The Man in the Wall

Before entering the Room at the end of the corridor, it's always best to gather as much information as possible.

Liu Qingjiang was the person in charge of the demolition project. On the day the demolition was suspended, he went missing while on duty. According to his last notes, he saw a light on in Room at the end of the corridor on the fifth floor, so he went to check it out and then disappeared.

It's easy to guess that Liu Qingjiang must have seen something on the fifth floor that led to his current predicament.

Lu Ban can now probably figure out some patterns.

First, if you take the stairs, you might encounter something the size of a baby following you, leaving footprints. Perhaps, when it follows you to the fifth floor, something bad will happen. From this point on, the missing nurse Xu Xiao was not lying.

Secondly, everyone who saw the things in the room at the End of the Corridor has disappeared, but Lu Ban suspects that they are not missing, but rather trapped in this alternate dimension. Just as the mission description states, these missing people have not died; they have simply changed their existence in this hospital.

And perhaps the entrance to the passage between the two spaces is in a room on the fifth floor.

So, what is the reason for the existence of this space?

Lu Ban realized that it seemed that only Liu Qingjiang and he were on this floor. He tiptoed to the door of the room Liu Qingjiang had entered and peered inside.

Upon looking, Lu Ban saw Liu Qingjiang's deadpan eyes staring at him.

No, he wasn't staring at Lu Ban; he was gazing out the window.

Liu Qingjiang remained unmoved by Lu Ban's appearance.

He looked outside for a while, then picked up a shovel and scooped up the ground.

The cement floor was pried up and became pitted and uneven, with a small hole appearing.

Liu Qingjiang dug for a while before packing the rubble into cement bags, hoisting them onto his shoulder, and slowly walking out of the room, returning along the same route.

Lu Ban stood against the wall, silent and holding his breath, watching Liu Qingjiang carry the cement bags step by step.

What is he digging for?

Seeing that Liu Qingjiang had gone far away, Lu Ban immediately crept into the room and looked at the hole in the ground.

He saw that in the pit in the middle of the huge ward, there was a human corpse.

Those people had simple, unassuming appearances, just like any ordinary person you'd see anywhere.

But the bodies were already torn to pieces, and Lu Ban didn't even think they could be pieced together into a complete human form.

More importantly, Lu Ban discovered that these people's faces had not decomposed and still looked exactly as they did when they died. Moreover, they were the workers who had died in an accident here before!

Besides the workers, there were other faces that Lu Ban didn't recognize, but he could guess that they were also unlucky people who had suffered some kind of accident at the hospital.

"Was Liu Qingjiang digging up these corpses? Did he dig them out of the floor?"

Lu Ban suddenly felt a chill on his chest, and he realized it was from the red-covered notebook.

He hurriedly opened it and saw that on the last page of the notebook, on the muddy page, black text began to emerge. It was a different handwriting from Xu Xiao's, very neat and meticulous.

"It's very cold, but construction isn't going smoothly. The soil structure here is a bit problematic, so the foundation can't be laid properly, the steel bars are prone to bending, and the cement can't be poured. The construction period is passing by day by day, it's too difficult. Those foreigners are taking advantage of their money and ordering people around recklessly. Those fake foreign devils are no good either. Sigh, if it weren't for the high price they offered, I wouldn't have taken this job."

"According to the locals, this used to be Caishikou, the execution ground. The executioner would take a sip of wine and spit it onto the blade, and the onlookers would cheer. He would throw away the sign on the prisoner's back, raise his knife, and with a swift stroke, a head would fall to the ground, and the onlookers would cheer again. The blood from that head seeped into the ground day after day, and the resentment of those who were beheaded lingered here. That's why nothing built on this place lasts long."

"I'm not superstitious. I've investigated the geological data. Because this used to be a riverbed, the soil is mostly sedimentary. Later, the Ling River changed its course, and this place became land, so the soil is loose and not conducive to construction. If you want to build a five-story hospital, you have to reinforce the foundation. I'm an architect who graduated from Jiangcheng University, so these problems are no challenge for me."

"But the construction difficulty here is obviously beyond my expectations. The structure designed may not be able to be realized in reality. The foundation is not being laid properly. It has been a long time, and only one-third of it has been laid. The workers are getting more and more irritable every day, and all kinds of rumors are spreading."

"The turning point came on the second day of the new year. Some of the workers who stayed here on New Year's Day somehow slipped and fell into the newly laid foundation. The sticky cement swallowed the worker instantly. I hurriedly wanted to send someone to pull him out, but the foreman next to me stopped me."

"He said that the foundation had been laid with great difficulty, and if they were to rescue the worker, the entire structure would have to be redone. If they were to start over now, they would definitely fall behind schedule, and everyone would have worked for nothing. Moreover, after he finished speaking, he said to me in a mysterious way that the worker who fell in was now Living Stake. The yin energy here is heavy, and it must be suppressed by the life force of a person. In the past, they might have had to find someone with a lowly life to fill the void, but now that the worker has gone in, it's just right."

"I don't understand how such feudal superstitious ideas can be so deeply rooted. I sent people to rescue the worker, but no one dared to touch him, for fear of getting caught up in it themselves. Seeing that the cement had already hardened, I had no choice but to give up, since no one could afford to pay for the delay in the construction period."

"It's strange, but ever since that worker died in the foundation, the foundation work has gone much more smoothly. We've encountered almost no problems, all the foundations have been laid, and construction is on track."

"Even I, who have never believed in these things, can't help but have some doubts about whether the so-called 'Living Stake ' really exists."

"It wasn't until around the Chinese New Year that we encountered a problem with the main load-bearing beam. The construction progress was delayed, the workers had all gone home, and the work came to a standstill. I walked on the construction site and looked at the main load-bearing beam that was never finished. I felt very frustrated."

"I saw a worker standing next to the load-bearing beam, pouring cement into it. Strangely, I clearly did not tell them to pour it. I called out to him, and the worker seemed to be startled, slipped, and fell into the cement."

"I ran over immediately and grabbed his hand. He begged me for help. Most of his body was stuck in the cement. He was pulling me desperately, but I couldn't hold on anymore. He was hurting me a lot, and I was about to fall in too. I screamed for help, but there were hardly any people on the construction site at the time."

"I held onto him like that for a long time, and then suddenly, the foreman's words came to mind: ' Living Stake.' The worker was already mostly embedded in the cement and didn't even have the strength to hold onto my hand anymore. If I let go, he would fall in."

"I've done my best, I've done my best, I did nothing wrong, and as long as he sinks, he can Living Stake, Living Stake, the hospital can be built, and everyone can get the money. Thinking this, I let go."

"I just watched him sink, and suddenly I felt incredibly relieved. After calling the police, I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I found that I was smiling."

"The hospital construction is finished. I received a generous reward, and the families of the deceased workers received a huge sum of money that they couldn't earn in a lifetime of bricklaying. Everyone is living a better life now. But sometimes I wonder, when I walk into this hospital and stand next to those pillars, do the people inside those pillars smile at me?"

Lu Ban noticed that the writing was no longer neat towards the end, and it looked more like it was written by someone suffering from epilepsy or a physical illness.

Sensing some movement, Lu Ban looked up from his notebook.

He saw Liu Qingjiang standing at the door with a shovel in his hand.

Thank you to "Oh my god, young man, is this a pregnancy sign?" for the 1000 coin donation, and thank you to "Infinite Dimensions One Sword Annihilates the World" for the 100 coin donation!