Chapter 16: Definitely Not

Wang Xiaodian knew his own situation all too well. His mental state could be considered stable, but it certainly wasn’t good, either.

He constantly felt like his stomach was slowly getting bigger. If he didn’t get out in a couple of days, he was afraid something might actually be born from it.

And there was that eye at the bottom of the restroom door gap that had locked eyes with him. That sticky, cold, sinister feeling just wouldn’t fade. He barely dared to stare at any crack or crevice, afraid of locking eyes with that thing again.

He was someone who listened to advice. Jiang Wuning had said their state wasn’t suitable for running around randomly, so he wouldn’t foolishly go and make trouble.

Lying in bed at night, Wang Xiaodian only managed to fall asleep with difficulty by repeatedly recalling his Shifu’s words and actions.

In a half-asleep, half-awake state, he heard a soft “creak,” then a “click,” like the sound of a door opening and closing.

Wang Xiaodian didn’t pay much attention. After all, it wasn’t just them living in this building; there were also anomalous colleagues.

Colleagues had a habit of crawling around at night. Initially, every little noise terrified Wang Xiaodian, but by now he had basically learned to ignore them. So he soon forgot about those sounds, until he heard Lu Neng’s startled exclamation: “Where’s Little Li?”

Lu Neng and Little Li slept in opposite beds. No one could sleep deeply in a place like this. When Lu Neng rolled over and woke up, what he saw was Little Li’s empty bed.

Gone to the restroom?

Impossible. Little Li didn’t have that kind of courage. Then what else was there to guess? He must have been affected and gone out on his own. The fear was that his Sanity Value had reached a critical point and he’d accidentally get himself killed.

Lu Neng couldn’t ignore this, knowing full well the implications. He immediately decided, “You wait in the dorm. I’ll go out and look.”

Wang Xiaodian hesitated. Going out was definitely dangerous, but he didn’t want to stay in the dorm alone either. Besides, they really did need to find Little Li. So he said, “Brother Lu, I’ll go with you. This way, if we see anything, we can warn each other, and watch each other’s backs.”

Lu Neng assessed Wang Xiaodian’s condition and agreed after consideration. There was no reason to leave Li Qing alone in the dorm without a word since they were all going to the office building. After asking her opinion, the three of them walked toward the Office Building together.

The starting point of all the anomalous events was in the Office Building. The possibility of Little Li being there was the highest.

Before, the latest they’d ever stayed out working overtime or investigating was 10 PM. Now it was nearly midnight. The feeling was noticeably different.

Wang Xiaodian walked in the middle, hugging his chest, shoulders hunched, steps light and cautious. “So cold. Is… is something following us?”

Lu Neng: “Midnight is like this. Don’t look around recklessly. Don’t think recklessly.”

Li Qing: “Walk faster.”

All three understood the principle, but their continuously dropping Sanity Values clearly indicated that principles were one thing, and reality another.

The dormitory and the office building were some distance apart. As the three walked in the darkness, their nerves on edge, the fear inside them kept accumulating.

Lu Neng inadvertently glanced at a crooked tree beside him. He remembered this tree—bare, without a single leaf. Now, it seemed like a black cloth was hanging on it. A cold wind blew, and the cloth flapped back and forth in the air. Curious, he wondered who would hang a black cloth here so late at night.

When he withdrew his gaze, his eyes swept downwards, and then the blood in his entire body froze.

On the ground, he met a ghastly pale face. The person was on all fours, upper body crouched low, hips raised high. Logically, even if a normal person could lift their head in this posture, they couldn’t form a 90-degree angle with the ground. But this person’s neck was held perfectly straight, face directly facing him. What was hanging on the tree wasn’t a black cloth—it was hair.

The shock from this image made Lu Neng’s hair stand on end. His footsteps froze; he almost jumped back. At that moment, it was Wang Xiaodian, the newbie, who held him back. “Calm down, Brother Lu, calm down. It’s a colleague. A colleague airing out her hair.”

Li Qing glanced that way, then glanced at Wang Xiaodian, her face stern, but she said nothing.

Lu Neng took a deep breath and slowly relaxed before continuing forward. It wasn’t that he didn’t know any strange thing was possible in the Inner World. It was just that he’d been so deeply trapped in the feeling of terror that when he’d met that face, every rational thought had been scared out of him.

After walking a distance, he couldn’t help but say to Wang Xiaodian, “Little Wang, you have really good qualities.”

Wang Xiaodian was still trembling a little. “Brother Lu, I… I’m actually scared too. But if I use my Shifu’s way of thinking to understand them, it’s… it’s not so scary anymore.”

That was his strong suit. He could flexibly apply many things once he learned them.

