The others quickly agreed, “Yes, yes, we trust you with it!”
Zhao Luan’s expression darkened. He hadn’t forgotten how, earlier in the day, they had all been afraid he would hoard the item when he took the journal. Now that it was in Li Zhi’s hands, they were all so quick to show their double standards. He had almost lost his life trying to summon the rain, and yet no one had even thanked him!
Angry, Zhao Luan slammed the door as he re-entered his room.
Chi Yi, who couldn’t stand him, muttered under her breath, “He’s got a smaller heart than a chicken! And he wants to be the team leader?”
The group quickly washed up and headed into their rooms. Afterward, the courtyard fell into silence. Li Zhi placed the exorcism knife next to her pillow, testing out how quickly she could grab it in case of danger. After a few adjustments, she found a more convenient position for it.
Watching from her bed, Chi Yi shuddered nervously. “Zhi Zhi, you don’t have sleepwalking issues, right? If you pull that knife out in the middle of the night and accidentally stab me, then shout, ‘I kill in my sleep,’ I’d die so unjustly!”
Li Zhi lay down. “Haven’t we shared a room before? Wouldn’t you know if I did?”
Chi Yi, with a serious expression, warned, “Don’t say things with double meanings like that! What if the viewers get the wrong idea?”
Viewers’ Comments:
【We’ve already misunderstood!】
【Say more, we love it!】
【These two are such comedians. It doesn’t even feel like they’re on a horror show. I’m shipping this CP now!】
【I’ll ship anything as long as it balances my diet. Count me in!】
…
The nights in these instances were always the most dangerous, but apart from sleeping, there wasn’t much else the players could do to deal with the night.
This time, however, all the players had passed the beginner-level instance, and each carried some kind of item—whether for protection or attack—so they were better equipped to handle the dangers compared to when they were novices.
Li Zhi, with her eyes closed, organized the clues they had gathered that day. Several points of suspicion lingered in her mind, and she decided she would investigate further the next day.
At first, Chi Yi mumbled a few responses as they discussed the clues, but soon, her words turned into the incoherent muttering of someone drifting off to sleep.
Just as Li Zhi was about to fall asleep herself, she heard the sound of rain outside. The droplets fell into the basins and bowls they had placed in the courtyard, making a soft, rhythmic ding-dong sound. After the containers were filled, the rain hitting the small puddles created a different kind of splash.
The rain, a type of white noise, was soothing and helped lull her toward sleep. But after her experience with the eerie cat cries in the last instance, Li Zhi remained subconsciously alert. So when she heard a sharp sound outside, different from the rain, she was instantly awake.
The room was pitch black. With the rain pouring down, even the moonlight was obscured, leaving only the dim red glow of a lantern swaying in the wind outside the courtyard, casting faint, flickering shadows.
The window near her bed was made of wooden lattice covered with paper, blocking her view of the courtyard. The sharp sound had been sudden and brief, disappearing almost as quickly as it had come. It might have been a trick of her mind, but Li Zhi was sure she had heard something—like an object being knocked over and hitting the ground with a sharp clatter.
Her hand instinctively went to the exorcism knife by her pillow. She sat quietly in the darkness, listening, but aside from the steady patter of rain, there were no other sounds.
After a long pause, Li Zhi slowly lay back down again, still holding the knife within reach.
According to the rules of horror movies, going out now to verify her suspicions would be as good as seeking death, so Li Zhi decided to wait until daylight.
She closed her eyes, trying to fall back asleep. Just as she drifted into a light slumber, she suddenly heard another noise.
This time, it was different from the earlier sharp sound—this one was dull and seemed to come from right beside her. Li Zhi snapped her eyes open and realized the sound came from Chi Yi, who was lying next to her. Chi Yi appeared to be trapped in a nightmare, making muffled sounds from her throat while her arms and legs thrashed about wildly.
It was too dark to see anything clearly. Li Zhi reached out to try to wake Chi Yi.
