Chapter 57: Inner World Observation Report

"I'm fine," Gao Tian called toward the door. "I'm already awake."

Hearing his voice, the people outside dropped their polite hesitation. Since this was Jiang Yang's room, he simply opened the door and walked in.

To Gao Tian's surprise, the gray-robed monk Yusheng was among them, his hands clasped as he silently chanted scriptures.

Despite his weakened state, Xia Ta kept things strictly business.

"You still used the Black Card in the final moments of the mission," she said.

"Yes," Gao Tian replied.

Xia Ta continued, "Well... even though you've completed your third Green Text Mission, you still can't join the Fourth Floor Team.

"Going upstairs without a Black Card is too dangerous.

"It's for your own good. I hope you understand."

Gao Tian had anticipated this and accepted it calmly.

So many people had died during this mission. He gave the apartment administrators a detailed account of everything that had happened on the Bus and what he had witnessed in the Inner World.

First was the bizarre Multi-Headed Ghost.

The administrators couldn't even imagine the strength of that ghost. Gao Tian had only barely survived in the Inner World because the rules of the Bus suppressed it.

The others exchanged blank looks; they had absolutely no intelligence on the Multi-Headed Ghost's origins.

Unexpectedly, Yusheng—the most mysterious of them all—spoke up.

"Under normal circumstances, a ghost only has one Killing Rule.

"But that ghost is different. Every head on its body is a new ghost. It is essentially a single entity formed from countless ghosts, which means its Killing Rules are beyond numbering.

"One of those rules is that if its name is mentioned anywhere, it will immediately appear and kill whoever called it.

"That creature's true name is the Artist."

Artist. That was the Multi-Headed Ghost's true name.

They were currently in the Living Apartment, so speaking the Artist's name directly wouldn't trigger its Killing Rule.

Even so, after Yusheng delivered the name with a blank expression, Zhao Zhenjia and the others still felt an inexplicable chill. They subconsciously glanced at the open doorway, as if a towering, deformed silhouette might slowly materialize at any moment.

The Artist's Killing Rules were densely packed. Based on what he knew, Gao Tian could deduce three of them:

1. It could sense human hostility.

While on the Bus, Gao Tian had briefly considered using the Shattered Face Ghost. He suppressed the thought in less than a second, but the Artist clearly reacted to it and subsequently targeted him.

That was hard to write off as a coincidence.

2. It could suppress a ghost hunter's Supernatural Items and the Killing Rules of other ghosts.

The Artist had only glanced at him, but Gao Tian instantly felt completely hollowed out, reduced to an ordinary person for a period of time. All his abilities and items were rendered entirely useless.

This rule was simply absurd. He didn't know if there was a limit to how many suppressions the Artist could inflict.

If there wasn't, then any first encounter was a guaranteed death sentence.

Any ghost hunter crossing paths with the Artist for the first time was bound to be killed.

It was highly likely that Xu Yuan from the Sapphire Mall, despite being fully decked out in god-tier Supernatural Items, had been temporarily reduced to an ordinary person the moment he encountered the Artist, leaving him powerless to stop it from casually slaughtering him.

3. Calling the Artist's name would cause it to instantly rush over and kill the caller.

...

Aside from that, the Artist could also detach its own heads to form new, smaller ghosts.

However, this ability didn't pose much of a threat; it was seemingly only used to cast votes on the Bus.

Those heads had been obliterated by a terrifying slash from Gao Tian after he recovered.

When it came to the Ghost Mother, the apartment administrators didn't know many details. The Blood-Red Nursery was also an incredibly dangerous Supernatural Zone. Xia Ta had passed by it once while riding the Bus, but she hadn't encountered the Ghost Mother and her thirty-plus Ghost Infants.

Finally, there were those "children" at the Pagoda Primary School—

Gao Tian's gaze fell on Jiang Yang's face.

