“So the shadow Brother Fugui saw was the ghost that killed Mu Wanming. It… it’s still here?” As Huai Yi spoke, the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Hearing what Huai Yi said, Ouyang Huanbin was even more frightened. His voice trembling, he urged, “What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

Jiang Cheng turned around and walked towards the wall clock. “If you want to leave, no one’s stopping you, but I can tell you, it’s not necessarily safer back there. This wall clock appeared suddenly. The path to survival might be inside.”

Miao Qing and Liu Hui also came up to examine the wall clock closely, but they only observed and didn’t touch it.

The wall clock, whether broken or not, had stopped. The hour and minute hands remained motionless. “1:17…” Jiang Cheng stared at the wall clock and said softly.

“Does anyone remember what time you heard Mu Wanming scream?” Huai Yi suddenly asked.

“It happened so suddenly that I didn’t notice the time, but after I returned to my room from Mu Wanming’s room, I glanced at my phone. It was almost 2 o’clock,” Liu Hui recalled.

“So, considering the time we spent in Mu Wanming’s room, the time of her nightmare is very close to the time the clock stopped,” Miao Qing calculated in her mind, and the conclusion was unsettling.

Bai Xiaojie nervously swallowed, looked around as if confirming something, and then whispered, “Could it be that this time is when those things appear? Every day at 1:17 AM… will they appear?”

This was a new discovery. If they could confirm it, it would be important for their next task. However, Jiang Cheng turned his head and stumped her with one sentence, “Then how do you explain what happened at the library?”

Not long ago, a ghost wearing a black dress appeared there and hanged Jiang Zhao.

There were no new discoveries in the room. The sky outside the window gradually darkened. Mu Wanming’s head was still on the ground, as if reminding everyone of what had happened here.

Everyone left the room and stood in the corridor outside. There were some tacit understandings in the mission, such as not wandering around at night unless there were special circumstances.

The clock pattern on the plate, the stopped wall clock in the room, the frozen 1:17… A layer of haze shrouded Jiang Cheng’s heart. He had an unspeakable feeling.

These discoveries were less like clues and more like bait. In a place they couldn’t see, an invisible hand was slowly leading them into the abyss.

Perhaps… the owner of this hand was the ‘it’ that the missing person’s soul dared not mention.

Everyone was a little tired and planned to return to their respective rooms to rest, but the next scene stunned them. The room doors couldn’t be opened. “What’s going on?” Bai Xiaojie twisted the doorknob hard. The doorknob was fine, but the door wouldn’t open.

Miao Qing frowned and walked forward. With a gentle push, she opened the door to Bai Xiaojie’s room.

Facing the door was a black table. On the table was an old clock, the clock face facing everyone, supported by a stand. The clock case was covered in rust.

But what really caught everyone’s attention was the time on it.

2:45. Everyone saw it clearly.

“It seems that none of us can go back to our previous rooms. We need to switch rooms, and now each room has an extra clock,” Jiang Cheng said, having gained insight from the arrangement of these two rooms.

“And the time on the clocks in each room is different,” Liu Hui added.

Without much further discussion, everyone chose new rooms. At Jiang Cheng’s suggestion, he, Fatty, and Huai Yi didn’t move, but let the others choose their rooms first.

Miao Qing and the others opened and closed doors quickly, as if intentionally avoiding the others.

Once everyone had entered their rooms, only Jiang Cheng and the others remained in the corridor. Huai Yi seemed to understand something, squinted at the empty corridor, and lowered his voice, “They’re worried about being seen the time on the clocks in their rooms.”

Fatty looked around. The sky outside was already half dark, and an unsettling atmosphere permeated the empty corridor. “Doctor,” Fatty hugged his arms. “Is it really okay for us to choose rooms last…?”

Without answering Fatty’s question, Jiang Cheng scanned the closed doors one by one. He had memorized the rooms of the others, then walked to an empty room, gently pushed, and the door opened.

He didn’t enter, but stood outside the door looking in. Using the light from the corridor, he found the clock near the bed. “It’s 2:59…” Fatty stretched his neck and squinted so he could see more clearly.

Then, under Jiang Cheng’s arrangement, Fatty and Huai Yi each opened a door, but only opened them, without going inside.

The clock in the door that Fatty opened was stopped at 5 o’clock, while the clock in the door that Huai Yi opened was at 1:55. Seeing this, Huai Yi couldn’t help but gasp, and his expression became tense.

“Fatty,” Jiang Cheng called. “Just go into your own room.”

“Okay, okay.”

Then, Jiang Cheng turned his head to look at the nervous Huai Yi. After a long while, he nodded to him and said softly, “It’s okay, let’s switch. You take my room.”

Hearing this, Huai Yi stared at Jiang Cheng’s face, his expression momentarily dazed. After he recovered, he was clearly nervous, his face complex and hesitant, “But here…”

Jiang Cheng shook his head, not giving him a chance to continue.

Fatty also noticed something and turned to look at the calm doctor, surprised, “It’s the time! The earlier the time, the more likely you are to be haunted by those things.”

Slowly, some previously incomprehensible things began to make sense. The reason why Mu Wanming was the first to die was because the clock in her room was the earliest of all.

1:17 AM. The ghost found her at 1:17 AM, in that incredibly realistic Nightmare Assault (emeng jingxi).

Thinking about it now, the clock patterns had always been hidden on the plates, but the first time, because they had eaten something strange, everyone hadn’t examined them carefully. But that was when the curse was activated.

And after they discovered the clock patterns, the pattern of this curse officially surfaced.

Thinking of this, Fatty couldn’t help but feel a little scared. If they had discovered the patterns on the plates any later, then these people would have been killed one by one by the ghosts according to the time, without any clues.

That would have been a massacre.

Currently, what they could confirm was that Mu Wanming, the first to die, was at 1:17 AM, the door that Miao Qing opened just now was at 2:45 AM, Jiang Cheng’s door was at 2:59 AM, Huai Yi’s was at 1:55 AM, and Fatty, who was scratching his head, was at 5 o’clock. He didn’t need Jiang Cheng to worry at all; at that time, the sky would almost be bright.

In other words, among the currently known times, Huai Yi was the closest to death.

More accurately, the person living in Huai Yi’s room.