Everyone froze when they heard Gao Ming's voice. All of them had assumed he was dead; none had expected him to still be alive.
The silhouette in the darkness gradually became clearer, and Gao Ming appeared before them. He looked exactly as he had when he went in, without even a hair out of place.
"Impossible! I saw something terrifying! A huge black dog made entirely of shadows!" The Female Host had thought she had everything under control. Only now did she realize how much lay beneath the surface in this building.
"Holy shit! You actually survived?" Luo Dong breathed a sigh of relief. Gao Ming's survival proved his earlier deduction right: the barking didn't mean danger. That Xiao Wu was probably a "pet" kept by a ghost.
"What was making those barking sounds? Did you see?" After asking, Luo Dong felt Gao Ming probably wouldn't answer. After all, this was a clue Gao Ming had risked his life to obtain.
"Your son guessed right. A living person was barking. The clay sculpture hidden in the pet company seems capable of mutating living people's souls into animals." Gao Ming pointed toward the route to the Third Floor. "The one hiding in the office bathroom should be a living person. He was asking us for help."
"Then why didn't you rescue the person who was barking? Wasn't he barking to ask for help?" The Female Host had caught a glimpse of a terrifying big dog earlier, so she was certain Gao Ming was lying. "There wasn't a single light in the stairwell. You couldn't see anything, so how could you know it was a living person barking?"
Gao Ming held out his bloodstained hand and opened his palm. "I touched his face. His mouth was full of blood. He seemed to