Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Spread of the Curse

"Impossible... How could this be..."

Li Xing was completely shattered by the scene before him. A chill surged from the soles of his feet straight to his brain, causing him to stumble and fall to the ground. His arm was raised high, pointing directly at the staff member just a step away—the very person who was about to snap his own head off.

"How could they all die! How could six people die in succession at the same time!"

Li Xing roared this question, and Ji Li was pondering the exact same thing within his own mind. The lingering light from the window fell upon his shoulders, yet his entire demeanor seemed to have merged completely into the darkness. Everything happening before him, which he was powerless to stop, was a cruel, desperate, and absurd display of horror.

Ji Li could not fathom what could cause all the staff members to fall victim simultaneously. He abruptly turned his head to look at the other corpse nearby. The man who had sent the text message was the source of it all... With his death, it was as if a curse had spread to all the staff members Ji Li had brought with him; not one had been spared.

He stared blankly at his own hands. The strange, rigid sensation had faded, but his palms remained a pallid, cyan-black.

"The curse is spreading..."

This thought began to circle in Ji Li's mind. Based on the current situation, the "isolation theory" was utter nonsense. The only reason no one had died on the first floor was simply because they were lucky. Since the ghost's killing pattern was not based on being alone, but rather through the spread of a curse, then what was the source of that curse?

Ji Li slowly lifted his head, his vacant eyes fixed on the starry sky outside the window. The heavy rain showed signs of letting up, but the strife within the building had only just reached a fever pitch.

"Seeing a case of possession-induced suicide?"

His second personality, which had been silent for a long time, spoke now in a weary voice.

"It doesn't seem like it. At the beginning, it wasn't just us; many people on the first floor saw Little Liu from the first staircase commit suicide, yet they are still perfectly fine," the third personality countered softly, before offering a more plausible conjecture. "Perhaps, we are the source of the curse..."

Ji Li heard this and fell into deep thought, remaining silent.

The third personality continued, "In fact, we have known from the very beginning that every time a victim died, or was on the verge of death, a store clerk was present! This isn't hard to guess, but at the time, we focused all our attention on the ideas of isolation and protection, ignoring this point. As we saw with the text-message man, once targeted by the ghost, we have no ability to intervene. And throughout this, Ji Li, you have experienced more than three scenes of possession-induced suicide; the curse has spread further through you. It can even directly affect the five staff members you brought. Who would have thought that while the mission explicitly demanded we protect the staff, the true path to death is to stay away from them!"

Ji Li remained silent, listening to the third personality's analysis. The hypothesis that the clerks were the source of the curse was not impossible, but it was somewhat rash.

"You're right; some parts do indeed align. But where is the ghost?"

This was the most critical question. So far, they hadn't even caught a glimpse of the ghost. Even after the text-message man had just been killed and the five staff members had fallen victim, they still hadn't seen a shadow of the entity.

"If we are the source of the curse, perhaps the ghost is within us..." The tone of the third personality was ethereal, as if even it were uncertain.

Deep down, Ji Li did not fully accept this theory. Could the conjecture proposed by the third personality hold water? It could. The ghost was within the clerks, and through them, it approached the staff to emit the suicide curse. This could indeed account for most of what had occurred.

However, there was one thing that could not be explained: the death of Old Xue and the abnormal behavior of the text-message man! Although Ji Li was not a forensic expert, having experienced death several times over, he could roughly estimate the time of Old Xue's passing. He certainly hadn't died only when they approached the fifth floor! He hadn't been on the fifth floor, yet Old Xue died prematurely, which contradicted the third personality's theory that the ghost was carried by the clerks.

Furthermore, the text-message man knew Ji Li and had personally stated that "the building has a ghost," clearly indicating he was aware of all the changes within. Yet, in the first round of searching, no one had discovered his movements. This meant he had kept an absolute, safe distance from the clerks. According to the third personality's theory, he shouldn't have known about the existence of the ghost. Even if he had seen a corpse possessed into suicide, he wouldn't have immediately associated it with a ghost killing!

These two massive points of suspicion could, in fact, be considered a single mystery. Old Xue, the text-message man, and perhaps the elusive Little Qi—the three of them had uncovered some major secret regarding this mission! Only by uncovering that secret could they truly find the ghost's killing pattern, and perhaps, the path to survival.

In the eighteenth-floor corridor, only Ji Li and Li Xing remained alive. He gradually turned his gaze toward the man, who was now trembling in fear. Bringing him along, besides using him as a scapegoat, was also because he was suspicious of him. In these missions, special existences always become the breakthrough point. For instance, in the previous "Peeping Ghost" mission, the man in the raincoat was the key to survival.

Ji Li had never mentioned why Li Xing had entered the hotel three minutes later than the others, but it had weighed on his mind. Even though, so far, Li Xing's performance could be described as perfectly ordinary, out of caution, Ji Li had kept him by his side.

Ji Li lit a cigarette and rose slowly. Just as he was about to wake the dazed Li Xing, he suddenly heard a faint squeaking sound. He frowned and looked up. At the same time, the fluorescent tubes above the corridor began to flicker on, one by one.

The darkness vanished in the blink of an eye, but the entire building was now bathed in piercing, cold light. Under the glare of the tubes, Ji Li's face appeared even paler, radiating a deathly aura similar to the six stiff corpses lying nearby.

"The lights..."

Li Xing shuddered violently, taking a moment to scramble up from the floor. "Store Manager! The power is back!"

Light always gave humans a sense of confidence in the face of fear, and Li Xing was particularly excited about it. Likewise, Ji Li felt a sense of relief. However, what he was thinking was that the surveillance system could finally be used! This was a backup plan he had considered from the start, but it wasn't until nearly half the mission had passed that he had the conditions to implement it.

A spark of vitality returned to Ji Li's face. As he walked forward with his cigarette between his fingers, he said to the third personality in his mind, "Although I don't agree with your conjecture, now that we have the convenience of the surveillance room, we might as well give it a try."