Because of Kanagawa Yume's boisterous, fearless personality, not many people were under the second bed.
The members of the Occult Club seemed to understand—
Cherish life, stay away from Kanagawa Yume.
But Kanagawa Yume knew Li Mo would time it perfectly, so there was still a short while before the ghosts descended. Talking was fine.
But now... not necessarily.
So Kanagawa Yume made a gesture of zipping her lips.
Signifying she wouldn't speak again.
In an instant, the brightness in the room plummeted. The human eye could no longer capture anything in the darkness.
But the sound was not obscured.
"Rustle... rustle..."
"Rustle... rustle..."
The sound of objects rubbing against each other came from all directions. Everyone looked left and right, but all they saw was vast darkness.
Li Mo's right hand grabbed Kanagawa Yume's. There was no other reason. The others could die, but Kanagawa Yume still held clues related to the secrets of the haunted manor. Before he figured it out, her survival value was much higher than the others.
Hide-and-seek was fine. It didn't demand much from the living. As long as they found a place to hide, behaved, made no sound, and caused no commotion, there was a high probability of survival.
But Red Light, Green Light was different. This game required reflexes.
When the ghost moves, the person cannot move; when the ghost is still, the person must immediately move to the next hiding place.
The ghosts' reactions were unquestionable. As long as it was a result within their cognitive judgment, the ghosts would immediately act on the judgment.
Therefore, if a ghost started moving while a person was fleeing, and the person didn't stop in time, the consequences were obvious.
"Creak—"
A strange sound emerged, followed by the same sound echoing repeatedly in the room.
The room was no longer pitch black. A strange, dim green light enveloped everything inside.
Li Mo forced his pupils to focus. Everyone covered their mouths.
Box after box toppled over. A withered, shrunken hand emerged from inside an empty box, clutching the wooden floor, its five blue-gray fingers digging in, creating five scratches for leverage.
This kind of ghost again.
Li Mo remembered it clearly. The ghost brought by the Knocking Ghost last night was very similar to this one.
It had a complete human form, a rotten body, as if gnawed on by vultures, with only a few pieces of rotting flesh clinging to its skeleton.
It also resembled the ghost Kanagawa Yume had described from her dream.
"Thump... thump..."
The ghost crawled out of the box, its hollow eye sockets like a pair of black holes.
It slowly rose, its feet on the floor, wandering aimlessly on the third floor.
They've touched the ground.
Li Mo confirmed this piece of information. In the past two days, besides the Knocking Ghost, it seemed no other ghost had had its feet on the ground.
This meant "Soul Summoning" could indeed allow fragmented souls to return and connect with reality.
On the fourth floor, there might really be the taboo of resurrection.
Li Mo shook his head, dismissing the thought. If resurrection were so casual, with no boundary between life and death, the rules of this world would have long collapsed.
So resurrection must not be a pure revival; there must be some unknown drawback.
Huh?
Li Mo noticed his two hands were being held. He glanced sideways. It was a member of the Occult Club.
Under the strange green light, they saw a deformed ghost crawl out of a box and wander the third floor.
Then, one ghost after another crawled out of the boxes, almost filling the entire third floor.
A strange phenomenon occurred. At first, the ghosts couldn't detect the people under the Ghost Bed, just treating it as one of their own.
But as the third floor became more and more crowded, the ghosts began to enter the area of the Ghost Bed, their feet facing it, as if they knew there were people underneath.
Li Mo made no response, his gaze shifting to Kanagawa Yume.
She could foresee death. Observing Kanagawa Yume's emotions was much more direct than observing the ghosts' behavior.
At this moment, the expression on Kanagawa Yume's face had changed slightly, but she showed no fear.
Bang!
Suddenly, the loud sound of a heavy object hitting the ground echoed through the silent, gloomy room.
Li Mo and the people hiding under the second Ghost Bed immediately looked towards the source of the sound.
The third Ghost Bed had been flipped over...
"..." Li Mo's gaze focused on the four living people, his eyes icy.
Instantly, the ghosts surrounding the second Ghost Bed walked towards the living people who were now exposed to their view.
Hundreds, thousands of eyeballs, glowing with a strange faint light, stared intently at the four living people before them.
"Ugh..."
The people hiding under the third Ghost Bed tried their best to suppress their fear, their bodies trembling uncontrollably. They were surrounded by ghosts.
