Chapter 202 Unknown Number

Overpass, sunny day.

The taxi sped between giant billboards, with warning signs such as "Do not approach suspicious human figures", "Do not confuse distortion with reality", and "Beware of weird intrusions into your circle of friends" erected all around.

Tu Lanxun listened to the car radio. "Recently, a large area of ​​the development zone has been mysteriously invaded. Housing prices have plummeted again. Investor Tu's Group has suffered heavy losses and has officially declared bankruptcy. It's reported that Chairman Tu Penglai has been hospitalized..."

The driver, unaware that the person sitting in the back seat was the daughter of the person in the news, uttered two "tsk tsk" sounds, glanced at her through the rearview mirror, and reiterated:

"You have to pay double the fare to go to the development zone. Young people just love taking risks, they don't care about their lives..."

"Sunshine Convenience Store, Gate No. 3 of Penglai Building, just open it." Tu Lanxun said.

The driver seemed to have seen a ghost. "Penglai Building? That's the most haunted one. Let me make it clear. I'll stop at the intersection for you and you can walk over on your own."

As we entered the development zone, flyers advertising discounted shops in Jilou were picked up by the wheels, fluttering like snowflakes. The area was deserted. The windows of the buildings on either side looked like empty eyes, staring at the intruder.

Before reaching the intersection, the driver refused to drive even one more meter. Tu Lanxun paid and got off the car. The former stepped on the accelerator to the bottom, but the taxi suddenly stalled at this moment.

The driver's terrified curses were heard from inside the car door. He stepped on the accelerator several times with trembling legs. The car finally started and ejected, leaving behind the blue-colored xun and the dark blue building in front of it.

Penglai Building is the core of the development zone's business district, like a mirror reflecting the sky. Tu Lanxun's destination is at its foot: a 24-hour convenience store with a white and green sign. It is also the only thing she got in the debt disaster.

——Because it is located in a haunted building in an uninhabited area, no creditor or buyer is willing to take it.

Tu Lanxun took a photo of a convenience store and sent it out with the location code. The person who posted it with the emoji [poop] replied, "Take a photo of yourself too! Don't try to trick me. Take a photo of me every hour from now on to prevent you from sneaking out."

After doing so, a transfer was sent to him. Tu Lanxun immediately received it and opened the door of the convenience store. There was a chaotic and dead silence inside.

The cash register drawer was open, the shelves had been swept through by creditors, the valuable goods were taken away, and the rest were thrown on the ground. Tu Lanxun bent down to pick them up one by one and put them back in their places.

This is not necessary, but it seems that if you are busy, you can forget that this is an uninhabited ghost area.

She had to stay here for at least one night. This was Miss Tao's plan to mess with her. Everyone in the second-generation circle knew she was afraid of ghosts. But Tu Lanxun could hardly afford to eat because she had money to earn.

After cleaning up the convenience store, it was already dark outside. Tu Lanxun took some time to find the power switch of the convenience store. To give herself courage, she turned on the lights inside the store and on the signboard outside the store.

However, Tu Lanxun quickly killed the latter. After all, this was a strange invasion area, and what if the lit plaque attracted dirty things?

I randomly picked up a pack of instant noodles, read the instructions, opened the oden pot with the grill removed, and waited quietly for the water to boil.

She had never cooked instant noodles herself. There was no gas in the rental house, so she could only use an electric kettle to make them.

After the water in the pot rolled for a long time and dropped to a level visible to the naked eye, Tu Lanxun was sure that it had boiled. She reverently threw the dough into the pot.

There was a small piece of dough floating in the big pot, looking a bit pitiful.

"This is the hot pot version of instant noodles." Tu Lanxun told himself while poking with chopsticks.

Eating inconvenient food alone in a haunted place makes me feel like my life is miserable. It's almost time for my next check-in.

Tu Lanxun took a selfie facing the oden pot and hit send, not worrying about whether Tao Si would share it with her friends in the "fake sisters" group and mock her. She had to fish it out quickly; the instant noodles in the pot were starting to melt.

