Chapter 717: The Invisible Family (1)

'Why does this silhouette look so familiar?' I jolted in sudden realization, my Adam's apple bobbing.

'I saw it when I was looking out at the Ancient Building from Bai Ya'er's apartment!'

At the time, Bai Ya'er suspected something had followed me into her room, so she turned off the lights to check our surroundings.

That was when I spotted a short, child-like shadow in the Ancient Building across from us, hugging something that looked like a rubber ball as it walked through the ruined corridors.

'Right, the round object in its hands even dropped once...' I remembered it perfectly. As the two silhouettes overlapped in my mind, I quickly reached a rather terrifying conclusion: 'The shadow in the Red Building is the exact same one as that short silhouette from the ancient architecture. It ran out of the Ancient Building!'

The short shadow had vanished among the floors; I wasn't sure exactly which one it was hiding on.

'I haven't even finished familiarizing myself with the Red Building's basic layout yet. I can't run around blindly.'

I hadn't sensed any hostility from the shadow, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous. Based on my earlier observation, that round, ball-like object in its hands was very likely a human head.

'Are my senses of time and space messed up, or did some unknown anomaly occur after midnight? To think the shadow from the Ancient Building ruins actually appeared inside the Red Building. Did it sneak in while I was talking to Zhu Li and the Doctor?' The Red Building was divided into four units, each with its own independent staircase and elevator. It was worth noting that the interior connected from the seventh floor up, allowing one to pass between units through the emergency exits. It was also possible that the shadow had entered from another unit and inadvertently wandered onto my floor.

'The seventh-floor tenant went missing a few days ago. If I can figure out the reason for his disappearance, it will be a huge help in unraveling the Red Building's secrets.' Looking at the three iron doors on the seventh floor, I scratched my head. Zhu Li only ever spoke in half-truths; he seemed to have revealed many clues to me, but in reality, he hadn't given me anything of substance.

'This is my oversight. I should have asked for the exact apartments of all the tenants.' The three iron doors looked identical. Who knew which door the missing tenant used to live behind?

'I can't knock on the doors of empty rooms, and I don't know the tenant's exact location. Zhu Li had bad intentions from the very beginning.' After what happened on the fifth floor, I didn't dare knock on doors recklessly anymore.

Standing in the corridor, enveloped by darkness, I looked around and felt a sudden, unprompted wave of panic. It felt as if something in the dark was slowly approaching, giving me an inexplicable sense of urgency.

'I have the key to Bai Ya'er's room, so if push comes to shove, I can hide in her place. But I'm worried that she and the Painter might have teamed up to eliminate me and laid a trap in advance.' Shaking my head to dispel the thought, I took out the Live Show Phone and used the faint glow of the screen to carefully examine the doors in front of me.

The disappearance of the seventh-floor tenant was a breakthrough, and I absolutely had to seize this opportunity.

The iron doors on the left and in the middle were coated in a thick layer of dust; it was obvious at a glance that they hadn't been opened in a long time. After carefully checking them, I walked over to the door on the right.

'The dust is thick, but the door handle is relatively clean. It seems someone has touched it.' I noted the distribution of dust on the handle before grabbing it. Before I could apply much force, the iron door suddenly rattled.

'The door... isn't locked?' I slowly applied force, pulling outward, and to my surprise, the rusty iron door gradually creaked open.

'All the other doors are covered in dust; only this one is an exception. What's going on? Did the missing tenant live here? Was he in such a hurry when he fled that he forgot to lock the door?' Countless thoughts raced through my mind, but because I had too little information to go on, it was difficult to piece together the truth.

'Every household in the Red Building has a red wooden door installed, which goes to show that those things in the darkness hate the color red. If the monsters outside forced the iron door open, then the lock on the wooden door inside should still be intact...' My fingers slid down, and I gave it a gentle push. Shockingly, the inner red wooden door cracked open a sliver!

'Also unlocked?! Is someone inside?' I hefted the bag containing the severed hand, ready at any moment to throw it out to distract any unknown monsters.

Taking a step forward, I cautiously pushed the wooden door. As it swung open, a musty, rotting stench washed over me.

Peering closely, I saw various daily necessities scattered around the room, along with a few rotting apples on a glass coffee table. 'It seems the seventh-floor tenant lived here before going missing.'

I took a deep breath, remaining on high alert as I slowly shifted my feet. Once I was completely inside the apartment, I quietly closed both the iron gate and the wooden door.

Hearing the click of the wooden door locking, I finally relaxed a little. That pitch-black, enclosed corridor was truly terrifying; compared to that, being inside the apartment felt much safer.

Recalling the layout of Bai Ya'er's and Zhu Li's apartments, I fumbled along the wall and quickly found the light switch. However, when I pressed it, the living room lights didn't turn on.

'Is the power out?' Leaning my back against the wooden door, I carried the severed hand the Doctor had given me and moved along the wall into the living room. 'No mistake, someone was living here a few weeks ago.'

