(15/20)
Xingwang Hotel
Chapter 293: Attack
“…”
The air fell into an unusual silence, broken only by the sound of dense raindrops pounding on the rooftop.
In the Xingwang Hotel corridors, Zhong Shan and his group had pressed in aggressively, but Wen Jianyan had good-naturedly compromised, retreating without clashing with them. Now, however, the momentum between the two sides had reversed without anyone realizing it. Wen Jianyan had become the one calmly in control, guiding the situation’s direction.
He waited patiently.
Finally, Zhong Shan gritted his teeth, as though making a decision, “I… I’ll choose the second option.”
It was the safest choice.
Though this “guest” would be credited to the opposing team, as the other party had mentioned, the lights at Xingwang Hotel would go out three times in a day. Even if they missed this chance, there would still be two more. They could take this time to observe the attack methods, significantly reducing the risk of fatalities in the future.
“Good.”
Wen Jianyan smiled slightly, unsurprised by Zhong Shan’s choice.
Turning to Blond, he said, “You go get the painting.”
Blond took a deep breath and nodded.
Though scared, he knew that under these circumstances, he himself taking the painting would be the safest option.
With this arrangement, Yun Bilan and Chen Mo, as combat members, would be free to act if danger arose.
Blond walked towards the painting.
The blurred woman sat motionlessly on the canvas, indistinct in the darkness, with only her deathly pale face standing out, eerily clear.
He dared not look too long. Turning his head, he carefully lifted the painting, avoiding touching the canvas with his fingers.
Despite its size, the painting wasn’t particularly heavy, and even Blond could lift it alone.
Wen Jianyan stood nearby, his attention not on Blond but fully focused on observing their surroundings.
The moment the painting left the ground, Wen Jianyan noticed that the rain overhead seemed to lighten. Just moments ago, it had been pouring and pounding on the roof, but it suddenly slowed without warning. The heavy noise dwindled, replaced by an unsettling silence.
Though he had expected it, his heart still gave a jolt.
Wen Jianyan knew that, by the rules… an attack was imminent.
“Go!” he commanded simply.
Yun Bilan and Chen Mo flanked Blond, guarding him as they quickly retraced their steps, remaining alert for danger along the way.
“Plop.”
A single raindrop dripped from the broken eaves, landing in a puddle on the ground. The still water rippled, showing a faintly pale hue, as though something eerie was stirring beneath.
The group soon reached the doorway of the ruined house.
The crooked door stood slightly ajar, and beyond it was a dim sky. The gray-black clouds hung low, suffocatingly oppressive.
Sure enough, as they’d heard from inside, the rain had indeed lessened outside. It fell lightly, splashing tiny droplets across the ground.
With the rain now reduced, they could likely remain outside for some time.
The uneven cobblestone path stretched away.
Not far off, in the direction they’d come from, a half-open door was faintly visible.
Once they passed through that door, they’d be back inside the Xingwang Hotel.
Apart from the lighter rain, there seemed to be no other changes outside.
But this overly eerie calm only heightened their unease.
“…”
Everyone exchanged glances.
Regardless, they had no choice but to go outside now.
With no load to carry, Zhong Shan and his team rushed out of the ruined house first.
They reached the opposite side of the cobblestone path without interference and stood waiting at the hotel entrance.
It wasn’t a show of teamwork, but a chance to observe how the attack might unfold for future reference.
Through the sparse raindrops, they could make out the vague shapes of the other team in the distance.
Clearly, since they weren’t carrying the painting, they had not triggered any attacks.
But things would be different when it came to Wen Jianyan’s team.
“Twenty minutes.”
Bai Xue suddenly raised his head and spoke again.
Having experienced this before, Wen Jianyan immediately understood his meaning.
This time, their stay in the rain had extended to twenty minutes, meaning that if they couldn’t get back inside Xingwang Hotel within those twenty minutes, they’d have to return to the ruined house and wait for their strength to recover before attempting again.
Wen Jianyan pulled out his pocket watch, checking the time.
It had been twenty-three minutes since the lights went out in Xingwang Hotel, meaning they had thirty-eight minutes until the lights would come on again.
They had at most two chances to return to the hotel in that time.
Taking a deep breath, Wen Jianyan looked at his teammates and nodded.
“Go.”
At his command, they all rushed out, heading straight for the direction of Xingwang Hotel!
Cold raindrops fell unpredictably, splashing on their faces with a chilling bite. Unlike before, the rain didn’t sap their strength in an instant but instead slowly, gradually drained their life force, constantly but at a slow pace.
This time, they could linger in the rain for a while, but logically, for such a short distance, it shouldn’t have taken this long.
No sooner had they left the ruined house than Wen Jianyan quickly sensed something was wrong.
