The World Below Surface

Chapter 36

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Wen Qing's whole body was stiff. When death approached, she closed her eyes in despair, not daring to look at that horrible face.

But the next second, she fell to the ground.

Although she was in pain all over, she was not dead. At the same time, she heard the scream of Xiao Mi, who had just been left behind by them. It was sharp and piercing, and it made her scalp tingle.

Wen Qing opened his eyes and saw the black cat, which had transformed into a gigantic monster, roaring and tearing at the huge female ghost, whose body was covered with white bones and pieces of rotten flesh fell from time to time.

It should have been a terrifying scene, but at this moment, she felt extremely relieved.

"Xiao Mi, thank you..."

Wen Qing rolled and crawled to her feet, then moved further away. She suddenly remembered that she still had a talisman that her grandmother had given her, and hurried to the place where she had just thrown it away.

Don't be afraid, Xiao Mi, I will come back to help you...

She had just been taken for a long distance by the female ghost and now had no idea where she was. She couldn't find the direction of the main road in the dark forest.

what to do

what to do?!

No matter how calm Wen Qing was, she was just an ordinary high school girl. The death of her best friend had dealt her a heavy blow. She was able to think calmly just now because of the life-and-death situation, but now she was pressed by the urgency to rescue her cat, and her mind was in a mess. No matter how she ran, it was pitch black in the forest. She couldn't see her hand in front of her face. She ran a long way, but still couldn't find the main road.

What to do...

Wen Qing ran for a long time, and finally couldn't help holding onto a tree and burst into tears.

Suddenly, she smelled a sweet smell in her nose. That smell... was the smell of a dead cat!

Wen Qing lowered his head in shock and saw the body of the small black cat fallen to the ground. Its limbs were still tied with ropes, which he had tied with his own hands.

What's going on

Xiao Mi is here, so who was the cat just now

However, she was very sure that the cat that turned into a huge monster was also Xiao Mi.

Are there two little ones

The sky gradually brightened.

‌Unlike the gloomy weather of last night, the moment the sun peeked out, it quickly illuminated most of the sky.

Wen Qing looked around, only to find that he had been wandering around the road, with the amulet lying on the ground not far from the black cat's body.

After a sleepless night and constant running around, Wen Qing looked miserable. She walked over slowly, picked up the amulet, and stared in the direction of the intersection, feeling grief-stricken for a moment.

Yun Qian...she died and turned into a ghost.

If those people hadn't forced her to play games, if they hadn't abandoned her... Yun Qian wouldn't have died.

If I hadn't dragged Sissi here, she wouldn't have died.

A strong hatred surged in her heart, and she looked in the direction where the vehicle left last night, her eyes filled with unprecedented resentment.

She couldn't forgive herself, but those four people deserved to die even more!

She would never, ever forgive!

After dawn, the roaring sound disappeared. Wen Qing tiptoed to hang the cat on the tree again and limped back along the road.

Grandma is still waiting for her at home. Thinking of this, Wen Qing limped onto the bus.

In the small room, the statue was as red as blood.

A bloody corpse of an old man fell to the ground, his body shrunken and skin-and-bones like a skeleton. Suddenly, the whole body swelled up as if it were inflated, and soon it returned to the size of a normal person.

It opened its eyes, a strange smile appeared on its face, and it stood up straight from the ground. Then, it adjusted its facial features and slowly revealed a kind smile that was exactly the same as its original one.

The statue enshrined in the shrine had been broken into several pieces and had completely lost its luster.

"This game is a bit weird. After midnight, you are locked in a room alone and have to peel an apple in front of a mirror. The skin must not break while peeling the apple, otherwise the mission will be considered unsuccessful."

As Nie Yunzhen was explaining the task, his hands were busy peeling an apple.

This game is very interesting. To be precise, the tasks they are required to complete are all real forbidden supernatural games that are rumored to attract ghosts.

It's not like he had never seen it before, and he had also watched some gaming videos uploaded by uploaders, but after watching so many of them, he made a terrifying discovery - those uploaders, without exception, omitted some steps in the gaming process.

But if they were to do the task, they would not dare to skip a single step. Otherwise, some misfortune would surely happen that they could not bear.

Nie Yunzhen and Ye Shengke were not very good at peeling apples, let alone making sure the skin was not broken. So they went out early in the morning and bought three boxes and came back to practice slowly.

"The man next door didn't go out." Shi Yan stared at the computer screen, and there was no man's figure on it.

When they went to buy apples, Shi Yan disguised herself as a hotel staff and went to the room. She gave a small gift in the name of winning a prize and installed some small gadgets.

Of course, since the other party was very vigilant, she could only stick the micro camera at the entrance. Due to angle limitations, she couldn't capture the entire room, but it was enough to determine whether the other party had gone out.

