Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

Using the Blood Key, a door leading to a safe, enclosed area near 309 is opened. Sun Dajun, Green, Mamer, and Maeda Miwa, four individuals whose abilities are generally unsuitable for exploration, stay behind as a reserve team and hide in this enclosed area. Then, Gao Hai, Kaguya, and Maki are responsible for exploring, finding the location of 309, and locating the room hidden in an endless, distorted space.

At least for now, this action plan has not encountered any insurmountable problems.

The only thing to mention was that the black guy, Mamel, still wanted to go outside to investigate. However, at this critical moment when they were close to clearing the pass, Gao Hai really couldn't trust a guy he hadn't met much, so he asked him to stay put.

After closing the door, Gao Hai turned around and looked at the maze-like twisted walls and various broken pieces of furniture around him, which were indistinguishable from one another.

To this day, nothing unusual has emerged, no attacks have occurred, and no strange phenomena have taken place.

It's just that it's become quiet here.

The entire third floor fell into a deathly silence, nothing more.

What exactly is the reason for this change?

With rain this heavy, who the hell wants to continue living in this leaky, dilapidated place on the third floor? Let's go, let's go to Grandma's house for a while.

[By the way, what's wrong with that apartment in room 304? It stinks horribly! Is the toilet broken?]

What does this have to do with us? Just ignore it, don't bother with them. Why should we care about that scumbag family!

As he was thinking this, Gao Hai seemed to hear some people muttering and footsteps moving away.

Is it true that the third floor, being on the top floor, suffered severe leaks during heavy rain, causing many people to temporarily move out?

As Gao Hai slowly made his way through this twisted land, he soon heard more sounds. There were shouts and curses from those living in the houses, and the sound of water dripping from the roof and ceiling, making the whole house damp.

Everyone is hiding something.

Everyone is hiding.

They...they won't easily reveal themselves, they won't advance through this rain curtain, unless...

Kaguya, walking alongside, passed by a relatively dry area that, for some reason, hadn't been touched by many water droplets.

Just as she was about to step into that clean area, Gao Hai reached out and placed his hand on the girl's shoulder.

Kaguya, who had abruptly stopped, noticed that the tips of her shoes, which had been inserted into the dry area, suddenly developed cracks.

"Don't go near any dry places without water. Those things on the third floor haven't disappeared, they've just hidden themselves. They're avoiding water. Wherever there's no water, those things could be hiding."

While pulling Kaguya back, Takahashi spoke earnestly, looking at the dry area with lingering fear.

He couldn't see anything unusual about the place at all.

If he hadn't been deeply cursed, allowing him to occasionally see phantoms of the past and deduce how to respond, he would have been absolutely unable to stop Kaguya just now.

"So, the rule on the third floor now is that it's only safe where there's water?"

Maki frowned and whispered as she looked at Kaguya's cracked shoe tip.

"Not necessarily."

He looked ahead at Gao Hai, shook his head, and his tone became somewhat helpless.

"Hey?"

Before Maki could even voice her doubts, Takahashi had already pulled her behind a broken wall, and Kaguya reacted at the same time, hiding as well.

pat- pat-

The sound of splashing water quickly passed the spot where the three had just stood.

A soft, melodious female voice also rang out at that moment.

[A mouse has gotten into the house again...]

Chapter 56: The Key Clue That Was Overlooked

[3 hours and 20 minutes remaining until the end of Day 3]

[1 hour and 20 minutes until nightfall on the 3rd day]

The woman's voice didn't last long from its appearance to its disappearance.

But for the three people present, the appearance of this thing undoubtedly foreshadowed very bad news.

The strangeness that existed in 304 has begun to spread, and they have started to track it down.

"Why is she outside? Shouldn't she be inside room 304?"

Princess Zhenfei didn't quite understand the reason for this thing's existence.

"Maybe it's because we took something it felt it shouldn't have taken. Now that we've seen this one, another one is likely to appear as well. Let's go, we need to be careful, we might encounter something else next."

As Gao Hai said this, he reached out and tugged at the collar of his slightly damp clothes, pretending nothing was wrong as he continued forward.

Just by getting close to that woman, his clothes were automatically soaked with boiling water, and he began to suffer intense torment.

As the curse he endured deepened, the corruption of his beastly parents seemed to intensify, as if his very existence was gradually shifting towards that poor girl's position, becoming like her, subject to the torment and abuse of the parents' power.

In truth, everything I saw, heard, and felt was essentially from her perspective. And the final stage of this curse was that I was executed in the same way she died, experiencing the same pain as her. It was as if, through this curse, I was forced to experience her entire life, to live through it all.

The problem now is that only I am experiencing this situation, but Maki and Kaguya have already begun to show signs of being cursed. Will they also reach this stage? If so, how much time is left before they reach that stage?

These questions, for which there were no definitive answers, made Gao Hai somewhat uneasy.

"It would be great if we could just use that key to get to 309."

Empress Zhen sighed and said in a low voice.

"It's better not to have such delusions. We've already tried, and that key can't open this kind of key room. The current situation is the best we can do. The only remaining problem is finding it."

