Chapter 58: The Seventh Floor

Mirrors formed the objects from reality in the same size as the actual object in reverse. If the 4 on the mirror was real, then the 4 in the real world should be reversed.

Bai Yan concentrated as he stared attentively at the number painted on the wall. However, the number on the actual wall was also not reversed, it was just an ordinary 4.

Could he have seen wrong?

Bai Yan turned his head again, trying to get a better look. Passing through the layers of ghosts surrounding him, the 4 in the mirror was also a regular one.

At this time, Bai Yan completely didn’t have any plans of getting off the elevator now.

Stepping off the elevator right now seemed to lead to entering the mirror’s realm.

The him in the mirror was surrounded by ghosts, eyeing him like prey. They were restricted from leaving by the mirror and could only intimidate him. If he were to go out now, all the ghosts would have been served a free meal.

Bai Yan stopped in his tracks as the elevator quickly closed its doors.

Bai Yan’s back was leaning on the elevator wall while his eyes stared fixedly on the mirror.

In a blink of an eye, a ghost inside the elevator suddenly disappeared.

Bai Yan’s heart grew cold as he stood by the elevator wall motionlessly.

A cold gust of wind blew on his body, grazing on his hair. Bai Yan’s body remained rigid, sensing that there was something that passed through his body.

He glanced at the mirror, and there was one less ghost there, suddenly not showing up anymore

Could it be that the ghost from the mirror came out? Or, the mirror won’t show them anymore?

Knowing that he couldn’t count on the mirror, Bai Yan looked somewhere else, focusing all of his energy on the elevator’s entrance.

The moment he calmed down, he heard a series of extremely light footsteps, walking from far away, as if there was really a ‘person’ who left the elevator and had gone to the dorm.

“Crack——”

The sound of a door opening came through as if that ‘person’ opened the door of the waiting area and went towards the building.

Bai Yan heaved a sigh of relief from knowing that the ghost that left the mirror didn’t kill him. He observed the empty waiting area, once again thinking over if he should leave here.

The male dormitory had a total of thirteen floors. Even though it looked a lot, he was almost through half of it.

Furthermore, the numbers of floors eight and eleven couldn’t be distinguished from their reversed forms. One small slip up, and he’d enter the world inside the mirror. In any case, he still wouldn’t have departed on these two floors.

On the thirteenth floor, the floor number wasn’t good. In addition to the elevator being on the top floor, in case something happened and he needed to escape, he could only do so downwards. The risks were too great. If he had the choice, he didn’t want to leave on that floor.

There was still time before the elevator doors closed, so Bai Yan decided to look in the mirror.

With one look, he truly found something wrong.

The elevator ‘people’ seemed to have moved closer to him!

Their images in the mirror were bigger. They looked like they were enlarged people inside a photo, each person magnifying a bit.

But looking more carefully, the people inside the mirror’s general appearance also somewhat changed.

Compared to before, their expressions changed to more ominous and more terrifying ones. Their mouths were slightly opened, showing densely packed sets of white teeth!

Their originally eerie expressions became weird. Bai Yan studied their faces closely for a while. The more he looked at them, the more it seemed that they were smiling.

At this moment, his heart had gotten a dangerous premonition.

As the elevator goes up the levels, these dreadful ghosts would come closer and closer.

In the end, they’ll indeed walk out of the mirror, and when the time comes for him wanting to leave the elevator, he regrettably wouldn’t be able to get away!

Bai Yan had once again walked towards the elevator’s entrance, standing in front of the door and thinking over whether he should depart on this floor.

The ‘person’ that got off seemed to have gone far away. If he left the elevator now, maybe he could run to the stairs and escape there.

There were two flights of stairs in the boy’s dorms. If he were unlucky and came across a ghost, he could go to the stairs and shake it off. There, he had a chance to flee.

However, he was afraid that the ‘person’ who had just left didn’t go far away. From his viewpoint in the elevator, he couldn’t see the waiting room’s door. If the ghost was blocking the door and was idly waiting for an opportunity, him leaving right now would just result in delivering goods.

“There’s still five more… Including the thirteenth floor, there’s still six chances. It’s better to not take the risk.”

Bai Yan thought it over once more, and ultimately, he decided to not get off on the fifth.

The ghost that left the elevator could still be hovering over the fifth floor. Walking out right now was still too high of a risk. Right now, he didn’t have any resurrection coins, so it wasn’t worth it to take risks.

Bai Yan made a decision and stood there by the elevator’s entrance, not moving an inch.

Around a minute later, the elevator doors began to close.

Towards this illogical scene, Bai Yan had already given up thinking rationally.

Why did this elevator in this strange world take five minutes to ascend to only a floor? Why did it start closing its doors after a minute? Since it was impossible to delve in deeper, even with his intelligence, he really couldn’t decipher how it worked.

The elevator door’s closing speed was also slower than the normal ones by a lot. But, as the doors closed to the width of a person, a horrifying thing happened——

A pitch-black shadow had suddenly appeared in the small space between the doors. He was completely black, only having a long dark vertical shadow.

Bai Yan couldn’t make out his facial features, but compared to the missing ghost in the mirror, this shadow’s silhouette was extremely similar to his.

With a ‘person’ at the door, it was reasonable to say that the doors should have opened on their own.

However, the modified elevator doors didn’t pay attention to this, nor did it consider the shadow to be a person. To put it briefly, the elevator doors maintained their closing speed, not slowing down or speeding up, still following their tempo.

“Brother, is it worth the trouble?”

Bai Yan looked at the deformed shadow that tried to squeeze in the elevator, his heart bubbling with joy from the mysterious entity’s misery.

Whether it was a person or a ghost, seeing other people suffer would always make him delighted.

