Free Web NovelChapter 29: Chapter 29: Apartment Meeting
Hearing this, Gao Tian already knew. The girl was the same one from the photograph that had floated out from the Shattered-Face Ghost’s ashes.
They had been a family of four who came to the big city seeking opportunity. Lured by cheap rent, they met a tragic end after moving into the Living Persons’ Apartment.
The parents died. The brother was killed during his third green text mission, his face peeled off to become a new ghost—the Shattered-Face Ghost. The vengeful spirits of the fourth floor took advantage of the sister’s vulnerability, and she willingly went upstairs, likely becoming one of them.
Her brother had loved his family deeply. Even as a ghost, he had carried a photograph with him. When he finally turned to ash, Gao Tian saw the photo and was hypnotically drawn into the Living Persons’ Apartment.
From the ceiling, the little girl’s voice was trailing off:
"There are lots of aunties and uncles on the fourth floor. The ghosts outside don’t dare come up here.
"In an age where vengeful spirits run rampant, the fourth floor is the safest, warmest place. That’s why I gave up on the second and third floors and chose to come up here.
"You’ll understand soon enough...
"Soon, you’ll choose to come up to the fourth floor, too. You’ll become just like me..."
...
Finally, the voice faded to a whisper, then disappeared completely.
The sound of marbles rolling on the floor vanished along with it.
Just as Gao Tian thought the Child Ghost from the fourth floor had left, a frantic knocking came from the door.
Logically, the person knocking should have been Xia Ta, rushing back. But Gao Tian didn’t hurry to open the door.
The timing was off.
Xia Ta had said on the phone that she’d be back within fifteen minutes. But in reality, the knock came less than five minutes after Gao Tian hung up. ’Could Xia Ta have gotten back that fast?’
What was even stranger...
As an adult woman about 160 centimeters tall, Xia Ta’s knock, considering her height and arm length, should land somewhere on the upper-middle part of the door.
However, judging by the sound and the vibrations in the doorframe, the knocking was coming from the lower-middle part of the door.
The person knocking was a child, about 120 centimeters tall!
It was possible the person outside wasn’t Xia Ta at all, but the child from the fourth floor, who had come straight down to knock on his third-floor door!
If residents of the fourth floor could come down, then no place in the entire Living Persons’ Apartment was truly safe anymore.
At that exact moment, the marbles on the floor, which had stopped rolling, began to make noise again.
For the first time, Gao Tian felt he was trapped between a rock and a hard place.
His Shattered-Face Ghost and Memory Ghost both required direct contact to be effective. But the vengeful spirit hadn’t even shown itself yet. If he accidentally triggered some rule that led to his death, he’d be killed before he could do anything.
His only hope was to stall until Xia Ta returned. If even she couldn’t resolve this, the Living Persons’ Apartment might truly be facing a total wipe.
At that critical moment, a loud BANG suddenly came from the door. A tan boot kicked a huge hole right through it. The foot pulled back, then struck a second time, then a third. The rickety door, battered by the monstrous force, finally CRASHED to the floor.
Job done.
A figure outside clapped her hands, and Xia Ta walked in, her eyes meeting Gao Tian’s.
"I was just knocking on the door for so long. Why didn’t you answer?
"I was worried something had happened to you."
Gao Tian was taken aback.
"How long were you knocking? And when you came over, did you see a child standing outside my door?"
Xia Ta replied,
"I didn’t see any child. The whole third floor was silent. There wasn’t anyone out there.
"And there was no sign of anyone coming down from the fourth-floor stairwell."
’This is wrong.’
’This is all wrong.’
Gao Tian pressed her, "When you were knocking just now, were you hitting the lower part of the door or the upper part?"
Xia Ta mimed the motion in the air.
"The upper part, of course.
"I’m not a child. Why would I deliberately bend over to knock on the lower part of the door?"
Gao Tian registered the two contradictions.
The knocking he had heard wasn’t Xia Ta’s.
And yet, at the exact same time, Xia Ta *had* been knocking.
They had been on opposite sides of the same door, but for that brief moment, it was as if they had been in different parallel worlds.
Regardless, once Xia Ta entered the room, the voice from upstairs, the knocking at the door, and the sound of the rolling marbles all vanished. The deathly still, cold room even seemed to warm up by a few degrees.
Xia Ta’s gaze first went to the ceiling. After confirming there was no sound from the fourth floor, she looked down and quickly spotted the two marbles in the bedroom, now lying still.
She picked one up with two fingers and held it up to the light for a closer look.
It was just an ordinary child’s toy, the kind you could buy online by the handful for a few bucks. For now, she couldn’t see anything special about it. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Xia Ta asked for confirmation again.
