Chapter 217: Huaishu Road Construction Site Strange Tales 15

Chapter 217: Huaishu Road Construction Site Strange Tales 15

"Xiao Qin? Mi Yang?"

Lu Cheng opened the Guild channel and whispered cautiously.

There was no response in the channel.

Lu Cheng called out two more times, but still received no answer.

"..."

What's going on? Lu Cheng felt a faint sense of unease.

Qi Xiu's eyes darkened slightly. "I think the people on the sixth floor might have been pulled into a side quest."

The task must be quite dangerous, at least much more perilous than their current situation, so much so that they don't even have the strength to respond after hearing the voice in the channel.

...

On the sixth floor of the Sinar Mas Department Store, Room 6-11, Property Management Office.

Qin Fei silently hid beside a redwood cabinet in the corner, his slender body pressed against the wall, completely concealed by the large shadow.

The room was deathly silent, with even the sound of heartbeats distinctly clear. Qin Fei gradually slowed his breathing, trying to minimize his presence as much as possible.

Not long ago, Lu Cheng had asked about the progress on the sixth floor through the Guild channel, but neither Qin Fei nor Mi Yang responded.

The reason was simple—they hadn't heard Lu Cheng's voice at all.

Just like half an hour ago when they first triggered the side quest and tried to sync information with Lu Cheng.

No matter how they tried, they couldn't connect to Lu Cheng's channel.

Moreover, Chen Zaocha and the others from Dark Fire were also out of contact.

The entire sixth floor seemed to be isolated in a relatively independent space, completely cut off from the rest of the department store.

"Tap, tap, tap."

The footsteps approached from outside the door, light and rhythmic.

The muscles around Qin Fei's ears involuntarily twitched. Judging from the sound, the owner of the footsteps seemed to be a lady wearing heeled leather boots.

She paused for a moment at the entrance of a nearby room before continuing forward.

"Tap, tap."

The footsteps grew closer.

Until they stopped in front of Qin Fei's door.

Qin Fei appeared to have heard nothing, remaining motionless, like a tree rooted in the corner.

The player lowered his eyes, his expressionless face showing no emotion.

A new piece of content appeared on his attribute panel, something that wasn't there before.

"Midnight Ghost Knocking - Game in Progress"

Game Progress: 5/8 Rounds;

Current Death Count: 0

Game Description: The rumor of ghosts haunting the top floor of the Sinar Mas Department Store has been around for a long time. What reason could you have for choosing to enter this dark area?

But since you're here, stay and play a little. The one hiding in the darkness has been looking forward to this for a long time~

Game Rules:

1. Those in the room, listen carefully to the footsteps in the corridor and determine whether the person knocking is your companion or a ghost.

2. The knocker can knock on any number of doors randomly, but can only choose one room per round to try to open. Those not chosen cannot open their doors voluntarily.

3. If there is no one inside, the knocker can open the door directly. If someone is inside, they can choose to open or not open the door. Those who fail to enter will join the next round's knocker.

4. Each room has only one right to refuse opening the door.

"!!! Friendly Reminder !!!"

Please make sure to hide your whereabouts well.

While you are trying to identify the identity of the visitor outside the door, the ghost is also actively searching for you.

Once the ghost senses your movement, hehe~ you won't want to know the consequences!

This "Midnight Ghost Knocking" game was triggered about half an hour after everyone entered the sixth floor of the building.

Like the other floors of the department store, the sixth floor had also been abandoned long ago, with the power supply cut off, and none of the lights in the corridor working. At the time, the players were feeling their way along the corridor, trying to push open the doors on either side.

Qin Fei's guess was accurate; the sixth floor was indeed full of offices—property management, accounting rooms, control centers... All the doors were tightly locked, each painted with the word "Demolish" in red paint.

The five people who infiltrated the sixth floor walked the length of the corridor but hadn't managed to enter any room when the task was suddenly triggered.

When the task was triggered, Qin Fei was trying to pick the lock of the property management office door with a wire.

Just as the wire entered the lock, the task prompt sounded, and the scene in front of Qin Fei changed abruptly. He found himself transported from the corridor to the interior of a room.

He looked around and identified the room as the property management office based on the scattered ID cards on the desks.

A giant fluorescent countdown hovered in the air.

"Time until the start of Round 1: 1 min"

Qin Fei was the only one here; everyone else around him had vanished.

Mi Yang sent a message on the public channel: "Damn! I've been teleported to the accounting office?!"

Unless a player was under the mental control of a ghost from the very beginning, it was almost impossible for information on the public channel to be fake.

Qin Fei quickly replied, "I'm at the Property Management Office."

Neither of them could communicate with Lu Cheng or the other players on the same floor.

Qin Fei tried to release a ghost infant, but this suspiciously cheating operation was mercilessly stopped by the system. The ghost infant was trapped in the office and couldn't leave the room.

