The wife, who had been silent the entire time, the middle-aged man, and the drunk all turned to look where the boy was pointing.
At the far end of the pitch-black corridor, a faint, unusual sound emerged. A doorknob in one of the rooms was trembling softly, as though something locked inside was trying to get out.
Inside the eerily quiet residential building, a door lock was moving on its own, and this made everyone's hearts clench with tension.
"I just saw the leader head upstairs — the rooms can't possibly contain any passengers," the middle-aged man said, growing more frightened the more he thought about it. "I've been to Liwan before. How should I put it? Sometimes you see things here that are very difficult to explain with science."
"Such as?"
"You don't want to know those examples. All we can do is avoid them."
"And what if we can't?" The drunk leaned against the wall, his gaze fixed tightly on the depths of the corridor.
"If we can't avoid them, then we pretend we didn't see them, try our best to act normal, and tell ourselves in our heads that it's all just our imagination." The middle-aged man's face turned even paler. He recalled certain unpleasant memories, and cold sweat appeared on his forehead — he looked terrible. "The Liwan I visited back then is not the same as the Liwan of today. There wasn't that vast red fog. Something new seems to have happened here."
"Stop trying to scare me, damn it. Why do I feel like someone's breathing on my ear? I think I hear a woman's voice!" The drunk whipped his head around to look behind him. The self-proclaimed "murder maniac" known as Scissors was passing by the stairwell entrance. Each step he took produced two footstep sounds, and his expression was deeply unsettling — clearly a man's face, yet the longer you looked, the more the features seemed to belong to a woman.
The figure hadn't followed them into the corridor. Instead, he walked on ahead.
"Is that guy a man or a woman?" The strange sensation made the drunk tense up instantly. He tapped the middle-aged man's shoulder lightly. "Someone just walked past."
"Someone did?" When the middle-aged man turned to look, the stairwell outside was already shrouded in blood fog — nothing could be seen. "Forget about him. Let's worry about protecting ourselves first."
In the brief moment of distraction, the trembling sound of the doorknob at the far end of the corridor ceased, and everything returned to an eerie calm.
The blood fog thickened a notch, the surroundings grew more sinister, and the faint sound of wind blowing through hollow gaps could be heard, making one's skin crawl.
"Did the person inside give up?" The drunk gripped the stair railing, standing guard at the corridor entrance, ready to bolt outside at any moment.
"Not necessarily. That thing might have already escaped from the room." The middle-aged man bent down and pulled a phone from his pocket. The drunk noticed it was a model from several years ago.
He turned the screen brightness to maximum and held it up in front of them. In the pitch-black corridor, something seemed to have appeared — but from too great a distance, he couldn't make out what it was.
"Strange." The middle-aged man nudged the drunk with his elbow. "I feel like this corridor looks different from before. Come take a look."
A shrill whistle of wind passed by his ear, like a madman muttering to himself. The drunk took the middle-aged man's phone and studied it for a moment. "There really does seem to be something new there."
He involuntarily took a step forward, his brow furrowing.
A decrepit ceiling. Large patches of peeling wall paint. Row upon row of closed doors. And assorted junk piled up in the corners.
"Hm?" The drunk suddenly looked toward a specific spot.
"Did you find something?" The middle-aged man hurried over and looked in the same direction. There was nothing obviously abnormal there — no ghosts or corpses as he might have imagined.
"I'm not sure yet. Hold on." The driver handed the phone back to the middle-aged man and took out his own, switching on the built-in flashlight.
The beam of light warped in the blood fog, still not providing a clear view.