This Building Was Sick

When Yu Xing put down the Yugi, he rubbed his eyes wearily.

Playing Yugi in the dark is quite harmful to the eyes. Since his body is in a normal state, he only realized after quitting the Yugi that his eyes were sore and tired, with a dry feeling as if they had been open all day without closing.

Ye Ting was already fast asleep in the room. He got up from his chair, moved his stiff limbs in the darkness, and then glanced at the time on the Yugi console screen.

It was already late. In a little while, the summer dawn would rise from the darkness, and Ye Ming, who was still wandering around the room, would no longer be a threat.

Yu Xing thought for a moment. Anyway, he had nothing to do at the moment, and due to the emergence of a large number of clues, he was in a rather excited state, so he wasn't very sleepy.

Should we take advantage of the fact that only Ye Ming Ghostification, and that he hasn't forgotten about the attic, and go check on it first?

Although doing so would be quite dangerous, with the possibility of being caught and killed by Ye Ming on the spot, opportunity and danger go hand in hand, and more clues are naturally obtained from dangerous places.

He also wanted to go into the master bedroom next door, but the bell in the master bedroom was too unsolvable, so he could wait until Ye Ming disappeared tomorrow during the day to go and see it.

Yu Xing was a decisive person. Since he had already thought of this, he did not hesitate. He tiptoed to the door, pressed his ear against it, and listened to the sounds outside.

The good news was that he didn't hear any footsteps in the hallway, which meant that Ye Ming was either downstairs or back in his room. The worst-case scenario was that Ye Ming was sitting or standing still in the hallway.

He gently turned the handle, controlling the force so that the door made no sound whatsoever, and peeked out through a crack.

It was pitch black outside. He squinted, trying to make out the outlines of things outside, but unfortunately, his eyesight had deteriorated to an extreme degree, so he couldn't see anything.

There's a bit of danger; Yu Xing needs to take the gamble.

He simply opened the door a crack wide enough for himself to slip out, then quietly stepped into the hallway and stood there waiting for two minutes.

During this time, nothing around him changed, so he guessed that Ye Ming was not in this corridor, and Ye Ming's room door was still open, and he could smell a bloody stench coming from that room.

This was the smell left behind when Ye Ming dragged him out of his room. There were rows of bloody handprints on the door frame, extending all the way to the floor of the corridor. Although Yu Xing couldn't see them clearly, he could feel the sticky texture of blood when he bent down and touched them.

Ye Ming wasn't in the hallway or his room, which was good news for Yu Xing. He remembered that the flashlight had been left in Ye Ming's room during the power outage, and it should still be there now, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Since he couldn't turn on the lights and attract Ye Ming's attention, he decided to steal the flashlight instead. Flashlights were easy to turn on and off, making them suitable for concealment.

With that in mind, he groped his way to Ye Ming's room. To prevent Ye Ming from suddenly appearing behind him, he closed the door. Then, without much effort, he found the family's only flashlight in Ye Ming's desk drawer.

He pressed the light switch, and the flashlight's light flickered twice, working normally and illuminating the mess in Ye Ming's room clearly.

To be honest, the room is now very chaotic and bloody. No one knows what Ye Ming did in the room before leaving, but Ye Ting, who was in the next room, could hear him banging his head against the wall.

Yu Xing then shone his flashlight on the wall and, sure enough, saw a large pool of blood on the wall connecting to Ye Ting's room. The blood was splattered and not very much, so it had already dried. More blood flowed down the wall to the floor, forming a large puddle.

The furniture in the room was mostly overturned or damaged, the bed was in disarray, and the pillowcases were torn apart, as if someone had once gone mad and destroyed everything in the room.

During their first meeting, the image of Ye Ming, a tall, thin student carrying a schoolbag, alternated with that of the deceased Ye Ming who was self-harming in Yu Xing room and trying to hurt others. This stark contrast made Yu Xing feel somewhat suffocated, and he knew that it was Ye Qin's emotions at work again.

