There were three figures standing in the elevator, two men and one woman.
On the display screen outside the elevator, the numbers were dropping madly.
Chu Xiu lowered his head and closed his eyes until they were almost slits. Lu Yanli was no exception, he simply closed his eyes and leaned against the elevator wall.
The woman standing in the middle saw that no one answered her, and a hateful expression gradually emerged on her face. She tilted her head to look at the two people, and her neck stretched longer and longer, like pulling a rubber, and finally her head stretched directly to Chu Xiu's side. The latter immediately closed his eyes when he realized something was wrong, and also pressed against the wall neatly.
The metal wall was cold, emitting an unpleasant smell of rust and blood. The two of them were close to each other, and could feel each other's body temperature, which made them feel more or less at ease. The elevator had been descending for an unknown amount of time, and finally, it swayed and finally stopped.
They both heard the elevator door opening, followed by the woman's light footsteps fading away.
Is she really gone
Lu Yanli couldn't open his eyes. He gently pushed Chu Xiu, who was not far from him, with his elbow. Unexpectedly, Chu Xiu didn't say anything, but just moved to the side.
The two of them had their own hidden agenda, neither saying a word nor opening their eyes. Lu Yanli stood a little closer to the door, hesitating for a moment, and then slowly moved towards the door.
His fingertips touched the still cold metal inner wall. This made Lu Yanli feel somewhat relieved, and then he slowly moved his fingers upwards to the top of the button. After a careful search, he pressed the relevant button, and then the elevator slowly rose.
However, that extremely cold feeling still did not disappear.
Outside the elevator door... is it really another world
After feeling the elevator rising, Chu Xiu breathed a sigh of relief. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around, then said, "It's okay. She's gone."
Lu Yanli also opened his eyes.
The surrounding environment was as cold as an ice cellar, as if all six walls were emitting chill, especially the elevator door, where one could almost see a thin layer of frost forming on the edge of the door.
Chu Xiu glanced at the elevator button: "Did you press the tenth floor just now?"
"Didn't you say it was the other way around?" Lu Yanli stepped back.
There is no other reason, because the tenth floor is almost here.
This hotel has 18 floors. According to the rules, they need to go from the first floor to the 18th floor, then go down the second floor, then go up to the 17th floor, and so on. The last middle floor they reach is the 10th floor. They can only return to the original world by pressing the button in reverse order. Therefore, they need to go back to the 10th floor first and then go down the 9th floor.
The elevator slowly stopped and stayed quietly in the air for a while. Then, with a "ding" sound, the door slowly opened.
What came into view was still darkness.
The long abandoned corridor was covered with cobwebs. Chu Xiu leaned out to look and could see all kinds of discarded old items piled up around him, filled with a slight smell of decay and dust.
"It looks like this is really another world." Chu Xiu frowned slightly, "Shall we go out and take a look?"
He made a shocking invitation.
"You're not really planning to go out, are you?" Lu Yanli was a little tempted, but he didn't show it.
Another world... It sounds too dangerous. As someone who is unwilling to be dragged into the game, it is impossible for me to agree immediately.
What's more, he currently has no confidence that he can come back from this world.
However, he wanted to know more. What was the difference between the so-called "other world" that he arrived at after the elevator game, his world, and the world that these outsiders lived in
Does the parallel world really exist
No matter how weird or scary it is, can it be as scary as the environment you are in now
Chu Xiu: "I'm a little tempted, but it's too dangerous, so I ask you." After saying that, he pressed the number 9.
At the moment when the elevator door closed to only half a palm's width, they all clearly saw that through the gap... a figure walked by!
The discovery immediately horrified them.
"Are you sure that if we reverse the original rules, we can return to reality?"
"That's what the rules say. Besides, if we want to go out and take a look, we can do that as long as we can find the original elevator. But I heard that the longer you walk in another world, the easier it is to get lost."
There was another brief silence.
Ninth floor, here we are.
