"On the first day, when you picked up this newspaper, it was already past 8:00 PM. Do not leave this house. Although it is full of danger, compared to the black fog outside, there are at least relatively safe places."
"You need to choose a room before 9:00 PM and enter with at least one other person. Remember, you must not be alone. When you enter, observe if the candle is flickering. If it is, leave the room immediately and enter another room with other people. Because the companion by your side may no longer be human..."
"Enter the corridor. The first to the eighth rooms are shelters. Do not, out of curiosity, go to the ninth room, not even to the door."
"After entering the room, do not leave. No matter what happens outside, do not go out. If nothing unexpected happens, you should be able to survive the first day safely. When it's 8:00 AM the next day, you will have temporary safety."
"On the second day, you need to be one step ahead of the others and go up to the second floor. Enter the eighth room, put down your luggage, announce that you will be sleeping in this room tonight, and invite as many people as possible to your room. This will greatly increase your chances of survival."
"Just like the first day, after 9:00 PM, you must not be alone, and you must not linger outside."
"Most of the ghosts on the first floor are in a dormant state. Even if they awaken, they may not come to the corridor. With the shielding of the candles, it is difficult for them to see you, unless you have done something bad."
"Most of the ghosts on the second floor are still in a dormant state, but at night, a 'guest' will come to the corridor on the second floor. If you run into it, you will surely die!"
"This is all I know. I hope you can survive and write the content for the third day..."
"That's all. That's what the Bloody Newspaper said in the video. So, you really want it, don't you?" Kanagawa Yume lay on the bed, smiling sideways, propping her head up with one hand, and looking at Li Mo with a grin.
However, Li Mo did not show the surprised or curious expression she had expected.
"You have to know, these intelligent ghosts are never good things. They won't help the living for no reason."
"Where there is gain, there must be loss." Li Mo shared his opinion. And most of the time, what was lost was life.
Kanagawa Yume asked, "Then what's the point of the Bloody Newspaper saying all this? If it wants to kill the user, wouldn't it be easier to just not provide any help?"
Li Mo stretched out his hand and pointed to the notebook on the bedside table. "Open it, and ask the question you want an answer to."
"Oh." Kanagawa Yume turned over, stretched out her hand with difficulty to grab the notebook from the bedside table, placed it on the bed, and opened it to the first page.
"Ahem..." After two light coughs, Kanagawa Yume became very solemn and serious, and asked in a strained, formal voice: "Oh, mysterious diary, please answer me, is my future other half male or female..."
[...]
"Huh? Why aren't there any words appearing? Is your diary a fake?" Kanagawa Yume pointed to the empty page above, where not a single word had appeared.
"Because it never answers meaningless questions. The question you asked has no reward for it, so it won't answer."
"This is the true nature of Bizarre items. The true purpose of the Bloody Newspaper is unknown, but it definitely has bad intentions," Li Mo explained calmly to Kanagawa Yume.
The next second, Kanagawa Yume completely ignored Li Mo's words and turned to ask again: "Oh, mysterious, great, and noble diary, please answer me, where does my future other half come from..."
Li Mo shook his head and picked up the Bizarre pistol, preparing to search the room for any clues. In his opinion, Kanagawa Yume's questions were pointless. Plus, she was just an ordinary person, so it would be difficult for the notebook to make use of her. She couldn't provide enough value for the notebook, so it wouldn't answer.
"Huh? What a strange answer. What does it mean, 'from outside this world, and already dead'? Is my future other half on the road to the underworld? Are you cursing me! You son of a bitch! Spits!"
"..."
"Give it to me." Li Mo immediately took the notebook from Kanagawa Yume's hand, wiped the saliva off it, and looked at it carefully. It was true.
"Mingyue, is your diary a little... slow?"
"Let's put that aside for now. If nothing unexpected happens, we should be able to see your classmates tomorrow."
"At 8:00 AM, I'll see if I can send you all out early." Li Mo closed the notebook and looked at the small and cute Kanagawa Yume again.
"If necessary, I'll send you out first."
"Huh?" Kanagawa Yume's mouth fell open, and she stared at Li Mo's gloomy face in a daze.
"..."
