Terror is resurging, but only I am.

Chapter 55 Escape and escape, escape to the cochlear bridge

"Yan Ming, why aren't you saying anything?"

"Yan Ming, you guys move a little."

Why can't I hear your voices?

The entire 2112 dormitory room was quiet, but Li Yan stood blocking the doorway, whispering softly.

Inside the room, Yan Ming and the Cane King dared not make a sound. Li Yan's behavior was strange, clearly indicating that he had been possessed by some kind of ghost.

After noticing Li Yan's unusual behavior, Yan Ming never looked up at Li Yan again, but he had already memorized Li Yan's appearance.

The ghost eye on Li Yan's forehead was replaced with a woman's small left ear, while the two eyes in the eye sockets were replaced with a pair of animal ears, which, judging from the shape of the ear cartilage, should be canines.

Human ears are delicate, with fair skin tinged with pink, revealing faint blue veins, while animal ears are furry, rotating like two radars, constantly capturing the sounds around them.

But apart from the very faint sound of breathing, they detected nothing.

Yan Ming only dared to look at Li Yan's feet, which blocked their only way out. In the extremely quiet environment, he could feel the faint sound of doors opening upstairs.

The dormitory supervisor's footsteps were silent, which made Yan Ming feel constantly anxious.

He didn't know how fast the dormitory supervisor was moving, nor how long it would take for the supervisor to find the place.

I can't worry about Li Yan anymore; I have to get out of here first.

"Yan Ming, stop dawdling! The dorm supervisor is coming down soon, come with me!"

Seeing that there was no sound in the room, Li Yan said anxiously.

"boom!"

At the same time, Yan Ming clearly saw Li Yan's body bend like a bow after being struck in the waist, and then be launched to the other side, crashing into the wall with a loud bang.

Then He Lian poked her head into the dormitory building: "Quick, the dormitory supervisor is coming upstairs. Li Yan has been infected and mutated!"

Seeing this, the man with the crutch rushed forward. Yan Ming, seeing that he was alright, then left the dormitory with him.

Although he was interested in the writings in the closet of the dormitory room, now was clearly not the time to worry about it.

The group quickly left the dormitory. Yan Ming glanced back at Li Yan, who was lying against the wall. That attack must have been carried out by He Lian using her telekinetic powers.

The impact was much greater than expected, and Li Yan was temporarily knocked unconscious.

At this moment, looking down the corridor toward the stairs at the end, Yan Ming noticed a faint red light spreading there.

The dormitory supervisor is here.

A red light appeared at the end of the corridor as the dormitory supervisor walked by. Yan Ming immediately avoided looking at it, not daring to look directly at it.

Don't look at her, run!
Yan Ming gestured and followed the cane-wielding king towards the stairs at the other end of the corridor.

Upon hearing this, the others didn't look back. They hurried up the stairs, climbing two floors before finally stopping to peer down through the gap in the stairs to observe the direction of the red light.

The red light slowly swayed to the end of the first-floor corridor, then rose upwards, shining towards Yan Ming and the others at the stairwell.

Yan Ming and his companions reacted quickly, immediately turning their heads away to avoid being illuminated by the eerie red light.

A few seconds later, the red light in the gap between the stairs disappeared. Yan Ming peeked down and saw that the dormitory manager had probably gone back to look for Li Yan, who had begun to exhibit strange characteristics.

"She went back, thank goodness."

King of the Canes breathed a quiet sigh of relief, as if he had been granted a pardon.

"It's alright, the dorm supervisor is probably chasing after Li Yan. Based on my past experience with dorm supervisors, she won't give up until she catches Li Yan, so she won't be back to take care of us for the time being." He continued, a thoughtful look on his face. "But I feel like this dorm supervisor is a little different from before, she seems to have become more... fierce?"

Lu Mingzhe nodded in agreement: "Yes, this is different from what I observed last time. As for Li Yan... well, I can sense that the dormitory manager's malice here has become much more pronounced."

Yan Ming, recalling Li Yan's appearance at the time, already had a guess in his mind.

The mission's name is straightforward enough: "Do Not Look Where It Is Profaned," implying that one should not observe or stare at the dormitory manager in any way.

At that moment, he recalled that Li Yan had previously used his ghost eyes to monitor the dormitory manager's activities, and that they had looked directly at the dormitory manager's body downstairs without being affected in any way, so he didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

Unexpectedly, the dormitory manager's abilities changed after they actually entered the dormitory.

