He glanced at the coffee table and saw an object that Adam Carter was quite familiar with—a pair of infrared night vision goggles, the very ones he was wearing on his head!

So, in the future, he put this thing on the coffee table?

If there were night vision goggles in his future room, there was no reason the other two items wouldn’t be there as well!

Adam Carter quickly scanned the living room and soon spotted a set of keys and a remote control, less than the length of a palm, on the simple shoe cabinet near the door!

He hurried over, stuffed the two items into his pocket, and secretly rejoiced that his guess had been correct.

All three items had their counterparts in the simulation game.

Only the Gang Hole was nowhere to be found.

He made a mental note of this detail for now. Adam Carter turned the living room doorknob, pushed the door open a crack, and leaned in to look outside.

With the eye not wearing the night vision goggles, all he could see was pitch-black darkness outside.

In the darkness, the ‘shadow wraith’ would not appear.

Holding the remote control, Adam Carter reached outside and pressed the ‘turn off light’ button toward the pitch-black space.

Now, even if he stepped outside and made noise, the sound-activated lights would not turn on.

Creak!

The sound of the door opening was especially eerie in the darkness.

Adam Carter broke out in a cold sweat. He watched as the night vision goggles revealed the room number on the door across the hall and the mold stains creeping down from the upper wall of the corridor. Without further hesitation, he stepped out and headed for the stairwell.

Step, step, step!

Even though Adam Carter tried to control it, his footsteps still echoed far in the empty stairwell.

As he approached the landing to the next floor, the sound-activated light on the lower level was triggered by his footsteps and suddenly lit up!

The bright white light cast shadows of the railing and the corners of the wall onto the floor.

A faint smell of corpse rot suddenly wafted into Adam Carter’s nose, making his hair stand on end from the shock, but his mind remained clear—

He reacted quickly, immediately pressing the ‘turn off light’ button on the remote!

Click!

The light went out!

Darkness once again enveloped the floor!

The faint smell of dead rat did not intensify.

But it also didn’t dissipate, lingering around Adam Carter’s nose.

‘As long as I restore complete darkness before the smell of dead rat gets stronger, the shadow wraith won’t come out to kill!’

Adam Carter came to a conclusion.

But the time it took for that stench to go from faint to strong was not fixed.

Sometimes it might take five minutes, or even longer; sometimes, just a blink of an eye.

He was lucky to turn off the corridor light this time, but what about next time?

Shaking off unnecessary thoughts, Adam Carter became even more cautious, moving extremely slowly, trying not to make a sound with each step.

Ping’an Garden was an old apartment building, not very tall, only eight floors, and Adam Carter lived on the fourth floor.

From the fourth to the third floor, he was only a little slower than usual.

But from the third to the second floor, it took him nearly ten minutes!

And just going down one floor drained his energy, leaving him drenched in sweat.

Climbing stairs was always exhausting, but going down should have been much easier.

Yet, no descent had ever made Adam Carter feel so utterly drained as this one.

Adam Carter paused at the stairwell landing for a while, letting his strength recover a bit before heading to the first floor.

As he was about to reach the first floor, he heard a rustling sound coming from the door on the left.

Someone in the room? What is ‘they’ up to?

Adam Carter frowned.

Chapter 5: Walker in the Dark

Adam Carter tried to shrink his body as much as possible, using the stair railing for cover, carefully peering at the door downstairs where the noise came from.

He was extremely tense.

Any unexpected change now could ruin this simulation completely.

People were the biggest variable.

Soon, through the night vision goggles, Adam Carter saw a woman open the door. Perhaps she was too nervous, for she pushed the door a bit too hard, causing it to creak loudly.

The sound echoed far in the dark corridor.

If Adam Carter hadn’t turned off the sound-activated lights in advance, that sound alone would have been enough to doom them both!

Adam Carter’s temples throbbed.

The woman was also startled by the sound of the door, and the phone in her other hand suddenly slipped and fell to the floor.

But the phone falling to the ground wouldn’t affect the current situation with the sound-activated lights off.

However, the woman’s finger happened to touch the phone screen.

The screen lit up.

The dark blue screensaver illuminated the area around the woman, casting a huge and twisted shadow.

“Damn it!”

A chill shot up Adam Carter’s spine from his tailbone to the top of his head, and he turned to run upstairs!

The stench of corpse that had been lingering in his nostrils suddenly became faint, almost imperceptible.

He looked back in shock and saw—

A tar-like, viscous substance surged out from the woman’s twisted shadow, enveloping her slender figure at a speed faster than thought!

The woman didn’t even have time to scream before the ‘tar’ blocked her mouth.

Creak, creak, rip!

A tooth-aching sound came from within the ‘tar’ as it suddenly burst apart!

A bloodstained hand landed on the steps, suddenly reaching toward Adam Carter, then slowly closing.