Chapter 29: Apartment Meeting

Hearing this, Gao Tian finally understood. The girl upstairs was the same little girl from the photograph that had fluttered down after the Shattered Face Ghost turned to ash.

They had originally been a family of three seeking opportunities in the big city. Lured in by the cheap rent, they moved into the Living Apartment, only to meet a tragic end.

The parents had died. The older brother was killed during his third Green Text Mission; his face was peeled off, and he became a new entity: the Shattered Face Ghost. The Fierce Ghosts on the Fourth Floor then took advantage of the surviving younger sister in her grief. She voluntarily walked upstairs and had likely become a resident of the Fourth Floor herself.

Her brother's love for his family ran so deep that even after becoming a ghost, he had kept that photograph hidden within his body. When he finally turned to ash, Gao Tian had seen the photo and had been hypnotized into entering the Living Apartment.

Through the ceiling, the little girl's voice was drawing to a close.

"There are so many uncles and aunts on the Fourth Floor. The ghosts outside wouldn't dare come up here.

"Actually, in an era where Fierce Ghosts run rampant, the Fourth Floor is the safest, warmest place to be. That's why I abandoned the Second and Third Floors and came up here willingly.

"You'll understand soon enough...

"Soon, you'll walk up to the Fourth Floor on your own too, and become just like me..."

...

In the end, her voice faded into a faint whisper until it vanished completely.

The sound of marbles rolling across the floorboards vanished along with it.

Just as Gao Tian thought the child ghost from the Fourth Floor had retreated, frantic knocking echoed from his front door.

Logically, it had to be Xia Ta hurrying back from outside. But Gao Tian didn't rush to open it.

The timing was wrong.

On the mobile phone, Xia Ta had promised to return within fifteen minutes. Yet less than five minutes after Gao Tian hung up, the knocking started. Could she really have made it back to the Apartment that quickly?

What was even stranger...

As an adult woman, Xia Ta was around 1.6 meters tall. Factoring in the length of her arms, if she were the one knocking, the sound should be coming from the upper half of the door.

However, judging by the sound and the vibrations shivering through the frame, the knocking was coming from the lower half.

The person knocking was a child around 1.2 meters tall!

It was entirely possible that the person standing outside wasn't Xia Ta at all. It was the child from the Fourth Floor, and she had come straight down to knock on his door!

If the residents of the Fourth Floor could come downstairs, then there wasn't a single safe place left in the entire Living Apartment.

At that exact moment, the marbles on the floor that had previously stopped rolling clattered back to life.

For the first time, Gao Tian found himself caught in a true dilemma.

His Shattered Face Ghost and Memory Ghost both required direct contact with the target to activate. Yet, the Fierce Ghost hadn't even shown itself. If he carelessly triggered its Killing Rule right now, he wouldn't be able to do a thing before it killed him.

His only hope was to stall until Xia Ta returned. If even she couldn't resolve this incident, the Living Apartment might truly face a total wipeout.

At that critical juncture, a deafening crash erupted from the door. A tan leather boot smashed straight through the wood, kicking a massive hole in it. The leg pulled back, then struck again, and again. Under the continuous barrage of monstrous force, the splintered door finally gave way, collapsing to the floor with a heavy thud.

Job done.

The figure outside dusted off her hands. Xia Ta stepped over the wreckage and met Gao Tian's gaze.

"I was out there knocking for ages. Why didn't you answer?" she asked.

"I thought something had happened to you in there."

Gao Tian froze.

"How long were you knocking? When you got here, did you see a child standing outside my door?"

Xia Ta answered,

"I didn't see any child. The entire Third Floor is dead silent. There's no one out in the hallway.

"Even the stairwell leading up to the Fourth Floor is empty. There are no signs of anyone coming down."

This wasn't right.

This wasn't right.

Gao Tian pressed further, "When you were knocking just now... were you hitting the top half of the door, or the bottom half?"

Xia Ta mimed a knocking motion in the air.

"The top half, obviously.

"I'm not a child. Why would I bend down just to knock on the bottom of the door?"

Gao Tian zeroed in on this glaring contradiction.

The knocking he had just heard hadn't been hers.

Yet, at that exact same time, Xia Ta really had been knocking on his door.

Even though they had been standing on opposite sides of the exact same door, for a brief moment, it was as if they had existed in two separate, parallel worlds.

Regardless, the moment Xia Ta stepped into the room, the voices upstairs, the knocking outside, and the rolling of marbles on the floorboards all vanished without a trace. The deathly, freezing chill lingering in the room seemed to warm up by a few degrees.

Xia Ta first glanced up at the ceiling. Once she confirmed that the Fourth Floor was completely silent for the time being, she lowered her head and quickly spotted the two marbles in the bedroom, resting motionless on the floor once again.

Pinching one of the marbles between two fingers, she held it up to the sunlight to inspect it.

It looked like an ordinary child's toy—the kind you could buy a handful of online for ten bucks. For now, she couldn't spot anything special about it.

Xia Ta looked at him to confirm.

