To be precise.
It wasn't that the Fire Escape door we'd used on the way in had disappeared. It was that there was no way to reach the ninth floor through that door.
When Jiang Qiao returned inside the door again.
He found only one flight of stairs leading downstairs.
He walked down the stairs.
In the end, he returned to the seventh floor.
He left through the door.
When he returned again, the stairs had changed to lead upward, taking him back to the eighth floor.
In other words.
The staircase looped between the seventh and eighth floors. The seventh floor could lead to the eighth, but the eighth floor couldn't reach the ninth. It could only return to the seventh.
"The path is cut off."
Jiang Qiao looked up at the ceiling.
His vision was filled with all sorts of patterns made up of twisted lines. He could vaguely see a space, but it was hidden behind countless patterns, and going there directly wouldn't be easy.
"The space where the ninth floor is located is farther away than any floor before it."
"It's more complicated, too."
Returning to the eighth floor.
Jiang Qiao focused his attention on the extremely dilapidated "lobby" of this floor.
Dust was everywhere.
Mold grew rampant.
The floor was full of bumps and holes, like an unfinished building.
Half the blackboard on the wall had already fallen off, while the remaining half was covered in countless scratches. It looked completely unusable.
But even in such an environment.
There were still some things that didn't fit in.
The Crystal Lamp, for example.
Although the Crystal Lamp on the ceiling was covered in dust, it showed no signs of wear at all. If the dust were wiped away, it would look no different from a brand-new