"Xiao Lin?!"
After entering the corridor, Wang Xiaoming's face turned deathly pale. He looked around, seemingly still unable to believe that he had actually run into the staff residential building.
"It's too dangerous for you to stand guard by yourself. Looking for the keys was my idea and had nothing to do with you — I can't let you bear the danger alone." Chen Ge put on the appearance of someone who had Wang Xiaoming's best interests at heart, gripping his arm tightly and refusing to let go no matter how the other man tried to shake him off.
"I…"
"Keep it down. That door up ahead doesn't seem to be shut properly." Chen Ge pressed his body against the wall. When he reached the middle of the long corridor, he noticed that a room's door was ajar, with the lights still on inside. A faint white glow was barely visible through the gap.
Wang Xiaoming was also afraid that the noise they were making would attract the attention of whoever was inside. He stopped resisting and let Chen Ge pull him to a stop beside the door.
"What are you doing?" Wang Xiaoming watched Chen Ge crouch by the door and peek inside, and he felt like his scalp was about to split open. The guy in front of him seemed to have absolutely no concept of fear, dragging him along to test the boundaries of danger over and over again.
"Shh. The lights are on in there — I think I can even see a shadow cast on the wall. There's someone inside." Chen Ge beckoned to Wang Xiaoming, and the two crept past the doorway on tiptoe.
Dragged along by Chen Ge, Wang Xiaoming had stopped fighting back entirely, as though he had resigned himself to his fate.
The maintenance room was at the very end of the corridor. The two searched for a long time before they finally found it.
"The door is locked?"
Chen Ge rattled the handle, but the door wouldn't budge.
"Take it easy! Don't pull so hard!" Wang Xiaoming hunched his shoulders, his expression taut with tension.
"The door is locked. Do you know who has the key?" Bad news kept piling on, and Chen Ge was already looking for a way to compensate.
"It should be on the maintenance worker, but the maintenance workers have already gone off shift!" Wang Xiaoming tugged lightly at Chen Ge's sleeve. "Why don't we just leave? Come on, let's go to the cafeteria — I'll treat you to something good. I guarantee you'll want to go back for seconds."
"Stop talking. Let me think for a moment." Chen Ge's eyes swept across the corridor and the rows of rooms. "When people hear an unusual sound, their brains need about one to two seconds to process it before they react. Then it takes a few more seconds for them to reach the corridor from wherever they are. Which means if I break down the door, I need to accomplish three steps within half a minute: break through, collect the tools, and get out. There's not nearly enough time."
"Xiao Lin? What did you just say? Break down the door?"
"This building has only one entrance and exit, one staircase — and the staircase happens to be right at the exit. Even if I manage to find the tools, there's nowhere to hide." Chen Ge rationally abandoned the idea of breaking down the door. "The maintenance room is on the first floor, and I already know its location. Rather than forcing the door, it would be safer to go in through the window."
With nothing to defend himself with, Chen Ge felt truly uneasy. Besides, he actually had another idea.
The nails in Room 413 had pinned the shadow figures to the wall. Chen Ge planned to strike a deal with them — he would pull out every nail and free them, and in return, they would have to agree to one thing.
In an ideal scenario, this would benefit both sides. But in practice, it would be extremely difficult. Every single step would need to be executed with utmost caution, and in the end he would still have to guard against the shadow figures biting the hand that freed them.
Chen Ge didn't actually want to resort to this, but he simply didn't have many options left. This door world had given him no chance of survival, and he was desperately scrambling to create one for himself.
A sudden, sharp pain lanced through his lower abdomen, as if he had been stung by a bee.
Chen Ge lifted his shirt. A short nail tumbled to the ground.
"This time the wound went even deeper — but why isn't it bleeding?" Any normal person stabbed by a nail like that would bleed when they squeezed the wound, but no matter what Chen Ge tried, the blood simply wouldn't come.