Chapter 52 The Opportunity Has Arrived

"What on earth is hidden on the eighteenth floor..."

Fang Sanyan and Yu Guo walked side by side toward the depths of the top floor. An aura of death constantly wafted around them, making the wind feel even more bone-chilling.

To this day, they still had no idea why this place had been "favored" by Ji Li, but a certain scent was guiding them through the dark.

It was the smell of a corpse.

"Old Xue's body should have been on the fifth floor, but Xiao Qi didn't see it there. This means something took the body away."

Yu Guo muttered as he ran frantically.

Fang Sanyan didn't have the spare capacity for such thoughts at the moment; within his blurred vision, he seemed to perceive a thread...

A tangible yet invisible grey line was stretching over from somewhere on the eighteenth floor.

His eyelids twitched, and he abruptly looked at Yu Guo.

He realized that Yu Guo seemed entirely unaware of this grey line; only he could see it.

This appeared to be some kind of hint, as if something was offering him assistance.

Fang Sanyan pondered for a moment, then inexplicably glanced at the back of his left hand.

There lay a strange, black Gothic tattoo shaped like an eyeball...

However, the current situation left him no time to dwell on the eyeball tattoo. Convinced in his heart, he quickly led Yu Guo toward the source of the grey line.

Gradually, a corridor materialized before them.

Here stood five corpses, standing rigidly on the ground in various postures, their faces frozen in the confusion and terror they felt before death.

Yu Guo's footsteps came to an abrupt halt. His throat tightened, and then he said:

"These are the five staff members who died earlier on the eighteenth floor!"

Fang Sanyan narrowed his eyes. The guidance of the grey line had grown somewhat faint here, suggesting that the hint was about to come to an end.

He instinctively touched the back of his left hand and found that the tattoo showed a slight sign of warmth.

Yet it felt like an illusion; he could no longer tell whether his blood was simply rushing too fast from the intense pressure or if the tattoo had truly become abnormal.

Shortly after, he heard a flurry of chaotic footsteps echoing from behind.

Knowing that Tong Guan and Chang Nian had caught up, Fang Sanyan shook his muddled head and urged:

"Keep moving inward. Perhaps we are not far from the truth now!"

...

"The source of the curse is within our hotel phones!"

Taking the lead, Tong Guan followed in the footsteps of Fang and Yu, sprinting toward the end of the eighteenth floor.

Beside him was Chang Nian, holding a remarkably calm Xiao Qi in her arms.

"What I can't figure out is, even though all the clues now point to our phones, why hasn't the real task content updated yet?"

During the dash, Tong Guan had checked his phone several times, but up to this moment, it still displayed the original, fake task content.

This situation forced him to begin doubting his own judgment.

Chang Nian's brain was also racing at full speed, echoing Tong Guan's thoughts.

After experiencing so many twists and turns, they had finally reached the critical final juncture, yet they still had no idea what the real task actually was.

Where on earth was the catalyst for discovering the true task, as Tong Guan had mentioned...

Hope was all they had left as she continued to press forward, praying in her heart that the end of this corridor would grant her the answer she desired.

...

Fang Sanyan and Yu Guo arrived first at the dead end, and the scene laid out before them was utterly bizarre.

The head of a previously unseen male corpse was tilted sideways on the ground, all ten of his fingers broken backward at the joints, extending outward at an exaggerated angle.

He was positioned right at the entrance of a gloomy storage room.

When Yu Guo leaned sideways to peer inside the storage room, he caught sight of two horrifying corpses dead as statues!

Positioned left and right, about two paces apart, both had uniformly died by suicide through ghost possession.

Their bodies faced the wall, while their heads stared blankly back at Yu Guo...

Fang Sanyan crouched beside the corpse in the corridor, examining it closely.

"He has been dead for a long time, and rigor mortis has set in to a severe degree, but his arms and all ten fingers were forcefully snapped by someone after death.

Furthermore, his clothes are disheveled all over, as if someone searched him haphazardly.

I suspect this was done by Ji Li!"

Yu Guo walked out of the chilling storage room and shriveled his neck.

"Then why did Ji Li snap his ten fingers?"

A look of realization crossed Fang Sanyan's face. He began rummaging around the male corpse's body, and finally straightened up empty-handed.

"The phone is gone."

Yu Guo drew in a cold breath, roughly piecing together the sequence of events that had transpired here.

"Ji Li must have obtained some monumental clue. He came straight here, ignored the two corpses on either side, and singled out this male corpse.

This shows that Ji Li's objective at the time was extremely targeted, heading straight for the phone on the man..."

"And because the male corpse died of ghost-possessed suicide, his arms were bent and his ten fingers rigid.

Ji Li couldn't unlock it immediately, so he had no choice but to forcefully break his finger joints in an attempt to unlock the phone!

This implies that the phone belonging to this male corpse contains a crucial clue to survival, or perhaps even the direct path to survival!"

The first half of the explanation belonged to Yu Guo, but before he could finish, a man and a woman accompanied by a lovely little girl appeared behind Fang Sanyan.

The second half of the statement was precisely Tong Guan's addition!

Hearing this, Fang Sanyan turned his head to look at the newly arrived Tong Guan, then cast a deep glance at Xiao Qi.

"I wouldn't advise you to bring her here."

"Why?"

"Daddy!!!"

Just as their conversation ended, Xiao Qi suddenly broke free from Chang Nian's embrace and bolted straight into the open storage room.

Chang Nian squeezed in right after, beginning to soothe the weeping Xiao Qi.

Seeing this, Tong Guan let out a silent sigh inwardly, though his focus remained unshaken.

He looked at the male corpse before him, pulled the hotel phone from his pocket, and flipped to the page containing the directory.

"The killing rule still holds; it's just that our direction of deduction was wrong.

It's not that the staff members closest to us will die, but rather that any staff member who establishes a connection with the hotel phones in any way fulfills the conditions to be killed.

The source of the curse is our hotel phones!"

Neither Fang Sanyan nor Yu Guo knew that Tong Guan had actually recorded the list of staff members on his phone long ago.

At the time, Tong Guan had done so unintentionally, thinking it would help him better organize the killing sequence and keep a written record.

Never had he expected that it would seal the fate of so many staff members.

Fang Sanyan frowned, as this was a possibility he hadn't considered.

"Viewed that way, things actually become much simpler.

We only need to know what the true task content is, and we will have room to maneuver."

Yu Guo bit his lip on the side, harbouring a lingering concern: why haven't the ghosts made a move against them yet?

While they were conferring outside the door, Chang Nian gently patted Xiao Qi's back while casting her gaze toward the two corpses inside.

Under the dim light, she looked at the corpse of the middle-aged man on the right, compared it with the corpse of Xiao Qi's father on the left, and lowered her head in silence.

After a moment of contemplation, her head shot up abruptly.

She sprang to her feet and walked straight toward the male corpse on the right, her eyes locked firmly on the fingers of that corpse...