Silence. Silence. The room was filled with a silent silence that echoed in their ears.
"You like me? If you like me, just say it. Hiding it is so disgusting!" Kanagawa Yume blurted out an extreme statement.
Li Mo didn't answer directly, because there was no need. The first page of the notebook had actively answered her question, which meant that her existence might be a crucial step in the notebook's plan to set a trap for him. The best choice was to send her out, so that the notebook's plan would be missing a key step, and it would need to answer Li Mo's questions a few more times to achieve its goal.
As for how she saw him, it didn't matter.
"Hey, why aren't you talking? Are you shy? No way, no way, is there really someone who gets so shy they can't speak after talking to a girl for a few minutes?" Kanagawa Yume actively moved closer, her eyes narrowed in a playful tease.
"I'm going to start checking the room. You'd better go back to bed and not do anything." Li Mo pressed the muzzle of the gun against her lower abdomen, and Kanagawa Yume immediately became much more obedient, smacking her lips and saying, "If you can't take a joke, don't play."
Li Mo began to sort out his thoughts. He had a lot of clues now, but they were very messy and needed to be organized.
At 8:00 PM, the black fog would rise. At 9:00 PM, the Bizarre entities in the haunted manor would be greatly awakened, and the higher the floor, the greater the probability of awakening.
The corridor was relatively safe, the rooms were relatively safe, and the candles shielded and suppressed low-level ghosts.
There was a door-knocking ghost in the black fog chasing him, and its whereabouts were now unknown.
There was a Bloody Newspaper in the haunted manor, which seemed to have the same function as his notebook, but it was strange in an indescribable way. It was impossible for Bizarre items to be identical.
Kanagawa Yume might be an excellent pawn for the notebook.
The ninth room in the corridor was very dangerous, and it was suspected that a very terrifying Bizarre entity was imprisoned there.
To survive after going to the second floor, most of the living people needed to gather in one room, but this clue came from the Bloody Newspaper and was not credible, so it needed to be verified.
At night on the second floor, a ghost would appear in the corridor. The living could not leave their rooms like on the first floor, otherwise they would run into the ghost and trigger a death rule, dying immediately.
Being alone was not allowed in the haunted manor.
Pretending to be a ghost was not allowed in the haunted manor.
"It's 11:50 PM. The candle is two-thirds full." Li Mo walked back and forth in the room, carefully checking every corner, but still found nothing strange. But this was unreasonable. The candle outside the wall resisted the ghosts outside, and the candle inside resisted the ghosts inside. If there were no ghosts inside, why would the candle, a Bizarre item, be consumed?
"What are you looking for?"
"A ghost."
"Huh? There's a ghost in the room? Aren't rooms supposed to be ghost-free?"
"Mm." Li Mo was too lazy to explain. He patiently checked again, more carefully than last time, tearing open every corner and every crack to look. Despite this, Li Mo still found nothing, no trace of any ghost.
It was too strange.
"Aren't you tired? I'm so sleepy..." Kanagawa Yume suddenly said.
"If you're tired, go to sleep." Li Mo replied perfunctorily, holding the thermometer tightly in his hand and pacing around the room. The thermometer showed that the temperature was always at zero degrees and was relatively stable, which indirectly proved that the biggest Bizarre entity in the room was probably Li Mo himself, because his body would gradually be polluted after restarting.
"Am I overthinking it? There are no ghosts in the room, or am I being judged as a ghost?"
"No, according to previous examples, I will only be judged as a ghost after dying three times, which is when I can use 'Usurpation'."
"I'm not using any Bizarre power now, nor have I been subjected to too much external pollution. I can feel my heart beating slowly, the blood flowing through my veins, maintaining the extremely fragile characteristics of a human."
"If I can't find it, I'll just keep watch." Li Mo brought a stool and placed it at the door, sitting on it with the thermometer in one hand and the Bizarre pistol in the other, guarding the door.
Time passed minute by minute. A rustling sound came from outside the corridor. Li Mo focused all his attention on the door, listening carefully to the footsteps outside. They were very heavy, like a beast stepping on the fragile, worn wooden floor, each step mixed with the sound of cracking wood.
"Thud... thud... thud..."