He skillfully continued to press the next button, the eleventh floor, and the two continued chatting.
"Do the rules say what the other world is like?"
"I'm not sure. Some say it's a mirror world, while others say it's the world of the dead."
Just before the elevator door closed, another figure passed by quickly. It was unclear whether it was a man or a woman. In fact, Lu Yanli and Chu Xiu did not dare to look. The moment the figure passed by, they immediately turned their heads and pretended not to see it.
After the elevator door closed, they felt a lot more at ease.
"Did you see the shadow clearly?"
Chu Xiu nodded.
Lu Yanli had a guess in his mind, but it could not be verified for the time being. After the elevator door reached the next floor, it slowly opened. They continued to stay in the elevator and did not go out. Instead, they immediately pressed the button for the 8th floor.
The moment the elevator door closed, the shadow appeared again.
The two looked at each other and saw deep fear in each other's eyes.
There is no other reason, because the distance between that figure and the door... is getting closer and closer.
That thing... wants to come in!
And if that thing is really allowed in, the consequences will be unpredictable.
It took only a few seconds from the eleventh floor to the eighth floor, and the two of them kept silent. After reaching the eighth floor, they did not press the button immediately, but waited for a while.
They were all counting down in their hearts, but to their surprise, after the time when the thing was supposed to appear, it did not appear.
Chu Xiu pressed the 12th floor button, and just as the elevator door closed, the figure outside the door passed by again.
This time, the shadow was even closer. The corridor was already narrow, and if it happened a few more times, it might get stuck in the crack of the door.
"It seems that this forces us to go out. Do you want to go out and take a look together?"
Lu Yanli hummed indifferently.
When the time came, he suddenly felt that there was nothing to be afraid of. He had been living in a place where neither humans nor ghosts existed. Even if the world outside the door was really the world of the dead, so what? At least he could truly sense the existence of death.
Instead of like now...
Lu Yanli's eyes lightly passed over Chu Xiu, but he was thinking in his heart: What will happen to this person if he dies
Will he be able to live happily here like the previous people
Tsk, this face seems to reveal such a stupid and naive look...
Chu Xiu sensed the crisis in an instant, and the hairs on his body stood up in shock. However, in just a short moment, the strong sense of crisis suddenly disappeared without a trace.
He looked out the door.
He didn't think it was an illusion, but he attributed the sense of crisis to something outside the door.
So... what's outside the door
12th floor, here we are.
Chu Xiu stepped out.
"When you see someone coming in later, don't talk or look at her, do you hear me? If you let him notice you, then you will face... something more terrible than death!"
Wen Zhengxin repeated in his mind what Shi Yan had told him. The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. He couldn't stop shaking. Not to mention that the elevator was falling madly at this time, as if the elevator rope had broken.
"Ding" sound.
We’ve arrived at the negative eighteenth floor.
The woman's footsteps were heard, and she slowly walked out the door. When the elevator door closed again, the four remaining people in the elevator breathed a sigh of relief.
Before I knew it, cold sweat broke out and covered my entire face.
Just after the woman went out, Wen Zhengxin quietly looked up to see what was outside the door, and the scene he glimpsed through the crack in the door made him open his eyes in disbelief.
Outside the door… Above him was a pool of blood flowing upside down, with countless dead souls and skeletons wailing in the pool, and a blazing fire on the ground. In just that instant, he seemed to see the eighteen levels of hell described by humans.
He stood there in a daze, and Ye Shengke accidentally bumped into him and pushed him to the ground.
Ye Shengke was startled: "Hey, what are you doing?"
Wen Zhengxin could no longer answer him. He collapsed to the ground, his face pale, his eyes rolled back, and he was mumbling something, but no one knew what he was saying.
Shi Yan turned around: "What's wrong with him?"
Nie Yunzhen: "Maybe I saw something I shouldn't have seen."
Ye Shengke: "Should we keep him now?"