To avoid being too distracted, Yu Xing turned her head away from the room's furnishings. Instead, she took a flashlight in one hand and used the other to rummage through the desk drawer, finding several unused batteries.

He disassembled the entire battery pack, compared it with the batteries in the flashlight, confirmed they were the same model, and then put the batteries into his pocket with satisfaction.

At this point, he didn't believe a flashlight could sustain him for all his exploration time. Nobody knew how long the flashlight had been used or how much power was left. The system would definitely set a trap here, plunging the careless researcher into complete darkness later. The flashing light when he turned on the flashlight was a warning.

After taking what she needed, Yu Xing felt a moment of confusion, suddenly wondering why she had done it.

His pupils then contracted, and he silently repeated to himself several times: Attic, attic, attic.

As expected, the deduction was capable of influencing the thinker's mind; he almost forgot about it after only a short while of not focusing his attention on it.

The attic is actually next to Ye Ting and the master bedroom. There is a board on the ceiling that needs to be hooked down. Once the board is removed, it will form a staircase that leads to the third floor, which is the attic.

Yu Xing casually grabbed the broom that was placed at the door of Ye Ming's room, left his older brother's room, and went to the corridor. He used the broom stick to poke the iron ring that had been hammered down from the ceiling, and with a little force, he managed to pry open the stairs.

He steadied himself, gripped the flashlight tightly, and without hesitation, began to carefully ascend step by step.

Generally speaking, attics are used to store miscellaneous items. Some creators in various fields also transform attics into studio-like spaces, such as painting studios, sculpture studios, and exhibition and collection rooms for finished products. However, based on the details in the Yugi information, this family completely used the attic as a storage room.

Yu Xing was prepared to smell the dust filling his nostrils when he peeked inside, and then find some key items among the messy objects on the ground. Perhaps the Female Ghost, that is, his mother's corpse, would be waiting for him here, or perhaps he would see the evil formation left behind by his father after sealing his flesh and blood.

But nothing happened. Under the flashlight beam, the attic looked strange. For a moment, Yu Xing seemed to see the phantom of a church in front of him, but before he could get a better look, the scene changed. He could only see several large black objects on the ground.

Even in such a situation, he still didn't have a chance to make a clear look. In a moment of confusion, everything went black before his eyes. The flashlight's beam was even less effective than he had expected, and the battery had failed.

He pulled a new battery out of his pocket, intending to replace it right there. Clearly, the system was designed this way to discourage slightly flawed deducers from continuing their exploration, while meticulous deducers could have an extra chance.

Installing batteries was a piece of cake for Yu Xing. He recalled installing batteries for the camera when he first entered the simulation, which was also done in relatively dark conditions.

While changing the battery, he could feel the air around him begin to move strangely, with abnormal air currents swirling around him. It was as if, in the blink of an eye, the attic began to subtly change.

After replacing the battery, Yu Xing turned the switch back on, and the scene that appeared in his field of vision again immediately startled him.

This place was both incredibly unfamiliar and incredibly familiar, because although he had never been here before, he had just watched the pixelated version.

Church!

He was in the church's prayer hall, standing in the aisle. Directly in front of him were four or five stone statues as tall as him, and on both sides were rows of well-preserved red chairs, neatly arranged from front to back.

A cold wind blew in from an unknown place. The old church always exuded a faint musty smell, and the dust concentration in the air was relatively high, making Yu Xing's nose very uncomfortable.

Huge cracks spread across the walls, spiderwebs tangled within them, and even the semi-circular dome above was cracked, revealing a bottomless color beneath. The once exquisite chandelier was in ruins, as part of its crystal glass had fallen and shattered on the ground, leaving fragments large enough to pierce Yu Xing's shoes and feet. The remaining weight of the chandelier caused it to slump to one side, looking extremely unsafe, as if it might fall at any moment.

The main color scheme is deep purple and deep red, with only the colorful glass blinds adding a touch of brightness. But that's far from enough; the main color scheme already makes the place feel oppressive and dull. Combined with all the other details, it gives Yu Xing a very strong sense of déjà vu.

This church... is sick.

