This is Outrageous, Are You Tricking Me?

High heels clicked on the floor, creating dull echoes in the empty space. The woman was alone; her temporary partner had vanished.

This was the left side of the factory, the largest section being the hall, connected by a short corridor to the changing rooms, the toilet, and two small resting rooms.

Zhang Shuya faced the camera, her expression no longer relaxed. As she walked forward, she scanned her surroundings cautiously. "Why has Fang Rui been in the toilet for almost ten minutes..."

She waited a little longer, growing restless.

The surroundings were empty. Nearly forty-five minutes had passed since the test began, but with scattered debris in the hall, there were too many places to hide batteries. She and Fang Rui hadn't finished searching the hall yet.

She recalled the human head she'd seen in a broken machine while picking up batteries earlier, and felt a shiver of fear.

The Deduction Company's props were too realistic; they even blinked and stuck out their tongues.

The tongue was so long, it reminded her of the boss at Qingyuan Pharmaceutical Factory who had hanged himself.

It was strange. She'd been to many haunted houses and experienced plenty of scary things before without any issues. Why did this time give her such an uncomfortable feeling?

Zhang Shuya took a deep breath, pulled out a sweet candy from her pocket to replenish her sugar, trying to lift her spirits.

She raised her camera, pointing it at the road ahead, and began to narrate like a streamer. "The test difficulty is greater than I imagined. The batteries are hidden very well; I've only found one so far."

"Fang Rui went to the toilet and still hasn't returned. The other four are far away. I'm alone in the hall now... Wait, did you hear that?"

She lowered her voice, concentrating to listen to the sudden "thump-thump" sound.

The sound was faint, seeming to come from the direction of the toilet.

"Is... is that Fang Rui? Did he forget toilet paper?" Zhang Shuya guessed hesitantly, her feet moving slightly towards the toilet before stopping again.

"Could he be playing a trick on me? He's been gone so long, is he trapped inside?"

After waiting in place for a while, listening to the increasingly urgent sound, Zhang Shuya gritted her teeth and walked towards the toilet.

She passed through the corridor connecting to the hall. The closer she got, the more piercing the thumping sound became.

She couldn't help but wonder if this was another deliberate scare tactic.

"Fang Rui, are you there? Are you inside? This is Zhang Shuya."

She stood before the toilet door, hesitantly poking her head in to look.

The abandoned factory toilet had cubicles. The other person was still knocking, indicating the cubicle door was closed, so she didn't have to worry about any awkward encounters.

However, after her voice echoed and faded in the empty space, there was no response from inside the toilet.

She looked further inside. The intensity of the door's vibration showed that the knocking was coming from the last cubicle.

This was even stranger.

Given their current situation, Fang Rui wouldn't use the last cubicle.

He wasn't the type to seek thrills, so the logic didn't make sense. Besides, Fang Rui wouldn't ignore her question.

Wasn't it Fang Rui inside? Then who was knocking?

"...Hmph, do they really think I'm that easily scared?" The smug face of the haunted house organizer flashed in her mind. She decisively stepped forward in her high heels, "clack-clack-clack," and pulled on the door of the last cubicle.

The door wouldn't open.

She deliberately said, "Is anyone in there? Are you out of paper, or did you fall in? Does big sister need to bring you paper?"

Her only response was the increasingly rapid "thump-thump-thump."

The door of this kind of toilet had a gap at the bottom.

Zhang Shuya took out her flashlight, intending to use it to see, but the flashlight flickered twice, made a slight "zzzt" sound, and then, to her astonishment, went out.

No way?

Props could be used to scare people, but the flashlight was her own from home. Could it really break at such a coincidence?

A vague suspicion crept into her heart. The old man in her family used to say, "He who walks by the river often will eventually get his shoes wet." Could it be... this place was truly unclean?

"No, impossible. It's all in my head." She liked playing in haunted houses and watching horror movies precisely because she knew ghosts didn't exist, which gave her an interest in exploring the truth.

If someone told her ghosts were real? She wouldn't believe it!