"After getting close to the Pagoda Primary School, I put down the ring like you asked. Then, on my way back, I heard a faint female voice whispering in my ear.

"That voice should have been your fiancée. She warned me to use the Black Card immediately and to abandon any fantasies of taking the Bus back, or else I definitely wouldn't make it.

"At first, I thought it was a Fierce Ghost's trap, so I ignored her. But looking back in hindsight, she was right.

"Su Jiu didn't have a Black Card, so she died. I was a few seconds too slow in using mine, and I almost died on the way back as well. You all saw it in the lobby."

Xia Ta recalled, "When Jiang Yang did his fifth mission, the gate of the Pagoda Primary School was safe.

"They didn't suffer attacks from those filthy things until they had ventured over a hundred meters into the school and entered the first teaching building.

"To think that the threat of the Pagoda Primary School has expanded to this extent. This is indeed something we administrators didn't know."

Jiang Yang looked at Gao Tian and spoke slowly:

"Are you sure you heard that voice?

"That it wasn't just a hallucination brought on by extreme tension?"

If that voice really belonged to the one trapped in the Pagoda Primary School all those years ago...

Did that mean there was a chance, a one-in-ten-thousand possibility, that Jiang Yang's fiancée still retained her consciousness?

That she could even use human logic to think from a resident's perspective?

Zhao Zhenjia pressed his hands onto Jiang Yang's shoulders, gesturing for him to calm down.

Xia Ta's gem-like eyes turned to Gao Tian.

"Stay here and focus on recovering. The rest of us are staying right next door; we set up a temporary room.

"If anything happens, knock on the wall or make some noise, and we'll be over to back you up within five seconds."

Watching the other administrators prepare to leave, Gao Tian couldn't help but ask:

"What happened in the Living Apartment while I was gone? Why can't I stay in Room 313 anymore?"

Hearing this question, Zhao Zhenjia sighed. He seemed to want to dodge the subject, but Xia Ta spoke up.

"Just tell him.

"If we end up dying on the Fourth Floor, at least someone needs to know what's happening on the Third Floor. Maybe... the next batch of residents will be able to find a way to survive."

It truly was one disaster after another.

The Living Apartment itself was now having problems. Gao Tian didn't know how ordinary residents were supposed to survive.

Since Xia Ta had given the go-ahead, Zhao Zhenjia dropped his reservations and gave Gao Tian a full account of what he had discovered the previous night.

"Late at night the day you left for the Green Text Mission, around one in the morning, I was sleeping in my room. Suddenly, I heard a knocking sound coming from next door—your room. It was accompanied by muffled, heavy breathing that sounded incredibly painful, like someone calling for help.

"I jumped out of bed, thinking you'd run into some kind of trouble. I threw on a coat, rushed out into the hallway, and was about to push your door open.

"But when the biting wind in the corridor hit me, I suddenly sobered up. Wait, you were off doing your third fucking mission—you weren't even staying in the apartment. How could your room be making any noise? Just what the hell was breathing next door?"

Speaking of which, the hulking man was actually quite responsible. He had promised to keep an eye on Gao Tian's room, and he had loyally patrolled it even while Gao Tian was away.

Zhao Zhenjia continued, "I have a Master Key. I slotted it straight in, and with a click, I gently pushed the door open.

"The room was pitch black and empty. The first thing I saw when I opened the door was the living room, and besides the outlines of some furniture, there wasn't a single silhouette. The bedroom door was left slightly ajar, and those strange knocking and breathing sounds were coming from inside.

"As I moved deeper inside, those muffled sounds from your bedroom gradually shifted into the soft, suppressed sobbing of a little girl.

"Why would a little girl run into your room when the front door was locked? The idea that some child from the second floor had run up to the Third Floor seemed highly unlikely. The only explanation was that the ghosts on the Fourth Floor had completely broken through their restrictions and could freely enter and exit your room.

"She came over to kill you.

"You just happened to be out on a mission, so you dodged a bullet."