Don't sleep?
This request was indeed strange.
"Lin God, when I encountered this situation, my first thought was to discuss it with you, after all, we're both from Migrant City. What do you think, could something big really have happened? Can you analyze it for me, so I can be prepared early?"
Mao Mao Hen Dan Da drank her beverage, sitting on the sofa and stretching lazily.
Lin Mo thought for a moment: "There are too few clues, not much to analyze, but from what we can see so far, if people really did die, it would likely be homicide, accident, or natural causes. From the video you sent earlier, it doesn't look like homicide, but also doesn't seem like natural causes, so it's probably an accident..."
As he spoke, Lin Mo maintained absolute calmness.
He truly didn't feel any fear or nervousness.
"As for what kind of accident, the police certainly know some things, but are hiding it from you to avoid unnecessary panic. I suggest you follow their advice, lock your doors, don't go out, and don't sleep."
Mao Mao Hen Dan Da nodded: "That's what I thought too, but to be honest, with over a dozen people suddenly dying in my own residential complex for unknown reasons, I'm really quite scared, which is why I contacted you. In the past when playing horror games, I could only get past difficult parts by watching your videos and explanations. Lin God, you're the bravest and most skilled game player I've ever seen."
"But now this is happening in Migrant City, close to where you live. Are you really not afraid?" Mao Mao Hen Dan Da asked again, not quite believing.
Lin Mo was getting a bit sleepy, and afraid she would keep pressing the issue, so he said against his true feelings: "I'm scared too."
"I knew it! By the way Lin God, want to team up and game together tonight?" Mao Mao Hen Dan Da raised her eyebrows hopefully.
Lin Mo shook his head expressionlessly: "You're not sleeping, but I need to sleep. Let's end the chat. There should be news about what happened in your complex tomorrow. Just be careful not to fall asleep yourself."
"Alright then, goodnight." Mao Mao Hen Dan Da said, a bit reluctant to end the call.
Lin Mo decisively ended the video chat.
At this moment, he recalled the strange expressions on the faces of the dead people in that earlier video.
"Not letting residents go out does suggest they may be pursuing criminals; but telling them not to sleep is rather odd..." Lin Mo habitually rubbed his chin.
After turning off the computer, Lin Mo walked to the window to look at the night scene outside.
From his vantage point, he could see Third Bridge Street, as well as the Green Garden residential complex over there.
The straight-line distance was less than 300 meters.
Unable to figure things out, he decided to stop thinking about it. He turned off the lights and went to bed.
Lin Mo hadn't been getting enough sleep these past few days due to work, so he fell asleep as soon as he lay down.
At this moment, it was just midnight.
...
Blood, blood everywhere, as if everything was soaked in blood.
But the blood quickly dissipated, as if it had never been there.
Lin Mo now looked at the unfamiliar room before him with a puzzled expression.
"Where is this?"
The room looked like it had been through a fire. The furniture was charred, the walls were blackened, and there was a lingering stench of something burnt.
Lin Mo shook his head. He clearly remembered lying in bed to sleep, just falling asleep, and then arriving here.
Walking out of the room, he saw an equally burnt living room. Looking at the layout, this was definitely not where he lived.
He looked out the window.
Lin Mo saw the Green Garden complex, but it seemed different from usual, though he couldn't quite put his finger on how.
Ah, that's it.
The distance.
The distance between the two complexes was closer now, less than 100 meters apart. It was as if some mysterious force had pulled the two complexes closer together.
However, the buildings in Green Garden looked extremely dilapidated, with only a few lit windows. Looking further around, it was pitch black, with only vague outlines of some structures visible.
That darkness was a bit like the fog of war in video games.
Just then, a sudden scream from outside broke the silence.
Lin Mo immediately turned around, walked to the door, and pushed it open to step outside.
Outside was a long corridor.
In the distance was a light, flickering on and off, making the dim and decrepit hallway appear even more eerie and sinister.
Lin Mo felt no ripples in his heart, simply observing carefully.
The corridor looked like the style from over a decade ago, weathered by time. There were bloody handprints on the walls, some already turned brownish-black, who knows how long they had been there. But some looked fresh, as if just imprinted.
There were also scratch marks of varying depths.
Lin Mo walked forward. By now, he was certain this was not the apartment building where he lived, yet he was still wearing his pajamas, and didn't feel sleepy at all.
So far, Lin Mo still hadn't figured out the situation.
Ahead was the stairwell. Lin Mo walked over and looked inside, his expression changing slightly.
In the stairwell lay a person.
He went over to check.
It was a man in his thirties, already dead, covered in blood. The fatal wound was a slash across his neck - someone had used a sharp weapon to cut from right to left, slicing right through his throat.
