Kuang Feifan cried out as his shoulder was struck by those withered little hands. He felt as if countless icy needles were piercing his shoulder, the chill penetrating to the bone, sending an electric current through his body, causing him to tremble uncontrollably. He tumbled helplessly on the floor, narrowly avoiding slamming into the wall again.

Instinctively, Kuang Feifan used both hands and feet to leverage himself, scrambling backward until he huddled in a corner. At that moment, he felt a coldness seeping out from the very marrow of his bones, his teeth chattering relentlessly.

Having landed the initial blow, the withered little hands resettled on the floor, clearly preparing for a second assault. Kuang Feifan fought down the tremors shaking his body and, in desperation, yanked the "Mani Stone" pendant from his neck, clutching it tightly in his fist. Strangely, he distinctly felt a faint, warm current emanating from the pendant in his palm, slowly spreading up his arm and throughout his body. Soon, the bone-chilling cold vanished without a trace.

Kuang Feifan was simultaneously astonished, delighted, and horrified. He never could have believed the pendant possessed such miraculous power. When his girlfriend—or perhaps ex-girlfriend—had given it to him, she claimed it had the ability to ward off evil and protect him, a notion he had merely laughed off. Now, in this bizarre and perilous moment, he actually found himself missing his ex-girlfriend.

But the current situation allowed no time for nostalgia. Those little hands had sprung up again and lunged toward him. Kuang Feigning narrowed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and resolved to take the biggest gamble of his life. He raised the fist clutching the pendant and met the attack head-on. In a haze, he seemed to see his own fist enveloped by a faint, almost imperceptible glow of soft light.

Fortuitously, Kuang Feifan's gamble paid off this time. The little hands appeared to sense the anomaly around his fist and paused mid-air. Because of this hesitation, Kuang Feifan’s punch did not meet the hands directly but slammed hard into the space above them.

A sharp, desolate infant's cry echoed from somewhere unseen within the room. The little hands were driven directly into the wall by Kuang Feifan’s force.

Because the hands disappeared so quickly, Kuang Feifan couldn't launch another attack. He could only watch as the hands dissolved into the plaster, leaving behind another black-and-red cross-mark. He wiped the sweat from his face and took several deep, ragged breaths, forcing his racing heart to slow down as quickly as possible.

After a while, he managed to straighten up, his emotions finally stabilizing somewhat. From regaining consciousness after being knocked out to the barrage of attacks he had just endured, only a few minutes had passed, yet for Kuang Feifan, it felt like several hours. But perhaps because of this experience, he understood something new; at least he realized that the room he was currently in was not entirely real.

It wasn't just this room; perhaps nothing he had seen since entering this building was entirely true. Kuang Feifan looked up at the window that revealed the bright moon, shaking his head. From the outside, he had seen every window in the building either shattered or thickly coated in grime. Now, the windows were clean and bright under the moon, with only the dust covering the floor and the grimy walls suggesting the building was as dirty and old as he had perceived it from the outside.

Suddenly, his heart sank as he remembered the identical window and the same bright moon in the room he had searched with He Shaoqing moments before. His expression turned grim, and the cold sweat that had faded from his forehead began to reappear. To see the moon from rooms angled differently—that was truly a spectacle seldom seen in a hundred years.

Yet, not all of it seemed to be an illusion. He looked at the chaotic marks scattered across the dusty floor, remnants of their recent struggle. He could clearly distinguish his own footprints from the distinct palm prints left by the withered little hands.

Kuang Feifan frowned and pulled open his shirt to examine his shoulder. Where the little hands had struck, a faint, bluish handprint remained. He touched it lightly; it didn't hurt or itch, suggesting no serious harm, yet the impact had made him scream aloud.

He bit his lip hard. The pain and the coppery taste confirmed he wasn't dreaming. It seemed impossible to grasp the cause of his current predicament right away. The most crucial thing now was to escape this room quickly. But what about the door?

Kuang Feifan took a deep breath and slowly approached a grimy section of the wall, which he remembered as the location of the door. He dared not smash into it again, as that was where he had been sandwiched and knocked unconscious previously.

He cautiously reached out and lightly touched the wall with his fingertips; it was cold and hard, showing no anomalies. He then rapped his knuckles against it, forcing a bitter smile; it was clearly a solid wall, not some partition. What good would knocking do?

But time was not on his side; he didn't know when those things might reappear. Kuang Feifan had no brilliant ideas, so he resorted to the most tedious method—his second gamble: swinging his fist, which still held the pendant, at every section of the wall. However, he deliberately avoided the wall containing the window that showed the moon.

