My Cudgel Poke

A dozen seconds after the wire was inserted, there was a click, and the lock sprang open.

The rusty iron gate was sucked open by the wind with a screeching sound. A wave of cold air and falling dust rushed into their faces.

"It's open." Yu Xing put away the wire, shielded his face from the dust with his hand, nonchalantly showing off his work. He then picked up the camera and sneakily hid behind Zhao Yijiu. "You first."

Since everyone knew he was timid, it was better to let the brave one go first.

"It's only been half a year and it's already this rusty." Zhao Yijiu didn't rush to enter. Although a new dark space could be seen through the gap in the door, he calmly wiped away the ugly, scar-like rust on the iron gate.

"This area is naturally humid, and it rains a lot after autumn. No one takes care of it here, so it's normal for it to rust. Look, there's mold in many places on the wall too." Yu Xing casually pointed, and indeed, besides spiderwebs, some nameless mold clung to the corners of the wall.

"Mm." The other person responded and pushed the door all the way open. Behind the door was a new corridor, much wider. The left side was a wall, and the right side had rooms one after another.

The doorframe of the room closest to them had a white sign hanging on it, which read "Office 01".

Yu Xing shone his flashlight further ahead. Following the row, there were Office 02 and Office 03. Further on were the Exhibition Room and the Toilet.

Between Office 03 and the Exhibition Room, there was a dark fork in the road.

After the Toilet was another iron gate. It looked like there were other areas behind it, but according to the factory map Yu Xing had found online and memorized before setting out, that area belonged to Tang Li and Tang Yuan's search zone, which was divided into the middle section.

He held the flashlight, parting his bangs with two fingers to smooth them down a bit. He gestured with his chin towards Office 01. "Shall we go in?"

"Wait a moment." Zhao Yijiu kicked a small wooden board from the ground. With a nudge of his shoe, he wedged the board into the door crack, covering the door, and explained, "To prevent the wind from closing it."

Why prevent it? Yu Xing's eyebrows twitched. Was he implying they would need to escape later? No, please...

Comrade Zhao Yijiu, could you please just stick to your usual taciturn, cool demeanor and not make things so obvious, causing me unnecessary anxiety?

After deceiving and comforting himself, Yu Xing followed Zhao Yijiu to the door of Office 01.

The office door was unlocked. It opened with a gentle turn of the doorknob.

There were no objects inside. At first glance, everything seemed to have been cleared out with the factory's abandonment and the personnel's departure.

The only places left to hide things were the wooden cabinets against the wall, the desk opposite the door, and the sofa and coffee table on the other side of the desk.

After entering the office, needing to both film and search for batteries, Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu had to turn off their flashlights and use the camera's Night Vision Mode.

The screen in Night Vision Mode glowed with a faint green light, casting an eerie aura in the darkness.

Without further words, the two split up with relative tacit understanding. Zhao Yijiu went to search the desk, while Yu Xing walked directly to the storage cabinet.

According to his calculations, six people needed forty-eight batteries. If the Deduction Company didn't intend to eliminate anyone deliberately, the number of batteries wouldn't be lower than this. With the batteries scattered throughout the factory, there should be at least one or two batteries in each room.

A thick layer of dust covered the storage cabinet, indicating it hadn't been touched in a long time. He opened the cabinet door and looked at the faint fingerprints left behind, a question arising in his mind.

"Strange, with so much dust, how did the company's people manage to hide the batteries without leaving any traces?"

As he had been walking, he had been looking very carefully, paying attention to the batteries.

It was only now that he realized... he hadn't seen any footprints on the ground.

If the company's people had been here recently, it was impossible for there to be no footprints.

Once suspicion arose, details began to surface one after another. His heart skipped a beat. He maintained his composure and scanned the contents of the cabinet through the camera.

Unused toothpicks, an empty square tin box of unknown contents, meaningless scraps of cloth... and a carving of false teeth, whose meaning was all too obvious... all useless items.

There were no batteries.

He squatted down and pulled open the drawers below. There were three drawers in total. He pulled them open from bottom to top. The bottom two drawers were empty. It wasn't until he pulled open the topmost drawer that a rolling sound was heard.

"You'd best gouge out your own eyes." A chilling voice came from behind him. Startled, he whipped his head around. Zhao Yijiu was standing behind the desk, holding a piece of paper. The visible eye he showed was fixed on the paper, as if he had just been reading it aloud.

"It was in the desk drawer," Zhao Yijiu said, seeing him turn around. He symbolically waved the paper at him. "It says, 'You'd best gouge out your own eyes'."

"Oh..." Yu Xing had no intention of gouging out his own eyes. He sighed, remarking on how Zhao Yijiu's voice was as terrifying as a ghost's. He lowered his head to look at what was in the drawer he had opened.

Two round objects rolled to the edge of the drawer due to inertia. Yu Xing froze. "Black glass marbles?"

He reached out to grab one, but the sensation in his palm sent a shiver down his spine.

"They're soft! Ah!!!"

Sticky and slightly warm.

What kind of black glass marbles are these? They're eyeballs!

Startled, Zhao Yijiu's hand trembled. He put down the paper and quickly walked towards Yu Xing, only to see two objects being thrown at him.

He dodged his head, and the objects hit the ground behind him, shattering with a crisp sound.

"Why are you throwing glass marbles?"

That sound was definitely glass.

Yu Xing, bewildered, faced the question. "They were soft."

"They were hard, and they shattered," Zhao Yijiu retorted mercilessly, like an emotionless killer.

"Impossible..." Yu Xing, refusing to believe it, walked over to the shattered marbles. He aimed his camera at one of them. The fragments reflected a translucent sheen.

"..." Yu Xing was incredulous.

