...
...
The disagreement over accommodation in Lin Hao's group was far more intense than on Su Ya's side.
Nine people stood at the entrance of the Huang clan ancestral hall, arguing in a chaotic mess.
Six of them wanted to stay in the Western-style building, which seemed much safer.
With electricity and light, it was already a vast improvement over the pitch-black ancestral hall.
Huang Facai didn't seem to want to get involved in their argument. He left the keys to the Western-style building and hurried away without even leaving any instructions.
Thus, the only ones left in the ancestral hall were Lin Hao, Zhou Hui, and Ouyang Qiu.
“Fine, you made your choice.”
Lin Hao crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe, his tone cold. “No matter what you hear tonight, don't run around. If you're still alive when dawn breaks, come find us at the ancestral hall.”
He spoke nonchalantly, as if talking about an insignificant trifle.
In truth, he wasn't sure which was the safer place between the Western-style building and the ancestral hall.
It was just that whenever the thought of leaving the ancestral hall crossed his mind, that damn umbilical cord around his neck would suddenly tighten, choking him.
...
“Let's clean up.”
Feeling a bit irritable, Lin Hao turned to Zhou Hui and Ouyang Qiu. “The three of us will take turns keeping watch. If you don't want to die, don't wander around, and don't let curiosity get the better of you if you hear noises tonight.”
Zhou Hui nodded, while Ouyang Qiu gave a noncommittal “Oh.”
Meanwhile, on the other side, the six players happily pushed open the courtyard gate of the small building.
The courtyard was paved with cement, clean and tidy, and the exterior walls of the two-story building were tiled in white porcelain.
The windows glowed with a warm yellow light, and the interior was fully furnished, looking no different from a small villa in the city.
There was a sofa, a coffee table, a television, decorative paintings hanging on the walls, and a bed with blankets in the bedroom.
The only issue was that the building's wiring seemed a bit faulty; the lights couldn't be turned off.
The group gradually let their guard down. The tension and exhaustion from their long journey rushed over them all at once, and they began to yawn one after another.
After tossing and turning for most of the night, everyone was exhausted.
“Let's get some sleep. We still have quests to do tomorrow.”
“Yeah, night.”
“When you're this exhausted, you honestly just lose all care. I feel like even if a ghost showed up right now, I could throw a couple of punches at it.”
“Just go to sleep...”
The lights were bright, and the door was locked from the inside.
With six of them squeezed into one room, they felt an overwhelming sense of security.
Outside the window, the white paper lanterns swayed slightly, and the shadow cast upon the glass window moved slowly.
...
...
Xiao Xiao slept on the outermost edge, right next to the door.
She was a light sleeper to begin with, and with the new environment, she slept fitfully, drifting in and out of consciousness.
After sleeping for an unknown amount of time, in her hazy state, she suddenly heard a cat's meow from outside.
“Meow-wu—”
It was thin and high-pitched.
Drawn-out, wretched, and eerie.
Xiao Xiao frowned, pulling the blanket up to cover her ears.
But the meows didn't stop. They came one after another, getting closer and closer, as if circling the building.
Each cry was more miserable and sharper than the last, making her skin crawl.
Xiao Xiao felt a bit annoyed and wanted to sit up to curse.
However, her body felt incredibly heavy, and her eyelids were like they were glued shut, impossible to open.
Sleep paralysis?
Her heart skipped a beat. She wanted to call out for help, but no sound could escape her throat.
Right at that moment, with a sharp snap, the light overhead suddenly went out.
The room plunged into pitch-black darkness.
Only a faint, miserable white light filtered in from the white lanterns hanging outside, casting a hazy glow.
Her heart instantly leaped into her throat.
What was going on?
Why did the light go out?
Was anyone there?
Why couldn't she move?
Her limbs felt unbelievably heavy, as if they had been filled with lead and cast into the deep sea. Every inch of her bones screamed of a crushing weight.
Fear washed over her like a tide. In the darkness, aside from the cat's meows, there seemed to be another sound.
“Crack.”
“Crack.”
“Crack.”
The sound was very light and crisp, like someone cracking melon seeds, or perhaps chewing on something hard.
One after another, the rhythm was slow but exceptionally clear.
The sound was coming from the direction of the nightstand.