It was as if the next second, the ghosts would open their bloody maws and bite off their necks, or like that classmate before, their heads would explode like fireworks.
Li Mo's expression was not good.
The ghosts weren't moving. This was their best chance to escape.
Whether it was running under another Ghost Bed, to the end of the corridor to the ninth room, or just finding a box to hide in, a hidden corner.
There was a chance to live.
But fear made them tremble, lose their wits, and cower in place, casting pleading gazes at Li Mo.
Their lips trembled, their mouths open as if to say something, but they dared not, afraid that the moment they spoke, the ghosts would act.
It was a good thing their mental fortitude was poor. If they hadn't been trembling so violently, they would probably have been instantly judged as not moving, and the ghosts' rules would have been triggered immediately.
And after they looked at Li Mo, some of the ghosts returned to the vicinity of the second Ghost Bed, a dense mass of corpse feet surrounding it.
Li Mo glanced sideways. Kanagawa Yume's expression changed from tense to terrified in an instant.
The second Ghost Bed was being targeted.
Without hesitation, Li Mo took out the Bizarre pistol, used one of his four remaining bullets, and fired at the person's heart.
Unsurprisingly, the bullet did not hit its target's heart, but grazed past their cheek.
This action attracted many ghosts, who all walked towards the second Ghost Bed.
The four living people who had been paralyzed on the spot finally reacted after Li Mo fired. Ghost still, person move. Ghost move, person still.
Thus, the moment the ghosts stopped by the Ghost Bed, a club member was the first to react, running towards the largest box in the corner.
The safest place is the most dangerous place!
The ghosts came out from here, so they definitely won't return for a short time.
Soon, the other three also woke up from their panic, forcing their trembling bodies to move.
Four people. The first hid in the box in the corner.
The second and third hid under the first Ghost Bed.
The last person ran towards the corridor. There was one last room there, Kanagawa Yume had told them.
As long as the candle was still burning, the ghosts couldn't kill anyone.
There must be a candle in the room, and the candle outside was enough to last until she opened the door.
The first three people didn't need much time to find their new hiding places.
The corridor was too far from the main hall. The fourth person hadn't reached her destination before the ghosts started moving again.
According to the rules, when the ghost moves, the person doesn't move.
But the moment the ghosts moved, the fourth person was still fleeing in a panic. When she looked back to see the ghosts' movements, she found a large group of them behind her, their faces ferocious, yet wearing strange smiles...
She's dead.
Li Mo mentally pronounced the death sentence for the fourth person.
The fourth person still held a shred of hope. She immediately stood still, thinking that as long as she remained motionless, the ghosts wouldn't kill her.
"Huh?"
The fourth person looked at herself in astonishment.
Why does the room feel bigger?
The next second, a ghost picked up her shrunken eyeball and placed it in its own eye socket.
At the last moment, the fourth person finally saw herself clearly. Her body was just a pile of rotten mud, and around her were a dozen ghosts, still holding her internal organs and intestines, greedily chewing.
A few minutes later, the person's body was divided among the ghosts, even her spine and skeleton were crushed.
The floor was a mess of organs and blood.
Kanagawa Yume and the others covered their mouths, stomach acid uncontrollably surging up, but they couldn't vomit, they could only swallow the nausea back down.
To the people of the Occult Club, this person was eaten by ghosts.
But to Li Mo, the ghosts' behavior didn't look like eating, but more like the cruelty and revenge he had personally experienced.
Eating was just one form of revenge and abuse.
Since these ghosts mostly came from living people, they naturally retained the subconsciousness of living people. The best way to treat an enemy was to eat them alive.
Pull out their tendons, break their spines, crush their leg bones, gouge out their internal organs, put them in their mouths bit by bit, pull out their blood vessels, suck the blood inside...
The fear on Kanagawa Yume's face gradually dissipated.
Soon, the ghosts that had been attracted by Li Mo's gunshot began to walk to other places.
For example... the box in the corner.
"Aahhh—"
"Don't come over, don't eat me!"
The piercing screams were deafening, making the dazed and dull crowd even more sober.
If they were caught by the ghosts, they would suffer the same fate...
At the same time, the people under the first Ghost Bed were even more panicked. After all, the ghosts had personally seen these two people crawl under this bed!
The people who had originally been hiding under the first Ghost Bed glared at the two newcomers, then remained silent, motionless, afraid to make a sound.