Inside the room, Lu Yanli glanced at the entrance again with a cold look.

That woman was watching him.

I guess she is one of the taskers.

I don’t know what their mission is this time and how many people have come.

‌He, can he survive

Lu Yanli was operating it, and soon, a new picture appeared on the computer screen, which was all the surveillance cameras in the hotel.

He called up the footage inside the elevator and his pupils shrank.

What surprised him was not that there were only four people in the picture, but... there was a woman in a white dress sitting on the shoulder of one of the men!

No... It should be said that a female ghost in white sat on the shoulders of one of the men! Because of the height limit of the elevator, the female ghost had to bend down, and her whole body was wrapped around him at a strange angle, and her long pale arms tightly wrapped around the man's neck.

Calculating the time, it’s only been one day, but they were haunted by the female ghost

Seeing that they seemed to know nothing, Lu Yanli was not kind enough to remind them on purpose. Through the surveillance camera, he recognized the man's appearance and decided to stay away from him for a while.

Excluding the female ghost factor, it can be seen from the surveillance footage that the other three are vaguely led by the tallest man among them who is wearing a leather jacket, although he doesn't seem to talk much.

Just as Lu Yanli hacked into the hotel system to check the surveillance, the hotel lobby manager was nodding and bowing to apologize to a man.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Wen. We will check the surveillance right away and will definitely get your belongings back. Please don't call the police for now. Trust us..."

"I trust you? Is it useful to trust you? I brought it back from abroad specially. Do you know how valuable that thing is?! Do you know how many people are scrambling for it? It disappeared less than a day after I gave it to you for safekeeping. Haha, I tell you, if we can't find it back, we'll all just wait to die together!" Mr. Wen said angrily.

"We are so sorry. We will definitely..."

"Don't make promises to me. Go check the surveillance now. I'm telling you, if we don't find it today, we'll all die together!"

The man called Mr. Wen couldn't calm down. His excitement didn't seem like he had lost some priceless treasure. Instead, he was quite timid and even scared. Just looking at his expression, no one would doubt that his words about everyone dying together were false.

"Yes, yes, the monitoring room is over here, do you want to..."

"Take me there, quickly!"

Soon, they arrived at the monitoring room.

What made the lobby manager very angry was that there was no one in the monitoring room. He must have disappeared somewhere.

He was so angry that his teeth were itching. He didn't dare to say anything under Mr. Wen's cold gaze. He respectfully called up the guests who had checked in from last night to today.

"Yesterday, there were seven new guests. These three were a family of three and stayed in a double room on the third floor. These four people checked in together, but they each booked a single room."

The manager introduced it as he spoke, but he saw Mr. Wen's eyes widened in disbelief, and his fingers trembled as he pointed at the screen: "You, what is this?"

“What…” The manager turned around, and was immediately frightened out of his wits.

There was actually a woman in white sitting on that man’s shoulders

"Ghost... It's a ghost..."

The screen suddenly zoomed in, covering the entire screen with a single frame of the elevator, as if someone was controlling it. The female ghost twisted her body and sat on the man's shoulder. She slowly raised her head and looked at the two men who were almost paralyzed by fear outside the screen.

Then, she slowly loosened her hands that were originally wrapped around the man's neck, releasing them one by one, and her long, soft, pale arms drooped down in an abnormal posture. Her hands were so long that after they drooped, it was difficult to fit into the entire picture frame.

Almost at the same moment, the hands went straight through the screen, grabbed the two men's necks, and then pulled hard, with the sound of bones breaking.

Everything happened in just a moment. Before they could react, they were pulled into the screen. The two of them sat in the corner of the elevator with their heads down, motionless. A large amount of blood flowed out from the broken neck, and soon flowed throughout the entire elevator.

Immediately afterwards, the image on the surveillance screen returned to its previous densely packed grid shape, and the elevator grid disappeared. No matter who looked at it, they would think everything was normal.

"Phew, luckily, no one came to check. If the manager saw it, my bonus for the month would be gone." Security guard Xiao Li went to the toilet and came back to find that no one was in the room. He felt relieved. "Just now, a customer actually took the initiative to peel an apple for me, hehehe..."

He sat in front of the surveillance camera, and as he watched, he began to feel sleepy. Somehow, he fell asleep in the surveillance room.

On the ceiling, thick black hair slowly dropped down, about to touch the man's neck. At this moment, a figure walked in from the door. It was the customer who had just handed him the apple.

When the guest opened the door, he saw the security guard lying on the table.

"Sure enough, the amount of sleeping pills I injected into the apple was just right." The man sighed, then pulled the security guard and his chair away, sat in front of the computer and prepared to change the surveillance.

