Chapter 11 It's so hot here, take me outside (Part 4) The sound of the waves remains the same...

Xia Zhu was a little confused; it seemed that this key was for opening the workshop building.

The stairwell was pitch black, the bottomless darkness making it seem as if something was lurking within, both frightening and intriguing. Xia Zhu looked behind her; the cold white moonlight shone on the empty courtyard. She looked away and decided to go inside and take a look.

The moment I stepped through the iron gate, I could clearly feel the air around me vibrate, like a fallen leaf drifting onto the surface of still water, creating ripples that were barely perceptible.

A fishy, ​​sweet smell wafted from the stairwell, sticky and clinging to my body.

Turn right after entering, and you'll find the warehouse she passed by during the day. It's unattended at night, but it shouldn't be left wide open like this, giving off a feeling of inviting someone into a trap.

Xia Zhu decided to check out the warehouse she hadn't yet explored, but as soon as she entered, she sensed something was wrong. Earlier that day, although she had only peeked through the crack in the door, she had seen mountains of boxes piled up inside the warehouse, but now there wasn't a single box in the warehouse.

She also noticed that the moonlight streaming through the high windows illuminated a square area on the floor in the center of the warehouse, and something was neatly arranged on that area, which, from her angle, looked like a spotlight projected onto the center of a stage.

Xia Zhu walked forward and saw 80 toy dolls neatly arranged in rows and columns under the spotlight.

Two small braids, a red plaid skirt, a pink plastic bow adorned with satin in her hair, and a mouth with neatly upturned corners, with two round red blushes above the corners of her mouth.

They are all factory-made dolls.

I wonder if the number of dolls has any significance.

For most people, dreams are fragmented pieces of a dream, and some images are actually flashbacks of processing past memories. However, anything that appears in the dream of a spirit should have a specific meaning.

Xia Zhu couldn't understand what the toy dolls represented. She picked up a few dolls from the floor and examined them, but found nothing special. She put them back and walked around the warehouse again, but there was nothing there except the toys on the floor. Although she worked in the workshop during the day, after seeing the completely different changes in the warehouse, she decided to go upstairs to take another look.

Before she even reached the gate, she felt a slight movement behind her. Though the sound was faint, it was easily detected in the deathly stillness of the night. She turned around and saw that one of the toy dolls, which had been lying neatly on the ground, had stood up and was smiling at her in the dim light.

Xia Zhu pretended nothing had happened and took two more steps forward. When she looked back, two more dolls had stood up from the ground. Regardless of the destructive power of small toys, their sudden movement was still an ominous sign. She turned from walking to running and quickly rushed towards the door. The noise behind her grew louder and louder. Without turning around, she knew that all eighty dolls must have stood up, and the sound was probably coming towards her from afar.

She rushed out of the warehouse door and stepped onto the stairs. The sound behind her suddenly stopped. She turned around and saw dolls piled up, filling the doorway, making it seem impossible to take another step. Eighty innocent, smiling faces turned their button-sewing eyes to look at Xia Zhu standing on the stairs to the right.

Just like a game, both Manager Wang and the toy dolls are NPCs and can only stay in specific areas. If the player leaves, they will only linger on the edge for a while before returning to their original location along a predetermined route.

Thankfully, they wouldn't chase after her. Xia Zhu turned and went upstairs expressionlessly. "That was close," she thought. "Otherwise, even if it were just the dolls pressing down on her, she would have suffocated. That would have been terrifying."

The second floor was no different from her own workshop except for the equipment, and the female workers didn't leave any personal belongings at their workstations. She continued upstairs with her flashlight, turned past the platform between the two floors, and came to a window in the third-floor corridor.

A safety net was installed on the window, with something like a ribbon hanging from the net, swaying in the night wind.

Xia Zhu had passed by here several times during the day, but she couldn't recall ever seeing anything like this on the window.

She walked to the window. The factory windows seemed to be built very high to protect the workers; Xia Zhu's chin was just level with the windowsill. She raised her flashlight and shone it on the ribbons that were still fluttering in the wind.

The tail was charred and stuck to the wire mesh, while the head was streaked with blood red. What was fluttering in the wind was not a ribbon, but rather a strip of meat.

The sweet, fishy smell in the air grew stronger, and she even hallucinated that the barbed wire was hissing.

"It's so hot."

A sigh-like sound suddenly drifted from the end of the corridor on the left. Xia Zhu remembered that there was nothing there before.

"It's so hot." The next second, the voice came clearly above her left ear, and the flashlight in her hand shone, illuminating a face close to her eyes.

It was described as a human face, but it only resembled one in appearance. The skin on that face was charred black and cracked into small, grid-like patches, reminding her of the burnt skin of a roasted sweet potato. The red flesh on the gums was exposed nakedly to the air without the cover of lips. Xia Zhu was so close to that the slightly melting tip of its nose was almost poking her face.

