"Well... alright, your opinion of the Bloody Newspaper is pretty low. From what I've seen on the supernatural forums, people are really interested in it and rate it highly," Kanagawa Yume said honestly.
"That's only because you haven't encountered these things before, so you don't understand them."
"But the president and the others... they seem to really trust that Bloody Newspaper," Kanagawa Yume asked worriedly. Knowing the Bloody Newspaper was problematic, what kind of end would the Occult Club face by being led by the nose by it?
"I'll find a chance to deal with it, but now is not the time."
"For now, let's look around the first floor with me. Some things might have changed overnight. You cleaned the first floor before, so if you see anything different, be sure to remind me."
After everyone from the Occult Club had gone up to the second floor, Li Mo didn't rush to follow, even though the Bloody Newspaper in the video had stressed the importance of getting to the second floor quickly.
The rules were fixed, but the living could ascend to a higher floor.
Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume had survived the first night, so the stairs wouldn't disappear until the new round of the ritual began at 8:00 PM tonight.
So, the living didn't need to rush to the second floor at all. The first floor was relatively safe during the day. If they didn't seize this opportunity to find some clues, once they went to the second floor and the stairs vanished from their perception, they would never have a chance to uncover the truth of the first floor again.
"Okay, I'll listen to you. But so far, nothing looks different."
"Is that so? Then what about the paintings on the hall wall?"
Li Mo raised his hand and pointed to the first painting on the hall wall. Kanagawa Yume followed his finger and saw that the painting had become incredibly vivid.
But amidst the brilliant pigments, there were now faint, shadowy traces, as if human shadows had been painted into the picture.
"Is the painting a ghost? Or a Bizarre item?" Kanagawa Yume asked nervously, staying close behind Li Mo, not daring to wander off.
Even if it was relatively safe during the day, she had to make sure she wasn't a burden.
Li Mo walked up and touched it with his Sprout-enhanced left hand.
When he pulled it back, his fingers were covered in filthy grime and dust.
"We didn't clean the paintings on the hall wall," Kanagawa Yume immediately added, seeing Li Mo staring blankly.
Li Mo brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed again. The smell was identical to the one emanating from the Bloody Newspaper.
The two were undeniably connected.
The Bloody Newspaper had been so eager for everyone to leave the first floor and go to the second, probably because it was afraid they would discover the clues on the first floor.
"Should we destroy it?" Kanagawa Yume asked, pointing to the painting on the wall.
Li Mo shook his head and explained calmly:
"There are probably five identical paintings on the second floor. When we first go up, they'll likely look like they've been there for a long time, only revealing their true nature after a certain condition is met."
"The painting I perceive and the one I'm touching are not the same thing. The dust on my fingers proves the actual object isn't here. Destroying this won't have any effect on it."
"Let's check the eight rooms on the first floor."
Li Mo led the way, opening each room one by one with Kanagawa Yume. He held the thermometer in his right hand, its indicator hovering between "0" and "1".
Even when they entered the rooms, the thermometer gave no warning, and there was no drop in temperature.
"We haven't triggered the first-floor rules, so we can't observe the ghosts of the other world," Li Mo analyzed calmly.
This was not good news. People in the Outer World couldn't observe the ghosts, but the ghosts of the Inner World could influence, and even kill, those in the Outer World.
This meant they had no way to fight back or even sense it. Death would be instantaneous.
A ghost could be right in front of a living person, and they would be completely unaware, foolishly walking right up to it.
"Aren't we going to check the ninth room? The Bloody Newspaper warned not to go near the ninth room, but we went there last night. So the ninth room should have something the Bloody Newspaper is afraid of, maybe even its true form."
Kanagawa Yume proposed a bold idea, then stood quietly, waiting for Li Mo's answer.
She would only dare to do it if Li Mo agreed.
"No."
Li Mo rejected it flatly, without a hint of hesitation.
"The two who turned into ghosts, besides satisfying the 'Pretending to be a Ghost' rule, were also standing at the door of the ninth room at the time."
"Do you remember what you saw back then?"
Kanagawa Yume quickly recalled the scene: "I remember it clearly. One classmate was standing motionless at the end of the corridor, and the other was hiding behind her, their bodies overlapping, until I walked up and called out..."
Suddenly, Kanagawa Yume's words trailed off, and she looked at Li Mo in astonishment.
Li Mo stretched out his hand and pointed to where the Knocking Ghost had been standing.
It was in a straight line with the door of the ninth room.
"Here. The Knocking Ghost stopped here and went no further."
"Your classmate, who turned into a ghost by fulfilling the rule, also showed signs of being suppressed here."
