Recalling the young girl’s slender figure, ragged clothes, and timid gaze, Chi Ling sneered inwardly.
The kitten in his arms seemed to sense Chi Ling’s mood, fixing its amber eyes on him without blinking and letting out a milk-voiced meow.
“I’m fine.”
“Older brother Chi, are you talking to me?” Standing here, Ji Qing always felt a lingering dread in his heart.
“Yeah! We should head up.”
At the same time, Ji Qing heard the system prompt tone.
Happily, he opened his panel.
“Don’t just stand there.” Seizing the chance, Chi Ling gave Ji Qing’s head a playful ruffle.
The texture was indeed quite good. Chi Ling narrowed his eyes in satisfaction, stroking the cat in his arms.
He kept turning the panel over in his mind. He had just submitted a secret, trying to start from the side quests, but the system ruled it invalid. Chi Ling felt a bit puzzled.
However, he didn’t linger to ponder further since 315 and 316 hadn’t been explored yet.
As for 312, it was temporarily outside Chi Ling’s consideration; his intuition told him it was best not to step foot in there today.
“Hello, employee of the No. 75 Family Dispute Mediation Office here to mediate a dispute, is anyone home?” Knocking with one hand, Chi Ling repeated the phrase he had already said numerous times. He felt like a broken record at this point.
“Just a moment.”
Measuring the distance to the door with his eyes, Chi Ling took two steps back.
Not long after, a woman with long, straight hair and a white dress opened the door. “Please come in.”
Chi Ling calmly assessed his surroundings. The apartment was properly furnished, fresh, and elegant, carrying a strong sense of a female homeowner’s touch.
The female homeowner poured two cups of tea for them and set them down on the table.
“Thank you.” Chi Ling accepted it calmly, took a light sip, and set it down. Ji Qing, on the other hand, appeared somewhat uneasy.
Chi Ling nudged Ji Qing with his elbow and noticed that the younger man’s face was slightly flushed. It didn’t look like fear, but rather shyness.
Raising an eyebrow, Chi Ling swept his gaze around before returning it to the homeowner’s face. She was clear, elegant, gentle, and amiable. So this kid liked this type.
Chi Ling flashed a smile. “Do you have any troubles in your life recently?”
“Troubles?” The homeowner tilted her head slightly, frowning as if pondering a difficult question. After a long period of thought, she replied, “None.”
Just as her words finished, she glanced down at her wristwatch, a look of apologetic warmth surfacing on her face. “Apologies, it’s getting late, I should head to the hospital. However, if you’d like to keep chatting, I can spare a bit more time for you.”
“May I ask your name?”
“My name is Lin Jing.”
“Ms. Lin, do you have any physical discomfort lately?” Chi Ling probed further.
“No, I’m preparing for pregnancy recently, so I frequently go to the hospital for check-ups.” Lin Jing reached out to touch her abdomen as if a tiny new life truly resided within, a smile curling the corners of her lips while a halo of maternal radiance emanated from her.
A smile danced at the outer corners of Chi Ling’s eyes. Inadvertently glancing at Ji Qing, he felt as though he could hear a young man’s heart shattering into pieces.
“If Ms. Lin has a child, it will definitely be extremely cute.”
“Thank you.” The smile on Lin Jing’s face grew even wider.
From Lin Jing, they learned that 316 and the floors above were currently uninhabited, causing Chi Ling to temporarily shelve thoughts of further probing.
Keeping a close eye on the sky outside, Chi Ling noted it was clearly growing late. The sky beyond the windows was gradually darkening.
It was already past three o’clock, meaning nightfall would likely completely envelop them before four. Sure enough, tonight’s night phase would arrive an hour early.
Chi Ling used an excuse to leave, and Lin Jing also stated she had to head to the hospital. The three of them walked downstairs together, with Lin Jing taking the lead. Wearing flat shoes, she gripped the handrail with one hand while supporting her lower back with the other, walking at a very slow pace as she descended and melted into the growing shadows.
Chi Ling and Ji Qing returned to 313.
Chi Ling placed the kitten on the sofa and bought some food for it from the mall.
Only then did the two begin to eat. From ten in the morning until now, they hadn’t touched a single drop of water, and their nerves had remained tightly wound all day, leaving them genuinely exhausted.
Chi Ling rubbed his stomach, eyeing the bread and compressed biscuits resting on the table.
Sigh! These past few days had truly wronged his stomach. The mall only offered these meager supplies, making it difficult to get a decent meal.
Compared to Chi Ling, Ji Qing accepted this remarkably well, gnawing on his bread with gusto.
“Is Lin Jing your preferred type?”
Ji Qing nodded, sinking his teeth into the bread with even greater vigor.
With a melancholic look on his face, he muttered indistinctly, “Too bad she’s already married.”
What else did you expect if she wasn’t married? This was a horror game instance, not a dating sim. You’ve got some nerve, maybe I should call you older brother instead!
Suppressing his internal commentary, Chi Ling put on a smile and asked, “Then what do you think of Lin Ru?”
Ji Qing shuddered all over. “She’s the exact type of woman I fear most, completely the opposite extreme of Lin Jing.”
The opposite extreme?
Not necessarily.
Noncommittal, Chi Ling leaned back until he rested fully against the sofa. “Right, remember the jumping suicide sounds we talked about last night? There’s only one family living directly above us, and that jumping woman is probably your beloved Ms. Lin Jing.”
Reaching out to pat Ji Qing’s shoulder, Chi Ling added, “My man, I hope you stay steadfast.”
