Monitoring Room

Inside an inconspicuous little storage room in the mall.

Several phone flashlights lit up inside. Everyone held their breath, their faces pale and filled with terror.

They were Boss Tang, Master Luo, Manager Li, Sister Li, and the others.

Besides them, there was one particularly special person: Yan Li.

Yan Li's expression was especially grim. He stared at the door before him, which he had smeared with scarlet blood. The blood congealed without dispersing, as though it were seeping out from inside the door, dripping blood nonstop.

The blood had pooled into a puddle on the floor.

"The noise has stopped. Looks like that ghost can't get in for now."

Yan Li let out a huge sigh of relief. He looked at his hands, covered in blood, and his expression remained unpleasant.

"M-Master, we should be safe now, right?" Boss Tang asked, still shaken.

They had originally made it smoothly to the fifth floor and planned to leave through the emergency exit. Yet when they arrived, they discovered that every door had somehow been locked.

They had planned to smash the locks and leave.

But while they were breaking the locks, something bizarre happened beside them.

Someone behind them suddenly fell to the floor. Their head was gone.

They had been so frightened that they no longer cared about breaking the locks. They scattered and fled, but fortunately ran into Yan Li. He brought them into this storage room and shut the door, allowing them to narrowly escape disaster.

But the situation had not calmed down.

Just moments ago, huge bangs had suddenly begun striking the door one after another.

It seemed as though something outside was trying to smash through the storage room door and charge in. Even the lock had been broken.

That kind of strength was definitely not something a human should possess.

The others watched as blood flowed from Yan Li's hands. Once he smeared it on the door, all the commotion finally ceased.

"This won't hold for long. The ghost outside has already set its sights on us and knows we're here. It'll keep attacking us. And I can feel that it's waiting right outside," Yan Li said.

His current situation was exactly the same as what Yang Jian had encountered before.

It was just that he had not realized what kind of existence this ghost truly was.

"Th-then what do we do now? Am I going to die?" Manager Li asked fearfully.

Yan Li snorted softly. "If anyone dies, it won't just be you. What are you so scared of? I told you long ago that those charlatans couldn't be trusted. You hired some feng shui master to inspect the feng shui and perform rituals, but when you actually ran into a ghost, he hid faster than anyone."

As he spoke, he glanced toward the corner.

Master Luo, who had previously looked so calm and confident, was now cowering there and trembling. None of his earlier arrogant, charlatan-like demeanor remained.

"Master Yan, then hurry and think of something. We can't keep hiding here. As long as we can get out, the price is negotiable," Boss Tang said anxiously.

He felt that the longer he stayed, the more dangerous it became.

Only by leaving this place—leaving the mall—would they be safe.

"Stop making noise. Is this about money right now?" Yan Li barked. He was extremely agitated as well.

Because he did not have any particularly good solution either.

The ghost in this mall was harder to deal with than he had expected, and after becoming a Ghost Tamer, he was also nearing his limit.

Just as the group stood there at a loss.

Yang Jian calmly made his way upstairs along the escalator, shining his flashlight ahead of him.

"Aren't you scared?"

Jiang Yan clutched his sleeve beside him, hunched her neck, and looked around nervously, terrified that a ghost might emerge from some pitch-black corner.

"Of course I'm scared, but is being scared useful?" Yang Jian said nonchalantly. "Will being scared stop you from dying? The more afraid you are when you encounter a ghost, the easier it is to die. The fact that you hid in the restroom for four days without being attacked by that ghost only means you were lucky."

"But if you want to survive, luck alone isn't enough. You need to act."

"If you just sit around waiting to die, there's only one outcome."

As they spoke, they reached the fifth floor.

The entire way had been quiet. There had not been a single sound.

Yang Jian swept his flashlight around and found no one nearby.

He only spotted a head by the emergency exit door.

Its face was pale, its eyes closed. Its neck looked as though it had snapped, yet not a single drop of blood had flowed out. If not for the missing body, the head would have looked as though it were asleep, with a peaceful expression.

"This was one of Master Luo's people." Yang Jian's expression shifted slightly. "But he was killed by a ghost."

Jiang Yan covered her mouth in terror, stopping herself from screaming.

Yang Jian had warned her earlier not to scream no matter what she saw.

"Where's the monitoring room?" Yang Jian asked.

"Over there." Jiang Yan pointed ahead.

Yang Jian quickly followed the direction she indicated and arrived at the monitoring room.

The monitoring room door was open. A ring of keys was inserted into the lock, and lights shone from inside, as though someone had entered.

"Wasn't there a power outage? Why are the lights still on in there?" Jiang Yan asked suspiciously.

Yang Jian's gaze sharpened. "It wasn't a power outage. Someone deliberately turned off the mall lights. How could a mall just lose power? If there really had been a power outage, I wouldn't have come to the monitoring room."

But when he walked inside, he froze.

Someone sat in front of the monitoring console, their body somewhat stiff and utterly motionless.

The person was wearing a security uniform.

There were also some wet marks beside the chair. The cuffs of his trousers appeared wet, as though he had just walked out of a restroom.

"It's a colleague."

Jiang Yan had not seen the photo in Yang Jian's hand and instinctively called out.

The man immediately turned around at the sound, took a look at them, and replied.

"Yang Jian, why are you here?"

"Liu Qiang." Yang Jian's expression immediately darkened.

That photo of a security uniform taken in the restroom was still in his phone album.

And in the entire mall, aside from Liu Qiang and himself, there was no third person wearing a security uniform.

"Great, you know each other." Jiang Yan was somewhat delighted. Finding another living person finally gave her a little sense of security.

"I'm Jiang Yan, the company accountant. Nice to meet you."

She wanted to go over and greet him, but Yang Jian stopped her.

Yang Jian showed her the photo. "Look at this first. I took it in the restroom earlier."

Jiang Yan looked at the photo.

In the dim restroom, a person in a security uniform seemed to have just walked out. Half of his body had happened to be caught in the shot.

Jiang Yan looked at the photo, then at Liu Qiang. Her eyes widened, terror flooding her heart. The hand she had just started to extend snapped back as though shocked by electricity, and she hurriedly hid behind Yang Jian with a hand over her mouth.

"Stand against the wall. Don't move around." Yang Jian grabbed her and pulled her against the wall.

Jiang Yan immediately pressed herself tightly against the wall, not daring to move.

This woman really was smart. She knew what to do and when to do it.

"What's wrong with you two?" Liu Qiang walked over, looking puzzled.

Yang Jian looked at him. "Nothing. The mall is haunted, and some people got separated, so we came to the monitoring room to take a look. By the way, why are you here?"

He spoke to Liu Qiang as normally as ever.

But in his heart, he had already directly identified Liu Qiang as a ghost.

"The mall is haunted? Where is it haunted? How come I haven't seen anything?" Liu Qiang said. "Earlier, I saw that the mall had lost power, so I went to check the wiring. I saw that the monitoring room lights were still on, so I came in to take a look. I hadn't been sitting here for long before you arrived."

"Is that so?" Yang Jian watched him warily. "Have you seen anyone else besides us?"

"No, I couldn't find them," Liu Qiang said, shaking his head.

"Is that so? Then can you help me pull up the previous surveillance footage?" Yang Jian asked.

"No problem. I'm good at this stuff," Liu Qiang said.

After saying that, he sat down and began pulling up the earlier surveillance footage.

Yang Jian walked over and lowered his head to look at the wet cuffs of Liu Qiang's trousers. "Did you go to the restroom earlier?"

"No. Why are you asking that?" Liu Qiang replied.

"Nothing, just asking," Yang Jian said.