"Are you absolutely sure these marbles rolled down from upstairs, and weren't just sitting in your room to begin with?"

Her tone carried a hint of doubt, as if she suspected Gao Tian might have been hallucinating. This rubbed him the wrong way.

"I'm positive.

"I'm not so paralyzed by fear that I'm seeing things. If I were really that terrified of the ghosts on the Fourth Floor, I wouldn't have volunteered to move onto the Third Floor just to monitor what was happening up there.

"The Fourth Floor is definitely starting to bleed into the Third Floor. It might just be a minor disturbance right now, but who's to say it isn't a sign they're breaking through the Apartment's restrictions? If we just ignore it, they might drop something much worse than two marbles next time."

Xia Ta nodded, signaling that she fully believed him.

"Don't get so worked up, student Gao Tian.

"I actually do believe you. Given your psychological resilience, a minor scare like this wouldn't cause you to crack.

"It's just that this is a massive deal. Once we confirm that the ghosts on the Fourth Floor can reach the Third Floor, we'll have to call an emergency meeting for all the Third Floor residents to figure out how to handle the fallout.

"A portion of the few remaining residents on the Third Floor might have to relocate down to the Second Floor. Our entire understanding of the rules governing the Living Apartment will have to change.

"After all, if even the Living Apartment is no longer safe, the last pillar of hope for many of the residents will collapse completely. That would be the most terrifying outcome for all of us."

Gao Tian understood where Xia Ta was coming from, so he dropped the issue.

"When should we hold the Third Floor meeting?"

Xia Ta checked the time on her mobile phone.

"Jiang Yang and Yusheng are both out right now. The other Third Floor residents are probably still at work.

"Let's aim for around 7:00 PM. The permanent residents of the Third Floor will all be back in the Living Apartment by then, and a few of the veteran Second Floor residents with a high number of completed Green Text Missions will come up to join us.

"After all, if the supernatural entities on the Fourth Floor are bleeding downward, it's going to affect the entire Living Apartment."

...

...

At 7:15 PM, everyone participating in the meeting gathered in Xia Ta's room, right by the Third Floor stairwell.

Xia Ta had lived in that spot for three years without experiencing anything overly bizarre. Even when faint, incomprehensible murmurs or calls drifted down from the Fourth Floor, they were mostly harmless whispers that had no real impact on the residents below.

This time, apart from Gao Tian and the three Apartment administrators, seven residents from the Third Floor and three from the Second Floor attended the meeting.

To Gao Tian's surprise, Boss Jin—who normally kept his distance from the Living Apartment's inner workings—had actually taken time out of his busy schedule to show up. Gao Tian couldn't help but wonder if it was Boss Jin's way of thanking him for his performance during the second Green Text Mission.

Among the Third Floor residents, the one who left the deepest impression on Gao Tian was a towering giant of a man who stood two meters tall. His name was Zhao Zhenjia. He was in his fifties, with white speckling his stubbled jaw. The man took up the space of three normal people, and rumor had it he was a former professional athlete. The girth of his arm alone was thicker than Xia Ta's thigh.

Many of the residents were already acquainted. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the meeting commenced.

Everyone had already been briefed on what had happened in Gao Tian's room before they arrived. Zhao Zhenjia was the first to speak up, voicing his skepticism about Gao Tian's story.

"It's not that I don't believe you, kid.

"But plenty of people have lost their minds and started hallucinating after moving into this Apartment. You wouldn't be the first, and you certainly wouldn't be the last.

"I'm more inclined to believe the problem is with your own head, not the Apartment. If there was any issue with the floors below the fourth, us veterans would've all been dead a long time ago. The ghosts would have had countless opportunities to come downstairs and slaughter everyone door to door. There's no way they would have let us live this long."

Xia Ta immediately came to Gao Tian's defense.

"I was the first to arrive at Room 212. Gao Tian was extremely tense, but his mental state was completely normal. There were no signs of hysteria or madness.

"Furthermore, I found two marbles of unknown origin in his bedroom. It's highly unlikely any adult brought them in, and Gao Tian had previously informed me about a little girl constantly playing with marbles on the Fourth Floor directly above him. The details align perfectly.

"For the first time, a ghost on the Fourth Floor successfully transferred a physical object downstairs. Even if it was just two small marbles."

She pulled the marbles she had found in Gao Tian's room from her pocket and placed them where everyone could see them, allowing the group to examine the evidence.

The two marbles were passed around the room, with every resident inspecting them closely before finally handing them back to Xia Ta.

Zhao Zhenjia, the last to examine them, spoke coldly.

"This still doesn't prove anything.

"They're just two perfectly ordinary marbles. Other than Mr. Gao, no one here can actually prove they fell from the Fourth Floor.

"Unless you can provide more concrete evidence, you're not going to convince Old Zhao."

Just then, Yusheng, the unassuming monk sitting quietly in the corner, performed a Buddhist salutation and finally spoke up.

"Amitabha.

"If it is evidence you seek, this humble monk also possesses a piece. I wonder if I may share it with the room?"