It was less than half a meter away from her head.
Xiao Xiao's scalp went numb.
Who in their right mind would be crouching by the nightstand cracking melon seeds in the middle of the night?!
Her eyes stung, tears welling up in them. The sheer terror made her forget to breathe, turning her entire face red.
“Crack.”
“Crack.”
In the quiet environment, every single one of these tiny sounds was magnified infinitely.
As the sound of teeth colliding with something hard drifted over, Xiao Xiao could only hear her own heart beating abnormally and violently:
“Thump-thump!”
“Thump-thump!”
“Thump-thump!”
She squeezed her eyes shut, terrified of what she might see in the next second.
Yet, human curiosity is no less intense than a cat's.
Curiosity and fear intertwined, feeling like someone was slowly, gently scratching her heart with a fine feather.
What on earth was that thing?
What was it eating?
Why was the sound getting closer?
It seemed... to have moved from the nightstand to the edge of her pillow.
“Crack.”
“Crack.”
It was as if someone were crouching by her head in the darkness, idly cracking melon seeds out of sheer boredom.
A faint, metallic stench of blood drifted over, mixed with a sickly sweet scent.
Hua Xiao's heart pounded wildly, feeling as if it were about to leap out of her throat.
Just one look.
If I just take one look at what it is, I won't be afraid anymore.
She trembled, her teeth chattering, she used almost every ounce of her strength to pry her eyelids open a sliver, squinting to look.
The room was very dark, with only a trace of miserable white light filtering in from the window.
Squinting made it hard to see clearly; she could only make out a blurry shadow.
With a hunched back and a small frame, it looked like a half-grown cat.
The thing was curled into a ball with its back to her, its shoulders twitching as it lowered its head to eat.
“Crack.”
“Crack.”
The crisp sounds were coming from its mouth.
Was it a big black cat?
Xiao Xiao felt a slight sense of relief.
It was just a stray cat that had snuck in.
But immediately after, she realized something was wrong.
Do cats... crack melon seeds?
Besides, the silhouette of its back looked far too bizarre.
The curve of its shoulders was wrong, and its neck was too long. It didn't look like a cat; instead, it resembled a shrunken human.
She held her breath and stared intently, using the light from the window.
As if sensing her gaze, the thing suddenly stopped chewing.
Then, it slowly turned its head.
Xiao Xiao's breath seized instantly.
It wasn't a cat.
It was an old lady's face.
The wrinkled skin was covered in folds, and her complexion was a deathly pale-blue.
Her eyes had slit pupils, yellow and unmistakably feline, glinting with faint, eerie light in the darkness.
Several long whiskers grew from both sides of her nose, and her mouth split wide all the way to her ears, with half her face covered in cat fur.
Finally, she had a mouthful of tiny, sharp teeth, stained with traces of dark red blood.
The Cat-Faced Old Lady.
An old lady with cat eyes and cat whiskers, crouching on the nightstand with a hunched back, eating.
She—or rather, "it"—was holding a piece of something in her withered hand.
It was white, thin, and rounded at the tip.
Blood was still dripping from the joint.
It was a human finger.
The Cat-Faced Old Lady was gnawing on the finger joint with her sharp teeth, making a crisp "crack, crack" sound like someone cracking melon seeds.
With every bite, she would suck out the marrow inside.
Xiao Xiao's gaze fell upon the finger, her pupils contracting violently.
There was a hairy mole on the back of the hand...
Why did this finger... look so familiar?
Her mind went completely blank as a terrifying thought bubbled up uncontrollably.
Using every ounce of strength she could muster, tears streaming down her face, she stiffly and slowly turned her head to look at the male player sleeping next to her.
He was sleeping peacefully, seemingly still immersed in a sweet dream.
Looking further down, half of his hand revealed stark white bone. His ten fingers were completely gone, leaving only two fleshy palms.
!!!
Xiao Xiao screamed, her eyes nearly tearing at the corners:
“Squeak squeak squeak squeak—”
But the moment the scream left her mouth, it turned into a long string of mouse squeaks.
In disbelief, she looked down, bringing her two paws before her eyes.
Where her hands should have been, there were now dusty-grey mouse paws.
Sharp claws, fine fur, and black paw pads.
