Distant Relatives Are No Match for Close Neighbors

Cold, terrifying, and damp, the air carried a faint stench of decay. The entire room seemed shrouded in shadow.

The familiar feeling of suffocation returned. Gao Ming knew he had once again entered a place where the two worlds overlapped.

Xuan Wen's method was right. This really does let me trigger a ghost-story game myself.

Avoiding the gaze of the corpse downstairs, Gao Ming turned toward the living room. The four candles placed in the corners had gone out. Everything inside seemed forever frozen at the moment the deceased had killed himself.

Where's Xuan Wen?

Gao Ming was alone in the shabby room. The serial killer specializing in psychological crimes who had wanted to enter the game with him was nowhere to be seen.

Has she already left this room? Or did she never come in at all?

The thick shadows engulfed him like black seawater. Gao Ming stayed where he was and forced himself to calm down. He needed to determine which game had become reality as quickly as possible.

The corpse appeared downstairs. Judging by its reach, this game is much bigger than the last one I cleared. It covers at least all of Building Two.

Brother Zhao talked to me many times while he was alive. I also planned to make him some little games to help soothe his emotions. I came up with several designs back then...

The vibration of a phone interrupted Gao Ming's thoughts. He slowly pushed open the bedroom door and found an off-brand phone on the bedside table.

Its casing had yellowed, and grime and stray hairs clung to the charging port. There was no lock-screen password. New messages kept popping up.

I saw Zhao Xi use this phone when we talked.

Gao Ming touched the screen and saw a chat group Zhao Xi had joined—Distant Relatives Are No Match for Close Neighbors. It was the residents' group for Building Two of Lijing Apartments.

Just moments ago, Mr. Wang, who lived on the first floor, had tagged everyone in the group and sent three videos.

Standing on his balcony, he had filmed Zhao Xi's corpse at close range.

The man who had killed himself had landed headfirst. His face was completely deformed, his neck broken and stretched out, his limbs twisted. Shattered bones pierced his skin.

2101 Wang Kuisheng: "I saw them take Zhao Xi away with my own eyes! How did his corpse come back?! What's going on???"

The group erupted. Some tried calling the police, while others wanted to go outside and investigate, but they all soon fell silent.

2203 Xiao Qiu: "Brother Wang, there's something wrong with your three videos! Zhao Xi isn't in the same spot in the first and third videos! He looks like... he's moving!"

The residents, Gao Ming included, watched the videos again. Zhao Xi's position had indeed changed between the three recordings.

2101 Wang Kuisheng: "How could a corpse move? How could a dead man move?! It must be the camera angle. I'll go check the balcony again!"

The first-floor resident was clearly panicking. He seemed to be preparing to film another video.

Sensing something wrong, Gao Ming took the phone and ran to the balcony to look down.

The heavy rain washed over the bloodstains. The corpse that had been lying at the entrance to the stairwell was gone.

Has he already crawled inside the building?

Wang Kuisheng, who had gone to record another video, sent no further messages. It was as though he had vanished.

Lijing Apartments was a typical aging residential complex in the old city. It was out of the way, many apartments stood empty, and only a handful of people lived in Building Two. Now that Wang Kuisheng had disappeared, the remaining residents were even more frightened. Those who had boldly declared they would go out and investigate now cowered in their apartments.

2203 Xiao Qiu: "We're screwed! What do we do?! None of my calls will go through, and I can't send messages anywhere except this group! Why is this happening?!"

2304 Li Li: "Could this group still work because Zhao Xi is in it?"

Li Li was Zhao Xi's younger brother's wife. She lived on the third floor with his adoptive mother, Zhao Yuanyuan.

2409 Fang Shuqi: "Why did Zhao Xi's corpse come back? Did your family do something awful? I'm upstairs, and I hear you arguing and fighting all the time! You people sucked him dry and acted like you were entitled to it. This must be your punishment!"

2304 Li Li: "Fuck your bullshit! His death had nothing to do with me!"

2203 Xiao Qiu: "Stop arguing! I heard it! I heard something in the stairwell! Something's crawling up!"

Too frightened and frantic to type, Xiao Qiu sent a voice message: "Something really is crawling up! It's right outside my door."

2409 Fang Shuqi: "Let's start a group video call. If we can all see each other, we'll have a better idea of everyone's situation and know what to expect."

The fourth-floor resident seemed to be deliberately trying to confirm something. After speaking, he added every member of the group, including Zhao Xi, to the video call.

Everyone drew a sharp breath when Zhao Xi's video feed opened. Then they saw Gao Ming inside Zhao Xi's apartment.

2304 Li Li: "Who are you? Why do you have Zhao Xi's phone? And why are you in his apartment? Did you bring his corpse back?!"

Before Gao Ming could speak, knocking came from Xiao Qiu's video feed. It sounded about every two seconds, as though someone were repeatedly bumping their head against her door.

Xiao Qiu's face had gone pale with fear. Keeping the video call running, she pushed her sofa against the living room door.

The knocking did not weaken in the slightest. Instead, it grew louder and louder, and the door itself seemed to tremble.

Holding her phone, Xiao Qiu looked terrified. She was trapped in her apartment.

"What should I do? Please help me! We're all neighbors! He'll come after you too!"

Curled up on her bedroom bed, Xiao Qiu begged the people on the video call for help, but no one in the building responded.

Her eyes filled with tears. Just as Xiao Qiu was about to cry from desperation, the lights flickered once, then suddenly went out.

Darkness swallowed Apartment 2203 without warning. The faint glow of the phone screen illuminated Xiao Qiu's face.

She seemed frozen in place, clutching her phone tightly as she stared into the living room.

Strange creaking sounds came from the pitch-black living room. Afraid even to breathe, she clamped a hand over her mouth and nose.

Something heavy dragged across the floor. The door was slowly forced open, and broken fingernails scraped over the tiles. The shape moving through the darkness gradually became clearer.

Her heart pounded as though it would leap out of her chest. With trembling hands, Xiao Qiu switched on her phone's flashlight.

Light briefly filled the bedroom, and Xiao Qiu let out a piercing scream.

Breaking down completely, she flung open the bedroom window and frantically kicked at the security bars, trying to jump out.

The torrential rain soaked her pajamas. Her phone slipped from her palm onto the windowsill. Forgetting the video call entirely, Xiao Qiu kicked at the bars like a madwoman.

Through the camera, everyone could see the bedroom ceiling and one side of the window. Desperate to escape, Xiao Qiu failed to notice another deathly pale face outside the lower-left corner of the window, inching upward.

The neighbors on the call shouted warnings, but Xiao Qiu merely turned around, trembling.

Her features contorted with terror. She seemed to have seen something horrifying. Her mouth opened wide, but before she could make a sound, she was dragged into the darkness.

Apartment 2203 fell deathly silent. The group video call was equally quiet.

Raising the phone, Gao Ming silently studied every neighbor on the call, committing each subtle change in their expressions to memory. Then he strode to the living room door.

The corpse was making its way upstairs, but that was not the worst of it.

Gao Ming had just seen the face outside the window on the video feed. It did not belong to Zhao Xi. It looked somewhat like Wang Kuisheng from Apartment 2101.

Gao Ming looked away from the Distant Relatives Are No Match for Close Neighbors group chat. He had not seen the neighbors being killed. Recalling the "parents" who had been replaced before, he now feared one possibility above all—the neighbors had already been replaced, and everyone in the building except him was a "Ghost."

(End of chapter)