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Chapter 524 A Short, Weak Chapter: Sitting Up in a Startle from the Brink of Death

"How could he run so fast!" Xia Jianren stared wide-eyed in the direction Gu Mian had left.

In this cold and terrifying instance, everyone walked cautiously and tremblingly with every step. Only Gu Mian would suddenly lose his temper and leave behind a sentence like "I have something to do, I'll go for a while, you guys have fun" and then leave the group. When the exhausted people met him again, they found that he hadn't lost a single hair.

"Is he even human?!" Xia Jianren finally couldn't help but voice his long-held thoughts.

Cang Yue also looked like she'd seen a ghost: "To be honest, it doesn't seem like it."

Wang Chuan looked up and asked, "Shall we continue upwards?"

Cang Yue nodded: "Since Gu Mian has gone up, she has paved the way for us. We should be fine following her up."

Xia Jianren, however, was worried about something else: "What if the thunder doesn't explode and he targets us instead?"

This idea was so strong that he almost felt it was something that would happen in the future.

“We’ve come this far, there’s no need to go back,” Cang Yue said, looking up at the top of the stairs. “Let’s keep going up.”

It's safer to be where Gu Mian is—that's the experience she's gained from spending a few hours in the dungeon.

So the group continued upwards, their pace quickening compared to before. Fortunately, although the stairwell was dark, nothing strange popped out.

They quickly made their way up a few more floors. As Xia Jianren climbed the stairs, he thought about Gu Mian: "I don't know why he was able to come back alive after running away with the ghost... Oh right, you guys saw that thing by the roadside in the car, right? That thing that looked like a person, its clothes looked familiar!"

There was a two-second silence in the hallway before Wang Chuan spoke with a strange expression: "I saw it, that looks like the driver who took Gu Mian away..."

That driver is a ghost, there's no doubt about that.

"Is it really a ghost?" Xia Jianren shuddered as he stepped up the stairs. "How could a ghost be so well-known?"

He lay dead in the street, motionless, just like someone who had just been robbed; anyone who saw him would feel sorry for him.

If someone happens to be inspired to write poetry, they might even look at the ghost's corpse and utter a line like, "Behind the red gates, meat and wine go to waste, while on the road lie the bones of those frozen to death."

"What we know now is that the driver was a ghost. He drove off with someone, and in the end, the ghost disappeared, and the person came back." Cang Yue quickened her pace slightly, secretly marveling at how absurd the situation was.

Thinking of the driver lying on the roadside, Xia Jianren's teeth chattered: "Could it really be Gu Mian who did it?"

He would rather believe that the driver was driving too fast and threw him off the plane, rather than believe that Gu Mian had done something to the driver.

Wang Chuan has a strong ability to accept things: "The world is so big, there are all kinds of wonders. Maybe Gu Mian has some special items that can suppress ghosts. I think the chainsaw in his bag is very likely a precious and special item that can restrain ghosts."

“I think so too,” Cang Yue nodded. “If it were just a regular chainsaw, he wouldn’t carry it around all the time; he could just put it in his inventory.”

Gu Mian, who had no inventory, was unaware that other players were speculating about how rare his saw was. He moved quickly, reaching the thirteenth floor while the others were still slowly making their way up the stairs.

The building has a staircase on the east and west sides, and four elevators in pairs in the middle.

The eastern part of the thirteenth floor is Zhao Shuang's company. Gu Mian happened to come up from the east staircase. Directly opposite her was a locked office. To her left was the easternmost part of the floor, where there was a restroom.

Toilets have always been haunted places in horror movies and novels. Gu Mian walked to the left without hesitation. Right next to the toilet door was a huge mirror, which reflected Gu Mian's figure as she carried a flashlight.

Looking further inside, you'll see two small doors.

On the left is a pink stick figure wearing a skirt, and on the right is a black stick figure.

Gu Mian stood at the entrance of the gloomy women's restroom, lost in thought.

Although his gender was marked with a question mark, and he was even allowed into the girls' dormitory during the college entrance examination activities, one should still have morals.

He stood at the entrance to the gloomy place for a long time, waiting. However, five minutes passed, and nothing happened.

“That shouldn’t be the case,” Gu Mian shook the flashlight in her hand. “According to the tropes of horror novels, shouldn’t this be a scene where ‘a dark, black hand suddenly pushes him on the back, and he is pushed into the women’s restroom without noticing, and when he turns around in a panic, he finds that the restroom door has been closed and he can’t get out’?”

Unfortunately, no one intervened to push Gu Mian, who adhered to his moral principles, so he hasn't been able to enter the women's restroom yet.

Gu Mian pondered for a few seconds, then understood. He turned off the flashlight and continued to stand at the door waiting for the culprit.

A few minutes later, nothing happened.

Only the sound of the wind whistling through the window seemed to mock Gu Mian for standing alone in the darkness as punishment.

“Fine…” He resignedly turned on his flashlight, took a big step inside, “Anyway, I wasn’t exactly a moral person to begin with.”

The women's restroom was spotless, showing that the cleaning staff were very dedicated to their work. Gu Mian carefully checked all the stalls, but found nothing.

There was no little girl hiding in the toilet crying, no female ghost constantly washing her hair, and no principal skilled at climbing toilet partitions.

Finding nothing in the women's restroom, Gu Mian, still undeterred, explored the men's restroom as well, but still found nothing.

"There were no ghosts in the toilet?" Gu Mian muttered to herself as she left the toilet.

He quickly turned his attention to the office opposite the restroom.

Their company has three offices, each about 100 square meters in size. In addition, there is a small storage room next to the toilet and opposite the office, used to store unused tables, chairs and other items.

Although Gu Mian didn't bring his office key, these few small doors couldn't stop him.

Immediately, Cang Yue and the others, who had already reached the eleventh floor, heard a deafening noise coming from upstairs, as if someone had carried a motorcycle up and was starting it.

The people going up the stairs were all startled by the sound, and Xia Jianren almost slipped and fell down the stairs.

"What's that sound!" He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, his heart pounding.

Cang Yue and Wang Chuan were also startled, but they quickly calmed down.

Coco looked up, then at the people around her, and hesitated before speaking, "That sounds like a chainsaw. Is someone sawing something?"

Upon hearing this, the others immediately understood.

"Gu Mian?" Cang Yue had a headache. "Making such a loud noise, he's really not afraid of death... But what is he sawing at?"

Wang Chuan guessed, "I bet he didn't bring his keys."

"He's really something!" Xia Jianren said, quickly climbing a few steps amidst the sound of the saw. "Even if ghosts didn't know where we were, they would now. Making this noise makes us easy targets!"

"Let's hurry," Cang Yue said, quickly taking a few steps forward, "to make him behave himself."

Amidst the cacophony of chainsaw noise, the group grew bolder and climbed the stairs much faster.

When they arrived on the thirteenth floor, they ran into Gu Mian, who had just finished construction.

"You're here?" Gu Mian had just sawed open the small lock on the storage room when he saw several people with different expressions standing at the top of the stairs. He waved his arm and pointed to several offices across the way. "Look, I've opened them all."

Wang Chuan's eyebrows twitched: "But we have the key."

"It's okay, the result is the same anyway." Gu Mian said as she opened the door to the storage room. "Let's see what good stuff we can find here."

It's so short, so very short.
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(End of this chapter)