Chapter 28: Ghost Upstairs

There was that strange sound again—a marble rolling back and forth across the ceiling of the Third Floor and the floorboards of the fourth. It seemed a family of three lived directly above Gao Tian. The parents were always out at work, leaving only a preschool-aged girl at home whose favorite pastime was rolling a marble back and forth across the floor.

How nice. If only Gao Tian didn't know that the things upstairs were ghosts.

Although he had grown completely accustomed to the noises made by the "residents" on the fourth floor, they still gave him the creeps every time he heard them.

Just as Gao Tian closed his eyes and prepared to doze off again, he heard a low, somewhat muffled girl's voice whispering from above:

"I'm sorry, big brother. My marble accidentally rolled into your room. Can you help me pick it up?

"It might just be a small effort for you, but it's really important to me. If my mom comes home and finds a marble missing, she'll really beat me to death.

"Sob... I'm begging you..."

It took Gao Tian a long time to realize that the "little girl" upstairs was talking to him.

This was a highly unusual omen. It was the first time since he had moved into the Living Apartment that the "neighbors" upstairs had tried to communicate with him.

What should he do? He could reply to this little girl, engage in some level of communication, and try to learn more about the residents on the fourth floor.

Or he could just ignore her entirely.

Gao Tian always kept one thing in mind: as long as he stayed on the Third Floor of the Living Apartment and didn't succumb to any temptation to head up to the fourth floor, he would be absolutely safe.

But he couldn't rule out the possibility that the little girl upstairs had some special ability. If he so much as spoke to her, there was a chance he might end up walking up to the fourth floor.

Before he understood her abilities, Gao Tian decided to play it safe and not say a word.

Deep down, he still hoped the little girl upstairs would keep talking. He wanted to know the origins of these fourth-floor residents and what kind of sinister plans they were plotting.

The crying from upstairs lasted for a while before the little girl's voice simply vanished, as if she had never been there at all.

Gao Tian waited for a moment, but the girl beyond the ceiling never spoke again. She had probably really left.

Lying in bed, he breathed a sigh of relief, unsure whether he felt glad or disappointed.

Thump, thump.

Right at that moment—

A terrifying event occurred, one that made Gao Tian's hair stand on end and almost froze the blood in his veins.

The sound of a marble rolling across the floor rang out right beside his ear.

If the sound of the marble had come from upstairs, Gao Tian absolutely wouldn't have panicked like this. He had known all along that the floor above was inhabited by ghosts. He had chosen the room on the Third Floor himself, fully aware that living here meant he would definitely hear noises from the fourth floor. From the very beginning, he had intended to monitor the movements up there.

But why was the sound of this marble coming from the floorboards of the Third Floor? Why was it coming from his own room?

That was impossible. The rules of the Living Apartment were absolute. The dead ghosts on the fourth floor couldn't possibly affect the Third Floor. The residents of the Third Floor were absolutely safe.

Gao Tian was very certain that there couldn't have been a marble in his room originally. After the little girl's voice appeared on the fourth floor, the marble that should have been constantly rolling upstairs had transferred down to the Third Floor.

This meant the Third Floor was no longer absolutely safe. The ghosts upstairs had transported two marbles down.

If this were true—if none of this was a hallucination and the ghosts on the fourth floor could actually affect the people on the Third Floor—then the last safe haven for the residents of the Living Apartment had been breached. The psychological blow this would deal to all the residents, including Apartment administrators like Xia Ta and Jiang Yang, would be unimaginable.

Gao Tian slowly sat up and looked from his bed toward the direction of the rolling marbles.

From beneath the TV cabinet, two children's glass marbles really did roll out, slowly moving toward Gao Tian.

One pink, one blue. The sound of them rolling along the floorboards was originally extremely, extremely faint, but to Gao Tian's ears in this moment, it sounded like a landslide or a tsunami.

He wasn't sure to what extent the ghosts on the fourth floor could influence the Third Floor. Grabbing the Ghost Transformation Spear from under the head of the bed for self-defense, he kept his peripheral vision fixed on the marbles on the floor. With his other hand, he took out his mobile phone and called Xia Ta, who was currently outside the Apartment.

The mobile phone rang unanswered for a moment before the call connected, and a cold female voice sounded:

"Student Gao Tian, what's wrong?"

She figured that with Gao Tian currently staying inside the Living Apartment, nothing too serious could happen.

Gao Tian:

"Xia Ta, has a situation like this ever happened before, where a fourth-floor resident successfully dropped a marble, or a similar little trinket, down to the Third Floor?"

Xia Ta:

"How is that possible?

"If the residents on the fourth floor could physically pass things down to the Third Floor, they could just drop any Supernatural Item down and the Third Floor residents would have died off long ago. How could the Living Apartment still be called a safe zone?"

Xia Ta was no fool. Combining this with the question Gao Tian had just asked, she shot back a moment later:

"Are you in your room on the Third Floor right now?"

Gao Tian smiled bitterly:

"Yes."

Xia Ta:

"What was passed down from upstairs? How did they pass it?"

