The entrance to Moon Tower should have been an imposing glass door.
But now, only a dark, gaping hole remained there, with shattered glass fragments on the floor glinting faintly in the thick dust.
A stale, icy draft blew out from inside the building, making Shadow Valley Tsubaki shiver.
“It’s so cold…” She tightened her uniform jacket. “Why is it so much colder in here than outside?”
“Probably a yin-gathering effect due to the building’s structure.”
Hanyu Suoluo switched on his flashlight, the beam piercing the darkness within.
The three of them stepped inside.
The lobby was extremely spacious, with a ceiling height of a full ten meters, supported by several massive load-bearing pillars.
But now, it looked as if it had weathered a violent storm.
The reception desk was snapped in half. The expensive marble floor was covered in a web of cracks, along with shards of glass from the ceiling’s dome skylight.
The walls were everywhere marked with charred black traces and deep, bottomless gouges.
“These marks…”
Kazama Yin crouched down, running his fingers over a three-meter-long claw mark on the floor, his hand trembling slightly. “Is this… damage caused by a Devouring?”
Hanyu Suoluo aimed his flashlight beam high on the wall, where a half-rusted steel rebar was embedded, as if thrown there by some monstrous force.
“It looks like an extremely fierce battle took place here. The timing… should be around the period of the Second Superpower Outbreak.”
Hanyu Suoluo’s expression was grave. “Look over there. There are signs of repairs, but they weren’t completed before the DRG people left.”
“Let’s go. Let’s check the upper floors.”
The elevator was naturally unusable. They began climbing the dust-covered emergency staircase.
The scenes on each floor were largely similar: overturned desks, documents and papers scattered everywhere, and horrifying battle scars on the walls.
Around the tenth floor, Shadow Valley Tsubaki suddenly stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Kazama Yin, walking ahead, turned back.
“Shh.”
Shadow Valley Tsubaki put a finger to her lips, her face pale. Her crimson eyes darted around nervously. “Do you… hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Kazama Yin and Hanyu Suoluo exchanged a glance, both straining to listen.
Apart from the mournful howl of wind through broken windows, there was nothing.
“No, I don’t. Tsubaki, are you just too tense?”
“No… that’s not it.”
Shadow Valley Tsubaki gripped the stair railing, her knuckles turning white. “There’s someone… a woman… singing.”
“Singing?”
“Mhm… very soft, very ethereal. Like she’s humming some kind of… lullaby?”
Shadow Valley Tsubaki’s voice began to tremble. “Have we run into a ghost!?”
Hearing a woman’s singing voice in this abandoned dead city?
Kazama Yin felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He instinctively tightened his grip on his sword hilt. “Could it be… an Earthbound Spirit? Or some kind of lingering mental-type Heart Worm Ability?”
“Since we’re here, we can’t let something so vague and insubstantial scare us off.”
Though Hanyu Suoluo’s face was also pale, his gaze remained firm. “Let’s go check it out.”
The three of them lightened their footsteps and continued upward.
When they reached the fifteenth floor, a long, curved corridor stretched before them.
The decor on this floor was noticeably more luxurious than below. The floor was covered with thick carpet, and the walls held picture frames whose contents were now indecipherable.
One side of the corridor was lined with offices, while the other side was a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows.
Hanyu Suoluo walked into one of the offices, heading to the window, initially just to survey the terrain.
But when his gaze fell outside, he froze completely.
“What… is that?”
“What’s wrong?” Kazama Yin came over.
“Look there.”
Hanyu Suoluo pointed downward outside the window.
Moon Tower was curved, its inner side embracing a massive central garden courtyard.
And there, in a corner of that courtyard now overrun with weeds and trees, nestled in the shadow of this imposing, futuristic curved skyscraper, was a building that seemed completely out of place.
It was a small apartment building, only five stories tall.
For a place like the DRG headquarters, brimming with the imposing aura of a “corporate empire,” the presence of such an apartment was as bizarre as building a thatched hut in the middle of a palace courtyard.
What was even more bizarre was…
“Look, that apartment building…” Hanyu Suoluo adjusted his flashlight’s focus. “It looks… almost undamaged?”
Compared to the pockmarked ruins of Moon Tower and Sun Tower around it, while the apartment’s exterior walls were a bit dirty, its structure was intact, and most of the glass was even still whole.
It sat quietly, cradled in the embrace of the giant tower, as if deliberately protected by some force.
“That’s weird…”
Kazama Yin frowned. “Why build a place like that in the core of the base? Employee dorms? No, those are on the periphery.”
“Maybe… the residence of some important figure?” Hanyu Suoluo speculated. “Some people have peculiar tastes, or… perhaps the building itself holds some special significance.”
“Should we go check it out?”
“Of course.” A glint flashed in Hanyu Suoluo’s eyes. “Such anomalous places often hide the biggest secrets.”
“Then we need to find a way down…”
The two of them were leaning against the window, discussing the route.
Meanwhile, Shadow Valley Tsubaki, who was responsible for guarding their rear, stood alone in the center of the corridor.
The feeling of being watched was growing stronger.
The singing…
The singing was back.
This time, it wasn’t a vague auditory hallucination, but clearly wormed its way into her ears.
It was some kind of cheerful melody.
