Free Web NovelAfter contacting Su Mi and putting away his phone, Lu Yibei stood up, cautiously observed his surroundings, and then decided to explore this building first.
With the experience from just now, he didn't go upstairs immediately. Instead, he observed the first floor, confirmed all possible routes to leave the building, and only then began exploring upwards.
This apartment building was old and dilapidated, seemingly even more damaged than the previous one. Even the stairs were covered in cracks, and Lu Yibei worried that they might suddenly collapse with every step he took.
Various words were scribbled on the stairwell walls in crooked handwriting that looked like it was written by primary school students.
【Li Guoqing, I love you!】
【For my birthday this year, I want a Subor learning machine to play games.】
【Wang Xiaobao, I ♦ your ancestors!】
...
Lu Yibei read along the way, vaguely feeling that he had seen some of the words somewhere before, but after thinking for a long time, he couldn't remember.
With the experience of encountering the strange Old man just now, he went upstairs very slowly. Every time he climbed a floor, he would stop slightly, observe for a while, and only continue forward after confirming that no one was hiding upstairs or following him.
When he reached about the fourth floor, he looked out through the ventilation window in the corridor, saw that the Mad Old Man was still wandering in the open space outside the apartment, and secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
These old apartment buildings weren't tall, with a total of only six floors. Although Lu Yibei stopped and started along the way, it only took him about ten minutes to reach the top floor. He then used a corner of a wall to conceal himself and sent a message to Su Mi.
After sending the message, he walked out from his hiding place and stood in the corridor on the top floor, looking around.
The floor of the corridor was a mess, with yellowed newspapers, broken glass, and even some vegetables in a washbasin, which had turned into a lump of black mud.
The corridor of the apartment building was very long, with a total of sixteen rooms, arranged in a 'concave' shape. In the dim light, standing at one end of the corridor, it was even difficult to see the scene at the other end.
"From the fruit born of the Fusang Divine Tree in the past, the king of myriad magpies, the contender who refutes misfortune with money, the monarch of the Eight Hundred Li Peach Garden..."
Lu Yibei muttered, hoping for divine protection for a safe journey.
Although this prayer from his dream memory was incomplete, he didn't know which deity it was directed towards.
But he always felt it was much more effective than the temples around Hua City, which were mainly scenic areas where burning incense and praying primarily served as psychological comfort.
The doors of the first three rooms were open and completely empty. The occupants had left nothing behind when they moved out. Lu Yibei quickly finished exploring them and sent a message to Su Mi before heading to the fourth room.
The door of the fourth room was locked. Lu Yibei tried turning the doorknob a few times but got no response. He didn't dare to smash the door, fearing the noise would attract people hiding in the dark, so he had to retreat.
After a brief observation, he noticed that half of the window of the fourth room facing the corridor was broken. He walked up to it, observed it slightly, and decided the opening was large enough for one person to pass through, so he cautiously climbed in.
The moment he landed, Lu Yibei almost wanted to turn around and climb back out through the broken window.
The curtains in the room were tightly closed, the light was dim, the decaying furniture was covered in mold, cobwebs in the corners were thick with dust, and a very unpleasant smell hung in the air.
Of course, if it were just these things, it would be acceptable.
After all, no one had been here for over a decade, or even longer.
However, the fact that a dog's corpse was lying in the center of the living room was somewhat unacceptable.
The corpse had completely turned into a mummy, with its stark white canine teeth exposed beneath the decaying fur.
After countless generations of bacteria and mold had multiplied within its body, they too had met their demise.
The cement floor, which had no tiles, was covered in messy scratch marks, one by one, deepening and then fading, finally stopping beneath the dog's paws.
Looking at those scratch marks, Lu Yibei could even imagine how it had met its desperate end in hunger and loneliness after being forgotten here by its Master.
"From the fruit born of the Fusang Divine Tree in the past, the king of myriad magpies, the contender who refutes misfortune with money, the monarch of the Eight Hundred Li Peach Garden..."
As if performing a rite for the departed soul, Lu Yibei clasped his hands together and devoutly recited the prayer from earlier towards the dog's corpse.
Although he didn't know what the Power of that deity was, weren't deities supposed to protect spirits? Whether it worked or not, it didn't cost anything, so he might as well believe a little!
What's the harm in reciting it a few more times? Anyway, I'm not the one who's annoyed!
