Chapter 161: Knocking All Night

Rose and Lily of the Valley waved their goodbyes, and Linglan made her way back to her room alone.

There was a castle standing within the amusement park, though only its ground floor was ever open to visitors. The floors above were reserved entirely for staff living quarters, as well as for handling all manner of other, less pleasant matters.

Their little master lived there as well.

He occupied the topmost floor, positioned so he could look out over every corner of the amusement park whenever he pleased.

Beneath that same castle, however, lay a filthy sort of hell entirely of its own.

Lily of the Valley made her way down the stairs, all the way to the underground prison below.

"Lady Lily of the Valley." The two men in black vests stationed at the prison gate quickly unlocked the cage to let her through, then fell into step behind her.

They hadn’t walked far before coming across several prisoners already beaten bloody.

"Split them up. Drag them off to the haunted house and the puppet theater, and handle it quickly, before anyone else notices."

The black-vested man behind her acknowledged the order at once and stepped forward to unbind one of the prisoners from the rack.

The violence they’d already suffered had left the man’s wounds throbbing with agony intense enough to jolt him back into consciousness.

"Lady Lily of the Valley..."

"Lady Lily of the Valley, please, forgive me... I never meant to... I swear I didn’t..."

Linglan said nothing at all in response. She simply gave the two black-vested men a small, knowing look before turning and walking straight back out of the underground prison.

Despite having witnessed this exact scene countless times before, Lily of the Valley still found she could never quite grow used to it.

Once back above ground, Linglan let out a long breath of stale, trapped air before heading off toward her own room.

Out across the park, more of the black creatures had begun appearing, wandering slowly through various corners of the grounds.

One survivor sheltering nearby had run completely out of water and figured that, with the black creature momentarily elsewhere, this was his chance to set a container outside his door to catch some rainwater.

But the moment he cracked the door open, pushed the container out onto the ground, and reached to pull his hand back inside, a dark shadow suddenly loomed over him.

There had, in fact, been more than one black creature lurking near his shelter all along.

Since every one of the black creatures looked utterly identical to the last, he had simply assumed that whenever he spotted one passing by, it must be the same solitary creature each time.

The creature seized his hand in an iron grip and yanked him bodily out through the doorway with startling force.

Terrified of provoking something even worse, the survivor didn’t dare so much as cry out.

From around the corner, a second black creature emerged, moving slowly toward the scene, slipping past both its companion and the captured man to peer inside and see exactly where he’d been living.

Finding nothing of particular interest inside, it turned back, raised its claws, and prepared to finish the man off where he stood.

A scream tore through the night almost instantly.

...

As Lin Yun slept, she suddenly found herself struggling to breathe, as though some heavy weight had settled directly on top of her.

Her eyes snapped open, and she realized Sang Biao had somehow climbed up and sprawled himself right across her at some point during the night. No wonder her sleep had felt so strange and restless.

Everyone around her seemed to be yawning that morning, all of them looking distinctly worse for wear.

"You again — it was so noisy last night. There was knocking on the door again, and just now someone screamed out of nowhere. I barely got a wink of sleep."

The complaint came pouring out bitterly, leaving poor Tuan Tuan caught rather awkwardly in the middle of it all.

Lin Yun blinked, momentarily stunned. Another round of knocking? And what exactly was this business about a scream?

Once she’d finally coaxed Sang Biao off of her, Lin Yun sat up and checked the time on her personal panel. Only 5:30 — not even six yet.

She paused for a moment, briefly wondering whether she might still manage to squeeze in another short nap.

She gave Tuan Tuan’s little tiger head a comforting pat before finally rising to peer out the window.

Sure enough, the black creature was still out there.

And, if anything, there seemed to be even more of them now than before.

Lin Yun, once again: "..."

Still, she wasn’t particularly concerned — it was far too dangerous out there regardless, and she had absolutely no intention of stepping outside.

After a quick trip to the bathroom, she climbed straight back into bed to try for more sleep.

Beep beep beep.