But in this environment, that cheerfulness only felt bone-chilling.
Shadow Valley Tsubaki stiffly turned her head, looking into the darkness at the far end of the corridor.
There was a room that looked like a high-level executive’s office.
The door was slightly ajar.
The singing was coming from there.
“Hey… Kazama, Hanyu…”
Shadow Valley Tsubaki tried to call her companions, but her throat felt blocked, and the sound she made was so faint she could barely hear it herself.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaah—”
A piercing scream instantly shattered the deathly silence of Moon Tower.
Kazama Yin and Hanyu Suoluo by the window whirled around, only to see Shadow Valley Tsubaki collapsed on the floor by the doorway.
She was pointing down the corridor, her face a mask of terror.
“What happened!?”
“There’s… there’s a ghost…” Shadow Valley Tsubaki managed to say before her eyes rolled back and she fainted.
Shing—
Kazama Yin rushed into the corridor, his kendo sword drawn and aimed toward the office at the end.
His pale blue eyes flashed with light. “Stop playing these tricks!”
Hanyu Suoluo cradled Shadow Valley Tsubaki’s neck, shook her, and finding her unresponsive, raised his hand and slapped her.
Smack!
Shadow Valley Tsubaki’s eyes flew open. She stared blankly at Hanyu Suoluo, then suddenly bared her teeth. “You hit me!”
Hearing the sounds of physical struggle from behind, Kazama Yin’s previously heightened momentum diminished slightly. He glanced back, exasperated.
Just in that split second of distraction, a figure flashed at the edge of Kazama Yin’s vision. He immediately snapped his head forward, on high alert.
“Stop fooling around!”
The two brawling behind him instantly fell silent.
Hanyu Suoluo’s deep purple eyes glowed. Several nails shot out from his backpack, hovering in his hands.
Shadow Valley Tsubaki got to her feet, her crimson eyes also glowing, an intangible ripple swirling around her.
Kazama Yin took the lead, checking the side offices one by one, until finally… only the double-door office at the corridor’s end remained.
He pushed the door open and entered, his gaze sweeping the room. It seemed utterly ordinary.
But he didn’t let his guard down. The three of them began searching for any useful information.
“Strategic Security Chief… Hattori…”
Hanyu Suoluo picked up a nameplate on the desk, looking at the grime on it and wiping it with his hand. “Koji Hattori.”
His gaze shifted to the side, landing on a standing photo frame. The picture inside seemed to be a wedding photo.
A rather ordinary-looking young man with black hair and black eyes, and a short-haired bride with a scar on her face.
“Ah! Quick, come look at this, look at this!”
Hanyu Suoluo turned his head and saw what Shadow Valley Tsubaki was holding. His pupils instantly contracted. “Don’t move!”
Shadow Valley Tsubaki, her finger on the trigger of a handgun, froze completely, not daring to move a muscle.
“That’s… a P320. It has a very light trigger pull. Don’t mess with it, okay?”
“Eek!” Shadow Valley Tsubaki let out a cute yelp, her face deathly pale.
Only after Hanyu Suoluo took the pistol from her hand, checked it, and removed the magazine did she finally relax. “That was dangerous…”
“You dummy, don’t touch the trigger of a gun you find.”
“How was I supposed to know…”
Click—
Kazama Yin sheathed his sword. He took one last look at this utterly ordinary office and spoke. “Let’s go.”
“Where to next?”
Having recovered from the initial scare, Shadow Valley Tsubaki had calmed down a bit and was even starting to find this exploration interesting. She asked proactively.
“The upper floors are dangerous, at risk of collapse. We’re going to that apartment building below.” Hanyu Suoluo said, placing the handgun back in its original position.
“Huh? The apartment?”
The three of them stood before the apartment building’s entrance, all feeling somewhat tense.
Because the sky had already darkened, and exploring a place like this at night was always more frightening than during the day.
Screeeech—
The grating sound of rusty hinges grinding was particularly jarring in the dead silence.
A wave of stale air, far more concentrated than inside Moon Tower, mixed with… an indescribable chill, washed over them, making all three shiver simultaneously.
Shadow Valley Tsubaki instinctively grabbed Kazama Yin’s arm.
The flashlight clicked on. The interior beyond the door was not the dilapidated scene they had imagined.
The entryway was abnormally tidy, with little dust, as if someone regularly cleaned it.
In the dim light, they could see clean tiled floors, with no signs of battle damage.
“It’s so… so cold.” Shadow Valley Tsubaki’s voice trembled, her exhaled breath forming white mist.
Hanyu Suoluo’s flashlight beam swept cautiously across the entryway, landing on the corridor leading deeper inside.
At the edge of the light, something seemed to move.
“Who’s there?!” Kazama Yin hissed, his sword already half-drawn.
The flashlight beam snapped into focus.
There, at the edge of the shadows where the corridor turned, a figure stood silently.
She wore a distinct black-and-white maid’s dress, her short hair cut just above her ears. A faint scar marked her cheek.
Her skin was pale, almost translucent. The edges of her body held a kind of unfocused blurriness, as if she were condensed from the coldest mist.
Hum, hum, hum…
The singing sounded in Shadow Valley Tsubaki’s ears once more.
“It’s a ghost!”