On the fourth floor, a furniture showroom.
Two entangled figures were rolling on a large pink bed, while a pile of scattered clothes lay discarded on the floor. Such a sultry scene felt utterly bizarre in this enclosed space.
"Oh..." Once the exertion ended, Lei Yuyao lay prone on Yan Ao's chest, her cheeks flushed, and panted softly, "Yan Ao, I am yours now. You will protect me, right?"
Resting for a moment without receiving the promise she wanted, Lei Yuyao grew somewhat dissatisfied. She had already thrown caution to the wind; what was wrong with this man?
"Yan Ao, are you planning to shirk responsibility..." Feeling humiliated, Lei Yuyao sat up, intending to question him. In the next second, however, she felt as if she had plunged into an ice cellar, paralyzed with fear.
She discovered that the Yan Ao beside her had unexpectedly transformed into a cold corpse. The corpse's head was nowhere to be found, and black blood oozed from the severed neck, staining the sheets below a dark crimson.
"Ah!" Lei Yuyao's face twisted as she let out a shriek. She scrambled up in a panic; in her wildest dreams, she would never have imagined that the person she had just been with was a corpse.
Her precious first time had been with a... Just the thought of it made Lei Yuyao feel both sick and terrified. She jumped frantically off the bed, only to sprain her ankle in her haste and crash to the floor.
Just as she tried to pull herself back up, her ankle suddenly tightened, and she felt it grasped by an icy hand.
"Ahhh, no, no..." Lei Yuyao was completely broken. Tears, saliva, and snot gushed continuously as she screamed like a madman. Her previously pretty face was utterly distorted by terror. Yet no matter how wildly she kicked her legs, that freezing grip showed not the slightest sign of loosening.
"Snap!" Unwittingly, Lei Yuyao's flailing hands struck a nearby chair, and something resting upon it fell to the floor, rolling to her side with a clatter.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lei Yuyao glanced over, and her expression instantly froze. The object that had rolled beside her turned out to be a bloody human head. But what truly horrified her was that the owner of the head was unmistakably Yan Ao.
"Ah..."
On the third floor of the mall.
Yan Ao stopped abruptly, his expression shifting. "Class monitor?"
The scream just now had clearly been Lei Yuyao's. Yan Ao was debating whether to go back and look for her when a sound of footsteps echoed from not far away.
"Brother Chen?"
"Brother Yan Ao?"
Yan Ao and Chen Hanlin bumped straight into each other. After a brief mutual pause, they began asking about each other's condition.
"Brother Yan Ao, have you seen Brother Lan? I walked around the first floor with him and then lost track of him. I thought he would come up to the third floor to rendezvous with you," Chen Hanlin said urgently.
"Wasn't he with you?" Yan Ao asked, frowning.
"He originally was, but somehow, as we walked, he just vanished." A bitter smile appeared on Chen Hanlin's face. Noticing that Yan Ao was alone, he asked in turn, "Where is Miss Lei? How is it just you?"
"I got separated from her as well, and..." Yan Ao hesitated, stopping short. Recalling the scream he had just heard, he said uncertainly, "I suspect the class monitor may already have been killed by the ghost."
"Ah?" Hearing this, Chen Hanlin turned somewhat pale. "How do you know?"
"I'm guessing. I just heard her scream, and furthermore..." Yan Ao finally shared the minor friction that had occurred between him and Lei Yuyao.
As it turned out, back on the fourth floor, Yan Ao had ultimately resisted the temptation and refused Lei Yuyao's request. After all, stranded in such a terrifying place, Yan Ao had no heart for romance. Most importantly, anyone could see that Lei Yuyao was simply treating Yan Ao as a drowning man's straw, intending to trade her body for protection.
Yan Ao knew his own limited capabilities; what did it matter if Lei Yuyao was as pretty as a flower? He doubted whether he could even leave this haunted mall alive, let alone make promises to someone else. Consequently, Lei Yuyao had fallen out with him on the spot, running off driven by shame and anger.
Though Yan Ao had wanted to chase after her, he never expected that after running barely a dozen meters, he lost all trace of her at a corridor turn.
"After searching the fourth floor and failing to find the class monitor, I went up to the fifth floor to keep looking for the ghost. Finding nothing, I came back down to the third floor to rendezvous, and right before I ran into you, I heard the class monitor's scream."
"So you deduce that she definitely met with disaster? That means Brother Lan..." Chen Hanlin swallowed hard, thinking of the missing Lan Zhijie.
"..." Yan Ao fell silent. According to Chen Hanlin's previous account, Lan Zhijie's prospects looked grim as well. At that thought, his heart tightened slightly. The two had been childhood playmates since they were little; Lan Zhijie's death was bound to be a heavy blow to Yan Ao.
"Brother Yan Ao, don't dwell on it. We'd better hurry and find a way out of here," Chen Hanlin comforted.
Hearing this, Yan Ao glanced at his watch. Only ten minutes remained. After a brief consultation, the two decided to head back down to the first floor and start their search over from there. In order to survive, they could not give up no matter what.
Yet on their way to the first floor, a dark figure suddenly lunged out.
"Go to hell!" Yan Ao only felt a blur before his eyes. By the time he reacted, screams and roars rang in his ears. Turning his head, he saw a dark figure pouncing on Chen Hanlin. The figure was holding a sharp knife, repeatedly stabbing it into Chen Hanlin's body. The screams were coming straight from Chen Hanlin's mouth.
Yan Ao was stunned, and just as he prepared to rush forward and save him, the dark figure stood up and turned to face Yan Ao.
"A-Jie?" Yan Ao couldn't help letting out an exclamation. The person holding the bloody knife before him was none other than Lan Zhijie, whom he had assumed was likely dead.
"A-Ao, run, run! Chen Hanlin is a ghost!" Lan Zhijie dropped the knife, ran up to Yan Ao with a panicked expression, and shouted.
Yan Ao was utterly confused. Looking at Chen Hanlin, who lay on the ground not yet fully dead and twitching convulsively, he turned his head and asked, "What on earth is happening? How could Brother Chen be a ghost?"
"It's true, A-Ao, you have to believe me. He... he is a ghost! The phone, it's the phone..." Lan Zhijie seemed truly traumatized. With bloodshot eyes, he frantically patted his pockets until he pulled out his phone and yelled, "I just heard the sound he made before he died over the phone! He wants me to keep him company, and... go check the first floor!"
The first floor? Yan Ao frowned. What on earth had happened on the first floor?