Putting away the broken flashlight, Zhang Shuya, with a hint of defiance, knelt down and lowered her body. She propped her face on one hand to avoid getting dust on it, and used her other hand holding a camera with night vision. She squinted, using the camera screen to look through the gap in the door.

Strangely, as soon as she looked down, the knocking stopped abruptly.

And in the image transmitted by the camera, the gap under the door was clean, showing only the bottom parts of the squat toilet and the trash can.

There was nothing.

But nothing was absurd. If no one was there, who was knocking?

"Then it's not the company messing around, it's a mechanism!" Zhang Shuya confirmed softly and stood up.

Just then, footsteps sounded from outside the toilet.

Zhang Shuya jumped, turning around abruptly. She saw a corner of clothing peeking out from behind the wall. The corner stayed for a moment. She tentatively asked, "Fang Rui?"

As if deliberately avoiding her, the corner of clothing moved and disappeared behind the wall.

Although Zhang Shuya was reluctant to admit it, she now had a reason to leave this eerie toilet. She whispered to the camera, "Fang Rui might be at the door. I'm going to look for him."

She hurried out of the toilet, guessing the direction of the clothing corner, and entered the nearby changing room.

As her feet left, the sound of flushing the toilet came from the cubicle. The door, which couldn't be opened, was gently pushed open, and a pale hand suddenly stretched out from the gap. It opened its fingers and felt around in the air. Not finding anyone, it seemed a little angry.

After a long pause, it quietly retracted and closed the door.

Zhang Shuya wouldn't know what she had just avoided. She looked at the rows of labeled cabinets in the room, and the four long benches in the center where people could sit and change clothes, feeling it was utterly bizarre.

Where were the people?

She was supposed to be teaming up to tackle an instance, so why was she alone now?

She muttered silently, "Fang Rui is so unreliable... I should have chosen Zhao Yijiu as my partner. At least he wouldn't just leave a girl behind and forget about her, right?"

"Bang!"

The only response was the changing room door being slammed shut. This truly startled Zhang Shuya. In such a quiet environment, even the sound of the rainstorm was muffled outside. A sudden loud noise could scare the heart right out of her chest.

She let out a short scream and ran to the door, banging on it. "Who's outside? Damn it, they locked the door too..."

After a stalemate of more than five minutes, she finally stopped reluctantly, certain that even if the person outside hadn't left, they wouldn't open the door for her.

"I'll look for batteries in the changing room then. Maybe if I find one, I can leave?"

She took out her mobile phone and checked the time. She had wasted so much time; it was already 12:57 AM.

She really needed to find a battery quickly. Otherwise, her camera would run out of power, and being eliminated would be awful.

At that moment, she didn't have time to dwell on it. She immediately opened every cabinet door she could, fumbling around inside with the help of her night vision.

"Nothing..."

"Not here either..."

"This doesn't make sense. In such a large place, there should be at least three or four batteries. Did Fang Rui already search here!?"

She searched the cabinets in the very corner, still without finding any batteries.

1:01 AM.

The camera ran out of power and automatically shut down.

"Five minutes left..." A cold sweat trickled down her face as she pursed her lips.

She began to suspect that some people in the company's human resources department had pre-selected certain newcomers and were making others run the race with them.

Were they deliberately telling the pre-selected people where the batteries were, and then suggesting they split up to make it easier to eliminate others?

The one who first proposed splitting into pairs was... Fang Rui.

He used the excuse of going to the toilet and then just disappeared!

"Damn it." Seeing that finding a battery was hopeless and she was locked in the changing room, she stopped bothering to maintain her ladylike demeanor and cursed directly.

Once everything was over, she would expose this rigged test!

Five minutes passed in a flash. In the dark changing room, the atmosphere suddenly became even more oppressive.

Zhang Shuya sat on the bench. Since she had already been eliminated, she planned to get some sleep.

Suddenly, something cold touched her ankle, sending goosebumps all over her body.

"Who!?"

Her flashlight was broken, and her camera had shut down. She could only use her mobile phone's flashlight to illuminate the area.

After her startled cry, the thing that touched her ankle didn't leave. Instead, it suddenly grabbed her!