After finishing my noodles, I paid my medical bills online, and my phone just happened to return to the chat screen:

She sat next to the cooking pot, her black hair becoming even curlier due to the steam, half of her body was immersed in the misty white smoke, and the thick mist around her cheeks faintly revealed... another set of translucent facial features.

Tu Lanxun's cell phone almost fell into the pot.

Looking at the photo again, even though it was made of white mist, the facial features were surprisingly three-dimensional. The translucent eyeballs stared at her coldly and sharply, almost sticking to her face, making people's scalp tingle, as if they were silently whispering with their eyes.

Is it a coincidence? Is it the inherent weirdness of this place, or is it that thing that killed people in the tube building that has caught up with me...

One that clung to her.

ghost.

Tu Lanxun hid far away from Guandong Pot. The white mist had faded away. She wanted to escape from the store at all costs, but a text message from the hospital woke her up.

Lucheng Central Hospital reminds you: Your hospitalization payment has been successful! To check your payment history, please log in to your Luyitong account. For manual consultation, call 10XX76.

Mom is still in the hospital. If she escapes from the convenience store, Tao Si will definitely stop paying for her medical expenses.

Moreover, night had already fallen, and it was impossible to walk out of the empty development zone on foot alone.

No matter what, I have to stay here for at least one full night, and leave tomorrow. I can find a job that pays, whether it's tutoring or serving dishes...

Tu Lanxun sat with a heavy heart as he sat under the dim lights on all sides. Every shadow in his blind spot seemed to be about to pounce on him.

She made a nest next to the cash register, using the chair as a pillow, covering herself with her coat, and padding her legs with a cushion she had found on the shelf. As soon as she lay down, the urge to urinate welled up in her bladder.

There was a bathroom at the deepest part of the convenience store, with a data cable hanging on the wall. It was a small, dark rectangular space with undulating shadows. She tried to open the main control box, but found that the switch marked "Bathroom" was broken.

The other light switch should be inside the bathroom door.

Tu Lanxun hesitated for two seconds. The night was still long, so she could only accept her fate and walk on.

But before going over, she turned on the cash register computer, and light music flowed out from the wall-mounted speakers, relieving her tension.

With a "creak", Tu Lanxun pushed open the half-open bathroom door, and was greeted by a dry cold air, as if it was connected to another exit, and a gloomy wind blew on her face.

The question of returning to nature - the feasibility of urinating and defecating anywhere - crossed his mind again, and his thoughts quickly switched to "since I'm here now", Tu Lanxun used the flashlight on his mobile phone to shine around for a while before he found the light switch on the wall.

With a "click", Tu Lanxun was startled by the sudden appearance of a human figure. His back was pressed against the wall before he realized that it was himself in the mirror.

She looked strange under the light, and she made an expression that made it even weirder, as if she was looking at another person through a mirror.

Hidden under the same skin as hers, but inside is another thing that imitates her. It will approach the mirror when she is not paying attention, stick out half of its body, and reach out to grab her...

Mirrors can bring about a strong sense of insecurity because they suggest that not everyone is who they appear to be. The thing that humans fear most is staring at themselves.

Moreover, when a person stands alone in front of a mirror, a strange and terrifying scene will appear - there are clearly "two" people keeping company here, but you still feel lonely.

——If you insist that you are the only one here, then who is the person opposite you?

Tu Lanxun shook off these thoughts and sat on the toilet, scrolling through his phone. The latest news read: "Beware! 'Gray City Cave'! The most terrifying and bizarre game in history has landed on Earth!"

Three consecutive exclamation marks pierced his eyes. Tu Lanxun browsed the blurry screenshots. It was becoming more and more dangerous outside.

This is not a game promotion advertisement, but a real game world where the NPCs and BOSSes will really come to Earth.

In recent years, relevant departments have speculated that those humanoid creatures that commit crimes may come from game worlds of different dimensions, especially horror games.

