"By piecing together the clues from every floor, we can work out the stories of the three people, then figure out the relationship between the three evil spirits."
"I suspect that during the road test, the evil spirit corresponding to each car will appear and interfere with the players. The written test should give us a way to get through the road test."
"Ma Gang's hatred for Yang Shuang has reached its peak, so I went to the first floor on purpose and took the photo from outside Yang Shuang's door. If we choose the prison van for the road test, Ma Gang might appear. We can use the photo to draw his attention and buy ourselves some time."
After taking the photo from the first floor, Chu Changge ran into the Fatty and Xiao Qiao on the stairs. He was now telling them what he had figured out.
In the darkness, the Fatty and Xiao Qiao exchanged glances as they listened, as if there was something they couldn't bring themselves to say.
Chu Changge looked at them and asked, "Where's Gu Mian? We need to tell him the story as soon as possible."
The Fatty hesitated, then said uncertainly, "N... no need..."
Chu Changge immediately saw that something was wrong. He frowned slightly. "What happened?"
The Fatty found it hard to explain.
I can't exactly tell him that the story he risked his life and went to all that trouble to piece together had already been dragged out of a ghost by Gu Mian, who'd grabbed it by the throat and interrogated it, can I?
That would be a real blow.
After a long while, the Fatty finally stammered, "Actually... we don't need to go to all that trouble. To be honest, Doctor Gu just caught the ghost on the second floor..."
Even without hearing the rest, Chu Changge could guess what had happened. He was good at putting two and two together.
Chu Changge asked in a low voice, "What did Gu Mian do?"
Though he asked, he could already imagine part of the answer.
The Fatty looked surprised. "Brother Chu, why aren't you shocked at all?"
When he'd watched Gu Mian drag that ghost out from under the bed, the Fatty had nearly been scared out of his wits.
It wasn't that Chu Changge had no reaction. He'd simply known Gu Mian for so long that he'd already witnessed plenty of things beyond ordinary understanding.
Besides, Gu Mian himself was practically a bug in this game. The fact that he could really die in an instance and attack NPCs made that obvious enough.
So even hearing that he'd attacked a ghost in the instance didn't strike Chu Changge as strange.
Gu Mian could hit NPCs. Going after a ghost wasn't all that surprising.
Seeing that Chu Changge didn't respond, the Fatty continued, "Doctor Gu dragged the ghost out from under the bed right in front of me. It was pretty strange..."
"When I saw the doctor could grab that ghost... I reached out to try it too, but it nearly snapped my neck... I was terrified."
"Doctor Gu really isn't like the rest of us. No, he's completely different..."
As the Fatty said this, he looked dazed, as if he were wondering whether he was dreaming.
Not bothering to listen to him ramble on, Chu Changge asked, "Where's Gu Mian now?"
The three of them were between the second and third floors.
The Fatty glanced up toward the floor above. "Doctor Gu said he was going to look for you, Brother Chu. He didn't see you on the second or first floor, so he just went up to the third floor. He told us to wait here. That ghost from the second floor shouldn't come back out, right...?"
After the previous instance had gone off the rails, Gu Mian had received a threatening message from the game system. So he was being very careful in this instance, trying not to break anything.
After asking his question, he naturally let go. The moment he did, the ghost vanished.
The Fatty was still talking when they suddenly heard a rustling sound outside the stairwell below.
It sounded as if something were pressed against the wall.
The three of them quickly looked toward the stairwell. From behind the wall, half of a ghastly pale face had appeared, its eyes wide and round as it stared at them.
It was back!
The Fatty's mouth fell open. He sprang to his feet and tried to run.
But just then, footsteps sounded on the stairs above.
Someone was coming down. He immediately looked up and spotted the familiar white coat.
"Doctor!" The Fatty's earth-shaking shout echoed through the whole building.
Chu Changge turned to look toward the second-floor stairwell.
The half-face had vanished.
Gu Mian looked toward the Fatty, dragging something behind him. "What's wrong?"
"G... a ghost..." The Fatty pointed at the second-floor stairwell, trembling.
Gu Mian looked that way. It was completely empty—not a ghost in sight, nor even a fly. Though there was one extra person.
He looked at Chu Changge. "I thought you'd been eliminated."
"No." Chu Changge shook his head slightly. "I found some clues and finally pieced together the relationship between the three ghosts. I was going to tell you, but it seems you didn't need me to."
Chu Changge knew that Gu Mian always had his own ideas.
Lu Xun once said, "There were no paths in the world to begin with. The more people walked, the more paths there were."
But Gu Mian never did things by the book. He never cared whether there was a path or not. He just wandered wherever he pleased, yet somehow always managed to reach the finish line.
He still remembered a time in kindergarten when the teacher assigned a craft project: they had to hand in a folded-paper house the next day.
It stumped countless kindergarteners and their parents. The next day, Gu Mian was the only one who'd completed the assignment.
How had he done it?
He'd gone straight to a funeral shop and bought a paper mansion—the kind people burned for the dead.
After that, the kindergarten teacher never assigned that kind of project again.
Gu Mian had been a weirdo since childhood, and as time went on, that strange little flower had only bloomed more brilliantly.
So it was no surprise that he'd taken an unconventional route in the instance and grabbed a ghost to interrogate it.
The point of this instance was to make the players deduce the answers, and ordinary players probably couldn't do something like that to a ghost anyway...
It was already 10:15. They could answer the questions now.
Gu Mian dropped the thing he'd been dragging and prepared to take out the test paper and start answering.
But Chu Changge seemed more interested in the thing he'd dropped. "Is that... a long-handled axe? Where did you get it?"
"That?" Gu Mian glanced at the axe on the ground. "It was in the hands of the ghost on the third floor. He wanted to beat me with it, but I took it from him."
The Fatty: "..."
Chu Changge stared at the long-handled axe on the ground, then reached out and picked it up. He recalled the plaque on Ma Gang's cell door on the third floor—
Ma Gang, convicted of intentional homicide. Released after serving thirteen years. Thirteen years later, he used a long-handled axe to kill a woman.
Looking more closely, he saw bloodstains on the axe. It could very well have been the murder weapon Ma Gang used to kill Yang Shuang.
"This axe might come in handy during the road test." As he spoke, Chu Changge tossed it to the Fatty. "Hold on to it for now."
The Fatty caught it. "So... can we take the test now?"
"Of course." Gu Mian had already taken out a pen. "Once we finish the road test, we can get out of here."
The Fatty pursed his lips. If only the road test really were as simple as Gu Mian made it sound.
There were seven players in this special instance.
Four of them had gathered with Gu Mian. One had died beside the stairs on the first floor: a middle-aged man named Hao Laoshi. Ordinary players didn't really die when they died in an instance, so the body had been simulated by the instance too.
The other two players were nowhere to be found. They might have died too, with their bodies in one of the rooms.
The instructor was already standing at the entrance to the Written Test Center, apparently waiting to grade their papers.
The four of them lined up and handed him their completed test papers.
The instructor seemed a little surprised, probably because so many of them had made it out alive.
He looked down at their papers. "Even though four players made it out alive, that doesn't mean even one of you will pass..."
But the rest of his sentence caught in his throat.
They'd all passed?
Before you continue