There was a dead silence in the stairwell. The light bulb covered with gray-white dust hung upside down on the ceiling of the stairway, emitting a suppressed yellow light and making a thin buzzing sound.

Li Yang and I didn't speak, we just looked at each other.

To be honest, I wanted to open the door and go out to the corridor to see if there was really an old lady there. But I really didn’t have the courage.

Li Yang asked me why I looked so bad. I told him that there seemed to be the sound of someone eating on one of the floors upstairs. I observed his expression, and he looked indifferent and couldn't tell anything strange.

I felt that my thoughts were getting more and more confusing, so I smiled bitterly and said, "I think we'd better get out of here. This building is too gloomy. If we climb higher, there might be some problems."

Li Yang regained his composure and scratched his head: "I'm worried that if we leave like this, we won't have the courage to come back. Let's do this. We've already come here, so let's go up a few more floors. If there are signs of danger, we will retreat as soon as possible."

I looked at him, and I really didn’t know whether I should trust him or even whether I should believe that such a person existed. However, my only choice now was to follow him and let me go back alone along the dark stairs.

It's better to kill me.

We started to go to the twelfth floor, and Li Yang said: "If you can't remember the floors now, go to the elevator entrance and take a look next time. I definitely won't go."

"Let's go now, you talk so much nonsense." I hummed, regardless of whether it was the real Li Yang or the fake Li Yang, I scolded him first before talking.

As we walked up one floor, the corridor became colder and colder. The temperature dropped very obviously. Even though I was wrapped in a big cotton-padded jacket, I felt the cold air seeping through the gaps in my clothes. I was shivering from the cold. At this moment, I didn’t pay attention to my feet.

He slipped and fell to the ground.

The fall caused my tailbone to hurt so much that I bared my teeth and screamed. Li Yang pulled me up. I cursed: "Who is so wicked? What did he do on the ground?"

The floor lights slowly turned on. We saw that there was a thick layer of white rice on the floor of the stairway.

I got angry for no reason and cursed: "Who lacks the virtue to spill the rice here?"

Li Yang knelt down, grabbed a handful and took a closer look: "The rice on the ground is spread evenly in thickness. Someone must have done this on purpose."

"Why do you do this?" I was stunned.

"I remember in the old Hong Kong ghost movie, there was a story about zombies being afraid of glutinous rice. Did they spread rice on the ground to prevent zombies?" Li Yang said.

I smiled weakly: "There are still zombies, please stop talking nonsense."

"Then what does spilling rice mean?" He threw the rice in his hand back to the ground: "It's so damn evil."

At this time, the lights in the building flickered "hissing" and "dark", the corridor flickered between bright and dark, and our Li Yang's shadow was long and dragged on the wall, looking like an old woman with splayed teeth and shaggy hair.

Li Yang continued walking upstairs. I sighed and had no choice but to follow him.

After walking up many more floors, I was really tired. I sat on the ground and panted: "Okay, I counted each floor, and I walked up ten more floors. Including the eleven floors we have already walked, we are now at

The top floor.”

Li Yang said nothing, put his hands in the pockets of his cotton-padded jacket, and stared at the dark wall without blinking.

"You are looking at a bird." I scolded him. He has been acting weird tonight.

Li Yang's facial features twisted a little and he swallowed: "Old Liu, look back at the wall behind you."

He said it so coldly, I felt a little numb. Damn, what is behind me? I suddenly thought of the old lady in red. She couldn't just be standing behind me.

I acted stiffly and reluctantly looked back. Behind me was the dark corridor wall, with no birds at all.

I was about to scold him for being happy when he suddenly saw something on the wall, and my blood suddenly froze.

It was a very fresh handprint, with the five fingers facing downwards. Judging from the size of the palm, it should be that of an adult. The direction and posture of the palm were very strange. It should have been left by a person who was clinging to the wall and supporting the wall with his palm.

The reason why I was so scared was because on the eleventh floor, when Li Yang came back from checking the building sign, the moment the building lights came on, my posture was close to the wall, with my palms on the wall.

Because this gesture was so embarrassing and occurred in a very special situation, we remember that moment deeply.

I looked at Li Yang, and Li Yang looked at me. The air was so compressed that it almost squeezed out the water. I slowly stretched out my hand and slowly leaned towards the palm prints on the wall. The moment they overlapped, we both let out a sound that was almost like a moan at the same time.

