The ghosts crawling out of the boxes wandered around, sizing up Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume. They stretched out their rotting, foul-smelling corpse hands, yet left no marks as they had before.
Bound by the rules, they couldn't harm Li Mo or Kanagawa Yume.
Li Mo's eyes were like pools of stagnant water, his murky eyeballs constantly turning, observing the movement patterns of each ghost. His right hand held Kanagawa Yume's, ready to move at any moment.
Kanagawa Yume's reactions weren't fast enough, but his were. Infinitely close to being a ghost himself, free from the interference of human emotion, his actions and thoughts were active and sharp.
If the ghosts stopped, Li Mo would immediately pull Kanagawa Yume and move.
At that moment, Kanagawa Yume, being led by the hand, took a deep breath. She lowered her head and stole a glance at Li Mo's profile, then re-examined her own strange state.
What a strange feeling...
I should be feeling terrified right now.
The ferocious-looking ghosts before her had slaughtered her countless times in her dreams. In those dreams, she was in agony, trembling uncontrollably with fear.
But now, these ghosts were real, right in front of her, and she didn't feel a shred of fear.
Is it because...
He's here?
The people under the Ghost Bed watched with trepidation. If Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume's bodies so much as trembled, these moving ghosts would instantly swarm them, devouring them completely.
Li Mo couldn't feel fear, and Kanagawa Yume, without her instinctual death premonition triggering, had also lost her perception of fear.
Therefore, the two could remain perfectly still, in a state of suspended animation.
Suddenly, Li Mo pulled on Kanagawa Yume's left hand, breaking her out of her stillness.
Before Kanagawa Yume could react, she was led, step by step, towards the end of the corridor.
Kanagawa Yume looked back to observe the ghosts and found that they had all stopped. No wonder Li Mo had broken his stillness so quickly.
But this kind of reaction...
It was a bit exaggerated, almost synchronized with the ghosts' behavior.
As a top-tier FPS player, Kanagawa Yume was confident in her reactions, but in this game of reflexes, she didn't seem to have the confidence to survive on her own.
To move the moment the ghost stopped, to stop the moment the ghost moved—neither was something a living person's reaction time could achieve.
So cold...
Kanagawa Yume felt a bone-chilling cold from the left hand Li Mo was holding, a cold that spread through her skin to every part of her body.
It was like holding a block of ice.
But she understood that to survive, on top of the game of "Red Light, Green Light," she had to replicate the process from the first night.
Hold hands, and walk to the end of the ninth room.
"..."
Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume walked slowly, ready to stop at any moment to avoid triggering the rule.
Creak...
The moment the sound of bones grinding echoed, Li Mo pulled Kanagawa Yume to a halt. The two of them became like statues, standing silently in place.
The ghosts gathered around, circling and徘徊 them.
Li Mo was well aware that these ghosts posed no threat to him. As long as he followed the rules of the third-floor game, they couldn't harm the living.
But there was one strange ghost that made Li Mo unable to let down his guard.
Crack... crack...
The sound of the floor splintering came from behind him. With every step the Knocking Ghost took, it left a shattered footprint in its wake.
Soon, the Knocking Ghost walked up behind Li Mo, standing motionless on his shadow.
The black shadow was very tall, several times Li Mo's size. Standing behind him, it blocked out a good deal of the third floor's strange green light.
The Knocking Ghost stood there quietly on Li Mo's shadow, its deep, dark eye sockets almost condensed into a black hole.
"..."
Then, the ghosts stopped, and Li Mo led Kanagawa Yume towards the door of the ninth room.
But strangely, the identical ghosts stopped, but the Knocking Ghost did not.
Kanagawa Yume tugged on Li Mo, giving him a puzzled look.
But Li Mo didn't stop. The Knocking Ghost was special; it couldn't be treated as a regular ghost.
His narrow escape on the first day had given Li Mo a rough understanding that the Knocking Ghost had its own unique killing rules that didn't belong to the haunted manor. Therefore, the game of "Red Light, Green Light" on the third floor couldn't use the Knocking Ghost as a reference.
If he and Kanagawa Yume stopped now because the Knocking Ghost was moving, they would undoubtedly face a counterattack from the hundreds, even thousands of ghosts on the third floor.
It was a gamble with no room for error.
Kanagawa Yume dutifully let Li Mo lead her forward, not making any unusual movements.
Crack... crack...
With every step Li Mo took forward with Kanagawa Yume, the Knocking Ghost would follow, crushing the floorboards and making a clear, piercing sound.
