Duya pushed open the door to Bulanni’s house and peered through the crack.
The room was eerily quiet.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the curtains, casting mottled patches of light and shadow on the wooden floor.
The colors should have felt warm, but instead they gave off an inexplicable sense of cold dread.
He wore a bird-beak mask, and his breathing was amplified in his ears.
With each inhale, he could clearly smell the herbal scent.
Duya tightened his grip on the hammer in his hand and cautiously stepped inside Bulanni’s home.
Bulanni herself was currently in Fuyeli’s room.
After giving her special instructions, she shouldn’t be coming back here.
So this time, he was truly entering this place alone.
Being alone magnified the eerie atmosphere even further.
Duya didn’t head for Grandpa Bulanni’s bedroom; instead, he walked straight toward the living room.
On the dining table in the living room sat a half-eaten bowl of mushroom soup.
Staring at the bowl of mushroom soup, Duya fell into deep thought.
Logically, neither he nor Bulanni had returned here this time.
So where did this mushroom soup come from?
Could it be… that Grandpa Bulanni made it himself?
Duya stepped forward and looked into the bowl.
A thin film had formed on top of the soup, shimmering with a pearlescent sheen.
Seeing this, Duya picked up the spoon and tried stirring it.
It was indeed mushrooms inside, and they looked exactly like the mushrooms Bulanni had picked.
He placed the spoon back as slowly as he could, but the moment it touched the rim of the bowl, a crisp ding echoed.
That single ding was jarringly loud in the silent room.
That was why Duya immediately grabbed his hammer and glanced warily around.
But he didn’t notice anything unusual—especially not from Grandpa Bulanni’s bedroom, which was completely still.
No one?
Or perhaps…
To be safe, Duya repaired the lamp on the table and carefully picked it up, just in case.
While scanning his surroundings, Duya moved forward.
Soon his gaze finally settled on a spot on the wall in the corner of the kitchen.
To be precise, it should be a door.
The paint on the door was the same color as the wall.
It might be hard to see at night, but in the daylight, the subtle differences were quite obvious.
More importantly, there were several fresh scratch marks on the wall.
Judging by these marks, they had been made not long ago.
Duya approached the door.
He noticed several fresh footprints in front of the wall—likely Grandpa Bulanni’s footprints, by the look of them.
He pushed gently on the door, but found it wouldn’t budge.
Between the gap in the wall and the cabinet, he spotted a padlock.
It was an old-fashioned padlock, not a built-in lock.
Duya stared at the rusted padlock, his brow furrowed.
“Locked from the outside?”
He muttered to himself, his expression grave.
His breathing inside the mask grew rapid.
If it was a padlock, that meant someone had deliberately locked something inside.
Or else something had come out from the inside and then locked the door again.
He pulled out the key Linglan had given him.
The rusted metal scraped against the keyhole with a teeth-grinding sound.
Click…
The door cracked open, and a thick musty smell rushed out.
Even through his mask, Duya could sense the stench of decay hitting him.
He took a deep breath and pushed the door fully open.
Before him was a steep wooden staircase that extended downward, disappearing into pitch-black darkness.
Even stranger, the staircase was covered in a thick layer of white fungal spots.
When he stepped on them, they felt slippery.
Duya checked the time—11:01.
Not much time left before the anomaly occurred.
He’d have to speed things up.
Duya lit the lamp in his hand and began descending the stairs.
His shoes squelched against the fungal mat, making a sticky, pressing sound.
The air in the basement was as thick as glue.
The glass on his mask quickly became coated with a heavy layer of fog.
Combined with the impenetrable darkness, Duya could barely see anything.
He wiped the moisture off the glass and aimed the light ahead.
A gray-white coffin appeared abruptly in the center of his field of vision.
The coffin, like the floor, was densely covered with fungal mats, and a number of grayish-white umbrella mushrooms had sprouted from it as well.
When he saw these mushrooms, Duya froze.
The reason was simple—these mushrooms… were exactly the same as the ones in Bulanni’s basket!
He held his breath and crept cautiously toward the coffin.
As he drew nearer, he saw clearly that the coffin wasn’t completely closed.
A withered hand was poking out from the gap.
The skin of this hand was an unnatural grayish-blue, wrapped in cobweb-like mycelium.
Duya used his hammer to carefully pry open the coffin lid.
With a creak, a mummy appeared before him.
He directed the lamp into the coffin, trying to identify the mummy’s identity.
The skin clung tightly to the bones, giving a parchment-like texture.
The eye sockets were packed with dry mycelial clumps.
The corpse was also covered with those grayish-white umbrella mushrooms, which almost completely obscured its face.
But even so, Duya recalled that night—the monster he and Bubble Shadow had seen… it was the old man in this coffin.
Only now, he seemed to be sleeping, without any signs of life.
Since Grandpa Bulanni’s corpse was here, the question was: that old man he and Bulanni had seen lying in bed last time—what was that thing?
Duya looked up toward the bedroom above.
Was that old man still lying in bed now?
Duya averted his gaze from the coffin and checked the time—11:20.
Time was running out.
He needed to get out of here now.
If he waited until midnight, who knew what this place would turn into.
Just as Duya was about to leave, his peripheral vision caught a human figure hanging on the wall.
He immediately assumed a combat stance and faced that figure.
But when the light fell on the figure hanging on the wall, Duya felt goosebumps rising all over his body.
The reason was simple—the figure hanging on the wall was none other than himself!
Only… his “self” in front of him still had a somewhat intact face; the rest was still in a white, sticky fungal shape, as if it was slowly coalescing into a human form…
Duya’s breath caught instantly.
He tightened his grip on the hammer.
Who had such a morbid sense of humor to create another him here?
At that moment, a terrifying suspicion crossed Duya’s mind.
Could it be… Bulanni?
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