Chapter 716: Don't Knock on Doors Casually

I turned on the camera, plugged in the Portable Encoding Stick, and took out the Plum Blossom Brooch, pinning it to my chest so I could switch perspectives at any moment.

"Connecting to live chat..."

"Acquiring image..."

"Data stabilized. Start the live stream?"

"Yes."

"Welcome Teletubbies Died of Murder to the live stream. Welcome Master Tieling Biao to the live stream. Welcome Jiang Fei to the live stream..."

A notification popped up whenever livestream viewers entered the room. When I saw the third name, I subconsciously tilted the camera away.

'Jiang Fei? Is it just someone with the same name?' My heart skipped a beat. After I rescued the eldest daughter of the Jiang family from Henshan Psychiatric Hospital, the Live Show app inexplicably appeared on her phone (see Chapter 203 for details). She even sought me out about it afterward. My guess back then was that anyone dragged into a broadcast had a certain probability of being able to watch the Live Show later on. It happened to Jiang Fei, and it happened to the taxi driver, Balding Uncle.

'She promised me back then that she would never touch this app again. Why is she watching now? Did she hear the news of my death and enter the live stream to verify it?' I figured my guess wasn't far off the mark. Ever since the Red Cord of Marriage was severed, Jiang Fei's attitude toward me had been strange. I didn't know how to face her, so I could only avoid her as much as possible.

Messages rolled across the screen. My popularity broke five thousand in just a few minutes, and the numbers were still soaring. The more people watched, the more points the Live Show would reward me. But by the same token, more livestream viewers meant a mixed bag of people, making my situation increasingly dangerous.

This chain reaction was unavoidable. All I could do was keep up the disguise.

Looking at the familiar IDs and messages, I really wanted to greet them. But to prevent unnecessary trouble, I had to drop the idea.

I pressed my fingers against the acupoints on my neck, making sure the camera couldn't capture me, before speaking in a hoarse, disguised voice.

"Welcome everyone, to the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room..."

That raspy voice threw the livestream viewers into an uproar. Using a vocal alteration trick from the ancient disguise technique, my current voice sounded completely different from before. I sounded more like a weathered man in his thirties or forties.

I saw the doubts and questions flooding the chat, but I couldn't explain.

Clenching my fists, I told myself that now was not the time to expose myself. They could suspect all they wanted, but I couldn't confess, otherwise faking my death to escape would become a total joke.

The super thriller live broadcast could have a successor take over, but there was only one Gao Jian, and "he" had already died in the Jiangcheng Three Yin Sect.

I was now playing the role of that successor, using a completely different broadcasting style to make the livestream viewers believe that Gao Jian might truly be gone.

'I'm still too weak. Like duckweed in a lake, drifting with the waves—a single moment of carelessness and the storm will smash me to pieces.' I was using the Brooch to broadcast this time. The livestream viewers couldn't see my face; they could only see my arms and lower body at most. I was a very cautious person. Even wearing two masks, I refused to do anything I wasn't certain of. After all, there were many capable and extraordinary individuals among the livestream viewers. I couldn't afford to be careless.

'Once I no longer fear the sect and can converse with the Live Show on equal footing, I will revert to my old style. But now is not the time.' I read through every chat message and viewer ID very carefully, refusing to miss a single one. I didn't spot the names of Daoist master Wan or Half-Immortal Liu among them, which made me somewhat uneasy.

'Forget it. Relying on myself is better than relying on others.' I didn't interact with the livestream viewers. A faint worry lingered in my heart. This broadcast involved the Underworld Live Show and another live show streamer. Could the Live Show have intentionally kept Daoist master Wan and the others offline?

If that was really the case, then I needed to reevaluate the Live Show's power.

Broadcasting with the Brooch Camera meant I didn't even need the Live Show Phone if I wasn't looking at the chat. I shoved it into my pocket. Carrying the "little gift" the Doctor had given me in one hand, I traced the wall with the other and slowly made my way upstairs.

It was already midnight. Even the tenants of the Red Building wouldn't step outside at this hour. The real danger had arrived, and the truth I wanted to uncover was likely hidden within that very danger.

'The Red Building has eleven floors in total. I'll just have to investigate slowly.' Hiding in the darkness, I silently recited the Profound Truth Mental Method to control my breathing and calm myself down.

Slowing my steps, I arrived at the fifth floor without making a sound.

Three rusted iron doors stood there, their seams thick with dust. Splatters of red paint speckled the rust, looking like coagulated beads of blood.

'The doors of every tenant in the Red Building are built like this: an iron door on the outside, and a wooden door painted bright red on the inside. Do the people here think red wards off evil?' I stopped in my tracks. In reality, red was a highly controversial color. Crimson as blood, the fiercest malevolent ghosts in the world often wore red...