"Hey... what is this?"

The man's attention was attracted by a white figure in the corner of the surveillance camera, and then he clicked on the surveillance camera.

“This… this is…” The other person’s face was full of horror, and he turned around to run, but the long hair gushing out from the screen had already tied him up tightly. Finally, in the man’s disbelieving eyes, he was pulled into the screen.

The screen showed that there was one more person in the elevator.

The hotel's first floor lobby.

A group of guests were waiting in front of the elevator. When the elevator finally came down, they all rushed in. But strangely, the elevator beeped and sounded the alarm before it reached the overload standard.

"That's strange, there's no fat person among us." The group of people were puzzled, but there was nothing they could do. A few of them could only walk out and prepare to take the next ride.

Then, the elevator door slowly closed.

To the astonishment of those waiting outside the elevator, the numbers on the elevator display suddenly dropped wildly.

"Ah, what's going on?"

"Why are they going downstairs? Tell them to come up!"

"That's not right. Does this hotel have multiple floors underground?"

"Impossible! I was in charge of the construction of this hotel before, and there was only one level of parking at most. This..."

In just a few tens of seconds, the elevator had jumped to the negative eighteenth floor. The bright red numbers, plus the number eighteen, easily reminded people of the eighteen levels of hell.

The display screen stayed on the number minus eighteen for a while, then slowly rose up, pausing for a while after each level, as if someone was getting on the elevator.

“Ahh—”

The people waiting at the elevator entrance were so scared that they ran away. Some called the police, some went to find the hotel manager, and more just rushed out of the hotel and prepared to go somewhere else.

The elevator stopped steadily on the first floor.

All the people downstairs ran away, but there were still people upstairs who were unaware and continued to wait in front of the elevator. Then they were also pulled into the elevator and fell into hell.

Finally, the police arrived, and with their presence, the hotel staff opened the elevator.

What was outrageous was that it was filled with countless human body parts, pale, stiff, bloodstained, and filled with the stench of blood and decay.

The moment the door was opened, the piled-up body parts collapsed outwards and directly buried the staff standing in the front.

However, when the police finally dug out the body parts, the worker who had been accidentally buried had disappeared without a trace. It was unknown whether he had also become part of the pile of corpses.

No one present had ever witnessed such a tragedy, and they were all terrified. The police tried to load the body parts into the car, but before they could do anything, the body parts poured out of the elevator again, and they were buried in it as well.

"There are still many... haunted ones! Help!"

"Quick! Get out now!"

"Who locked the door? No! Let us out!"

A few guests who came to watch the fun fled to the door and desperately banged on the glass door to ask for help from the people outside. To their disappointment, even if there were people passing by, they just glanced at them quickly and didn't pay much attention at all.

"Help! It's haunted!"

As they were still weakly banging on the glass door, the corpses behind them surged up and covered them, and the struggle soon stopped.

Body parts and limbs continued to pour out of the elevator entrance. Everyone in the hall was trying to find a way to escape, but no matter where they went, those body parts would be everywhere. In the end, even the ceiling began to rain blood.

When the last corner of the hall was filled, the elevator door flickered, and then the body parts and blood plasma automatically moved towards the elevator entrance as if they had life. The body fragments that filled the entire hall quickly decreased, and in the end, not a single one was left.

The hall has returned to its previous cleanliness and tidiness.

The elevator door slowly closed, and the numbers jumped wildly. After a while, it opened again, and people with stiff and pale expressions walked out one after another. The elevator was like a bottomless pit, without any stagnation, and soon, those people filled the entire hall.

They were no different from the people who disappeared before, standing in the hall, with a weird smile on their pale and blue faces. Then, they adjusted their expressions and slowly returned to the state of living people. After that, these people separated.

Nie Yunzhen was going downstairs because someone had gone downstairs for a long time and had not come back yet, so he planned to go look for him.

However, just as he walked into the lobby, he ran into his friend who was about to take the elevator.

"Why have you not come for so long? We have been waiting for you for a long time." Nie Yunzhen stepped forward and asked.

"Don't mention it. Just when I was about to change the surveillance, the lobby manager suddenly came. He said that a guest had lost something important and wanted to check the surveillance. He didn't get angry when he saw the security guard sleeping, and he took the guest to look for it. I had to hide aside and wait for almost an hour." The man replied.

"Okay, let's go back now."

The man nodded obediently and followed him, and they both went upstairs to the room.

The sky gradually darkened, and soon it was midnight of the next day.

They are about to enter the second game.

It would be a lie to say I wasn't nervous. Being locked in an enclosed space alone, peeling an apple in front of a mirror is terrifying just by hearing it. Who knows what will appear in the mirror after you're done peeling an apple

"I really don't know where all these weird and strange supernatural games came from, and now they have become real." Ye Shengke complained, "This game is obviously trying to make us summon ghosts, right?"