The woman had already left, and they followed the rules and pressed the elevator button in an attempt to return to their original world. They had no intention of visiting another world.
"No need." A voice sounded.
"Okay." Nie Yunzhen replied. He and Ye Shengke barely pulled the middle-aged man up, and when the elevator door opened the next time, they immediately pushed him out without even looking at the darkness outside.
The elevator door closed again.
Nie Yunzhen and Ye Shengke hadn't discovered anything yet and breathed a sigh of relief, but Shi Yan suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.
"Chu, Brother Chu." Her voice was trembling, "Did you ask them to throw it out just now?"
Chu Xiu paused and shook his head: "It's not me."
Ye Shengke and Nie Yunzhen's faces turned pale with fright.
Since those were not what Chu Xiu said, then who was the voice that just answered them
As usual, Chu Xiu didn't show much expression. He just stared carefully at the crack in the elevator door.
The world the elevator just passed by... seemed to be a normal world
Wen Zhengxin was pushed into an unfamiliar corridor, stumbling, but he felt nothing. He just smiled foolishly. After a while, he held his head and burst into tears.
To forcibly touch upon an area that humans cannot reach, even if it is only seen for a moment with the naked eye, the cost is definitely not something humans can bear.
For someone like him, he is lucky to be just unconscious.
"Mr. Wen, what's wrong with you?" There was a power outage in the hotel for some reason. Two waiters were patrolling the corridor with flashlights. The light suddenly shone on a man. Seeing that he looked crazy, the two immediately stepped forward to ask him with concern.
The four people in the elevator never expected that they just pushed each other casually, but he returned to his original world. And now, they are still trying to return according to the rules.
However, the situation inside the hotel is not much better now.
An extremely cold, terrifying and twisted aura emerged from deep underground.
"Today is really weird. Why is there a power outage and a sudden cold snap?" The manager complained, "Hurry up, isn't the backup power ready yet?"
"It's coming, it's coming. The technician said there's something wrong with the circuit."
"Okay, no one's taking the elevator, right?"
"No, I was just downstairs and the elevator didn't move."
The four people still in the elevator had no idea that the hotel had suddenly experienced a power outage. The lights in the elevator they were riding were still bright and the elevator was still operating normally.
Maybe... they will never have the chance to know, because that elevator has taken them to another world.
At this moment, two waiters came over with the crazy Wen Zhengxin. The latter was in tears but still making silly noises. They looked embarrassed: "Manager, please see..."
The manager was shocked: "What's going on? What happened to him?" Then he squatted over and waved his hand: "Mr. Wen? Brother Wen?"
"I don't know. We found Mr. Wen when we went upstairs to check. When we found him, he was already like this." One of them looked anxious, "Manager, what should we do?"
"Die... Hahahaha, everyone will die here." Wen Zhengxin suddenly burst into crazy laughter, "Let's all die. If we can't find it... we'll all die!"
There was no call in the hall yet, and everyone was relying on candles and flashlights. Wen Zhengxin suddenly exploded, and his face was distorted with satisfaction in the candlelight, which completely scared the manager.
He... is he really crazy
What's going on
"Manager, look at this..." Many people were frightened by what he just said.
"It's okay, everyone, be quiet. Okay, send Mr. Wen to his room now, and I'll call his family to pick him up." The manager forced himself to calm down, clapped his hands and arranged the tasks. Then, the two waiters who saw him dragged him back to the room again.
"Speaking of which... it's really a bit scary. I feel like Mr. Wen is a bit weird, and what about his... lost statue? Do you think... ?"
Another one immediately said to her: "What era is this? You still believe this?"
"Don't you think it's scary? What if there really are ghosts in this world?"
As they were talking, they had already arrived at Wen Zhengxin's room. They swiped the room card and helped the man to the bed. Wen Zhengxin felt much better, no longer crying and making a fuss. He curled up at the head of the bed and kept muttering that he wanted a daughter.
