"What are you laughing at again?" Shekh moved his eyes. Why does this person change so much?
"It's nothing." Shi Jinzhe stood up, took Shehe's hand, and pulled her up. "Let's go. Let's take a walk around the hotel while it's still light. Be careful on the first night and don't stay outside the room too late."
Back in the winding corridor, other players gradually checked in.
In the oppressive, dim light, Shi Jinzhe passed by room 409 again. The door was half open, and inside lived Liu Run and Cheng Youan.
Although he disliked it, he still stood at the door and knocked.
Liu Run placed the unconscious Cheng You'an on the bed and turned around when he heard a knock on the door.
Shi Jinzhe silently surveyed the layout of room 409 and asked, "Was this door locked when you opened it?"
Liu Run nodded: "It was opened with a room card."
"Okay, sorry to bother you." After asking only this one question, Shi Jinzhe left with Shehe.
Liu Run was completely baffled. "Shi Jinzhe came up before everyone else. Did he discover something was wrong by asking this question? Was the door open before I came in?"
He looked around the room. To the right of the entrance was the bathroom, and to the left was a full-length mirror.
Two meters inside from the doorway are two beds placed side by side, one by the window and the other by the wall. Cheng Youan was fast asleep on the bed by the wall.
A wooden bedside table separates the two beds, with a distance of one meter between them—this is the most common hotel layout.
If there's any problem, it's that the furniture is all reddish-brown, the tone is too dark, and it's suffocating to look at it for too long.
After checking the room, Liu Run checked the door locks, but found nothing wrong.
I specifically chose room 409 because I didn't want to stay in the room at the end of the corridor.
He stroked his chin: "Shi Jinzhe's problem... The door was indeed locked when I opened it. He must have noticed something was wrong when he passed by from the outside."
Thinking it over, Liu Run opened the door and prepared to simulate the movement route from the outside to see if he could discover anything.
But as soon as he opened the door, he heard Shi Jinzhe say from the doorway of the room two doors down, "Excuse me."
"..."
Shi Jinzhe knocked on each room door. Some doors didn't open, some opened only a crack and were very wary, and some opened their doors wide to invite him in.
Liu Run, who thought his room was special, was speechless. It turned out that he was just asking a routine question.
He slammed the door shut, and Shi Jinzhe acted as if he hadn't heard a thing, walking into the next room without turning his head.
“Someone in the room said you’re crazy.” Shekh twitched his ears and told her what he had heard.
Shi Jinzhe didn't care: "Mental patients are the ones with the best lives. They can legally go crazy, it's no big deal."
To survive, it's not shameful to behave a little strangely.
After asking around at each of the players' rooms, Shi Jinzhe returned the way he came, passing by his own room, 403, and headed towards the next corner.
Surprisingly, this corridor was shorter than the others, with four rooms on each side and a closed wall at the end.
The continuous U-shaped layout is cut off, and the house, which is supposed to gather energy, is missing a corner. The northwest corner of the house is missing, which is a very bad omen.
Shi Jinzhe: "No wonder we only saw a one-way corridor when we came out of the elevator. It turns out that it's not connected."
Shekh stared for a moment: "It's open, but it's been bricked up. There's a road behind this wall."
"It's working? Did you notice anything unusual?"
"No."
Sheh looked around, and after a moment, she tugged at her broken fingers, pointed to something on a door, and asked, "What's that? Why is there a tree branch hanging on the doorknob?"
Shi Jinzhe looked in the direction of her face.
The fourth room's door was labeled "Operating Room," and a dozen or so round, yellowish-brown fruits, resembling longans, hung from the doorknob. The short, wide leaves were withered, with only a few remaining.
A red rope was tied to a withered branch and then to the doorknob. Dust had accumulated in the folds of the red rope knot, indicating that the thing had been hanging there for a long time.
Shi Jinzhe replied, "It is soapberry."
"What's the point of hanging it on the door?" Shekh approached, quite curious.
"Soapberry, commonly known as 'the devil's thorn,' is said to ward off evil spirits when hung on the door according to folklore."
Shekh had never heard of using a plant to ward off evil spirits, so he reached out and touched the round soapberry fruit.
The peel is dried and brittle; when touched, it's like a cracked eggshell, with a small gap revealing the black fruit inside.
Shi Jinzhe told her, "Some people make the black kernels inside into bracelets, which are meant to bring good fortune and peace. In addition, Buddhism also makes them into prayer beads."
“Deceased wife, death, warding off evil spirits—perhaps someone died in this room.” Having spent the past month staying in hotels with Shi Jinzhe, Sheh had gained some understanding of the situation.
"Humans are very reluctant to encounter such things while traveling, so why is the hotel displaying them so openly? Could it be that something strange has happened and can no longer be hidden?"
Shech continued, "You even think the room at the end of the corridor is unlucky and demand to change rooms. If the residents see this thing, they'll definitely overthink it, right?"
"Of course, the needs of the guests are the top priority. Even if something happened at the hotel, it must be kept secret."
Shi Jinzhe gently touched the soapberry tree on the doorknob with his finger and saw that it had been trimmed.
"There are 18 beads in total, representing the Buddhist eighteen sons, which symbolize blessings and good fortune."
The old wooden door was a lighter color than the others, with a fake gold nameplate on it. The peephole below was completely black and opaque, indicating that the lights were off inside.
Shekh has already learned basic common words. When he saw the three words "operation room", he said, "It's a place for employees to ward off evil and pray for blessings. I don't know if the accident just happened to happen in this room, or if it's because the employees work here for a long time, so there's an extra layer of protection. We need to check the situation on the other floors."
Shi Jinzhe's attention was still on the soapberry on the doorknob. In the windowless corridor, the round and small fruit trembled slightly.
His hand had already been withdrawn; the fruit should have remained still for the past two minutes since he hadn't touched it.
Shekh was still deep in thought when he heard Shi Jinzhe's breathing behind him. His voice was very low: "Shekh, lower your head."
The soapberry tree on the doorknob was still trembling, not swaying from side to side, but a slight shaking caused by the vibration of the door panel.
In the empty corridor, it sounded like someone bumped into the door, but apart from the breathing of two people, there was no other sound.
It wasn't a hallucination; for a full half minute, the bunch of soapberries trembled for no apparent reason.
Shi Jin whispered in her ear, "Is it a ghost?"
Sheh shook her head; she had checked the corridor when she first entered and found no ghosts.
Even though she witnessed the soapberry tree, which is believed to ward off evil spirits, moving with her own eyes, she still couldn't sense any ghostly presence.
With his eyes closed, Shekh re-examined the four rooms to confirm that there were indeed no ghosts.
"Not only are there ghosts, but there aren't even any people."
She imitated Shi Jinzhe, keeping her voice as low as possible. The two of them gazed at the string of soapberries and communicated with whispers.
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