1TWITF[C Chapter 80

Chapter 80

The dripping sound of water became clearer and clearer.

“The museum’s renovation is really terrible…” others thought, continuing to busy themselves.

Only the man who had taken the two glass lamps stood there blankly, staring at the ceiling, feeling that something was wrong.

But what exactly was wrong?

The water accumulating on the ceiling increased, flowing freely, gradually forming a strange pattern in the man’s eyes.

He wanted to see the pattern clearly, so he had to hold the flashlight higher, his eyes widening, trying to make it out.

But the museum was too dark. Even if he stood on tiptoes and raised the flashlight, he couldn’t see it clearly. A sense of anxiety arose in the man’s heart – “Damn it! What’s up there?”

What is it?

Yi Jun had been watching the man. Seeing him suddenly stop, standing in place with his head raised and motionless, alarm bells went off in her mind.

Because she was so focused on watching the front, she even ignored the increasingly cold aura coming from behind her.

Lightning flashed across the sky.

In that moment of light, the middle-aged man’s eyes widened. He had finally seen the pattern clearly.

On the ceiling, the water flowed into the pattern of a human face.

The lightning flashed and was gone, and the museum was plunged back into darkness. But the middle-aged man’s eyes grew wider and wider.

Why did he feel like he was seeing it more and more clearly?

No, it wasn’t that he was seeing it more clearly, but that the face was enlarging, giving the middle-aged man a strange smile.

He seemed to hear strange sounds.

Someone was laughing.

In the empty museum, an insane and lonely laughter, indistinguishable between male and female, now far, now near. Very similar to the image of ghosts in human imagination, gray and white translucent shadows floated in the darkness.

Those gray shadows laughed and giggled, reaching out their hands to him…

Yi Jun stared at the man for a long time, not even noticing when Cao Yi had disappeared.

To avoid unnecessary trouble, she was standing quite a distance from the middle-aged man, only able to vaguely see a dark silhouette.

What’s on the ceiling?

She looked up in confusion, shining her flashlight, but still couldn’t see anything.

The man was gone!

Yi Jun subconsciously took a few steps forward, looking around, unwilling to believe it.

Everything was empty, only damp water stains on the ground. “Drip,” a drop of water fell from the ceiling, splashing a small water flower.

Even if he ran away, he couldn’t have disappeared without a trace in such a short moment, so… something strange must have happened!

Just now… what happened?

Did the middle-aged man’s disappearance happen because he took the newly unearthed relics from the tomb, or because he was constantly looking up?

This almost made her scream.

Unknowingly, she realized that she was the only one left in the museum hall.

Where were the others?

Yi Jun didn’t dare to think too much, hurrying inside. She took out her phone to contact the others, but found that the signal was bad and the messages couldn’t be sent at all.

Stay calm… According to their experience, the most important thing to avoid in this situation is yelling and screaming, and try not to look for companions, because they might be ghosts in disguise.

Yi Jun bit her lip hard, her pace still quickening a lot.

She had to… had to try to survive, otherwise, what would happen to Nannan? No one would raise her.

She hadn’t done many tasks. She received her first task because she went to pick Nannan up from school.

Yi Jun still remembered that it was a rainy night, the weather as bad as it was now. After she took her home and was urging her to take a bath, a voice rang in her mind. The voice told her that she had to arrive at a certain place before midnight on Wednesday to do a task. At that time, she would go to another world.

Yi Jun didn’t believe it at first, but the continuous nightmares for several days forced her to believe it. The nightmare also told her that if she didn’t participate, in addition to dying suddenly on Wednesday, the task would also be transferred to her daughter.

How could she bear it?! How old was Nannan?

In this way, she started her task career again and again. Each time she escaped death, she almost lost half her life. She began to resent, resenting the tasks, resenting the other world. Inevitably, she also resented her daughter.

If it wasn’t for Nannan… if it wasn’t for her, if she hadn’t picked her up from school that day, wouldn’t this have happened?

Yi Jun didn’t dare to look directly at her heart, constantly using maternal love to numb herself – she was not only living for herself but also for Nannan.

The flashlight on the phone flickered twice and went dark. Then, the already weak light disappeared completely.

The hall was truly plunged into boundless darkness.

No… can’t panic…

Yi Jun tried to widen her eyes, walking step by step towards the interior of the hall. To avoid bumping into the display cases, she moved slowly along the wall.

As she got closer, she realized it was a small exhibition hall. The door was closed, and a trace of faint green light poured out from the crack in the door.

Almost involuntarily, she knocked on the door.

Yi Jun then realized that the door was locked from the outside. She opened the latch, hesitated for a while, and then pushed the door open.

As before, square display cases were placed along the walls. None of this was important. The point was the exhibit in the glass display case in the middle, about the size of a child’s head, round, smooth, and emitting a faint green light.

Almost as soon as you saw it, you would think of one word – night-luminescent pearl.

