After making this declaration that sounded almost like a challenge, Li Yuebai watched Gao Chengyu's phantom gradually disappear before his eyes and turn into sand that floated in the air.
The first level returned to silence.
Li Yuebai walked directly to the stairs without hesitation, stepped on them, and walked up step by step.
At the end of the stairs was an open door. It was dark inside and nothing could be seen clearly.
In the darkness, there was a strange cry.
Crying?
Li Yuebai frowned, feeling puzzled, and unknowingly quickened his pace, passing through the thick black fog at the door and entering the second floor.
The second floor looked no different from the first. It was empty everywhere. There was a crow perched on the window, perhaps the same one as before.
The biggest difference is that there is an extra girl in the corner.
The girl looked only five or six years old. She had her back to him and was facing the corner of the wall. She was wearing a very cute dress. She raised her hands to cover her face and cried. Her crying was no different from that of other little girls Li Yuebai had seen before. Other children would cry because they didn't get to buy beautiful clothes, eat the cake they wanted, or go to the amusement park they wanted to go to, but when they cried they would be coaxed or scolded by their parents. No one would come to this strange tower alone in the middle of the night and cry alone facing the corner of the wall.
Li Yuebai walked closer and after seeing the girl's figure and clothes clearly, he felt his heart stop beating.
This is the girl captured by the camera.
After Ye Qing became a vampire, he drove away from the underground garage of the community. The last scene captured by the camera was him holding the girl, who was covered in blood and had left behind the bloody stuffed bear...
Li Yuebai will never forget this scene.
According to the subsequent investigation by the Municipal Bureau, the girl was Xiaowan - Xiaowan who had been kidnapped by a female vampire in the same underground garage, and her mother had also called her.
For a moment, Li Yuebai couldn't understand why Xiaowan appeared here.
Xiaowan heard footsteps behind her, slowly stopped crying and turned around.
The moment she turned her head, Li Yuebai wanted to avoid her sight, but he held back.
Fortunately, nothing strange happened. The girl's face was cute and normal - big eyes, long eyelashes, her cheeks and nose were red from crying, and her whole face was wet with messy tear marks.
“Wuwuwuwu, police brother…” The little girl saw Li Yuebai’s appearance clearly and started crying again: “Save me, there is a vampire who wants to eat me, it’s so scary, wuwuwuwu…”
"Xiao Wan?" Li Yuebai hurriedly walked forward, squatted down, and wanted to wipe her tears, but he realized that his hands were too dirty and covered with dust. He didn't have any handkerchiefs or tissues on him, so he could not do anything.
"I'm so scared..." Xiaowan cried until she almost passed out.
"Don't be afraid, I'm here." Li Yuebai tried to speak in a softer voice and comforted her.
He didn't have anything that could really comfort the girl, except for the gun and a bottle of drinking water. In desperation, he could only take out the water and empty the bottle cap, wanting to help the girl wash her dirty hands and face, but he was too afraid to actually do it.
He was afraid that the water would go right through the girl's body and fall to the ground, and then the girl would disappear into the air and cease to exist.
Li Yuebai suppressed the chaotic thoughts in his mind, quietly took out the parchment and took a look at it - there was nothing shown on it.
Li Yuebai simply wrote the question directly on the parchment - What is she? Is she an illusion?
Parchment didn't answer.
Not long after, new footsteps were heard.
Li Yuebai stood in front of the girl, turned around, and saw the most familiar person again - it was Ye Qing.
It was still the fake Ye Qing on the first floor, walking towards the girl step by step.
When the girl saw Ye Qing, she immediately burst into laughter: "Police brother!"
Indeed, in the beginning, Xiaowan liked Ye Qing more than Li Yuebai, because it was Ye Qing who sent her home, and Li Yuebai had shed too much blood and was too murderous at that time, so he did not get close to her.
"Don't come over." Li Yuebai calmed himself down and looked at the fake Ye Qing warily.
"Why not?" Fake Ye Qing didn't care about his protest at all, and still walked closer step by step: "When I turned into a vampire, you didn't kill me, so shouldn't this be the result you are waiting for?"
Li Yuebai took a deep breath and put his arms around Xiaowan's shoulders. Her body was warm and soft, as if a slight squeeze would kill her. It was this feeling that made him want to do his best to protect her.
But the touch in his hand soon disappeared. Xiaowan's body dissipated into a phantom in an instant, and then quickly condensed into a solid body. In this way, she avoided his control and walked towards Ye Qing unconsciously.
"Vampires have the ability to control minds, but Vila doesn't." Ye Qing smiled: "So she will only listen to me."
"You..." Li Yuebai stood up and rushed forward, trying to separate the two people, but found that his hands could not touch their bodies at all.
"Brother Policeman." Xiao Wan raised her head hopefully and tugged at the corner of Ye Qing's clothes: "You can save me, right?"
Ye Qing leaned over and touched her head, a smile that was totally unlike Ye Qing appeared on the corner of his mouth: "Yes."
The next second, he picked up the girl, moved close to her neck and bit her.
The girl's body trembled violently, and she began to struggle desperately in his hands, waving her slender arms desperately to try to push him away, but she couldn't do it at all. She cried and screamed miserably, but it was of no use. Soon, her struggling movements became smaller and smaller, and her voice became weaker and weaker. Her originally rosy skin soon turned pale, and her soft body gradually stiffened.