Shi Yan said, "Forget it. Which game doesn't invite ghosts? It's only the second day." She turned her head to look at Chu Xiu. His face was cold and his eyes were hard to read. She couldn't help but ask, "Brother Chu, what do you think of this game?"

Chu Xiu: "These are just some guesses now, and we can't be sure yet."

"Then how about everyone share their ideas and brainstorm?"

"Okay, I have no problem with that."

"In that case, I'll be frank. From all the information we've gathered, the game we played these seven days can be called a ghost-summoning game. No one knows what a ghost is, but when it comes to ghosts, everyone will more or less think of something invisible and intangible. Combined with what happened yesterday, I doubt that the ghost we summoned will possess someone without even knowing it."

Chu Xiu's words cast a thick shadow over everyone's heart.

If what he said was true, then who is possessed now

Chu Xiu, who had left Da Lei behind, remained calm. He looked down and found that his dark blue denim jacket was stained with some stains. He lowered his head and patted it gently with a calm look on his face.

"On the contrary, this is one of the ways to survive. Just like Yun Qian yesterday, she didn't die after being possessed, right?"

In other words, when they play these supernatural games, even if something really happens, no one will be killed for the time being. As long as they can survive until the seventh day, they will be considered successful

But it is not certain what will happen during the period of possession.

The sky outside the window gradually darkened and Chu Xiu opened the door.

Everyone knew what he was going to do. Nie Yunzhen and Ye Shengke followed him silently.

"No, you guys go back."

Judging from the surveillance footage during the day, he was just an ordinary young man. It was enough for him to carry a gun alone, but having more people would make the other party alert and unwilling to open the door.

He went out, turned left and knocked on the middle door.

"Who?" A young man's voice came from inside.

Then, the sound of light footsteps was heard.

Chu Xiu could even imagine the other person standing cautiously in front of the door after approaching.

He raised his hand and knocked on the door again, then stepped back a little: "Police, a guest in the hotel has lost a valuable item, and we're here to ask about it." After that, he placed a forged police ID next to his face so that the person on the other end of the peephole could see it clearly.

The person inside the door muttered something, probably complaining, and then opened the door.

The moment it was opened, the young man froze.

A gun was pointed at his head.

Lu Yanli put his hands on his chest, his eyes filled with fear. As the man standing outside the door approached step by step, he had to step back. After Chu Xiu entered the room, he pulled the door with his free hand and closed it.

"You, what are you going to do?"

"Relax, we just want you to play a game with us."

"Game? What, what game?"

Chu Xiu was very intimidating when he had a cold face. He should have been satisfied with his results, but when he looked at the terrified expression on the other person's face, he always felt that something was wrong.

Therefore, he did not put down the gun in his hand.

No, that's not right...

From my own observations, the other party is very cautious, and many details show that he is a very calm person.

He shouldn't have panicked so quickly.

The trace of doubt on Chu Xiu's face did not escape Lu Yanli's eyes.

Just as this thought came to his mind, the young man opposite him suddenly turned his head quickly to avoid the muzzle of the gun, then raised his hand and grabbed his wrist forcefully. At the same time, his other elbow hit Chu Xiu hard in the abdomen.

Caught off guard, Chu Xiu felt a pain in his abdomen, but he seemed not to feel it, and used his other hand that was not holding the gun to chop the opponent's neck. But the opponent's reaction was too fast, and his body tilted, and Chu Xiu's hand knife chopped at his shoulder blade. Just as he was about to raise his leg, he was thrown to the ground by the opponent, and his forehead hit the ground heavily.

Chu Xiu threw the gun in his hand out, and it fell in front of the door with a "bang".

"Who are you? What do you want to do?" Lu Yanli finally breathed a sigh of relief and held the other person's hands to prevent him from struggling. He then realized that the other person seemed to have fainted because of the collision just now.

Lu Yanli's breathing stagnated, and his chest was still rising and falling violently. He asked the other party to turn around. During this period, he was always careful not to loosen his hand holding the other party's wrist. However, the other party still did not wake up.

Faced with this situation, he hesitated for a while, and hit the other person's neck again. Then he loosened the shackles and stood up to pick up the gun.

Just as Lu Yanli stood up and walked towards the door, he felt a pain at the back of his head.

Chu Xiu held another gun in his hand, and hit the other man on the back of his head with the butt of the gun, then caught the unconscious man.

Sure enough... His suspicion was correct, this was a man with a strong sense of vigilance.

Then, Chu Xiu squatted down, picked up the gun, and took the unconscious man back to his room.