While playing pixelated Yugi, Yu Xing genuinely felt that the backgrounds fit the atmosphere of horror Yugi. But standing here in person, he realized that the atmosphere wasn't just strange and terrifying, but also permeated with a strong sense of disease.

It's hard to explain how such an abstract adjective could be applied to an old building, but Yu Xing was able to sense with his exceptional Spiritual Sense that the church, like a human being, was utterly sick inside and out, from spirit to body.

A mad, morbid atmosphere permeated Yu Xing's senses; he was somewhat familiar with it—it was the feeling of a mentally ill person.

It means... that Female Ghost, who is also the mother of the three siblings, suffers from a severe mental illness.

Yu Xing had previously deduced that the church's existence was a new place created by several ghosts, including the main character of the deduction, who had been wandering in the house for a long time, combined with their fear of the Female Ghost.

At this moment, perhaps dissatisfied with his superficial understanding and decisive withdrawal from the Yugi, the system directly arranged a real-life scene of him entering a church!

Moreover, when Yu Xing regained his vision, he suddenly realized that his field of vision had increased slightly, which was completely different from when he had been controlling Ye Qin's body for the past week.

With a premonition, Yu Xing looked down and indeed found that the man standing in the church had regained his real-life physique and height, even the shape of his muscles had returned to normal.

However, he didn't immediately notice the changes in his body in the darkness, which indicates that his muscle strength and power remained unchanged, still at a useless level.

The darkness in this deduction, just as he had realized in previous instances, was used for spatial changes and the transformation between the "inner and outer worlds." Pitch blackness is the best camouflage for all paranormal events.

The moment Yu Xing realized where he was, he turned off his flashlight. Since he was already in the church, inside a horror Yugi scenario, it meant the Female Ghost would soon arrive to begin the initial plot, "Inspecting the prayer hall."

Yu Xing stood out too much in the corridor. He recalled that scene in the Yugi and wondered where he should go.

Hiding under the seat is impossible; it's highly unrealistic. In the Yugi, pixelated characters can hide completely under seats, but Yu Xing can't. He's much taller than he was at 17 when he wasn't fully grown, not to mention that the character Ye Qin has made him much shorter. He wasn't even this short at 17. Now, as a 1.85-meter-tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged adult man, trying to squeeze under a seat is nothing short of a pipe dream.

He now understood why he had reverted to his original form in the church; it was to make things more difficult for him.

There was no difference in strength between Ye Qin's body and his body; both were in a sealed state. The system had simply set up a trap here to make the deducers have a lower margin for error. Many places that teenagers could hide in, they couldn't hide in. This forced them to be more meticulous and not make a mistake at any step.

Yu Xing smiled. This action showed that the system was indeed a little anxious. He believed that several people in the factions who were good at analysis could have noticed this. The system regarded this team competition as very important, and for this reason, it did not hesitate to raise the difficulty to a level that ordinary strategists could not reach, and to create traps for the recommenders in a roundabout way, just to keep the strongest part.

Within their team, Zhao Mou was adept at handling such deductions, Qu Xuanqing was highly experienced, and Carlos was quite secretive, having always been a lone wolf before meeting him. The fact that he could remain solitary during deductions already speaks volumes.

There shouldn't be any problems with these two.

The only thing that worried Yu Xing was Brother Jiu. He wondered if Zhao Yijiu had persevered. After all, decryption wasn't his forte. Even though he had become increasingly perceptive of people's psychology recently, logical reasoning wasn't something that could be developed overnight.

As he pondered, he carefully controlled his footsteps, walking along the central aisle towards the statue of the deity.

He couldn't hide in the chair, but the pulpit could accommodate him more than enough.

He crouched down behind the pulpit and hid inside it.

According to his memory of playing the Yugi, when the Female Ghost came to the prayer hall in a menacing manner, whether it was the time she checked every row or the time she chopped up all the seats with an axe, she never approached the statue or the pulpit. This suggests that this place was somewhat special to the Female Ghost, and she probably did not want to provoke what the statue represented.