Wan Jie Hospice Care Company

As soon as Xiang Yu's foot touched the ground on the fourth floor, he froze.

wrong.

The enormous door behind him closed silently. Then, in the instant he turned to look, the door, frame and all, sank into the wall, returning to its smooth, clean state as if it had never existed.

There's no way out.

In the distance, a huge inflatable castle stood quietly, very full and bulging, with colorful flags on top that remained motionless.

A huge inflatable castle stood in the distance, and the floor beneath their feet had become very soft and bouncy, unlike a tiled floor at all.

"The entire fourth floor is an inflatable playground?" He lightly jumped twice on the spot, and the ground undulated with his movements.

He immediately used his "Knowledgeable" ability to scan his surroundings, and was immediately confused by the pop-up messages.

【? ? ? 】

Countless bright red dots appeared out of thin air in his field of vision, densely packed.

There are question marks everywhere... which proves that the entire fourth floor is eerie!

Xiang Yu's expression turned serious, and at that moment, he noticed that the fat boss next to him looked extremely unnatural.

On that greasy, chubby face, the color surged between pale and flushed, and large beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, rolling down his cheeks and hitting the soft, springy ground.

"What's wrong with you?" An Ling, who was the most observant, was the first to notice something was wrong. She stared at the fat boss's face, which kept changing color, and asked.

"I, I'm fine..." The fat boss raised his hand and wiped away his sweat haphazardly, his voice trembling, "It's a little hot."

"Will it still be hot in winter?" The man in the paper clothes also sensed something was wrong. Ever since they got to the fourth floor, this fat man had been acting very strangely.

"I...I..."

The fat boss took two steps back, and faced with three pairs of eyes fixed on him, his tongue began to tie itself in knots.

"No, it's nothing, it's alright..."

His gaze began to glaze over, as if he were listening to something inaudible to others.

"You have already..."

"You have become a part of this place!"

"Okay, that's enough, is that enough?"

He suddenly raised his voice, the usual flattery and slickness gone, replaced by an almost manic frenzy.

"I...I..."

"I've brought them here, can you let me go now?"

He roared at the void, and no one knew who he was talking to.

In just a few breaths, the pain on the fat boss's face suddenly vanished.

Instead, there was an almost ecstatic excitement of receiving some kind of promise.

His eyes lit up, and without saying a word, he took off running.

"Stop right there!"

The man in the paper clothes grabbed the fat boss's leg and struggled to stop him from running away.

"What are you doing? Get out of here!" the fat boss shouted. "I... I was forced into this. Do you think I wanted this?"

"This entire shopping mall is haunted! It wants me to stay open; it wants to eat people!"

"Now that you know what's inside, it won't let you out! And I won't let you out either!" The fat shop owner kicked the man in the paper clothes away. "If this mall can't devour people, it will come after me, and I'll die too!"

"I just want to live... Get out of here!"

After saying that, the fat boss scrambled away from the spot, while Xiang Yu, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke up: "What happened to that master? What's going on with him?"

"Master? Hahhh, how would I know what he is? He said as long as I feed a few people to this mall regularly, I can survive... I don't care about the rest!" The fat boss roared as he ran, "A perfectly good mall, and now it's turned into a ghost town!"

"That bitch thought she was getting closer to the master and was trying to scam me out of my money, but she's just an idiot, she doesn't know anything!"

"Now look what's happened! She's become a mouthpiece, and you're all stuck here too, here to inspect! Here to stop me from opening!"

"Die, all of you! Die! Hahahahahahaha!!!"

"..." Xiang Yu didn't reply, but just stared at the emergency exit not far away.

The fat boss was running towards the emergency exit without looking back; he would be out of there in a few more seconds.

"What are you waiting for? Hurry up and catch up with him!" The man in the paper clothes was about to stop the fat boss, but Xiang Yu put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

Xiang Yu shook his head.

He can't escape.

Xiang Yu stared at the green-glowing emergency exit, a question mark appearing in his pupils: "???"

How could an exit possibly have a grade?

This only proves that... this so-called exit is still just one part of the mystery.

He only thought he could escape; in reality, he had already become part of the supernatural.

He wasn't running towards a way to survive, but towards swallowing his own mouth.

The fat boss plunged into the door, his figure swallowed up by the thick darkness behind it.

There were no screams, no struggles, not a single echo.

"Ugh! We've been tricked!" The man in the paper clothes stomped his foot, looking regretful. "I should have killed that fatso sooner!"

"What? What do you know?" Xiang Yu wasn't flustered at all, but asked the man in paper clothes with great interest.

"I originally came to see my younger brother," the man in the paper clothes sighed. "My brother is a construction worker, and this commercial center was built by his construction team."

"But after the project was completed, eight people inexplicably disappeared from the construction team. Nobody knew where they went, so the construction team could only announce that the workers had gone missing..."

"This didn't delay the mall's renovation and opening. The mall opened a year after the disappearance case... But I just couldn't let go of my brother's situation. I searched for him like crazy during this time, but I didn't find a single clue."

"At that point, I started to suspect that my brother might have been silenced because he knew some secrets related to the project. So I decided to go back to the mall to look for him, hoping to find some clues that I had overlooked at the time."

"I searched for months, and during those months I came to the corners of the mall every day to look for clues, but strangely, there are many strange things about this mall. For example, there is no cleaning service, but the floor is always clean; the positions of some stores always change subtly, as if... this mall is alive."

"The more I investigated, the more frightened I became, especially after hearing that there were more and more missing persons cases in this shopping mall. I felt increasingly uncertain and was preparing to temporarily stop the investigation..." The man in the paper clothes sighed. "But things didn't go as planned. On the very night I was about to stop the investigation, I found that I couldn't get out."

The man in the paper clothes told him everything he knew. Xiang Yu frowned slightly and thought for a while, but found no logical errors.

"No wonder you hate this boss so much. Do you think your brother's disappearance is related to him?" Xiang Yu asked.

"Originally, I only hated the dog because of the house; I hated everything about this mall, so I hated the mall owner too." The man in the paper clothes gritted his teeth. "But now, I only regret not discovering this sooner. The root of all evil is indeed this fat bastard!"

"...Not necessarily. Although this fat guy isn't a good person either, given his intelligence, he shouldn't be capable of hatching any grand conspiracy," Xiang Yu said. "He's probably just the knife in the devil's hand."

"So what?" The man in the paper clothes seemed to have all his strength drained away, and he slumped down on the soft, bouncy ground, his whole body deflated. "The clues are gone, the door is gone, and the people have escaped... We're just going to be trapped here and die."

"If you didn't say anything just now," Xiang Yu looked at him, but there was no despair in her eyes, "then we are indeed in a dead end."

He paused.

"But those eight missing people you just mentioned have given me a little something to think about."

"Huh?" The man in the paper clothes suddenly looked up, completely bewildered. "Th-those are all completely unrelated things... what could possibly be connected between them?"

On the surface, there is indeed no contact.

Xiang Yu slowly took two steps, the soft, springy ground undulating silently beneath his feet. His gaze passed over the paper-clothed man, over the silent inflatable castle, and landed in some unseen place.

"But the long story you just told only made one thing clear to me."

He stopped, turned around, and spoke slowly and deliberately.

"The earliest disappearance of a living person in this shopping mall did not occur after it opened."

"Those who went missing were construction workers."