Intruder

"Still not dead?"

Chen Shouyi was startled. He subconsciously looked toward the corpse's eyes.

Its eyes were half-open and half-closed. Through its eyelids, perhaps because of the light, Chen Shouyi vaguely felt that a faint, eerie glow seemed to be radiating from them.

After watching for a while, he retreated into the courtyard.

It wasn't because he was afraid. The smell was simply too awful.

Once Chen Shouyi sat down, Chen Xingyue moved closer and asked in a low voice, "Did you notice anything?"

"It's right there. Can't you go look for yourself?" Chen Shouyi glanced at her and replied.

"Don't be so stingy. Will it kill you to tell me?"

"Don't say 'kill.' Be careful not to speak it into existence!"

Chen Xingyue was somewhat frightened.

"Big brother, if you keep this up, I'm ignoring you."

"I'm not teasing you anymore." Chen Shouyi stopped joking as well and said softly, "Its hand is still moving, but it's tied up. You probably won't have much to do today."

Chen Xingyue immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

Time slowly passed, and the moonlight seemed to grow ever colder and clearer.

During that time, the old man could no longer hold out and was persuaded to go to sleep.

Around one in the morning, banging vibrations came from the mourning hall. The corpse began to struggle.

Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and looked at one another, their faces filled with uncertainty and alarm.

After a long while, Old Man Wang's second son, Wang Dewen, worked up his nerve to take a look inside the mourning hall. When he returned, his face was pale. "N-No... It's fine. Dad tied him up properly."

Everyone relaxed upon hearing that.

Chen Shouyi keenly noticed that his younger sister's little hand, which had been tightly clutching her pant leg, had also loosened.

He couldn't help finding it amusing. If she was so afraid, why had she come out in the first place?

The banging vibrations continued without pause, growing more and more violent.

Along with the forceful "mm-mm" sounds coming from deep within the corpse's throat, they were especially eerie in the dead of midnight.

But Chen Shouyi only felt bored.

He could only continue to endure the ordeal.

He even somewhat hoped Old Man Wang would break free and liven things up.

Unfortunately, in this low-magic environment, Old Man Wang was powerless to do so.

No one knew how long they endured it before dawn finally broke, and the corpse's movements gradually subsided.

On the way back, Chen Xingyue yawned while walking with light, skipping steps.

"Just like that, five thousand yuan is ours. I didn't expect it to be so easy."

"You only get two thousand. Three thousand is mine." Chen Shouyi cruelly shattered her beautiful dream.

"I don't need you to remind me, money-grubber!" Chen Xingyue snorted. "If I'd known it would be this easy, I would've gone alone."

She could have earned the full five thousand, but now she wouldn't even get half of it.

"Without me, would you have dared to come?" Chen Shouyi cast his sister a sidelong glance.

He had long since seen through her outward bravado and inner weakness.

"What's there to be afraid of? I'm too lazy to argue with you."

"Sigh, I've easily earned three thousand. I wonder how I should spend it?" Chen Shouyi pretended to ponder, wearing an unbearably smug expression.

"Big brother, you really are an awful person, you know that?" Chen Xingyue ground her teeth behind him as she stared at his backside, wishing she could kick him.

"You actually said your brother is awful? I was planning to give you some of it."

"Big brother, you're my one and only big brother. You're the best." Chen Xingyue changed her attitude in an instant and spoke without the slightest bit of dignity.

As a "millionaire" with more than two hundred thousand yuan to his name, how could he really have the nerve to take the hard-earned money his sister had struggled to earn? He had merely been teasing her earlier.

When they reached home, they found that their parents had already gotten up.

Judging by their sleepy faces, they had clearly spent the night worrying and hadn't slept well.

"Don't come in yet. Step over the brazier and drive away the bad luck." Mother Chen, a superstitious woman, lit a handful of dried mugwort in a battered cooking pot.

After sleeping for only a few hours that morning to catch up, Chen Shouyi awoke feeling full of energy.

After lunch, Chen Shouyi picked up his briefcase and went to the Unfinished Building again.

The military and police were still patrolling nearby, but this time Chen Shouyi couldn't hold back.

He hadn't gone to the deserted island for several days, and he was somewhat worried that the barbarians might have made some moves.

Taking advantage of the police's inattention, his figure flashed, and he quickly ran toward the Unfinished Building.

After making his way there without incident, he reached the Underground Parking Lot.

His expression immediately became suspicious and uncertain.

The floor of the parking lot was covered in a thick layer of dust. Every step left behind a clear footprint. Originally, there had only been his own footprints, but now there was another pair.

His expression turned solemn as he followed the footprints forward step by step.

The newcomer's purpose was crystal clear. They had followed his footprints until they vanished at the entrance to the passage.

"Has someone finally discovered this passage?"

Although Chen Shouyi was startled by all this, he wasn't surprised. The Unfinished Building wasn't located in some remote, uninhabited wilderness. It was near a street, and anyone who paid attention could easily discover that his movements were abnormal.

He took a deep breath and calmed himself.

Soon, he noticed something strange.

The other person's footprints only went in one direction, proving that they were still inside. However, dust had already accumulated over them, and its thickness was almost the same as that covering the footprints he had left the last time.

How many days ago had he last come to the other world?

More than four days had already passed.

He vaguely formed a guess.

That person had probably already died.

But thinking about it more wouldn't help. He should go inside and take a look first.

Chen Shouyi stepped into the passage, and just as the scene shifted before his eyes,

he saw a corpse.

The corpse lay face-down, dressed in a suit like a white-collar worker.

At first glance, Chen Shouyi looked at the shoes the corpse was wearing. Their patterns were identical to those of the footprints. Clearly, this was the person who had discovered the passage.

He had been dead for some time. The corpse was already somewhat swollen and decayed, and both feet were twisted unnaturally. Clearly, he had been unable to withstand the gravity here and had suddenly collapsed to his knees.

Chen Shouyi subconsciously looked at the distance between the corpse and the passage. They were more than twenty meters apart.

He couldn't understand how this person had managed to run so far.

Three times Earth's gravity was already extremely dangerous for an ordinary person. On Earth, falling over would at most scrape the skin, but here, it could cause fractures at best and be fatal at worst.

Only when Chen Shouyi noticed a pile of Gold Sand glittering with enchanting radiance in the sunlight not far ahead did he suddenly understand.

People would die for wealth, just as birds would die for food. The saying was indeed true.

The other person had probably seen his pile of Gold Sand and ventured deeper at the risk of his life.

The Gold Sand actually weighed less than half a kilogram. At most, it was worth forty or fifty thousand yuan, yet it had cost him his life.

For Chen Shouyi, however, this was a good thing.

Although the corpse had begun to stink, it still had to be dealt with.

After witnessing Old Man Wang's strange transformation, Chen Shouyi had become extremely sensitive to corpses. Even Earth's environment had produced such an eerie change, let alone this other world, where mysterious power was even stronger.

Holding his breath, he grabbed one of the corpse's legs and dragged it down the mountain.

A dozen or so minutes later, he threw the corpse into the Great Sea and then carefully washed his hands.

On the way back, he saw a wallet. Clearly, it had fallen from the other person's pocket while he was dragging the corpse.

The wallet lay open, revealing the photograph inside.

He had originally intended to ignore it. No matter how much money it contained, he didn't want to pick it up. But when he saw the photograph tucked inside, he still couldn't help crouching down and taking it out.

It was a photograph of a family of three.

In the photograph, an adorable little girl sat on her father's neck, laughing happily.

Chen Shouyi suddenly crumpled the photograph into a ball and hurled it into the distance with all his strength.

I wasn't the one who killed him!