My Strange Tale Love Strategy Simulator

The black aura was extremely faint, so faint that it looked as if someone had drawn a stroke in the air with the tip of a calligraphy brush, and it dissipated before it could take shape.

Zhang Ying stood at the top of the stairs on the fourth floor, staring at the air in front of him that had returned to normal for two seconds.

He was quite certain that he hadn't activated his Ghost Eyes; the sudden appearance of the black mist before him made him freeze in place for a second or two.

Maybe I'm seeing things wrong?

People are indeed more prone to blurred vision when they are not fully awake or have just finished eating.

The hallway was already dimly lit, and the motion-activated lights on the fourth floor were intermittent, leaving only a dim light bulb in the corner to provide any illumination.

He thought for a moment, then activated his Eerie Eye. The world faded to gray-white.

He stood at the top of the fourth-floor stairwell, scanning the corridor inch by inch, the walls, the floor, and the tightly closed security doors of his neighbors' homes.

There was nothing there.

"It was a false alarm."

He turned off the eerie eye and confirmed that he had just been seeing things.

Then he put his hands in his pockets and continued down the stairs, his pace as unhurried as ever.

What he didn't notice was that on the ceiling of the fourth-floor corridor, a pair of dark footprints were slowly walking towards room 403.

The footprints were extremely faint, as if they had been printed with very thin ink. Each step was suspended upside down from the ceiling, moving in alternations, silently.

The footprints paused just above the door of room 403. Then, an extremely thin black line hung down from the ceiling and seeped into the top of the door crack.

The motion-activated light in the hallway flickered briefly before returning to darkness.

Zhang Ying took the same walk as usual.

Exit the north gate of the community, walk along the sidewalk to the next intersection, bypass the 24-hour convenience store, and then walk back through the south gate.

By the time Zhang Ying finished walking the last stretch of straight road, the twilight on the horizon had completely dissipated, and the streetlights were lighting up one after another overhead, casting his shadow long and short.

A promotional poster with the words "Good luck on the college entrance exam!" was pasted on the glass door of the convenience store, with a red background and yellow lettering, and the edges curled slightly in the night breeze.

He turned into the residential compound. The access control bar rose and fell again; there was no one in the guard booth, only a small fan blowing on an empty chair.

He glanced down at his phone; the timing was perfect, similar to his usual walk pace. He could go back upstairs and do another English practice test.

When he reached the bottom of Building 6, Zhang Ying habitually glanced at the buildings above him.

Many windows in each household were lit up, and the blue light from television screens flickered behind the curtains.

Everything seems to be normal.

The stairwell door was ajar, the latch not fully engaged, probably because the previous resident had been carrying too many things and had used their knee to push the door open.

He opened the iron gate, and the motion-activated light snapped on.

Two strollers and an old shoe rack were piled up in the first-floor hallway, with sneakers lying crookedly on the rack.

He walked around the shoe rack and started going upstairs.

A new notice for overdue water bills was posted on the wall at the corner of the second floor, and the edges of the paper still smelled of undried glue.

The motion-activated light on the third floor flickered without warning just as he stepped onto the last step, then suddenly went out, only to come back on half a second later, brighter than before.

He looked up at the lamp; inside the lampshade was a ring of brown, dead flying insects.

"The community facilities really need to be repaired." Zhang Ying shook his head helplessly.

Go up to the fourth floor.

The voice-activated light didn't flash; it stayed on steadily.

Just as he was about to turn around and head to the fifth floor, he caught a glimpse of something floating past him out of the corner of his eye.

A surge of stress, almost leaping out of his brain, caused his pupils to contract slightly, allowing him to precisely spot a few extremely fine black strands in front of him!

He stopped in his tracks.

It's not an illusion.

What I saw before my walk wasn't an illusion.

He stood still, activating his eerie vision towards the fourth-floor corridor!

The world faded to gray. The fourth-floor corridor was completely dark.

The yin energy is not just a few wisps, nor is it a clump!

The entire corridor was filled with water, from the ceiling to the floor, from one end of the corridor to the other. It was so thick that it almost pushed the paint off the walls!

The yin energy didn't seem to have just drifted in from elsewhere; it seemed to have been simmering here for a very long time, with each wisp slowly churning in mid-air.

There is only one source of yin energy.

Room 403.

Black, eerie energy seeped from every crack in the door, the keyhole, and the extremely thin gap between the door panel and the frame. It flowed down the security door, all the way to the ground, mixing with the black mist in the corridor.

Zhang Ying stood at the top of the stairs and stared at the door for a few seconds.

In the eerie, gray-white vision, the security door was no longer an ordinary metal block. It was like a valve that wasn't properly sealed, and on the other side, something was squeezing out eerie energy.

A family of four lived in room 403.

He had met the couple and their twins a few times; the two children were probably in elementary school age.

Zhang Ying turned the eerie eye off and on again to confirm that the source of the black energy had not changed.

He walked to door number 403, raised his hand, and knocked three times on the door with his knuckles.

"Hello, I'm from the community, here to survey residents' happiness index." After he finished speaking, he added, "Could you please open the door? I just want to ask a few simple questions."

He put his ear close to the door panel.

There were no footsteps. No pattering of slippers on the tiles as they approached. No children's laughter. No woman's routine wary question through the door, "Who is it?"

Of course, he had considered the possibility that he might be mistaken for a home burglar.

Before 8 p.m., a young man claiming to be a community worker appeared. Anyone would ask him a few questions through the door first.

Even if it's mistaken for a robbery, at least there will be some response inside.

A full-time housewife with two children, whose husband hasn't come home from get off work yet at this time of day, is probably in the living room supervising her children doing their homework or washing dishes in the kitchen.

The TV should be on, and the kids are chattering away by the coffee table.

There was no flickering blue light from the television coming through the crack in the door, no clattering of dishes or chopsticks, and none of the sounds one would expect from a room where someone lives.

Only black, sinister energy seeped out of the keyhole, bit by bit.

He was quite certain that he had seen the light on in room 403 when he went upstairs, which meant that someone should be inside.

Zhang Ying straightened up, kept the eerie eye on, and scanned the corners where the door and wall met again.

The yin energy did not spread beyond the corridor; the stairwell on the fifth floor was still clean, and no black energy was seeping out from the cracks in the doors of the other two apartments on the fourth floor.

He recalled the scene when he went out this evening.

I initially dismissed the wisp of black smoke drifting through the fourth-floor corridor as just an illusion. Perhaps something had already happened in room 403 by then.

He put his hand back on the door, but this time he didn't knock.

With my fingers spread, my entire palm pressed against the cold metal door, and I could feel that the temperature coming from my palm was a few degrees lower than that of a normal security door.

He lowered his voice and said through the crack in the door, "Is anyone home? If you hear me, you can knock on the wall."

There was still no response from inside the room; only deathly silence.

Zhang Ying frowned.

Could something have happened inside the house?