Chapter 705: Neighbors

Thick darkness swallowed me. I lost my sense of direction, but I could feel a pair of eyes watching me from the pitch-black stairwell.

Rainwater slid down my temples. My heart raced. Reacting in a fraction of a second, I stomped my foot.

Dim light spilled up from the first floor, its faint glow bringing me a sliver of security.

"Granny, it's so late. Who are you still waiting for?" I forced a smile and turned around.

Dried mugwort was tucked outside the iron gate, which was covered by a layer of wire mesh. The base of the gate was heavily rusted and splattered with red paint that looked like beads of coagulated blood from a distance.

The solid red wooden door inside had been pulled open against the wall. The old woman stood right at the entrance. Her wrinkled face was pressed tight against the outer wire mesh, and her entirely white eyes stared straight at me.

"You... couldn't be waiting for me, could you?" My voice faltered as I realized that in all this time, the old woman hadn't blinked once.

'Is she blind?'

The atmosphere in the corridor was incredibly eerie. It took the old woman a long while to finally speak. Instead of answering my question, she said something very strange.

"Are you here looking for someone?"

Her hoarse, grating voice made me shudder. I was about to brush her off, a fabricated excuse already on the tip of my tongue, when a thought flashed through my mind like lightning. 'Right, I am here looking for someone! She isn't wrong, but I never told anyone about this. How could a blind old woman know?'

I drew in a sharp breath, neither confirming nor denying it. "Granny, why would you say I'm here looking for someone?"

"The people here never turn on the lights when going upstairs, so you must be from the outside. Longchang Community isn't easy to find. If you came all this way, what else would you be doing if not looking for someone?" The old woman's voice dropped lower and lower. Though her appearance was somewhat terrifying and her voice was hoarse and unpleasant, I could tell from her tone that she bore no ill intent.

"Never turn on the lights? Can you even see the way in the pitch black?" I muttered, then explained to the old woman, "You misunderstood. I ran into one of your tenants on the way here. She was drunk, and I was worried something might happen to her on the road, so I decided to walk her home."

I supported the woman with one hand. She was thin, and her entire body barely weighed a thing.

"If you aren't here looking for someone, then hurry up and leave. The roads here are very dark at night." The old woman's eyes had been fixed in one direction from start to finish. I originally thought she was looking at me, but when I shifted my body, I realized she was just staring blankly at the pitch-black stairwell, as if expecting someone to come up from downstairs.

Was she really waiting for someone?

Various questions surfaced in my mind. After a moment of thought, I decided to just ask her directly. "Granny, who exactly are you waiting for?"

"Waiting for someone."

The conversation fell into a dead loop. Knowing she didn't want to say, I didn't push the issue. "Take care of your health, don't catch a cold."

With that, I continued dragging the woman upstairs. Just as we reached the landing between the second and third floors, the voice-activated light on the first floor went out again.

This time, I was prepared and didn't panic. Recalling what the old woman just said—that the tenants here never turned on the lights when going upstairs—I still wasn't sure if those words held any special meaning. But everything happens for a reason, so I decided to follow the local custom. Without making too much noise, I slowed my steps, utilized my Judging Eye, and walked up step by step in the dark.

Standing in the pitch-black corridor, an enclosed and gloomy space, it was inevitable for any normal person's imagination to run wild.

'The Live Show's broadcast task is for me to arrive at Longchang Community at midnight and survive until dawn. The location for the task should be here. Meanwhile, that live show streamer from Jinghai told me to look for him at Pig Cage Apartments. According to the intel I got from the restaurant owner, Pig Cage Apartments and Longchang Community refer to the same place. In other words, that live show streamer might live right here in this blood-red Apartment Building.'

'Since both refer to the same location, why did the Live Show issue me this kind of task? Is it trying to help me?' In my impression, the Live Show would absolutely never do such a thing. It had to have its own ulterior motive for giving me this task!

I had barely entered the Red Building and hadn't gone far when I encountered that eccentric old woman with only the whites of her eyes showing. You could certainly call this a bizarre start.

It wasn't midnight yet, and the broadcast hadn't started. The real dangers were still lurking in hidden corners, and I felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of unease.

Whether it was the drunk woman or the blind old woman, I was certain beyond a doubt that they were living humans, and this was exactly what troubled me the most.

Compared to dealing with ghosts and monsters, I hated dealing with devils wearing human skin even more. They were shrewd and cunning, often killing without a trace.

'Better to be careful. Tonight has only just begun. I can, however, make use of this drunk woman in my hands. She's a tenant here, so she should be very familiar with the community.' Thinking of this, I furrowed my brow. That live show streamer was highly likely a tenant here too. With so many people living in the entire building, finding him would be way too difficult.

"Theoretically speaking, anyone in the apartment could be a live show streamer." I glanced down at the dead-drunk woman. "Including this woman with a sadomasochistic complex. I need to investigate every single person thoroughly."