By the time he had circled the room and was about to strike the last section—the wall directly opposite where he remembered the door being—his hand was already numb with pain. Standing before this final stretch of wall, he gasped in frustration, shaking his hand. Before he could gather the strength for this last blow, the room shifted again.

Kuang Feifan clearly heard a soft snort behind him and instinctively flinched, a single thought flashing through his mind: Damn it, here we go again...

He couldn't help turning his head and his heart instantly seized up. Hovering in the corner diagonally opposite him, a child’s head materialized in mid-air. Or rather, it seemed to be a newborn infant, except that besides the head, there was no body—only a repulsive mass of internal organs hanging below. The forehead was crisscrossed with fine wrinkles, the skin taut and dry, and the vacant eyes were milky white. The face was aimed directly at him, wearing a strangely twisted smile. As the mouth opened and closed, a hollow, ethereal voice drifted out: "Stay. Play with me."

Kuang Feifan roared back in a mixture of shock and anger, "Play with your mother's spirit..." As he spoke, he drove his fist forcefully into the wall.

With a piercing shriek, the infant's head widened its eyes in a ghastly grimace. Simultaneously, the wall before Kuang Feifan rippled violently, like water struck by a stone, the waves spreading rapidly to the surrounding walls. The air itself seemed to surge with a shockwave, causing Kuang Feifan to feel suffocated, his brain dizzy, and the surroundings blurring before his eyes.

In an instant, Kuang Feifan cleared his head. He immediately noticed that the interior of the room within his sightline was completely different from moments before. The tightly shut door had reappeared before him. Kuang Feifan was overjoyed, but the infant's head, still suspended in the corner, contorted in fury and shock. It opened its dark mouth into a wide 'O' and shrieked, flying directly toward Kuang Feifan in mid-air.

Kuang Feifan’s joy evaporated instantly. He summoned all his strength and threw himself at the door. With a loud CRASH, the hinges and lock on both sides of the heavy wooden door snapped, and the door flew open with a rush of wind, landing on the carpet outside in a cloud of dust, pulling him down with it in a heavy fall.

Before he could look up, a blast of cold air swept over his head as the infant's head, trailing its entrails, soared right over him and vanished with a swoosh into one of the mirrors hanging not far in front of the door.

Kuang Feifan lay sprawled on the floor, letting out a long sigh. Inadvertently, he stirred up more dust, choking until he coughed uncontrollably, tears and snot streaming down his face. He quickly scrambled up, spun around, and sat back down on the floor, panting heavily, his hand still tightly gripping the pendant that had saved his life.

He wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and glanced sideways at the mirror diagonally opposite him. He figured, without needing to look, that his face was already a grotesque painting. He decided he would gather his wits and immediately find He Shaoqing, then find a way to leave this building as quickly as possible. He truly did not want to spend another moment in this wretched place.

Having only managed a few breaths, Kuang Feifan suddenly felt an itch on his scalp, as if something soft were lightly brushing and tracing patterns across his head. A faint, rotten odor drifted into his nostrils. He instinctively raised a hand to touch his head. He felt soft, downy strands. Before he could react, his wrist was suddenly entangled by something.

Startled, Kuang Feifan tried to spring up, but the object gripping his wrist exerted considerable force. When he struggled, he didn't get up; instead, he was pulled back down to the floor, his wrist yanked upward, sending a sharp, piercing pain through it. Staggering, he used his other hand to push himself up, finally seeing clearly what had ensnared his wrist: a massive clump of black hair seeping out of the wall. The waves of decay were emanating directly from it.

Kuang Feifan felt a wave of nausea rise in his stomach, his throat tightening. He forcefully suppressed the urge to vomit and tried his best to press the pendant in his free hand against the mass of hair wrapping his wrist. Unexpectedly, the hair showed no reaction to the pendant. Instead, as if sensing his intention, another clump of hair immediately erupted from the side, flailing and lunging at his raised hand. Terrified, he hastily pulled his hand back. In desperation, a spark ignited in his mind: he quickly tucked the pendant into the inner pocket of his jacket and, as he did, fished out a Zippo lighter.

This Zippo had also been a gift from his ex-girlfriend. Although he had quit smoking, he habitually carried it. He regularly maintained it—replacing the flint, refilling the fuel—and occasionally flipped it open just to play with it, often showing off his smooth lighting technique to his girlfriend.

Now, he had no time for showmanship. Following pure instinct, he drew out the lighter with the base facing up, then casually used his middle finger to flip the lid open and rapidly slid his thumb down the flint wheel to spark the Zippo. This particular method had a name: the "Desperado's Flick." He wondered if it wasn't an apt description of his current situation.