"The ninth room does have something unknown, but it's definitely not the Bloody Newspaper's true form. It doesn't have the clout to make the Knocking Ghost stop in its tracks."
"The unknown factor is too great. Opening it rashly would very likely mean instant death."
After Li Mo patiently explained his view, a chill ran down Kanagawa Yume's spine.
"Then last night, we..."
"We were holding hands when we went there. I think the doorway was the absolute limit."
If Kanagawa Yume hadn't satisfied two rules last night, they might not have been able to walk to the door of the ninth room alive.
Before Kanagawa Yume could recover, Li Mo pulled her by the hand towards the main hall.
"The first floor is checked. Besides the paintings on the hall wall being possibly connected to the Bloody Newspaper, there are no more useful clues in the Outer World. It's time to go to the second floor."
"Okay."
The two walked to the staircase, Li Mo taking the first step.
It was an ordinary staircase, seemingly so fragile that a little force could easily break it.
But who knew if this haunted manor had a "destroying the building" instant-death rule? The reward was too small to be worth the risk.
The staircase was a spiral, a good six or seven meters high.
After about two minutes of climbing, they finally reached the second floor. The hall was empty, with only a few food scraps and some luggage.
The layout of the second floor was no different from the first. A central hall, a corridor, and nine rooms, even the distribution was just as even.
Without hesitation, Li Mo walked towards the paintings on the hall wall. He was about to reach out to verify his guess when a sharp rebuke stopped him.
"Stop! Don't touch anything here! Are you trying to get us all killed?"
Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume turned to see the Occult Club president standing furiously in a corner, an unhappy expression on her face as she strode towards them.
"Don't touch things in the haunted manor, especially in the main hall. What if you wake up other sealed ghosts? If someone dies, neither of us can take the responsibility. Isn't it better to just behave, follow the plan, wait until night, and wake up after a good sleep? Isn't it selfish to take risks for your own curiosity? It's not fair to the others who are being careful."
Standard rhetoric. Who's responsible if something goes wrong?
What you're doing is selfish. It's not fair to the others.
Li Mo's heart was unmoved. He tried to understand these words but found their logic riddled with holes.
He couldn't be bothered to argue. He had already guessed that the Bloody Newspaper had instructed them to wait here.
Even if it wasn't explicit, it was implied.
"President, we found a clue about the Bloody Newspaper. It might be related to this painting..."
Before Kanagawa Yume could finish, the president frowned. A few more people walked out from behind her, surrounding Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume.
"You don't need to worry about the Bloody Newspaper. We'll throw it away as soon as we use it to get out. What it is doesn't matter."
"Even if we knew, what's the use? We have to rely on its power now. Otherwise, we won't know the rules for the next three floors."
"If you touch things on the second floor and release a ghost, what if the Bloody Newspaper can't handle it?"
Li Mo retracted his hand. He no longer needed to touch it, because the dust falling from his fingertips already proved that the painting on the second floor wasn't the original either.
An unknown ghost, originally part of a painting, was locked into the Bloody Newspaper by some unknown rule. It was trying to get back to its original painting by deceiving people, thus completing itself.
He just didn't know which painting was the original. If he chose the wrong one and accidentally awakened the ghosts in the other paintings, that would be a big problem.
But with him here, the Bloody Newspaper wouldn't have a chance to complete itself.
Li Mo was extremely cautious about this type of intelligent Bizarre entity.
"Kanagawa, let's go check the guest rooms in the corridor."
Li Mo ignored the Occult Club members. They were already being led by the nose by the Bloody Newspaper, had lost their rational judgment, and were blindly following. Li Mo couldn't wake them up.
Even if he could, Li Mo didn't want to waste the time and energy.
He had a lot more to do. He had to be fully prepared before nightfall, or... the number of people who could survive tonight and reach the third floor could probably be counted on one hand.
"The eighth room is full. You can pick any of the first seven rooms, they're all empty," a member said.
"That's right, we're all staying in the eighth room. It's too crowded," another member added.
"..."
Kanagawa Yume fell silent. This time, she was silent for a long while, looking at the classmates before her as if they were strangers.
It was fine to claim the room first, but... why not share the information?
Were they that afraid that she and Li Mo were ghosts disguised as living people?
Even a little hint would have been nice... at least to let her know that her classmates were still concerned about "Kanagawa Yume's safety."
"It doesn't matter. We'll stay in the second room."
Li Mo walked past the Occult Club members and went straight to the second room in the corridor.
Kanagawa Yume paused for a moment, then followed, not saying a word as she passed her classmates.
Entering the room, Li Mo closed the door and began searching every corner with the thermometer.
The temperature on the thermometer still fluctuated between "0" and "1".