Is it imitating me?
Li Mo recalled the Knocking Ghost's walking pace and frequency. It was identical to his own, as if a person's space-time had been split in two.
With this thought, Li Mo immediately changed his walking habit to prevent the Knocking Ghost from perfectly imitating him.
Who knew what kind of ghost it had inside it that killed by imitating a living person's behavior? The Knocking Ghost had numerous rules within it; Li Mo couldn't bet that imitation wasn't a killing rule.
In the Previous Era, Li Mo had encountered a ghost that killed by imitating others. But because that ghost had strong limitations and was relatively docile, it was almost impossible for it to spread. However, dealing with it was quite troublesome.
At that time, he lacked a decisive method, so he had just discarded it in a desolate, sunless place, letting it wander in eternal solitude and darkness.
Although the behavior rule didn't kill directly, once it completely imitated all of a person's habits and behaviors, it would directly replace the target.
If it weren't for the fact that imitation took a very long time, for an ordinary person, the ghost wouldn't have finished imitating before they died of old age or in some natural or man-made disaster.
Unless the living person willingly let it imitate them.
Returning to his thoughts, Li Mo focused his attention, no longer staring at the Knocking Ghost.
According to the rules of "Red Light, Green Light," he had to stop immediately at any sign of movement from the ghost, and move immediately when the ghost suddenly froze.
As long as they reached the door of the ninth room, the Knocking Ghost and these identical ghosts naturally couldn't get close to them.
It was just...
Li Mo remembered his risky entry into the domain of the ninth room during the day. He had felt very unwell.
His soul had felt like it was about to be torn out.
The Misfortune Ghost hadn't triggered its rule, his Sprout-enhanced left hand hadn't reacted, his whole body was in pain, only his ghost-like left hand couldn't feel it.
But soon, Li Mo would be able to verify what the domain of the ninth room affected.
"..."
"..."
Kanagawa Yume took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling slightly.
The ninth room was right in front of them. A few more steps and they would be safe.
But why did she have a faint sense of unease...?
The Knocking Ghost stopped in the middle of the corridor, not continuing forward.
The ghost swarm also stopped in the corridor, seemingly in a frozen state from the game of "Red Light, Green Light"...
They had arrived.
Seeing that the ghost swarm had stopped, Li Mo prepared to lead Kanagawa Yume into the domain of the ninth room.
The moment he took the first step, a chilling cold came from behind him. The extremely low temperature difference almost made Kanagawa Yume's body tremble uncontrollably.
Li Mo quickly turned around and found all the ghosts in the swarm showing ferocious and playful smiles.
I was deceived. They were pretending to be frozen just now, but in reality, they hadn't completely stopped. Li Mo saw through the ghost swarm's cunning trick.
Why?
Why did this swarm of ghosts suddenly gain human intelligence? The ability to deceive?
Without hesitation, with the ninth room right in front of them, Li Mo wanted to immediately pull Kanagawa Yume into its domain.
But when he tried to pull her, he found that Kanagawa Yume was standing still, motionless, her body as if turned to ice.
Li Mo didn't delay. He decisively judged that he would have to force her in.
In his thrice-dead state, his physical fitness far surpassed all the Herrschers below Finality. Anything that could be solved with strength was not a problem.
However, Li Mo failed.
Kanagawa Yume seemed to be bound by some kind of restraining rule. Triggering the rule, she was firmly locked in place. No matter how hard Li Mo pulled, he couldn't move her.
He wasn't fighting against gravity, but against a rule.
The only thing that could deal with a Bizarre rule was another Bizarre rule.
"Mur... der... er..."
"Mur... der... er..."
"Mur... der... er..."
"Why... are you... still... alive..."
"Why... are you... still... alive..."
"Why... are you... still... alive..."
The ghost swarm behind the Knocking Ghost seemed to have gone mad, turning into one grotesque, amputated animal after another, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling.
Like a pack of wolves, their eyes gleaming viciously, they constantly closed in.
Their mouths mumbled sinister, hateful words.
Li Mo pulled out the Bizarre pistol. The last three bullets were poured unreservedly into Kanagawa Yume's feet. The blue-purple hellfire burned, fighting against the restraining rule on Kanagawa Yume.
However, the hellfire was not in its most complete state.
The hellfire from the Bizarre pistol had a similar level of completeness to the restraining rule on Kanagawa Yume. It would take some time to see the result.
