The first floor, the second, the third... Every floor looked much the same: dusty gray walls, dark red fire doors, and emergency lights buzzing overhead. Chen Siyao counted the floors. By the tenth, the air began to turn cold. It was not the chill of air conditioning, but a cold that seeped out from deep within her bones.
"Chen Hao, are we almost there?" Yang Wanqing's voice echoed through the stairwell.
"Not yet." Chen Hao's voice was steady.
By the twentieth floor, Chen Siyao began to hear something. It was faint and distant, as though someone were crying. Not loud wailing, but stifled, intermittent sobs.
She instinctively wanted to look back, but remembered her brother's warning and forced herself not to.
"Brother, I hear someone crying."
"Ignore it," Chen Hao said from ahead. "They're testing you."
Chen Siyao swallowed and quickened her pace, holding Yang Wanqing's hand. By the twenty-fifth floor, the crying had stopped, replaced by laughter.
It was thin, shrill laughter, like a child's, but there was no happiness in it—only a malice that sent chills down her spine.
Yang Wanqing's legs felt a little weak, but she did not stop. "Yaoyao, it's so cold in here," she whispered.
"That's normal. This is the entrance where baleful yin energy gathers. The higher we go, the stronger the yin energy gets," Chen Hao explained calmly, without the slightest change in his tone.
The twenty-eighth floor. Chen Hao stopped.
"We're here."
Chen Siyao and Yang Wanqing stood behind him, catching their breath as they looked up. A layer of black mist blocked the entrance to the Twenty-Ninth Floor. It was so thick it seemed solid, rolling and writhing under the pale emergency lights as though something were struggling inside.
There were voices in the mist, many voices—crying, laughter, screams, whispers—all