"What the hell was that?!"
Ji Li was so frightened by the scene that his hair nearly stood on end, while Second Personality was already screaming in alarm inside his mind.
Inside the Master Bedroom, only the phone's image gave off light. That sudden shock made everyone's hearts tremble.
Because Yu Guo was holding the phone, he was closest to the image. He immediately hurled the phone away, smashing it against the glass window and leaving a small crack in the previously intact pane.
"Go, go, go!"
Ji Li violently shook his head, got up from the floor, shoved Fang Shenyan beside him, and squeezed through the crowd as they fled the Master Bedroom!
Ding Miaoxin and Cao Yuan had practically darted out of the room the instant he spoke.
Ji Li ended up falling behind instead. At the moment he left the Master Bedroom, he still could not suppress his curiosity and turned to glance at the hole.
But this time, he found that the beam of light inside had vanished...
"The murderer in Room 702 has realized we exist!"
The instant one of Ji Li's feet stepped into the Living Room, regret welled up in his heart.
The phone's camera had been plugged into the hole. Even if someone from Room 702 poked their head over, they would not have been able to see anything!
Ji Li had panicked and ordered an immediate retreat, only to thoroughly expose them as a group of "peeping Toms"!
He quickly left the Master Bedroom and entered the Living Room.
The five employees gathered in the middle of the Living Room. Each of them sat on the floor in a circle. After the earlier fright, the group seemed to have become more united.
Ji Li was the first to ask for the notebook. Fang Shenyan did not say much and handed it over, though his face was somewhat pale.
"October 20, 2015..."
Ji Li frowned deeply. That perverted man had said he was already dead and was going to find the woman in Room 702.
The date he had written those words was two days ago!
But why had the murder they had just seen through the hole seemed to be happening right then?
What had this ghost been doing for the past two days?!
Yu Guo raked a hand through his hair, restless in the face of the complicated situation. Unable to stand the oppressive atmosphere, he was the first to ask:
"Everyone, things seem fairly clear now.
Room 701, where we are, was the residence of a perverted creep. After he died, he became a ghost.
But he still did not change his ways and went after the woman in Room 702.
It seems that simple, but too many things don't add up!"
Fang Shenyan nodded, fully agreeing with Yu Guo. He too felt that things had progressed far too easily.
"We still have plenty of unresolved doubts!
First, how did the perverted man know he was going to die?
Second, I noticed that the last page of his diary was written two days ago, but everything next door clearly just happened. There's a two-day gap!
Third, why is the perverted man's room so tidy? That completely contradicts the personality he displayed!"
Frowning, Ji Li pulled out a Cigarette Case from his pocket. After lighting a cigarette, he tossed it onto the coffee table.
"I can answer the third point.
The furnishings we see in the room may have been altered by the hotel to some extent. It removed irrelevant information and retained the corresponding information.
That is one of the mission's Unspoken Rules.
As for the first point...
Perhaps there is some unknown connection between the hotel and ghosts. Such broad and deeply hidden matters are not important to us right now.
The key question is this: why had he clearly targeted the woman in Room 702 two days ago, yet only murdered her today?"
Basically none of the people present had Mission Experience. Ji Li was asking himself as much as anyone else.
After several rounds of silence, Third Personality spoke up and offered a rather vague conjecture.
"Ji Li... do you think what we saw was the ghost reenacting something that happened two days ago?"
Ji Li frowned and replied softly, "What do you mean?"
Third Personality paused to choose its words, then analyzed aloud:
"Perhaps the woman in Room 702 was killed by the same method two days ago,
and what we are seeing now is a reenactment performed by the ghost to achieve some purpose!"
Ji Li considered whether Third Personality's analysis had any flaws. But after examining it from every angle, he found that the idea was indeed very plausible.
"Then that means the reason it showed us the murder was to reveal either a path to survival or a dead end!"
The moment he said that, the voices in his mind completely fell silent.
Third Personality agreed, and Second Personality had no objections.
"Brother Ji... wh-who are you talking to...?"
Cao Yuan's voice rang out. Only then did Ji Li abruptly look up and realize that the other employees were all staring at him with extremely strange expressions.
Ji Li waved his hand without offering an explanation.
He glanced at his watch. It was 8:48 p.m., and nearly an hour had passed since the mission began.
Ever since those eyes had stared at him, he had felt a premonition in his heart.
Ji Li looked at his companions, whose expressions all differed, and said softly:
"We can be ninety percent certain now that the perverted man in Room 701 is the ghost we have to face in this mission!
And I can now roughly answer Fang Shenyan's second question.
During those two days, it had not been doing nothing.
The moment it wrote the last page of its diary, it went to Room 702 and killed that woman.
Then it waited for our arrival and deliberately recreated the scene from that time."
Yu Guo glanced at the phone that had been thrown into the Master Bedroom and asked absentmindedly, "Why?"
Ji Li hesitated, but he did not answer immediately.
"What exactly are you thinking?" Second Personality could not make sense of Ji Li's meaning either, so it asked from the side.
Third Personality spoke softly in his mind:
"Earlier, we were guessing whether the ghost letting us see the murder illusion was a clue to survival or a dead-end trap!
But... if we speculate according to Murphy's Law,
perhaps it took advantage of the employees' urge to actively search for clues and spent two days meticulously designing a dead end.
One that would instantly trigger for every employee!"
Bang!
Just as the living people in the Living Room were immersed in the lingering psychological terror, the security door was suddenly struck violently!
Ji Li's fingers twitched, and a bit of ash fell onto his clothes, but he stared at the door without blinking!
Everyone was drawn to that bang on the door. Then Cao Yuan, who was closest to it, sprang up from the floor as if electrocuted and squeezed into the crowd.
"It's here? It's here!"
Cao Yuan shoved Yu Guo beside him hard and growled, "It's here! It's here! Run!"
With some irritation, Yu Guo knocked Cao Yuan's arm away and inconspicuously edged closer to Ji Li.
Even with death at hand, he did not seem overly panicked. "Run where? This place is only so big. Where can we even run to?!"
"Th-this... this..."
Ding Miaoxin had completely collapsed to the floor. Both hands braced against the coffee table, she no longer had the strength even to run.
She was thoroughly terrified. Yu Guo's words still rang in her ears, but she could no longer take them in.
All she could remember was that scarlet, sinful eyeball, like a Sea of Blood piled with corpses, was about to devour her life!
Fang Shenyan was already near the interior rooms. He glanced at the doors, then looked at Ji Li, who had not moved the entire time.
He seemed to roughly understand why Ji Li had not answered Yu Guo's question back then.
"Because the dead end has erupted..."
Before you continue