This Damned Thirst for Survival

The cotton pillow with the shape of a baby drawn in blood was just absurdly exposed for all to see.

Ye Xun's internal anger rose for a moment, his fingers trembling slightly with anger, "Are you pretending to be pregnant?"

Wen Renlian slowly became expressionless as he lifted his head from the pillow, looked coldly at the pregnant woman and suddenly slammed his fist into the lift wall.

Even the best-tempered Kuang Zheng hardened his face.

The pregnant woman cowered for a moment, then raised her head with some sort of strength and said in an exaggerated manner, "What do you want? Kill me if you dare?"

Now that she had been discovered, there was no point in pretending. The pregnant woman smoothed out her messy hair; she had seen through the character of these men and was not at all worried that they would dare to harm her.

The only thing the pregnant woman was concerned about was the strange, long-haired young man. But after seeing that he only dared to expose her tricks and didn't do anything to her, she became carefree again and took out a powder puff from her coat pocket, carefully fixing her make-up in a small mirror, mockingly saying, "How about I just pretend? Are you four big men trying to make things difficult for me, a woman?"

After touching up the powder on her face, she took out her lipstick again, "Who made them so innocent that they ran over when I said help, what am I to blame for? I pulled them hard to save me?"

As they listened to her finish the sentence, Ye Xun's three men were already so angry that their chests rose and fell violently and their eyes filled with rage. But they had to admit that the pregnant woman was right.

Even though they knew she had killed their companion, even though they knew it was in a dream, the education and the bottom line they had received could not allow them to make a move on the woman who looked soft and real in front of them.

Is it really necessary to kill her?

But here is nothing more than a dream.

Yet not kill? But the anger and sadness in the heart is not diminished by the fact that it is a dream.

In the midst of this stagnant stalemate, Jiang Luo moves.

As soon as he approached, the pregnant woman screamed in terror, her back pressed against the wall, fear lingering in her mind as if she had seen some hideous evil spirit, "Don't you come any closer! Do you know who the man on the top floor is waiting for? He's waiting for me! If you dare lay a hand on me, I'll make sure you're ready when I get to the penthouse!"

"The penthouse," Jiang Luo pulled his lips up in an odd smile, "so you want to go to the penthouse."

The pregnant woman was cornered by him and looked at him in horror.

The dark-haired youth's pretty face leaned slightly closer to hers, his lips teased, his cold white skin without a single flaw. His head was bowed and the faint scent of his body lingered on the pregnant woman's nostrils. Jiang Luo's brow was tender and loving as he addressed the pregnant woman as if to a lover, "But what about it, you may not live to reach the top."

The pregnant woman lost her voice and shrilled, "You threaten me?! You want to kill me?!"

Her heart was beating faster and faster, some unknown fear was eating away at her internal organs, she had the unpleasant feeling that she would die at any moment, the pregnant woman panicked and shouted to the three companions behind Jiang Luo, "He's going to kill me, and you don't stop him? Is he trying to be a murderer!"

Wen Renlian looked at her with his arms around her and laughed twice, stopping Ye Xun and Kuang Zheng who didn't know whether to stop Jiang Luo or not.

"How could I have killed you," Jiang Luo raised his hand and gently stroked across her cheek, sending shivers down the pregnant woman's spine, "but I guess the man you wanted to see, or the ghost, he wouldn't have let you live long."

A bad feeling grew stronger, and the pregnant woman, her forehead sweating, subconsciously retorted, "Impossible, you're lying to me!"

Jiang Luo smiled at her and said to himself, "Originally it was impossible, but now it's not so sure."

As his hand was about to touch the pregnant woman's earlobe, a greenish-white ghostly hand suddenly extended from the wall against which she was leaning. The ghostly hand strangled the pregnant woman's neck and abruptly pulled her into the wall just as she was showing an expression of disbelief.

It was as quick as the wind, and Jiang Luo reacted quickly by taking a few steps back and gazing at the metal walls of the lift, which reflected his silhouette.

His eyes were dark.

Chi You was really watching him from time to time.

When he came just a little closer to the pregnant woman, Chi You was enraged by him and struck and killed her.

Jiang Luo lowered his eyes and turned towards his companions again, "Did you see what just happened?"

The anger in Ye Xun and Kuang Zheng's hearts hung rigidly in mid-air as they shook their heads stiffly.

Wen Renlian gave a small laugh as he reacted.

"Don't stand against the wall," Jiang Luo reminded, "let's stand in the middle, this lift is hiding ghosts too."

The four men stood back to back in the middle, not caring to be sad at this point, Ye Xun looked closely and said, "There are lots of little black dots in the walls, are those the people who were swallowed?"

As he spoke, Jiang Luo realised the small black dots that seemed to be hidden in the walls. As he looked at them, he thought of the broken mirrors in the hotel toilets, could they be getting closer to them as the floor rose?

The lift stopped with a ding.

They've reached the tenth floor.