It has become more aggressive, and the bizarre level of contamination is unreasonable.

Originally, it was thought that Li Yan, as a "player," could be of great help, but unexpectedly, he was defeated instantly.

Was it because they didn't expect that indirect observation would also lead to infection?

The dormitory supervisor's appearance was seen by the Ghost Eye, a branch of the Ghost Eye, which was able to trace the source directly and harm the Ghost Eye's main body—Li Yan.

This level of pollution source tracing...

The footage of the dormitory manager was the source of the infection. When the Ghost Eye transmitted what it saw to Li Yan's brain, it directly led to Li Yan's body being infected.

Yan Ming felt a vague sense of unease, realizing that Li Yan's situation was probably worse than he had imagined.

"Eek—ha!"

Suddenly, a sharp laugh came from the first floor. It was Li Yan's voice, but it was completely different from his previous appearance.

"Idiot, come and chase me!"

Li Yan chuckled, his heavy footsteps echoing down the other side of the stairs, fading away completely in no time, seemingly leading the dormitory manager away as well.

Yan Ming listened intently for a while and realized that Li Yan had already walked far away.

Never mind him for now. This guy doesn't sound too bad; he seems to be having a lot of fun.

The mission is called "Don't Look Where It's Inappropriate." We must avoid looking directly at the dormitory supervisor and can only determine his location by his red glow; otherwise, we'll end up like Li Yan.

Yan Ming wrote down the note; his judgment was basically what others thought as well.

"By the way, we're lucky, we just found one of the safety bolts."

At this moment, He Lian took out a cylindrical gray metal pin from her pocket, with the number "5" marked on it.

"5? This should be the 5th floor, right? The safety bolt for the 5th floor is hidden on the 1st floor?" The Cane King felt incredulous. He continued, "Shall we go to the 5th floor now and install the safety bolt?"

Lu Mingzhe immediately shook his head: "No, if we install it in advance, the dormitory manager might just take it down, and the middle-aged man we saw in the dormitory earlier hasn't shown up yet."

He looked at the Cane King, his eyes gleaming: "The safety bolt is very likely the key to this mission. How can it be left unattended?"

"Alright." The Cane King didn't seem to think much of it and started heading towards the second floor. "We found the first floor, so shouldn't we check the second floor? Just be careful not to look at the dorm manager's body, right?"

【He Lian, you and he help keep an eye on the dormitory supervisor's movements at the stairwell. Lu Mingzhe and I will go down to the second floor to check the situation.】

Yan Ming thought for a moment and rearranged the groups.

He was worried about leaving the Cane King alone, and Lu Mingzhe's abilities should be able to help hinder the dormitory supervisor's pursuit, so it was better for him to stay with him.

He had already witnessed He Lian's telekinetic abilities; controlling the Cane King was a piece of cake for her.

“No, He Lian will go with you. She has an advantage in finding safety bolts.” Lu Mingzhe offered a different opinion.

Yan Ming did not refuse and slowly went downstairs with He Lian, starting their search along the dormitory at the beginning of the second floor.

"My abilities are related to the mind, so I can vaguely sense the lingering emotions and thoughts of other people nearby."

He Lian explained Lu Mingzhe's words and then continued:
“I sensed a lingering feeling of ‘panic’ at the door of dormitory 2101. The emotion was rather weak, probably because the incident happened a long time ago, so the energy had dissipated. We searched the dormitory and found this safety bolt under the bed.” “It doesn’t look like someone deliberately hid it under the bed; it’s more like someone threw it in casually while passing by the dormitory in a panic.”

"Because the dust under the bed was not evenly distributed, we could see the location of the safety bolt by the thickness of the dust. It bounced a few times under the bed before rolling deep into the bed."

He Lian briefly explained how she and Lu Mingzhe discovered the safety bolt, and also shared their guesses.

Yan Ming seemed to be deep in thought.

Did someone throw the safety latch under the bed while fleeing?

why?
These five safety bolts must have been removed by someone from the electrical boxes on each floor, right?
Are these people trying to create a power outage so they can escape?

If this is an escape, these safety bolts should be located in the dormitories near both ends of the corridor.

Yan Ming quickly realized this. The logic was simple: if the safety latch was discarded during the escape, there was no reason for these people to deliberately search all the dormitories on the five floors.

Their route must be relatively short, which is enough to rule out most of the dormitories.

