After walking five hundred meters through the pitch-black, rain-soaked mountain forest, the two noticed marks on the trees ahead—signs Yu Jing had carved earlier. This confirmed they had returned to their starting point, ending this brief exploration of the dark woods.
"A ghost wall? At a certain distance from the inn, it automatically leads you back? A lateral distance of five hundred meters—that's enough to calculate how far we are from the inn. We can use this as a reference for escape routes later."
"While we were moving forward just now, I felt something watching us in the forest. It gave me a very dangerous feeling… really dangerous. Did you feel it too?" Yu Xiaoxiao whispered beside him.
Her chilling words sent a cold sweat trickling down Yu Jing's neck. He recalled the woman twisting and crawling in the inn—the twisted horror that could emerge from the dark woods at any moment.
"Let's go! To the inn. Maybe there are other teams teleported nearby."
Yu Jing immediately suggested heading toward the firelight—at least the glow could help dispel some of the fear.
Unexpectedly, as they moved toward the light, Yu Xiaoxiao suddenly took Yu Jing's hand. The skin-to-skin contact stirred a strange feeling within him, and some of his fear eased.
"These monotonous deep mountain woods, combined with the surrounding darkness, can numb your nerves and cause us to accidentally lose each other. Keeping physical contact prevents that."
Yu Xiaoxiao seemed unaware of any social taboos between men and women. Holding hands, they walked toward the glow until the three-story wooden inn—exactly as Yu Jing remembered—appeared before them. Every room had candles burning inside, giving the whole place an eerie atmosphere.
Despite having faced life-and-death tests at the institute, the scene before Yu Jing stirred an ancient primal fear deep inside him.
"Someone's here!"
Yu Xiaoxiao slid a blade from her sleeve, eyes narrowing as she stared down the road leading away from the inn.
Four cautious voices approached. When they met, the tense atmosphere quickly dissolved.
"Yu Jing, friend! Didn't expect to see you here! It's pouring outside. Let's head inside and talk. I guess you couldn't leave this area either, so you ended up here? The inn probably houses the dangerous ghost Commissioner Lu Chuan warned us about. But at this point, our only option is to face the tiger's den head-on."
This was Jiang Pengyu from the Physical Training Academy. Though he seemed carefree, his observational and analytical skills were quite sharp.
"Right."
Jiang Pengyu's gaze lingered on Yu Xiaoxiao holding Yu Jing's hand.
The two teams entered the inn's main hall together. The damp, musty smell lingered in the air. A candle burned on the counter beside a "Vacancy" sign. A warm cup of tea sat nearby, and an old-fashioned TV played silently—just as Yu Jing remembered.
The only thing missing was the bell that should have been on the counter.
Creak!
At that moment, footsteps sounded from the staircase leading to the second floor. The wooden steps groaned under the weight.
All six stood on edge, their hearts gnawed by the oppressive darkness, the cold dampness, and the stench of decay. But deep inside, their will to survive pushed down the fear. They stared intently toward the stairwell.
Yu Jing, having endured strange experiences before, pictured the woman with the twisted body crawling down the stairs.
But what appeared was an emaciated old woman clutching a candleholder. She looked to be at least seventy or eighty years old, and she slowly shuffled to the counter.
"Looks like a mudslide knocked out the power poles down below. Are you guests looking to stay the night?"
To Yu Jing, the old woman seemed entirely human—no sign of the supernatural. Given the power outage, she must be lighting candles in the rooms upstairs.
"We want to stay. How much is it per night?" Jiang Pengyu, the leader of the four-person team, asked politely.
"Single rooms are 60 a night, doubles are 80. You can decide."
During the training, carrying personal items was forbidden. Neither Jiang Pengyu's team nor Yu Xiaoxiao had any cash on them. One woman in Jiang's team was even preparing to use special means to control the old woman.
"Need me to lend you some money?"
Jiang Pengyu and his team didn't know how dangerous the inn really was. Yu Jing regarded the old woman as a key figure. To avoid trouble, he took out a stack of bills from a hidden pocket in his hoodie—about three thousand yuan.
"How did you bring so much cash out…? Yu Jing, can you lend me some? I'll pay you back double once we get back to the Institute."
Jiang Pengyu was surprised. In this day and age, everyone used electronic payments. He personally hated carrying cash.
"For safety, let's have two people per room. Since your team has a woman, she and…"
"No. I'll share a room with you! We're one team, and this has nothing to do with the others."
Yu Xiaoxiao immediately refused the idea of sharing a room with Jiang Pengyu's teammate, indirectly rejecting any cooperation between the two teams. Her words were blunt and unwavering. In her eyes, only Yu Jing was trustworthy; her gaze toward the strangers was filled with rejection—bordering on hostility.
"It's fine. We'll arrange things within our own team. The thousand yuan is my loan. I'll definitely repay it once training ends… Please give us a double room for seven nights."
Jiang Pengyu intended for his entire team to stay in one room, the four of them together to minimize risk as much as possible.
The old woman behind the counter took the cash, slowly verifying each hundred-yuan note in front of the candlelight. She then painstakingly recorded the names of the four and handed Jiang Pengyu a key with a wooden tag numbered 207.
"Let's go."
Jiang Pengyu and his three teammates headed upstairs to the second floor, leaving only Yu Jing, Yu Xiaoxiao, and the old woman in the hall.
"Will you share a room with me?" Yu Jing asked Yu Xiaoxiao once again.
"Mm, that's safer. I don't trust anyone else. The woman in that group made me uncomfortable, and the other two seem to be hiding something too. I don't want to deal with them. Let's choose a corner room on the third floor—easier to escape if something happens."
At Yu Xiaoxiao's request, the old woman brought out a key with the wooden tag '310' and handed it to them.
"If you need anything, come to the front desk. I'm old and can't move around well. My dear granddaughter has run off somewhere I don't know."
"Granddaughter…" Yu Jing hesitated slightly but decided not to ask about it in this eerie, early morning hour.
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