At this time, the hotel had not yet restored power, and Wen Zhengxin was sitting at the head of the bed, a dark shadow. The two of them felt that their mission was completed, so they left the room and walked back.
"No, I still feel very scared. You don't know that my intuition has been very accurate since I was a child. I feel uneasy today." One of them held the arm of the other and couldn't help shivering.
"Is it because of me?"
The other looked down at her.
At this moment, the hotel's power supply was restored, the lights in the corridor came on, and the two looked at each other.
When that person saw clearly the owner of the arm she was holding, her expression froze on her face, and then gradually turned into a look of fear and disbelief.
Her face was smooth and bare.
She actually walked all the way with this man without facial features!
"Are you afraid of me?" the man continued to ask.
The skin on her face flowed down like hot wax, and soon, her originally smooth face became like a candle lit in the middle of the night. One could just barely make out a face from the roughness. The mouth was still moving, and it looked like she was smiling.
She was so frightened that she stood there motionless and almost forgot to run away.
A barely audible scream was heard, and the corridor returned to silence.
Deep in the elevator shaft, a girl in a school uniform skirt was desperately climbing up.
Compared with the girl in the elevator, she was more cruel, her eyes were more vicious, and her beautiful face was distorted to the point where her appearance was unrecognizable, which was chilling.
The four people remained in the elevator.
"Remember, we can't leave early. We must complete all the procedures. Otherwise, we may end up staying in an illusory world." Shi Yan warned them repeatedly.
"In that fake world, anything can happen. You may think you are back home, but it is more likely that you are at home in another world."
As he spoke, the elevator door opened. Unlike the dark corridors in the previous times, this time, the familiar hotel corridor appeared before his eyes, and there was a man waiting outside the door.
They were stunned.
The man was also stunned for a moment, mumbling as he chose to close the elevator again and wait for the next one. Before closing the door, everyone heard the man mumbling, "Strange, why are there so many people taking the elevator in the middle of the night?"
After hearing this sentence clearly, several people in the elevator couldn't help but tremble for a moment.
There weren't many people in the elevator... What did that person see
On the other side of the city, Chu Xiu made the same introduction to Lu Yanli.
They had tentatively stepped out of the elevator door, but to their surprise, they did not see any figure, as if the figure that had been flashing through the crack of the door before did not exist.
"So don't run around randomly. It's best for us to act together." In order to prevent them from getting lost, Chu Xiu suggested.
Lu Yanli nodded. Of course he wouldn’t run around.
But the next second, Chu Xiu was slapped in the face.
They were in a dim, winding corridor with a number of oil paintings covered in thick dust hanging on the walls, miscellaneous items piled on the ground, and the walls were yellowed and the paint was peeling off, revealing unpleasant mottled marks and cracks, as well as a number of simple drawings that looked like children's graffiti.
The two were originally walking side by side, until later on, the various piles of debris on the ground made it too difficult to provide a parallel path, and they were afraid of breaking some taboo by stepping on it, so they had to walk one in front and one behind.
Chu Xiu was walking ahead. Just after turning a corner, he came to an unfamiliar place. Everything in front of his eyes went dark, as if all the light had been swallowed up.
Where is this
Chu Xiu's eyes widened in astonishment, and he looked around, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see the surroundings clearly with the little light. But he could tell by feeling that he was standing in a corner.
Just then, he heard very light footsteps coming towards him.
What is it? Where has he gone
Chu Xiu tensed up in an instant.
The man was getting closer and closer, and Chu Xiu could even sense his emotions. When the man came closer, he became nervous and a little panicked.
Could it be... this is really a living person
Chu Xiu wasn't sure.
The figure came closer and closer, and finally, stopped in front of him.
The man in front disappeared as soon as he turned a corner, and this incident made Lu Yanli nervous.
The strangest thing about this matter is that he still doesn't understand the pattern of the ghost's attacks, and he doesn't even know how many ghosts there are.
