The Third Floor Was Off-Limits

As night deepened.

Chen Feng grew more and more nervous.

Just then, white light flashed outside the window, followed by a sudden crack of thunder.

Pop!

Chen Feng jolted and looked up. The fluorescent lights flickered violently a few times, then went out completely.

The power was out. The rain had probably damaged a wire somewhere.

In the dark Internet Cafe, voices erupted all at once.

"Fuck! My pentakill!"

"What's going on, staff?"

Faced with the customers' anger, the staff gave a ridiculous answer: "Restart."

Like hell a restart would fix this.

Chen Feng almost laughed. That coworker's got a sense of humor.

Amid the chaos, a loud crash came from the Internet Cafe's entrance. Glass shattered.

What the hell was that?

Customers switched on their phone flashlights and aimed them toward the sound. All they saw were shards of glass on the floor, rainwater slowly seeping in, and a cold wind blowing through the doorway.

Chen Feng felt a little better. "I thought something else was coming. It was just the wind."

Then a burly man with tattooed arms, sitting near the entrance, suddenly went rigid. His eyes widened.

"What's wrong?"

People around him asked, but his face flushed red and he couldn't get a word out.

Then came a crack.

In the light of the phones, Chen Feng saw it. Everyone did. The tattooed man's head suddenly turned a hundred and eighty degrees. His neck had been wrenched clean around.

There was the twist.

Only it was his neck.

Chen Feng's mind went blank.

At first, he'd thought he had crossed into a City World romance.

After all, he'd become an Internet Cafe attendant right away, with three beautiful coworkers beside him. Wasn't this straight out of "Oh No, I'm Surrounded by Pretty Girls"?

But after witnessing something so horrifying, Chen Feng realized he'd gotten it wrong. This was clearly a world of ghost stories!

Oh no, I'm surrounded by monsters!

"Someone's been killed!"

"There's a ghost!"

At the first scream, the entire Internet Cafe erupted. People shoved one another, feet pounded, and gaming chairs toppled over in the chaos.

This place is deadly! Time to get out!

Without hesitating, Chen Feng sprinted up the stairs.

He reached the second floor.

Hearing the commotion below, customers from the private gaming rooms gathered around.

"What happened?"

"Something happened downstairs!"

Chen Feng told them what had happened on the first floor and urged them to call the police.

"There's no signal!"

"What's wrong with this damn phone?"

Of course.

Whenever trouble struck, a phone was guaranteed to become a useless brick.

Chen Feng sighed. Just then, the sounds of fighting, screaming, and cries of pain downstairs grew much quieter.

A moment later, everything fell silent.

Was it over?

Then why hadn't anyone else come up?

Was everyone downstairs dead?

Questions crowded everyone's minds.

"Anyone brave enough to go down and look?"

"Easy for you to say. Why don't you fucking try it?"

They argued back and forth, but no one moved.

Chen Feng looked around. He saw neither of the two receptionists nor the Landlady, and his heart sank.

Had they already been killed?

It now seemed likely that this monster had killed him on his previous run.

It could turn invisible and was strong enough to twist a person's head a hundred and eighty degrees.

Chen Feng could accept being killed by something like that. What he couldn't understand was why he had no memory of the monster at all.

Was I strangled in my sleep?

But with screams that loud, even a pig would've woken up. Besides, I locked the door before bed.

As Chen Feng puzzled over it, the sound of running water suddenly came from the restroom.

"What's that sound?"

A young man in flip-flops, fearless as only the inexperienced could be, pushed open the restroom door. A faucet was running full blast. Water overflowed the sink and soaked the floor and carpet.

Someone had probably forgotten to turn it off after using the restroom.

"Who does that?"

Pinching his nose, the young man stepped forward, Zheng about to turn off the faucet, when a chilly draft brushed his neck. He wondered, Why's the air conditioner set so low?

Halfway through the thought, he almost laughed. The power was out. How could the air conditioning be on?

Wait. If it isn't on, why is it so cold?