Now was not the time for blame. They could only pray that the ghosts had forgotten about it.
After the ghosts finished eating the second living person, the house fell into a brief silence.
It seemed they had lost their target, and the ghosts continued to wander.
Seeing this, the people under the bed breathed a sigh of relief.
Are we saved?
The ghosts don't seem to have noticed there are two more beds here.
Except for Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume, almost everyone in the Occult Club thought so.
Because that's how they had survived last night.
Kanagawa Yume would decide whether to believe based on Li Mo's actions, while Li Mo would judge whether the ghosts would attack based on Kanagawa Yume's abnormalities.
As long as Kanagawa Yume felt fear, he could conclude that the ghosts were about to attack, and the time interval would not exceed half a minute.
The death premonition deduced earlier came in handy on the third night.
Li Mo's gaze was still fixed on the walking corpse feet, his peripheral vision occasionally glancing at Kanagawa Yume.
After a long time, these ghosts still hadn't flipped over the second Ghost Bed, wandering aimlessly in the house.
Just when they thought the second game wouldn't proceed, the familiar sound of splintering wood echoed again.
"Crack..."
A tall black shadow stood at the entrance of the third-floor staircase, like a machine, its gaze dull.
Li Mo frowned slightly, revealing a subconscious instinct of impatience.
He had dealt with this Knocking Ghost too many times.
He knew that the Knocking Ghost had many rules within it, but as long as it didn't violate the floor's rules, its only rule left was knocking.
Currently, the Knocking Ghost's identity and origin were still the things Li Mo was most unclear about.
Li Mo even had some clues about the ninth room, but the Knocking Ghost seemed to have appeared out of thin air, with no traceable origin.
Li Mo pondered for a long time, one hand tightly gripping Kanagawa Yume's.
The Knocking Ghost appearing on the third floor was very wrong. He had to be prepared for the worst.
Sure enough, the moment the Knocking Ghost appeared, Kanagawa Yume's expression showed visible fear, her pupils trembling uncontrollably like a sunny-day doll after a rainstorm.
Wait...
Li Mo began to recall his memories of the first day. He vaguely remembered that the Knocking Ghost had first gone to the second floor.
Then it went downstairs to the first floor, killing Kanagawa Yume and himself.
On the second day, the Knocking Ghost also tried to enter the room he and Kanagawa Yume were in, and Li Mo hadn't heard any intelligence about the Knocking Ghost entering the eighth room after the candle went out.
So the Knocking Ghost was after him or Kanagawa Yume.
Plus, on the second day, Li Mo had let Kanagawa Yume sleep to test the survival rules for the third floor, and the Knocking Ghost had returned after leaving.
In the end, it had forced him to lose his last chance to restart, constantly using "Usurpation" to repair the injuries on Kanagawa Yume's body.
On the first and second days, the Knocking Ghost hadn't gone to the third floor, but it just had to come to the third floor when he and Kanagawa Yume came up.
This was unreasonable. If the Knocking Ghost's rules included patrolling the third floor, then it should have appeared at eight o'clock.
Not wait until now.
So it didn't have any relevant rules for the third floor, but was... tracking Kanagawa Yume or me. The purpose was unclear, but killing was undoubtedly one of them.
A persistent fellow.
"?"
Kanagawa Yume looked strangely at Li Mo, because she felt Li Mo pulling her arm, trying to get her out from under the Ghost Bed.
This was very dangerous, because outside the Ghost Bed was full of ghosts.
If the game of hide-and-seek failed, they could only play Red Light, Green Light with the ghosts, just like that person just now.
Losing meant being eaten clean.
And it was very easy to fail. The ghosts' reactions were always much faster than humans'.
Li Mo leaned close to Kanagawa Yume's ear and reminded her simply, "No other choice."
Kanagawa Yume pursed her lips, looked back, and saw the others casting pitying gazes at her.
Leaving the Ghost Bed was a nine-to-one chance of death. There was already a precedent. Going out at this time was no different from suicide.
Kanagawa Yume bit her lip, and finally resolutely followed Li Mo out from under the Ghost Bed.
She didn't know what had happened, but Kanagawa Yume was willing to trust Li Mo, to entrust her life into his hands.
Her heart also told her so.
The moment she left the Ghost Bed, holding Li Mo's hand and facing the all-too-familiar swarm of ghosts, that feeling of fear vanished without a trace, replaced by a sense of peace.