The World Below Surface - Chapter 6

Unfortunately, there was no trouble on the bus. The further the bus drove, the newer the furnishings became, and by the time it reached its destination. Everyone got off; the vehicle had been refurbished and looked no different from an ordinary bus in the outside world.

It was clearly late at night when they got on the underground, and now the sun still hadn’t risen, and outside the windows were the lights of a late urban night.

“Get off.” The driver said, his voice still hoarse.

The back door slowly opened.

Lu Yan stepped in the middle and got out, and it was only when his feet hit the ground that he had the solid feeling that he had escaped from that other dimension.

The others did the same, first thankful that they had survived, then seeing the few people left, they felt a bit sad that the rabbit had died.

Fourteen people had initially entered the world, and now there were only six left, yet their real mission had yet to begin…

He Lou took several deep breaths to calm himself down.

This time, the mission must be hazardous! He must survive.

He cast a stealthy glance at Lu Yan, who had always acted foolishly and with unrealistic and naive fantasies.

Was he really as harmless as he appeared to be? Had he survived because of luck, mission protection, or something else?

Without waiting for them to say anything, Lu Yan took a moment to get his bearings and volunteered, “Thank you all so much. You’ve been busy all night, if you don’t mind, would you like to come and rest at my house? I will definitely treat you all well.”

He added, “I have three rooms at home, so I can still sleep in a squeeze. After all, it’s not very convenient to go and stay in a hotel when everyone is like this ……”

Coming out of the blood mist, everyone had a thin layer of plasma stuck to their bodies. Going to a hotel like this might get them alerted by the attendant.

He Lou and the others were supposed to go to Lu Yan’s home, so how could they refuse? Without even a token excuse, they agreed to go.

It was late at night, and there were only faint lights in and around the square. The night was nearly autumnal, and the cold wind was chilly.

Lu Yan took the initiative to walk at the front, saying as he went, “I’ve been interrupted before, so now I’d better finish my neighbour’s story. My upstairs neighbour ……”

The crowd struggled to get to the point from Lu Yan’s long-winded ramblings full of nonsense.

He had a new neighbour upstairs that he had never met before, and when he knocked to get acquainted, the other party wouldn’t open the door. Every night he could smell the strong smell of blood and the sound of chopping meat, which made Lu Yan sleepless.

At first, he only thought that his neighbour loved meat and had bought raw meat to dispose of, but the more he thought about it, the more wrong it became. What kind of raw meat could bleed so much? Why had he never heard the sound it made if it was an animal?

After discussing the matter with a few other neighbours, he was frightened by his imagination and decided to call the police. However, bizarrely, the police came to the house and found nothing. The other person’s place was clean, except for a bit of meat filling for dumplings in the fridge. Nothing of the blood, corpse …… he had imagined.

In front of the police, the neighbour said he just wanted to eat dumplings, needed to work during the day, and only at night to have time to chop the filling. He did not expect to cause a misunderstanding.

The police also did a bloodstain test, and the house proved clean.

It was a misunderstanding.

The neighbour was wearing a mask, and several other people could not see his face. When they saw his excellent attitude when he faced the police, they thought they had really misunderstood. When the police left, they took the initiative to apologise. They offered to buy him dinner, only for that neighbour to kick them out the door fiercely.

Lu Yan shook: “The man …… he was wearing a mask, and before he went out the door, he called out to me, and then ……”

Then he took off the mask, and underneath it was ……

“What is it?” Yellow Hair asked after him.

Lu Yan drifted off briefly and shook his head, “I can’t remember.”

As they spoke, they arrived at the block building where Lu Y lived. The crowd, whose attention had been drawn by Lu Yan’s conversation, did not notice that something was wrong with their shadows.

The street light was dull, and with it, their shadows were equally flat. Li Fang Yu clearly only had shoulder-length Hair, yet she was crouched on Li Fang Zhi’s back, and what appeared in her shadow was a woman with waist-length Hair.

When the wind blew, the shadow’s long hair fluttered and slowly melted into the shadow of this building.