'According to the information Zhu Li gave me earlier, it seems the higher up you go in the Red Building, the more dangerous it gets and the fewer tenants there are. If I were a live show streamer trying to hide my identity, would I choose to live alone on a high floor?' Just as I was pondering this, a strange noise suddenly reached my ears.

'What was that sound?' My ears twitched, and I slowly turned around. 'That sound seemed to come from inside this room.'

I stared at the room near the stairs on the fifth floor, my brow furrowing. 'Zhu Li said nobody lives on the fifth floor. How can there be sounds coming from an empty room?'

Pressing my ear against the iron door, I listened closely. The sound emanating from the rental apartment was deeply unsettling. It was like fingernails scratching against a rough wall, enough to raise goosebumps all over my skin.

'Are rats gnawing on something? With perverts like the Painter and the Doctor living in the building, the specimens in those black bags would definitely attract rats and bugs.' The corridor was already eerie and terrifying, and the bizarre noise from the apartment only made it more chilling. Even someone like me, who had survived over a dozen live broadcasts, felt intensely uncomfortable.

'The iron door is locked. I can't get in without a key. Kicking it down would probably cause massive chaos.' I recalled the monsters Zhu Li and Bai Ya'er had mentioned. The two pencil sketches Zhu Li had shown me flashed through my mind, and I couldn't help but look back. There was clearly nothing in the pitch-black hallway, but it exuded an invisible, oppressive weight, as if something were quietly closing in.

'I'd better leave for now. The Red Building isn't exactly small, and time is tight if I want to investigate every tenant to find the live show streamer.' I stared into the profound darkness and sighed. People were just like that sometimes—fearing the unknown, yet unable to resist the curiosity to explore it. By the time fear finally tore away its veil, it would already be too late.

I turned to head upstairs. But after taking only a few steps, something happened that made my scalp go numb.

The iron door I had just pressed my ear against emitted the click of a springing latch. Then, the hinges slowly rotated. The creaking sound was exceptionally horrifying in the dead silence of the hallway.

'Didn't they say no one lives in this room?!' I stiffly turned my head to look. The iron door near the stairs on the fifth floor hadn't opened; it remained completely still. But the red-painted wooden door inside it had been pulled open a sliver!

'Someone's inside!'

The latch had clicked; someone had turned the lock from the inside. I immediately used my Judging Eye to check. Unfortunately, the other party was very cautious. The wooden door wasn't fully open, and the lights inside were off. I couldn't see anything at all through that narrow crack.

'What is going on? Was Zhu Li lying to me? Rats and bugs can't open doors; there has to be a person hiding in this room! They might be hiding right behind the door, watching me this very second!' My forehead broke into a cold sweat at the thought of having pressed my ear flat against the iron door just moments ago to listen.

'I can't just let this go. If I can chat with the person inside for a bit, I might get an unexpected lead.' I gripped the black bag in my hand tightly to steady my emotions. Just as I was about to speak, the exact same clicking of latches suddenly came from the other two rooms on the fifth floor.

Wooden doors creaked. With all three doors making that noise simultaneously, I immediately realized something was wrong.

'It's too synchronized, and the timing is too perfect. This doesn't seem like something the building's tenants would do.' I took a step back, suddenly recalling something Zhu Li had told me: the tenants in the building were divided into two categories—humans, and pigs.

Though I was curious to see what these so-called "pigs" actually looked like, I chose to leave just to be safe, retreating to the landing between the fifth and sixth floors.

The wooden doors didn't stop creaking until I had left the fifth floor entirely.

'It seems not every room can be entered, and the things living in some of these apartments might not necessarily be human.' This was one of the three pieces of advice Zhu Li had given me—never knock on the doors of unoccupied rooms. 'What did he really mean by humans and pigs? Does "pig" hold some special meaning here?'

The Red Building was even more bizarre than I had imagined. After midnight, a change invisible to the naked eye fell over the place. I could feel it, but I couldn't specifically describe it.

Carrying the severed hand the Doctor had given me, I reached the sixth floor. According to Zhu Li, an "adorable" boy lived here.

'It's absolutely impossible for a child to survive alone in the Red Building, yet Zhu Li said he had never seen the boy's parents...' I looked at the three doors in front of me, unsure which room the child lived in.

'I won't search here for now. Even if I find the child, it would be difficult for him to provide any useful clues. Besides, Zhu Li looked very strange every time he mentioned the boy on the sixth floor. I have to be careful.' I decided to check the seventh floor first. But the moment I turned and raised my head, my Judging Eye traced the gap between the crisscrossing staircases upward—and spotted a short, dark silhouette by the handrail on the eighth floor.

Half its body was pressed against the handrail, hidden in the darkness and very inconspicuous.

'Judging by the build, it looks like a child. Could it be the boy who lives on the sixth floor?' Just as I was about to call out to it, it unexpectedly shrank back. Clutching something perfectly round, it ran off into the distance.