Turning around to head back to the bedroom, he left the massive living room suddenly empty, save for Ji Qing and the kitten on the sofa.
With a face full of tearful grievance, Ji Qing felt he couldn’t swallow the bread in his mouth anymore. The kitten kept meowing insistently toward the spot where Chi Ling had vanished, wanting Chi Ling to take it along too.
Just as he slipped off his jacket, Chi Ling heard the noise and stepped back out of the living room, scooping the kitten back into the bedroom.
“Almost forgot about you.”
Wait, didn’t you forget something else too?
Ji Qing heard a sharp clack as Chi Ling shut the door. He hurriedly chugged several mouthfuls of bottled water to force down the bread stuck in his throat.
Nervously glaring around his surroundings, Ji Qing felt as though indescribable monsters lurked within every shadow.
“Older brother Chi, I’m coming in too,” he said with a trembling voice.
Chi Ling set up a makeshift nest for the kitten using a jacket on the bedside table, a smile in his eyes as he gently stroked the cat’s head, an infinite wave of tenderness seemingly pooling in his gaze.
Not only Ji Qing, who had just stepped inside, but even the viewers in the live stream room were completely transfixed.
“He’s so gentle, I’m in love.”
“Really, as expected, I still like gentle people.”
“I’m drowning!” (Player No. 4311 tipped 500 points)
Yet the very next second, they witnessed Chi Ling’s ruthlessness. “What are you coming in for? I’m heading out again shortly. What, do you want to experience taking an afternoon nap only to stay wide awake all night? Or do you want to witness Ms. Lin Jing’s other side?”
Ji Qing: Wuwu! He’s so fierce.
Actually, as soon as dusk fell, the kitten had wanted to sleep, and now it could finally slumber in peace. Lulling the cat to sleep, Chi Ling cracked the door open and stepped out quietly, with Ji Qing trailing step-for-step behind him.
Having someone nearby made Ji Qing feel a bit less terrified, and he inched a little closer to Chi Ling, who shot him a look that successfully halted his intent to close the distance.
Half-joking, Chi Ling remarked, “Get away from me! I’m a taken man.”
“The person he’s talking about must be me, yes, we have a child together.”
“Stop dreaming, everyone, he’s talking about me.”
“No, it’s me.”
[Live stream room Journey, current viewer count: 13,892, likes: 10,887, favorites: 11,096, tips: 2,385.]
Male players lurking on the side watched the female viewers spamming comments crazily with dumbfounded expressions. Were they… here to chase idols?
Ji Qing chuckled, assuming Chi Ling was just joking like everyone else, though he retained some sense of propriety and drifted back to his previous spot.
Sitting down side by side, the two simultaneously pulled out their phones. Abruptly, the viewers in the live stream room lost all audio and grew deeply confused, spamming system maintenance tags.
After a few minutes, they realized these two were communicating face-to-face via their phones.
Audience: “…” Hey! Are you kidding me? We are honored whale-tier payers here! Is there anything we aren’t allowed to hear?
Actually, Ji Qing had set up a group chat today, pulling every single player inside the instance into it. Checking the member count, Chi Ling confirmed there were precisely twenty people in the chat once he joined.
It appeared the players who failed to secure jobs at the No. 75 Family Dispute Mediation Office were still alive as well.
This was night two, and the instance had yet to suffer any attrition, meaning everyone had yet to encounter true danger.
Why? Could it be that he had strayed from the main storyline? He possessed plenty of fragmented clues in his mind, but they hadn’t linked together yet.
Or perhaps, this time the main storyline had nothing to do with the Family Dispute Mediation Office… The moment that thought flashed through his mind, Chi Ling dismissed it.
Unlikely.
Sweeping his thoughts around, Chi Ling refocused his attention. Barring a few overly cowardly players, almost all the players in the group chat had scouted parts of the complex, yielding varying degrees of understanding about the estate.
[301 Wang Xumei: Thanks to @313 Chi Ling for sharing this method, giving us a pretext to visit and gather information.]
[303 Zhang Jing: 310 is a couple…]
[304 Huang Shaojie: 311 houses a family of three…]
Scanning through the messages, Chi Ling automatically filtered out the known information, though one particular message caught his interest.
[302 Liu Jun: 312 is a female living alone, very pretty, with a mole underneath her eye…]
This was a place he hadn’t visited today, and several other players had visited 312 as well, which Chi Ling reviewed with extra emphasis.
He had a premonition that the people who visited 312 today might face danger.
Aside from them, two other players’ updates also piqued his interest: the sole player assigned to Building 1, and the sole player assigned to Building 2.
[116 Gu Yuanzhou: 112, a female live streamer, quite pretty.]
[207 Xia Yue: Went to 208 today, opposite me lives a pair of sisters surnamed Lin.]
Chi Ling proactively added these two to inquire further. Xia Yue didn’t yield much extra information; she only knew her next-door neighbors were a pair of very close sisters. Additionally, room 210 upstairs was occupied by a single male college student with clean features who seemed fond of gaming. She also mentioned that no other units in that building appeared to be unoccupied.
Thanking her, Chi Ling reciprocated by sharing some information known only to himself.
Chi Ling still hoped to glean the appearance of the 112 female resident from Gu Yuanzhou.
Gu Yuanzhou described her at length, yet the image remained blurry in Chi Ling’s mind, save for the fact that she was extremely beautiful, almost as if Gu Yuanzhou himself couldn’t quite remember her facial features.
Abandoning hope of squeezing more details from Gu Yuanzhou, Chi Ling brought up one final, crucial piece of news.
The 112 female resident had a tear mole.