Dormitories closer to the stairs are more likely to have safety latches, since stairs are always an escape route.

“Yes, Lu Mingzhe said the same thing.” He Lian nodded in agreement. “This safety bolt was found in room 2101, which was the first room we searched and the closest to the dormitory building’s main entrance, which is why we were able to find it in such a short time.”

With that, Yan Ming pushed open the door to the dormitory room next to the stairs and focused on checking the floor.

If the first safety bolt was just tossed in carelessly, then the others probably were too.

Unfortunately, there wasn't one in the first dormitory.

Yan Ming then opened the cabinets and examined their top surfaces, wanting to see if anyone had carved any words inside.

One can imagine that someone once hid in a closet in one of these dorm rooms, while the dorm supervisor strolled by in the hallway outside.

Yan Ming still remembers those words: "Quickly hide, make some noise, and let it go."

Although it's unclear what the person who carved the inscription was in, this might be useful?

The effectiveness is questionable.

"No, let's go to the next dormitory. We need to be faster."

He Lian said decisively, then quickly walked out of the dormitory.

The previous speculation could eliminate some options, but Yan Ming, adhering to the principle of "since we're already here," did not overlook the dormitories along the way.

He opened every room, thoroughly inspecting under the beds and in the closets, making sure no one escaped.

If we pick and choose rooms, what if we find one is missing at the end? Wouldn't we have to start looking all over again?

However, just as they had expected, the middle dormitory rooms were basically empty.

There were no special markings or signs of a safety bolt.

"Eek—ha!"

Li Yan's cheerful, high-pitched laughter came from afar, and Yan Ming thought it sounded like it was coming from upstairs.

Judging from the loudness of the sound, Li Yan may have already taken the dormitory supervisor to the fifth floor.

As Cane King once said, the dormitory manager is the type who will chase you to death, so having Li Yan help to attract attention is undoubtedly a good thing.

Regardless, Li Yan, you truly deserve immense credit.

With each sharp laugh serving as a reminder, Yan Ming felt more at ease while searching.

As Yan Ming searched all the way to the dormitory in the middle of the corridor, he was about to walk out of one of the dormitories when he noticed that He Lian looked a little nervous. She cautiously peeked into the corridor, but saw nothing.

"Eek—ha!"

Li Yan's voice came again. Yan Ming listened carefully and found that this time it seemed to be coming from downstairs. He was immediately surprised.

What do you mean?
How could it be downstairs?

Was he able to move that quickly?
"Don't you think it's too quiet around here?"

He Lian was breathing heavily. She was particularly sensitive to changes in the "atmosphere," and now she felt as if a pair of hands were gripping her heart.

Abnormally depressing.

Quiet?

Such an adjective made Yan Ming pause for a moment, because he had just heard Li Yan's voice.

So Yan Ming quickly wrote it down.

Didn't you hear Li Yan's voice? It seems he just ran downstairs again; the dorm supervisor is probably still following him.

"Li Yan?"

He Lian lowered her voice, her face full of confusion.

"When did I hear Li Yan's voice?" She turned to Yan Ming, puzzled. "Are you hallucinating?"

Yan Ming was stunned. He never expected He Lian to say that.

Can't she hear Li Yan's voice?
Could someone have covered her ears?

At this moment, He Lian felt another unsettling emotion approaching from two directions simultaneously.

"Oops."

As if sensing something, she glanced outside from a small angle, and her expression immediately turned grim.

He Lian said quickly, somewhat flustered:
“There are red lights on both sides of the corridor. How come there are two dormitory supervisors? They seem to be coming this way. Aren’t the dormitory supervisors supposed to keep chasing Li Yan? Could it be that Li Yan has already been captured and assimilated? But I can still feel that Li Yan’s aura hasn’t dissipated…”

When she turned around, she saw that Yan Ming's expression was even more gloomy than her own.

"What’s wrong with you?"

He Lian was startled and couldn't help but take a half step back.

Yan Ming, however, understood something in an instant.

He seemed to understand why Li Yan's voice was fluctuating and shifting between different tones.

And the dormitory manager did indeed follow Li Yan.

He didn't know when it started, but Li Yan had somehow managed to get his ears to it.

That's why only he could hear these strange sounds.

Now, the dormitory supervisor has arrived.

"whee."

Li Yan's voice came again, and this time it was clear.

He was right next to my ear.