Relying on my own strength alone to investigate all the tenants in a single night was essentially impossible, so I had to seek help.

Right as I was pondering this, a dim yellow light suddenly shone from downstairs. The voice-activated light on the first floor had inexplicably turned on.

'Did someone pass by?' I hadn't made a single sound, so it couldn't have been me who triggered the light.

Staring at the dilapidated stairwell illuminated by the flickering light, I couldn't shake the feeling that something had entered the corridor.

I dropped the drunk woman onto the floor and, using my Judging Eye, was just about to head down and check when the old woman living on the second floor suddenly took a few steps back. With a wave of her hand, she locked the wooden door from the inside.

'What's going on?'

I stood at the corner between the second and third floors, staring at the solid red wooden door to the Old Granny's home. My Adam's apple bobbed, unsure of what to do.

Although she had startled me earlier, the fact that she hadn't closed her door at least made me feel like there was someone else accompanying me in this stairwell.

'Has the person she was waiting for already arrived?' I craned my neck to look down at the first floor. The peeling paint on the walls looked like grotesque, smiling faces, and the floor tiles were fragmented and incomplete. The only footprints on them belonged to me and the drunk woman. 'No one came in. Why would the voice-activated light suddenly turn on? Aging wiring?'

Even with my Judging Eye, I couldn't spot any issues. I wasn't sure if someone was playing tricks or if something terrible had truly happened.

'Granny said she was waiting for someone. Now that the first-floor light is on, not only did she not open the door, but she also locked it from the inside. Could it be that whoever came in wasn't the person she was waiting for?'

Unable to figure it out, I waited for the voice-activated light to go out before turning and heading up toward the third floor. Just a few steps in, my neck suddenly felt very itchy. I reached back to scratch it; it felt as though the woman's hair had brushed against the back of my neck.

At first, I didn't pay it any mind, but after climbing a few more steps, I realized something was wrong.

I had just dumped the drunk woman by the wall. How could her hair possibly brush against my nape? If it wasn't her, then who could it be?!

Pressing my back against the wall, I whipped my head around. There was absolutely nothing in the pitch-black corridor.

I was certain that just now had absolutely not been an illusion. 'The back of my neck? Could it be...'

Slowly tilting my head back, I looked up. The scenario I imagined—of something clinging to the ceiling right above me—didn't happen. It was pitch black. There was nothing.

'This Red Building is way too bizarre, isn't it?' I remembered hearing someone say a long time ago that if you inexplicably felt scared in an unlit stairwell, you must never turn around. You just run all the way home, because the more a person thinks about that kind of stuff, the more likely those certain things are to appear.

Lifting the drunk woman with one hand, I strode up the stairs.

People were likely living on the third floor as well. Some of the iron gates were smeared with something that looked like dog's blood, and used tissues were tossed on the ground.

"Living in this place is real torture," I muttered as I reached the fourth floor in one breath. This was the floor the drunk woman had gestured at earlier. But when I actually got here, I ran into another problem.

There were three apartments on every floor, and I still didn't know which specific one the woman lived in.

"Hey, wake up!" I shook the woman's shoulder, but she didn't react at all. The eerie scenes that had just occurred were still vivid in my mind, and I really did not want to linger in this pitch-black stairwell.

"Pardon the offense." I patted her down with one hand and soon dug a ring of keys out of her pants pocket.

Threaded on a red string were old-fashioned brass keys with heavily worn edges, looking as though they had been used for a very long time.

'These three iron gates are all of the same design, and there isn't much dust where the doors open and close, which means people live in all three apartments.' Unable to find any more clues, I could only try my luck. I picked the gate closest to the stairs at random and walked over with the keys.

In the Red Building, only the first floor was equipped with a voice-activated light. The corridor was now pitch black. If I didn't possess the Judging Eye, I wouldn't even have been able to find the keyhole.

After a few tries, I realized the woman's brass key simply wouldn't slide in.

The sound of the key scraping against the iron gate's lock was exceptionally clear in the dead-silent corridor. I was just about to turn and try the next door when a strange noise suddenly came from inside the room in front of me.

It was a very strange noise, sounding exactly like a knife slicing open a burlap sack.

I stopped outside the door, not making another sound. True qi surged into the acupoints behind my ears as I listened to the noises inside the room.

A minute or two later, very soft footsteps sounded from within. Then, the solid red wooden door was pulled open, revealing a narrow crack.

Through the gap, I saw a middle-aged man with dirty, disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes pressing himself behind the door. His body reeked of a foul stench. He was very cautious, looking as if he was in the middle of doing something shameful.

"I'm here to bring this girl home. You're her neighbor, so you should know which room she lives in, right?" I supported the woman's arm, hoisting her up.

The man hid behind the wooden door without uttering a single word, scrutinizing me with his bloodshot eyes.