As night fell, the institute gradually became quiet, and the corridors changed from being filled with busy people to being empty.
The originally bright lights dimmed, and darkness gradually approached from the end of the corridor. From a distance, it looked like a ferocious beast with its huge mouth wide open, quietly waiting for its prey to fall into its trap.
Glasses rubbed his arms, which were a little cold, and shrunk his neck and said, "Do you feel that it's a little cold around you?"
Xia Chi: "It's not cold."
Glasses: What is that
Xia Chi also rubbed the goose bumps on his body: "It's really scary."
"Just think about it. During the day, this place is bustling with people, busy and bustling. But at night, all the people disappear. When the day and night are in sharp contrast, the night seems particularly spooky."
Glasses looked around timidly: "I know the situation you are talking about is most obvious in school. There are crowds of students during the day, but no one is there at night, and it is pitch black and gloomy. I once left something in school, and when I went back to look for it, it was dark. The school was empty and there was no one. I walked quietly in the dark corridor by myself. When I was about to reach the classroom door, I shone the flashlight in front of me, and suddenly I saw a dark shadow in the corridor..."
"Ahhh!" Xia Chi's trembling hands suddenly clenched Yan Jing's wrist, and he let out a low scream while suppressing his voice.
Glasses was already in a state of horrific memories, and when Xia Chi hit him like that, he jumped visibly and started screaming, "Ah, why are you screaming? Don't scare your own people. Scaring others can kill them!"
Xia Chi's eyes were filled with fear. He stretched out a shaking finger and pointed to the dark corridor. "No, no. Just now when you were talking about campus life, I happened to see a figure flash by."
Glasses' expression froze immediately. "You, you, you, don't scare me. I'm timid and can't stand being scared. This is not fun at all."
Xia Chi's body was almost hanging on the glasses. "I, I, I didn't. I really saw... just a black shadow, and it seemed to be dragging something heavy behind it. That thing was precipitated, and it looked like... it looked like a person."
“…” Yan Jing and Xia Chi looked at each other and hugged each other at the same time, “Ahhh! There are ghosts! There are zombies! It’s so scary!”
Xia Chi: "Brother, brother, save me, save me, woo woo woo."
The man in the suit didn't show any change in expression. He just stood by and watched the two of them silently, "..."
"Xia Chi, are you calling me?" A calm and clear voice came from not far behind them. Xia Chi looked back tremblingly. When he saw the man's figure clearly, he jumped off his glasses in an instant and hung on the man nimbly, "Brother, brother, wuwuwuwu, you finally came to pick me up. There are ghosts here. There are ghosts in this research institute."
Baili Xin, who had waited for them on the underground first floor for a long time but didn't see them coming, finally came out to look for someone: "..."
You were so scared, I didn't know how to comfort you.
After thinking for two seconds, Baili Xin asked, "Did you see anything?"
Xia Chi raised his head from Baili Xin's shoulder, revealing a pair of aggrieved, watery black eyes. He opened his mouth tremblingly and told Baili Xin everything he had just seen.
After hearing this, Baili Xin looked further into the corridor, his eyes inquiring: "You mean you saw a figure dragging another person across the corridor?"
Xia Chi nodded vigorously. Infected by Baili Xin's calm expression, Xia Chi's fear instantly subsided a lot, and he also plucked up his courage. "Yes, the place where he disappeared was at the wall, but there was only a wall. If it was a physical object, how could it pass through it? So it must be a ghost that didn't escape, wuwuwu."
Baili Xin patted Xia Chi's back soothingly, his eyes sparkling in the darkness as he looked straight into the depths of the corridor, "There is also a possibility that what you saw may not be a ghost, but a secret room inside the wall."
Xia Chi was slightly stunned.
Yan Jing and Lin Xiao also looked over.
Baili Xin: "I found an opportunity to go to the data room before, and then I made a very strange discovery. Since it is a research institute, there should be a room for special experiments, and there should be a lot of experimental equipment placed there. But in this research institute, the data room really only has a pile of data. Where are the beds? Where are the instruments? Where are they? At that time, I guessed that this research institute is not as simple as it seems on the surface, and it must be hiding unknown secrets."
"Xia Chi, you have done a great job."
"It seems that I still have to rely on you to find things. You are awesome. Can you make any other more specific discoveries?"
The young boy Xia Chi gradually lost himself in the praise of his idol brother. He stood beside Baili Xin in an instant, patted his chest and said seriously, "Of course you can, brother! Who am I? I am Xia Chi, a good teammate you can trust with your back. As long as it is something I want to find, there is nothing I can't find. Just watch my performance!"
Baili Xin smiled and said, "Xia Chi, it's great to have you."
Xia Chi's face turned red and he immediately scratched his head embarrassedly.
A flash of inspiration: “…”
It's numb, destroy it.
Baili Xin: "But we have other tasks today. I found the entrance to the sewer. I asked you to come to the basement to find me, but you didn't come, so I came up to find you. Let's investigate the sewer first tonight, shall we?"
As a die-hard fan of Baili Xin, if Baili Xin said to go east, Xia Chi would definitely not look west.
