A hair's breadth.
Just a hair's breadth more.
And Ning Qiushui would have died at that horrifying woman's hands!
If Liu Chengfeng hadn't charged out with the blood jade at the crucial moment, risking his life to save him, Ning Qiushui would have died beyond all doubt!
"Thank you..."
Ning Qiushui sat cross-legged on the floor, one hand braced on his knee, panting.
That... had been a truly deadly moment!
Liu Chengfeng slapped at his violently shaking legs and shook his head:
"It should be me thanking you, bro..."
"If you hadn't brought me up to this room, I'd have been eaten by that horrifying woman sooner or later anyway!"
Having said that, he began to laugh.
It was the unconcealable joy of a man who had escaped death by a hair.
Liu Chengfeng sprawled on the floor and roared with laughter like a man who'd lost his mind.
It took a long while before he returned to normal.
"Right, bro... what about the others?"
Liu Chengfeng propped the old lady's body upright and made sure she was unhurt, then asked.
The latter's eyes flickered faintly.
"There's absolutely no going out for us now..."
"It's far too dangerous outside. Tomorrow we'll see if we can reach them from the third floor. If we truly can't—then we've done all that duty asks."
Toward the deaths of strangers, Ning Qiushui seemed rather indifferent.
He didn't mind pulling those people out of the fire, of course—especially since he had no quarrel with them.
But only on one condition... that he didn't endanger himself doing it.
After all, when he had asked who was willing to come with him to hunt down the truth, not one of them had stepped forward.
You take the risks, and everyone else reaps the reward sitting down—nobody alive is happy with that arrangement.
He was no saint of boundless mercy, come to ferry all living beings to salvation.
"Right, bro... I've got one more question."
Mostly recovered, Liu Chengfeng seemed to remember something.
"Ask."
"How did you... know that ghost-thing's killing rules?"
At that question, Ning Qiushui was silent in the darkness for a good while.
"Because before I boarded the bus, I received an anonymous letter."
"A letter?"
"Yes. The letter gave me a photograph and a few lines."
And then Ning Qiushui slowly recited those lines:
"In wind, light no lamp; in rain, burn no candle."
"By day, climb no stairs; by night, close no eyes."
At those four lines, Liu Chengfeng's eyes went wide, disbelief spreading over his face:
"Well, I'll be damned... it all matches!"
"Bro, that's incredible—you've got some hidden master watching your back!"
"And—and the photograph?"
Ning Qiushui glanced at him, something moving behind his eyes.
"You want to see it?"
Liu Chengfeng's face stiffened.
"What, is it... private?"
"If it's not convenient..."
Before he could finish, Ning Qiushui reached into his black plaid shirt, drew out a slightly yellowed photograph, and turned it to face him.
The moment Liu Chengfeng saw it, his pupils clenched tight!
"No way..."
In the moonlight, Liu Chengfeng saw that it was a photograph of a person.
And the person in the photo was no one else... it was him. Liu Chengfeng!
The two of them stared at each other across one thin photograph, and for a long time neither spoke.
Liu Chengfeng saw his own photo—but he didn't see the writing on its back.
Yes—on the back of that yellowed old photograph, there was a line in black ink—
【A friend worth making... but a walking Hundred Thousand Whys】
Liu Chengfeng reached out, wanting to take it and examine it properly, but Ning Qiushui withdrew the photo and smiled at him:
"Surprised, aren't you?"
"So was I."
"At first, I thought it was just a prank—or that someone had written the wrong addressee..."
"But when I woke up on that bus and saw you, I realized things were not as simple as I'd thought."
"A bus with no driver. That mysterious fog. That eerie Blood Door... and all of us on the bus."
"Behind all of it—every last bit of it—there has to be a hand we can't see, pulling the strings!"
Liu Chengfeng gave a bitter laugh.
"Bro... forgive my bluntness, but I doubt anyone in the real world has the power to pull all this off."
"You've seen what it's like out there."
"That is simply not something human strength can do."
Ning Qiushui fell silent.
He didn't press the argument further.
But that mysterious letter—so far, every single thing in it had come true.
The eerie Blood Door, the strange killing rules... and a friend he had never met who would risk his life to come save him.
It was a deeply frightening thing.
As if... someone had been watching him all along, from somewhere he couldn't see!
The night passed without another word.
The two of them had barely slept the first night to begin with, and after tension like this, once they finally came down from it, drowsiness rolled in like a tide.
Not until the next morning did shrill screams from the second floor break the villa's silence.
Clearly, someone else had died.
And what terrified the survivors on the second floor was not only that yet another person had died overnight—but that three people had gone missing!
Among the missing, besides Ning Qiushui, the pillar everyone leaned on, was the key figure of the task itself!
After all, the Blood Door's task was to care for the bedridden old woman for five days.
Now the goddamn old woman was gone—what the hell were they supposed to be caring for?
Listening to the voices from the second floor, Ning Qiushui and Liu Chengfeng learned that the one who had died in the night was the man called Bei Dao.
He had been eaten.
"Hic... hic..."
"They... why are they all gone..."
"Have they all already been..."
"Waah..."
Yan Youping's broken sobbing drifted up from below.
Liu Chengfeng shouted at the window, trying to send word down to them—but their voices seemed to be sealed inside the third floor. However Liu Chengfeng screamed himself hoarse, no one came to the rescue... er, no one heard.
"Enough. Stop howling."
Watching Liu Chengfeng refuse to give up, Ning Qiushui shook his head slightly.
Liu Chengfeng felt distinctly uncomfortable with Ning Qiushui's coldness.
"Bro, aren't you a doctor? Those are two living human beings down there. Just abandoning them like this—isn't that a bit too..."
Ning Qiushui closed his eyes and said:
"I may be a veterinarian, but in my practice there are three I do not save."
Liu Chengfeng blinked:
"Three you don't save? Which three?"