The mission prompt had already made everything clear. Although the incident was sudden, everyone remained quiet, no one foolish enough to shout in their rooms.

Ten seconds before the countdown ended, Qin Fei walked quickly to the office door, locked it from the inside, and placed a chair against it.

Every office on the sixth floor had no windows on the wall facing the corridor.

This meant that if ghosts really appeared later, the only way to determine whether someone was in each room would be through sound.

Ten seconds before the countdown ended.

Qin Fei found a corner farthest from the door and quietly squatted down.

"The first round of the game is officially starting~~"

An exaggerated prompt sounded, and Qin Fei instantly felt the surrounding air drop several degrees.

A layer of goosebumps rose on his exposed arms.

Footsteps echoed outside the corridor, tap, tap—the sound of women's high-heeled shoes hitting the ground.

Players in different positions on the sixth floor felt their hearts tighten as the sound began.

There were no women in their team, and no one's shoes could make such a sound.

What appeared in the corridor was most likely a ghost!

But...

Could they be sure?

In the live stream comments, viewers were frantically typing:

"Holy crap, this is terrifying. This mission is insane, too sudden."

"So, is it a person or a ghost?"

"I don't know."

"The system is really messed up, locking all the other live streams on the same floor!"

Making it impossible for viewers to check other streams for information.

Most viewers thought similarly to the players:

"It's probably a ghost. No player wears high heels."

Soon, a spirit raised an objection:

"But what if the footsteps were tampered with?"

Mi Yang was also thinking about this: "Do you think it might actually be a player or those two NPCs, and the system is just playing tricks, creating a new sound to confuse us?"

After a moment of consideration, Qin Fei gave a negative answer: "Not likely."

Players had almost no means to judge the appearance of whoever was outside the corridor. If even the sounds could be faked, the entire eight rounds of the mission would become a complete game of luck.

Such random mission modes were extremely rare, if not non-existent, in the instances.

Tap, tap.

The sound of the high heels varied in intensity.

The person paced back and forth in the corridor, seemingly hesitating about which room to enter.

After a while, she began knocking on the doors of each office one by one.

The result was already determined.

No matter whether there were players inside, no one would open the door for her voluntarily.

The corridor fell silent for a moment. After some time, she seemed to randomly choose a room and entered.

Mi Yang breathed a sigh of relief: "The door opened directly; that room is probably empty."

"Round 1 ends! Countdown to Round 2: 2 min!"

In a corner of the Property Management Office, Qin Fei remained crouched in place, continuing to text Mi Yang in the channel:

"I suspect the challenge of this mission isn't so much about 'players not opening the door for ghosts.'"

So far, he and Mi Yang were the only ones who could communicate normally on this floor.

With highly restricted information, everyone couldn't determine each other's positions.

"The first round of the game is over; the ghost entered a room," Qin Fei said softly, his eyes slightly downcast.

"In that case, how should a player, if selected in the second round to be the one knocking on doors, determine which room is safe?"

It was almost impossible to determine which room the ghost had entered based solely on its footsteps outside, unless a player happened to be in the room adjacent to the one chosen by the ghost.

In the accounting room, Mi Yang quickly scanned the text Qin Fei had posted in the channel, his expression gradually tensing up.

Indeed.

In Qin Fei and Mi Yang's live streams, their exchanges in the guild channel were projected onto the light screen by the system.

The spirits frowned, crowding around to read, muttering:

"What does this mean? What does this mean?"

"Will there be players sent to knock on doors in the next round?"

"So what’s the difficulty?" one spirit asked, puzzled. "Since everyone inside can tell whether it's a person or a ghost outside, can't they just open the door when someone knocks?"

"Are you stupid?" another viewer scoffed. "Didn’t the rules clearly state that the person knocking can knock randomly, but each round only allows one final answer?"

If the person inside the room doesn’t respond, how could the player knocking on the door determine whether they knocked on a safe room or a bridge to hell?

But if the person inside responds—

The spirit pursed their lips: "Don’t forget the friendly reminder."

"Once the ghost senses your movement, hehe~ you don’t want to know the consequences!"

This reminder wasn’t just a scare tactic; it also implied:

The ghost’s ability to detect sounds in the hallway might be greater than that of the players.

If the player inside gives a signal to the player outside, both might indeed be safe in this round, but if the ghost also hears those sounds, when the next round begins—

The spirit swallowed nervously: "The ghost will definitely come looking."

At that point, the person in the room would undoubtedly be in a dilemma.

Open the door, die.

Don’t open the door, and the ghost remains outside.

A room can only be forcibly locked once. If the ghost lingers outside and continues knocking on the same door in the following round, it can directly trap both players inside.

Simultaneously, the player selected to knock on doors in the following round would also be forced to share the same corridor with the ghost.

A triple kill.

That would be disastrous.