In my ears, there was a buzzing sound like the fluttering of moth wings.
For a moment, Cheng Tingyu suspected that his hearing had been severely damaged.
She calmed herself down, decisively took out a mirror, and used her ability to assess her current state
[Mental State (Mild Madness): 73/125]
Cheng Tingyu believed the description in the parentheses—because at this moment, she already felt a bit inclined to buy [chewable coffee candy] or [essential oil patches], and didn't think they were expensive at all..
For someone who was short of money and constantly busy looking for a job, the fact that she didn't even care much about money anymore clearly meant she was not far from losing her sanity.
While Cheng Tingyu was verifying her personal information, the faint sounds in the corridor never ceased. Each time the noise reached her ears, it sent a sharp pain through her nerves.
Apartment No. 6 had staff from the inspection team stationed there, but given the current situation, leaving the room to seek help was clearly an extremely difficult task.
Cheng Tingyu didn't hesitate much and directly took out the "Check-in Instructions" he carried with him.
"..."
Normally, the "Check-in Instructions" would have twelve lines of tips, but what Cheng Tingyu saw at this moment was a vast emptiness equivalent to "give up, there's no hope."
——If there were a place to rate the living experience of Apartment No. 6, Cheng Tingyu would be willing to give it a negative five-star review.
She gently rubbed her temples.
Having lived here until today, Cheng Tingyu had already formed a certain suspicion about the true state of Apartment No. 6, but tonight, an unexpected change seemed to have occurred.
"This doesn't make sense..."
Cheng Tingyu closed his eyes and leaned against the headboard.
Except for the death of a tenant, everything on the sixth floor was no different from yesterday. If the death of the tenant in 601 were something that would trigger a chain reaction, the apartment management would not have let it go so easily this morning.
Cheng Tingyu gently erased the point of suspicion from his mind.
In addition to that, there was the matter of Ji Shilu.
During the day, he bought sealing paper that could isolate power from "Screwdriver."
Cheng Tingyu's pupils grew darker and deeper. She reached out to tuck the fallen strands of hair behind her ear, the ends of her black hair already dampened by blood.
Last night, Ji Shilu entered the dungeon, and today he is in very poor condition. According to the procedure, he should go to the medical room to get a mental recovery agent.
In the case of obtaining the mental restorative, why did he still feel the need to urgently seek help from the "Screwdriver"?
Cheng Tingyu thought, there must have been something that shattered Ji Shilu's trust in Fang from the apartment.
She almost immediately recalled the description of the medical room's potion—"For non-Mi-Tong players, it can have a placebo effect."
Cheng Tingyu looked at the mirror, silently communicating with himself: "We both know that, under normal circumstances, just entering a dungeon once wouldn't severely affect the participant's mental state."
However, "Secret Eye" type players are special. From the moment she regained her memory until now, all the information she received from various sources conveyed the same fact: "Secret Eye" players are very prone to madness.
If Lu Zhen is indeed a Mito about to awaken his own abilities, then is the anomaly in the corridor a result of his madness?
Cheng Tingyu closed his eyes in deep thought.
When they first met, she had identified a line of information about an ability on Ji Shilu: "In the process of hatching."
As a "Mithun," Ji Shilu could enter the spiritual world after completing his incubation.
In the apartment room late at night, Cheng Tingyu and his reflection in the mirror simultaneously revealed a smile: "Did you think of it too?"
She had once seen a "point of light" filled with malice in the sea of her mind.
Cheng Tingyu couldn't fully recall the appearance of the "light spot" in his mind afterward, but he remembered the feeling of being consumed by madness.
Based on the current situation, Ji Shilu, whose abilities are in the "incubation" stage, directly gazed at the lighthouse within the sea of spirits that should not be witnessed during the process of obtaining the true name.
Cheng Tingyu lowered his gaze. If his hypothesis was correct, it meant that even the inspection team couldn't resolve the consequences brought about by Mi Tong's madness.
In the darkness, Cheng Tingyu felt his heart beating faster and faster.
Although she was infinitely close to death, she unexpectedly felt no regret. Instead, she looked into the mirror, smiled at her reflection, and said, "If I really can't make it through this night, then it's just your own doing."
Rushing into City F0631 without any relevant memories was indeed a highly risky endeavor. Had my former self considered this?
Cheng Tingyu could feel her thoughts gradually slowing down. She twisted open the large bottle of mineral water placed by the window and unceremoniously poured it all over her head, using the cold water to cool herself down.
To find a way to survive, one must first sort out the current situation.
She had long suspected that Apartment No. 6 was not one copy, but two.
Cheng Tingyu carefully read the original version of the "Check-in Instructions." According to common sense, the rules listed there must have been set to increase the survival rate of the guests.
The ones related to sleep are the sixth and seventh rules.
Guests only enter the dream instance after falling asleep, so from this perspective, the proportion of relevant content in the "Check-in Notice" is indeed a bit too low.
Cheng Tingyu analyzed the content of rules six and seven. The part in rule seven about "contacting the staff if you sleep for more than twelve hours" was relatively easy to understand. The rooms in the apartment were only for single occupancy, and the residents usually didn't visit each other. Therefore, this rule was likely set up in case someone went missing for a long time or accidentally fell asleep in a public area.
As for the sixth rule, "Try to go to sleep before three in the morning," it made Cheng Tingyu somewhat concerned.
