Yu Guo's drowsiness was utterly crushed by the bizarre and brutal reality before him. After freezing for a moment, he sprinted toward the first floor!
Tong Guan, Fang Shenyan, and the others immediately realized that the situation had collapsed on a massive scale, their expressions changing drastically.
Following Yu Guo's footsteps, Fang Shenyan quickly moved toward the first floor, trying to save the staff members whose necks had not yet been snapped.
They tried to preserve the last remaining spark before the six-hour mark arrived, hoping to delay the final deadline.
Only Tong Guan and Chang Nian remained completely still, standing silently at the stairwell.
It was as if everything before them had nothing to do with them, as though their minds were occupied by something else.
"What do you feel?"
Tong Guan took out the hotel phone and opened the memo app, which contained a string of names in black text.
It was the registered list containing the basic information of all staff members.
Chang Nian frowned, unwilling to speak, but after a long while, she said, "It makes no sense."
"Everything that has happened since we entered this mission has been utterly inexplicable."
Tong Guan nodded upon hearing that. He felt the same way. "There hadn't been any casualties on the first floor from beginning to end.
"It was as if the ghost had been looking for trouble only on Ji Li's side. Even when I personally lured it over, nothing changed.
"But now, with a full hour left before the mission ended, the ghost had actually struck simultaneously and instantly killed more than twenty staff members?"
Chang Nian turned her head. Tong Guan's tall figure was reflected in her bright eyes as she softly said:
"At this point, the ghost's killing pattern seems to have revealed itself.
"First, it kills all the staff members. Then, it kills all the employees.
"But this pattern... has no solution!"
Tong Guan took a deep breath. Listening to the teeth-grinding sounds of bones snapping beside him, he slowly closed his eyes.
"Perhaps there are still doubts we haven't figured out.
"For example, why had the staff on the first floor remained unharmed all this time, only to be attacked at the same time during the fifth hour after the mission began?
"If there was no pattern, why had all the previous deaths occurred around us?
"This might be deeply connected to the mission's true contents."
Chang Nian was persuaded by his lengthy explanation and continued following Tong Guan's train of thought.
"We need to find the mission's true contents, and to accomplish that, we return to the very first question..."
Tong Guan slowly turned his head and looked at the camera closest to him. He knew that on the other side, a pair of eyes had been watching him all along.
His lips moved gently without sound, forming three words:
"Where is the ghost?"
"Where is the ghost?"
Ji Li's face was illuminated deathly pale by the screen. He slowly shifted his gaze away from the monitor and lowered it to his side.
Everything had progressed in the direction he had originally anticipated. Though it was the outcome he least wished to see, it had always been unavoidable.
Ji Li knew that Li Xing played a special role in this mission, and that special status stemmed from the hotel making an exception for him.
Why had he been three minutes late for the newcomer report-in?
And what had happened during those three minutes...
Li Xing sat in a corner of the Monitoring Room, his sides angled against the walls. It was a blind spot.
Yet it gave him enough of a sense of security.
Li Xing had also heard Ji Li and Tong Guan's earlier speculation, but that was not where his attention lay.
More importantly, ever since hearing their doubts about whether the mission's contents were real, he had felt as though he had forgotten something.
But where he had forgotten it, and why he had forgotten it, he was completely unable to think through.
Until...
Ji Li fully turned around. Just as Li Xing was about to speak, he saw that face, cold to the extreme.
"Ma... Manager..."
Seeing his reaction, Ji Li honestly found it difficult to believe that such a cowardly man could be the ghost.
Thus, he leaned more toward another possibility: Li Xing was not the ghost itself, but the ghost's vessel!
"Take off all your clothes."
The horrific scene in the first-floor lobby was still unfolding, but the staff members had not all died yet. Ji Li understood this clearly.
Even if the situation had fallen apart, he still had a few minutes. At the very least, before all the staff members died, he was safe!
Ji Li still believed that Li Xing was hiding some kind of secret, perhaps one even Li Xing himself did not know about.
Li Xing was stunned by the abrupt command, completely baffled.
"Manager, why?"
Ji Li asked coldly, "Have you noticed anything unusual about yourself?"
Li Xing scratched his head and thought carefully. "There's... nothing uncomfortable about me, Manager. What is this about?"
"Not a single suspicious detail?
"Have you never wondered why an ordinary person like you had been treated differently by the hotel?
"You were three minutes late. What were you doing during those three minutes?"
Ji Li's questions came like a barrage, leaving Li Xing almost unable to catch his breath.
"I... I just urgently needed to use the restroom, but all the spots in the building were occupied, so I looked for a restroom on every floor.
"Then I was brought into the hotel. In my understanding, that transfer had taken no more than an instant.
"But I feel like I may have forgotten something..."
Li Xing went through everything that had happened to him when he entered the hotel from beginning to end before finally voicing the strangeness he had always felt.
Ji Li raised his brows. "Why?"
Li Xing could not explain it either. His face flushed red as he struggled for a long time before saying:
"It wasn't there before. Ever since you and Tong Guan mentioned whether the mission's contents were real, it suddenly felt like certain scenes had begun flashing through my mind.
"But whenever I tried to examine them, I could never grasp them.
"I'm certain they exist inside my mind, but..."
Ji Li's eyes shifted. Memories that existed in his mind... What exactly had Li Xing seen during those three minutes...
That was the key!
"A trigger!"
Ji Li could conclude that Li Xing had definitely seen something before entering the hotel, perhaps even the ghost's true body.
And by entering the hotel himself, he had brought that ghost inside as well!
Perhaps this ghost was exceptionally powerful, or perhaps it was a special arrangement by the hotel.
Using this ghost's unique nature, the hotel had arranged an extraordinarily special mission.
All of this must have happened outside the hotel. So even though the ghost had erased Li Xing's memories, its power had been weakened inside the hotel, causing Li Xing's current sensitivity toward the mission's contents and triggering his lost instincts!
Li Xing had instead become the breakthrough point, which delighted Ji Li.
He watched Li Xing's increasingly confused expression. It was as if Li Xing's crucial memories had been tightly sealed behind a lock.
All that was missing was a key. It did not even need to enter the lock; its mere appearance could shatter Li Xing's prison of memories!
Ji Li found himself caught in a dilemma as he turned to look at the large screen.
Fang Shenyan and Yu Guo's rescue efforts had not produced the slightest effect. In fact, the moment they touched the staff members,
the victims' deaths accelerated with startling speed!
In less than two minutes, there would be no living people left in this building besides the employees and Xiao Qi, whose whereabouts were unknown.
Then there was a high chance that the ghost would strike at the employees next.
The key that could trigger Li Xing's memories was the ghost!
As long as the ghost appeared, it could shatter Li Xing's prison of memories in the most direct and cruel way possible, revealing the truth of the mission's contents!
But likewise, the ghost might not choose to attack the employees first. It could target the only survivor hiding somewhere in the building—Xiao Qi.
If Xiao Qi died first, Ji Li would lose one of his fallback options. If Li Xing proved useless as well, it would be difficult for him to turn the situation around!
Ji Li clenched his fist until it creaked, but he firmly believed that Li Xing was the key to the mission!
He was already incredibly close to the truth, which meant he was close to the path of survival.
So would the ghost follow that false mission requirement and kill Xiao Qi first?
Or would it follow the hotel's usual practice and kill Ji Li, who was nearing the path of survival, first...
Before you continue