No One in the Room

The fact that someone was hiding in this locked room that had never been opened made Yu Sheng's scalp tingle. What followed was an uncontrollable torrent of speculation.

Who was that? When had the owner of that voice hidden inside? Had they slipped in while he was asleep, or had they already been here when he arrived two months ago?

If it was the latter, then he had spent long periods staying inside this big house without going out. He was certain that no one had opened this room on the second floor during that time. Had the person inside been hiding there all along? Was there another passage in the room, or...

Was the one who had laughed softly really a "person"?

Chaotic thoughts surged wildly through his mind, but Yu Sheng's expression gradually calmed. Perhaps his encounter with that "Frog" had changed something, or perhaps it was the effect of having come back from the dead. He felt that his mindset now... was a little strange.

He could not hear goodwill or malice in that voice, only something undeniably eerie. Yet after the initial scalp-crawling sensation, all fear and hesitation had vanished from Yu Sheng's heart. What remained now... was only intense curiosity.

He wanted to figure out what exactly was inside that room.

He wanted to figure out what secrets this big house, which he had treated as a place to stay, was hiding.

This was his Safe House, his only "home" in this enormous city. There could not be anything unsafe in a Safe House.

He slowly moved closer and pressed his ear against the door. He seemed to hear low laughter still hidden within, though it might have only been an illusion. Perhaps it was merely hollow wind circling in his ears.

He curled his fingers and knocked on the door.

"Open up. I heard you."

The door naturally did not open, but the hollow laughter truly disappeared.

It was exactly what he expected. Yu Sheng said nothing and simply turned away. He went to the neighboring room filled with miscellaneous junk and took an axe from inside.

Returning to the locked room, he silently raised the axe high and swung it down with all his strength.

The sharp axe struck the thin wooden door with the piercing clang of metal colliding. Sparks flew from the blade, yet the door that looked like it could be kicked down with one foot did not even bear the slightest mark.

That soft laughter came through again, vague and indistinct, but Yu Sheng paid it no attention. He calmly raised the axe again, as though he were doing an especially serious, meticulous task requiring patience, and continued chopping with one blow after another.

He knew this door could not be opened. It could not be opened with an electric drill or a power saw. But even knowing that, over the past two months, he had tried almost every day to open it by all kinds of methods. Today, the eerie voice from behind the door had instead given him even more motivation to open it.

And as each chop failed, that motivation only grew stronger. Every swing of Yu Sheng's axe became more forceful, more natural, even... more in tune with his own wishes.

As his mind gradually emptied, bizarre associations even sprang up out of nowhere. He felt like Wu Gang chopping down a tree on the moon. As long as he chopped down that damned osmanthus tree, Chang'e, Jade Rabbit, Baldy Qiang, and Sisyphus, who were watching from nearby, would gather in a circle and applaud him...

He had no idea why Sisyphus had appeared in his imagination.

Yet the soft laughter from behind the door became increasingly grating, clearer and closer, as if its owner had walked over step by step and was now pressed against the other side of the wooden door. It was as though she fully understood the door's indestructibility and was brazenly mocking Yu Sheng, who was swinging an axe outside, through this Wall of Sighs.

But suddenly, another voice appeared amid that eerie, piercing laughter. It sounded tense and angry. "Can you stop laughing?! If he really breaks in, I'll be the first one he chops!"

The laughter inside the door immediately stopped being amused.

Yu Sheng, who was raising his axe for another strike, froze at once. Then he heard his waist crack.

Along with that crack, the axe in his hands, which he could no longer hold back, came down and struck somewhere completely outside his plan.

A crisp sound entirely different from the previous piercing clashes came from the door. The axe fell from Yu Sheng's hand, and then he abruptly raised a hand... to support his waist.

His waist hurt. He had strained it badly, and it throbbed sharply.

Supporting his waist, he painfully moved closer to the door. Only after catching his breath for two seconds did he focus on the spot where his last axe strike had landed.

A "flash" hovered about two or three centimeters from the door. It was beside the hinge, seemingly a spark thrown up by the axe, yet it appeared frozen in the air at the instant the firelight had burst forth.

And by that faint light, Yu Sheng vaguely saw that there seemed to be something on the door nearby.

He reached out to touch it.