For some reason, the farther they moved forward, the heavier their bodies became, and their speed slowed, becoming increasingly sluggish, as though something heavy were pressing on their backs, making it hard to breathe.
The distance was only a few dozen meters, yet as time passed, the cobblestone path seemed endless, stretching on and on.
By the time they had covered less than half the distance, they could barely straighten up. Their legs felt as though weighed down by a thousand pounds, each step forward requiring over ten seconds of struggle.
Blond’s face turned red, sweat beading on his nose as he struggled under the weight of the painting, glancing toward Wen Jianyan. “Captain, I—I can’t go on!”
Chen Mo gritted his teeth. “Captain, at this rate, we won’t reach the other side in twenty minutes!”
Wen Jianyan was well aware of this as well.
He glanced at his watch.
Only about four minutes had passed since they left the house. If they turned back now, the situation likely wouldn’t change much the next time they tried. If they wanted to make it back to Xingwang Hotel alive, they needed to figure out the cause and how to counter it this time.
“Try using the tools!”
“They’re not working…”
Even though acceleration tools and temporary strength-enhancing items were activated, the oppressive weight on their bodies didn’t diminish in the slightest, nor did their speed increase.
It seemed this scenario had similarities to the previous one.
Once inside the instance, they couldn’t use outside props to escape the danger.
This was troublesome.
Wen Jianyan felt the weight on his shoulders reach the point of overload. His bones creaked under the strain, his muscles ached, and even standing still was exhausting, as though he’d collapse if he took another step.
But…where did this weight come from?
Clenching his teeth, Wen Jianyan’s mind raced.
Everything was just as before, so what was trapping them, keeping them from leaving?
“Drip…drip…”
Raindrops fell around them.
Suddenly…Wen Jianyan seemed to realize something.
Wait, not everything was as before.
The rain had lessened, hadn’t it?
What was once a downpour had now dwindled to occasional drops, falling sporadically into puddles, creating irregular splashes.
When it had been raining heavily, the pelting rain had churned up the puddles, making them impossible to reflect anything. But now, as the rain lightened…
The surface of the water began to calm.
He recalled Bai Xue’s warning before they entered the instance.
—“Beware of shadows.”
Wen Jianyan felt a chill run down his spine.
He moved toward the nearest puddle.
The half-sunken cobblestone held a pool of water, its surface calm, occasionally disturbed by a single raindrop that caused faint ripples.
In the puddle, Wen Jianyan saw his own reflection.
And—
Countless pale arms draped over him.
One after another, layer upon layer, lifeless limbs weighed him down, bloated and ghastly from the water, their greenish-white, stiffened fingers gripping him tightly, as if trying to drag him into the water.
A mountain of dead bodies piled upon him, still climbing onto his back.
The moment he saw this, Wen Jianyan’s heart leapt to his throat.
He spun around to look behind him.
There was nothing but empty air.
No soaked, deathly white corpses, no grasping, ghostly hands.
But Wen Jianyan knew clearly…
In some sense, they were there, clinging to him, invisible but felt, their coldness and crushing weight all too real.
He turned back, gritting his teeth, and said to his teammates:
“Go! Back to the house!”
In the distance, Zhong Shan’s group watched Wen Jianyan’s team from behind the thin veil of rain, frowning as they muttered among themselves.
“What’s happening? Why are they going back?”
“No idea…”
From their vantage point, they’d only seen Wen Jianyan’s team leave the house, then, as if something held them back, their pace had slowed more and more. After a brief conversation, they had turned back to the house.
Zhong Shan and his team exchanged puzzled looks.
Inside the crooked old house, the eaves sheltered them from the rain.
Upon re-entering the dark space, Wen Jianyan’s team immediately felt the oppressive weight gradually lift until it returned to normal.
They gasped for air.
Though they had only covered about ten meters, each one was drenched in sweat, as if they’d just run a kilometer.
“So… what happened just now?” Blond panted, glancing at Wen Jianyan with difficulty.
Wen Jianyan, his face darkened, recounted what he’d seen in the puddle to his team.
He spoke very briefly, but everyone still felt a chill rising from their backs.
Although they hadn’t seen it themselves, just knowing that the weight pressing down on them was water-bloated corpses… was enough to make their skin crawl.
Yun Bilan frowned deeply.
“Then…how do we get rid of them?”
Tools from the system store didn’t work, and the corpses were invisible and intangible. Once entangled, there was no escape. Even though they now knew the source of the weight, they couldn’t leave within twenty minutes.
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, pondering for a while.
A few seconds later, he slowly spoke:
“There’s not no way.”
When the rain lessened and stopped disturbing the water’s surface, the corpses appeared on them.
