Chapter 211: The Haunted Construction Site on Huaishu Road 09

Chapter 211: The Haunted Construction Site on Huaishu Road 09

Outside the pitch-black stairwell, two figures stood guard by the third-floor safety door, one in front and one behind.

Ji Feipeng clung to the door panel, peering inside while constantly glancing over his shoulder, as if fearing something would crawl out of the darkness and tear him apart.

Thinking about what had just happened, Ji Feipeng felt his temples throbbing.

"Brother Hu," he swallowed nervously, his face filled with fear, "Zhao Li... he shouldn't... again..."

Zhao Li, Zheng Hu, and Ji Feipeng were the players selected by the West Team and North Team to track Qin Fei and his group.

Unlike the strategies of the Southeast teams, the West Team and North Team did not carefully select their members but instead sent three of their least important members into the darkness to take the risk.

From a macro perspective, the decision made by the team leaders was sound.

The West Team and North Team were unclear about the purpose of Qin Fei's group reaching the third floor and unaware of the dangers involved. Sending core players could result in significant losses, which would be devastating for their subsequent combat capabilities.

Sending three expendable members alleviated such concerns.

In fact, the most suitable candidates for this task should have been non-player NPC members, but NPCs couldn't use the guild channel to sync information in real-time. If anything went wrong during the tracking, it would become a futile effort.

Thus, the honorable yet arduous task fell upon Zhao Li and the other two.

Unaware that they were considered expendable tools, the three players, filled with a sense of responsibility, silently followed the advancing group.

The entire building was dimly lit, making the footsteps and silhouettes of the players barely noticeable. The trio had to exert all their efforts to ensure they didn't lose track.

Under such intense focus, none of them noticed that as they passed through the women's clothing section, an extra shadow seemed to have joined their ranks without anyone realizing.

That shadow followed them through the women's clothing section, onto the elevator, and all the way to the second floor.

Amidst the steel bars and construction materials on the second floor, the unnamed fourth person quietly mingled with the group.

It wasn't until Zhao Li heard a fall behind him and instinctively turned to help his teammate that things took a turn.

Zhao Li grabbed the person's arm, feeling the skin beneath his palm cold to the bone.

Under the dual assault of dust and the ghost's mental pollution, the players still hadn't noticed anything amiss.

"Hurry up! Are you crippled or something?" Zhao Li snapped irritably, "Can't you see they've already—"

His voice cut off abruptly.

Can't you see they've already walked far ahead?

They.

Two.

Three of them set out together, with two in front.

Then who was the one whose arm he was holding now?

The ghost, who had been looking down, suddenly lifted its head, its blood-red eye sockets filled with pure black pupils, reflecting Zhao Li's terrified face!

"Ahhh—!!!"

The scream Qin Fei and the others heard came from this moment.

Every time Ji Feipeng recalled the scene, he breathed heavily in fear.

At that moment, the distance between him and death was less than half a meter!

Zhao Li died instantly.

The female ghost reached out with her withered hands and choked him, breaking the neck of a strong adult male in less than half a second.

Only then did the people staying on the first floor send a message:

"Hurry! Put on the clothes you bought from the women's section; there's something wrong with the rules!"

Unfortunately, this warning came too late for Zhao Li.

Seeing Zhao Li's limp body, Ji Feipeng and Zheng Hu's first reaction was to run away!

But the voice of their teammates in the guild channel reminded them, and they finally realized that the female ghost targeted them because they violated the rules.

Ji Feipeng took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

The female ghost's mental pollution was incredibly strong. After he and Zheng Hu quickly put on the women's clothing they bought on the first floor, the ghost gave them a long, resentful look before disappearing into the darkness.

Yet, her pale face, bleeding eye sockets, and Zhao Li's expression of sheer terror before his death remained etched in Ji Feipeng's mind.

Ji Feipeng pursed his lips tightly and turned to look inside the third floor.

The third floor looked no safer than the second, perhaps even more eerie, with flower wreaths and paper money everywhere, creating a sense of immediate doom upon stepping into the area.

Ji Feipeng and Zheng Hu had each consumed several mental supplements, but their sanity levels remained low.

The severe mental fluctuations significantly affected their ability to act, so they decided to stay put and observe rather than continue following upstairs.

"We'll wait... one more minute."

Zheng Hu said, almost as if consoling himself:

"After one minute, if there's no other movement up ahead, we'll follow."

The six players and one NPC ahead conversed in hushed tones and moved deeper into the third floor, leaving the remaining two tails anxiously waiting by the door.

"How is it going?"

The voice channel buzzed with the first-floor player's anxious inquiries, and Ji Feipeng clicked his tongue in frustration.

Hurry, hurry, hurry—that’s all they know.

Why don’t they come and track them themselves?

Ji Feipeng exchanged a glance with Zheng Hu.

It’s about time. Should we go in?

However, before they could make their final decision, members from the East and South teams were already walking back towards them.

Ji Feipeng’s face froze. He never expected the other party to act so swiftly, returning in the blink of an eye.

There was no room left for him to sneak a peek!

"Hey, Ji Feipeng, speak up! You said they went to the third floor, what’s there? What’s on the third floor?"

"What did those three big guilds do?"

"Hey, hey, where are you???"

Sweat poured down Ji Feipeng’s forehead!

How would he know what they did? He saw nothing!

"They… on the third floor, it’s all flower wreath shops! Funeral service one-stop shops!"

Forced into a corner, Ji Feipeng’s eyes suddenly sharpened. He pulled Zheng Hu into the darkest corner, his gaze piercing as he scanned the hands of those few people.

