Chapter 143

It was still that same telescope; after Meng Ziqi tore off the seal, the field of vision was indeed much clearer.

But he still didn't find anything; he even saw the photos in the living room. After observing for a while longer, Su Mian had to give up, and when she got up, she accidentally pulled her hair.

"Ouch..."

She frowned; her hair had been tied by Si Shi, and it might have come loose while running in the corridor.

While sitting in the suitcase during the meal, Si Shi had been fiddling with her hair; Su Mian could already imagine how ugly her hair looked.

The moment she put down the telescope, a certain high school student who was writing furiously while studying suddenly stopped.

The lights on the fourth floor were dim and flickering.

Tap, tap, tap...

Someone pushed open the door, entered the room, and easily opened the doors to other rooms that Meng Ziqi had failed to open during the day.

She walked into the bedroom barefoot, but suddenly bumped into the corner of the table; her big toe split sharply from the other toes, and the pain caused Qiao Yinuo to wake up with a start.

"Holy crap, ahhh, it hurts so much—"

She screamed, her chest heaving from the pain; before she could catch her breath, she immediately froze.

Did she sleepwalk?

Where is she now???

Qiao Yinuo turned around and glanced outside, finding this decor exceptionally familiar, and her heart gradually sank into the abyss.

She was in... 4–1?

Realizing this, all the blood in her body flowed backward; currently in a strange bedroom, a sense of fear surged up.

She wanted to run, but her hand unconsciously stroked the bulging quilt on the bed; goosebumps rose all over her body, and she couldn't close her eyes.

It's hard... it wouldn't be a corpse, would it?

The more she thought about it, the more she felt she was about to faint; she tried hard to control her breathing, her heart beating like a drum, adrenaline soaring.

But after stroking it for several minutes like this, nothing happened, and Qiao Yinuo's mind was somewhat erratic.

She would pay attention to the doorway from time to time, and look down to study the pattern of the quilt from time to time.

Just as she was praying for it to end quickly, something slid suddenly.

In an instant, a human face popped up from under the quilt and slid onto the pillow.

The complexion was sallow, but the blush was eerily rosy, the cheekbones prominent; her body slowly slid out from under the quilt, her hands placed on her stomach.

Without looking at Qiao Yinuo, she stared straight at the ceiling, yet it was so lifelike that it seemed she would turn her head and smile at her at any moment.

Qiao Yinuo felt that in that second, her heart stopped beating.

"Ahhhhhhh—!!!"

"Someone died again! Someone died again!"

"Oh, what a sin, I shouldn't have been greedy for cheap rent and lived here; it's over, it's over, won't we also be..."

"Don't say such unlucky things, ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!"

"What a pitiful child... sigh, died before even taking the college entrance exam."

"Still studying physics, sigh, well, that's fine, maybe be a physicist in the next life."

The third floor was packed tight; the crowd was chattering endlessly, but immediately fell silent after the DM appeared. Someone had wanted to go into the room to join the fun, but ultimately stopped their steps.

From then on, they pushed each other away to leave; a certain middle-aged man wiped his sweat and secretly complained, "This landlord is really wicked..."

"If you don't want to live here, get out."

Su Mian didn't know when she had stood behind the man, her expression faint; the man was startled, apologized repeatedly after seeing who it was, and fled with his newspaper tucked under his arm.

"Hasn't Xiao Li come out yet?"

Wang Xiaonan seemed to be in low spirits, his eyes drooping as he asked casually.

Si Shi had changed into a smoke-gray sweater with bat sleeves, a long, slender chain hanging from his neck, the pendant being a small snake with a lively posture, cold light flowing.

Su Mian felt a bit puzzled.

It seemed there weren't these clothes in his suitcase; where did he get such flashy things?

"You can go upstairs and check on him."

Si Shi reminded with a smile, and the players turned and went upstairs.

The door to 4–2 was wide open; Xiao Li heard the sound and slowly woke up.

He threw off the quilt, put on his slippers, and walked to the door, recalling everything that happened yesterday, feeling very fortunate that he had entered this room.

Nothing happened; he let out a long breath, and a sense of joy and the feeling of surviving a disaster followed.

It seems he was overthinking it; this instance is also quite good at messing with people.

"Phew, it was just a matter of sleeping; what was I afraid of here."

He tidied his clothes and walked toward the door refreshed, only to find the players at the door looking strange.

His smile shrank, "What... what's wrong with you guys?"

Wang Xiaonan swallowed, "Xiao Li... didn't you realize that you, you slept on the floor all night?"

Xiao Li frowned in confusion, "What are you talking about? I slept on the bed; although the quilt was a bit thin and cold, how could I possibly sleep on the floor?"

Su Mian pointed into the room, "Turn around."

Wang Xiaonan turned around slowly; when his gaze met the scene inside the room, his heart stopped for a moment, and a chill crawled up his spine bit by bit.

All the furniture was on the ceiling; no, it should be said that where his feet were stepping was the ceiling, and the floor was in the sky.

Yet it was arranged neatly, exactly the same as a normal room, just completely inverted; it was too strange and too eerie.

So... he really slept on the floor last night...

Xiao Li kept his mouth open, feeling a belated sense of horror; Su Mian observed for a while before saying, "You should be glad you slept on the ceiling."

"Wh... why?"

Xiao Li couldn't even speak clearly.

Similar to some folk rumors, old people in the countryside often say that such houses should not be entered casually.

Once a room is inverted, it's not that the house has flipped, but that Yin and Yang have swapped positions.

Where the living reside, the ground is below and the sky is above; where the dead stay, the road is overhead, and what is stepped on is "void."

If one day you push open the door and find the floor has run to the ceiling, that means where you are standing is no longer a territory for the living.

Just like the Yin-Yang ladder often talked about in the 80s and 90s, the front is for the living, and the back is for the dead.

It is said that houses in the underworld are inherently inverted.

Ghosts don't walk on their feet, they rely on shadows, so in the places where they live, the floor must be overhead, and they walk by stepping on shadows.

The older generation says that such houses mostly have had people die unnatural deaths.

"It doesn't matter if the house is inverted, but if a person is flipped over, they won't be able to come back."

The old man who had just finished playing chess appeared out of nowhere, startling the players; he hunched his back and went upstairs leisurely after finishing.

A silence fell; even though it was daytime, this place was so dim and cold, and a chill surged into everyone's hearts.

"It's okay, you didn't flip over, which means you survived."

Wang Xiaonan offered comfort; Meng Ziqi was already familiar with entering the room opposite.

"The diary has been updated."

He took out the diary; that diary only had writing on the first page yesterday, but today it had become two pages.

The crowd looked over, and the new page of the diary read.