Her arms were covered in short, coarse grey fur, and her oval face, which she had always been so proud of, had turned into a pointed mouse snout.
The world turned upside down; everything had become massive.
The bed was like a vast plaza, the nightstand like a towering mountain, and the Cat-Faced Old Lady crouching there was terrifyingly gargantuan.
She had shrunk.
She had turned into a mouse.
A mouse waiting to be preyed upon by a cat.
“Squeak—!”
Xiao Xiao finally let out her last scream of the night.
The Cat-Faced Old Lady lunged forward, a foul wind brushing against her face as sharp fangs gleamed coldly.
“Squeak—!”
The short mouse squeak cut off abruptly.
Then, a new sound arose:
“Crack.”
“Crack.”
The chewing sound started up once more, sounding even more cheerful than before.
The room remained dead silent.
The rest of the players were still fast asleep.
...
...
...
“What do you mean, ‘you don't know where they went’?”
Lin Hao's face was livid. Staring at the bloodstains on the messy bed, he gritted his teeth and said word by word, “Make it clear. How on earth did those two disappear?”
One of the players took a deep breath, waiting until they calmed down before explaining the situation with a pale face.
When the four of them woke up in the morning, they realized Xiao Xiao and the other male player were gone.
At first, they thought the two of them had simply woken up early and gone outside.
However, the door was locked from the inside, and the windows were bolted shut; it was impossible for anyone to have left.
Then, they found a tuft of grey mouse fur and a large pool of blood near their pillows.
The people were gone, but their clothes were still lying on the bed.
At first glance, they looked like the cocoons left behind after butterflies emerged.
But here lay the problem: two living human beings were gone, yet their clothes remained.
They couldn't have run off naked, could they?
...
“We searched the entire building but couldn't find them...”
One player's voice trembled, filled with lingering fear. “It's too bizarre. The door was locked, the windows were closed, and there wasn't a single sound in the middle of the night, yet they just vanished...”
Someone nearby added, “I did hear some mouse squeaks and cat meows. I also heard what sounded like my grandma chewing on soybeans—”
They chimed in one after another, growing more terrified as they spoke, their eyes filled with shock and fear.
Two perfectly fine people had vanished overnight.
There wasn't even a death announcement.
Lin Hao glanced at the remaining player count in the top right corner, which was still firmly at 23. He cursed, “Fuck! If you guys hadn't been so troublesome and insisted on staying in the Western-style building, how could they have gone missing?”
Cat meows.
Mouse squeaks.
The sound of an old lady chewing on soybeans.
It couldn't be that the deceased Old Lady Huang had crawled out of her grave to chew on the two of them like soybeans, right?!
Great. They still had quests to do today, and now their group was suddenly down to seven people.
Lin Hao's face was dark. He couldn't help but feel like this damn Instance was targeting him.
...
...
As for the third mirrored Instance.
The three and a half survivors didn't even dare to enter the village. Jiang Chen and Zhou Chang had taken turns driving the paper car all night, never daring to stop.
It seemed the four of them truly intended to take turns driving for seven days, refusing to enter the village or complete the main storyline quest even if it killed them.
Outside the Instance, Song Mo fell into deep thought, silently noting down this "bug" in her notebook.
She rarely intervened in the progression of the stories within the Instances—unless a major logical flaw occurred that made it impossible to continue.
“Do they really plan to tough it out for seven days?”
Song Mo glanced at the haggard, unshaven Jiang Chen and sighed with genuine admiration, “Quite a character. You actually managed to exploit a bug, kid.”
...
Inside the Instance, Jiang Chen, who was driving the ghost car and wishing he were dead, suddenly shuddered. He raised his head in disbelief, his expression blank and terrified.
An overwhelming pressure crashed down upon him, slamming heavily into his body. His limbs lost all strength as he collapsed uncontrollably, followed by a burning, stabbing pain in his chest.
“Pfft—”
He spat out a mouthful of blood, his entire body jerking backward. He felt extremely dizzy, and his internal organs trembled violently.
In the top right corner of his vision, ink-wash text arranged itself in a bizarre fashion, finally swirling together to form a passage of words:
【You have disturbed "Existence".】
【"Existence" has seen you.】
...
...
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