The moment her fingers touched Chi Yi’s shoulder, Li Zhi realized something was very wrong.
She had touched something wet, slimy, and cold. The sensation was unpleasant, as if it was something covered in mud. A strong stench of brackish water and rotting vegetation hit her nose, and under her fingers, the thing felt like a snake, slowly slithering and dragging itself, making faint, scraping sounds.
In an instant, Li Zhi grabbed the kitchen knife by her pillow with one hand while the other hand yanked the slimy thing hard, pulling it onto the empty bed beside them. In the dark, she swung the knife down without hesitation.
A high-pitched scream echoed from outside the window. Whatever she had cut off slithered away like a retreating tide, making a faint, rustling sound as it went.
At the same moment, Chi Yi suddenly shot up in bed, gasping for air. Her neck was already wrapped in the same slimy material, and if Li Zhi had been a second slower, Chi Yi might have been strangled to death in her sleep.
Chi Yi coughed and cried, “What is this thing?!”
Li Zhi jumped out of bed and fumbled in the dark to light the oil lamp. As the candlelight flickered to life, they both saw the bed was now covered in thick, black hair. Chi Yi, horrified, leaped off the bed with a scream.
“Why is there so much hair?!”
Li Zhi brought the oil lamp closer to inspect. The hair had clean, smooth ends, obviously where she had just cut through them. The strands were wet, still dripping with water and tangled with bits of aquatic plants, sprawled messily across the bed.
Chi Yi’s neck was still wrapped in the wet hair. She frantically ripped it off, her whole body breaking out in goosebumps.
The two exchanged a glance and, without speaking, both immediately thought of the former madam who had drowned herself in the lake.
Li Zhi moved the oil lamp over to the window and, sure enough, found damp watermarks in the cracks of the wooden lattice. It was clear now—the hair had crawled through from outside.
They could almost picture it: while they slept, the ghost had risen from the lake, dragging her swollen, waterlogged body and hair full of weeds, creeping through the courtyard and up to their window. The hair slithered like snakes, climbing the walls, squeezing through the cracks in the window, and silently wrapping itself around Chi Yi’s neck. Meanwhile, the ghost stood motionless outside, her silhouette cast by the red lantern against the thin paper window, waiting for them to be strangled in their sleep by her cursed hair.
If Li Zhi hadn’t woken up in time.
After thinking it over, Li Zhi pulled Chi Yi closer and used the oil lamp to check her ears. Chi Yi, still shaken, asked nervously, “What’s wrong?”
Li Zhi replied, “I’m just checking if any of the hair crawled into your ears. Do you feel anything strange?”
Chi Yi almost cried again. “I didn’t before, but now that you mention it, my throat feels itchy.”
After such an ordeal, neither of them dared to return to bed. They took the blankets and made a makeshift bed in the corner of the room. Surprisingly, despite everything, they ended up sleeping better on the floor than they had on the bed.
When they woke, the rain had stopped, and daylight filtered softly through the paper windows. Li Zhi, still lying in her bedding, heard voices from outside.
“Who knocked over my rain jar?!”
Li Zhi’s thoughts immediately flashed to the sound she had heard last night—the sharp clattering noise. She quickly crawled out from under the blankets.
After a quick wash, she stepped outside and found the other players already up. Scattered around the courtyard were various containers the players had left out to collect rainwater. One of the enamel jugs had been knocked over and lay on its side on the ground.
Li Zhi walked over, set the jug upright, and then kicked it. The jug rolled across the ground, making the exact same sound she had heard the night before.
The other players watched her curiously.
“Li Zhi, what are you doing?” one of them asked.
Li Zhi, deep in thought, glanced back at them and replied, “Just confirming something from last night.”
Li Zhi turned to the group and asked, “Did any of you hear this sound last night?”
The players exchanged confused glances. After a moment, two people hesitantly raised their hands. “I heard it.”