Hopefully, the dog will meet a good Master in its next life? Lu Yibei thought, and after sending a message to Su Mi, he continued his exploration.
Meanwhile, it was nighttime.
In the Taoyuanli Scenic Area, which had reopened to tourists, lights illuminated Queqiao Mountain, making it sparkle brilliantly.
Ju Meng, disguised as a scenic area staff member, mingled among the tourists, observing visitors praying for happy love lives or healthy offspring. By studying their wishes, she accelerated her progress in mastering her new Power.
Incidentally, if she found someone particularly pleasing to the eye, it wasn't out of the question to use the power of her Power to fulfill their wishes.
Suddenly, she sensed the faint prayer from the distant other side, looked out the window, and tilted her head with a puzzled expression.
"It's happening again! Who in the world is it? Are they out of their mind? This time, the object of prayer is actually... a dog?"
"Could it be that they want it to become a breeding machine like the stud dogs in dog farms?"
"They're insane!"
----
He quietly chanted the prayer a few times.
Lu Yibei composed himself, endured the unpleasant smell in the room, and began searching.
The furnishings in the room were mostly untouched; almost all the furniture was still there. A very strange painting hung next to the television.
The painting depicted a chaotic city. The lights flickered, rain and stones flew upwards, stars were underfoot, the city was in the sky, and an old banyan tree's roots grew as densely as its canopy...
All order had vanished, leaving only distortion and chaos in the city.
Lu Yibei vaguely felt that he had seen such a scene somewhere before. He paused for a moment, memorized the content of the painting, and then continued forward.
Everything in this room suggested that the family had left in a hurry.
It was as if they had decided to leave on the spur of the moment and never returned after they left.
Passing through the living room into the bedroom, the wardrobe was open, clothes were messily pulled out and lay scattered on the floor, becoming a breeding ground for mold.
The bed was a mess, with the quilt bundled up. Lu Yibei stared at the bundle, feeling as though something was hidden inside.
Logically, one shouldn't touch such eerie things; not touching them would prevent unexpected dangers.
However, in this situation, being too cautious and not triggering specific 'plot points' seemed to make it impossible to obtain enough clues.
What if the clue that could help me find the Xunzhen Mutual Aid Society was hidden in the quilt? Lu Yibei thought.
He hesitated for a moment, then, with a touch of apprehension, walked forward, grabbed a corner of the quilt, and pulled hard.
The next moment, dust flew up, and a black, foul-smelling object suddenly flew out from the quilt.
Lu Yibei was startled and stepped back two paces, staring intently.
It was the corpse of a bird. Judging from the feathers that hadn't completely decayed, it looked like a white dove.
Perhaps it was also a pet the family kept.
Lu Yibei, "..."
He had initially thought that the dog in the living room was starved to death simply because the family hadn't anticipated they would never return when they left.
But now, seeing the dove's corpse, he suddenly had a feeling of clarity, and a chill subtly rose up his spine.
The presence of this dove's corpse proved that the family knew they would never return when they left, so they didn't take anything with them.
Naturally, they couldn't take the pet dove and pet dog either.
A dog could be kept indoors, but a dove would fly away on its own if hungry and try to find food.
So, its Master chose to suffocate it in the quilt.
After reasonably speculating about the situation at the time, Lu Yibei couldn't help but curse in a low voice, "This ♦ person must have psychological issues, right? Even I, someone with suspected symptoms of mental illness, think this is perverted!"
He searched the room for a while longer.
When Lu Yibei came to the desk in another bedroom, he made a discovery.
An old-fashioned red rubber notebook lay open on the desk. A sentence was written in messy handwriting on the yellowed pages.
【Memories are deceptive; they only tell you things that are beneficial to yourself. Only when you leave your memories can you be free.】
This sentence struck Lu Yibei like a heavy hammer, causing his body to tremble slightly.
Since having that strange dream, he seemed to have been experiencing a deception of memory.
He frowned and flipped through the notebook, trying to find other information. Soon, he found another passage in the notebook.
【Some people will always be etched in your memory. Even if you forget their voice, forget their smile, forget their face, the feeling you have whenever you think of them will never change.】
Looking at this passage, Lu Yibei inexplicably thought of the people in his dream memory: Jiang Li, Ju Meng, Qingji, Bai Kai...
