According to the planned scheme, Shang Jianyao didn't linger on the third floor, heading straight for the fourth floor, which the room's owner shouldn't have reached during their initial exploration.
When he finished climbing the stairs that seemed to be copied and pasted, he arrived at his destination and found that the light shining through the outer windows of the rooms on both sides had dimmed considerably.
This seemed logical, as the beginning of this psychological shadow was near dusk, when darkness had already enveloped the earth. At this moment, it was only natural that the night was a little deeper.
However, Shang Jianyao discovered that the night sky outside not only lacked a high-hanging moon, but even the stars were absent, leaving it pitch black.
Logically, such an environment should have been so dark that one couldn't see their own hand, approaching the state of "Pangu Biology" after the lights were turned off at night. But in reality, there was still a faint light shining into the food company from an unknown source, allowing the outlines of different things to be faintly visible in the darkness.
"It seems that the room's owner made some minor mistakes in perfecting this scene with their subconscious..." The semi-mechanical monk Shang Jianyao pulled out a pipe from somewhere, brought it to his mouth, and took two sniffs.
The pipe then disappeared, and he turned on his flashlight, slowly walking along the corridor towards the other end.
The previous discovery indicated that he was now in the memory of the room's owner's second exploration of the food company.
After walking a short distance, Shang Jianyao suddenly felt something and shone the flashlight on a room next to him.
Inside the room was a figure wearing a white women's shirt and a blue blazer, clearly the "professional woman" who should have been on the second floor at this time.
Under the light, Shang Jianyao noticed that she seemed a little older than when he had encountered her before.
Although at first glance, her black hair hadn't changed, and she still looked to be in her early twenties, the muscles in her cheeks had started to sag slightly, and her nasolabial folds had become more pronounced.
Just as Shang Jianyao was trying to "retain" her, preventing her from fleeing in a panic, the "professional woman" turned her bloodshot eyes and looked at Shang Jianyao.
Unlike the fear, dread, panic, and flurry she had shown in the previous two encounters, she was now calm, silent, and indifferent.
"That's more like it!" Shang Jianyao slapped the side of the flashlight with his left palm, making a "dang" sound.
This was the state of the big Boss that he had imagined.
The next second, the "professional woman" opened her mouth and spoke in a voice like a duck's quack:
"Leave this place."
As soon as she finished speaking, everything in front of Shang Jianyao turned pitch black.
He couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, couldn't feel anything, and couldn't think about anything.
He completely fainted, without even a dream.
After an unknown amount of time, Shang Jianyao slowly woke up and once again saw the vehicle with its front door open and the advertising sign smashed on the ground not far away.
He was back at the starting point again.
"The room's owner still failed the second exploration..." Shang Jianyao muttered to himself.
His previous experience should have been the room's owner's encounter during their second exploration of the "Tieshan City Second Food Company," otherwise the experience wouldn't have been so clear and so different from the first time.
——If it was just the subconscious perfecting itself, without the corresponding experience, then Shang Jianyao believed that he would inevitably repeat the previous encounter, with his body stiffening, his mind freezing, and him running into walls, as this was the most natural, effortless, and energy-saving "repair."
After feeling his physical condition and finding that there were no lingering problems, Shang Jianyao didn't rush to exit room "522" and return to reality, but instead, he plunged into the "Tieshan City Second Food Company" again.
This time, he not only passed through the first three floors in one go, but also didn't linger on the fourth floor, heading straight for the fifth floor.
He wanted to see if the room's owner had explored this place a third time.
The layout of the fifth floor wasn't much different from the second, third, and fourth floors, but the glow coming in through the windows seemed a little brighter, like a final burst of radiance.
With the help of this environment, Shang Jianyao turned off his flashlight and relied purely on natural light to observe the rooms on both sides.
They had signs hanging on them, belonging to different companies. Shang Jianyao, who was familiar with Old World entertainment information, wasn't surprised by this and easily understood what was happening:
The "Tieshan City Second Food Company" clearly didn't need the entire building that belonged to them, so they had rented out the fifth floor and above to others.
"Xiangsheng Technology," "Baihai Petroleum Tieshan City Office"... To clearly identify the names of those companies, Shang Jianyao turned on his flashlight.
In the swaying yellowish beam, he caught a glimpse of a skeleton in a room slightly ahead.
The bones were lustrous, without any rotting flesh hanging on them, which seemed very strange.
At the same time, it was wearing a white shirt and a blue blazer.
Seeing this, the semi-mechanical monk Shang Jianyao turned the Six Senses Beads and chanted a Buddhist prayer in a low voice:
"Namo Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi, beauty ultimately returns to bones, all things are empty, consciousness is the truth."