The view comes from external network data signals captured by psychic network experts, a video game poster, and two game screenshots. The male face restored in the screenshots is extremely similar to the mysterious murderer in recent serial murders.

Today's external network does not refer to foreign Internet, but the information flow that occasionally passes through outer space and can be intercepted by the earth.

Ever since Professor Huang of Southern Zhou University captured the first set of external network signals and decoded the fragmented call sounds six years ago, research on different planets and even different dimensions has become a blue ocean field, and even a special discipline has been established.

That voice fragment was originally called "a call from a friend in space", but today, with the strange invasion, it has been regarded as the beginning of all ominous things.

Tu Lanxun enlarged the picture of the strange suspect. It was a young man with deep facial features. The noise and distortion at the edges of the lens were too severe, blurring it into a charcoal-colored polygon.

But the only thing that made a strong presence was the eyes with downturned corners and pupils looking upwards. They looked pretty, but the sharp gaze shot out from under the shadow of the brow bone, as if it could pierce through the screen of the mobile phone and stare at Tu Lanxun's face.

It seems a bit like the eyes in the steam.

How is that possible? That's the evil ghost killer in the news. How could it be such a coincidence?

That weird one has a name or code name that comes from the character poster of "Gray City Cave".

Doctor Nightingale.

Just as Tu Lanxun was about to close the page, her cell phone rang with a "buzz", making her hands numb. The numbness almost spread from her palms along the veins all the way back to her heart.

The strange eyes stared at her as if in warning.

It was an unknown call with no location, and was automatically prompted as "suspected risk".

A sudden phone call always makes one's heart skip a beat. Tu Lanxun subconsciously turned off the call, and a missed call notification popped up on his phone.

"It's another advertisement for private loans." Tu Lanxun has received many such calls recently. They come to her from every corner, like mosquitoes smelling blood, promising that as long as you lend your personal real-name account or read a text with your ID card, you can get a high-interest loan of varying amounts.

She added this call to the blacklist, let out a breath, and was about to leave the bathroom when her phone rang again.

It was still that unknown number, the string of numbers that had just been blocked, that didn't look like a phone number, flashing on the screen painted with blue ink. Like a silent threat.

Tu Lanxun hung up the phone with her numb fingertips and decided to go all out. She turned off her phone. The black screen reflected the bathroom light, and she tried to catch her breath amidst the pounding of her heart.

The last bit of sanity collapsed the moment he looked up.

The bathroom mirror in front of her was covered with a layer of mist, which was not there when she entered. It was no longer bright, and the grayish reflection of the blurred facial features of Tu Lanxun was revealed. She saw herself - the figure's mouth was wide open, a crescent-shaped dark red, and then raised towards the ears.

She could guarantee with every hair on her cheeks that she was definitely not smiling!

"Buzz-buzz-buzz-" The screen of the turned-off phone lit up again, and it was still the nightmarish unknown number.

Ghost call. These three words appeared in her mind uncontrollably.

This time, no matter how Tu Lanxun pressed the buttons, the call page didn't move at all. He couldn't exit, hang up, or even turn off the phone.

It was irresistible. It was like a kind of doom that had to be passed on to her. It was like a cursed videotape in a movie, where if she watched it, a ghost would emerge from the ceiling, the bed, or even her throat to eat her.

Tu Lanxun seemed to be frozen in place, but his mind was still working. Just as he was considering whether to fill a pool of water and throw his phone in to soak, something strange happened.

It was as if invisible fingers were smearing on the mirror, and the matte surface made a "squeaking" sound of friction. A line of words with a handsome structure but long, tricky horizontal and vertical strokes, which looked eerie, appeared on the mirror.

"Answer the phone." The words read.

Tu Lanxun's evasive behavior obviously caused some kind of displeasure.

A breath finally rushed out of her chest, and with a sudden burst of courage, she threw her phone at the mirror and fled the bathroom.