The reply just now seemed to be from him.

Under the soft, faint green light, the man’s shadow fell on the wall, not looking like a ghost.

The man turned his head, and Yi Jun was stunned.

Wasn’t this the man who had switched rooms with them yesterday?

Lu Yanli also recognized her, nodding slightly: “So it’s you.”

But no matter how careful he was, he accidentally entered an exhibition hall. As soon as he entered, a gust of wind blew, the glass door closed, and seemed to take the latch with it. He couldn’t get out, so he could only wait.

“Lu Yanli.”

“So it’s Mr. Lu. By the way, do you know anything about it?” Yi Jun pointed to the night-luminescent pearl.

“Sorry, I don’t know,” Lu Yanli’s attitude was very indifferent. Yi Jun didn’t give up. She desperately wanted a companion to embolden her.

Since the door was open, Lu Yanli didn’t need to stay any longer. After taking another look at the night-luminescent pearl, he politely thanked her and left the exhibition hall.

Yi Jun was about to chase after him when two more people walked in from outside.

It was Jing Tao and another tourist who was also trapped in the museum. The latter’s eyes immediately went straight, circling around the night-luminescent pearl.

“Oh my god, there really are night-luminescent pearls! They must be worth a lot of money, right?”

The man kept muttering, although he didn’t say it directly, the subtext was obvious.

“Just take it out and look at it, use it for a while, we’re not not putting it back, it should be fine, right?”

Yi Jun fell silent, obviously persuaded by him.

Drip.

A drop of water fell on the glass counter.

They stood in a circle around the night-luminescent pearl, not noticing that a figure slowly walked past the door.

The floor, which had been flooded with water just now, was now clean and dry, with no water stains at all.

Since he disappeared, then… where did the glass lamps go? Why did the water stains on the ground also disappear?

Lu Yanli stood up and returned to the counter where the glass lamps were placed. The ground was still covered with broken glass.

He vaguely heard some sounds, hesitated for a while, and walked towards the door.

He wanted to try if he could leave.

As soon as this thought came to his mind, Lu Yanli realized that the road under his feet seemed infinitely long. The door was clearly in front of him, but no matter how he walked, he was still in the same place.

He stopped, took another look at the door, turned around, and walked inside.

“Ah!”

It was the tourists who came to visit, a man and a woman. The man was one of the task-takers, and the girl was an ordinary tourist.

They rushed out of a small exhibition hall, trying to run to the door. Obviously, they also failed. Lu Yanli watched them run, but the distance between them didn’t increase at all.

“What should I do? I don’t want to die!” The girl cried, wiping away her tears and snot. “I knew I shouldn’t have come. What kind of museum is this? It’s obviously haunted!”

“Should we call them?”

Because it was too dark, they didn’t seem to notice Lu Yanli. They chatted as if no one else was there. It wasn’t until the latter coughed lightly that they realized that there was a person standing in the corner. The girl screamed again, and the man hurriedly stopped her: “It’s okay, it looks like a person.”

Seeing that the other person seemed to be a human, and looked very calm, the two immediately started talking.

“…We went to another exhibition hall, and there was a suit of armor in that hall. We took a few more glances…” Speaking of this, the girl reached out and punched the other person hard. “He moved the armor.”

“Anyway, the head of the armor accidentally fell off. We were about to put it back on when it suddenly moved and chased after us! This museum must be haunted!”

Lu Yanli smiled: “Not necessarily, what if it’s a robot? I heard that some museums do this, using robots to disguise as exhibits.”

“Is, is that so?” The man was skeptical.

How long has it been? They haven’t even seen the shadow of the Double Fish Jade Pendant. It would be too unjust if they were targeted by a ghost so quickly.

Lu Yanli had guessed that each exhibit seemed to have a certain attack range. This might be why the museum would lure people to actively disperse and enter different exhibition halls.

But this still needed to be verified.

“But it’s good to be wary of these things, after all, they are antiques.”

Lu Yanli didn’t say anything like there are no ghosts in the world, which made his words more credible.

The girl listened, feeling that it seemed to make sense. Her fear of ghosts made her subconsciously trust this man.

“But, but we didn’t run out just now…” the girl murmured.

The man changed the subject.

“By the way, I’m Lu Yanli, what about you?” In the darkness, Lu Yanli slowly approached, a pair of eyes darker than the night staring at the two people.

“I… I’m Wang Pengfei.”

“Ke Xiaoxue.”

Because of the psychological suggestion just now, they all had a sense of intimacy with Lu Yanli.

Lu Yanli smiled gently: “Okay.”

Coincidentally, he also needed to witness some phenomena to verify his conjectures.

As a provincial-level museum, the local government was willing to spend a lot of money. The entire museum covered a very large area, divided into three main exhibition halls and forty-two sub-exhibition halls. Among them, the two main exhibition halls C1 and C2 were side by side, and the thirty-one sub-exhibition halls D1-D31 were located on the first floor. The rest were all on the second floor and were closed all year round, generally not open to ordinary tourists.

