"Bang... bang bang... bang bang bang!"
The pounding on the door seemed to follow a rhythm. Whatever was outside, aside from using greater force, did not seem particularly impatient.
This strange sound became a deadly note amid the oppression, wrenching at the nerves of the living people inside.
Faced with such intense psychological pressure, Ji Li showed no sign of urgency.
His eyes remained fixed on the hands of his watch as he checked the time.
"Exactly five minutes after the woman next door in Room 702 died, the knocking began outside the door.
Right on time!"
Fang Shenyan had been watching Ji Li's reaction all along. Frowning, he asked, "Why aren't you worried at all?"
Ji Li shook his head slightly. He straightened his back, looked at the pale-faced crowd, and said softly:
"The dead end has indeed erupted, but I don't believe it has erupted completely.
Normally, the mission has only been underway for nearly an hour. Even if it kills someone, it would most likely only kill one person!
Most importantly, it has been knocking all this time. It's been nearly two minutes now, yet it still hasn't come in...
Either it simply can't get in, or it's waiting for something..."
"A one-in-five chance..." Fang Shenyan's hand adjusting his glasses trembled slightly.
He was already like this, and Cao Yuan and the others were even more frantic.
"Th-then... what is it waiting for?" Yu Guo asked anxiously.
Ji Li hesitated for a moment. Then, amid everyone's horrified stares, he stood up and walked straight toward the door!
"What are you doing?"
Without turning around, Ji Li waved his hand and approached the pitch-black security door.
He took a deep breath and pressed his face to the peephole.
This time, the sensation was similar to before. His cheek turned cold, and the view through the lock went from blurry to clear.
At the same moment, the knocking abruptly stopped as he drew near.
And through the peephole, Ji Li saw a figure wearing a dark raincoat...
He stood motionless outside the door, as though he could see Ji Li watching from within!
The raincoat's hood obscured most of his face. Ji Li could not make out his features, but the stubble on his chin made it clear that he was a man!
Under Ji Li's gaze, that half-hidden face gradually began to stretch...
Slowly, it curved into an unfathomable smile.
Ji Li had never seen a person smile in such a strange, twisted manner. The skin on his face seemed to be pulled by an invisible force, squeezing out a fractured, forced arc!
He became increasingly certain that the man outside really could see through the door!
Because after Ji Li appeared, the man turned and opened the door to Room 702, walking inside!
Ji Li slowly pulled away from the peephole. He lowered his head with a furrowed brow, unable to say a word.
"What did you see?" Light glinted off Fang Shenyan's lenses as he asked the question everyone was desperate to hear.
"I saw a man...
He should be the ghost, but he turned around and went back into Room 702..."
Before he could finish, Ji Li's throat suddenly trembled!
His body stiffened for an instant, then he immediately rushed to the center of the Living Room and grabbed Ding Miaoxin, who had remained limp on the floor, with both hands!
At that moment, Ding Miaoxin's body was as soft as noodles. He barely needed any strength to pull her up from the floor!
It seemed that every bone in her body had been shattered. What Ji Li held was a loose, lifeless corpse...
Ding Miaoxin was dead!
Fang Shenyan, Yu Guo, and Cao Yuan hurried over one after another. None of them had been mentally prepared for Ding Miaoxin's death.
When Ji Li said that the man outside had left, they had even secretly rejoiced that no one had died.
But...
"Without a sound, without even entering the room, it killed Ding Miaoxin first!" Yu Guo's face flushed as he kicked the coffee table over!
Fang Shenyan lowered his head and smoked, his face deathly pale.
Cao Yuan's eyes were red. He wanted to step forward and take Ding Miaoxin's body, but he simply did not have the courage.
In his view, he should have been the one closest to the ghost at the beginning.
When the knocking came, he had only cared about running away himself. He had not even pulled Ding Miaoxin along with him!
Yu Guo was the only one who took the corpse. He placed Ding Miaoxin on the sofa, then turned to Ji Li.
"The ghost rule envelope you gave us said this mission was clearly a survival-type mission.
But this house is barely over a hundred square meters. There's no way we can't survive a single night!"
After witnessing the death of a companion, he no longer had his earlier "indulgence." His words were filled with discouragement.
Ji Li remained silent with a frown. In truth, his thoughts were in complete chaos.
There were too many things he could not understand. He felt that everything happening in Rooms 701 and 702 carried an indescribable sense of dissonance.
They were now certain that the perverted man was the ghost, but why had he not entered the room?
After all, he was the owner of this room. He surely had a way to open the door, so why kill someone in such a roundabout manner?
And there was also the sixth person who had been weighing on his mind!
The mission had already been underway for an hour, but where exactly was the Replenishment Person?
Yu Guo's discouragement, Fang Shenyan's silence, Cao Yuan's panic—Ji Li had no means of changing any of it.
But after hesitating for a long while, he said, "There should actually be a sixth person in this mission..."
Yu Guo and Cao Yuan stepped forward from behind him, their faces full of shock.
Ji Li raised his head and quietly explained everything.
Yu Guo paced back and forth. After pondering for a long time, he said, "Perhaps... this sixth person will become our breakthrough..."
Ji Li took out another cigarette. This was the sort of thing that helped him organize his thoughts.
Only four male clerks remained in the room. Amid the smoke, Yu Guo was just about to speak.
But suddenly, everyone heard a muffled thud...
It sounded as though something had smashed into the wall!
"The Master Bedroom!"
Ji Li was the first to react. He flung away his cigarette and rushed toward the Master Bedroom. He could clearly tell that the sound had come from the neighboring Room 702 again!
The four clerks raced into the Master Bedroom and all turned their eyes toward the eastern wall.
A beam of light appeared through the small hole once again. It was obvious that the lights had been turned back on in Room 702!
"Why! Why!"
"Sob..."
Ji Li heard a man's low roar and a woman's sobbing, making the situation even more incomprehensible.
But before he could think further, he immediately took out his phone and, just like last time, aimed the camera at the hole.
This footage was much clearer and more complete than before, as though the incident had only just begun.
Under the cold-toned lens, within the shaking image,
he saw a man in black wearing a raincoat straddling a woman in a long dress, his pale hands tightly choking her slender neck.
"Again? Killing her again after she's already dead?"
Yu Guo's eyelids twitched. He rubbed his eyes hard, feeling that everything before him was an illusion.
Fang Shenyan abruptly turned to Ji Li, whose expression was shifting unpredictably, and said in a deep voice, "No! Your theory just now was wrong!"
At the same time, the Third Personality shouted within Ji Li's mind:
"We were half right and half wrong about the dead end!
The murder scene does not appear only once—it repeats!
The killing rule is that it can only kill one person at a time, and it does so after killing that woman again and again!"
The two voices exploded beside Ji Li's ears. At the same time, he looked down at his watch and decided not to watch any longer.
Ji Li shoved his phone away, then rushed to the window with decisive speed. He leaned his head out and measured the distance between the windows of Room 701 and Room 702.
Then he turned to Fang Shenyan and Yu Guo, his clear voice echoing through the midnight!
"It's all repeating itself. Five minutes after the Raincoat Man kills the woman, he'll come to Room 701 again to kill us!"
Cao Yuan was completely terrified. He could not understand how someone who had already been killed could appear again and be killed again!
"According to this killing rule, if we can stop the Raincoat Man from killing the woman, can we delay the arrival of the dead end indefinitely?
And thereby achieve a way out!"
Before you continue