If the copy only exists within the dream, then reality relative to the dream can be considered a safe zone. However, the sixth rule clearly tells everyone that reality is not safe, and it is even more dangerous than entering the dream copy.
Rule Six suggests that guests need to be asleep by 3 a.m. Does this mean that sleep is actually a form of protection for the guests?
On her first day in the apartment, Cheng Tingyu already had some ideas about the scenario she was in, and her subsequent experiences repeatedly confirmed the accuracy of her suspicions.
When she walked in the hallway, she sometimes felt the presence of others around her, but when she looked closely, she saw nothing.
Other people might still have the possibility of being dazzled, but as a "Sharp Eye," Cheng Tingyu clearly wouldn't miss someone standing right in front of him.
Apart from that, there were the strange noises in the hallway at midnight.
Cheng Tingyu opened his eyes and turned his head to look at the empty bed on the other side, his middle finger rhythmically tapping the edge of the bed.
There were quite a few vacant rooms in Apartment No. 6.
In Apartment Six, each room has two beds.
Cheng Tingyu had reason to speculate that, perhaps besides them, there was also an invisible group of guests living in this apartment building.
Those guests, in the dead of night, have a chance of sensing those who are still awake, so residents need to go to sleep early to avoid staying up all night.
Staying up late outside is harmful to your health; staying up late in Apartment No. 6 is deadly.
Under normal circumstances, apartment residents cannot see the invisible people around them, but in certain situations, contact between the two parties can occur.
The empty bed in the room served as a kind of detection mechanism; if there were signs that someone had slept in it, it would mean—
In this room, there were other occupants as well.
"..."
Cheng Tingyu took a deep breath.
——Although the situation outside the door was very bad, fortunately, she was the only one inside for now.
Since the tenants needed a bed, it meant they would sleep, and if she guessed correctly, since these invisible beings were also considered tenants of the apartment, they would naturally be subject to the same restriction of entering the dream instance after falling asleep.
Unlike regular guests who can leave after staying for a month, invisible guests can only wander in place forever. Their strength, sanity, and life are continuously diminished in the dream copy.
Only the residents with the dreamscape entrance will lose their entrance characteristic every thirty days, and will only regain it on the forty-fifth day.
That is to say, if a forty-five-day cycle is taken as a reference, those invisible tenants who are between thirty and forty-five days are not affected by entering the instance after falling asleep.
They are the source of the strange noises in the corridor.
"I think I understand how the tenant of 601 died."
——"Notice for Residents" suggests that guests should avoid visiting each other, delineates the activity areas, and informs them that staff wearing blue work badges are safe.
This means that two types of residents coexist in overlapping spaces, with a certain probability of interacting with each other, and those invisible residents have the ability to affect the perception of normal residents.
Yesterday, after Zhang Zhuowei took the food upstairs, he reached out and knocked on what he thought was the door to apartment 604. However, his perception had already been affected, and the one who ultimately opened the door for him was actually the monster in the apartment.
However, judging from the situation in the corridor, as long as the guests do not open the doors themselves, those monsters should not be able to enter their rooms directly.
"..."
Cheng Tingyu smiled slightly, "But yesterday morning, the resident of 604 should have had the door open for a long time, right?"
So, in the room of the tenant in 604, could there be an invisible guest present at this moment?
Cheng Tingyu pondered the above hypothesis—after awakening the "Secret Eye," meeting the "Light Spot" in the sea of consciousness, and then encountering the invisible tenant of the apartment, it was simply a gathering of the essence of bad luck and the quintessence of a side quest.
As she pondered, she picked up the blank "Check-in Notice" again.
About five or six seconds later, two lines of information appeared that only Cheng Tingyu could see—
[Detected item to be identified, proceed with identification?
Remaining identification attempts: 3/3
Because she had just woken up from a dream, her stamina was still full, giving her three full identification attempts.
Cheng Tingyu raised his eyebrows.
At this moment, she seemed to have somewhat understood how to use her abilities.
"Secret Eye: Appraiser" currently has two main directions. One is everyday appraisals, which don't consume much energy but also don't reveal anything particularly valuable. The other is like appraising Wei Heng's corpse and that heart called [Flesh: Life Overload], which requires a significant amount of energy but also provides more detailed data.
The second skill has a prerequisite. Since her true name is "Appraiser," she must possess sufficient relevant knowledge to appraise the target.
So when Cheng Tingyu had a considerable understanding of the situation in the copy, he could detect the items to be identified.
Cheng Tingyu chose to use her ability. Her eyes were already a deep, intense color, but now they resembled a night sky shrouded in darkness, black enough to make one's heart tremble.
[Supplementary Clause One: In the event that multiple people appear to be living in the apartment and it is inconvenient to contact the staff, tell yourself that it is all an illusion. Lie down as quickly as possible and ensure that you fall asleep. Sleep is a protection for the residents.]
Supplementary Clause Seven: The [apartment residents] that should not exist are derivative humanoid creatures of the [F0631-M-0851-02] copy. When an individual's mental value significantly decreases or the copy undergoes a mutation, normal residents have a probability of seeing them.
Supplementary Clause Nine: After prediction, the dropped items from [F0631-M-0851-01] copy include [Music Box - Lullaby].
Note: The [Music Box - Lullaby] is a prop created by the [Dream Maker], capable of putting specific targets to sleep.
Note 2: Unfortunately, no method has been found to crack the copy of [F0631-M-0851-01] at this time.