"Are you sure these marbles rolled down from upstairs and weren’t in your room to begin with?"
Her tone still held a hint of suspicion, as if she thought Gao Tian was hallucinating. This annoyed him.
"I’m sure.
"I’m not having paranoid delusions out of fear. If I were that scared of the fourth-floor ghosts, I wouldn’t have moved to the third floor specifically to monitor what was happening up there.
"The fourth floor is definitely starting to affect the third floor. It’s only a minor influence for now, but who’s to say this isn’t a sign they’re about to break through the apartment’s restrictions? If we ignore this, next time it might not be just two marbles they send down."
Xia Ta nodded, signaling that she fully believed him.
"Gao Tian, don’t get so worked up.
"I actually do believe you. Given your mental fortitude, something this minor wouldn’t be enough to make you crack.
"It’s just that this is a huge deal. If we confirm that the fourth-floor ghosts can reach the third floor, all of us third-floor residents will have to call an emergency meeting to decide how to handle it.
"Some of the few remaining third-floor residents might move down to the second floor. Our entire understanding of the Living Persons’ Apartment’s rules would have to change.
"After all, if even the Living Persons’ Apartment isn’t safe anymore, the last bit of faith many residents have might shatter. That would be the most terrifying outcome for us."
Gao Tian understood her concern. He didn’t dwell on the issue.
"So, when are we holding this third-floor meeting?"
Xia Ta glanced at the time on her phone.
"Jiang Yang and Yu Sheng aren’t here. The other third-floor residents are probably still at work.
"Let’s say around seven tonight. The permanent residents of the third floor will be back in the apartment by then, and a few of the older residents from the second floor—the ones with a high count of green text missions—will also come up to participate.
"After all, the descent of the fourth floor’s paranormal power will affect the entire Living Persons’ Apartment."
...
...
At 7:15 p.m., all the residents participating in the meeting gathered at the top of the third-floor stairs, in Xia Ta’s room.
Xia Ta had lived in this spot for three years without any strange incidents. She occasionally heard ravings and calls from the fourth floor, but they were mostly meaningless murmurs that had no real effect on the residents below.
Aside from Gao Tian and the three apartment administrators, seven households from the third floor and three from the second floor attended the meeting.
What surprised Gao Tian was that Boss Jin, who usually kept a respectful distance from apartment affairs, had also taken time out of his busy schedule to be there. ’Maybe he came to thank me for my performance during the second green text mission,’ he wondered.
Among the third-floor residents, the one who made the deepest impression on Gao Tian was a giant of a man, two meters tall. His name was Zhao Zhenjia. He was in his fifties, his stubble flecked with white. He took up the space of three people and was rumored to have been a professional athlete. His biceps alone were thicker than Xia Ta’s thighs.
Many of the residents knew each other, and after some brief pleasantries, the meeting began.
Everyone had been briefed on what had happened in Gao Tian’s room before arriving. Zhao Zhenjia was the first to speak, expressing his skepticism about Gao Tian’s personal experience.
"Look, young man, it’s not that I don’t believe you.
"Plenty of people have gone crazy or started hallucinating after coming to this apartment. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.
"I’d sooner believe the problem is with you, not the apartment itself. After all, if there was any problem with the floors below the fourth, we old-timers would all be long dead. The ghosts would have had plenty of opportunities to come down and kill us all, door to door. They wouldn’t have left us alive this long."
It was Xia Ta who came to Gao Tian’s defense.
"I was the first person to arrive at Room 313. Gao Tian was extremely tense, but his mental state was normal. He showed no signs of madness or hysteria.
"Furthermore, I found two marbles of unknown origin in his bedroom. It’s impossible that an adult brought them in, and Gao Tian had already told me that there was a little girl on the fourth floor constantly playing with marbles. It all adds up.
"A ghost from the fourth floor has successfully teleported an object downstairs for the first time. Even if it was just two little marbles."
She took the marbles from Gao Tian’s room out of her pocket and placed them where everyone could see, for all to inspect.
Everyone present passed the two marbles around, and after confirming they were just marbles, they were returned to Xia Ta’s hand.
Zhao Zhenjia, who inspected them last, said coolly,
"This doesn’t prove anything.
"These are just two ordinary marbles. Besides Mr. Gao, no one can prove they came from the fourth floor.
"Unless you can provide more concrete evidence, you’ll have a hard time convincing Old Zhao."
Just then, the unassuming Monk, Yu Sheng, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, gave a soft murmur of assent and spoke up:
"Amitabha.
"If it’s evidence you’re after, this humble Monk has something as well. May I be permitted to share it?"