My hand did match the palm print on the wall

What does this mean? It means we are still on the eleventh floor. But, is this possible? The two of us kept climbing up, as tired as dead dogs. How could such a supernatural thing happen?

Li Yang's voice was hoarse: "Could it be a ghost hitting the wall?"

"No way." I smiled bitterly.

Li Yang said: "If it's a ghost breaking the wall, there are two situations. One is that we go up and down the eleventh floor and are trapped on this floor. The other situation is that we go to the twenty-first floor, and finally

It’s a big loop, going around and back to the eleventh floor.”

I wiped my face and said, "Don't judge so early that this is the eleventh floor. It's possible that this palm print was the one I left just now, and I was so tired that I forgot about it. Don't scare yourself."

Li Yang made a gesture of invitation towards the side door leading to the corridor. The meaning was obvious. To judge whether it was the 21st floor or the 11th floor, just look at the building number.

If I go to see the building sign again this time, it will be my turn.

I looked at Li Yang and laughed. I couldn't tell what the emotion of this smile was. I just wanted to have a good laugh. I rubbed my forehead, walked to the side door, and gently opened the door.

A gloomy coldness swept in from outside, making me shiver all over. I looked back at Li Yang. He lit a small cigarette and smoked it leisurely without looking at me.

I turned the corner of the stairs and saw a long corridor in front of me. I saw two windows opened in the middle of the corridor, and a figure in red clothes stood facing the window. I didn't know what he was doing there.

I screamed and crawled back to the stairwell. Li Yang was still smoking. Seeing that I was so scared that I was pissed, he hurriedly supported me and said, "Damn it, Old Liu, what's wrong with you?"

Since the Li Damin incident, I have experienced many ups and downs, but never once have I felt a fear that penetrates deeply into my soul like now. I was so scared that I felt that my whole heart was destroyed.

In Li Yang's arms, tears flowed out.

Li Yang was also frightened by my appearance: "What's wrong? Talk, what did you see?"

"I, I saw the old lady in the red sweater." I said intermittently.

Li Yang was startled: "Idiot, don't fucking scare me."

"How about you go and see it?" I said.

"Forget it. The old lady's appearance is like a maggot attached to the bone. It has always been imprinted in my mind. Every time I close my eyes, it's her. Damn it, if I look at it again, I might as well hit her to death." Li Yang

Said: "I don't need to see it with my own eyes to know that you are not lying. You are so frightened that you look so unlucky that you can't even act."

He sighed: "Trouble, we really encountered a ghost and kept wandering around on the eleventh floor."

Only then did I realize that my posture was extremely inelegant. I was hugging him tightly and resting my head on his shoulder, creating an ambiguous rhythm of picking up soap. I quickly jumped away and burped on the ground, feeling sick.

Li Yang was so confused that he didn't pay attention to my behavior. He smoked desperately: "What should I do?"

I managed to regain my composure and had an idea in my mind: "Let's go up one more floor. If we still see this scene, it means we have been circling on the eleventh floor; if we see something else"

"What happened to the others?" he asked.

"Let's talk about it then. Anyway, this is the only way I can do it."

Li Yang nodded: "Let's take it one step at a time."

The two of us started to walk up. When we reached the stairs, the lights were not on yet, and the surroundings were pitch black. I vaguely saw Li Yang's figure stop. He didn't turn his head, and said quietly: "Do you remember the twelfth floor?"

What's the situation?"

"There is rice." I said.

Li Yang said: "What if the lights turn on and we don't see the rice?"

"Don't ask, I don't know what to do either."

Li Yang walked up, and I followed closely. At this time, the light came on.

Under the pale yellow light, I saw a thick layer of white rice spread on the floor of the corridor. This was a very familiar scene, but it was not on the twelfth floor because there were some strange furnishings on the white rice.

They were small houses, there could be twenty or thirty in total. Each house was about the size of an A4 paper, made of simple wooden boards, and looked like it was used by immortals. The most peculiar thing is that the small houses are

There are two red couplets posted on the left and right sides of the door of the house. The couplets are written with crooked calligraphy that looks like earthworm script, but they are too small to be seen clearly.

When I first saw these strange little houses, I thought I had entered Lilliput, but upon closer inspection, they looked like tombs.
Chapter completed!