"It went upstairs?" Li Mo was very confused. He remembered Kanagawa Yume saying, and had also gotten an answer from the notebook that was not a lie, that the stairs would only appear after surviving the first day.
The notebook wouldn't lie, so there was only one possibility: the one who went upstairs was the ghost from the black fog.
Li Mo recalled the memory of fleeing in the black fog. After getting Mo's memory, Li Mo was extremely clear about every detail of all his past experiences. A three-meter-tall, wide black shadow was quickly shuttling through the black fog. Behind it were countless blurry black shadows, most of which were similar in shape to living people. So there was a real "Night Parade of a Hundred Demons" in the black fog?
But if there were hundreds or thousands of ghosts, he should have been killed by triggering a rule long ago, and would have had no chance to escape to the haunted manor. So what were those ghost-like things in the black fog?
"I don't have time for that now. I just have to guard this door. This room is my guarantee of safety."
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" A knocking sound came from above, very faint. Li Mo remembered that he had died before in the notebook's description, and he had heard a knocking sound before he died, and then was killed by a ghost. But it wasn't his door that was being knocked on, so he should be safe.
The target of the sound was not him. The knocking ghost couldn't possibly kill everyone who heard the knocking, right?
"The guest rooms and corridor on the second floor are right above? The layout is exactly the same... very strange."
"It stopped?" Li Mo noticed that the knocking from above had stopped abruptly, after only three knocks. The knocking ghost ignored the shielding and suppression of the candles, and walked a few more steps down the corridor on the second floor, arriving at the second room on the second floor, which was the guest room corresponding to Li Mo's position on the second floor.
The next second, the knocking sound came again.
"Bang!" Only one knock.
Then the knocking ghost walked a few more steps and came to the third room on the second floor.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" Four knocks.
"Three knocks, one knock, four knocks..." Li Mo carefully recorded the knocking sounds from above. His hearing was exceptionally sharp after dying twice.
Soon, the knocking ghost came to the eighth room, which was also the key room for Yamashita Tetsuya to survive, as indicated by the Bloody Newspaper...
Suddenly, a chaotic and noisy knocking sound, like raindrops, frantically rang out on the ceiling above Li Mo.
"Bang bang bang bang bang... bang bang bang!!!" Thirty-two knocks... What... did that mean?
In the first seven rooms, the room with the most knocks was the sixth room, with seven knocks. The eighth room had more knocks than the first seven rooms combined. Li Mo looked around at the size of the room. If one knock killed one living person, then thirty-two knocks could almost kill everyone in the room.
The Bloody Newspaper was lying!
"Hiding lies in the truth? No, I can't draw a conclusion yet. Unless I can prove that the knocking sound is the rule for killing, the rule of the Bloody Newspaper is still a mystery."
"Maybe the knocking sound is the key to surviving the second night and reaching the third floor. After all, the first sentence of the Bloody Newspaper was—'I am you from two days in the future, and I am telling you what will happen through this newspaper. In two days, you will be killed by a ghost. To survive, you must remember every word I say.'"
"The 'guest' mentioned in the Bloody Newspaper must be this knocking ghost."
"This ghost almost ignored all the candles outside the corridor. The human-spider that had eaten so many people was affected to some extent, but this guy was like a ghost that was fine."
"If I leave the room, I'll probably be killed instantly, without even a chance to resist." The soundproofing between floors was not good. The house, worn down by time, was very dilapidated, and the floor was very fragile. Li Mo heard the sound of the corridor floor being stepped on and breaking, but he didn't hear the sound of the door breaking apart.
Knocking thirty-two times without breaking it meant that the door could effectively resist the knocking ghost.
Li Mo noted down the knocking sounds he heard tonight. If nothing else happened, he would go to the second floor tomorrow morning and check out the eighth room to see what was inside that made the knocking ghost knock thirty-two times repeatedly.
There must be a reason for the Bizarre paranormal rules. There were no inexplicable behaviors, especially such deliberate ones. It was hard not to make Li Mo think of something.
"It seems that tonight is over..."
Before Li Mo could finish, the room suddenly plunged into darkness.
