Strange game designer.

Chapter 862 Time is the most delicious food

"Reached?"

The higher Xue Se went, the darker it became. Even though the motion-activated lights were working perfectly, he felt that the light was being blocked by something more peculiar.

"almost."

After rounding a corner, Li Zhi dared not go any further, as if he were about to be executed, each step extremely difficult: "This is it."

The walls still show faint traces of fire damage, but strangely, there are fine red lines on the walls, like new flesh growing from a scab on a wound. The ends of those red lines all point to the same place.

"This is the room where the old lady in red was burned down. The residents of the building don't dare to go near here, not even during the day, let alone at night. When they pass the thirteenth floor, they unconsciously speed up." Li Zhi was genuinely resistant, but he was being held by Xue Se and had no way to leave.

Moving his feet, Xue Se was the first to enter the corridor. The surrounding environment was completely different from the information that Dr. Gao had sent him. It wasn't that he suspected Dr. Gao of deceiving him, but he just felt that this room seemed to have a real life and could grow on its own.

The wind in the corridor was cold and damp, blowing rhythmically, like a person's breathing.

Unconsciously, Xue Se found herself at the door of the old lady's room. The door and frame had been newly replaced, which looked out of place against the dark walls.

“The residents in the building were afraid that something would run out of this room, so they asked the neighborhood committee to install a new door. But according to the previous residents on this floor, ever since the door was installed, they can hear the door opening at midnight every night, and something crawls out.” Li Zhi’s voice was very low, and he was taking a deep breath.

Are there any other residents on this floor?

"Guess why this room is called the 'Man-Eating Room'? The residents on the same floor of this building moved out a long time ago. Some of them live alone and have no contact with the outside world. I guess if they went missing, no one would know." After taking the medication, Li Zhi's body was still weak, but his mind was working faster than before.

The information left by Dr. Gao was inside the house. Xue Se had already arrived at the door and had no reason to leave. But when he looked at the lock, the small keyhole seemed to grow larger and larger in his eyes, as if it was about to swallow him up completely.

"It's really annoying." Xue Se wasn't afraid. When he encountered things beyond his control or the unknown, a strong destructive urge would burst forth in his mind. He had been controlling that impulse, using the rules of the police and Xin Hu to restrain himself.

"Someone's coming, officer," Old Ma whispered a warning. The two men and one horse retreated to the emergency exit, peering down the corridor through the crack in the door.

The elevator doors opened, and an arm stretched out, wearing a wedding ring and with scratches on the wrist. She looked like a fish with its mouth hooked, her feet touching the ground and her arm swinging slowly.

The woman looked to be in her early twenties. She had a camera hanging around her neck, and her crossbody bag was zipped up, with a half-finished report inside.

His pants were tattered and covered in paper dust; his hair hung down, revealing grains of rice and congealed bloodstains.

"Reporter Bai?" Old Ma had seen her before: "I saw this reporter when Dr. Gao took me to the court. She was very interested in the gardener's case."

The woman's body seemed to float in the corridor. The elevator doors did not close. Behind her followed a series of withered and aged faces, their eyes, filled with whites, were smiling. Five or six elderly people were worshipping her and scattering paper money along the path she walked.

As the group walked, the motion-activated lights slowly went out. They seemed like worms wriggling in the darkness, stopping in front of the house where a fire had occurred.

The elderly people crowded together, muttering something, and then grabbed the woman's head and slammed it against the door lock.

A rattling sound came from the keyhole as the door was opened from the inside. They dragged the woman into the house; their wrinkled faces were more frightening than ghosts. Xue Se released the safety on his sidearm and pushed the security door open a crack.

"What are you going to do?"

"If we don't help, that reporter might get into trouble."

"You can actually save people?"

"Nonsense! That's what I do!" Xue Se was speechless. These criminals and suspects actually thought they were the same as them.

Arriving at the door with a gun, Xue Se found it closed and there were no cries for help from inside. It was so quiet that it was as if everything she had seen before was an illusion.

"Don't be impulsive, those guys are strange, really strange." Li Zhi was trembling violently, perhaps because he was scared, or perhaps because the effects of the drug were wearing off.

"You think I can't beat a bunch of old men and women?" Xue Se stared at the keyhole, where the remaining bloodstains seemed to be sucked clean bit by bit. The unease in his heart made his destructive desires burn fiercely. He imitated the old men, chanting incantations, and then grabbed Old Ma and brought him to the vicinity of the keyhole.

“Why me?”

"Because you talk too much."

A sound like a stream came on, unexpectedly pleasant to the ear; just listening to it made me feel younger.

As the lock turned, Old Ma's muscles atrophied slightly. Before he could even cry out, the door slowly opened from the inside.

A dark red color came into Xue Se's eyes. This room had been burned down once, but now it was completely undetectable. She felt no pity for its pitiful state, but was shocked by its cruelty.

On the walls, ceilings, and windowsills, wherever you could see, there were nails to people. Their skin was wrinkled, their heads were made into clocks that ran backwards, their facial features were used as clock faces, and their entire faces were distorted into blood-red planes. Black hands ticked across the numbers on their faces.

"How could this happen?" Xue Se even saw the police officers who had come to investigate the Death Time community before in the lobby. His family said he hadn't been home for a long time.

"A person turned into a clock! What kind of heartless madman would do such a thing!" Xue Se had solved many major cases in Shanghai, but this was the first time he had ever encountered such a cruel scene.

The ticking of time mingled with the sound of blood dripping from the corpse, frantically drilling into his brain. Xue Se felt as if he were being pulled into a giant vortex, surrounded by faces made into clock faces. His expression gradually turned ferocious, and he suddenly raised his gun, pointing it in a certain direction in the room: "If you keep playing tricks, I'll smash every single head in this room!"

Xue Se's voice was loud; he was barely able to suppress the destructive urge surging within him.

"Bloodstained, I didn't expect you to have forgotten everything." A voice came from one of the heads.

"Who's speaking!" Xue Se pinpointed the head, strode forward, and blocked the moving pointer with the muzzle of his gun.

"I am Time, you fools. You have all forgotten, but Time Blood City still exists. As long as I remember this moment, I will not be lost like you." The voice came from another head, and all the corpses in the room seemed to share the same soul.

(End of this chapter)