His eyes followed the figure being squished just like an eraser, squeezing into a thumb-sized slit.

Seeing that the elevator doors were closed, the shadow finally withdrew from the small opening slowly as if it were scared of being sandwiched by the doors.

Despite not seeing the brother’s expression, Bai Yan could imagine that it was extremely unsightly.

But, no matter how unsightly it was, it didn’t have a chance anymore.

“Brother, take care.”

“I didn’t expect you to be more treacherous than I!”

Bai Yan bungled his mouth and couldn’t help but be a bit glad.

He originally thought that this brother would pretend to go out and patiently wait at the door.

Not expecting for the shadow to disappear, even more, it quietly backed off and stood right outside the elevator opening. If he so much as extended his head outside, he would have been caught by it.

The shadow’s footsteps themselves were light. If it had purposely masked its sounds, Bai Yan simply wouldn’t have heard its footsteps with just his normal hearing.

What had happened with the shadow gave Bai Yan a wake-up call. This ghost was more diabolical than the last. Next time, before he would decide on leaving the elevator, he had better not extend even a single finger out of the boxed-area.

The elevator was his restriction, but at the same time, it was the app’s way of giving him protection.

The elevator went up again, and Bai Yan continued to stand with his back against the wall, but this time, he stood a little farther away from the mirror.

The ghosts inside the mirror would change every minute.

Their bodies gradually became bigger as they started to put their faces against the mirror, slowly obstructing the Bai Yan in the reflection.

Bai Yan attentively gazed at himself in the mirror and compared his body to the ever-growing ghosts beside him. In this light, he looked weak and pitiful, like if he didn’t take care of himself properly, he would be instantly torn to shreds by these fierce ghosts.

However, Bai Yan very well knew that this was merely an illusion that he saw. This bunch couldn’t leave the mirror, and only by scaring the people inside were they able to keep their dignities as malicious ghosts.

Before they ate the person, they would have their fair share of fun.

Similar to how he watched criminal TV programs out of boredom, incapable of relinquishing the hand that broke the law, Bai Yan fully understood their sullen moods and decided to empathize with them.

Anyway, looking wouldn’t result in getting hurt.

He had always been a tolerant person.

…

Along with two ding sounds, the elevator finally reached the sixth floor.

Bai Yan looked at the seemingly abandoned waiting area, this time not even entertaining the idea of going out.

When the elevator reached its destination, it only produced one ding, so where did this extra sound come from?

Did the elevator mutate again?

Moreover, the two dings were close to one another. If he didn’t listen carefully, he could have easily heard it as one sound.

If the two sounds were significantly far apart, each sound being clear as day, he could have considered this as a coincidence.

But, the two dings coincided, only out of alignment by a bit. It was clear that someone was trying to cover it up.

Bai Yan thought about it and then recalled the amateur actor ban cun guy from the second floor.

Ban cun guy scared him into thinking that the elevator was full of ‘people,’ intending on tricking him to run out.

However, he saw through his ruse, so he certainly felt unresigned.

T/N: In the next few lines, although the ban cun guy was originally referred to as it in the raws, I have decided to use male pronouns to refer to him. These pronouns will be italicized.

Bai Yan remembered that before leaving, the ban cun guy mentioned that he’d just ride the other elevator. Maybe he already got off the elevator just now.

A series of two dings were near each other, but he was able to vaguely distinguish that the other ding came from the side opening.

“The opening… If he wanted to leave the elevator, he’d surely walk right past me. So, why hasn’t he come over?

Bai Yan knew that he shouldn’t go out on this floor. Instead, he just looked forward to the ban cun guy walking over to show a scene that would lead him to feel happy.

However, the ban cun guy seemed to think that he didn’t hear that the ding was weird and was continuously being holed up in that place, not going out.

Bai Yan let out a sigh, believing that this guy was truly useless. He failed to live up to the president’s careful training. His tricks were not even acted out well. A ghost’s body in vain, truly a humiliation for the ghost world.

Acting like a good-hearted person, Bai Yan decided to help him a bit.

“Huh? There’s no one on this floor? Should I get out here?”

Bai Yan deliberately yelled this, but the ban cun guy appeared to have made up his mind. Assuming that he simply won’t show, Bai Yan wouldn’t discover that something was wrong, so he hid himself and won’t come out.

Realizing that ban cun guy’s IQ was limited, Bai Yan hated iron for not becoming steel(1) and just regretfully watched the closing doors.

When the elevator doors were already half-closed, the ban cun guy finally came out.

Ban cun guy… or should he say headless guy stood right outside the elevator’s opening, just as the shadow and the brother had done before.

Seeing that the ban cun guy had lost his head, Bai Yan probably understood why this person didn’t want to come out.

In this respect, even the mentally handicapped were still aware of when something was wrong.

It turned out that he wasn’t completely useless.

It was Bai Yan who wrongly blamed him.

Bai Yan sighed, and without waiting for him to express sympathy, the head inside the elevator suddenly moved, curiously rolling out of there.

The ban cun guy crouched down and picked up the lone head, placing it on his neck.

Seeing the unexpectedly well-fitted head, Bai Yan suddenly realized, “So the basketball that that brother was dribbling was your head!”

“Classmate, you’re too miserable!”

He could only say this before the elevator doors closed completely.

Bai Yan arrived at the seventh floor full of regret. He heard a ding, and the doors showed the seventh floor.

Hearing the elevator’s ding, a person turned his head and saw Bai Yan, energetically waving his hand, “Bai Yan, what a coincidence. Did you just come back?

Staring at Wei Zizhuo——His cheap roommate with a thick face, Bai Yan’s expression froze.

The ghost story in the forum, wasn’t it like this at the start, where he would run into his roommate?

One floor, one anomaly. Should he get out of the elevator or not?