But Li Mo was certain that there was a ghost of unknown completeness in this room. If he didn't find it, who knew how long the candle would last at night? It might go out in a second.
He had to drive this ghost out during the day.
"Kanagawa."
"Yeah..."
"You seem to be in low spirits."
"A little, but I'm fine. Tell me, what do you need me to do?"
Kanagawa Yume shook her head forcefully, bracing herself, her eyes burning as she looked at Li Mo, waiting for instructions.
"You take this thermometer and search the room. Normally, when you first take it, it should show a normal reading of over twenty degrees. You need to take the thermometer and check everything in the room, don't miss anything. Once the thermometer shows a significant drop, move the corresponding object out into the corridor."
"If it drops to zero or below, leave the room immediately. I'll come find you."
"During this time, I'll be guarding outside until you come out. You need to close the door... and maintain a state of being alone, to satisfy the 'Being Alone' rule."
Li Mo stretched out his right hand and handed the thermometer to Kanagawa Yume.
As she took the thermometer, Kanagawa Yume noticed the reading on Li Mo's thermometer. It showed "1°"...
Escape if it's below zero... does that mean below zero represents a revived, active ghost?
Why is his '1°'?
"But won't I be taken to another world if I'm alone? That... world overrun with ghosts."
Li Mo didn't hide anything: "So there is a certain risk, because I'm not sure if triggering the 'Being Alone' rule during the day will directly send you to that world."
"But if we don't trigger the 'Being Alone' rule, we can't observe the ghost in the room, and we'll still die at night."
"The best-case scenario I can think of is that you trigger the 'Being Alone' rule, but because the rule is restricted by its active time, it won't pull you into the Inner World, but you'll be able to perceive the ghost's existence. Then, while the ghost is dormant during the day, you can bring it out of the room."
"There's only one ghost in the room."
Li Mo opened the door and walked out, but didn't immediately close it. Instead, he looked at Kanagawa Yume, observing her state.
Kanagawa Yume didn't disappoint him. Not only did she not feel fear, she didn't even show any unnecessary hesitation or dissatisfaction.
"Aren't you going to ask why I don't do it myself?" Based on reason, Li Mo thought Kanagawa Yume would ask why he wasn't doing it himself.
In her view, he was the professional. It was obviously unreasonable to throw this kind of task to an ordinary person.
Logically speaking, most people would think he was making Kanagawa Yume do it because he thought it was too dangerous, even though the reality was the exact opposite.
"You say, I do. A noob's gotta listen to the pro's call to win the game, right? I get it~~"
"Well then, see ya, Li Mo."
Kanagawa Yume gave a relieved smile, made a V-sign at Li Mo, then walked forward and slammed the door shut with a thud, all in one smooth motion.
Li Mo stood there stunned, his right hand unconsciously making the same gesture Kanagawa Yume had just made to him.
Searching his memory and cognition, Li Mo found the relevant meaning.
To commemorate and celebrate victory and success.
And to express happiness, confidence, and optimism.
But this oppressive atmosphere shouldn't have any natural happiness, confidence, or optimism.
Because this could very well be a one-way trip to death.
So, she was hiding her loneliness and solitude.
"..."
"Incomprehensible."
Li Mo didn't understand why she would do such a meaningless thing, but on the surface, at least Kanagawa Yume's mental fortitude was good. Maybe she could really do it.
---||---
Meanwhile, after closing the door, Kanagawa Yume couldn't hear a single sound from the corridor.
Perhaps she had already arrived in the Inner World. Fortunately, it was daytime, which was relatively safe.
"Hmm... is this thing really useful?"
Kanagawa Yume held up the thermometer, looking it up and down curiously, feeling like it was just an ordinary thermometer.
"Oh well, I'll trust him."
Kanagawa Yume got to work, carefully checking every part of the room with the thermometer. When she couldn't reach, she bounced on the bed, not even sparing the ceiling.
After searching for twenty minutes, the thermometer still hadn't changed, never dropping below twenty degrees, let alone zero or below.
"So tired, I'll just rest for a bit... No, no, now's not the time to rest, I have to find that ghost quickly!"
Slacking off is human nature, but staying in a world full of ghosts was obviously not a good choice.
Kanagawa Yume perked up and searched for another ten minutes, still with no results.
"So now all that's left is under the bed."
Kanagawa Yume swallowed, her throat bobbing.
Under the bed. The bed was too heavy to move; at least, a girl like her definitely couldn't move it.
This meant she had to get down on the floor and crawl to check under the bed.
"I hope I don't see anything weird..."
The corners of Kanagawa Yume's mouth twitched, her left eyelid twitching. She had a bad feeling that something bad was about to happen.
It couldn't... be that much of a coincidence, right?
