"Bzzzzzz—"
Inside the elevator as it continued descending, Ethan pressed himself against the inner wall. Something on his body kept trembling, but all of his attention was fixed on the steadily shrinking numbers.
The cold floor numbers flashed before his eyes one after another. Their blood-like color gradually filled his entire vision. At the same time, Ethan felt his consciousness growing blurrier and blurrier. The increasing sensation of weightlessness made it feel as though his whole body were floating in some unknown space.
I'm screwed…
That was the final thought that crossed his mind. Whatever that unknown thing was, it really had forced him into this elevator.
Just before Ethan completely lost consciousness, he saw the number jump one last time, stopping at -21. In the absolute silence, there was a click, and he saw the elevator doors open.
…
Against the dark, overcast sky, white specks drifted downward. Only when they came closer could he see that they were full, rounded snowflakes.
Ethan lowered his head and saw that the hard soles of his shoes were standing on a damp, filthy stone step. Mud spread thickly on both sides of the stairs, wet and sticky. The withered trees nearby had not yet accumulated snow, but many of them had already been bent by the cold wind.
Sometimes, when a person is faced with something impossible to understand—especially when one bizarre event follows another—they can't help but laugh.
Ethan drew a deep breath of the freezing air into his lungs and tugged at the corner of his mouth. He truly had no idea what kind of expression he was supposed to wear in the face of what was happening to him now.
A moment ago, it had still been early autumn.
Now, it was suddenly the dead of winter.
He didn't even know how he had gotten here.
His surroundings were completely unfamiliar. He seemed to be halfway up a mountain. Looking downward, he could see a long, muddy mountain path stretching into the distance.
The road going up had already come to an end. Directly in front of him stood an old building that looked like the entrance gate of a temple, though it was not large and appeared somewhat run-down.
And he was not alone.
Standing beside Ethan were five other people—three men and two women. They were all wearing modern clothes similar to his, and aside from two of them who had coats on, the other three were dressed just as lightly as Ethan.
"Tch… man, in a situation like this, you can still laugh?"
At that moment, a man in a shirt suddenly spoke to Ethan.
It was called a shirt, but in reality it had many pockets, and the material looked tough and practical. Unfortunately, it clearly did nothing against the current cold. As soon as he finished speaking, the man hurriedly pulled down his rolled-up sleeves and buttoned his shirt all the way up.
Ethan looked him over a few times. He was a young man in his twenties, wearing rectangular glasses. Though he was shivering from the cold, there was not the slightest trace of confusion or bewilderment on his face.
Clearly, he was different from Ethan.
He knew why they had appeared here.
"It suddenly got this cold, so I laughed from freezing. If I'd known, I would've worn more clothes."
Ethan glanced down at the clothes he had changed into before going out and replied casually.
He was currently wearing a short-sleeved shirt and long pants. Fortunately, he had put on shoes before leaving, so his ability to move wasn't limited.
"Yeah, no kidding. Who the hell knew we'd end up in—"
The man in the shirt waved his hand, about to say more, when a rustling sound suddenly came from nearby. One of the figures at the side seemed to want to move away from the group and took two steps backward.
But snow was still falling, and the ground was far slipperier than the person had expected. His foot slipped, and his body lurched violently, nearly falling into the muddy roadside. Fortunately, he managed to catch himself with both hands, and only after several seconds did he climb back up in an awkward, miserable state.
"No, wait, what are you—"
The shirted man cut himself off halfway, confusion showing in his eyes.
Ethan looked over as well.
It was a short-haired boy who looked to be no older than nineteen. The T-shirt on his upper body seemed to have already been soaked with sweat before he got here, while below he wore a pair of black pants. His hair was disheveled, and it was impossible to tell what he had gone through before arriving. At that moment, he was shivering violently in the cold wind.
Before anyone could react, the boy raised both muddy hands in panic, palms facing outward, as if trying to protect himself. Then he slowly backed farther away from the others.
"He's scared out of his mind."
A female voice spoke from nearby.
The one who spoke was a young woman with her hair tied back. She looked very young, but watched the scene expressionlessly.
When Ethan heard her words, he couldn't help but think of what he had gone through before arriving here. He, too, felt a strong unease toward everything unknown here; he just hadn't shown it on his face.
Thinking of it that way, perhaps this boy had encountered something similar, which was why he looked so terrified.
And aside from Ethan and the boy, the remaining four people all seemed to know something about the current situation.
"Looks like there's only one newcomer this time."
Among the six, the last man casually swept his gaze across everyone's faces before stopping on the frightened boy. He frowned.
"I'll explain the situation to him. Otherwise, he might get all of us killed."
The shirted man volunteered and stepped forward, only to see that the boy had already retreated to the edge of the steps. His expression changed, and he quickly said,
"Hey, kid, don't back up any farther. Falling down there won't be funny… We're victims too. Nobody's going to hurt you."
Those words clearly had some effect. The boy stopped, shivering as he asked,
"Where… where is this? Why did I suddenly appear here…?"
The air seemed to grow even colder. The snow was falling harder and harder, and the wind howled through the mountain woods. In weather like this, nobody looked particularly good. But Ethan noticed that none of them seemed ready to move yet.
It was as though…
everyone here cared a great deal about this newcomer.
"Before you came here, you should've been like the rest of us and entered an elevator too. Before it opened, it should've stopped at minus twenty-one, right?" The shirted man remained patient and didn't move any closer. "By the way, my name is Ryan. What's yours?"
At those words, the boy seemed to recall something horribly terrifying. His already pale face turned completely bloodless. He didn't answer the question at all, only muttering to himself,
"What… what is going on…?"
