Chapter 57: The Mystery of Room 502

Xia Wulei deeply agreed and patted Li Lianxin on the shoulder by way of comfort.

Since the nightmare realm had already appeared in this instance, it meant it would soon invade the dreams of others.

The good news, however, was that the nightmare realm would not repeatedly invade the same person's dreams within a short period. In other words, Xia Wulei and Li Lianxin could temporarily stop worrying about the nightmare realm.

According to Li Lianxin, there were three or four ghosts in the nightmare realm who would actively come out to scare people.

Because the attack power of the nightmare realm was low, they could only resort to scaring people.

The ghosts behind the doors, on the other hand, were far more dangerous, and Li Lianxin had only stumbled into the door that Xia Wulei had previously entered by sheer coincidence.

To prevent anyone else from getting trapped in the nightmare realm, Cheng Cheng specially wrote down the step-by-step solution to that advanced mathematics problem and made the others memorize it.

Watching the others wrinkle their faces in sheer agony, Xia Wulei and Li Lianxin felt grateful to the ghosts for targeting them for the first time.

While Teacher Cheng Cheng supervised the others in memorizing the problem, Li Lianxin still lingered with lingering fear, saying she needed a moment to calm down. Thus, Xia Wulei went out alone, intending to check out room 502.

Since it was right next door, it would be easy for the others to rush over if anything happened.

Unfortunately, room 502 was locked.

When Xia Wulei took out her hoe and attempted to unlock it by brute force, a system prompt popped up.

System: [This item cannot be destroyed.]

Xia Wulei paused, holding her hoe aloft, surprised that such a rule existed.

Xia Wulei: "System, can no items directly related to the instance be destroyed?"

After receiving a positive confirmation from the system, Xia Wulei's mind began to spin.

Wasn't this plainly telling the players that there were definitely clues hidden here, and it just required the correct method to open it?

Since a frontal assault wouldn't work, she had to use her wits. The keys to the entire apartment building were held by only one person: Grandpa Liu, the building manager.

Xia Wulei took the elevator down to the first floor. The reclining chair was empty, and Grandpa Liu was nowhere to be seen.

Grandpa Liu's small resting room was located right beside the main entrance of the apartment building, containing everyday living items such as a bed and bedding.

The security room door was half-open, and Xia Wulei did not stand on ceremony, walking straight inside to search.

The level of dilapidation here was similar to the exterior of the apartment building: the walls were old and yellowish, furnished with a thin wooden plank bed and a simple desk.

Perhaps due to the lack of sunlight year-round, the bedding and clothes also emitted a damp, unpleasant odor.

On the wall directly opposite the desk, a wooden board was nailed, and several keys hung from it. Xia Wulei stepped forward to look—they were precisely the keys to the vacant rooms in the apartment building.

The key to room 502 was among them.

The clues in a simple-level instance were not deeply hidden. Just as Xia Wulei picked up the keys and prepared to leave, she suddenly caught sight of a notebook and a few sheets of paper resting on the desk.

They were the visitor registry and a diary.

Xia Wulei instinctively wanted to pocket them, but unexpectedly, something crawled out from beneath the bed.

The creature was on all fours, its head twisted sideways and pressed tightly against its shoulder, while its abdomen was flipped upward, crawling toward Xia Wulei in that distorted posture.

It was Grandpa Liu.

"Do... not... touch..."

Grandpa Liu, who was already withered and thin, crawled across the floor like a human-shaped spider, his mouth wide open, pitch-black pupils filling his entire eye sockets, with thick saliva dripping from his mouth.

Upon seeing Grandpa Liu, only one thought flashed through Xia Wulei's mind.

Ah, Grandpa Liu’s hunchback was gone.

Grandpa Liu, now free of his hunchback, struggled across the floor toward Xia Wulei, his pitch-black pupils fixed tightly on the diary in Xia Wulei's hand.

Xia Wulei curved her lips with amusement: "It seems this is indeed a very important item."

Looking somewhat annoyed, Grandpa Liu roared and crawled toward Xia Wulei.

Yet, in that posture, crawling fast was exceedingly difficult.