But the ghost swarm had already flooded in from the main hall, now less than two meters from Li Mo.
Brute force was useless.
Li Mo's combat power was very strong, yes, but overly powerful strength would directly kill the ghosts.
The ghosts would instantly restart, nullifying all the force.
This meant no matter what kind of attack Li Mo launched, the ghosts would use a restart to nullify it, leaving not a trace of damage in the end.
Unless Li Mo could precisely bring the ghosts to near-death, only then could he barely deal with a smaller ghost swarm and buy a sliver of a chance to escape.
Even with the lowest-level Head Ghost, Li Mo didn't dare to get entangled with it, let alone a haunted manor filled with an endless number of ghosts. If he dragged it out, he would be the only one to lose.
"I'm sorry..."
Realizing she was dragging him down, Kanagawa Yume lowered her head, her voice as soft as a mosquito's buzz.
"Don't apologize when there's a problem. Solve the problem first."
Li Mo said coldly, then stood in front of Kanagawa Yume.
The Bizarre pistol's magazine was empty. His body was suffering from too much contamination and was about to collapse. "Usurpation" could be used, but he couldn't usurp high-level things. Even with low-level things, he couldn't use it many times.
He would surely die if he entered the domain of the ninth room alone.
After Kanagawa Yume died, he would be hunted by the Knocking Ghost. He would still die.
So there was no better way now. He could only hold off the constantly surging ghost swarm and wait for the battle between the hellfire and the restraining rule to end...
Li Mo had no confidence. To be honest, his reason had already told him the result of this choice—
Certain death.
But he wouldn't give up. Courage is a human's anthem.
Li Mo believed he was human. He still wanted to live, no matter what it took.
Screee—!!
Blood splattered. Chunks of flesh and bone were smashed against the wall, ground into a pile of rotten dust.
"Huh?"
Li Mo looked at the Knocking Ghost with a hint of astonishment.
In that instant, a ghost had bypassed it, preparing to kill him, and the Knocking Ghost had caught it.
Then came an unreasonable smash against the wall.
It had perfectly calculated the limit of a restart, leaving it near death but unable to restart.
A ghost... is helping me?
Before Li Mo could figure it out, more and more ghosts bypassed the Knocking Ghost, pouncing on him.
The next second, a corpse hand reached out from the thin shadow at the Knocking Ghost's feet. Li Mo recognized it as the arm of the living person the Human-Spider had eaten.
The Human-Spider had clearly been dismembered by him, so why would its corpse hand appear in the Knocking Ghost's shadow?
Wait...
Li Mo looked up. The Knocking Ghost's body seemed even larger than before. Wisps of black hair had appeared on the back of its head, stained with crimson blood.
"It's the Human-Spider's true form. The Knocking Ghost ate it."
"It's completing itself."
Li Mo concluded.
At this moment, because Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume had triggered the killing rule of the third-floor game, the ghosts emerging from the boxes attacked ceaselessly. But each one was caught by the Knocking Ghost in various ways, then directly sent into its pitch-black body.
The ghosts from the boxes seemed endless, constantly emerging without a break.
"Oh no, oh no, these ghosts are all running in the direction Yume left! What did they do?"
The ghost swarm seemed to ignore the people under the Ghost Bed, heading straight for the corridor.
Their numbers grew exponentially.
"Maybe Mingyue broke the rules of the third floor, making the ghosts gather in one place and ignore the humans on the third floor?"
Someone whispered.
But no matter what, they were safe for now.
---||---
On the other side, Li Mo stood guard in front of Kanagawa Yume, his serious gaze fixed on the entrance of the corridor.
The Knocking Ghost was tireless, not letting a single ghost pass.
Smash, devour.
It ate these ghosts as if an eagle were eating a snake on the ground, without any sign of a rule conflict.
"No, that's not right. Even the Head Ghost has a brief rule conflict when it eats other ghosts."
"But the Knocking Ghost doesn't. This doesn't conform to Bizarre rules."
Li Mo resisted the urge to take out his notebook and ask, desperately trying to figure out the Knocking Ghost's rule characteristics.
It could eat ghosts like the Head Ghost, but there was no process of rule conflict.
Li Mo couldn't think of a reason, unless the ghosts it ate had already been eaten in a past timeline, which was why there was no need for a judgment now—input event, get result, skip process.
The future is the shadow of the past...
Li Mo thought of the term "time loop."
But it was just a guess. He had no evidence to prove it.