Where did Chu Xiu go
Should he continue exploring
Lu Yanli looked back and saw that the elevator door was still wide open, as if waiting for him to go back. A faint green light was projected on the display screen at the door, but the numbers had become blurred into a ball of green light, so he didn't know which floor it was.
Now that we are here, we might as well keep going.
Lu Yanli calmed himself down and walked more lightly, but Chu Xiu's disappearance did give him some concerns. He paused, turned around and walked in the opposite direction.
If Chu Xiu can come back alive, it won’t be too late to ask him later.
No, that's not right. I can't be sure whether the one who came back is the real Chu Xiu.
It became darker and darker as he walked. The entire corridor seemed to be just a corridor. There was no room and no windows. Lu Yanli didn't know where the light that allowed him to see the things around him came from. He looked around as he walked.
The further he walked, the more bloodstains he saw on the ground, but the spider webs gradually became fewer, which made him even more uneasy.
Even the spiders are fewer, which means there are even fewer creatures that can survive on the road ahead.
When he reached the end of the corridor, he saw a staircase.
Lu Yanli hesitated for a while, looked back in the direction of the elevator again, and decided to go down.
No matter what, no matter where he goes, he has to survive.
As long as we can survive, it doesn't matter which world we live in.
With this mentality in mind, Lu Yanli slowly walked down the stairs.
Just as he reached the first floor, Lu Yanli's eyes suddenly widened.
This... Why does this scene appear
Why did he come to the house where he used to live
"Xiao Lu, you finally came down from the upstairs. You must be tired of hiding in the attic every day, right?" Lu Yanli's mother came out of the kitchen and saw her son standing upstairs with a smile on her face. She was holding a dish in her hand, which was fragrant and steaming.
"Mom?" Lu Yanli uttered a word uncertainly.
"Hey, what's up today?"
"Is there anything going on today?" Lu Yanli looked around the house and suddenly felt a little overwhelmed, stammering.
Everything was normal: sunshine, flowers, a clean and tidy house, mom's favorite little bear placed on the sofa, and their puppy running around happily.
And Lu Yanli still clearly remembered that within half a year when the world exploded strangely, the puppy fell into the bathtub in front of them and broke into more than a dozen pieces.
Was this all just his illusion? Could it be that... all these weird imaginations were just a dream he had while sleeping in the attic
Which one is true and which one is false
Have all these years been fake
"Xiao Lu, hurry up and clean up. Your dad will be back soon. If he sees you like this, he will beat you again."
"Dad is coming back?" Lu Yanli asked again.
He glanced at the calendar.
He still remembers very clearly that his father should have been out on a mission at that time. His father was the most serious person and couldn't stand his "unruly" appearance.
And what was I like at that time
He glanced down at himself.
She was wearing ripped jeans. She reached out and pulled a handful of hair in front of her eyes. Obviously, it was dyed red.
It is completely different from my later style.
In the past, he was always afraid of his father coming back, because his father would beat him if he saw him. He didn't really beat him hard, but the kind of beating that was out of disappointment. Even so, the relationship between father and son was not good.
"By the way, Xiao Lu, your dad said he would introduce you to a comrade-in-arms' daughter. I heard she's very pretty. They should be home soon, so you should pack up quickly and go!" Mother Lu entered the kitchen again, leaned half of her body out, and waved a spatula in her hand twice.
Everything is so real.
but…
"Is everything true?" Lu Yanli asked suddenly.
"Ah, what's true or false? What's wrong with you today? Why are you so weird?" The woman was confused.
"nothing."
"If there is anything you can't say to your mother, say it now."
Lu Yanli glanced at the woman's face.
He had dreamed about it countless times and missed it, but his memory told him that it was all fake.
He saw with his own eyes that the other party doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire.
This house... also exploded, and was reduced to ruins right in front of him.
Although within a few days, this home, along with the woman before him, returned to him intact, he knew that someone who had died once would never be the same person again.
“They are all fake.”
He resolutely turned around, went back and walked upstairs.