Am I hallucinating?

Did the strong psychological suggestion I gave myself lead to tactile hallucinations under stress?

The sticky, warm softness became clearer and clearer in his memory. He frowned, unwilling to believe it was his own problem, and decided to explain things clearly to Zhao Yijiu: "When I picked them up just now, they were clearly eyeballs..."

Although eyeballs couldn't roll with a "plop, plop" sound, which was why he initially thought they were black glass beads and didn't consider anything else, the feeling in his hands was undeniably real. Coupled with the note on the desk that happened to mention eyes, it couldn't just be a coincidence.

"If what you're saying is true," Zhao Yijiu mused for a moment, "then something interfered with your sense of touch, deliberately trying to scare you."

"Y-yes, is that it?" If that was the case, then there was definitely a ghost here!

Once was bad enough, but being tricked a second time, Yu Xing felt he had no reason to stay and court death. A cold sweat broke out on him, chilling him to the bone.

"I want to leave."

While he wanted a better job, he wasn't so desperate that he'd endure obvious weirdness. There would be other jobs, but only one life.

Only one life.

Thinking this, he became more determined. "What about you? Are you coming? There are four other people..."

Zhao Yijiu stared at his face for a while, lost in thought. After a long pause, he asked, "Do you really want to go?"

Yu Xing found his question baffling. Was he planning to stay for the New Year?

"Right," Zhao Yijiu nodded to himself. "It's a bit dangerous here, so let's go together."

He's such a strange person. Yu Xing chuckled.

Also, from the hand Zhao Yijiu was holding, he vaguely saw a piece of battery.

"..." It seemed the battery was over by the desk. Damn it, why him? He was the one who got scared, but someone else was taking the battery?

Exiting Office 01, Yu Xing's expression was a little grim. For some reason, he suddenly had a strong urge to use the toilet. "I'm going to the toilet before we go."

"Oh?" Zhao Yijiu glanced at him. "You still dare to go into a toilet now?"

Since ancient times, in the horror genre, countless films, TV shows, and urban legends have established toilets as undisputed high-risk zones.

The Hanako-san in the toilet, the mirror in the toilet, the knocking sound in the toilet, the lack of toilet paper... every one of those stories was terrifying!

"It's a physiological need, not something I want," Yu Xing hesitated. "Can you come with me?"

He really didn't dare to go in alone.

"Mhm," Zhao Yijiu replied calmly, and walked with Yu Xing towards the toilet at the end of the corridor.

As they passed the crossroads, the deep darkness in the small path made Yu Xing quicken his pace, afraid that if he was a second slower, a ghost face would pop out and send him to heaven.

With the factory abandoned, the toilet hadn't been cleaned in a long time. The moment they entered, a strange, mixed odor hit them.

Even more unexpectedly, this men's room had individual stalls, with the urinals separated, blocking any line of sight.

"Isn't this just asking for trouble..."

Yu Xing endured the discomfort and entered the outermost stall. Zhao Yijiu stood outside the stall waiting for him, perhaps possessing a sliver of warmth beneath his indifferent exterior.

Inside the stall, there was a mop and a trash can. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"Can you grab my camera for me?" he felt a bit ashamed.

"I think you should take it in with you," Zhao Yijiu surprisingly didn't agree this time.

"Why?"

"Intuition."

Fine...

Yu Xing obediently took the camera. He felt Zhao Yijiu was too calm in this situation, perhaps knowing something. It was probably wise to follow his advice. As soon as he walked in and placed the camera on the floor to take a picture of the wall, intending to finish quickly and leave without closing the stall door, a gust of wind blew in, making him shiver from the cold.

At the same time, the door was blown shut.

Is this bad? Yu Xing instantly became alert, quickly finished up, zipped up his pants, and turned to push the door.

"..."

The door wouldn't open.

"Zhao Yijiu?"

No response.

It's over, it's over, it's over... Yu Xing felt a headache coming on. Was this the third time? Why him again?

"I have no toilet paper, I'm deaf, I don't want to buy anything, don't ask, just say I'm cute, I don't want to listen to the neighbors, and I don't need them to pass me paper, please leave me alone QAQ..." Muttering to himself, he picked up the camera, ready to bolt the moment the door opened.

"Whoosh--"

The sound of a toilet flushing came from the urinal. Yu Xing, who had been staring intently at the gap in the door, stiffened immediately and said, "I'm deaf, I'm blind, I've poked my own eyes out, I can't see you, don't waste your effort..."

He was utterly cowardly.

However, despite saying he was blind, he couldn't help but cast a sidelong glance towards the urinal.

A pair of blood-red eyes met his.

A pale face was submerged in the water, black hair spilling out, completely clogging the urinal.

It was a woman's face.

Swollen and deformed, its original features were unrecognizable, only appearing ugly and terrifying. The woman's body seemed to still be in the sewer, struggling to climb up. Her mouth stretched open, emitting a sinister laugh like teeth grinding together.

"Hehehe..."

"Ghost!!!" This was the second time Yu Xing had uttered those words in less than half an hour. This time, he was absolutely certain: screw the recruitment test, they'd been sent to a ghost's den!

The Female Ghost's face grew closer, looking like she was about to crawl out of the toilet bowl any second. Her laughter grew louder, and within it, indistinct words could be heard: "Hehehe... poke... out... your... eyes..."

Yu Xing was consumed by Despair.

He reached out, grabbed the mop leaning nearby, stepped on the mop head, and yanked hard, pulling out the wooden handle. With innocent terror, he yelled, "Didn't I tell you I was easily scared? Don't scare me! What are you laughing at!"

Immediately, he jabbed the mop handle into the Female Ghost's face, poking her back down the drain.