In other words, those corpses weren’t an invisible, intangible presence that only the water’s surface could reveal. They were more like something from beneath the water’s surface…
They clung to them only when their shadows fell into the puddles.
And when they moved away from the puddles—like now—everything returned to normal.
“So, from now on, let’s avoid all puddles on the ground,” Wen Jianyan raised his gaze and said.
“We were already trying to avoid stepping in them—”
“No, not just not stepping into them.” Wen Jianyan shook his head, looked up at everyone, and said, “It’s to avoid letting our shadows fall into the puddles.”
“…”
Everyone froze, glanced at each other, and suddenly looked as though they understood.
Soon, after preparing themselves, the team reassembled and set off once more.
This time, they were extremely cautious, not only avoiding stepping into the puddles but also making sure their shadows didn’t fall into the water.
Although this didn’t completely eliminate the weight…they could clearly feel that it was increasing much more slowly than before.
They breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed Wen Jianyan’s approach was working.
Only when their shadows were reflected on the water would those “things” climb onto them.
Soon, they had made it more than halfway, far surpassing their previous progress.
But… just as they began to relax, something suddenly happened!
Blond, who was carrying the painting, suddenly felt something pull down at his foot. Startled, he looked down.
Half his foot was in a puddle.
But strangely, though it was only a small, shallow puddle, it now seemed bottomless, dragging his foot downwards as if…
Something was pulling him under.
“?!”
Blond’s pupils shrank, his face paling in panic.
His heart raced, and instinctively he tried to pull his foot out of the water, but a stronger force tugged him off balance.
In just a few seconds, half his leg was sucked into the puddle.
Blond screamed, “Quick! Help me—”
Before he could finish his sentence, there was a loud splash as a pale, dripping hand suddenly reached out from the puddle, grasping his ankle tightly from below.
“!!!”
The moment he saw the hand, Blond’s face turned ashen, and he began struggling wildly.
“Ahhhhh, help me!!”
He clutched the picture frame tightly, screaming in terror.
Hearing his cries, the others whipped around, rushing in his direction!
However, the “person” beneath the water climbed up much faster than the others could reach him.
Wrist—arm—shoulder—
Bluish-white, bloated limbs extended from beneath the water’s surface, even though it was just a shallow puddle. It seemed like a bottomless abyss lay below.
A ghastly pale, smiling face gradually emerged from the water.
Under the murky, shallow surface, pitch-black, eerie eyes locked onto Blond, rising higher and higher—
“Aaaaaahhh!”
Blond screamed even more desperately, struggling with all his might.
At that moment, the others finally reached him.
Chen Mo and Yun Bilan, reacting swiftly, grabbed hold of Blond tightly, one pulling his arm, the other holding onto his waist, trying to prevent him from being dragged under.
But human strength was still too weak. Even with two people holding onto him, Blond’s body continued to sink downwards!
Amid Blond’s pitiful cries, a pale, stiff, eerily smiling human figure climbed out from beneath the water.
“Wait, that’s—”
In the distance, a member of Zhong Shan’s team gasped, immediately recognizing the figure emerging from the water.
It was their teammate who hadn’t made it into the house in time!
Just moments ago, he had dissolved into a puddle of water right before everyone’s eyes, disappearing completely, but now he was reappearing before them.
And in a bone-chillingly terrifying form.
“Help! Help!!!”
Blond screamed desperately, hands flailing in the air, yet he couldn’t stop himself from sinking. In a matter of moments, the shallow puddle that once only reached his ankles had already swallowed him up to his waist.
His eyes were filled with despair, his whole body shaking in terror.
“Something’s pulling me from below!”
“…”
Wen Jianyan’s gaze dropped, falling on the ground around Chen Mo and Yun Bilan’s feet. Suddenly, he realized something.
After all, the cobblestone path was uneven. No matter how careful they were, they couldn’t completely avoid stepping into puddles. Yet, only Blond was attacked. This meant…
Blond was being attacked, not because he accidentally stepped into the water, but because of the painting in his hands.
Wen Jianyan’s eyes shot up as he reached out to Blond in the water, commanding him succinctly:
“Quick! Hand me the painting!”
Blond snapped out of his daze and hastily handed the frame over.
Wen Jianyan grabbed the damp frame and, with a sharp twist, snapped it!
With a loud “crack,” the already decayed frame broke easily, splitting into pieces, which he tossed into the water, where they quickly sank.
Wen Jianyan yanked the canvas out from the frame.
“…”
It was as if silence had fallen over the scene.
The others stared at him, stunned by his daring act.
Even the corpse clinging to Blond’s leg momentarily stopped moving.
Wen Jianyan crumpled the canvas into a ball and stuffed it into his pocket:
“What are you standing there for? Run!”
haha even the ghost was shocked. hahaha