98 10th Floor

 

The system announced that Xu Qin’s friendliness level had rocketed for 20 points. “Notification for player 0000! Friendliness Level with Xu Qin has reached the required standard! Congratulations for gaining Xu Qin’s friendship! You’ve now learned how to build a peaceful relationship with your neighbours!” Han Fei swiped his character profile to the last page and found Xu Qin’s name under the tab, Life Blueprint. Her name was arranged above Meng Si.

“Xu Qin (Curse Amalgamation): Her original persona has long since disappeared, causing cognitive dissonance in her mind. Teetering at the edge of the abyss, she is on her journey to pursue the world’s most extreme taste.”

After completing the Manager Mission, Han Fei gained a whole lot of rewards, he still had not gone over them in detail. ‘High risks come with high rewards. The unique Manager Talent alone is worth all the trouble. Spirit Farer sounds like it is perfect for this game. I shall act as a journeyman to help those lost souls in their adventure towards closure and salvation, it fits my identity as the Building Manager as well.’ Han Fei now had 2 talents, one was Spirit Farer and the other was the unknown talent, Resurrection that he was ‘born’ with. There was no description about Resurrection in the menu but based on his newly-acquired talent, he believed that these talents were all related to the user and other players.

According to the description, Spirit Farer enabled Han Fei to invoke players with spirituality affinity to appear before him. In other words, could this be a way for Han Fei to draw players from the normal world into the cryptic world? For now, the talent was only Level F so it had a low success rate and it could be used once per night. However, the talent could grow. When Han Fei was at a higher level, the talent might experience a paradigm shift.

‘If only I can draw Ying Yue’s extended family into the game.’ Han Fei prayed that the family of three would live a fabulous life until he was experienced enough to invite them to join him in this Iyashikei game. ‘Didn’t they like to take over people’s houses? Well, I have so many empty houses here for them to inhabit.’

After studying the talents in more detail, Han Fei inputted the free attribute point on stamina and 2 skill points on acting. In other words, his intermediate acting upgraded to advanced acting skill. How powerful this ‘advanced acting skill’ was, Han Fei had no idea. The only visible change he could feel was he could now not only easily portray internal emotions and expressions, but also copy the expressions of those he had met before. Acting would not be a conventional skill to level up in a game, but in both the cryptic world and the real world, it proved immensely helpful to Han Fei.

Working out the kinks in his body, Han Fei glanced around Room 1091. He realized Xu Qin was still staring at him. Her red eyes appeared to have blood flowing through them. Moving his eyes away, Han Fei said, “Wasn’t there another person in the room with us? I remember it was some kind of mannequin.”

“The mannequin escaped from a nearby theme park several decades ago. It was given a home by the building manager but it had gone missing one day. I was surprised to run into it on the 9th floor as well.” Xu Qin put away her knives and wiped down the blood that stained her hands. “It has been heavily injured, I believe I saw it run into Room 1094 after you fainted.”

“Shall we go see how it’s faring?” Han Fei’s interest was piqued.

“Do you plan to take it down when it’s injured?” Xu Qin said bluntly. “Before this, no one was able to leave the 9th floor but now the 3 of us can exit freely. This can only mean that the previous building manager has disappeared without a trace, and the new building manager should be among the 3 of us.” The bright lips slowly opened. Xu Qin bit on her pinkie and her expression colored with desire, “If you wish to kill it, I am more than glad to help you.” Xu Qin probably had guessed that Han Fei was the new building manager but she simply did not point it out.

“That’s not my intention, I just want to meet it. To be honest, I’m more interested in the theme park where you said it came from.” Han Fei heard from Huang Yin that there was a rumored crossroad between Perfect Life’s surface and cryptic worlds at the deepest part of a theme park maze. He wanted to locate that point of intersection. To do that, he needed more information on the theme park.

“Its consciousness of self has been severely impaired. You might need to wait forever before you can communicate normally with it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The mannequin’s essence is in the mask. It is where its consciousness resides. The previous building manager took over the mask and basically mind-controlled the mannequin to act as his building patrol.”

“So the shuffling footsteps that we heard earlier belong to it?”

“Yes, I’d advise you to not place too much hope on the mannequin, I’m not even sure it’s sentient anymore.”

Han Fei did remember the strange mask on the mannequin’s face. Since the previous manager could manipulate the mannequin through it, there was no reason why he couldn’t do it either. After some brief conversation with Xu Qin, both of them headed to Room 1094. The mannequin stood at the corner of the room. No matter what Han Fei or Xu Qin did to it, it did not respond, like it was an inanimate object.

“The mask can’t be removed and I can’t carry this thing with me. O well, we’ll let it rest here for now. We’ll return to check on it later.” The mannequin was one of the tenants of the building, Han Fei did not want to harm it. After exiting Room 1094, Han Fei did not hurry to leave. Instead he went searching for the last 2 human jigsaw pieces. Now he only needed to bring all the pieces back to Room 1044 and he’d complete another Grade F Mission.

“Should we head up to the 10th floor to take a look?” Xu Qin glanced at the stairs that led upwards. Other than the building manager, none of the tenants had been to the 10th floor before. Her curiosity was evident.

“Sure.” Han Fei followed behind Xu Qin as they headed up to the 10th floor.

The top floor of the haunted apartment was surprisingly normal. The building manager had reconstructed this floor according to his former house. Pushing open the door to Room 1101, the place did not give off any scent of blood or rot, in fact, everything was arranged neatly. It was like they were stepping into a model house.

The thing that attracted attention the most inside the room was a hand-painted map on the wall. When Han Fei touched it, the robotic voice said, “Notification for Player 0000! The map function has been unlocked, the places that you have explored will be highlighted!”

Opening the menu, Han Fei found the game map under the Life Blueprint tab.

Among the sea of darkness, there was a barely discernible pinprick of light. Han Fei had to magnify the map to its maximum before he could see the legend that was marked beside the point of light—Explored Locale, Happiness Neighbourhood Apartment 1.