"Luckily, it's nothing serious."
After reading the doctor's diagnosis, Lu Ban felt much better.
He knew very well that all those diagnoses—delusional disorder, schizophrenia, persecutory delusions—had merely resulted from the doctor hearing his description of The Silent Land.
Anyone normal would think there was something wrong with Lu Ban's head after hearing all that, let alone a psychiatrist.
But aside from that, Lu Ban didn't have any psychological problems.
"Although the doctor said I might have mental issues, that's precisely why I don't have any problems."
Lu Ban felt considerably more at ease.
It seemed that the system had a different standard for judging sanity. Even if his sanity dropped to zero, a person could still live normally.
Besides, if Lu Ban had really gone mad, how could one explain his logical and polite behavior now?
He retrieved his backpack and crowbar, then returned to his warm home.
Lu Ban first took off his clothes, grabbed a change of clothes, and walked into the bathroom.
Last night's experience had caused enormous trauma to both his body and mind. Lu Ban had no intention of rushing to complete the next stage of the task. He only wanted to take a good hot shower and sleep a little longer.
He turned on the shower. Warm water flowed down from the top of his head as Lu Ban squeezed out some shampoo and vigorously scrubbed his hair.
"A towel."
Only after his head was covered in foam did Lu Ban reach toward the rack beside him, groping for a towel.
His hand was trembling, but before he could touch the towel, a soft piece of fabric was handed to him.
"Thanks."
Lu Ban responded, and then the hot water rinsed away the shampoo as he wiped his face with the towel.
After wiping his face, he hung the towel back up.
Only then did Lu Ban belatedly realize something.
"Who handed me the towel just now?"
Lu Ban looked at the tightly closed bathroom door.
There was a tiny gap beneath the wooden door.
Light from the living room seeped through the gap, causing the wet bathroom floor to reflect faint glimmers.
Suddenly, the light coming through the gap seemed to be blocked by something.
It was as if someone was standing there.
Lu Ban stared at the frosted glass covered with plastic film, as if he were looking into the eyes of some presence on the other side of the door.
Splash, splash—
The shower continued pouring warm water. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but the water seemed to have grown cooler.
Lu Ban remained motionless, simply standing beneath the slightly cool water.
After a moment, the light returned. The gap seemed to sigh with relief before once again drawing in the light from the living room.
Lu Ban turned around to continue showering.
Just as he turned, the rack holding the towel suddenly collapsed. The end of its stainless-steel pipe pressed right against Lu Ban's neck. If he hadn't been paying attention a moment earlier, the pipe might have pierced his throat.
Lu Ban raised his foot. There was a lot of foam beneath it, and it was slippery.
He placed the broken rack on a nearby counter, rinsed himself off, dried himself, changed his clothes, and walked out of the bathroom.
The living room was brightly lit by the sunlight approaching noon.
He checked his bedroom and the kitchen, but found no sign of anyone else.
Lu Ban looked under the bed again.
It was completely empty.
He returned to the bathroom, picked up the broken rack, and decided to buy a plastic replacement at the supermarket after waking up that afternoon.
Lu Ban glanced at the washing machine.
He saw that the dirty clothes he had taken off before showering and casually stuffed into the washing machine had been folded neatly and stacked inside the drum.
"So the two of them really don't agree with each other?"
Lu Ban believed there were at least two rather unusual housemates living in his home. One of them seemed hostile toward him, while the other was relatively friendly.
However, compared with what he had seen last night, both of them seemed rather weak.
Lu Ban had no intention of finding these two housemates and driving them out. He was just an ordinary law-abiding citizen and had no skill at communicating with the dead. If negotiations broke down and they tried to harm him, he had no way to deal with them.
Besides, as long as he played some festive, auspicious music, the two housemates would become obedient. They didn't cause Lu Ban much trouble.
If thieves ever broke into the house, they might even help keep watch.
It was like discovering a white-fronted golden orb-weaver curled up in the corner by one's bed. Although it looked terrifying and rather ferocious, it was actually a beneficial insect that could help catch mosquitoes. As long as one didn't provoke it, it would quietly stay in the corner and mind its own business.
"I'll have to play music next time I shower, too."
He set an alarm on his phone for six that evening, started playing a Spring Festival Gala playlist on his computer, threw himself onto the bed, and fell into a deep sleep.
Six o'clock.
Night had yet to fall. With summer's arrival, the days would grow longer and longer. The Summer Triangle would soon become clearly visible, while the noisy chirping of cicadas continued without pause, occasionally falling silent all at once and creating a strange atmosphere.
Lu Ban woke up and rubbed his eyes.
In the dim room, the melody of "Let the World Be Filled with Love" echoed through the air.
Lu Ban had slept soundly and hadn't dreamed.
He sat up, ordered some takeout, turned on his computer, and imported the video he had obtained the previous night.
The original video, which hadn't appeared very large on his phone, suddenly became much larger after being imported to the computer. Perhaps this was another one of the system's tricks.
Lu Ban didn't dwell on it.
He dragged the video's progress bar. Footage from several camera angles repeated across a total length of roughly thirty hours. Its details and quality were both far superior to those of the first video. Perhaps this was the benefit brought by exploration progress.
If exploration reached one hundred percent, would those bizarre perspectives become unlockable as well?
"This is going to be a huge project."
Lu Ban pulled open the curtains. A creature that seemed to have been standing in front of the window earlier fled at high speed. He glanced at the security bars on the balcony and saw dark-red traces along the rusted edges of the iron window, as if they were congealed blood.
He paid it no attention.
Returning to the computer, Lu Ban opened his video-editing software. He first cut the video into several sections, renaming and categorizing them.
One portion was filmed diagonally downward from a forty-five-degree angle in a third-person perspective, allowing both Lu Ban and the surrounding environment to be shown at once.
Another portion was filmed from Lu Ban's first-person perspective. Accompanied by the beam of a flashlight, it possessed a mysterious and terrifying quality even without editing.
There were also distant shots, panoramic shots, and other footage to serve as supplementary material.
Lu Ban noticed that the footage of the stars he had seen—stars that might have contained great deities—had not been recorded in these videos. He didn't know whether those things had been hallucinations or whether the system's abilities were insufficient to capture them clearly.
But it didn't matter.
Lu Ban felt that unless someone had experienced it personally, anyone else who saw those bizarre stars and dark-yellow planets would probably only be confused, unable to make heads or tails of them.
Fear came from familiar things—from the unease created when a familiar environment was disrupted. The more down-to-earth and commonplace the thing was, the more terrifying its alteration could be. Even if Lu Ban told his viewers that Betelgeuse had exploded and a radiation storm would soon descend upon Earth and wipe out every living thing, most people would merely laugh and pay it little attention.
Understanding came at a cost.
But conversely, simple and comprehensible horrors were even more frightening: seeing a black shadow appear behind you in the mirror, feeling something scratch at the bedboard while lying in bed, or waking halfway through the night to find a spider crawling into your mouth.
After preparing the footage, the text on the computer screen before Lu Ban's eyes changed into a cold and indifferent system notification.
He clicked into the dark-green Director profession tab. Soon, a career task popped out of "My Computer."
Career Development Task Maintaining a high level of creative passion and continuing to create is the foundation of every creator! Through constant creation, let the world remember your name! Task Requirement: Obtain enough followers online to complete the task Followers Obtained: 4396/100000 "Please shout my name!"
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