It was unknown how long it was before Ye Qing dropped the girl's cold body and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
The girl was thrown into the corner in a strange posture, her eyes were wide open, her face was full of panic and fear, her skin was gray and pale, very scary.
Throughout the whole process, no matter what Li Yuebai did, he could not stop Ye Qing's behavior. It was as if they were not in the same time and space.
On the parchment, the answer gradually appeared: She was not an illusion, she was a ghost left in the world, repeating the process of her death over and over again.
Li Yuebai found that he had taken out the pistol from his arms and pointed the gun at Ye Qing without knowing when.
"Shoot! You should have shot a long time ago." Ye Qing looked at him coldly: "If you had shot on the first floor, then what happened on the second floor would not have happened."
Yes, if I hadn't let Ye Qing go in the museum, Xiaowan wouldn't have died...
Li Yuebai felt his hands were shaking.
Finally, he put down his gun: "It's not your fault."
"If it's not my fault, then whose fault is it?" Ye Qing narrowed his eyes: "Yours?"
“…”
"Do you know how many people's blood I sucked after Xiao Wan?" Ye Qing had no intention of letting him go. He pressed closer and closer, pointing upwards: "The next six levels are all like this, each one more cruel and unbearable than the last... So... why don't you kill me yet?"
"No." Li Yuebai gritted his teeth and put the gun back into his arms.
As long as he shoots Ye Qing, everything he holds on to in his heart will be gone, and he will fall into the control of the vampire.
Illusions are just illusions. What really tortures you is not the illusion, but the fact that has already happened.
"If you insist, please continue moving forward." Ye Qing bowed and disappeared.
The stairs leading to the third floor opened.
Each subsequent level is hell on earth.
Li Yuebai had seen many human imaginations of hell in books and documentaries - mountains of corpses and seas of blood, frying pans, shovels... demons, flames, tongue pulling... everything was repeated here.
On each level, Ye Qing killed a person or a group of people in some cruel way, then sucked their blood, and then challenged Li Yuebai: Why don’t you dare kill me?
It’s not his fault, it’s not his fault… Li Yuebai repeated this in his heart over and over again until he no longer understood what this sentence meant.
Until the seventh floor.
"Is he so important to you?" Fake Ye Qing stood in the sticky blood on the ground, playing with a bleeding head with a mocking smile: "Have you thrown away all the principles in your heart for him now?"
Maybe?
Once dead, there is no resurrection. Dust returns to dust, ashes return to ashes. This is the law of the universe.
But he could use the existence of the dormant vampire to change his fate and bring him back to life.
So, he became a vampire and had to transform himself into a devil in order to survive.
Even so, I could only watch from a distance and do nothing, not try to stop him or reveal any information about him.
Gu Xisha has always been a person who can clearly distinguish between good and evil, and advocates eradicating all evil.
Li Yuebai himself, of course, has always hoped that innocent people could be protected.
But is the current practice really contrary to this principle?
Maybe, but there is no other way.
Now we are at the seventh level. If we hold on a little longer, we will win.
"I won't kill Ye Qing." Li Yuebai stood in the blood-soaked ground, staring at the fake Ye Qing opposite him: "Don't waste your time, get out of the way."
"You win." Fake Ye Qing clapped his hands and made a helpless gesture: "You passed the test, please continue to move forward."
For the seventh time he disappeared into thin air.
This is the seventh floor.
Li Yuebai looked around, but only saw a staircase leading upwards.
The seventh floor is already the top floor, why can we go up further? Could it be that the exit is at the top of the tower?
Anyway, the torment of phantoms and undead is over.
Li Yuebai wanted to walk, but his legs felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead.
His back was already soaked with sweat, and he felt very uncomfortable in his heart. All his strength was consumed in the psychological struggle.
Even though he knew clearly that the scenes he saw were all illusions, but whenever he thought that Ye Qing might have really done these things and just didn't see them... he would be overwhelmed by the heavy sense of guilt and feel suffocated.
There is no way to atone for so many sins.
If he were to see those phantoms again, he might really collapse, become schizophrenic, suffer from depression, and do all kinds of crazy things...
Fortunately it's over.
Li Yuebai tried to calm himself down and stepped onto the stairs going up.
At the end of the stairs, there is still a doorway hidden in darkness.
Going out of this doorway, maybe you can see the night sky, maybe you can look up and see the stars, maybe you will find yourself standing on the top of a tower, overlooking this chaotic city - maybe not, the Seven Stars Tower has only seven floors, which is too short compared to the city. Even though it is located on a hillside, you cannot overlook the city.
The moment he passed through the doorway, Li Yuebai closed his eyes.
He imagined a thousand times what he would see when he opened his eyes - maybe Gao Chengyu and his men, maybe nothing, maybe...
But he had not expected what was happening before his eyes.
In front of me was an empty tower room. There was no decoration, no furniture, just a large empty room with a winding staircase leading to the upper floor. The walls were made of black bricks. There was a window on the wall, but there was no glass, just an empty window hole. A crow was perched on the windowsill, making a mournful cawing sound. Under the crow's claws, there was a piece of parchment.
Li Yuebai walked forward and picked up the parchment, on which was displayed a line of words - Welcome to the first floor.