Chapter 384: Outside the Door

After snatching Zhang Bei's blade and beating him until he couldn't fight back, Number One Wang Shi and I threw him into the Electric Chair and strapped the helmet onto his head.

"Goodbye. Be a good ghost when you get to hell."

"I won't let you get away with this! Even as a ghost, I'll drag you down to hell with me!" Zhang Bei's savage face warped completely the instant the current surged through him. His agonizing screams echoed through the room.

Zhang Bei's corpse turned stiff and charred. After he died, the projection on the wall began to change. Only the surviving five numbers remained, along with a few lines of text that must have been prepared in advance.

"Congratulations on your new lease on life. I only fed you ordinary candies. There was no slow-acting neurotoxin."

"The only exit is behind the cabinet. Think carefully before going in. They have already heard your confessions, and whether you receive forgiveness is entirely up to them."

"The game is over. Life or death rests entirely in your hands."

These lines of text were glaring. For a nonexistent poison, twelve people had schemed against each other until only five remained.

"Damn organizer!" Jin Zhouzhe cursed under his breath.

"Don't let him hear you. That person is right here among us." I smiled faintly. "The text appeared on the projection just seconds after Number Six died. Did anyone make a move just now?"

"None of that really matters anymore." Du Yu stood on the other side of the cabinet. He stared at the iron door, a trace of anticipation hidden in his eyes. "Finding out whether ghosts actually exist in this world was my whole reason for coming here. If I can see one with my own eyes, I'll die without regrets."

"If there really are ghosts, you probably won't even be able to die if you want to. Putting aside the innocent victims you've killed, Number Four and Number Six, who just died in the hall, wouldn't let us off." Number One Wang Shi walked alongside Du Yu. The two of them had already teamed up.

I shot them a puzzled glance, wondering what conditions Wang Shi had offered to get Du Yu to agree to join forces with him.

There were two reasons why I had preemptively crippled Number Six Zhang Bei. First, I didn't like him. Second, Du Yu had decided to protect Wang Shi, and I trusted his judgment.

"To think we still have to walk out that door and face those monsters." Everyone had their own theories about what lurked outside. Jin Zhouzhe sighed. "We were all played by the organizer. That whole routine with the confessions and slaughtering each other was just a farce."

"I don't see it that way. Perhaps this really is a chance at atonement from the organizer?" Du Yu glanced at his watch and helped Wang Shi push the cabinet aside.

The iron door was already loose. It didn't need a key; a hard pull was enough to open it.

Fine splatters of blood speckled the iron door, and the floor beneath our feet was sticky. The blood was fresh, but a quick scan of the area revealed no sign of a corpse.

"It stinks." A wave of damp air mixed with a strong, foul odor hit our faces. Du Yu walked at the very front. Covering his mouth and nose, he began to survey the world outside.

It looked like an abandoned bomb shelter. River water had flooded in, submerging most of the area. Only this hall had escaped the deluge because it sat at the highest point.

There were no lights in the passageway. One or two bubbles occasionally surfaced from the pitch-black water, making it look incredibly eerie.

I picked up a stone and tossed it into the water, listening as it sank. "The water's pretty deep. Probably over a meter."

"A bomb shelter, the river flooding backward... we must be right by a major river." Number Eleven stared at the water in silence for a long time before finally speaking.

"The layout inside a bomb shelter is complex, so don't wander off," I warned. Channeling the Judging Eye, I was hardly affected by the darkness. "Follow my lead."

By all rights, it should have been morning by now, but the bomb shelter was so winding and convoluted that sunlight could hardly reach inside.

I jumped in first. A bone-piercing chill seized my body almost instantly. "River water shouldn't be this cold, even in the dead of winter."

The others followed suit, jumping into the water one by one. Jin Zhouzhe brought up the rear. "Number Nine was dragged out by over a dozen pairs of women's hands. That means there were at least a dozen 'people' gathered out here at the time. Yet we can't see a single one now. They're probably hiding in some corner of the bomb shelter. I suggest we hold our ground and wait until noon when the sun is highest, then make a run for it all at once."

"In this pitch-black bomb shelter, there's no difference between noon and early morning. Sunlight can't shine in here anyway." I didn't stop, continuing forward with careful, cautious movements. "The hall is in the deepest part of the shelter, and the organizer is right here among the five of us. If we stay inside the room the whole time, something else might happen."