They passed the first row of display cases.

The task-taker named Wang Pengfei carefully looked through them before heading to the next row.

Soon, they passed the second row, the display cases mostly containing jewelry.

Wang Pengfei deliberately probed, quietly saying to Ke Xiaoxue: “Look, these hairpins are very beautiful, right?”

Under the light of the flashlight, several jade hairpins shone with a soft and warm light.

Really… so beautiful…

She reached out, groping on the glass case.

Lu Yanli didn’t stop her, just stood further away.

Wang Pengfei was even happier: “If you like it very much, we can take it out and wear it for a while, just wear it for a while, don’t take it away, put it back after wearing it, nothing will happen.”

Ke Xiaoxue murmured: “Just wear it for a while?”

“It’s okay, we’ll just take a look.”

While speaking, he had already cut a seam in the glass case, twisting his wrist to cut out a hole the size of an open hand.

“Which one do you like, you can take it out and try it on,” Wang Pengfei persuaded her.

Ke Xiaoxue could no longer resist the temptation, reaching out and slowly taking down a jade hairpin with kingfisher feathers from the shelf.

“It’s really beautiful…” Her expression gradually became obsessed, but she didn’t realize anything was wrong, still stroking it with an obsessed look on her face.

Wang Pengfei and Lu Yanli were completely certain that the exhibits in the museum were indeed strange.

Light slowly came from the side, a little fluorescent green. Wang Pengfei looked back, shocked, and hurried over.

“Damn, you guys are too amazing, you even found the night-luminescent pearl,” he turned off his flashlight, looking amazed.

Yi Jun smiled helplessly.

She and Jing Tao knew that the cultural relics here could not be touched casually, so they simply lured the ordinary tourist and let him take away the night-luminescent pearl.

Now, the tourist holding the night-luminescent pearl could hardly hear anything, only following them foolishly, acting as a mobile light source.

Jing Tao shook his head: “It shouldn’t, look at the man who took the glass lamps, he disappeared directly, the worst result should be disappearing, right?”

The three task-takers realized that something was wrong.

“What’s going on?”

Why did they seem so unfriendly? It was like they were about to fight.

Lu Yanli stepped back a few steps again, standing in the darkness, looking at the only three smart people among this group of task-takers.

Jing Tao tentatively reached out to pull the man holding the night-luminescent pearl forward, but the latter’s feet were rooted to the spot, refusing to move.

It was as if something terrible would happen if he took another step forward!

Jing Tao had to give up.

Yi Jun pursed her lips: “What do you think the way out of this museum anomaly will be?”

She counted on her fingers: “Once people get close to cultural relics, they will be attracted to them. Forcibly taking them away is likely to cause harm, so the first way out is not to take away cultural relics.”

“But now, two people who hold cultural relics at the same time cannot approach each other. Is their inability to approach each other a universal phenomenon or an individual phenomenon?”

Wang Pengfei understood: “In this way, we’ll call another person to do an experiment.”

Jing Tao and Yi Jun agreed.

The three of them seemed to have intentionally or unintentionally ignored Lu Yanli, who was very satisfied with his hypnotic effect, quietly standing in the corner, waiting for their experimental results.

They quickly discussed the division of labor. Wang Pengfei stood in place waiting, while Jing Tao and Yi Jun took the person holding the night-luminescent pearl to try to bring other tourists to do the experiment.

Another drop of water fell, dripping onto the floor that had already accumulated a thin layer of water.

Jing Tao and Yi Jun left, the light gradually dimming.

“Speaking of which, the person who took the glass lamps disappeared before, so where did the glass lamps he was carrying go?” Jing Tao asked after they left.

Yi Jun shook her head: “I was watching all the time, but I didn’t find out. He disappeared with just a turn of my head. Even Cao Yi is gone.”

While speaking, they passed a small exhibition hall.

It was dark inside, but there were a few slight sounds.

“Is anyone there?” Yi Jun shouted inside, while asking the person holding the night-luminescent pearl to stand inside, letting the soft light illuminate the entire small exhibition hall.

Under the illumination of the night-luminescent pearl, the entire exhibition hall was clear at a glance. They keenly discovered a girl curled up in the corner of the exhibition hall, her whole body trembling, her clothes soaked by the water on the ground, shivering.

And that girl… who else could it be but Cao Yi?

“Cao Yi? What are you doing here?” Yi Jun raised her voice and asked.

Cao Yi’s face… why was it so animal-like?

It was almost like a cat demon in legends.

“This… what’s going on?” Jing Tao was also startled. “Run!”

Yi Jun turned around and ran, Jing Tao pulling her along, leaving the foolish tourist standing in place, running away frantically.

Cao Yi sat up, as if not adapting to the light, reaching out and knocking over the night-luminescent pearl.