He reached the sink. Water washed over his flip-flops and touched his feet, cold enough to bite. It made no sense. Even if it was raining outside, the pipes had baked in the sun all day. How could the water be this cold?

Before he could work it out, he felt a pair of cold, slippery hands close around his neck.

Another crack.

The young man never got to puzzle it out.

"Run! It's come upstairs!"

Everyone shouted and fled for their lives again.

The Landlady had said not to go up to the third floor, but with his life on the line, Chen Feng couldn't worry about that. He grabbed the railing and ran upward.

But as he ran.

Chen Feng suddenly noticed how quiet it had become.

Something was wrong.

He looked up. No one was ahead of him. He turned around. No one was behind him, either.

What was going on? Where had everyone gone?

Chen Feng couldn't make sense of it, but the monster was downstairs. He didn't dare go back to look for anyone, so he forced himself onward.

Just as the Landlady had said, the third floor was unfinished: one large hall with no partitions. The air smelled of cement dust and an indescribable, sickening stench.

Did someone's septic tank explode?

Chen Feng covered his nose. Countless thick ropes hung from the ceiling, packed close together, with what looked like quilts hanging from their ends.

Why were there so many quilts hanging up?

He stepped closer and drew in a sharp breath. They were shriveled, but he could still make out the outlines of facial features and limp limbs. Those weren't quilts hanging from the ropes. They were flayed human skins!

"Ah!"

The hellish sight drove Chen Feng back several steps. His shoes tapped twice against the floor.

There wasn't a breath of wind.

Yet every human skin began to sway. They turned toward Chen Feng, their empty eye sockets fixed on him.

What... what was this?

Chen Feng's scalp prickled. In an instant, countless pieces of information flooded his mind.

[De-de-de-de-detected: previous host is de-de-de-de-dead. Zheng is sca-sca-sca-scanning new host information. Bi-bi-bi-bi-binding in progress.]

A mechanical voice rang in his ears, echoing over and over. Then notifications bombarded him.

[Ding! Congratulations! You have successfully bound the DS-01-ZBDL Show-Off Slap System...]

[Ding! Congratulations! You have successfully bound the XH-02-SLJD Deep Blue Stat-Allocation System...]

[Ding! Congratulations! You have successfully bound the DS-03-SHFX Tycoon Cashback System...]

It was hard to describe, like hundreds or thousands of people adding him on WeChat at once. Mechanical chimes kept ringing in Chen Feng's ears.

After a while, the turmoil in his mind gradually settled.

Chen Feng shook his head and finally calmed down enough to work out what had happened:

Before they died, the owners of these skins had been transmigrators with systems, just like Chen Feng. They had been killed, and their systems had been left behind with them.

And Chen Feng had become those systems' new owner.

I inherited my predecessors' systems?

There was no joy on Chen Feng's face. Instead, panic gripped him. What kind of place is this? How did it kill so many transmigrators?

"Didn't I tell you not to come upstairs?"

A sultry voice, touched with weariness, came from ahead.

That voice!

Chen Feng's eyes widened. The Landlady, He Ting, emerged from the Skin Forest, swaying as she walked.

Even a fool would know now that the Landlady had something to do with his predecessors' deaths.

"Stay back!"

As long as I'm alive, I can try again.

Chen Feng turned to run, only to fall to the floor. He looked down at his legs, thinking he'd tripped over something. Instead, he found they had somehow become withered and deeply wrinkled, like those of an eighty-year-old man on his deathbed.

What was happening?

Chen Feng felt as though his entire body were being hollowed out. His vitality drained away at a terrifying rate, and an endless drowsiness washed over him.

I want to sleep.

I want to sleep so badly.

I want...

Chen Feng closed his eyes. At last, he knew how he had died the first time.

And when he opened them again.

The air was hot and humid, cicadas sang softly, and a beautiful woman walked out of the Internet Cafe. She slowly approached Chen Feng, who stood frozen in place.

"Handsome, you don't look well. You'd better find somewhere to shelter before it rains."