Xiao Qin held a plastic bag, while Qi Xiu seemed to be carrying… a stack of joss paper? Or talismans?

Behind them, Cui Wenxuan was counting money with a serious expression.

"They went shopping, very purposefully. They must have gotten information from the NPCs," Ji Feipeng deduced. "Wait a bit more; I’ll go find out what they bought."

Although Ji Feipeng didn’t see which shop they visited, the NPCs on the third floor wouldn’t move. Once those few left, they could inquire around.

"Alright, do as you see fit." The team leader’s instructions came through the channel. "Buy whatever they bought."

Ji Feipeng didn’t respond. Leaning against the wall, Xiao Qin and Qi Xiu had passed through the third-floor safety door and back into the hallway, almost brushing past Ji Feipeng’s face.

The others followed closely behind.

Ji Feipeng and Zheng Hu dared not breathe until the six figures vanished at the bottom of the stairs, then they breathed a sigh of relief.

"The players from the big guilds aren’t that perceptive after all."

Zheng Hu muttered to himself.

"Even after following them all this way, they didn’t notice us?"

What they didn’t know was that their every move had been visible to the other party all along.

...

First floor, residential area.

After returning, Qi Xiu and the others headed straight to Room 1 and locked the door.

Xiao Qin recounted their observations upstairs:

"The second floor is entirely demolished. About one-third of the third floor is still in use, all selling funeral supplies."

"After going upstairs, we headed straight for B12, 1001. It was a regular shop. When I entered, I mentioned the foreman and the contractor, but the shop owner didn’t react. Then—"

Xiao Qin paused: "Then, I told the boss: ‘I want the most expensive.’”

The foreman’s advice: don’t be cheap.

Xiao Qin’s move was correct. After saying “the most expensive,” the shop owner’s expression turned serious, as if he had heard some secret code.

He led them to a corner, opened a wooden cabinet, revealing a variety of items inside: "These are the expensive ones. Which do you want?"

"Then what?" Mi Yang asked eagerly.

"Then," Xiao Qin blinked his innocent eyes at Mi Yang.

Mi Yang suddenly felt a bad premonition.

Especially when he noticed that the corner of Qi Xiu’s mouth seemed to be twitching slightly.

What Ji Feipeng and Zheng Hu saw on the third floor was not everything. Only now did Xiao Qin start pulling items out of his personal space, one by one.

Joss paper.

Cinnabar.

Six small peachwood swords.

A string of coins from the Five Emperors.

A picture of Guan Yu.

Even a string of garlic…

One, two, three, gradually filling the only table in the room.

The players' eyes gradually widened.

"Wow..." Mi Yang's mouth twitched along with the corner of his lip.

What the hell, did they go shopping?

Before the three of them went upstairs, every player from Team Dong took out all their money and handed it to Qi Xiu. After Qin Fei's meticulous calculations, not a single coin was left unspent.

Qi Xiu said, "Fortunately, we got a head start. This level seems to be half a speed run; there were only two copies of everything."

Conveniently, rooms one and three divided them up.

Lu Cheng was speechless. "I suddenly feel a strong sense of security."

Room One, where even ghosts wouldn't dare enter!

Qin Fei lit an oil lamp, which he had just bought: "Put the statue of Guan Yu behind the door, hang the coins of the Five Emperors in front of the window facing the door, give each person a peach wood sword, take turns keeping watch at night, and don't let this oil lamp go out before dawn."

This was the advice given by the shop owner when they heard that the group planned to spend the night in the former women's clothing section staff dormitory on the first floor.

In addition to the ghost-repelling items, Qin Fei and the others brought some other news as well.

"We asked the owners of the two shops on the third floor and compared the yellow calendars hanging in those shops. We can confirm that today is the thirteenth day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar," Zhu Ning said.

Their mission requirement was to survive until after the Mid-Autumn Festival.

That is, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the night after tomorrow.

"The shop owners on the third floor told us that Sinar Mas Department Store is actually abandoned now. The fourth, fifth, and sixth floors have all been vacated. The shops below that haven't moved out yet will do so after the Mid-Autumn Festival."

Sitting on the bed, Qin Fei lightly tapped the rusted metal bed frame with his fingertips:

"We also asked the shop owners if anything had happened in this department store building."

But as soon as this topic came up, the shop owners all wore expressions of deep secrecy.

"Something must have happened in this building, probably involving deaths. Before, everyone must have known about it—the foremen, supervisors, and NPCs running shops in this building, everyone knew."

Everyone knew except for them.

There must be something wrong, and they needed to uncover the truth before the deadline of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

This was a common trope in rule-based worlds. If the players foolishly waited for time to pass, they might face a horde of evil spirits wiping them out in one fell swoop.

A chill ran down Lu Cheng's spine: "If the NPCs are tight-lipped, how are we supposed to find information?"

Searching the building might be one way, but they had to work across the street during the day, and doing this at night was too dangerous.

Different areas of the building had different rules. In the dark, missing just one rule could spell disaster.

—Didn't one of the players tracking the neighboring room already meet with misfortune?

Qin Fei gave a light chuckle, his lips curling into a pleasant arc.

"Besides people, aren't there also ghosts who can talk?" he said nonchalantly.

From the behavior of the NPCs in the ghost stories, tonight was destined not to be peaceful. Those dirty things lurking in the shadows would surely visit the dormitory.

Since they had fortified their own room, the ghosts would naturally go to the neighboring room instead.

"Tonight, let's see how the neighbors fare." The young man's eyes sparkled with anticipation, his smile gentle and warm.