It was a hand!

Zhang Shuya's hair stood on end. Upon contact with that delicate skin, she finally screamed, realizing it wasn't a prop.

A violent pulling force came from her ankle, dragging her to the floor. Her phone flew out, hitting the wall and illuminating a small corner.

Something crawled up her leg, and finally, a chilling pressure settled on her eyes.

"No, don't..." Zhang Shuya panicked. She struggled violently but was held in place. A finger pried open her eyelids, exposing her eyeballs.

She clearly saw what was in front of her.

"No!!!"

Splat--

Two black orbs, accompanied by thick blood, fell to the ground with a wet thud.

Twenty minutes earlier.

Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu didn't stay in the Exhibition Room for too long. Besides a general analysis of the situation, they also went to Office 02 and Office 03 to look for batteries. Not wanting to encounter any Ghosts, they didn't take the batteries after finding them, merely noting their locations to use if needed.

Afterward, the two followed their original path back towards the entrance of Qingyuan Pharmaceutical Factory.

It's worth mentioning that although their mobile phones showed everything was normal and they had signal, any calls they made would never connect, and posts on various social media apps would receive a red exclamation mark.

As Yu Xing tested each of his devices, even though he had anticipated such a situation after learning there were indeed Ghosts here, he still put on a pathetic face under Zhao Yijiu's disgusted gaze.

He complained with a miserable expression, "Tell me, why can Ghosts interfere with electronic devices? Doesn't this provide some evidence for certain people's magnetic field theories? For the final exam, you wouldn't even need signal jammers. Just put a Ghost in the hallway, and it would be incredibly effective."

"I'd admire the students if they could still write their papers under those conditions," Zhao Yijiu said. He didn't know why he was engaging in this boring hypothetical conversation. After speaking, he regretted it. How had he been infected by Yu Xing's nonsensical talk?

As they passed through the hall and successfully reached the main door, Yu Xing's resentment reached its peak.

"I knew it! Just as I expected!"

The door wouldn't open at all. Yu Xing fiddled with the wire for a long time, reaching a conclusion: "It's not locked, there must be another reason it won't open."

"It's probably sealed by the abnormal power of a ghostly creature." Zhao Yijiu skillfully kicked the door, but it didn't even budge.

He stopped trying and instead lowered his head, frowning.

Two seconds later, his eyes flashed: "You mean you saw that Assistant Hao had no footprints from here?"

"Huh? Yeah, Assistant Hao only moved around this area." Yu Xing casually replied as he continued to work on the lock.

Zhao Yijiu narrowed his eyes, feeling a sense of absurdity as a wild guess seemed to be confirmed.

He finally understood the source of that feeling of incongruity.

Yu Xing had always acted terrified of ghosts, but in reality, none of his actions indicated he was avoiding ghostly creatures. It was like someone loudly proclaiming, "I'm going to fail again," yet scoring first in the class.

This was ridiculous—Yu Xing hadn't told him that Assistant Hao had no footprints.

Zhao Yijiu had only just realized that the footprints leading to the main door belonged only to him and Yu Xing. He then remembered that at midnight, Yu Xing had asked Assistant Hao if he was cold and watched him leave, intending to trick him into revealing something.

He hadn't expected to actually trick him.

Yu Xing's subconscious answer indicated that he had noticed Assistant Hao's lack of footprints at that very moment!

So, the question was, who among normal people would have no footprints? The footprints of the several applicants were scattered everywhere. The only one who could move through so much dust without leaving a trace... had to be a ghost, right? Yu Xing knew Assistant Hao was a ghost from the beginning but hadn't shown any unusual behavior.

Then his previous fearful act couldn't be explained.

His move to go home upon learning there was a ghost here also contradicted this.

Coupled with Yu Xing's fluctuating behavior between calmness and panic, his ability to extract and analyze the key points of a problem...

Zhao Yijiu's thoughts suddenly became clear. Based on all this, it was highly likely... Yu Xing was putting on an act!

Was he playing the pig to eat the tiger!?

He fixed his gloomy gaze on Yu Xing's back, contemplating the other's motives.