After I waded out a few meters, I suddenly tripped over something and nearly fell.

"Careful."

A hand supported my arm. I turned my head and saw it was Number Eleven. His hands were covered in thick calluses; the skin was so tough it barely felt human. "Thanks."

After we rounded a corner, we found a lone wooden boat bobbing on the water beside a broken wall.

"There are iron nails driven into the wall to secure the mooring line. Our clothes were dry when we first arrived, so we must have been brought in on this boat." I remained where I stood. Seeing the boat, Jin Zhouzhe and Du Yu moved to the left and right. The three of us formed a triangle, boxing Number Eleven in the middle.

"Care to explain, Number Eleven?" I slowly turned my head. My legs were going numb from the freezing river water. It felt as if this water flowed straight out of the underworld, chilling me to the bone.

"Explain what? You can't just peg me as the organizer because you found a boat. Besides, what year is it? Who even rows wooden boats anymore? Whenever I go out on the river to fish out corpses, I use a motorboat." Number Eleven's expression shifted, and he shook his head emphatically. "If I were the organizer, I'd never leave a flaw like this. Knowing you would come out here, why would I hand the evidence right to you?"

"Let's put a pin in that and just get on the boat. This water is freezing my legs numb." Wang Shi braced a hand against the wall. His pajamas were soaked through, his skin pale from the cold.

The small boat could only seat four people, so it took a great deal of effort for all five of us to squeeze aboard.

The boat rocked unsteadily. Number Eleven and I squeezed together at the bow, while the other three stood hunched over at the stern.

"Don't rock it. This boat is too beat-up; it could capsize at any moment." Without hesitation, Number Eleven picked up the boat's only oar and began to row. His movements were smooth and fluid—clearly the work of an experienced hand.

I grew even more guarded against Number Eleven, keeping most of my attention fixed on him.

A few minutes later, the boat stopped at a three-way fork. Number Eleven didn't decide on his own, instead looking back at the rest of us. "Take your pick."

With one passage to the left and another to the right, no one could decide which way to go.

I circulated the Profound Truth Mental Method, sinking my consciousness into my spirit platform to enhance my five senses, trying to feel the subtle differences between the two passages.

My original plan was to determine the direction of the exit based on the water current and airflow, but a sweep of my eyes yielded an unexpected discovery. "There's something underwater!"

A continuous string of tiny bubbles drifted up from beneath the surface, looking just like a school of fish blowing bubbles.

"Underwater?" Jin Zhouzhe pulled out his phone. He first checked the signal, then turned on the flashlight and shined it down at the water.

The bright beam pierced the dark river water. Jin Zhouzhe leaned over, his gaze following the light all the way to the bottom.

His face rapidly changed color. The corners of his mouth twitched in a sudden spasm.

"What is it?" I looked toward the light as well. Thanks to the Judging Eye, I could see even more clearly than Jin Zhouzhe did.

Beneath the murky river water floated a multitude of bloated corpses. They looked like deformed, big-headed dolls, inspiring an indescribable terror.

"A river of corpses!"

Everyone saw what lay beneath the water. Standing at the stern, Wang Shi was so terrified that he stumbled backward, nearly stepping off the edge and plunging into the river.

"Don't panic. It's not like you've never seen dead bodies before." I was the first to regain my composure. Fighting past the putrid stench, I took a closer look. "Most of these corpses have been picked completely clean of flesh, and their skeletons have yellowed. They must have been dead for a long time. There are heavy rocks tied around their waists, keeping them anchored to the riverbed instead of drifting all over the place."

I examined a few more corpses and realized that there was a massive time span between the bodies sunk at the bottom of this bomb shelter. Some were so heavily decomposed that only bare bones remained, but a small handful were only swollen, their clothes completely intact. They had likely died just days ago.

"I say we leave right now. This place is way too creepy."

"Yeah. Let's just pick a path and leave marks along the way. If it's a dead end, we can always turn back."

Wang Shi and Jin Zhouzhe didn't want to linger here a second longer, but my reaction was the exact opposite. Squinting, I zeroed in on a specific detail among the sunken corpses on the riverbed.