Two "Corpses"

Deep in the night, in a corridor without power, a single wall stood between them.

Outside the wall stood Ji Li and the other five; inside was an indistinct, unfamiliar woman whose sobs were all they could hear. The situation had reached something of a stalemate.

Ji Li raised his flashlight and shone it through the glass wall. He could not quite make sense of the situation.

Why would a woman be sobbing on the deserted fifth floor?

Although he was not particularly afraid, the atmosphere had grown terrifying enough that he had to be careful with everything he did.

Beams of light darted chaotically around the room, dazzling Ji Li. He turned to look at Li Xing and the others.

Li Xing was holding his Hotel Phone with its flashlight switched on, trying to search the room as well. The four trembling staff members behind him also took out their phones, hoping to dispel some of the darkness.

Ji Li reprimanded them in a low voice. "Turn off your lights. We still don't know what's happening inside. Too many flashlights just make things confusing."

Li Xing immediately slipped his phone back into his pocket, and the others followed suit.

Ji Li pressed his lips together. He still had not seen any sign of a living person. He murmured to himself, "Did you hear wrong? There's no one in here."

The Third Personality sounded uncertain too. "After that sound of someone slamming into a door, I definitely heard a woman sobbing. Can't you still hear it now?"

Ji Li glanced up at the door a short distance away. There was no sign that it had been opened. It was completely shut.

He found the events on the fifth floor far too strange. There was no mistaking that impact against the door, yet the door here had never opened.

Then there was the woman's sobbing, which still rang incessantly in his ears. From farther away, it had been difficult to make out.

Now, standing outside the wall, he could hear how strangely hollow it sounded, making its precise location impossible to determine.

Ji Li calmed himself and said nothing more, simply listening to the faint, elusive crying.

Gradually, as the sound reached a certain peak, it suddenly vanished!

Ji Li jerked his head up as though he had realized something, then hurried to the office door and pushed it open.

"Everyone, stay together!"

Even as he spoke, he had already stepped inside the office. Once he was fully inside, a low, lilting passage of traditional opera sounded in his ears!

"Goddammit, we've been fooled! That's not a woman crying!

Someone's playing mournful opera vocals in this office!"

If the Second Personality had had a face, he would have rolled his eyes dramatically. The Third Personality fell silent too.

Ji Li looked somewhat embarrassed as well. A loop of opera vocals had stalled him for over five minutes. That was hardly defensible.

He tilted his head back and looked at the several speakers mounted on the ceiling. The melodious singing came from them. No wonder he had been unable to locate the source from outside.

The sound filled the entire office.

Then Ji Li noticed a Bluetooth speaker connected to a power bank on one of the desks.

Li Xing and the others looked displeased too. "Manager, it looks like someone's been messing with us."

Ji Li waved a hand and said:

"Not necessarily.

The opera must have only started playing recently. Otherwise, Tong Guan and his companion would have noticed it while searching the fifth floor.

That means there really was a living person here after Tong Guan left and before we arrived!"

Li Xing thought it over and realized that was indeed the case. Then he said, "So that impact against the door was probably that person's startled reaction when they noticed the power had gone out?"

Ji Li did not quite understand either. It was only a power outage. The staff knew nothing about the ghost's existence, so why would someone flee in a panic?

Unless...

They had seen the ghost!

Ji Li's mind raced as he worked out which direction that person might have fled. Logically, they would have run downstairs.

But they had come up from downstairs themselves. Although there were three stairways leading to the fifth floor, they had heard no footsteps earlier, only that impact against the door!

That discrepancy remained impossible to explain.

Unwilling to give up, Ji Li looked at the six people around him. Including himself, there were already seven people here.

The person who had been alone had very likely witnessed the ghost's existence. As long as they found that person, they could verify whether the killing rule they had deduced earlier held true.

With that thought, Ji Li moved to lead everyone out of the office.

Li Xing scratched his head and glanced at the speakers overhead. The eerie opera lyrics left him unnerved.

But just then, he heard a faint creak...

Li Xing stopped, falling behind everyone else. Slowly, he turned his head and saw that the glass door at the far end of the office, which had remained shut all this time, was now open a crack.

Through the gloom, he glimpsed a foot...

In the shadows, that open door seemed to embody some profoundly mysterious power. The moment he saw it, something seemed to cloud his mind.

Without realizing it, he came under a Mental Suggestion compelling him to investigate.

Go over... go over...

A voice sounded in his mind, without any apparent source, yet so unmistakably real.

Li Xing's eyes went blank. With stiff steps, he slowly approached the door, pausing after each one.

The scene inside grew clearer in the dim light, and he gradually made out the owner of that foot.

A bloated body lay face down on the floor, its head slumped to one side and its legs sprawled limply. Only its hands remained contorted, wrenching at its own head.

Saliva from its mouth had pooled across the floor. It had clearly been dead for quite some time.

Beside its head lay a phone with its screen dark.

Li Xing stared at that pale, bloodless face. He should have been afraid, should have panicked, yet in that first instant, he actually forgot to feel fear.

Even his thoughts ground to a halt.

All he could see was that grotesque manner of suicide. Unconsciously, he slowly raised his own hands.

His left hand climbed to his chin, while his right pressed near his temple. He began to exert force...

At that very moment, the Hotel Phone in his trouser pocket abruptly lit up.

An eerie light glowed faintly through the fabric.

Thud!

Just as Li Xing was about to end his own life, a brutally powerful kick from behind suddenly knocked him to the floor. His chin struck the corner of a desk, tearing open a cut.

At the same time, the phone in his pocket went dark.

Li Xing came back to his senses, but for the moment, he could not move, as though he needed time to regain control of his limbs.

The office door was pushed fully open, and Ji Li crowded into the room with the five staff members.

Ji Li's gaze turned cold. If the Third Personality had not warned him that one set of footsteps had vanished from the original seven, he would not have realized that Li Xing had fallen victim to the trap.

Li Xing's body, which had narrowly escaped death, lay motionless on the floor, in almost exactly the same position as the corpse.

It was as though he had become the room's second corpse.