He Gu stood in the stairwell of the third floor, staring blankly at the ceiling above, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow.
The stairs ended here, and the fourth floor, where He Gu had been living for several days, was completely gone!
"The dormitory only has four floors…"
He Gu felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave, repeatedly muttering this rule to himself.
"Wait a minute, I just came down from the fourth floor yesterday, and it was also yesterday that I started seeing the stairs leading to Basement Level One…"
With this thought, He Gu's spirits lifted.
All these changes began after he put on the blue work uniform and donned the supervisor-level glasses!
Perhaps the problem lay with the glasses!
With this in mind, He Gu immediately took off his glasses and looked towards the stairwell again.
However, there was no change in the stairwell; the stairs leading to the fourth floor still did not appear.
He Gu even tried going downstairs, stepping outside, then taking off his glasses and re-entering the building.
But the anticipated change did not occur.
Even without his glasses, the entrance to the stairs leading to Basement Level One was still there.
He Gu went back upstairs, and the stairs still only went up to the third floor.
It seemed the problem wasn't with the glasses after all?
With no other choice, He Gu braced himself and walked into the third-floor corridor.
As soon as he entered, he immediately saw the door directly opposite the stairwell marked with the number "417."
Just as he suspected… Basement Level One was considered the first floor, the original first floor became the second, and so on; the original third floor was now the fourth.
After hesitating for a moment, He Gu walked down the corridor.
In the dimly lit hallway, He Gu compared the numbers on each door as he moved forward.
Before long, he stopped in front of a door.
The number on the door was: 444.
Looking at this number, He Gu's feelings were mixed.
For a moment, he even thought about turning around and leaving this broken dormitory behind.
He could just find a bench in the living area to lie on for the day and call it quits.
But this thought was quickly dismissed by He Gu himself.
In a world of strange tales, sleeping outside was definitely not a wise choice.
He might wake up to find half his leg gnawed off by a "Decaying Corpse Cat."
Moreover, based on He Gu's three years of experience watching strange tale livestreams, in a world of strange tales, every incident or plot encountered often came with opportunities or clues amidst the risks.
Sometimes, actively avoiding an incident could trigger an even more extreme event.
After hesitating for a moment, He Gu took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, and inserted the key into the lock of the door in front of him.
"Click…"
As expected, the key slid in smoothly.
He Gu paused for a moment, took another deep breath, steeled himself, and turned the key, opening the door.
"Creak—"
The old wooden door creaked open, and a faint musty smell wafted out, as if the room had been empty for a long time.
It was still dark outside, and the room was pitch black.
After a few experiences of being startled by a little girl, the first thing He Gu did after opening the door was to press the light switch and immediately look inside the room.
After the light flickered twice, the dim yellow light filled the room.
Seeing the layout of the room, He Gu felt a sense of déjà vu.
The furnishings and layout inside this room were exactly the same as the one he had stayed in "upstairs" a few days ago.
The same room, the same bed, and even an identical hot water bottle in the corner, though this one wasn't smashed.
Aside from the intact hot water bottle, there was another difference: He Gu's luggage was not in the room.
He Gu sighed helplessly. To be cautious, he had left many things in the dormitory.
Fortunately, the most important items like the red towel, the quadrangular key, and the small medicine bottle were still with him, and even the "fake medicine" He Gu had made with chalk was wrapped in tissue paper and tucked in his pocket.
However, the two notebooks left by 424 were gone, and some of the "secret codes" written in Morse code on them had not yet been decrypted, which made He Gu feel slightly uneasy.
Another problem was that He Gu's charger was also missing.
Although there was no signal in this factory area and the mobile phone was almost a decoration, He Gu had the habit of recording key information on his phone. If the phone couldn't be charged, his sense of security would be greatly reduced.
With this thought, He Gu sighed again.
"Look on the bright side, at least the red towel and the quadrangular key, the two most important items, are still here…"
There was no use fretting over the situation.
He Gu comforted himself inwardly, adjusted his emotions, and lay down on the bed that felt both strange and somewhat familiar.
However, as soon as he lay down, He Gu felt something was off.
There seemed to be something in the bedding!?
He Gu immediately sat up and reached into the quilt, fumbling around.
Before long, he pulled out a soft-cover notebook with curled pages.
This notebook was identical to the two left by 424!
He Gu's heart leapt with joy; there was indeed another notebook!
But then He Gu let out a wry smile; without the previous two notebooks, he couldn't decipher the rest of the code.
Since there were too many scattered codes, He Gu hadn't backed them up with photos on his phone.
With a sense of resignation, He Gu still opened the notebook.
Although the codes were gone, based on the previous two notebooks, 424 usually left some messages that didn't need decoding.
Sure enough, on the first page of this notebook, He Gu saw the following message:
[Congratulations, my friend, on finding this notebook. It means you have temporarily escaped a dangerous situation.
But this isn't entirely good news, as it implies you are moving towards an even more perilous situation.
Firstly, if you're reading this, it means I've been eaten.
But that doesn't mean my experience is unreliable, just that there were some things I didn't quite understand, and that's probably what cost me my life.
Back to the point.
After a long investigation, I've come to a basic conclusion: no matter how many times you manage to evade being preyed upon, you can't escape the fate of being eaten in the end.
The difference is only whether you're eaten by others or eventually by "it."
The only way to survive is to escape from here.
But to escape, you must first kill the first thing that tries to prey on you, and then, you need to find a way to get a set of purple clothes.
Without purple clothes, you can't do anything.
As for the specific method, I believe you will find the answer.]
***
The first page was filled with writing, stirring a slight excitement in He Gu.
From this content, it seemed that 424 knew more clues than He Gu had imagined!
However, as He Gu eagerly turned to the second page, he immediately revealed a resigned smile.
From the second page onward, the content turned into various unrelated and even incoherent sentences, or "gibberish."
He Gu flipped all the way to the last page to find the same.
It seemed that without retrieving the previous two notebooks, He Gu wouldn't be able to know the "specific method" 424 mentioned…
Proofreader & Editor:Peter Pan