The red whistle blew alone in the night, its sound sometimes sharp, sometimes low, sometimes like a whisper, sometimes like a mournful cry…
whatever the tone, it was all eerie.
About half an hour later, the whistle suddenly stopped.
This sudden silence seemed to be brewing something, making it even more chilling.
Suddenly, from next door, room 410, came Sha Liu's heart-wrenching scream, accompanied by a sound like a beast's growl. No one could guess what was happening in the room.
"Help! Help me!" Sha Liu's shrill cries seemed insignificant compared to the beast's roar, and gradually, the sound of something being gnawed came from the room.
Hearing this chilling gnawing sound, Ke Xun suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. Wild beasts were different from ghosts; the pain and fear they brought were real, raw.
"It sounds like a canine," Mu Yiran said, maintaining his usual calm.
A metallic clanging sound came from the next room, as if Sha Liu was retaliating. Then the door opened, and through the small window of room 411, one could clearly see a blood-soaked Sha Liu staggering out, followed by a huge, ferocious wolf. Ke Xun rubbed his eyes, thinking the wolf looked somewhat like a dog.
"Help! Help!" Sha Liu cried out repeatedly, but her eyes were filled with despair. Ke Xun suddenly noticed that Sha Liu's left forearm seemed to be missing; blood was gushing from below the elbow.
The giant wolf didn't seem to want to kill its prey outright; its biting was more like toying with it. It opened its massive jaws, grabbed Sha Liu, and dragged her along, seemingly enjoying her screams.
Sha Liu finally knocked on the door of room 411, but this time she didn't cry for help; instead, she cried out, "You will all die! You will all die! No one will get out of here alive!"
Ke Xun and Mu Yiran ignored the curse outside, each standing in one of the two rooms, waiting for the strange phenomenon in room 411 to occur.
Sure enough, after the door opened, Ke Xun, standing in the living room, saw a woman walk out of the bedroom, wearing those conspicuous red slippers.
Although the scene was very strange, Ke Xun didn't want to miss any clues, staring intently at the woman.
The woman, however, seemed not to see Ke Xun, and walked naturally to the dresser, opened the last drawer, and took out a cloth bundle—Ke Xun recognized this bundle; he had opened it before when looking for the seal, but it only contained some old clothes, so he hadn't looked at it closely.
The woman seemed to find something in the bundle, looked at it, put it back, and then got up and went back to the bedroom.
When Ke Xun rushed back to the bedroom, the woman had disappeared.
The room returned to darkness.
The screams of Sha Liu continued outside the window, gradually fading into the distance, whether from the distance or from the weakening of Sha Liu's voice, it was unclear.
Something seemed to be left behind in the corridor outside the door; Ke Xun couldn't see clearly, but he could roughly guess it was a piece of Sha Liu's severed limb lying in a pool of blood.
"The whistle is gone." Mu Yiran's gaze fell on where the whistle had hung.
"Who took the whistle?" It couldn't have been that wolf-like beast.
The whistle had probably fulfilled its purpose, the purpose of some kind of summoned beast…
Almost two hours passed, and Sha Liu's occasional groans could still be heard. Of those who had died in the past few nights, Sha Liu had probably suffered the most painful death.
A whistle pierced the night sky, and once again, the familiar, hoarse voice of the old man rang out: "Wang Fu—you finally know to come home—"
…
When Ke Xun woke up, it was already broad daylight. Mu Yiran had already gotten up and left.
Ke Xun went outside and found that the bloodstains and severed limb from last night had been cleaned up.
In the courtyard, everyone stood around the body covered with a white sheet, including the now-mad Xinmiao, who was happily dancing around Sha Liu's corpse.
Old man Li Taiyong pulled Xinmiao aside and gave her a lollipop.
Wei Dong, who had been gagging nearby, saw Ke Xun and said, "Luckily you got up late; you didn't see the body parts scattered all over the building..."
Ke Xun frowned; although he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he could imagine it.
Qin Ci said, "I just don't understand why the corpse turned white, even the hair turned snow-white."
"It's because her knocking caused a backlash from this room," Zhu Haowen answered. "She lived in room 410, which was originally the room of that albino patient, and that woman also died of albinism, so her body mutated after she knocked on the door."
Wei Dong vomited again: "No wonder those body parts were so white..."
Finally, Sha Liu's body was carried out, the stretcher trembling, making people worry that a piece of limb might be left behind...
The doorman walked over, waving his keys: "Everyone's here, let's talk about 307." Finally,
it was time to talk about 307.
"Usually, 307 was lived by Lame Liu. Old Liu was a good man. Although he couldn't find a wife because of his leg injury, he was hardworking, capable, and had high moral character. He used the money he saved to support impoverished primary schools. Speaking of Old Liu, you can't forget Wangfu, the stray dog he took in and raised for seventeen or eighteen years. The two of them depended on each other for survival.
"When those bastards from the factory came to kick us out, they thought Old Liu was easy to talk to, so they picked on him and made him set an example by being the first to move out!" Seeing Lao Liu being shoved and bullied by those people, Wangfu panicked and bit the deputy factory director's leg. This caused a lot of trouble. Although he was wearing thick clothes and his leg wasn't broken, the deputy factory director was still furious…
"The deputy factory director didn't say anything at the time, but Wangfu went missing the next day, which terrified Lao Liu. Wangfu was like his own child to him. For days, Lao Liu searched for Wangfu day and night, until his voice became hoarse. Before, Wangfu would always rush out the moment it heard Lao Liu's whistle or the sound of Lao Liu banging his dog bowl…
"Several days later, someone finally found Wangfu between the tenement building and the outer cement wall. The old dog had been killed by those people, and they had chopped it into several pieces and thrown them away.