Lu Yibei patiently read through the entire notebook.
After a long time, he let out a long sigh.
"Hmph!"
Friendly Reminder: The Website is about to be revised, which may cause the loss of reading progress. Please save your "book shelf" and "reading record" in time (screenshots are recommended). We apologize for any inconvenience caused!
Besides those two paragraphs of somewhat bizarre words, there was no other information in the notebook; the rest were all work notes from the mine.
----
A moment later.
Lu Yibei quietly observed the broken window for a while, confirmed that the corridor was silent and the Mad Old Man was not lying in ambush outside, then climbed out the window and returned to the corridor. After adjusting her mood, she walked towards the remaining rooms.
The doors of several subsequent rooms were damaged, and those rooms were almost completely empty.
The door of the seventh room had completely fallen off and lay on the ground.
Her gaze passed through the doorway, and in the living room, Lu Yibei found a globe covered in strange markings and arrows.
The base of the globe was damaged, and the sphere had rolled into the corner of the living room, covered in thick dust. At first glance, she thought it was a human head and was almost scared enough to turn around and run.
Steadying herself, Lu Yibei tried hitting the globe with the iron rod, wanting to see if anything was hidden inside. Unexpectedly, with one strike, the globe bounced up, almost jumping into her arms and covering her in dust.
I have to say, the materials used by handicraft manufacturers back then were solid!
After sighing in her heart, Lu Yibei withdrew her attention from the globe and saw the strange painting on the wall of an empty bedroom.
This painting again? Lu Yibei frowned, walked into the room to search for a while, and soon came out dejectedly.
Inside the room, besides the globe and the strange painting, she did not find anything else.
She continued searching room by room, stopping occasionally to send Su Mi a message confirming her safety.
Finally, just as she was starting to think that Gu Qianqian's home might not be in this apartment building and was about to give up, she arrived at the room at the end of the corridor.
The window of the room was intact, locked, and even had window decorations, making it look like someone had been living there recently.
Just as Lu Yibei was contemplating how to get in, a cool breeze blew.
Accompanied by a soft creaking sound, the door of the room opened.
The door wasn't locked?
Lu Yibei looked at the slightly low doorway and the dark living room behind the door, feeling the atmosphere starting to become a little eerie.
She suppressed the gradually intensifying sense of oppression in her heart, rubbed the goosebumps on her arms, took a deep breath, stood at the doorway and observed back and forth for a while, and only entered the room after confirming that no one else was hiding inside.
The first thing she did upon entering was lock the main door. Then she opened the window lock, pulled the window open a crack, confirmed that the window could be opened, closed it again, and locked it.
This room was located at the end of the 'U'-shaped corridor. The positions of the door and window were staggered, so if someone wanted to break in, jumping out the window to escape could buy a little time.
After moving a table to block the door, Lu Yibei carefully observed the environment of the room.
The room's layout was simple, and the furniture was highly similar to the room where she found the notebook earlier, making one wonder if it was uniformly distributed by the cement factory.
After a brief look around the living room with no discoveries, Lu Yibei walked towards the bedroom.
The bedroom door was tightly shut. She pushed it gently twice but couldn't open it, unsure if it was locked or jammed by something.
Pressing her ear against the door and holding her breath to listen for a moment, after confirming there were no strange sounds inside, Lu Yibei tightened her grip on the iron rod and the plunger, stepped back two paces, and kicked the door hard.
Then...
With a "bang!" the door broke through, and nearly three-quarters of the door panel came off directly and fell into the bedroom.
The interior doors of the rooms in this apartment building were old wooden doors. Hua City is a city with high temperatures and considerable humidity year-round. Over time, these wooden doors decayed severely, so this situation was quite normal.
This is good too. Just tearing down the door means I don't have to worry about any inexplicable door-opening kills... Lu Yibei muttered to herself, bent down, and walked into the bedroom.
As soon as she entered the bedroom, she saw the eerie painting on the wall.
"This..." Lu Yibei frowned, muttering, "Why is this evil painting hanging everywhere? Could this painting have something to do with the Xunzhen Mutual Aid Society?"
One for everyone, placed at home for 'worship'. Hmm, it has the flavor of a cult!
Walking forward, Lu Yibei prepared to take the painting off the wall to study it carefully, but found that the frame was fixed to the wall with two nails.