The security room was not large to begin with, but it took Grandpa Liu a full several minutes of rolling and scratching to crawl from beneath the bed to Xia Wulei's feet.

Xia Wulei was speechless: "Whenever I watched horror movies before, I always felt something was off. How could anyone twist their limbs like this and still move so fast? Doesn't that violate basic common sense?"

Grandpa Liu: ...Common sense? You're trying to apply common sense to a horror movie?!

Grandpa Liu felt deeply aggrieved as well. In the past, whenever he made an entrance in this form, those players would have long since been scared out of their wits, offering him delicious fear. How could anyone stand right in front of him and mock his restricted mobility?

Unreconciled, Grandpa Liu opened his mouth to roar, only to be pushed aside by Xia Wulei's foot in utter disgust.

"Alright, alright, cut it out."

Seeing the hoe materialize out of thin air in Xia Wulei's hand, Grandpa Liu promptly shut his mouth.

Xia Wulei questioned: "What are you doing here..."

"That... that diary is an important item. Players are only supposed to be able to take it after the sixth day."

"Are you from the instance or a random ghost? Where is Grandpa Liu?"

"A random ghost... I am Grandpa Liu, assigned to guard the item. If you had come for the diary after the sixth day of the instance, I wouldn't have come out to scare you specifically; I would have only transformed to attack you on the final day."

Grandpa Liu answered honestly. In fact, he had actually been quite happy to see a player come to take the diary early, as it allowed him to harvest a bit of fear value to nourish himself.

The more terrified the players were, the more fear value he gained, and the stronger his power would become.

Originally, upon seeing the presence of an expert like Cui Chengzhi, Grandpa Liu had intended to lie low and avoid drawing attention to himself, but he never expected Xia Wulei to deliver herself right to his doorstep, leaving him with no choice but to hide.

Yet, this batch of players was truly difficult to deal with; not only had they failed to be scared, but they had even turned the tables to mock him.

Grandpa Liu shed a bitter tear for himself in his heart.

Xia Wulei inquired further with Grandpa Liu about whether there were any rare treasures or natural resources in this place, but seeing that Grandpa Liu had always guarded his own territory and knew little about the outside world, Xia Wulei had no choice but to drop the subject.

With the keys and the diary in hand, Xia Wulei abandoned Grandpa Liu and headed back upstairs.

Taking advantage of the elevator ride, Xia Wulei read through the diary and finally understood why it was considered an important item.

It contained records of almost every household's information, as well as the suicide-by-jumping incident in room 502.

A family of four lived in room 502, and the young girl who jumped from the building had met her fate while her parents were away on a trip.

After that, not only the residents on the fifth floor, but also those on the floors below frequently encountered bizarre occurrences—either the elevator would suddenly stop working, or the crying of a little girl could be heard at night. Consequently, more and more people moved away.

The diary also recorded why Grandpa Liu had turned into a ghost.

After the tragedy in room 502, an aura of yin qi enveloped the entire Happiness Apartment, though no one noticed it.

The longer people lived in the apartment, the easier it was for them to be eroded by the yin qi, which stirred up the dark sides of their hearts and reduced them to monsters.

Meanwhile, Grandpa Liu had always harbored deep resentment toward the people in the apartment.

Having served as the building manager for decades, the residents either treated him with utter indifference or ordered him about imperiously, showing not a shred of respect. Grandpa Liu was naturally cowardly by nature, daring only to silently accumulate hatred in his heart.

When the yin qi descended, Grandpa Liu bore the brunt of it. In a mere three days, he transformed into a monster, and soon after, the players arrived.

Xia Wulei mused to herself that turning into a monster wasn't actually half-bad, as both his hunchback and hearing impairment had been cured.

It seemed the final boss was likely that young girl who had jumped from the building, and after eight days, those who had been more deeply eroded by the yin qi would also turn into monsters to attack them.

Having finished reading the diary, Xia Wulei felt a sense of certainty in her heart.

Upon returning to the fifth floor, Xia Wulei happened to run into Cheng Cheng walking out of a room.

"Sister Wulei, tutoring them is just too exhausting. I came out to get some fresh air."

Cheng Cheng looked as though she had aged ten years.

True enough, tutoring homework was a life-threatening job.