The lift door opened and there was no one outside, Wen Renlian always felt that something was wrong and he glanced cautiously outside, "Are we going out?"

Jiang Luo said, "Wait a little longer."

Soon, the lift closed again.

The lift rose slowly again, this time skimming directly over the eleventh and twelfth floors. Wen Renlian pondered for a moment, "There's no pattern to the floors where the lift stops."

"Yes," Ye Xun nodded, a rusty wariness and coldness rising in the eyes of a man who no longer had any hope in the world, "and every time it stopped, there was no one waiting outside the lift."

Kuang Zheng tried to analyse it with them, "So why did it stop?"

The crowd fell silent.

Because they coincidentally thought of the worst but most likely outcome.

This is a haunted building and the lifts do not necessarily serve only people, they also serve ghosts.

Jiang Luo: "That's a lot of ......"

Wen Renlian sighed, "Since the ground floor, the lift has stopped four times, on the third, seventh, eighth and just now on the tenth floor, so if ghosts have come in on all four floors, that means we have at least four ghosts around us."

Jiang Luo said, "There is also a lift ghost."

Wen Renlian smiled bitterly, "Yes, and a lift ghost."

If only Xiao Fen were here, Ye Xun thought with disappointment, it could have eaten all the ghosts in one go.

Kuang Zheng thought about it, "Not necessarily every time we stop a ghost comes in, maybe it's possible that a ghost is going down."

"This lift doesn't have buttons," Jiang Luo thought otherwise, "unless the ghosts that come in have another ability to control the lift to stop at the floor they want to go down, I'm inclined to think that every time it stops it's because there's a ghost waiting outside. And the ghosts here are not nice ghosts," the decapitated head of Ge Zhu in the mall flashed through his mind and Jiang Luo's eyes darkened, "would they really go down willingly without doing something to us?"

Jiang Luo thinks not.

The lift stops once more on the fifteenth floor.

The doors slowly opened and Jiang Luo was ready for the ghosts to come in again when the lights inside the lift went out.

Jiang Luo seemed to have sensed something and immediately looked around. Seven or eight pairs of greedy, horrible green eyes suddenly appeared in the darkness, and the ghosts they could not see before emerged, smiled viciously towards them and pounced viciously.

Jiang Luo made an immediate decision: "Run!"

The four fled instantly, and after they were all out of the lift, the doors slammed shut again. The ghosts left inside the lift had twisted expressions as they watched them leave reluctantly.

They didn't take a step out until the lift doors closed completely.

There was a scare and several people breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the sign on the wall.

"This floor is the fifteenth floor and is divided into five lifts, guests are invited to choose one lift each to reach the top floor."

Below the sign are the five lift doors on the fifteenth floor, all five of which are identical in colour and size.

"Why do they have to re-share the lifts?" Ye Xun's brow furrowed in a nagging frown as he looked at the lift doors one by one, "Are they trying to separate us?"

Jiang Luo was quite interested in the set-up and would have applauded Chi You if he hadn't been so upset about the death of his three companions.

He clasped his arms and sneered, "Yes, they're trying to separate us now."

Ye Xun's selection difficulties returned and he looked pained: "If only Lu Youyi were here."

Ye Xun didn't know which one to choose, Jiang Luo was afraid to choose. After cautiously observing the lift doors, he gave up on the first and last doors and chose the middle of the room.

Wen Renlian thinks for a moment and walks instead to the door of the first lift.

Seeing that the two of them had already taken their places, Kuang Zheng followed and stood next to Wen Renlian. There were still two seats left, and Ye Xun was still in a difficult position. His frown deepened and he suddenly looked up and asked Jiang Luo: "Jiang Luo, you choose one for me."

Jiang Luo held his chin in thought for a moment and solemnly chose the last lift for him.

Ye Xun's brow relaxed slightly as he walked without hesitation to the other lift.

Jiang Luo: "......"

Ye Xun politely explained, "And you know your luck ......"

Jiang Luo gave him a sly look and pressed the lift door.

The interior of the lift is clean, with only an LCD screen hanging. Jiang Luo stares at the LCD screen for a few moments, and then suddenly it lights up.

The figure of Wen Renlian appears above.

*

Wen Renlian only felt that he had just stepped into the lift and he was in another place. A door deep in memory appeared in front of him.

The familiar staircase of the old flat, the familiar discoloured spring scrolls, he returned to his childhood home.

He stood in front of the door of the room, which at this time was still an old-fashioned two-storey door. One layer of wood on the inside and one layer of iron bars on the outside, the silver paint half gone, revealing the dirty original colour of the inside.

Wen Renlian understood, "A dream within a dream?"

There was a faint sound of conversation coming from the head of the room.

A middle-aged man's voice, pretending to be kind but containing filthy malice, rang out, "Isn't your child a son? This child looks so much like a girl, look at this white, tender little face, so cute."

Wen Renlian listens quietly.

It was the voice of his stepfather, and the words occurred when he had just remarried after his mother.