“Here we are. I live here.”Stepping out of the lift, Lu Yan enthusiastically came to a door and pulled out his key to open it.

He Lou looked up at door number 304.

This meant his upstairs neighbour lived in 404.

In horror films, the number 4 is often used as a surrogate for horror, such as a car number, a mobile phone number, etc. He didn’t find it that unusual as he stood at the door and quickly looked at the house’s furnishings.

The house was large and relatively empty and looked like the premises of an ordinary single man’s residence. Li Fang Zhi looked at her wristwatch. It was now eleven fifty-two minutes.

They had finally arrived at the location before the time required by the mission.

And what would happen down there, none of them knew.

Lu Yankewise looked at the time and ah a sentence, “It’s so late; everyone is tired, right? I have two bathrooms at home, so why don’t we all discuss the order to take a shower? By the way, have you guys brought any clothes?”

The people looked at each other with blank faces.

Seeing this, Lu Yan said, “If you don’t mind, everyone wear mine? It’s just ……” His eyes glanced apologetically at the Li sisters.

Li Fang Zhi said, “Do you have clean pyjamas? I can go buy them tomorrow.”

Having already reached her destination, her tone reverted to her previous icy coldness.

Lu Yan’s previous performance had indeed made them lower their guard. Still, it had also made them look down on him involuntarily. The current Lu Yan was no more than an information provider in their eyes. The mission required them to stay for a whole week, and it was best for them to stay out of the flat to complete the mission rigorously, but there might be no loopholes to exploit.

Lu Yan good-naturedly moved towards the room, “I’ll look for it. There should be one.”

He still needed to remove his hat and mask. Under the shadow of his hat brim, his eyes were sad and joyless but inexplicably sarcastic.

Lu Yan rummaged through several sets of new, clean clothes and walked out.

Li Fang Zhi had already placed her sister on the sofa. She took the clothes and nodded in satisfaction, sweeping her gaze at everyone except He Lou: “We’ll go first.”

At that moment, the sound of chopping meat suddenly came from upstairs, extremely loud and evident in the silence of the night.

The man chopping the meat was so loud that one wondered if he was planning to chop up the board in one piece.

Everyone in the room looked up, trying to see what was going on upstairs through the ceiling. At the same time, the heavy, pungent smell of blood drifted in through the window.

Lu Yan reached out and pointed upstairs, the helplessness in his eyes unmistakable.

Yellow hair had no words to say: “So vigorous, it’s no wonder you suspected him before ……”

“No way, the police came and found nothing. But I still think something is wrong. These days, whenever I go to work or walk downstairs, I see a man standing at the window above my house.” Lu Yan sighed, “Although I couldn’t see his face, I could feel …… him glaring at me.”

He said so, and the others said smoothly, “It’s okay. We’re here.”

“There are so many people now. He wouldn’t dare do anything.”

It wasn’t until everyone had finished washing up that the sound of chopping meat died. The heavy smell of blood, which lingered in the nostrils, only gradually dissipated after the sun had risen.

Everyone hadn’t slept enough that night, and they weren’t in too good spirits when they got up.

Fortunately, Li Fang Yu was finally awake after a long slumber. For some reason, everyone didn’t suspect anything but was happy that she had awakened.

They sat down to breakfast together, He Lou and Li sisters lowering their voices to discuss things.

The time limit for completing the mission was one week. Although episodes of ghosts suddenly going mad and killing people maliciously could not be ruled out, the first day was usually not too dangerous.

As Lu Yan had said before, he and his neighbours had called the police and knocked on doors, and there was no danger. So He Lou was inclined to go upstairs and look during the first two days of protection.

“Who’s coming with me?” His eyes darted among the Leigh sisters and the three remaining men.

“It’s best if we can lure it away, and then we go in to investigate.”

Lu Yan seemed to remember something: “You guys said to lure him away, right? He seems to go out every third afternoon.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve been following him all along.” Lu Yan said.

After his bath last night, he had taken off his mask and was, unsurprisingly, a very handsome-looking man. Now he was smiling as he said this, sending chills down the crowd’s spines for no apparent reason.

