"I could..." team up by myself.
But before Gu Mian could finish voicing his opinion, Qing Huan interrupted him. "Then I'll team up with Doctor Gu."
Gu Mian silently swallowed the rest of his words.
Yuwen Hao looked at them, then at Lin Yue'er and Huang Yu, who were left. "I doubt anyone wants to be on their own, so the three of us can team up."
Lin Yue'er and Huang Yu agreed without a word.
Yuwen Hao fished a phone out of his pocket and handed it to Gu Mian. "I bought this on the way here. I've got one too. It doesn't do much, but I've already put a SIM card in it. My number's saved in your phone. The two of us can work together as a team to make communication easier."
It was the year 2002, when you didn't need an ID to get a SIM card.
Gu Mian took the phone and slipped it into his white coat.
Yuwen Hao continued, "Let's meet here again at five this afternoon... no, at four. We'll need time to discuss where we're going to stay."
Gu Mian didn't think changing houses would stop the ghost from following them, but since his teammates wanted to do it, he wasn't going to argue against them.
Once they'd finished discussing things, the several visibly exhausted teammates finally went their separate ways.
None of the four had gotten much sleep the previous night. And staying up late in a dungeon had the same consequences as staying up late in real life: severe sleep deprivation and a sharp drop in efficiency.
Qing Huan was still yawning when he followed Gu Mian out.
Gu Mian glanced at him. "It's not good for a guy to stay up late all the time. You might end up with kidney problems, and in serious cases, even become infertile."
Qing Huan froze for a moment. "Doctor, you seem to know a lot about this."
Gu Mian strode along the asphalt road. "I'm a doctor, of course I know."
Qing Huan hurried to catch up. "But Doctor Gu, are you an internist?"
The sun was slowly climbing higher, and the weather seemed nice today.
Gu Mian looked up at it. "No. I'm a surgeon who knows how to use hammers, tweezers, scalpels, electric drills, and chainsaws."
"A surgeon..." Qing Huan stopped short. "Surgeons know this much about the dangers of staying up late, too?"
The surgeons he had in mind were incredibly handy, and just as good with their mouths. They loved telling dirty jokes, but none had ever lectured him on the dangers of staying up late.
"I memorized it all when I was in school. The whole book, cover to cover. Of course I remember it clearly."
"Don't your teachers highlight the important points for you?"
"Patients don't get sick according to the important points."
"..."
After chatting along the way, the two finally reached Gu Mian's place.
He was renting it.
It was a very dilapidated apartment building, with the kind of triangular roof that had a "Hong Sheng Apartment" sign hanging from it. The building had been painted yellow, but it seemed they'd run out of paint near the top, so they'd used a similar pale pink instead, apparently hoping no one would notice.
But the disguise was pretty lousy. The pale pink band around the top stood out so much that anyone without more than eight hundred degrees of myopia could tell at a glance how many colors the building had been painted.
The building had three units, five floors, and ten apartments in each unit. But only five households remained in the entire building.
Gu Mian knew which unit the landlord lived in, because a large sheet of paper was posted at the bottom of the building with a handwritten message on it.
"Tenants, please pay your water and electricity bills on time each month at the west apartment on the fifth floor of Unit Three."
Gu Mian lived in the east apartment on the first floor of Unit One, as far from the landlord as possible.
Without giving a thought to whether he lived near or far from the landlord, Gu Mian headed straight for Unit Three. Qing Huan hurried after him.
Perhaps because he hadn't slept well the previous night, Qing Huan was panting heavily by the time he reached the fourth floor, drawing frequent glances from Gu Mian.
"Buddy." Gu Mian patted Qing Huan on the shoulder. "Why are you so out of shape?"
Qing Huan looked up at him in surprise. "You're in great shape, Doctor. You're carrying that huge guitar and aren't even out of breath after climbing to the fourth floor?"
Of course. Gu Mian was carrying a chainsaw on his back. If he weren't in good shape, who knew where his corpse would be buried by now?
Qing Huan straightened up and continued climbing. "I haven't exercised much since I started college. Most of my classes are on the first or second floor, and even walking from the dorm to the school gate to pick up a package wears me out. Besides, there are elevators everywhere now. I haven't exercised in ages."
The physical fitness of Earth's people really was on the verge of collapse.
After finally getting Qing Huan up to the fifth floor, Gu Mian was just about to knock on the door on the east side when, before he could even raise his hand, the door opposite the landlord's apartment creaked open from within.
The two of them turned around.
The door behind them had opened a crack, and half a woman's face appeared in the gap.
The woman behind the door stared at them and asked, her expression somewhat uneasy, "You are...?"
Gu Mian looked at her. "I rent a place here too. There's something I'd like to ask the landlord. Who are you?"
But the woman didn't seem inclined to respond. She merely gave a cold "Oh," then slammed the door shut.
Qing Huan leaned in close and whispered mysteriously, "Based on my years of experience watching supernatural stuff, there's definitely something wrong with that woman!"
So this was what the Chinese literature major did in his spare time?
Without wasting any more time, Gu Mian knocked on the landlord's door.
A few seconds later, someone inside made their way slowly to the door and opened it a crack.
A deeply wrinkled face appeared behind it. The landlord was an elderly woman. Her hair was completely white—not the kind with gray mixed in, trying to pass itself off as white, but a pure, brilliant white without a trace of any other color.
She was dressed neatly enough and wore a pair of glasses. A yellowed newspaper was in her hand.
"Little Gu!" When she saw Gu Mian, she pulled the door open enthusiastically and ushered him inside. "What brings you here?"
The dungeon had assigned everyone an identity, but hadn't told them the details.
The landlord knew Gu Mian, but Gu Mian didn't know her, so he had to pretend.
He sat on the sofa with a fake smile. "Well, I've felt like there's something strange about the place I'm staying these past couple of days, so I came to ask you about it."
"Strange?" The landlord pushed up her glasses, which had slipped down to the bridge of her nose, and seemed quite surprised. "What's strange about it?"
Gu Mian looked at her. "There's a strange knocking at the door in the middle of the night."
"A strange knocking at the door?" The landlord slowly repeated the words, savoring them. At first, her expression held a hint of confusion, but then she seemed to remember something, and her face changed dramatically.
Before you continue