I picked up an apple from the coffee table; it was covered in yellowish-brown rot spots.

Applying force with both hands, I snapped the apple in half, causing foul-smelling juice to splatter from the moldy flesh. 'The climate in Jinghai City is humid, so things mold and spoil very easily. Only the outer layer of this apple is rotting, so it shouldn't have been sitting out for more than two weeks.'

Putting the apple down, I crouched beside the coffee table and studied the fruit bowl. Suddenly, I made an unexpected discovery.

One heavily decayed apple had been touched by someone before I even entered the apartment!

The moldy skin was caved in, and foul-smelling juice oozed over the fungus.

'Based on the size of the indentation on the skin, I can practically confirm that the one who touched this apple was a child.' I stood up, speculating inwardly. 'Could it be that short shadow I just saw? No, that thing felt entirely incorporeal to me, so it shouldn't be able to move an apple on the table. Did it bump into it by accident?'

Sweeping my gaze with Judging Eye, I spotted a filthy handprint on the corner of the sofa.

The handprint wasn't large, matching my earlier deduction; it must have been left by a six- or seven-year-old child.

I lightly scraped the handprint on the sofa. 'The mark hasn't fully dried yet. Whoever touched the apple hasn't gone far. They might even still be in this apartment!'

'Did my opening the door just now scare him?'

The coffee table, the sofa... there weren't many places to hide in the room. Proving my theory would be simple.

I got up and pushed open the doors to the bathroom and the balcony. Both were empty; there was nothing there.

'Looks like they're hiding in here.' Concealing the bag with the severed hand behind my back, I slowly opened the bedroom door.

The bedding on the wooden bed gave off a suffocating, musty stench. I cast a sweeping glance over the room and noticed that the wardrobe against the wall wasn't fully closed.

"Come out, I see you," I said in a low voice. In reality, I was extremely tense. I couldn't be certain of my guess, and if a monster covered in bite marks jumped out instead, I would be in grave danger.

There was no response from within the bedroom. I took it step by step until I reached the wardrobe. With a swift pull, I yanked it open.

The wooden wardrobe was piled high with various articles of clothing, both men's and women's. What I found even stranger was that nine-tenths of it was women's underwear.

'Don't tell me the original owner of this apartment had a fetish for stealing women's underwear?' Fearing that the person I was looking for was hiding in the pile of clothes, I pulled everything out of the wardrobe. 'Wait, no. The men's and women's underwear are exactly the same size. These clothes probably weren't stolen.'

I let out a bitter smile, gaining a new understanding of the Red Building Tenants. 'This sort of behavior is probably a bit more severe than just stealing underwear.'

Closing the wardrobe doors, I stood by the bed. There was only one place left in the entire apartment that I hadn't checked.

Flipping up the moldy quilt, I bent down, braced one hand against the floor, and looked under the bed.

The glow from the phone screen dispelled the darkness under the bed. I slowly shifted my gaze, and when I looked toward the foot of the bed, my eyes froze.

'Found you!'

An emaciated little boy was huddled in the corner, thoroughly terrified, clutching a half-eaten rotten apple in his hand.

The air seemed to freeze. I was deeply worried that the boy would scream and attract some unknown monster.

Fortunately, he was far braver than I had imagined. He merely curled in on himself as tightly as possible, shrinking backward without shouting or screaming.

"You're even eating rotten, moldy apples. Are you very hungry?" I spoke slowly. It took a long while after hearing me before the boy seemed to snap out of his daze and gave a slight nod.

"Do you live in the Red Building too? Where is your family?" The boy's reaction to my question was very strange. First, he nodded, but then he hurriedly shook his head.

I made a mental note, keeping his bizarre reaction in mind.

'Zhu Li mentioned that a cute boy lived on the sixth floor. Could he have been talking about him? This child is skin and bones; no matter how you look at him, he has nothing to do with 'cute.' Could Zhu Li have said that on purpose to throw me off?'

I took a few steps back. "Little guy, does your family live on the sixth floor?"

The boy nodded woodenly. The impression he gave me was like that of a stray dog left to fend for itself.

"Come out first. I absolutely won't hurt you..."

I reasoned with him for quite a while, but the boy remained curled up in the deepest corner. Left with no other choice, I had to lift the bedboards to finally pull him out.

"What is your name?" I tried every way I could think of to pry some information out of him, but he only ever nodded or shook his head. I suspected he didn't even know what he was doing himself. 'What a bizarre kid.'

From the adults to the children, not a single person in the Red Building was normal. Giving up on my questioning, I took his hand and led him out of the bedroom.

As soon as we reached the living room, the boy suddenly lost control and bolted toward the coffee table. I wanted to see what he was up to, so I didn't stop him, simply letting go of his hand.

Despite his frail and weak body, he ran incredibly fast. His small hands grabbed those moldy, spoiled apples, using his tattered clothes as a pouch to hold them...