"We didn't dare tell Lao Liu, afraid he couldn't handle it. Lao Liu died without finding Wangfu; that was probably his unresolved issue."
It turned out that the person who wanted revenge wasn't Lao Liu, but Wangfu.
As for why the red whistle appeared in front of 410, it remains a mystery.
Could it be that Old Liu sensed the murderous aura emanating from 410 at the time? — Sha Liu's guidance to Qiu Lu was actually a death guidance; in other words, Sha Liu was the murderer who killed Qiu Lu.
"But how exactly did that dog appear in 410?" Wei Dong asked.
"Because the window outside 410 was open, and the dog's body was thrown into a narrow crack in the cement wall, so—Wang Fu's ghost still crawled up from there..." Ke Xun said.
The gatekeeper suddenly looked up. Because of the converging light from the rooftop, the entire tenement building was not very bright. In fact, the diameter of the courtyard opening was only five or six meters, and everyone felt like they were sealed in a small jar.
The gatekeeper gave a pleased look: "This looks promising! Maybe we can break ground tomorrow! You all should hurry up and eat! Breaking ground is a good thing! Let's all go out now!"
The gatekeeper then waved to Xinmiao: "Your screen window in 215 needs repair; we'll replace it with a new one in a couple of days!"
Xinmiao didn't quite understand, but just smiled at the gatekeeper.
No one was in the mood to eat. Qin Ci looked up: "Could it be that the groundbreaking has happened ahead of schedule?"
"NPCs shouldn't lie. We probably triggered some conditions that caused the groundbreaking to happen early." Mu Yiran couldn't figure out the reason either.
Wei Dong said: "If there really is a complete lockdown before the groundbreaking, we'll probably suffocate. But aren't these people afraid?"
Mu Yiran looked at Xinmiao not far away: "Xinmiao is already one of them, so she shouldn't be afraid."
Wei Dong suddenly noticed that Xinmiao had changed into a red dress: "Could it be... that the others living in this tenement building are all..."
"They're all people from the earth." Zhu Haowen answered directly.
"If it's really as the NPC says, that the groundbreaking will be completed tomorrow, then today will be the day of complete closure before the groundbreaking," Ke Xun analyzed the current situation. "If we can't find the seal today, we'll probably all be dead here."
There are six people left: Mu Yiran, Ke Xun, Wei Dong, Qin Ci, Zhu Haowen, and Elder Li Taiyong.
Elder Li Taiyong walked over: "I'll search with you."
But no one moved; they'd searched all the places they could, and now they didn't know where to start.
Zhu Haowen spoke first: "I have a feeling it's related to the courtyard entrance, since that's where the bamboo shoot tip would form."
"But that's not the rooftop; we probably won't be able to climb to the courtyard entrance," Qin Ci said doubtfully.
"When the deformation reaches a certain level, the window on our sixth-floor exterior wall will be like the top of the bamboo shoot. We should be able to do it by breaking the window glass!" Zhu Haowen offered his idea.
"There's no time to lose," Mu Yiran suddenly spoke up. "You guys go to the sixth floor, Ke Xun and I will go back to 411. There were some strange things happening in the room last night, maybe it's related to something big."
Ke Xun looked at the old man Li Taiyong: "Grandpa, you should come with us too, the sixth floor is too high."
So, the six people split into two groups, three to 616 and three to 411.
Mu Yiran asked Ke Xun along the way, "What strange things did you see last night?"
After all, they were in room 411 last night, and it might not be safe to discuss those strange things openly, so they left it for the daytime.
Ke Xun talked about the woman he saw yesterday, then suddenly looked at Mu Yiran: "Could it be that what you saw was different from what I saw?"
"No, it was different. I saw that woman walk from the living room into the bedroom, take out paper and pen, and start drawing her own portrait in front of the mirror." Mu Yiran said what he saw last night.
"So, that woman can paint?" Ke Xun thought the word "painting" was very sensitive in the context of art.
"Yes, it looks like a very professional sketch."
Old man Li Taiyong said directly, "I'm slow, you two go up and look for it first!"
So, the two went straight to 411, first opening the compartment under the dresser, and found the large cloth bundle inside. Sure enough, among several hand-knitted sweaters and trousers, they found a hand-sewn cloth satchel containing some letters.
With their lives at stake, they didn't care about privacy. The two sorted the letters and began to read them one by one.
Most of the letters were from abroad, and they gradually learned from them that the woman's husband had gone abroad to study oil painting a few years ago.
Due to financial reasons, the man hadn't returned to China for many years, and the woman lived alone in China with her son, residing in the Chunshun Dormitory 411 right before their eyes.
It was clear that the couple loved each other very much, and Ke Xun vaguely understood the meaning of the character "归" (return) on the desk.
The two read through the letters one by one. The bottom envelope didn't contain any letters, but a bunch of notes. Ke Xun emptied them all out and read them one by one. Most of them were written by the couple during their school days—the two seemed to be high school classmates and even deskmates, so they often passed notes to each other during class.