“I’ve been watching him every day now, and that’s what I’ve come to after two weeks of observation. He’s not at home every third day from 2pm to 5pm and will drive to Ocean Park …… downtown,” Lu Yan said nonchalantly about his stalking observations.

He still looked harmless, obviously a bit cold-looking. Still, Lu Yan kept smiling as if he didn’t notice his abnormal behaviour.

Sure enough ……

He Lou even had a feeling in his heart that it had finally come.

Often faced with these bizarre events, how could Lu Yan have remained a cowardly rotten person? There was bound to be something abnormal about him, and that was normal.

“So, let’s go ahead and knock on the door and ask today.” He went down with determination, “Li Fang Yu, are you better now?”

Li Fang Yu had been a lot quieter since she woke up. What no one else noticed was that her hair had grown longer. She raised her eyes and said lightly, “Yes.”

No one else seemed to see the difference in her attitude.

“Huang Mao, you go too.”

Huang Mao was just about to make an excuse when Li Fang Zhi’s eyes glared at him sharply for a split second. Huang Mao swallowed and had to agree.

If Li Fang Zhi didn’t say anything, He Lou might still protect him, but if Li Fang Zhi did, He Lou would definitely watch him die.

With Li Fang Yu around, Huang Mao, who was under Li Fang Zhi’s control, could not escape He Lou’s grasp. Lu Yan thought to himself.

At around ten o’clock, the group went upstairs. Lu Yan raised his hand and knocked on the door.

“Sir, are you home? I’m the neighbour who lives downstairs from you.”

“Sir?”

For some reason, this door gave him an extraordinarily chilly feeling. Obviously, it was not yet the cold season, but he reached out and knocked on it only to feel a bone-chilling gloom.

The smell of blood seemed even more potent.

After knocking for half a day, no one answered, as if no one had ever lived in this room.

The opposite door creaked open, and a bald head came out of the doorway, grinning when he saw Lu Yan and opened the door: “Little Lu, you’ve come to settle scores with this guy again?”

Lu Yan smiled bitterly, “Yes, did you hear that last night? It was so noisy that I didn’t sleep.”

The bald man glared at the door before whispering, “Forget it; just put up with it. This guy is evil; something is not right.” He saw the people behind Lu Yan and asked, “By the way, who are these people?”

“They’re all my friends visiting.” Lu Yan said.

“Oh, oh, friends, okay.” The big man scratched his head, “I advise you not to expect to tell him to change his ways. Anyway, this old man is planning to move. Motherfucker, the noise every day is annoying as hell!”

“Move?” Lu Yan seemed to be inspired.

“Yeah, I’ve got my house all figured out. I’m moving out next week. I’ll move out next week”. The old man said, “If you want to move, move quickly, I hear there’s no one living across the street from my new house.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.” Lu Yan said.

The old man closed the door, and Lu Yan introduced him to the others, saying, “That man is called Guan Yun Long (关云龙). He has been taking care of me since he came here. If he really moves out, I really feel sorry for him. I’m thinking about moving out too.”

As he said that, he went back to the door and knocked again, but as expected, the door was still not open.

“Why don’t you try knocking on the door too?” Lu Yan knocked for a while and shook his hand off.

Yellow Hair said, “I’ll do it.”

He used the exact words as Lu Yan, and after knocking for a while, he somehow got up and pressed against the cat’s eye to see.

The image in the cat’s eye was white with some red threads, he didn’t know what it was, but he felt a palpitation for no reason, and He Lou yanked the other man back: “Don’t you want to die?”

Only then did Huang Mao shake his head off, seemingly surprised at his sudden stupidity.

When they returned to Lu Yan’s place, He Lou asked, “What did you see just now?”

“I didn’t see anything, just …… a white patch.” Yellow hair suddenly shivered.

“Forget it.” He Lou twisted his head and asked, “When will he go to Ocean Park again?”

Lu Yan calculated the time and said with certainty, “It’s today.”