The group squeezed their eyes shut, but their ears were perked up.
They huddled together and heard Gu Mian lift the bed frame by himself.
It was a single bed, so it wasn't hard to lift.
They heard Gu Mian pause for a while after lifting the bed frame. Several seconds later, he lowered it again.
Then the three of them heard Gu Mian say, "You can open your eyes now."
Only then did they slowly open their eyes. Qing Huan was the first to crack his eyes open, and only relaxed enough to open them fully once he saw that the bed was back in place.
Yuwen Hao hesitated before asking, "How was it?"
Gu Mian rubbed his chin and paused for several seconds before answering, "The deceased seems to be in a very stable emotional state at the moment."
At that, the three of them retreated several steps, their faces turning pale.
Qing Huan asked, "Lin Yue'er... is she really underneath?"
Gu Mian nodded. "Yeah. She was dragged in by force. The space underneath was so small that a layer of skin came off. She seems to have been alive for a while after they dragged her in. There are scratch marks from fingernails under the bed, but I didn't see any ghosts. Do you want to check for yourselves?"
The three shuddered. "No!"
They hadn't managed to save her, and there was no reason to stay there any longer.
When they left Lin Yue'er's apartment, Yuwen Hao and the others were all deathly pale.
The second day hadn't even ended, and they'd already lost one person. They still had more than eight days to endure.
After finally getting everything taken care of and returning to the hotel, none of them could sleep anymore.
Huang Yu sat dejectedly on the sofa. "What are we supposed to do for the remaining eight days?"
Although he hadn't seen Lin Yue'er's corpse with his own eyes, he could imagine some of it. The thought that his own death might be even more horrifying than hers made Huang Yu's scalp crawl.
Yuwen Hao sat beside him and tried to reassure him. "Don't lose heart. We might still have a chance if we find the source of the curse. We can't be far from it now."
Huang Yu looked up. "But those ghosts keep getting closer to us... Lin Yue'er died today. Someone else might die tomorrow... Can I really make it out alive?"
Yuwen Hao was at a loss for words. It was clear he didn't know how to answer Huang Yu, either. After a moment's silence, he said, "Let's get some sleep first. We'll deal with tomorrow when it comes."
There was nothing else they could do right now besides sleep.
Huang Yu agreed, but the air around them remained heavy with gloom.
They'd been at it for several hours that night, and it was already 3:45 a.m.
Gu Mian paid no mind to how gloomy everyone else felt. He lay down, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. When he opened them again, the sun was already up. He turned to look at the clock in the living room. It was seven.
The others in the living room were groggily getting up. Gu Mian made a point of counting them. No one was missing.
Still, everyone looked a little off, especially Yuwen Hao.
He'd slept by the door to the other bedroom last night, but that morning he'd moved to the middle of the living room, and he'd shut the bedroom door as well.
Qing Huan looked at Yuwen Hao, who seemed out of sorts. "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
While he was keeping watch, he'd seen Yuwen Hao tossing and turning as if he couldn't sleep. Not long after, he'd gotten up to shut the bedroom door, then moved his bedding to the middle of the living room.
Qing Huan didn't feel too good himself, since he hadn't had a decent night's sleep in two days. But Yuwen Hao seemed to be doing far worse than he was.
Yuwen Hao nodded, his lips pale. "I feel a little uneasy..."
"After we got back and I lay down at around three, something felt wrong. I was facing away from the bedroom door, but I kept feeling like something in there was watching me..."
"Then I turned over and faced the doorway while I slept... but I kept feeling like something was right in front of me... like I'd see it the moment I opened my eyes."
"I couldn't take it anymore, so I shut the door... then moved to the middle of the room to sleep..."
"But even with the door shut and me in the middle, every time I closed my eyes, I still felt like something was watching my back, so I slept facing up..."
"Even sleeping on my back... when I closed my eyes, I felt like something on the ceiling was staring right at me. By this morning, that feeling of being watched had gotten even stronger..."
Because the ghosts were getting closer.
Qing Huan sucked in a sharp breath. "Let's get moving. We'd better find the source of the curse before tonight."
Everyone knew that the ghosts were drawing closer, so they didn't dawdle. They hurried out first thing in the morning.
The hotel owner gave them a curious look as they left, probably wondering why one of the women was missing.
Gu Mian had left Lin Yue'er's body under the bed to avoid trouble. After all, there were law enforcement officers in the instance, too.
Gu Mian found a local map at the hotel. It marked the location of Mingliang Plastic Factory, which wasn't far away.
They followed the map, and before long, they spotted the small factory.
A huge iron gate stood at the entrance to the plastic factory, with a clear view of the inside.
Several loops of iron chain were wrapped around the gate, probably to stop workers from sneaking out during work hours.
Right behind the gate stood a little hut that looked like a guardhouse, though guardhouses weren't very sophisticated in those days.
It was just a shabby little building with a large window facing the factory entrance. Through it, they could see an old man dozing at a desk.
Qing Huan hurried to the gate and rattled it. "Hey, sir!"
The old man, who had been dozing, jolted awake at the sound and looked over. Only after recognizing them did he relax, probably because he was afraid a supervisor had caught him slacking off.
Using the desk for support, the old man got to his feet and walked to the guardhouse door. "Who are you?"
Gu Mian glanced at Yuwen Hao beside him. "Didn't you come here yesterday? Why doesn't he recognize you?"
Yuwen Hao shook his head slightly. "The guard yesterday was someone else. He was a lot younger."
Mingliang Plastic Factory wasn't large, with at most seventy or eighty employees. They should all know one another, and it was obvious that Gu Mian and his group were strangers.
Qing Huan scratched his head. "We're here to investigate something."
"Investigate something?" The old man hesitantly walked over to the gate. "Investigate what? Nobody at our factory has done anything bad."
His tone suggested he suspected they were police officers.
"No," Qing Huan explained. "We're here to look into two people. One was called Zhao Wen, and the other Zhou Guanglei. You must know them, right?"
Both men had once worked at this plastic factory. They had died two years ago, both killed by the Knocking Ghost.
Gu Mian suspected that the two of them had gotten into trouble together two years ago, which was why the Knocking Ghost had started haunting them.
The old man's expression turned strange when he heard their names. "I know them. They died a long time ago. They passed away two years ago."
Qing Huan hurriedly nodded. "Right, I know. That's why we're here to investigate what happened to them."
The old man's expression grew even stranger. "Well, you've come to the right person. I've been working at this factory for a long time, so I know those things from years ago better than anyone. There are plenty of details in this story that outsiders don't know about."
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