The monster seemed frozen in place, making no further movement. Shining her flashlight downwards, she saw that its entire body was charred black, its flesh turned inside out, and its chest cavity had even burst open, with a limp piece of what appeared to be an organ hanging limply outside its sternum. Xia Zhu thought she should smell a stench, but only a meaty aroma lingered at the tip of her nose.

This is not a monster, but a charred human.

"It's so hot!"

Suddenly, another voice came from the right. She swung her flashlight toward the source of the sound. The workshop, with its door wide open, was densely packed with a group of charred people, who kept saying "It's so hot!"

The charred figure on the left, now free from the light, began to move. A charred fist, carrying the scent of flesh, brushed past her ear. Xia Zhu felt a chill run down her spine. The light shone back on its face, and the charred figure froze again.

It seems they are afraid of light.

"Oh no!" she realized, and Jiao Ren in the workshop rushed out the door and ran away.

Fortunately, she regularly exercises and runs. Xia Zhu rushed downstairs like a cannonball, leaving Jiao Ren far behind. As she ran, she took a moment to thank herself for her daily efforts.

She dared not look back, but she could feel the relentless pursuit of the charred people. However, everything has a cause and effect, and even in a nightmare, one would not create a terrifying atmosphere without any reason just for the sake of effect. Why were these charred people chasing her? Unfortunately, Xia Zhu had no time to think about it now.

The charred figures behind her ran erratically, perhaps because their limbs were incomplete. As they chased after Xia Zhu, they pushed and shoved each other, even trampling on one another. A charred body, only half of which remained, flew over the stair railing above her head and fell in front of her. Xia Zhu dodged the charred figure that was lying on the ground struggling and unable to get up. The iron gate was not far ahead.

She rushed out of the workshop building in one breath, casually pulling the iron gate shut. The lock on the gate didn't move much after it was opened, hanging loosely on the fence. She left the charred people far behind, so she was able to lock it again. She took a step back, and the next second, all the charred people crashed into the gate. Those who ran in front were blocked by the gate, but the charred people behind did not back down. They rushed towards the gate even more frantically, causing the charred people to pile up layer upon layer in a few seconds, so crowded that there was no gap.

Xia Zhu looked up and saw countless charred human faces gleaming through the wire mesh of the third-floor window.

There were so many people that if they were stacked up, they would be as tall as a three-story building.

The charred figures inside the gate clenched their fists and waved wildly at her through the bars. Luckily, the gate was locked; otherwise, judging by their posture, they might have broken the rules and rushed out of the building. Xia Zhu noticed that the iron gate seemed sturdy enough, so she went forward to examine it. Strangely, the expressions on the charred figures didn't seem particularly ferocious. Even though their faces were grotesque, Xia Zhu could see despair and fear on their faces.

The closest charred creature had its face pressed tightly against the fence. It looked a little different from the other charred creatures. A few drops of pink, waxy substance were dripping from its charcoal-black face. Upon closer inspection, it was a piece of pink plastic embedded in its cracked skull, stuck to the surrounding flesh.

The person and the hairpin looked as if they had been burned in the same fire.

Fire?

Xia Zhu took a step back.

The girl's voice echoed in her mind.

"Look, don't I look like a doll?"

She picked up a plastic bow, held it up in her hair, and said to the girl next to her.

"Alright, stop showing off, or you'll get caught and have your pay docked!"

Xia Zhu could hardly believe her own deduction. She looked at the crowd struggling to rush out of the building, reached into her coat pocket, and touched the key that could open the door in front of her.

Her heart began to pound, and she turned and ran into the staff dormitory building.

On the first and second floors, in the silent building shrouded in darkness, the sound of weeping could be heard from every tightly closed door. The sounds were as sorrowful, resentful, and grief-stricken as Zhou Xiaoli's.

As she walked up the steps to her dormitory room, a girl's clear singing voice broke through her sobs from one side of the corridor. It drifted through the long, dark corridor and out the window, chasing the jade-colored moonlight.

"The moon sets and crows cry, a testament to a thousand years of wind and frost..."

"The sound of the waves remains, but the night of yesteryear is gone..."

Xia Zhu gently opened the door. Wu Yan and He Yujiao were still fast asleep, while Zhou Xiaoli's bed was quiet, and she had stopped crying. She lay down on her own bed fully clothed, staring at the grain of the wood beneath the ceiling.

She needs time to connect everything.

A fire; a tightly closed escape route; girls who complained about the heat during the day disappearing into the night to weep in the dead of night; two roommates who asked for leave at the same time were perfectly normal, neither disappearing into their beds nor making a sound; Zhou Xiaoli, who shared a dorm room with the factory manager, seemed to have a close relationship with him.

The truth slowly became clear in Xia Zhu's mind, and the various clues began to connect.

But there is still one crucial point that remains unclear. A corner of that place is vaguely visible, but she cannot peel off the thin film covering it.

If this is a dream caused by the death of many people, perhaps as many as eighty, in a fire, resulting in an obsession, then who is the person having the dream?

Who exactly is the spirit who possesses the key to Xia Zhu's departure?

A note from the author:

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