He nodded immediately and walked forward with high morale: "Okay brother, let's go!"
The man with glasses and the man in a suit looked at each other: "..."
Fear is like a tornado, it comes and goes quickly.
There was still some light on the ground, but when we reached the underground level, there was no light at all. The dark corridor could only be illuminated by their flashlights.
It was quiet all around, the only sounds that could be heard were their footsteps and the occasional sound of flushing water.
After arriving in this environment, the encouragement buff above Xia Chi's head had completely gone. He once again stayed close to Baili Xin and asked in a very weak voice, "Brother, haven't you arrived yet?"
Baili Xin: "It's almost there, follow me."
They walked down the dark corridor for a few minutes and stopped in front of a simple door.
Xia Chi looked at the tattered and rusty iron gate curiously and asked, "Where is this?"
Baili Xin opened the door skillfully. As he pushed the door, the iron door made a creaking sound. "This is the dormitory where my character used to live. Come in. The entrance to the sewer is right here."
Xia Chi: “???”
The room smelled strong, a mixture of mold and fish.
Baili Xin entered the room and tapped the wall with his hands. The originally dim room was instantly covered with dim light.
The room was not big, and the floor was littered with messy things. It would be more appropriate to call it a storage room rather than a dormitory. Several people managed to find a place to stay after squeezing together.
Xia Chi looked around. The room was narrow, with only a hall where the bed and a bunch of things were piled. Next to the hall, there was a narrow doorway that could only accommodate one person. It seemed that was the bathroom.
The bed was a metal bed that was connected to the ground, but it did not look like a good quality bed. The bed frame had long been rusted due to the high concentration of salt and alkali. He could smell the rust from a distance.
At this time, the bed had been moved away, revealing the ground hidden under the bed.
Because the bed had not been moved for a long time, a clear rectangular mark had appeared on the ground. In the middle of the rectangle was an old black metal cover.
Xia Chi stared at the round manhole cover in silence: "The entrance to the manhole is in the room of the cleaning NPC?"
Who the hell could have imagined this
Baili Xin: "I stayed here for one night when I first came to this dungeon. At that time, I found that the sound of running water was too loud. The sound did not come from the bathroom, but from directly under the bed. Later, I used a tracker to track the process of water flowing into the sewer, and found that every time it reached the negative first floor, the location where the water flowed was just below this. The location was too coincidental. After I finished my work in the afternoon, I came here to look around and found the entrance to the sewer in the bathroom."
"The entrance to the sewer is sealed with metal from the outside. It can only be opened from here. It is difficult to open from inside the sewer. I guess the people in the institute are probably afraid that mermaids will get in through the sewer."
After saying this, Baili Xin stopped.
He actually only said half of this sentence. The sewer was tightly locked. Was it really the mermaids they were afraid of? Or was it some other monster that they didn't know about yet
The name of this copy is "Special Species Laboratory" instead of "Mermaid Laboratory". After they entered the copy, they found that all the research here was about mermaids, so they preconceived that "special species" was "mermaids".
The mermaid was captured only in the last two years, but judging from the decoration and usage signs of this laboratory, it is much older than two years, and it seems to be at least twenty years old.
What was this institute studying before studying mermaids
However, this was just his guess. Before getting a definite answer, he kept his guess to himself for the time being.
It’s not that I can’t say it, but I’m afraid that saying it will scare Xia Chi and the others.
Everyone was crowded in the cramped and narrow room. Baili Xin glanced at them and continued, "We need someone to stay up there. If anything happens, we need to return quickly. I've studied this lid, and I don't know what it's made of. Once it's closed, it can't be opened from the inside."
"How about I, I'll stay here." A voice as thin as a mosquito sounded in the quiet room. Everyone looked over and saw Glasses raising his hands hesitantly. He said awkwardly, "I'm a little afraid of the dark. How about you guys go down and I'll keep watch from above."
Baili Xin nodded: "Okay, let us know in the group chat if there is any situation."
Glasses quickly responded, "Okay, Master Xin, no problem, Master Xin."
They opened the sewer cover from the outside, revealing a deep, dark trench. Xia Chi shone the flashlight down and saw a somewhat rusty metal staircase.
Not sure what was in the sewer, Baili Xin told Glasses before going down: "Keep the lid closed after we leave. You can only open it after we send you a message to do so. Other than that, no matter what happens down there, don't open the lid."
Glasses was a little flustered for a moment. He asked cautiously, "What do you mean by no matter what happens down there? Is there anything else down there besides you guys?"
This question immediately made Xia Chi stand up.
Baili Xin: "Don't scare yourself. I know I'm afraid that the people from the research institute are down there. If you open it without the code, won't you be exposed?"
He actually planned to go down by himself in the afternoon, but after discovering the strange structure of the sewer and what might be inside, he temporarily gave up this plan.
He suddenly remembered the first day he had been here. That night, in addition to the sound of running water, he seemed to hear other sounds mixed in with the running water. But the sound of the running water was too loud, covering up the strange sound, and he couldn't tell what the sound was.