"Kid, you've run into a supernatural incident. That elevator is how this nightmare world picks its people."
Ryan spoke slowly, sounding helpless.
"Of course, the rest of us are the same… Once you enter that elevator, you have to make a trip through this world with ghosts in it, and then figure out how to stay alive and get back."
Ethan's gaze shifted slightly.
Ghosts?
He noticed the wariness in the shirted man's expression when he said the word.
Which meant that the things Ethan had seen earlier…
really were ghosts?
The apartment building he had lived in for years had been hiding that many ghosts… No, perhaps everything had started changing from the very moment that madman had appeared in his home.
From that moment on, everything seemed to have changed. The police had clearly arrived at his apartment, yet somehow time and space between them had misaligned—as though he had stepped into an almost identical world, a kind of mirrored version of his own.
Could it be…
that what these people had experienced was the same as what had happened to him?
Then what did the line of bloody text written on the elevator door actually mean?
Ethan's eyes shifted. At that moment, the others were all coldly watching the boy by the steps, and several of them had taken out their phones to check something.
Phones?
Ethan remembered that when he'd been inside the elevator, it had felt as though something on him had been vibrating constantly. He reached into his pocket…
He hadn't been carrying much—just his phone and the two identical keys.
But now, all he felt was the cold screen of his phone.
The two keys were gone.
Whether he had lost them or they had disappeared for some other reason, he had no idea.
He took out the phone and lit up the screen.
A crimson glow shone across his face. On the screen were the same familiar, unsettling blood-red words:
"Find the corpse of the vengeful ghost within the boundaries of Tuanshan Temple."
"This nightmare has only one death rule."
There were only two lines.
When he saw the second line, the sentence he had seen on the elevator door rose involuntarily in Ethan's mind:
Do not leave your residence for more than five minutes.
A death rule…
When he thought about what had happened after he violated that sentence, Ethan's heart gave a violent jolt. If he hadn't entered the elevator, he might truly have died.
At that moment, the bloody text on the phone screen spread like fresh blood, quickly turning the whole screen red—then, as if it had only been a hallucination, it returned to a normal interface.
The signal bars on his phone showed zero.
But the truly strange part was that when he had left home, it had been a little after eight in the evening, and it had been Monday.
Now, however, the phone displayed Wednesday, 4:00 PM.
Ethan took a deep breath. The questions in his mind only increased.
And what alarmed him most was this:
If in his world the killing rule had been not leaving home for more than five minutes…
then what was the rule here?
"AHHHHHH—!!!"
A shrill scream suddenly rang out.
Ethan immediately looked up. The sound came from the steps, where only the boy was standing. The next second, with a thud, the terrified boy fell face-first to the ground.
After that, it was as if something were dragging him.
His whole body was being pulled down toward the muddy path.
The boy clawed desperately at the ground, trying to grab onto anything, but the slick mud offered nothing to hold. His fingers raked through the soil mixed with fresh snow, leaving a string of twisted marks behind.
"Shit!"
Ryan's face changed instantly. Reacting with astonishing speed, he rushed forward and grabbed one of the boy's hands, adjusting his stance and bracing his feet on the ground. But in the very next moment…
his whole body was dragged downward as well.
The scene immediately fell into chaos.
The others, who had just been standing still, all turned pale. The woman who had earlier said the boy was scared witless decisively rushed over, seized his other hand, and pulled upward with all her strength.
Ethan's gaze passed over them—
and he suddenly saw it.
From a filthy pile of dirt beside the path, a long arm had stretched out. The arm was ghastly pale, one side covered in purple-red lividity, and at that very moment, it had latched onto one of the boy's feet.
"Hurry! Take off your shoe!"
The woman who had rushed over shouted sharply.
The boy snapped back to his senses and began kicking at his shoe with his other foot. The foot being grabbed seemed unable to move at all, stretched rigid and straight. After several frantic kicks, the shoe finally came loose.
In an instant, the boy's frail body was yanked back up the steps as though in a tug-of-war.
Ryan and the woman both staggered. After watching cautiously for a moment, they finally let go, allowing the boy to collapse on the ground and gasp heavily for breath.
Ethan walked over, and his pupils shrank.
The place where the arm had appeared was now empty.
More strangely still, even the shoe had vanished without a trace.
The shoe and the arm had both disappeared into thin air.
"Kid, can you still move?"
Ryan walked over to the boy and, without waiting for an answer, grabbed him and pulled him upright.
The boy could barely stand. Mud covered him from head to toe, and several exposed parts of his skin had been scraped. He looked utterly miserable.
But compared to his physical injuries, what had just happened had clearly struck his mind far harder. His whole body was trembling violently, his face pale as paper.
A cutting gust of wind swept across them, carrying a spray of fine snow that hit everyone's faces like sand.
"Let's go… If we stay here any longer, we might freeze to death before the ghosts even kill us."
The woman with her hair tied back looked grim.
Everyone nodded. No one said anything else. The shirted man supported the injured boy, and the group began walking toward the temple.
Ethan followed behind them, his mind constantly turning over what had just happened.
From the moment he saw the boy being grabbed by that hand, he had felt that the whole thing was very similar to what he himself had experienced earlier.
Just like when he had left his residence, the boy had likely triggered some kind of rule, which was why that arm had appeared…
Could it be…
that this world also had some kind of spatial boundary?
Ethan suddenly thought of the message on his phone:
"Find the corpse of the vengeful ghost within the boundaries of Tuanshan Temple."
Perhaps just now…
that boy had unknowingly stepped outside the boundaries of Tuanshan Temple.