The nails were small and already showed signs of rust...
Maybe I can try?
Lu Yibei examined the nails on the frame, walked to the side of the frame, inserted the iron rod she was holding into the gap between the frame and the wall, and pried it hard.
"Crack!"
Accompanied by a soft sound like wood breaking, the frame flew off, and something was brought along with the frame, flying out from the slightly hollowed-out wall, falling to the ground with a "Snap" sound.
Lu Yibei was stunned for a moment, waved her hand to disperse the «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» dust and musty smell in the air, and looked closely.
She saw a square black cloth bundle lying in the corner of the wall not far from her. One corner of the bundle had been lifted during its flight, revealing the corner of a notebook inside.
The style was the same as the notebook she had seen before.
It should have been uniformly distributed by the cement factory.
"A notebook hidden behind the picture frame?" Lu Yibei muttered, turning her head to look at the square hollow carved into the wall, her gaze slightly focused.
There must be something very important inside, otherwise it wouldn't have been hidden so carefully! frёeωebɳovel.com
She stepped forward, carefully used the iron rod in her hand to lift the black cloth bundle, and pushed the notebook towards her.
She bent down to pick up the notebook, left the bedroom, and went to the balcony.
She opened the first page of the notebook, and in the dim sunlight from outside the window, the first thing she could clearly see was a name on it.
"Cao Wei... Is that the name of the owner of this notebook?" Lu Yibei murmured.
Below the name, like a preface, a sentence was written.
【Open your eyes to see falsehood, close your eyes to find freedom】
"Close your eyes to find freedom, isn't that... dreaming?"
Lu Yibei pursed her lips and continued flipping through. The second page had a simple construction diagram drawn on it, and the table below recorded some data whose purpose was unclear. Amidst the large amount of data and diagrams, a sentence written in very small characters was hidden.
【I love this world, and I love my life, but they are all fake.】
She flipped two more pages, which were all data and diagrams related to work in the mine. And within these large amounts of diagrams, a sentence was hidden on almost every page.
From the content, it seemed like random thoughts recorded by the owner of the notebook during work breaks.
【Today, some people who called themselves Doctors came to the mine and took Old Luo away, but I can't figure out what illness he had. Was it just because he told everyone that this world is fake?】
【Today, Xiao Yang was also taken away by those Doctors. I went home, thinking about what happened during the day, and couldn't sleep at night. If they took Old Luo and Xiao Yang, they might not necessarily take me.】
...
The paragraphs of text revealed intense feelings of suppression, making one feel like there was a lump in their chest, unable to rise or fall.
Old Luo, Xiao Yang, and this "I", could they all be members of the Xunzhen Mutual Aid Society?
Were the people who took them away really Doctors?
If I continue to investigate, will I also be taken away? Lu Yibei thought with unease, and just as she was about to continue flipping through, there was a sound in the corridor.
"Clink!" A sound of metal colliding came.
It was very light, like an iron rod or some other metal scraping across the ground.
Hearing the sound, Lu Yibei immediately became alert, quickly closed the notebook and put it into her backpack, flashed into the blind spot of the balcony's view, concealed herself against the wall, tightened her grip on the plunger and iron rod, and listened attentively to the movement outside.
"Shhh— Shhh—!"
Someone was walking in the corridor, stepping on the grit formed by concrete and bricks on the ground, making subtle sounds.
Who could it be? Is it Gu Qianqian? Could it be that Mad Old Man from before?
Lu Yibei thought, pressed against the wall, and peeked out with one eye towards the corridor.
After just one glance, she quickly pulled her head back.
Through the window in the living room, she saw the Mad Old Man's tall and slightly hunched figure in the corridor, and the twisted, writhing black shadow behind him.
"..."
Damn it, he actually chased me here. This is troublesome now. I wonder if he's found me.
If he found me and rushed in to attack me, if I anticipate his move and hit him unexpectedly, I should have a high chance of winning, right? Lu Yibei thought.
Just as she was thinking, the faint footsteps in the corridor gradually faded away and soon disappeared completely.
The Mad Old Man seemed to have left.
Lu Yibei waited in her hiding place for a moment, then repeatedly poked her head out to look out the living room window until she was sure the Mad Old Man had really left.
However, just as she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a strange laugh suddenly came from below her.
"Heh heh—!"