Kaguya, unusually talkative, gave Maki a very serious warning.

"Yes, yes, it's Great-Grandma. Hmm, there seems to be some noise up ahead too, be careful..."

Princess Zhenfei had just replied with a sentence when she noticed some strange noises.

The three hid again, and then they heard the sounds of commotion gradually approaching from a distance.

Come on, who's afraid of who? Hit me! If you chicken out, you're a coward, hahaha!

"Are you blind? What do you mean by throwing a bottle at my doorstep?"

[I can throw him wherever I want, come on, you want to fight? Come on, scared, huh? Hahahaha—]

The man, reeking of alcohol, was swearing loudly.

The angry neighbor dared not approach, because he knew the man was truly capable of violence and didn't care what would happen afterward.

Even if the police are called, once a fight breaks out, unless someone is seriously injured, it will only be considered mutual assault. This man never accepts mediation; once he enters the police station, his goal is to send both sides to detention. The man's thinking is simple: going to detention will make it easier for him to avoid his debt collectors for a few days. But for his neighbors, who have jobs and families to support, this stubborn man becomes utterly disgusting.

Another recurrence, an echo of the past.

However, this time, Gao Hai wasn't the only one who could hear these things.

"Those sounds just now... Haijun, have you been able to hear these sounds ever since you were cursed?"

Maki turned to look at Takahashi. The distorted sounds didn't seem to have much of an effect on her. In contrast, after actually experiencing what Takahashi was going through, her concern for him immediately deepened.

"Will the boiling water appear in the next stage, or will there be other stages in between?"

Kaguya's face was slightly pale, but she quickly calmed down and turned to Takahashi to ask.

"That's about it. Anyway, be careful from now on, this is not a good experience."

As Gao Hai spoke, he glanced at the two girls' slightly bulky school uniforms.

To prepare for the various reactions to the curse, both Maki and Kaguya placed multiple layers of toilet paper and towels under their clothes. This way, when the curse appeared out of nowhere upon contact with boiling water, they could absorb as much moisture as possible with the tissues and quickly remove it from their bodies, thus reducing the severity of the burns and slowing down the rate of its effects.

However, the exact effect of doing so can only be known when that moment actually arrives.

[Leave this family alone. This disgusting person, as long as it's not too outrageous, just ignore them.]

It's disgusting to look at; how can there be such people in the world?

More and more echoes are emerging, as if the toy, once taken away, has activated the memories of this twisted land.

[This family should just die out. His wife is disgusting too. She secretly picked vegetables from plant 303 a couple of days ago, and when she was discovered, she just trampled the vegetable patch.]

And their daughter, is she sick or something...? She acts like a fool all the time, she gets startled every time I ask her a question, and her mother even yells at me for talking to her daughter, she's completely insane!

Disgusted sounds, disgusted expressions, disgusted actions—no matter what the initial feelings were, they all eventually turned into the same disgust.

[Who cares? Last time, that young man from 309 tried to discipline their daughter, and look at the commotion he caused—he practically drove them away.]

[Ugh, I wish those debt collectors would stop banging on my door in the middle of the night. They even knocked on my door by mistake once.]

All the sounds were pieced together bit by bit, piecing together what had happened and creating a corner of the history of that apartment.

Faced with that repulsive couple, whom everyone feared being associated with and embroiled in conflict with, the initial conflicts gradually gave way to everyone ignoring them. It was as if this family didn't exist; whatever happened, no one paid attention. Once some things become habits, they start to be taken for granted. For example, everyone knew that this family's daughter had been suffering constant torment and abuse. But what did it have to do with me? What good would it do to get involved?

Only one young man, a newcomer who planned to make a name for himself in the big city and moved into this old apartment building to save money, couldn't bear to see the child's plight and took action.

But his good intentions only brought him endless trouble, eventually forcing him to move away. After this stark example, no one was willing to care about this family anymore, to the point that even their children imitated the adults' attitude, ignoring, insulting, and even bullying the child.

Everything is sliding towards the abyss.

The light gradually disappeared without a trace.

Or perhaps it never existed at all.

There was just one moment when she had the illusion that things would really change.

"call……"

Gao Hai had already taken off his clothes and was moving around shirtless.

His body was covered in burns; his skin turned red, blisters appeared, or entire chunks of flesh were burned off.

Even though the total number of these injuries is not yet large enough to cover the entire body like in the second playthrough, the pain that Gao Hai is enduring has already become so intense that it has begun to affect his mobility.

"Or not……"

Kaguya took a deep breath and removed her badge. The rescue team uniform she was wearing, which was almost finished, also disappeared, revealing her original school uniform.

"Are we still missing something? Or is that door really so well hidden that we still can't find it even after searching this area so many times?"

On the other side, Princess Zhenfei was also panting. She had already worn the badge once before, and only took it off when she was about to give up, but she still got nothing.

Wearing the rescue team's medals, and forming a rescue team uniform around their bodies, might allow them to find the entrance to 309. This was a possibility that Takami Maki and Kaguya considered, and it was also the reason they were trying it out.

But the result was not ideal.

Even with the rescue team badges on, they still couldn't find the location of 309.