Floor Negative Eighteen

“Hey!”

Lin Mo grabbed An Yuexin by the back of his collar and yanked him a full step backward.

“Huh?” An Yuexin froze for a moment. His eyes shifted around before his mind finally caught up.

He looked down.

Two more steps ahead was the mall’s central atrium. Looking over the edge, it was at least twenty meters to the bottom.

An Yuexin’s face instantly went pale. His knees went weak, and he nearly collapsed.

He abruptly grabbed Lin Mo’s sleeve with his other hand, his fingers tightening around the fabric.

“Fuck! What the hell was wrong with me?! I clearly didn’t—”

Before he could finish, Lin Mo pressed down on his shoulder. His grip wasn’t particularly hard, but his tone left no room for argument.

“Shut up. Call the others, then get out of here.”

An Yuexin met Lin Mo’s eyes. He swallowed all the nonsense that had been about to come out of his mouth and nodded vigorously, like a pecking chicken.

The two of them headed back. An Yuexin was still trembling.

“Better to believe it than regret not believing it.”

“Don’t say anything reckless, either. They might not believe you, and if you trigger their rebellious streak, we’ll be in trouble.”

An Yuexin thought that made sense, so he grabbed onto Lin Mo with one hand and followed him back toward the corridor.

He was being, to put it mildly, a bit of a coward.

But this strange incident really had made his scalp prickle.

He glanced left and right at the empty corridor and lowered his voice as much as possible.

“Someone was talking right next to my ear just now.”

Lin Mo turned his head.

An Yuexin swallowed. “I heard someone whispering in my ear, telling me to jump. The voice was incredibly clear. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but it was so close—like they were pressed right against my ear.”

He rubbed at the gooseflesh on his arms.

“My mind was all foggy at the time. My legs suddenly stopped listening to me and just started walking forward on their own.”

Lin Mo said nothing.

An Yuexin nudged him with his elbow. “Say something, will you?”

“Aren’t you looking for your arcade anymore?”

“…”

An Yuexin opened his mouth, then shook his head with all his might.

“No, no, I’m not looking anymore. I wouldn’t look even if you paid me. I’ll go wherever you say.”

His legs were still shaking, but at least he could walk.

The two returned to the auntie’s shop.

The others had already finished their conversation, and Luo Ruiyu was the first to bounce over.

“What Eight Coffins legend? It’s all made up.”

“The auntie said it was just a rumor that got twisted out of proportion. There’s nothing to it. It’s only because the developer was from Hong Kong and liked to keep the air conditioning turned way up. Someone thought the place felt creepy, and then people started making things up.”

Fang Jun chimed in from the side. “Exactly. Look how warm it is now. It was cold before because of the air-conditioning problem. Nobody’s complaining about the heating now, are they? There’s really nothing going on.”

The expressions on Xie Yuling and Chu Miaomiao’s faces remained unchanged.

Xie Yuling didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned and glanced at An Yuexin’s face.

An Yuexin pressed his lips together.

He wanted to say something, but when he met Lin Mo’s eyes, he remembered Lin Mo’s warning not to say anything reckless. So he put on a calm expression and raised his chin.

“If that’s the case, then let’s go. We can see where else to look around.”

“All right, let’s go.”

The group continued down the corridor. After turning a corner, they saw the elevators.

They had just come up on the escalator, so they could simply take the elevator down.

Nothing wrong with that.

The elevator happened to be stopped on the fifth floor. The moment they pressed the down button, the doors opened.

Luo Ruiyu stepped in first, and Fang Jun followed.

“Don’t take this one.”

Lin Mo spoke up.

Everyone paused.

It was rare for him to actively warn them against something.

Xie Yuling couldn’t see anything unusual, so she looked up at Lin Mo.

An Yuexin had already fallen victim to something once. He felt safest when he was beside Lin Mo.

So without the slightest hesitation, he changed direction.

“The escalator’s over there. We came up that way, so let’s go back down the same way. We’re not in a hurry.”

Luo Ruiyu and Fang Jun, however, stared at Lin Mo in confusion.

“Is that really necessary? It’s just an elevator.”

“What’s gotten into you guys today? Didn’t we already establish that the story about Li Lin Plaza was fake?” Fang Jun didn’t understand either. One of his feet was already across the elevator threshold.

Lin Mo shook his head. “Listen to me. Don’t take this elevator.”

With that, he started walking toward the escalator.

Xie Yuling tugged on Chu Miaomiao, and the two of them followed.

An Yuexin hurried after them, not forgetting to call back over his shoulder, “You two, hurry up!”

Fang Jun and Luo Ruiyu exchanged a glance.

Luo Ruiyu stepped out of the elevator and asked in a lowered voice, “Does Lin Mo have some kind of psychological problem? Like claustrophobia?”

Fang Jun shook his head. “I don’t think so. I remember riding elevators with him plenty of times.”

That was what he said, but they still intended to follow Lin Mo.

“Whatever. Come on, let’s go.”

Just as Luo Ruiyu turned around, his foot stumbled.

No.

It wasn’t a stumble. Something had tugged at him.

At the same time, Fang Jun lost his balance as well, his entire body pitching backward.

He had clearly already stepped out of the elevator. His foot was already planted on the tiles outside, yet his body was moving backward against his will.

The two of them fell into the elevator almost simultaneously.

Bang!

Fang Jun’s back slammed into the rear wall, making him grimace in pain.

Luo Ruiyu landed on his side, his elbow striking the panel. He sucked in a sharp breath.

Fang Jun braced himself against the wall and hauled himself up.

“No, wait. We were clearly several steps away from the elevator. How did we suddenly end up falling back inside?”

Before he could finish, the elevator doors closed.

Not at their normal speed, either. They slammed shut, as though someone had forcefully shoved them together from both sides.

Fang Jun looked up and saw the elevator begin descending automatically, shooting straight down to the first floor.

But it didn’t stop.

It continued downward.

Basement One. Basement Two. Basement Three…

“Does this mall really have that many underground floors?” Luo Ruiyu had gotten to his feet as well. He rubbed his elbow and leaned over to look.

There was still no sign of it stopping.

Fang Jun began pressing the door-open button.

Nothing happened.

He pressed the emergency call button.

Nothing happened.

The elevator accelerated. Their eardrums began to swell with pressure, and the sensation of weightlessness grew stronger and stronger, like they were plunging through empty space.

Luo Ruiyu turned to look at the elevator wall behind them. The mall’s elevators were observation elevators with glass on three sides. They should have been able to see the central atrium outside.

But there was nothing beyond the glass now.

Only darkness.

Fang Jun stopped pressing the buttons. He backed into the corner, his back pressed against the wall, and swallowed hard.

The elevator continued its descent.

It went all the way to Basement Eighteen.

“What the hell is going on?!”

The elevator stopped, but the doors didn’t open.

As the two men stared in terror, the elevator itself suddenly began to change. A visible decay spread across it right before their eyes.

It began at the seams, spreading piece by piece. Rust stains crawled across the metal like living things.

The fluorescent lights changed as well. Their white glow turned yellow and dim, while cracks spread across the plastic covers.

One corner of the floor lifted up.

Everything was changing in a bizarre, unnatural way.