Kanagawa Yume crawled on the floor and shone her flashlight under the bed. Aside from some sticky dust, there was nothing strange.
The naked eye obviously wouldn't see anything useful. She had to check it with the thermometer.
So Kanagawa Yume quickly slid under, placing the thermometer flat against the floor, checking it inch by inch.
"Huh?"
The thermometer's reading dropped at a visible rate, from the original twenty-something degrees to the teens.
Kanagawa Yume, half of her body under the bed, placed the thermometer closer to the center of the bed. The temperature actually dropped to five degrees.
At the same time, the underside of the bed behind her gradually twisted, and a deformed human face appeared on it.
Two eyes extended like a snail's tentacles towards Kanagawa Yume's back, connected to shattered eyeballs, spinning ceaselessly.
"..."
Kanagawa Yume suddenly felt a bone-chilling cold on her back, as if something was staring at the back of her head.
Slowly, she turned around and found nothing. The underside of the bed was made of wood, very ordinary.
"Hmm... is there something wrong with the floor?"
Kanagawa Yume turned back, her back still to the bed. The face on the underside of the bed was gone.
Because the face was now attached to the back of her head.
"Ugh..."
A strong wave of dizziness made Kanagawa Yume scramble out from under the bed. Her vision became increasingly blurry. The thermometer's reading had changed, but she couldn't see it clearly.
She could only bring the thermometer close to her eyes—
Zero degrees.
"How can this be?"
Just then, Kanagawa Yume suddenly remembered Li Mo's words: if the thermometer dropped to zero or below, leave the room immediately.
Just as Kanagawa Yume was about to run, her body refused to obey, kneeling down, her entire body pressing flat against the floor, crawling.
Like a snail, she writhed forward.
"...%&*."
Kanagawa Yume wanted to speak, but what came out was not human language, but a very strange cry she had never heard before.
Her body seemed to be controlled by another consciousness, completely crawling under the bed. Kanagawa Yume's remaining consciousness could only watch as she, with her back to the underside of the bed, propped herself up with her hands and feet, and something strange on her back sucked her onto the bed's base.
Before long, her hands became sticky and lost their fingers. She couldn't see her toes, but she had lost all feeling in them, unable to sense their existence.
A thick, disgusting slime secreted from her limbs, dripping onto the floor under the bed. The thermometer also fell, and the temperature rose slightly—five degrees.
She suddenly realized it wasn't the floor that was the problem, but the slime hidden in the dust on the floor.
It was obvious where the slime came from.
"...!?"
Kanagawa Yume found that her eyeballs had become very strange, like a teru teru bōzu hanging in the wind, swaying back and forth.
Her field of vision suddenly became very wide, and she could even see herself.
And her eyes were constantly moving...
Wait, I...
Kanagawa Yume was stunned. She saw herself turning into a grotesque mollusk—a humanoid snail.
The bed was a spiral shell, and her head had two pairs of tentacles. At the tips of the back tentacles were her eyeballs. Her mouth had also undergone a bizarre transformation, with a rasp-like radula inside, filled with disgusting, foul-smelling slime.
Gradually, Kanagawa Yume noticed another face on the back of her head, constantly moving. Through the eyes at the tips of the snail's tentacles, she saw the ghostly face had reached her right cheek, gradually replacing her original face.
Kanagawa Yume wanted to struggle, but she could do nothing.
The bed was the ghost Li Mo had mentioned. Going under the bed was like entering the ghost's body...
Am I going to die...
Kanagawa Yume stopped struggling; it was meaningless.
This ugly, unbearable body did not belong to her.
She couldn't even close her eyes.
In a daze, Kanagawa Yume saw some memories that didn't belong to it.
A knock on the door, and the living person sleeping on it was absorbed by the slime, assimilated one by one into snails, becoming a piece of the puzzle on the underside of the bed.
Is this the scene of previous victims meeting their end?
These images were all memories of this ghost.
Suddenly, Kanagawa Yume saw another, cleaner image. The previous memories were all in this filthy room.
But this time, the scene was exceptionally clean. The room had been cleaned spotlessly.
She couldn't see the speaker's face, only hear the voice—
"Seele, how about we play a game? You hide, hide until eight in the morning tomorrow. If you're not found, you win, okay?"
"Seele doesn't want to play this game... It's so dark... so empty..."
"..."
"..."
The conversation in the middle was blurry. By the time Kanagawa Yume came to her senses again, the middle part of the conversation had already been skipped.
All she knew was that the girl named Seele had agreed to the game.
Even though she was very afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, and very unwilling.
"There's nothing here, Seele will definitely be caught..."
"Under the bed... can I hide under the bed?"
Under the bed?
Oh no, this is bad...