Gao Tian looked at the marbles that were still spinning around his bedroom:

"At first, I just heard the sound of marbles on the floorboards of the fourth floor.

"Today, I suddenly heard a little girl upstairs asking if I could help her pick up her marble. She said her mom would beat her to death if she was missing one, things like that.

"And then two marbles inexplicably appeared in my room. They're still spinning on the floor right now."

Over the mobile phone, Xia Ta's voice suddenly turned serious. Anything concerning the safety of the Living Apartment was a matter of utmost importance.

If the first three floors of the Living Apartment were invaded by ghosts, then they didn't know if there was a single safe place left in this world.

Xia Ta:

"When the little girl upstairs was talking to you, did you reply to her?"

Gao Tian:

"Not at all."

Xia Ta:

"Could there have already been marbles in your room to begin with?"

Gao Tian:

"I didn't pack any marbles in my luggage. And in the week since I moved into the Living Apartment, I've never found any marbles in the wardrobe or anywhere else. These things don't belong to me."

Xia Ta made a final confirmation:

"Student Gao Tian, are you absolutely sure this is reality, and not a hallucination brought on by too much mental stress?"

This kind of situation had happened before to new residents of the Living Apartment.

Some residents, experiencing supernatural events for the first time in their lives, suffered mental breakdowns after surviving two Green Text Missions. Even after returning to the Apartment, they would constantly scream that there were ghosts in their rooms. In the end, they were diagnosed with schizophrenia and were no longer capable of carrying out missions normally.

Gao Tian gave a bitter smile:

"I don't think so.

"My mental state is perfectly fine right now. I'm very sure that everything I'm seeing is not a hallucination."

If the ghosts on the fourth floor really could transport a marble down to the Third Floor through some channel, then this news would be tantamount to the end of the world for the people in the Apartment.

Could it really be like the former Apartment administrator said—that the ghosts on the upper floors of the Apartment were truly beginning to invade downward, floor by floor?

With something this major happening, no matter where Xia Ta was outside right now, she had to rush back.

Xia Ta:

"Listen to me, Student Gao Tian.

"Stay in your room for now. No matter what happens, do not go out.

"If the ghosts upstairs could directly attack you, they would have done it already. Since she only teleported a marble down, she might just be trying to force you out of your room.

"I'm grabbing a taxi back to the Apartment right now. I'll be there in about fifteen minutes. Hold on a little longer."

Gao Tian:

"That makes a lot of sense. Got it."

Xia Ta:

"Are there any other residents present in the rooms on the Third Floor?"

Gao Tian only knew that Jiang Yang had been gone for a while.

When that guy didn't have a mission, he was either at a bar or on the basketball court. In his own words, Apartment residents could die at any moment anyway, so he might as well enjoy the wine while he had it.

As for the other resident, the gray-robed monk Yusheng, his movements were usually the most secretive. The door to his room was always tightly shut, without the slightest sound coming from within.

Gao Tian:

"I'm not completely sure. But when I came up the hallway, I didn't hear any movement from the other rooms."

There were very few residents on the Third Floor to begin with, and anyone who would choose to live here was more or less different from ordinary people.

On the other end, Xia Ta directly hung up the mobile phone. It seemed she was also burning with anxiety and was taking the fastest route back to the Apartment.

Gao Tian had just put the phone down. With Xia Ta's reassuring voice gone from the dead-silent room, the only sound left was the rolling of the marbles, making the atmosphere feel even more eerie.

For the short term, all the two marbles did was roll randomly across the floorboards without posing any direct threat to Gao Tian.

But as time dragged on minute by minute, the little girl's voice from the ceiling rang out once again:

"Big brother, weren't you very interested in me? Didn't you ask about my situation on your very first day at the Living Apartment, wanting to find me?

"Why are you so scared now that I'm actually here?

"My family, too, originally thought this was a cheap Apartment. We thought we had finally found a place to settle down in the big city. Who would have thought that moving in would just be the beginning of a nightmare?

"The Apartment administrators forced us to do all sorts of tasks. But the truth is, even without the administrators, the Apartment itself would directly obliterate any resident who failed to do a mission within a set amount of time.

"My parents were the most ordinary of ordinary people; they quickly died during their first and second missions. My older brother was a little better at playing the game and finished two missions. He originally could have survived his third mission as well, but he was betrayed by other participants. He was chased all the way to the Apartment entrance by a Fierce Ghost, and in the end, he had the skin peeled from his face while he was still alive, right in front of my eyes.

"My whole family died, leaving only me behind. I couldn't complete a single Green Text Mission; I was only a burden to the others. What's more, the ghost that peeled off my brother's face was still wandering outside the Apartment doors. It really wanted to break into the Apartment, drag me out, and peel my face off too."

At some unknown point, the little girl's crying had morphed into laughter.

"Inside the Apartment, everyone was very cold. No one cared about me.

"Fortunately, there were still many uncles and aunts on the fourth floor who cared about me very much. Other than my dead family, they were the only people in this world who were good to me."