Volume One: Phantom Mansion Chapter Sixteen: The Oil Painting

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“Whew! Whew! Whew!”

In the stairwell, Cheng Fan felt as though his chest were about to explode.

From the moment he immobilized the female ghost and began to flee until now, when he leaned against the wall and gasped for breath, nearly ten minutes had passed. He had been running without pause the entire time—and running upstairs at that. The toll it had taken on his stamina was self-evident.

As he panted, he found himself regretting his usual lack of physical training. Had he maintained a stronger constitution, he would not have been reduced to such a state.

Of course, the fact that he had managed to last this long was already remarkable—at least by the standards of university students, he could be considered outstanding. He simply did not know it.

After sweeping his eyes over the relatively calm stairwell and confirming that the surroundings were temporarily safe, Cheng Fan gritted his teeth and continued upward.

In order to find the nineteenth floor as quickly as possible, he was willing to risk everything. Even if he exhausted himself to death, he had to race against time and return to the nineteenth floor as soon as possible.

Because that was where his final hope of survival lay!

“I refuse to believe this!”

Gritting his teeth, Cheng Fan forced his aching legs to move. At the same time, he carefully scanned the area with his eyes. Whenever he passed the edge of a floor, he would lean out to inspect the corridor. His purpose was naturally to search for the oil painting, and the reason was exactly as he had analyzed earlier: although the ghostly maze had sealed the building, this so-called seal merely caused all the floors to become disordered. The floors that should exist still existed; they had not been completely concealed.

If the red-clothed female ghost truly possessed the ability to hide entire floors, then this supernatural instance would be an utterly unsolvable death trap.

That would run directly counter to the fundamental rule of the Ghost Spirit Space—that it never issued impossible missions.

Relying on this deduction, Cheng Fan indeed discovered many familiar scenes as he moved.

For instance, while inspecting one floor, he saw a few strips of cloth scattered across the corridor.

They were remnants of the rope he and Zhao Linxuan had deliberately fashioned earlier in order to climb through the windows.

On another floor, several doors stood open.

Those were traces of their hasty movements when he and Zhao Linxuan had searched for the infirmary.

And on yet another floor, a wastebasket near the corner had been knocked onto its side.

He and Zhao Linxuan had accidentally overturned it while running earlier.

Confronted with these many familiar traces, Cheng Fan became even more certain that the female ghost could not conceal the floors. At the same time, hope began to kindle within him. He believed that if he continued persevering, he would certainly return to the nineteenth floor. The only question was when.

At that thought, Cheng Fan could not help feeling secretly relieved.

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He was relieved that, after discovering something was wrong, he had decisively distanced himself from Zhao Linxuan. If that woman were still following him, everything might have been fine while they remained safe. But should they encounter the female ghost, he would effectively become her shield.

Put bluntly, the female ghost would always prioritize attacking whoever happened to be beside Zhao Linxuan, regardless of who that person was.

“Hmm?”

Just as Cheng Fan was secretly congratulating himself, he suddenly stopped.

While passing the edge of a nearby floor, he ceased running and stood motionless, his eyes abruptly widening.

Because he had seen something familiar.

Under the bright lights that spread throughout the building, Cheng Fan saw the object he had dreamed of day and night. Hanging on the wall in the middle of the corridor was an oil painting.

He had found it. At last, he had found the nineteenth floor!

Tap, tap, tap!

As expected, upon finally seeing the oil painting that represented a chance of survival, Cheng Fan was overjoyed. He momentarily forgot his exhaustion, then shot out of the stairwell and raced toward the corridor.

As he ran, he saw a pool of blood besides the painting. It was the blood he had spat at the female ghost in order to save his life, further proving that this was the nineteenth floor and not the twentieth, which also had an oil painting.

Of course, this was not the time to concern himself with such details. His heart pounding with excitement, Cheng Fan rushed to the painting, raised his head, and examined it intently.

There was no difference from the first time he had seen it. It was still the same oil painting, depicting a man rushing toward a room. The scene was profoundly obscure; even when he pressed close and scrutinized it with every ounce of concentration, he still could not make much of it.

All of that was true. However, unlike the aimless confusion he had felt during his first observation, Cheng Fan was now prepared. Having determined that the oil painting before him represented his only chance of survival, he examined it with extraordinary care.

His mind raced throughout the process.

Looking closely, he saw that the painting still depicted a room—or rather, the room occupied most of the composition, while the remaining space was taken up by the corridor and the man standing before the door.

The content was plain enough at a glance, yet a question naturally surfaced in Cheng Fan’s mind.

Why was the man rushing so urgently toward the room?

As he stared at the painting, Cheng Fan’s thoughts gradually expanded.

If his earlier conjecture was correct, then it could first be established that the man in the painting represented an explorer, while the room represented the countless rooms throughout the building. The implication was that the explorer trapped inside the building was meant to place himself in the man’s position. That much was beyond doubt. But the problem was…

Even if I put myself in the man’s place, and the room represents every room in the building, what exactly is inside those rooms?

Is it some object capable of restraining the female ghost? Or perhaps a special location that can help an explorer escape the building?

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Keeping his eyes wide open, Cheng Fan devoted himself entirely to contemplating the oil painting.

Is it some kind of object?

No. Impossible. If there truly were an object capable of restraining the female ghost, the instance would certainly use the oil painting to hint at it—just as the painting on the twentieth floor had once implied that blood could restrain the female ghost. After all, there were far too many things in the building. Without the slightest hint, even if such an object existed, an ordinary mortal explorer would never be able to find it.

Moreover, after searching the entire building, he knew that only the nineteenth and twentieth floors had oil paintings.

If that was the case, then only one possibility remained…

The path to survival lay inside the rooms. More precisely, any room in the building might contain it. Somewhere within one of them was the place that would allow him to escape the building. As long as an explorer found that location, he could clear the instance and leave the haunted building alive.

Thanks to an intelligence that could only be described as exceptional, Cheng Fan finally gained some insight after repeatedly observing the oil painting and thinking it through with utmost care. Although he still had not found the path to survival, he had at least identified a definite direction:

The path to survival was hidden inside the rooms. Any room within the building contained it!

At that realization, an excited expression appeared on Cheng Fan’s face.

He was excited—but strangely, the feeling did not last long. In less than a moment, the excitement that had just been written across his features vanished, replaced by bewilderment, bitterness, and increasingly furrowed brows.

Why had his brows drawn together?

The reason was simple. Although he had found a valuable clue and even determined the direction in which the path to survival lay, Cheng Fan was still unable to pinpoint its exact location.

“Damn it. How could this happen…”

As his thoughts delved deeper, Cheng Fan muttered to himself. He had fallen into a dead end of reasoning. No matter how he searched, he could not locate the path to survival hidden within the rooms.

Until…

Until his gaze shifted toward the window in the painting.

The instant he looked at the window, Cheng Fan noticed another detail—an eerie detail that was profoundly inconsistent with the situation before him!

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