Lu Neng: “That makes sense. When in our world, do as the locals do. We may not understand, but we must respect. We have employee status, and we’re inside the company right now. These anomalies won’t attack us. It’s okay to talk. Li Qing, say something too, help us loosen up.”

Both he and Li Qing were people who became tenser and more silent the more nervous they got. Now, with Wang Xiaodian guiding the conversation, the atmosphere could ease up a little.

Li Qing: “Okay.”

“…”

After that one word, silence.

Lu Neng: “…” He looked toward Wang Xiaodian.

Wang Xiaodian: “This lousy company is both proper and not. After work, there isn’t even anyone to lock the doors.”

Lu Neng: “It’s better that there isn’t. Otherwise, we’d have to figure out how to pick locks.”

Wang Xiaodian: “I wonder how much this lousy company pays per month. We didn’t even discuss probationary salary when we came in. The overtime is so severe, I can’t believe my Shifu can stand staying here.”

Lu Neng hesitated, then still said, “Little Wang, don’t put too much emotion into anomalies. No matter how human they seem, they’re no longer human. And we are going to leave.”

If they didn’t leave, they would die.

Wang Xiaodian was stunned. His mind subconsciously felt something was wrong with that statement.

Li Qing: “After the Pollution Source dies, the Symbiotic Anomalies will die with it.”

Wang Xiaodian already knew what Symbiotic Anomalies were. When a person becomes an anomaly, the related anomalies born from that anomaly’s memories are Symbiotic Anomalies. To Wang Xiaodian, it was simply the difference between a Boss and NPCs. The ones with a plotline might count as elite monsters?

The vast majority of the employees at Delicious Food Company were Symbiotic Anomalies.

Wang Xiaodian thought of his Shifu. Natural-born anomalies inside the Inner World usually carried some biological characteristics, like Brother Zhang.

Once, when staying late, he’d accidentally seen Brother Zhang’s four hands working furiously on the desk, creating a flurry of clicks. Brother Zhang’s teeth were also different from normal people’s teeth. But his Shifu…

His Shifu was too much like a human.

Maybe he was simply molded entirely from the Boss’s memory of what that person was like.

If his Shifu was a Symbiotic Anomaly… the thought that his Shifu would disappear along with the Pollution Source made Wang Xiaodian forget even the gloomy, sinister environment he was in.

He fell silent. A sudden wave of melancholy and sorrow surged up.

In truth, if he counted carefully, he had been in the Inner World for four days and five nights at most. That time was genuinely very short. The time he’d spent with his Shifu was even shorter.

Perhaps it was because he was inside the company all day, and the inherent danger of the Inner World gave everything a unique intensity, but those four days felt like four months. Add to that the real help his Shifu had given him… In this situation, even four days were different.

His Shifu wasn’t human, but he had feelings.

Li Qing spoke again: “I didn’t say he definitely is.”

Wang Xiaodian paused. That was true. Someone with his Shifu’s incredible affinity for anomalies… how could he possibly be just a common NPC?

Please, don’t let it be.

By this time, the three had entered the Office Building, heading straight for the fourth floor. They went right for the elevator.

The elevator took a moment before slowly, eerily opening its doors. The light inside the elevator car was on, emitting a cold, gloomy glow. It being on wasn’t much better than it being off.

The elevator was empty of people, but a pair of old black cloth shoes sat right inside.

“AAAHHHH!!! Shoes! There are shoes!” Wang Xiaodian was petrified. Because he’d been pondering the possibility of his Shifu vanishing, he’d temporarily forgotten his surroundings. Seeing this thing so abruptly, completely unprepared, he immediately screamed.

In horror stories, what he feared most were items with this kind of dated, old-fashioned feel.

Old black cloth shoes! This couldn’t be explained away by any “normal” behavior of an anomaly.

Wang Xiaodian instantly recalled a taboo about encountering ghosts in elevators he’d read online.

If you find only a pair of shoes inside an elevator, don’t enter. Leave immediately. Because that ghost is standing right there, watching you. The moment you enter, you’ll never come out again.

After shouting, Wang Xiaodian clamped his mouth shut and retreated rapidly. He had to act as if he hadn’t seen anything.

Lu Neng and Li Qing were also scared. If this wasn’t a deliberate prank by someone, then it was an Anomalous Phenomenon they were seeing after being affected by Mental Contamination. Either way, the elevator was no longer an option.

The three unanimously decided to take the stairs. No one entered the elevator. The doors closed automatically. But the elevator, which should have stayed on the floor, began moving upwards instead.

Wang Xiaodian shuddered again. Just as he thought. There was an invisible ghost inside.

Invisible things were the most terrifying.

The thing inside the elevator might be gone, but the stairs were no easier to take.