There was a moment of silence inside the door, as if the scene had changed.

The greasy middle-aged male voice continued, "I bought your son a dress, let him wear a dress from now on, it looks good on him."

The mother hesitated, "That's not good ......"

"Where is it bad!" The man's tone intensified with fire, "Your stomach hasn't moved for a year after you remarried to me, I'm raising your son for you, isn't a girl's dress that costs a few dozen dollars cheaper than a boy's clothes? If you don't give him clothes, he can simply run around naked without them in future!"

The mother was silent.

Wen Renlian tilts her head slightly sideways, her wig gently raking past her ears and evoking a plausible smile.

The hem of his skirt by his feet clung quietly to his body.

The scene changes again.

A childish and defensive voice rang out coldly, "What are you going to do?"

The man's voice contained a sickening greed as he rubbed his hands together and said, "Little Wen, will Uncle come and give you a bath?"

Little Wen Renlian said sternly, "Get out!"

After a short silence, there was a "crackle" and the jumble of many things falling to the floor.

Wen Renlian had heard enough of the buzz, he gripped the door handle and pushed the door open without hesitation.

Inside the door is a damp and cluttered bathroom, with bath tubs and towels and shoe brushes stacked against an entire wall. In the middle of the floor, a middle-aged man in his forties, dressed sloppily with a protruding beer belly, is pressed up against a boy in a skirt.

The boy was struggling hard, his eyes full of anger and desperation. But his thin hands could not resist the adult's pressure, and the dress he was not supposed to be wearing was torn from his body, wet with the sewage on the floor, and then lifted up by the middle-aged man in a rush of colour.

Gradually, the boy seemed to give up his resistance. The middle-aged man let his guard down, he let go of the boy's arm and anxiously unbuckled his trousers, at which point the boy's hand kept fumbling on the floor and he grabbed a glass bottle of shampoo and heaved it on the middle-aged man's body.

Blood mixed with white shampoo liquid flowed from the middle-aged man's head as he gave the boy a disbelieving look and fell heavily to the ground.

Wen Renlian, who was watching the scene, burst out laughing and raised his hand to applaud his former self.

In the bathroom, the boy gasped heavily as he struggled to crawl out from under the middle-aged man and walked over to the man's head to check it out.

A sharp sliver of glass was inserted into the man's skull and the boy tested the man's nostrils; the man was dead.

Bewilderment and fear flashed across his face, which slowly turned to calm again.

The boy hugged his knees and sat against the wall next to the body until his mother returned from outside in the evening and found him in the bathroom with his clothes in tatters and his body already cooling.

Wen Renlian watched his mother cry as she held her childhood self, and after a long moment of weeping, she stared blankly at the body, her face gradually becoming determined.

She brought Wen Renlian a clean outfit to change into and kept stroking Wen Renlian's head, "Mummy will send you to your grandmother's place for a few days, okay? Your father's side will be taken care of by mum, don't be afraid, son."

When she finished, her expression changed to a twisted and frighteningly serious one, "You are not to tell anyone about this today! Including your grandma and grandpa! Do you hear me? You've been playing outside today, you haven't come home in the middle of the day, and you've never seen your father! Wen Renlian, remember, no matter who asks, you will not tell anyone about today, forget it, forget it all, don't remember a thing! Do you know that?"

Little Wen Renlian said uneasily, "Mom ......"

She was obviously only in her thirties, but her temples were already white, shaped like a woman in her forties or fifties with tears in her eyes, she hugged Wen Renlian hard, "Son, mommy is sorry ...... mommy is sorry ...... "

The lights in the room slowly went out, as if the play had come to an end. The body lying on the floor with its head smashed in suddenly opened its eyes and stood up with a sinister smile.

Wen Renlian looked at the body and sighed, "This is the most common nightmare I've had since I was a kid."

"I always felt like I hadn't killed him," he said to himself, "or worried that he would turn into a ghost and seek my revenge when he died, and now that nightmare has become a reality."

At this point, the blood left on the floor by the corpse formed a line: [Close the door and leave, and you will pass this level and reach the 18th floor]

Wen Renlian pondered, "So this is the last hurdle. Just close the door and ignore him and I'll win."

He sighed and stepped in, closing the bathroom door behind him. Walking towards the corpse, after easily dodging its blow, Wen Renlian attacked harshly and snatched the glass bottle from the corpse's hand, his face expressionless and his eyes abruptly sharp, "But even if I lose, I'm going to kill him again."

The glass bottle in his hand was lodged deep into the body of the corpse.

Wen Renlian stabbed him a dozen times, splattering his face with blood. When the broken body no longer has the strength to stand up and fall to the ground, Wen Renlian throws the beer bottle away and laughs.

The air in the bathroom becomes thinner and thinner, and Wen Renlian's face gradually turns blue.

His features and limbs became rigid, but his eyes were extremely content, and he kept this laughing expression before finally suffocating to death in the bathroom stall.

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