The quilt lay flat on the bed without a single wrinkle. There were no signs of a struggle in the master bedroom. Everything was exactly as it had been before.
"Where did they go?"
Bai Xiao's Adam's apple bobbed as he lowered his body.
Everything in the master bedroom looked normal, yet it filled him with an unbearable sense of suffocation. It felt like being held underwater in a swimming pool at midnight, unable to touch the bottom no matter how desperately he thrashed his arms and legs.
All the lights had gone out. Only the outline of the wardrobe remained in the darkness, like an upright coffin—or a magic box radiating a deadly allure.
The note was still pasted across the gap between the wardrobe doors, untouched. The words "Do not open under any circumstances" crawled like insects across his vision. By the time Bai Xiao came to his senses, his hand was already resting on the wardrobe.
"No. I can't open it!" His powerful will snapped him out of his trance. He tried to move away from the wardrobe, but the moment he left the master bedroom and turned his back on it, he sensed something wrong. The gap between its doors seemed to have widened slightly. It felt as though an eye inside was watching him!
Crash!
A cup fell to the floor. Bai Xiao looked toward the kitchen, where black liquid flowed among the shattered pieces.
Only then did he notice the countless black spots growing across the plaster. It seemed that touching them would cause something terrible to happen.
The black spots spread incredibly fast. Bai Xiao dodged backward, but the living room door slammed shut just then, and something beneath the sofa grabbed him.
His blade flashed. Bai Xiao kicked the sofa over, but