Chapter 26: Zhong Ting and Zhong Yi, Telepathic Connection
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“Old man, you really ought to stop smiling. The more you smile, the more nervous I get.”
Unable to bear the landlord’s unsettling grin, Ji Yan finally spoke.
“Finish it as soon as possible, then get some rest.”
“When you pass the eighth floor, don’t linger, and don’t run around. There are plenty of places in this apartment building that someone who has only just arrived has no business going.”
“Even with that badge hanging from your chest, it’s nothing more than decoration to certain residents. It won’t protect you.”
The landlord said no more. After giving him those final instructions, he turned and left.
Clutching the key, Ji Yan followed him out of the room and hurried upstairs.
At night, the apartment was frightening not merely because of its atmosphere. Countless indistinct, uncanny shadows wandered through the corridors and stairwells.
Some of these nocturnal entities could be reasoned with. They might even trigger quests, and if you completed them, they would not make things difficult for you.
Those with bad tempers were another matter. Their quests would never trigger. After only a few exchanges, they would simply open their mouths and start eating.
That was why players without nighttime privileges would never dare venture out after dark, even if they were given a hundred times the courage.
Even those with privileges did not dare act recklessly.
The privilege badge worked against most of the strange entities, but a small number of the truly terrifying ones refused to acknowledge such rules.
They were like viruses and Trojan horses that had slipped through the cracks. None of the apartment’s protective mechanisms could restrain them.
Ji Yan left Room 404 and raced up the stairwell, unwilling to linger on even a single floor.
Quite a few nocturnal entities also wandered through the stairwell.
Some of them even ignored his privilege badge and were capable of interacting with him.
Ji Yan paid them no attention. His mind held only one thought: reach the rooftop.
By the time he reached the seventh floor, the shadows in the stairwell had grown fewer, but all kinds of horrifying sounds echoed through the darkness.
On the eighth floor, the corridor was black as ink. He could not see either end of it. The oppressive silence sent chills through him.
Come to think of it, he seemed to have connections on both the seventh and eighth floors.
As for the resident on the eighth floor, that was another matter.
Liu Nianqing on the seventh floor owed him a considerable debt of gratitude. He simply had no idea how much influence it carried within the apartment.
Ji Yan had already made up his mind.
If he encountered any danger on the rooftop that he could not handle, he would run straight to Liu Nianqing’s room and leave the problem for it to solve.
But when he reached the rooftop, he discovered that the door was already open.
“Who unlocked this?” Ji Yan stared at the open lock, unable to tell whether it had been opened by a player or an eerie entity.
He drew his nail hammer and cautiously stepped onto the rooftop.
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On the apartment building’s rooftop, the icy wind howled, cutting straight to the bone.
A blood-red crescent moon hung high in the night sky.
Ji Yan glanced to either side. The next moment, he noticed a faint movement behind him. He spun around and caught a brick flying toward him with pinpoint accuracy.
When he looked up, he saw a twin-tailed girl not far away, her face pale with shock.
“Oh no! The ambush failed!”
“Little sis, run!”
“Why are you running? He’s a player, not an entity.”
The girl with a single ponytail grabbed her fleeing sister and scolded her irritably.
Ji Yan crushed the brick in his hand and dusted off his palms.
Looking closely at the two girls, he realized they were twins. Even their clothes were identical; only their hairstyles distinguished them.
“You should be glad I’m a player. If I were an entity, you wouldn’t have had any chance to run.”
The older sister said helplessly, “Don’t take it personally. My sister is rather simple-minded. She gets startled by everything.”
Ji Yan looked at the twin sisters and ventured a question. “So you were also tricked into coming here by the landlord to complete the ‘Clean the Water Tank’ quest?”
“The quest is indeed the same, but it wasn’t triggered by the landlord. It was triggered by the eerie family member in Room 705.”
The older twin shook her head as she spoke.
They were player residents of Room 705. Their eerie family member was an entity that had died in the bathroom and now played the role of their older brother.
Because it had drowned in the bathroom, it spent all day submerged in the overflowing bathtub. Like a fish, it could neither leave the tub nor survive without the water.
But over the past few days, the water from the faucet had turned into thick black blood. Their eerie brother had grown increasingly irritable and had even begun to turn evil.
If the twin sisters wanted to continue living safely in Room 705, they had to resolve the water-quality problem.
Through the quest, they had obtained the rooftop key from the landlord. When they came up during the day, however, they found nothing wrong with the water tank. So they had returned at midnight to investigate again, only to encounter Ji Yan.
Ji Yan finally understood.
The two girls also wore privilege badges on their chests, meaning they possessed nighttime protection. That surprised him slightly. The sisters looked like complete beginners, yet they had privileges and were residents of the seventh floor at that.
After checking their profile information, he discovered that they had survived for forty-five days.
It seemed they truly had some ability. One could not judge them by appearances alone.
“How is your quest progressing? What problem did you find?”
Ji Yan glanced at the square concrete water tank nearby and asked the question.
“We haven’t gone over there. We don’t dare!”
“It’s terrifying!”
The younger twin, Zhong Ting, clutched her head with both hands. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and her face was filled with terror.
“Terrifying?” Ji Yan narrowed his eyes. “What did you see?”
The older twin, Zhong Yi, covered her sister’s mouth. Clearly, she was far more alert, and she regarded Ji Yan with a hint of wariness.
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She spoke first. “You said the landlord sent you up here. Do you have the rooftop key?”
Ji Yan answered without hesitation and tossed the key over.
Only after seeing it did Zhong Yi relax.
“We don’t know what’s inside the water tank. We heard it.”
“Heard it?”
Before her sister could say anything, the younger girl blurted out, “Yes! Our talent is Telepathy. Inside an instance, my sister and I can not only communicate through our thoughts, but also hear the thoughts of eerie entities while carrying out quests!”
“It’s an A-rank talent. Pretty amazing, right?”
The younger girl’s face was full of pride.
Her sister covered her face and rapped her knuckles against the girl’s head.
“You little idiot. I’m begging you, keep your mouth shut!”
She was furious that her sister had failed her so completely.
Who revealed their trump card to a stranger right from the start?
If her sister had not been there to cover for her, it would have been a miracle if that fool managed to survive even a single day in an instance this brutal.
Ji Yan was mildly astonished when he heard this.
They could hear an eerie entity’s thoughts?
That was an extremely useful talent.
After surviving in instances for so many days, he had finally encountered a talent worth mentioning.
Ji Yan fell into thought. If that was the case, then the reason the water tank had become filthy was most likely the work of that entity.
“What did you hear it say?”
“We call it thoughts, but in reality, we couldn’t make out the words clearly.”
“It sounded horrifying, so we didn’t dare open the water tank. We thought we should discuss a plan first, and then you came up.”
Zhong Yi shook her head as she spoke.
The younger girl crouched in a corner, clutching her head with both hands. Still shaken, she said, “That entity is in a lot of pain.”
“It even begged us for help…”
The moment she finished speaking, her pretty face suddenly changed.
She clapped both hands over her ears and screamed, “Ah! That entity is shouting again! It sounds so frightening!”
“So much pain… I want to block out that entity’s voice. Someone, please save me…”