They all had their eyes tightly shut, but their ears were pricked. Huddled together, they listened to Gu Mian lift the bedboard by himself. Since it was a single bed, it wasn’t difficult to lift. They heard him lift the bedboard, then a pause, and after several seconds, the sound of it being lowered back into place.
Immediately afterward, the three heard Gu Mian’s voice. "You can open your eyes now."
Only then did they slowly open their eyes. Qing Huan first narrowed his eyes to a slit, and only fully opened them with relief when he saw the bed was back in its original position.
Yuwen Hao hesitated before asking, "How is it?"
Gu Mian rubbed his chin, paused for several seconds, then said, "The deceased’s emotional state is currently stable."
Hearing this, their faces turned grim, and they all retreated several steps.
Qing Huan asked, "Is Lin Yue’er... really under there?"
Gu Mian nodded. "Yes. She was forcibly dragged in. The space underneath is so small that a layer of her skin was scraped off. It seems she was still alive for a while after being dragged in; there are fingernail marks under the bed. I didn’t see a ghost. Do you want to check?"
All three shivered. "No!"
Since they hadn’t managed to save her, there was no need for them to stay any longer.
When Yuwen Hao and the others emerged from Lin Yue’er’s apartment, their faces were deathly pale.
The second day wasn’t even over, and they had already lost one person. They still had more than eight days to endure.
After finally finishing everything and returning to the hotel, they found it impossible to sleep.
Huang Yu sat dejectedly on the sofa. "What are we going to do for the remaining eight days?"
Although he hadn’t witnessed the state of Lin Yue’er’s death, he could somewhat imagine it. The thought that his own death might be even more terrifying than Lin Yue’er’s made Huang Yu’s scalp tingle.
Yuwen Hao sat down beside him and comforted him, "Don’t lose heart. If we find the source of the curse, there might be a turning point. We can’t be too far from it now."
Huang Yu looked up. "But those ghosts are getting closer to us... Lin Yue’er died today, maybe someone else will die tomorrow... Can I really survive this..."
Yuwen Hao was momentarily speechless, clearly not knowing how to answer Huang Yu. He fell silent for a while before saying, "Let’s get some sleep first. We’ll deal with tomorrow’s matters tomorrow."
For now, aside from sleeping, there was nothing else to do.
Huang Yu agreed, but a gloomy and oppressive atmosphere still hung over them.
They had been rushing around for several hours, and it was already 3:45 in the morning.
Gu Mian, ignoring everyone else’s dejection, lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. When he opened his eyes again, the sun was already in the sky. He turned his head to look at the wall clock in the living room; it was already seven o’clock.
The others in the living room were slowly stirring and getting up. Gu Mian deliberately counted them; no one was missing.
However, everyone’s expression was a bit off, especially Yuwen Hao’s.
Last night, he had slept by the door of the other bedroom, but this morning, he had moved to the middle of the living room and had also closed that bedroom door.
Qing Huan looked at the out-of-sorts Yuwen Hao. "What’s wrong with you? Are you unwell?"
When Qing Huan was on watch, he saw Yuwen Hao tossing and turning as if unable to sleep. Not long after, Yuwen Hao got up to close the bedroom door and finally moved his bedding to the middle of the living room.
Actually, Qing Huan himself wasn’t feeling well either; after all, he hadn’t slept properly for two days. But Yuwen Hao’s current condition seemed more than just a little worse than his.
Yuwen Hao, his lips pale, nodded. "I feel a bit uneasy..."
"As soon as I lay down after we returned around midnight, I felt something was wrong. I was sleeping with my back to that bedroom door, and I kept feeling as if something in the bedroom was staring at me..."
"Later, I turned over to sleep facing the door... but then I always felt like something was right in front of my face... as if I’d see it the moment I opened my eyes."
"I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I closed the door... and moved to sleep in the middle of the room..."
"But even with the door closed and sleeping in the middle, whenever I closed my eyes, I always felt something staring at my back. So, I slept facing upwards..."
"Sleeping facing upwards... when I closed my eyes, I felt like something on the ceiling was looking right at me. This feeling of being watched grew even stronger this morning..."
It was because the ghosts were gradually approaching.
Qing Huan sucked in a cold breath. "Let’s get moving quickly. It’s best if we can investigate the source of the curse before tonight."
The ghosts were constantly approaching them; everyone knew this. So, they didn’t dawdle. Early in the morning, they got up and hurried out.
As they were leaving, the hotel owner gave them a strange look, probably wondering why one of the women was missing.
Gu Mian left Lin Yue’er’s body under the bed to avoid trouble, as there were also law enforcement police in this instance.
Gu Mian found a local map in the hotel. It marked the location of Mingliang Plastic Factory, which wasn’t far from their hotel.
Following the map, they soon saw the small factory.
In front of the plastic factory stood a large iron gate, secured with several loops of iron chain, likely to prevent workers from sneaking off during work hours.
Just behind the iron gate was a small building, like a guardhouse. Of course, guardhouses of that era weren’t so advanced.
It was just a small, rundown building with a large window facing the factory gate. Looking through it, they could see an old man dozing at a desk.
Qing Huan quickly walked to the gate and shook it slightly. "Sir!"
The dozing old man was startled awake by his voice. He lifted his head to look their way and only relaxed after getting a clear look at them, probably afraid his superiors had caught him slacking off.
The old man pushed himself up from the table and walked to the door of the guardhouse. "Who are you?"
Gu Mian looked at Yuwen Hao beside him. "Didn’t you come here yesterday? How come he doesn’t recognize you?"
Yuwen Hao shook his head slightly. "The man on duty yesterday wasn’t this old man. That one was much younger."
Mingliang Plastic Factory wasn’t large, with seventy or eighty employees at most. Everyone there should know each other, and Gu Mian’s group were clearly unfamiliar faces.
Qing Huan scratched his head. "We’re here to investigate something."
"Investigate something?" The old man said hesitantly, walking to the gate. "No one in our factory has done anything wrong."
His tone strongly suggested he suspected they were police.
"No," Qing Huan explained, "we’re here to investigate two people: Zhao Wen and Zhou Guanglei. You should know them, right?"
Both were employees of this plastic factory and died two years ago, killed by the Knocking Ghost.
Gu Mian suspected that the two of them had provoked something together two years ago, which led to them being targeted by the Knocking Ghost.
The old man’s expression turned peculiar upon hearing the two names. "I know them. They died a long time ago, two years back."
Qing Huan quickly nodded. "Yes, I know. We came to investigate their cases."
Hearing this, the old man’s expression grew even more peculiar. "Then you’ve asked the right person. I’m an old-timer at this factory. I’m the clearest about things that happened a few years ago. There are many details involved that outsiders wouldn’t know."