The illusion was collapsing. None of the scenes she had imagined had happened.
Following the dim corridor, Chang Nian caught sight of a gigantic furnace. Yet it was cold, extinguished, as though it had never once been lit.
The raging fire within the furnace had yet to burn. The dismemberment table did not exist, nor had the surging ghosts appeared.
Naturally, the mysterious and terrifying male ghost from her imagination was not in Room 1818 either.
If she had to use one adjective to describe this unique Room 1818, it would perhaps be "extinction."
Silent—deathly silent.
Yet beneath that silence lurked suppressed frenzy, restrained collapse, and a vague, muddled stupor.
Extinguished—darkened into death.
Yet amid that death, there was faintly a trace of the living. All four windows stood open, carrying in a lively scent.
Everything before her was completely different from what Chang Nian had anticipated, but the peculiar atmosphere and smell filling the room made her already grave expression turn even more severe.
Room 1818 had windows open on all sides. Cold winds howled, and night rain drifted in.
Illusory soot rose from the icy furnace, while the air was thick with the smell of charcoal. Death, negativity—everything was contained within it.
Chang Nian knew none of this was an illusion.
There really had once been an immensely powerful ghost standing before this Giant Furnace, chopping apart ghostly limbs and tossing them into the flames to burn as fuel.
She lifted her foot from the dark red carpet outside the Door of 1818 and walked farther down the corridor.
The string of blood-red footprints stretching from the first floor to the Eighteenth Floor glimmered in the darkness, guiding her step by step toward the cold Giant Furnace.
"Why is Room 1818 so empty?"
No one knew whether the