lang flips the photo over; the date and location are written on the back.

"August 2015, Huangshan."

"West Lake, September 2015."

"October 2015, here."

The last photo was taken in front of this building. The two people are standing at the entrance, with the "View Inn" sign behind them.

Zhou Lang put down the photo and picked up the letters. The letters were from the girl to the boy; the contents were ordinary, just sweet nothings between lovers. But the last letter was different:

"I feel like something's off here. The landlady's eyes are giving me weird looks, and that girl working here seems really scared of something. Last night I heard noises from the next room, like someone was crying. Do you think we should move somewhere else?"

The letter ends here.

Zhou Lang put the letter back in the box and stood up. This couple must be the "young couple on vacation" mentioned later in the story; they were caught in the fire and burned to death.