After saying this, the "Pudu" Zen master respectfully bowed and slowly approached.
After careful observation, he found that inside the blazer, on top of the white shirt, hung an employee ID card wrapped in plastic film.
It had a photo, a name, and a position:
"Liu Lu
"Sales Manager
"Employee ID:"
The semi-mechanical monk Shang Jianyao squatted down and tried to search the pockets of the blue blazer.
The red light in his eyes dyed the bones with a bloody color.
Suddenly, a shadow flashed before his eyes.
It was a thick, slippery tentacle with bizarre patterns.
This tentacle was coming out of the pile of bones!
Almost simultaneously, Shang Jianyao felt a sudden surge in hidden gazes, coming from all directions.
He instinctively looked around and saw black, deep holes appearing on the walls, with various eyeballs seemingly staring within the holes.
Shang Jianyao used his knees to push off the ground and jumped up.
Without looking back, he ran towards the window on the outer side of the room.
During this process, he caught a glimpse of the changes in the bones.
It had pulled out a human skin from somewhere and put it on, transforming back into the "professional woman" from before.
The only difference was that her clothes now seemed to be painted on her skin, with dark tentacles constantly emerging from underneath and extending towards Shang Jianyao.
Bang, bang, bang! Shang Jianyao dashed out of the metal-textured room.
He leaped forward, crashing through the window and jumping from the fifth floor.
As a semi-mechanical monk, he accurately landed on the narrow windowsill extending from the fourth floor, and then jumped down one floor at a time, quickly descending to the alley behind the food company.
Before he could steady himself, he looked up and felt as if the entire building had come to life, shaking, creaking, and opening windows, as if opening mouths.
Amidst the clanging and banging noises, Shang Jianyao couldn't find any human consciousness, so he had no target for using items or Awakened abilities. He could only take big steps and continue running.
He ran half a circle and returned to the starting point along the original route.
Huff, huff, huff... After such a commotion, even the semi-mechanical monk Shang Jianyao was panting.
The calm and rational him quickly made a decision:
"Let's exit first, rest well, and then come back."
…………
The gray-green jeep was parked next to the burning campfire, and the flickering flames were reflected in the windows.
Jiang Baimian and Long Yuehong, who were focused and highly vigilant, saw Shang Jianyao push open the car door and get out.
"How was it?" Jiang Baimian asked.
Long Yuehong quietly breathed a sigh of relief:
It seems like there weren't any major problems...
Shang Jianyao walked towards the campfire, came to his companions, and described his experiences from earlier in detail.
"It seems that the room's owner has explored the food company more than three times..." Jiang Baimian said with emotion after listening.
He fainted directly the second time, woke up and returned to the starting point, and was scared away by the mutations there the third time.
Long Yuehong frowned slightly, feeling that something was a little off.
After a few seconds, he tentatively put forward an idea, unsure:
"The anomalies inside the food company don't seem to have much malice towards the room's owner?"
Otherwise, the room's owner wouldn't have had the opportunity for a second, third, or even fourth exploration, and would have been dead long ago.
A simple principle is that when his body stiffened and his mind froze, hitting his head against the wall, if he had used just a little more force, he probably wouldn't have woken up. Or, after he fainted, the hidden forces wouldn't have thrown him back to the original point, but rather thrown him into the area where the "Heartless" gathered, and he wouldn't have had a future either.
"It seems that's the case." Jiang Baimian nodded. "The room's owner should have discovered this later, otherwise he wouldn't have dared to explore there time and time again."
Shang Jianyao followed up with a smile:
"That's why I dared to return to the food company as soon as I woke up."
Jiang Baimian continued to analyze:
"Judging from the details you observed, there were considerable intervals between the room owner's first, second, and third explorations. That strange woman named Liu Lu gradually aged, then died, and turned into bones.
"What will happen next?"
"She, is resurrected?" Shang Jianyao's thinking was always unconventional.
"That would be very scary." Jiang Baimian didn't make too much of this "possibility," and instead said, "Your first exploration today resulted in you fainting directly, isn't that like 'consciousness deprivation'? The second exploration encountered a scene like a ghost story, isn't that like some application of 'Six Paths of Reincarnation'?"
Clap clap clap, Shang Jianyao applauded.
Long Yuehong sincerely sighed:
"It's worthy of being one of the holy sites of Buddhism..."
Shang Jianyao then pointed to the jeep:
"I'm going to sleep for a while, I'll try again later."
"Okay." Jiang Baimian thought for a moment and said, "Try going to the sixth and seventh floors."
…………
Near dawn, Shang Jianyao woke up and entered the "Mind Corridor" once again.
ps: Both updates for today have been delivered, please vote for the guaranteed monthly ticket~ Now it's double~