Wang Xiaodian hadn’t walked a few steps before he saw a woman crawling out of the darkness. Wearing a bloodstained white dress, her ghastly pale face twisted as she cried, “Help me! Help me! Help my child!”

Wang Xiaodian was horrified. He clutched his stomach and stepped back. This woman could grab him. He glanced back towards the elevator.

Outside the closed elevator doors, a figure, thin as a bamboo pole, was crouched, peering through the crack of the doors. Sensing someone watching, the figure turned its head sideways and smiled at them.

A cold, slimy gaze. Eyeball about to drop out. Sharp Head.

Li Qing and Lu Neng saw it too. A wolf at the front door, a tiger at the back. The three stood rigid, momentarily unable to move.

“Help me! Help me!”

The woman crawled closer.

Sharp Head clung to the elevator, grinning sinisterly at them.

Li Qing understood. This was a chain reaction of the Mental Contamination they’d accumulated on the way, coupled with their destabilized state from the shock. Lu Neng also realized it. He forced out soothing words: “It’s fine. We haven’t reached that point yet. Even if they grab us, they can’t kill us.”

Yes, they couldn’t kill them. But being grabbed would frighten them, lower their Sanity Values, subject them to more severe contamination. When their perception blurred, killing themselves was a common occurrence.

Right now, they still didn’t know what had happened to Little Li. They didn’t have time to waste. Just as they steeled themselves to close their eyes and charge forward, the elevator doors opened. The instant they opened, Sharp Head disappeared. But the scene inside the elevator gave them another shock.

The elevator car, previously empty, was now somewhat crowded. Three women with disheveled hair hung from the top of the car. At the front stood Xu Xiye and Little Li. That pair of old black cloth shoes was still in the corner.

Xu Xiye stepped out first, followed by Little Li. When Little Li looked at them, his expression changed. It seemed he saw the woman behind them crying “Help me.”

Everyone, all the Anomalous Phenomena—they saw it all. It was a clear sign of how dangerous their mental state was right now.

Xu Xiye walked out with a long face. Ignoring everyone else, he headed straight for Wang Xiaodian. “Little Wang, what shoes? Show me. What shoes made you scream like that?”

“Sh-Shifu… it’s really you? And Little Li’s okay, that’s great!” Wang Xiaodian’s trembling voice rose. Only after watching the elevator doors close again did he lower his voice and say, “Shifu, didn’t you see? There was a pair of old cloth shoes in the elevator. Shh, there’s a ghost in there… Ugh, Shifu, my stomach’s gotten bigger…”

He was in a state of nervous confusion, talking about one thing then another. He looked seriously unwell. Xu Xiye sighed. His urge to scold him vanished. “That wasn’t a ghost. That was the company cleaning lady, Sister Liu. Sister Liu isn’t used to taking elevators, so she wants to ride them more after work. Sister Liu is a ‘bland person.'”

Wang Xiaodian: “…” Okay, noted. This can be explained by “bland person.” But isn’t this a little too bland?

The expressions on Lu Neng and Li Qing’s faces were also indescribable. When their Sanity Values were stable, they might not be scared. But right now, they couldn’t control it. Even with Xu Xiye’s explanation, it was very difficult to stop their minds from wandering toward terrifying places.

Lu Neng: “What do we do now? Go back or go find Sister Ning?”

Li Qing: “How much Sanity Value do you have left?”

Lu Neng: “72.”

Li Qing: “I have 90. If we go any higher, we’re dead. Our best choice is to go back.”

Wang Xiaodian didn’t know the specifics. Little Li hadn’t said a word since coming down and only stood behind Xu Xiye with his head lowered, not daring to look around.

The higher they went, the closer they’d be to the Pollution Source. Their state couldn’t withstand it.

Lu Neng: “Those things won’t disappear even if we go back to the dorm. Let’s wait outside and be ready to receive Sister Ning.”

Li Qing: “Fine.”

While they were discussing, Little Li kept silent, and Wang Xiaodian rubbed his stomach, staring at Xu Xiye, seeking comfort.

After saying his piece, Xu Xiye had stopped listening to them. He had memorized the scent of the Hanged Women, and now that scent was getting stronger and stronger. Of course, just the fact that the things Little Li and Little Wang were seeing had increased was proof enough. But it also meant the madman was becoming even crazier.

He looked up toward the upper floors. That was the source of the scent. He no longer needed to wait for Jiang Wuning’s news. He no longer needed what Outsiders saw to investigate. He could already determine where the patient was.

Xu Xiye started to leave. Wang Xiaodian immediately asked: “Shifu… where are you going?”

Little Li finally stirred, calling softly: “Brother Xu?”

“I’m going upstairs to take a look.” Xu Xiye replied without turning back.

He re-entered the elevator. The moment he was inside, he shed his human form. It was too exhausting.