A suppressed shriek came from behind the door. "Ah—"

Yu Sheng abruptly opened his eyes. The bright living room lights were somewhat glaring. Falling asleep on the sofa had left his whole body aching. The wall clock nearby ticked away, and the time on its face showed that he had slept for less than forty minutes.

Yu Sheng lay on the sofa in a daze for a while before his numb memories finally began to clear.

He had fallen asleep... Was that just a dream?

He sat there blankly, but suddenly, he felt that something was wrong.

That "dream" had been too real, its details too clear and complete. He could even clearly remember the feeling of the axe in his hand, remember the frozen firelight on the door, remember...

He suddenly sat up from the sofa and sharply raised a hand... to support his waist.

His waist hurt. He had strained it badly, and it throbbed sharply.

"Damn... hiss... fuck..." Yu Sheng could not help swearing. His newly strained waist, the sudden movement of sitting up, and the body aches from sleeping on the sofa combined into a mixed treatment that made him feel, for an instant, that being stabbed through the heart by that Frog would have been better. At least that had only hurt for two seconds. Only then did he painfully stand while pressing on his waist, becoming increasingly certain that it had definitely not been an ordinary "dream."

A strained waist in a dream could not hurt in reality. Something truly sinister had appeared.

That thing had invaded his Safe House.

He adjusted his posture and mindset so the pain in his waist would not affect his movements too much. After thinking briefly, he grimaced and made his way up the stairs to the second floor.

With a baton in one hand, he returned to the room storing junk and found the axe he had used in the dream, gripping it in his right hand. The feeling of the handle in his palm was exactly the same as in the dream. The wooden handle even seemed to retain the warmth of his hand.

He came to the tightly locked door. It was still pristine and intact, and there was no sign of the "light mark" left by his chopping in the dream.

The room beyond the door was silent.

It was as if everything were normal, as if nothing had happened.

But Yu Sheng still clearly remembered the location of that light mark.

He hung the baton at his waist, switched the axe to his left hand, and stretched out his right hand to feel along the door, searching for the spot where the flash he had created in the dream had been... He remembered it was near the hinge. At the time, he had seen something vaguely...

The next second, he touched a handle, one that could not be seen with the naked eye.

But he clearly remembered that there had been no handle here. Back when he first discovered this locked door, he had examined every inch of it and felt every part of its surface. He could be certain that he had never touched any "nonexistent handle"!

Why? Because he had observed it in his dream? Because his axe had "seen through" some kind of disguise? Because he had confirmed its existence, so it truly existed?

Yu Sheng ran through every movie, television show, game, and novel he had ever seen, instantly coming up with a whole pile of possible explanations. But his hands did not hesitate in the slightest. He had already grasped the invisible doorknob and gently turned it.

The indestructible locked door opened with absurd ease, opening from the hinge side.

It was an empty room. Through the gradually widening crack, he could see only the floor and walls. The light spilling in from the doorway slowly illuminated the dim space. Yet even after carefully opening the door all the way, Yu Sheng did not see the owner of the mocking voice from inside.

He tightly gripped the axe in one hand and cautiously surveyed the room, only to find that there was truly nothing inside. There was not even a bed or a chair.

Only cold moonlight streamed through the gaps in the old curtains, leaving mottled patches across the floor.

But suddenly, he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye.

There was something in the room. A painting hung on the wall directly opposite the door.

It had an exquisite frame, its edges decorated with intricate, classical vine patterns. At the center of the picture was a chair covered in soft red carpeting, serving as the background.

But there was nothing else. No cursed ghost that had laughed mockingly sat in the oil painting, watching the intruder.

Yu Sheng frowned and stared carefully at the painting frame, which was about half a meter tall, for a long while. Keeping his eyes on it, he felt around and found the light switch beside the doorframe, then turned on the room's lights.

Under the illumination, every detail of the oil painting became even clearer.

He cautiously approached the painting and observed it for a long time.

Then he saw an extremely inconspicuous little detail in the corner of the frame... the hem of a skirt.

"..."

After thinking for a moment, he spoke with an odd expression. "You there?"

"Not here!"

A guilty voice came from inside the painting.

Thanks to Charlie Doesn't Eat Vegetables for the Silver Alliance Leader~