The World Below Surface

Chapter 10: An extra layer

What Li Fang Zhi didn't see was that behind her, Li Fang Yu was quietly watching her. The lift doors closed, illuminating Li Fang Yu's back, her dark curly hair reaching her waist. She had clearly turned into another woman!

However, Li Fang Zhi did not care, as if she was oblivious to her sister's strange back. She turned around and pulled her sister away, sending a message to He Lou with her other hand.

[Brother Lou, we've all overlooked a problem.]

[This building was not just the ninth floor, but the tenth floor!

He Lou and Lu Yan were knocking on the ground floor door when they heard the message beep and picked up the phone to take a look, their hearts shaking.

Ten floors?

The extra floor, where was it?

No wonder they didn't know. They were confined to the flat and couldn't go outside, so naturally, they couldn't count how high the building was and could only get the answer from Lu Yan's mouth.

He steadied his mind, the door was already open over there, and after a quick reply, he put the phone back in his pocket and started to talk to the occupants.

The floor of 101 was occupied by a family of three, and the couple was home on weekends. He pretended he was visiting friends and saw that the building was good and wanted to buy it, so he took this opportunity to ask some questions.

The young couple was enthusiastic and talked to him a lot, quietly telling him that if he wanted to live here, he should forget about it or buy an at a discount. There was a man who chopped meat every night, making a lot of noise, and it was useless to call the police.

"I stayed at a friend's house last night and heard it. It was really noisy." He Lou expressed his understanding, and after a few words of small talk, he naturally asked, "You have ten floors in this building, I heard, don't you? Why is the lift only on the ninth floor?"

"Ten floors?" The couple living on the ground floor expressed their confusion. Lu Yan was also slightly surprised. After the young couple closed the door, Lu Yan asked, "Brother Lou, what's with the ten floors? How do you know there are ten floors?"

He Lou shook his head, not saying how he knew, but only asking Lu Yan to count the floors outside.

Only now did he realize the flawed nature of this mission.

They were restricted from leaving the flat, and only nine floors were in the lift. If Li Fang Zhi hadn't been so keen on numbers and hadn't noticed that the time it took for the lift to go up one floor and the time it took to reach the top of the building weren't quite right, they might not have noticed that there was an extra floor.

Lu Yan dutifully went out to count it. He even took a picture of it, came in and counted it carefully with a gloomy face, "There really is an extra floor ......"

This extra layer, how many layers was it?

Strangely, this photo has some magic power. No matter how they counted, they couldn't measure it clearly.

He Lou had an unpleasant guess in his mind. For some reason, he always felt that the extra layer might be near the third floor.

And this suspicion sent chills all over his body in the early autumn, when summer heat had not yet subsided.

"Brother Lou, what's wrong?" Lu Yan was puzzled and reached out to shake his hand in front of him. He still looked a little foolishly naive and concerned.

He Lou suddenly asked, "Do you really not know?"

Would he really ignore this anomaly in his flat, given the weirdness he had been dealing with?

If he was really this stupid, how had he survived in the past?

Lu Yan blinked, "Huh?"

Only three people left, so even if He Lou was stupid, he should have understood that something was wrong with him.

But Lu Yan didn't care. The group's mission was still a few days away, and if He Lou knew what he was doing, he wouldn't have flipped out on him.

He Lou paused, really not showing any difference, and sighed, "It's still too careless of us to notice such a big blind spot."

The fact that he had to be in the flat for a week and they were not allowed to go out implied, apart from the fact that there was something unusual about the flat, it also suggested that there were clues that had to be obtained outside the flat.

Seemingly unconcerned, but each with their own agenda, the two men moved on to the next house to ask for information.

102 was an elderly couple who had lived here for a long time.

103 was a single woman who, for some reason, looked familiar to He Lou.

104 was unoccupied. They wondered if anyone was living there.

Next were 201 and 202 ......

Neither of them noticed that they had overlooked an even bigger mistake.

After each house had been questioned one by one, Li Fang Zhi brought Li Fang Yu down from upstairs, and several people met up at Lu Yan's home.

"Did you get any information?" Li Fang Zhi asked.

He Lou shook his head.

Everyone looked like regular residents living in an ordinary flat, nothing out of the ordinary, and a simple question about the surrounding buildings corresponded to the map He Lou had specially checked.

"When you went downstairs, did you notice which floor was the extra floor?"

"Yes." Li Fang Zhi looked grave and reached out to point at the ceiling.

Surprisingly, it was right above them?

He Lou didn't even know whether to say this was expected or unexpected. Seeing Li Fang Zhi's answer, he was relieved in his heart instead.

Anomalies ...... This flat is an anomaly, right?

Lu Yan looked stunned, swallowed his saliva and pointed at the ceiling, not daring to speak too loudly: "You said this extra floor is ......?"

Li Fang Zhi nodded.

"Then ...... that sound we heard?" Lu Yan said, " No wonder my upstairs neighbour said he was just chopping dumpling filling, and the police didn't find out anything ......"

"Then every night, the one making the sound ......" Lu Yan didn't dare to say more.

"You can't draw conclusions so quickly yet." He Lou said, his gaze turning to Lu Yan, "To determine the source of the sound, we'll wait on the fourth floor this evening."

"No way! The fourth floor is too ......" Lu Yan lowered his voice, "What if it really is the fourth floor? Wouldn't that be too dangerous? Let's go to the fifth floor. There's no other floor more or less clear to hear."

He Lou vaguely sensed that something was wrong, but Li Fang Zhi felt that Lu Yan had a point and agreed with him.

"Indeed, we can't take any more chances now that the fifth floor can also be heard clearly. Or perhaps, Lu Yan, do you have more recording equipment at home?"

The camera from the last trip to the Oceanarium was recorded into something that shouldn't have been recorded and couldn't be used any more. Lu Yan had thrown it out long ago.

Lu Yan subconsciously shook his head and suddenly remembered something and said, "There is still a camera that I bought a long time ago."

"Then let's wait on the fifth floor tonight and put the camera on the fourth floor. Will it still work now?"

"It should work, you wait, and I'll look for it."

Seeing Lu Yan rummaging through the boxes and starting to look for them, He Lou and Li Fang Zhi exchanged a look. He Lou then walked, seemingly unintentionally, to the living room television. He quickly replaced the batteries in a miniature VCR in the corner with new ones and replaced the memory card.

Although ghosts could often affect electronic devices, features such as audio and video recording could instead make the ghosts appear and help them keep track of the NPCs' whereabouts. On the first day they moved in, the trio had installed surveillance Lang II pouches in every room.

He Lou was also curious to know what Lu Yan had done. Whether he was really as innocent as he appeared to be.

In the other room, Lu Yan had already found an old camera and ran out with gusto: "I found it, it still works, I'll charge it up."

"Good, we'll rely on it tonight."

Night falls.

The four of them got into the lift, and to compare the time it took to get upstairs, they went down to the ground floor first, then took the lift to the fifth floor. He Lou made a point of using a stopwatch to keep track.

Sure enough, reaching the fourth floor after the third floor was about half as slow as the other floors.

[TN: IF you liked it, like and comment, and I'll post more of these lightly edited chapters. If no, I'll go back to sleeep.]

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