Lin Yun gritted her teeth and pulled up her friend list to see exactly which troublemaker had decided to message her at this hour.

Song Xizheng: "I know it’s a rough time to be sending this, but what if your phone’s on silent anyway?"

Song Xizheng: "Last night while I was asleep, it sounded like they’d moved something — a float, maybe — over to another spot. Then early this morning I heard a scream that scared me half to death."

Song Xizheng: "I rushed straight to the window to look. Oh my god, it was seriously bloody out there."

Song Xizheng: "I actually watched two of those black creatures commit murder right in front of me — dragged some poor survivor out and tore him apart on the spot."

Song Xizheng: "Thanks for the mental image, by the way. There’s no way I’m sleeping tonight."

Lin Yun: "??? My cat mentioned hearing something too, but I honestly didn’t hear a thing myself."

Song Xizheng: "Wait, were you already awake, or...?"

Lin Yun added, "Don’t worry about it. You’re still very much alive, aren’t you?"

Song Xizheng let out a relieved sigh. "Well, that’s something, I guess. There are way more of those creatures out there now, though. We can’t go outside at all — not even a little."

Lin Yun replied, "Doesn’t matter to me either way. I haven’t been doing anything out there anyway. I’ve even had my daily tasks paused this whole time."

The two of them chatted back and forth a bit longer before finally settling back down to sleep.

By evening, Lin Yun tucked the stem stick away again and glanced out toward the window. There were noticeably more black creatures now than there had been that morning — only two earlier in the day, but now she counted three or four at least.

The heavy rain carried on for a full four days straight, and the survivors remained cooped up inside their shelters for the entirety of that stretch.

The gruesome fate of the survivor who’d been dragged out and torn apart that first night had been witnessed by more than a few others sheltering nearby, and the sight left them thoroughly terrified — not one of them had the slightest urge to venture outside afterward.

They all stayed obediently tucked away inside, without exception.

Over those last two days, the black creature had taken to knocking precisely at midnight without fail. At first, the knocking had come every two or three hours. Now, it had escalated to once every single hour.

It was, to put it mildly, driving all of them slowly out of their minds.

On the seventh night of the special world.

"Naa~ Na na~ Na aah~"

"Naa~ Na na~ Na na~"

"...Hey."

Lin Yun bolted upright without warning — and yet, on closer inspection, her eyes never actually opened.

She threw off the covers, climbed out of bed, and started walking straight toward the door, not even bothering to put her shoes on first.

Sang Biao and Tuan Tuan, both drowsing lightly when the strange humming first began, spotted Lin Yun’s movements and let out startled yelps at once.

"You again?! Ah, wait, where do you think you’re going?!"

Sang Biao scrambled down and threw himself in front of Lin Yun, blocking her path forward.

Tuan Tuan flicked the lights on immediately and dashed off toward the backyard to summon the ghost vine, quickly wrapping its trailing vines around Lin Yun to hold her in place once more.

"Hiss."

Lin Yun let out a sharp hiss of her own, lifting her hand and shaking it irritably. "Which one of you just bit me?"

Just as she turned to hold her hand up beneath the light to check the damage, her feet caught on the vines wrapped around her ankles, and she went tumbling straight down to the floor.

Tuan Tuan let out a quick, sharp crackling sound and swiftly expanded in size, cushioning Lin Yun’s fall just in time.

Dazed from the impact, Lin Yun glanced down at her feet and found them thoroughly tangled — bound up in the ghost vine’s coiling tendrils.

"Youyou, are you okay?" Tuan Tuan nuzzled up against her, clearly worried.

[I was terrified! When Tuan Tuan came rushing over to call for me, I genuinely thought something awful had happened!]

The ghost vine let out a long breath of relief once it saw Lin Yun finally coming back to her senses properly.

Perhaps it would be safer to keep our little scuffles confined indoors from now on, it mused. If it kept brawling with the ivy and the rest of them out in the backyard like usual, there was a real chance they’d end up missing something important like this entirely.