Translator: CinderTL
"I hope he can survive," Hua Luo exhaled and said.
"Damn it!"
Liu Guo kicked the glass door of the café with all his might, but to his surprise, the door was much sturdier than it appeared.
Through the glass door, the street outside looked as normal as ever. A woman carrying a bag filled with vegetables and red and white meat passed by.
About 7 or 8 meters away, a few mountain bikes were parked. Four students, chatting and laughing, were gathered there, eating skewers while their backpacks hung casually from the handlebars.
An old-looking van was parked in front of a bookstore, where two men were unloading goods, one smoking a cigarette.
Not far away, two elderly people, supporting each other, waited by the sidewalk for the traffic light to turn green.
Everything seemed normal. Liu Guo had tried to break the glass door with a hard object but failed, only managing to create a loud noise.
The feeling of being watched grew stronger, and he even sensed the temperature dropping.
"Hey, can you hear me?" Liu Guo crouched down and shouted through the gap between the two glass doors, "I'm locked in here!"
Soon, his cry for help received a response. A few people approached with puzzled looks.
An elderly man with glasses, hunched over, adjusted his glasses and asked Liu Guo, "Young man, what's wrong?"
"I came for coffee, but the owner locked me in," Liu Guo explained. "He forgot there was still a customer when he closed up."
"That's really careless," one of the students remarked. "Do you have the owner's number? Call him and ask him to come back."
"Running a business like this, really," the smoking man chimed in.
"There's no time. I'm in a hurry. Could you please break this glass door from the outside?" According to Liu Guo's speculation, this café was within the Ghost's control. If he could leave, he might survive.
Of course, he couldn't break the glass door himself; he needed external help.
"That's not necessary. This door... this door must be expensive," the elderly man advised kindly. "Wait a little longer, or give us the owner's number, and we'll call him for you."
In the frugal eyes of the elderly man, breaking the glass door would likely cost a lot of money, which wasn't worth it.
"I'm afraid there's no time," Liu Guo said urgently. "I smell something strange, maybe gas."
"Gas?" The faces of the passersby changed at once. If it was a gas leak, it could be a matter of life and death.
The smoking man immediately threw his cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. "Don't panic. Let's try to pull the door open a bit, and you can squeeze through."
With that, the students stepped forward to help. Together, they managed to pull the door open a significant gap.
It seemed that if Liu Guo put in some effort, he might indeed be able to squeeze through.
"What are you waiting for?" the man holding the door with both hands, his face red from exertion, shouted. "Come out quickly! We can't hold it much longer!"
The elderly man also urged, "Young man, hurry up. A gas leak is no joke. If you're late—"
But Liu Guo seemed to have noticed something. As he looked at the kind-hearted people helping him, his eyes gradually turned cold.
The reflection on the glass door beside him was completely different from the people in front of him.
The figures in the reflection all had pale, grim faces, their eyes glaring at him as if they wanted to devour him whole.
These were not human.
Damn it...
Liu Guo slowly backed away, then turned and ran upstairs without looking back.
The Ghost's control was far more terrifying than he had imagined.
No, perhaps it wasn't a Ghost after all.
The problem was with this door. This door... had undergone some kind of mutation!
And from it, those incomprehensible things had emerged.
"Damn it!" Liu Guo ran frantically. He reached the second floor and opened door after door, but to his despair, all the windows on the second floor had disappeared.
Where the windows should have been, there were now only blank white walls.
He finally rushed into a messy room at the end of the hallway. Inside, there was a sofa, an unmade single bed, and a black desk.
On the desk sat a red laptop.
Liu Guo recognized it at once—it was Qiao Yu's computer. He looked around and found a camera on the shelf, along with several carefully stored lenses.
A few photography magazines were scattered on the floor.
This was Qiao Yu's room.
According to the timeline of this world, Qiao Yu should still be alive.
"Tap."
"Tap."
"Tap."
Footsteps echoed from downstairs.
Only now did Liu Guo truly understand the terror Qiao Yu had once faced. The footsteps were unnervingly clear, each step resonating as if it were stepping directly into his heart.
The footsteps were fast, climbing up the stairs to the second floor, and then they stopped outside the door.
Liu Guo had already locked the door.
The door was old, and the lock was the kind used in homes many years ago, where turning the handle from the outside would also turn the inside handle, producing a clicking sound.
To Liu Guo, it was like the sound of a death knell.
He couldn't escape now, but he could still do something for those who were still alive.
In an instant, Liu Guo rushed to the computer, turned it on, and immediately activated the recording function.
He held the comic close to the camera, flipping through the pages quickly, especially the handwritten letter.
When he noticed the door handle had suddenly stopped moving, Liu Guo clicked save, then opened Qiao Yu's account and sent the video to every friend.
Finally, he added a voice message, "If you receive this video, please contact Qiao Yu's brother immediately, or come to Nanmu Bay Café and find the owner here. You will be greatly rewarded!"
"This is not a joke. I repeat, this is not—" Liu Guo's voice was abruptly cut off as the computer lost power, and the screen went black.
Through the screen's reflection, Liu Guo saw someone sitting on Qiao Yu's bed behind him.
What terrified Liu Guo more than the sudden appearance was the pair of crimson eyes that slowly lifted to meet his gaze.
In the next second, Liu Guo immediately reached for the baseball bat beside him. The moment he saw the face of the man in black, he knew there was no chance of being spared.
And this confirmed his earlier speculation.
This door had indeed undergone a mutation; otherwise, it would never have broken the rules.
He knew very little about such incomprehensible things and had no idea how to fight them. It was precisely because of the emergence of such entities that the rules within the door had become so bizarre.
He only knew that such beings had the power to rewrite the rules.
Within the door from which they had emerged, they were supreme, above all else.
This door... had been completely eroded.
(End of the Chapter)
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