Li Zhi said, “Someone—or something—came into our courtyard last night.” She paused for a moment, then added carefully, “It could also have been a ghost.”
At that moment, Chi Yi stepped out and briefly recounted the events with the hair from the previous night. As she finished, everyone’s faces paled. “I thought the ghosts in these scenarios could only kill under certain conditions? We were all together yesterday. Did you trigger some kind of death condition?”
A pop singer in the group speculated, “Maybe it’s because the ghost got angry when Li Zhi threatened her with the knife during the possession, so she’s taking revenge now.”
Zhao Luan, who had just emerged from his room, frowned and asked, “You heard the sound of something knocking over, but there was a long gap before the hair crept into your room. What do you think she was doing in the courtyard during that time?”
Comedian Tian Mingjie joked, “Maybe she was standing by the window, admiring our sleeping faces one by one.”
Zhao Luan: “…”
Player: “That’s not funny at all! Can you turn off your comedian mode for a second?”
While they were talking, two of the players who had been sharing a room with another rushed out, panic-stricken. “Feng Zhenghao is missing!”
The group froze. With a dozen or so people standing around in the courtyard, no one had even noticed that someone was missing until they shouted.
“When we woke up, he was already gone from the room. At first, we thought he’d just gone outside, but we haven’t seen him anywhere! We’ve searched the entire place, and he’s nowhere to be found!”
There were only six rooms in total, and the courtyard wasn’t that big. Unless someone was deliberately hiding, there was no reason they wouldn’t have found him. And in an instance filled with danger, it was unthinkable that anyone would play hide-and-seek.
The players walked into the room Feng Zhenghao had shared with two others. It was just like the other rooms, showing no sign of a struggle or anything out of the ordinary. Remembering what Chi Yi had said about the deadly hair, they checked every corner around the windows and bed, but not a single strand of hair was found.
Even if the ghost’s hair had killed him, it should’ve left a body behind.
But there was nothing. He had vanished without a trace.
They didn’t even know what death condition had been triggered. One of Feng Zhenghao’s roommates began to sob. “He had an exorcism item on him. He told us about it.”
The fact that someone with an exorcism item could still be silently killed sent a wave of fear through the group. The atmosphere grew heavy, and the players became increasingly uneasy. Zhao Luan, seeing their pale, terrified faces, let out a mocking smile and was the first to head toward the exit.
Someone finally snapped out of their stupor and hurried to follow him. “Brother Luan, where are you going?”
Without looking back, Zhao Luan replied, “To have breakfast. Afterward, I’m heading to town to see if I can find any clues.”
No matter what they thought of Zhao Luan’s earlier behavior—pushing a teammate into danger—it was undeniable that he was highly capable. In the last instance, he had led the remaining players to victory. Whatever suspicion they had of him yesterday paled in comparison to the fear they now felt after seeing a teammate mysteriously vanish. Following Zhao Luan meant more exposure, and everyone believed they wouldn’t be the unlucky one to be sacrificed.
Besides, Zhao Luan wouldn’t be insane enough to push a teammate into danger every time, right?
As a result, half of the players followed him, while the others looked to Li Zhi. Without realizing it, the group had split into two factions.
Li Zhi said, “Let’s gather the rainwater and then go have breakfast.”
The dining hall wasn’t far from the guest rooms, and after walking the path yesterday, the players knew the way. When the servants saw them coming, they began to serve breakfast. True to the household’s wealth, the meal was sumptuous and extravagant, even for a simple breakfast.
As they were eating, Butler Chen suddenly burst into the room, his usually composed face twisted in panic. “What happened?! How did one of your people drown in the pond?”
“What?!”
Butler Chen, still catching his breath, gasped, “The person who came with you yesterday! We just found his body in the pond!”
Zhao Luan quickly stood up. “Take us there.”
Leaving their breakfast unfinished, the group hurried to the lotus-filled pond, where the missing Feng Zhenghao was now floating on the surface. His face, deathly pale, had swollen from being submerged in the water.