"What's going on?" Li Mo didn't turn on his phone's light, because that would instantly attract the ghosts on the first floor. The candle had suddenly gone out for no reason, which meant that the room Li Mo was in was no longer a shelter. If a ghost wandered into the corridor, it would definitely find him. He had to move immediately.
"Kanagawa, Kanagawa..." Li Mo called out a few times, but Kanagawa Yume's eyes were still tightly shut, as if she had fallen into a deep sleep. There was no time for Li Mo to wake her. After packing up his Bizarre items, Li Mo carried Kanagawa Yume on his back and kicked open the door.
The corridor outside was slightly dim, but at least the candles were still burning. However, the light didn't last long and suddenly went out.
"The candles outside the wall went out too? Damn it! That mess of hair?" Li Mo suddenly remembered the true form of the human-spider, a mess of black hair wrapped around the sconce. The candle going out meant that this ghost that could seize the wisdom of the living had escaped and escaped into the shadows.
The Bizarre pistol would also be unable to cause effective damage to it.
"Tap tap tap... tap tap tap..." Frequent footsteps came from the main hall, constantly approaching the corridor.
"No time to deal with that ghost now, move rooms!" Li Mo carried the sleeping Kanagawa Yume on his back and rushed into the nearest third room. Fortunately, the candle inside was intact.
"Saved?" Li Mo walked into the room and was about to close the door when the small space was swallowed by a thick, ink-like darkness, with no light at all.
"What's going on? This is the second time." Li Mo's mind raced, trying to analyze what had happened to make the candle in the room go out instantly. There was only one possibility for the candle to go out: it was used to suppress a ghost and was constantly consumed until it was exhausted.
There had never been a precedent of it going out instantly, or rather...
"I'm being targeted by a very terrifying ghost."
"So even if I go into the fourth room, or the fifth room, the result will be the same, and it will just waste time." Li Mo didn't hesitate. He immediately kicked the door open and ran towards the eighth room.
As he ran through the corridor, every time Li Mo passed a sconce, the candle would go out. Gradually, the corridor plunged into an endless, deep darkness. Like hope, it was swallowed up without leaving a trace of light...
"I can't go into the ninth room. The eighth room is my last chance."
"What on earth happened?" Everything happened too suddenly. Li Mo's on-the-spot judgment didn't leave him time to think about the reason. But when he only had one path to take and didn't have to think about what to do next, and could focus his thoughts on the reason why the candles went out, he suddenly realized the truth.
The truth that he could have easily touched, but had subconsciously ignored because of the notebook's hints. The rules were absolute. There was only one reason for the candle to go out: it had encountered a ghost.
He had checked the room dozens of times, the corners, the peeling walls, the cracks, the small holes... The only thing he had missed that was most likely a ghost was Kanagawa Yume.
The person on his back was a ghost.
"I'm... alone?"
Before Li Mo could turn around, a pair of exquisite, fair hands reached out from behind him, gently caressing his chin, then his neck, and finally his cheeks. A gentle caress was not enough. The ghost behind him hugged him tightly, like a girlfriend in a passionate love affair.
An ethereal and cold voice was right next to his ear. The thermometer's temperature dropped crazily. Li Mo's ear was bitten by freezing teeth.
"̸̝̗̝̪̱̇́̉̿̈́I̸̘̿ ̴̺̝̩͙͖̾̿͒L̶̛̜̙̃̍̓͠o̶͈̘͔͑̈́͗̄̚v̶̯͂͐̃͘e̶̡̙̪͛̈͑ ̶̛̗̙͈̜̤͐́̏̄Y̵̺̞͆̍͂õ̶̤͍̓̑̑u̸͙̿̎͘͝ ̷̪͕̝̜́͘͝t̶̟̼̜̯͊͑h̸͕̊̏͝e̶͔̲͆ͅ ̴̢̦͓̳̓̐M̷̗̺̱̐ö̴̰̥̰́̒͛͋͜s̸̨̹̙̗̝͋̊̔͋͐t̶̤̤̮̫̓͜͠.̶̱̰̦͋͊͝.̴͈͔̩̠̈́̇̒̀͜͠.̶̨̗̤̫̐̒̓̑"̸̢̭͈̦̆͆̄̑