Global Collapse-Chapter 550 - 518: You’re Really Something _1

Cang Yue and the others felt their scalps prickle. They haven’t left the building! They’re still here!

"Don’t open the door!" Cang Yue raised her voice slightly to remind Xia Jianren. As long as the ghosts were still in this building, they weren’t safe. Opening the door in this situation was undoubtedly courting death.

Xia Jianren didn’t need Cang Yue’s warning; he had already snatched his hand back and even retreated several steps, distancing himself from the main door.

He anxiously looked up at the ceiling. "But we can’t stay here forever. I guess they’ll come to this room eventually... But the ghost didn’t enter this room just now. Could it be that they can’t get in?"

Cang Yue said softly, "The instance just started. The ghosts obviously won’t kill all the players within half an hour of the instance beginning. Previous instances tended to follow a pattern." In other words, it was too early for anyone to die.

As she spoke, Cang Yue glanced at the clock. It was already eight o’clock, and it was pitch black outside.

Hearing this, Xia Jianren also grew very anxious. "Then we..."

But before he could finish, everything before them suddenly went dark. The power had gone out.

The sudden darkness frayed Zhao Shuang’s fragile nerves. She opened her mouth in terror, about to scream, but Cang Yue quickly strode over and clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Don’t scream!" Cang Yue pressed her hand firmly over Zhao Shuang’s mouth, preventing her from doing anything else foolish.

The other players were also startled but quickly calmed down, making no sound other than a few shivers.

They keenly observed that when the power went out, the footsteps from upstairs also stopped. The room was instantly plunged into an eerie silence.

The sudden darkness prevented Keke from seeing her surroundings. Before her eyes could adjust, a cacophony of sounds assaulted her ears: the sharp screech of tires scraping against the ground, the jarring screams of many people simultaneously, and the thud and clatter of something heavy falling and rolling.

And beyond these sounds... there seemed to be the noise of many people coming downstairs.

Clearly, they had all heard this sound. Keke felt Xia Jianren trembling beside her and heard his faint voice ask, "Are those things from upstairs coming down?"

The screams from an unknown source grew louder and louder, filling the entire room with heart-wrenching cries. No one was in the mood to answer his question. Everyone was pale, hands clamped over their ears, their heads throbbing from the din.

During this prolonged torment, Xia Jianren thought he heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs stop right outside their door.

At the same time, another piercing sound suddenly erupted: a telephone ringing.

The staff dormitory was equipped with a company telephone line for internal calls, free of charge.

The phone had no caller ID. Its small screen merely flickered, looking particularly eerie in the darkness.

This isn’t a call from a human. It’s a call from a ghost.

Cang Yue stared wide-eyed at the small screen, the only source of light in the room. Biting her lip, she looked at Zhao Shuang. "You answer it."

She knew this call was almost certainly for Zhao Shuang.

Zhao Shuang’s hand trembled as she reached for the persistently ringing phone. Shuddering, she picked up the receiver and pressed it to her ear.

From the other end came an incredibly chilling sentence, delivered in a hollow voice as if by a group of people speaking in unison: "We’ve returned."

「It was now 8:30 PM.」

The weather was poor that day. Heavy clouds obscured most of the sky, allowing only a dim moon to peek through.

Gu Mian was examining a phone booth at the entrance to the residential complex.

This phone booth was no different from those in the real world: four glass sides and a landline telephone inside. The only distinct feature was a "Call Taxi" button in the phone’s lower-left corner.

These phone booths were quite common. Gu Mian had seen them along the road when he first entered the instance; in fact, he had used one to call a taxi initially.

He had to admit, this contraption looked and sounded very familiar.

If one pressed the "Call Taxi" button in the lower-left corner, a sweet female voice would say, "Hello, this is Sunshine Taxi..."

Gu Mian had been in a hurry when he arrived and hadn’t studied the phone booth carefully.

Now that he finally had the time, he stood inside the transparent booth, staring at the landline before him, deep in thought.

After pondering for a moment, Gu Mian picked up the receiver and pressed the "Call Taxi" button in the lower-left corner.

The same familiar voice, the same familiar Sunshine Taxi.

"Hello, this is Sunshine Taxi."

"I need a taxi."

"Alright, your address has been noted. Please wait a moment..."

It was the same familiar script; she didn’t ask Gu Mian for his location.

"Wait," Gu Mian suddenly interrupted the female voice. "I have a question I’d like to ask."

"Please, go ahead."

"Is the Antarctic Chemical Factory far from here?"

Silence hung on the other end for several seconds, as if the voice was trying to place the location.

After a moment, the female voice continued, "I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t believe there’s a place called the Antarctic Chemical Factory nearby."

"What about Shicha Sea?"

"That’s not here either."

"Crazy Game City?"

"I’m sorry, there’s no such place here."

Gu Mian searched his memory for other locations and asked, "Is there a Sweet Manor?"

The customer service agent’s tone had become a little strange, as if she thought she was dealing with a lunatic. Nevertheless, she answered patiently, "There seems to be a place called Sweet Manor in the next city. Do you want to go there? Now?"

As soon as Cang Yue and the others rushed out of the residential complex’s gate, they spotted the Doctor. He had left the staff dormitory much earlier and was now idly standing in a phone booth, apparently making a call.

He looked relaxed, a stark contrast to them, who had desperately fled the staff dormitory.

After Zhao Shuang had taken the call, they discovered the door to their room had been opened at some point.

Terrified, the group immediately swarmed out. They didn’t dare take the elevator, instead racing down the stairs and not stopping until they were out of the residential complex’s gate, finally pausing to catch their breath.

They hadn’t expected to run into Gu Mian.

"I thought he was dead! Don’t tell me he’s been here making calls all this time!" Xia Jianren had clearly also seen Gu Mian standing in the phone booth. "He left the dormitory just to come here and make a call? But who could he possibly call in this instance?"

Panting, Cang Yue quickened her pace and approached the phone booth.

The booth’s soundproofing wasn’t very good, and Gu Mian’s voice could be heard drifting out from inside.

"No, I don’t plan on going to that place in the middle of the night. Um... Miss, I also wanted to ask if you’ve seen a variety show called ’Crazy Guessing Words’... What about ’Sweet Lovers’ then?"

Cang Yue stood before the phone booth, her eyes wide.

They had just narrowly escaped the staff dormitory, so terrified they barely dared to breathe. Yet this man was in a phone booth, casually asking some woman if she’d seen a TV variety show?

"You’ve really got some nerve!" Cang Yue exclaimed.