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Chapter 362 The Mysterious Gu Mian

Such sneaky behavior must mean they're up to something.

Xu Xingcheng disappeared very quickly; Gu Mian only caught a glimpse of him from afar before she could no longer find him.

Gu Mian immediately shifted her attention to the dark stairwell.

The stairwell is right in front of me, but I don't know where it leads...

As he pondered this, he stepped inside.

The dim light of a flashlight shone in the narrow stairwell, casting an unusually long shadow of Gu Mian. Combined with the guitar behind her, the shadow cast on the ground by the flashlight resembled that of a deformed person in a movie.

If a passerby who was unaware of the situation saw the shadow at that moment, they would most likely be terrified and run away in a panic.

The dark corridor was narrower and shorter than he had imagined.

However, after taking a few steps forward, Gu Mian saw the staircase ahead. Strangely, the staircase only led downwards, with no stairs leading upwards.

"This place is so damp, and there are no windows, it must be underground, right?" Gu Mian frowned as she looked at the stairwell not far ahead.

This place should be similar to a basement.

Theoretically, there should be a staircase leading to the ground, but now, instead of a staircase leading to the ground, there is a staircase leading underground.

What the hell?

Gu Mian paused for a moment, then lifted her foot to look ahead.

Just as he took his first step, he felt as if his trouser leg was caught on something.

But the thing hooking his trouser leg seemed weak, and Gu Mian broke free of it with a single step.

After taking a step forward, Gu Mian shone her flashlight down to look: "Why are there still wires used to hook clothes here?"

But when Gu Mian looked closely at what was at her feet, she realized that what had grabbed her earlier was not a wire.

Instead, it was a pale hand.

This is a common scene in horror movies: when people are sleeping, studying, or reading novels alone, restless ghosts always extend a pale claw toward their ankles.

And that is exactly the case now.

Gu Mian stared silently at the pale hand below.

It extended from a dark corner to the side. Because Gu Mian had been paying attention to what was ahead, she hadn't noticed the narrow corner in the darkness.

The hand, having failed to catch its prey earlier, was now restlessly groping around at his feet, seemingly trying to grab something.

Gu Mian guessed that its target was her trouser leg.

He silently turned down the flashlight's beam, tucked it into his pocket, and then, ignoring the hand that was still persistently groping at his feet, quietly walked towards the corner from which that hand extended.

He walked to the corner, stood against the wall, and didn't rush in. He just peeked in with half his face out.

Gu Mian noticed a woman squatting behind the corner, only after looking down.

She squatted there motionless, head down, only her slender arms swaying slightly as she groped around outside.

Gu Mian stared intently at her scalp.

Before long, the woman on the ground seemed to sense the malice coming from her scalp.

Gu Mian saw her slowly raise her head. "Ah!" Li Yibai was running around aimlessly in the corridor with doors on both sides when he heard a scream from afar.

Even though the scream seemed to come from several walls away, he recognized it as Guo Jimei's voice.

At this moment, Coco was following behind Li Yibai.

The two men had just witnessed a gleaming chainsaw emerge from behind a door, and now their expressions were filled with panic.

Upon hearing Guo Jimei's voice, Li Yibai immediately stopped in his tracks.

Coco recognized the voice too: "Is that Guo Jimei? It sounds like it's coming from behind us..."

She stopped in her tracks as she spoke, a worried expression on her face: "Should we go over and take a look?"

"Don't go over there!" Li Yibai immediately objected. "Didn't you hear Gu Mian say that there's a ghost between Guo Jimei and Yuan Qinghua? Besides, Guo Jimei is already very suspicious. She said she didn't vote, but the ballot paper disappeared without a trace, not even a scrap of paper was found... She could very well be a ghost, and she's doing this to lure people over, right?"

"Besides, even if she's not a ghost, calling out like that usually means she's encountered one. If she really has encountered a ghost, your presence won't do any good."

Hearing this, Coco nodded: "You're right... So what do we do next?"

They were lucky; they were teleported together, and traveling together made them feel much safer.

Li Yibai, holding a small flashlight, said, "I need to find out if Lin Qi is here, and also find the exit. Let's not go towards Guo Jimei's direction, let's go in the opposite direction."

Although there were doors on both sides, Li Yibai was still hesitant to touch them, fearing that there might be ghosts behind them.

They only moved around in the corridors, and at most listened to the doorway to see if there were any sounds inside.

Coco nodded in agreement.

The two then continued moving forward.

Li Yibai shone his flashlight around, and for some reason, he felt a strange sense of familiarity about the place.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember when he had been here before. Li Yibai subconsciously felt that Coco next to him should recognize this place, so he asked, "Don't you think this place looks a little familiar?"

No one answered.

Li Yibai slowly came to a stop.

In the darkness, the footsteps that had originally belonged to two people had somehow become the sound of only him.

He paused for a moment, then turned around and looked back.

There was no one behind him. He stood alone in the empty corridor. Some of the doors behind him were cracked, as if something was watching him from the darkness.

Looking at the empty space behind him, Li Yibai swallowed hard and cautiously probed, "Keke? Xu Ke?"

Only the echoes in the corridor answered him.

He took a few steps forward, trying to find Coco, but without success.

The dark corridor seemed to devour people; even sound seemed to be swallowed up, and Li Yibai couldn't even hear his own breathing.

Li Yibai called out a few more times, but received no response.

At that moment, he felt that the place was extremely eerie, as if something might float over from the other end of the corridor or crawl out from the cracks in the half-open doors at any time.

(End of this chapter)