Additionally, the man's belly had been cut open and his internal organs removed. His left ear had also been brutally cut off.
The bloody scene was real, the smell of blood assaulting Lin Mo's nostrils.
This was more real than any horror game or creepy story.
"The killer hasn't gone far." Lin Mo crouched down to examine the body. This person had just died recently, but the scream he heard earlier wasn't from this man.
The timing didn't match up.
In other words, besides himself, there were others here.
Moreover, Lin Mo realized something that made him feel the situation was very serious.
He had seen this dead man before.
It was his neighbor, who lived on the same floor. They would greet each other when they met.
How could his neighbor end up killed so brutally here?
The neighbor's expression was one of terror. He had clearly experienced extreme fear and pain before death. Lin Mo suddenly remembered something and reached out to wipe the blood off the man's face.
The neighbor's twisted, terrified expression at the moment of death was very similar to the expression of the dead person he had seen in that video earlier.
"Could it be that person died the same way? But he had no fatal wounds..."
"Mao Mao Hen Dan Da said the police warned her not to sleep at all costs. I couldn't understand what that meant before. Now it seems, perhaps the danger comes after falling asleep. When people sleep, they dream. What if dying in the dream means dying in reality?"
Lin Mo was now crouching beside a disemboweled corpse, pondering. Mainly because he himself had instantly arrived here after falling asleep, the only explanation was that he might be dreaming.
This was his bold hypothesis.
But there were many things that couldn't be explained. If it was a dream, surely everyone would be dreaming their own dreams, not interfering with each other. Yet in the current situation, he had encountered his murdered neighbor.
Or perhaps this was all just his own nightmare?
But Lin Mo had never had nightmares since childhood.
A person who feels no fear at all is incapable of having nightmares.
However, if we assume this is someone else's nightmare, then things would make sense.
The sharing economy has been booming for years, but can nightmares also be shared?
"Assuming this is a shared dream space, I fell asleep so I entered. My neighbor did the same, but he was unlucky and got killed..."
"So that means there are at least three people in this building right now."
"Me, my neighbor, and the killer." Lin Mo counted on his fingers.
"Also, based on the deaths in Green Garden and the police warning, does this mean if you die in this dream, you die in reality?"
Lin Mo looked at his neighbor. The man wasn't weak, in his prime at just over 30 years old, yet he had died so tragically, his chest practically split open with one slash.
This indicated the killer had immense strength.
Plus the killer had a weapon. No matter who it was, encountering them unarmed would mean certain death.
"So this is like a survival game. The main goal is to stay alive, which means avoiding the killer. All you can do is hide and run."
Lin Mo looked at the dark stairwell.
His neighbor had probably tried to go downstairs, but had the terrible luck of encountering the killer here and being murdered.
"I just walked through this floor and didn't see anyone else, which means the killer isn't on this floor. They've either gone up or down."
Just then, a scream came from upstairs.
"They're upstairs."
Without another word, Lin Mo headed downstairs.
As he descended, Lin Mo muttered: "Looks like quite a few people have entered this shared dream space."
The screaming continued for a while, then abruptly stopped.
Whoever it was likely met the same fate as his neighbor.
Lin Mo had considered trying to save them, but as he analyzed earlier, going there would be no different from offering himself up.
He made his way down from the 7th floor to the 3rd floor.
At this point, Lin Mo noticed movement at the stairwell ahead.
In front, there seemed to be a layer of black mist, shrouding the path forward. The downward stairs appeared to be swallowed by this black mist, with only vague outlines visible.
Most horrifying of all, within this layer of black mist, there seemed to be several people hanging, swaying slowly.
Looking closely, they really were people.
Both men and women, at least seven or eight of them.
Normal people seeing this situation would certainly not dare to continue down.
But at this moment, Lin Mo heard hurried footsteps coming from upstairs.
There was a 90% chance it was the killer coming down.
So without hesitation, he walked straight into the black mist.
Poor visibility wasn't a problem, he'd just have to move slower.
Now Lin Mo could see clearly - all the corpses around had hemp ropes around their necks. They had all been hanged alive. Their deaths were horrific - some had their neck bones broken, their necks deformed by the downward pull of their bodies, tongues sticking out grotesquely long.
This scene was indescribable.
Lin Mo calmly reached out to push aside a pale, purplish foot blocking his path. There was no choice - he couldn't get through otherwise. There were too many bodies; he had to touch this thigh, bump into that foot.
Just then, Lin Mo felt a hand suddenly grab his leg.
Anyone else would have screamed in fright at this point.
But Lin Mo's reaction was extremely calm. He looked down.
At the edge of the stairs crouched a person.
A living person.
The hand gripping him was trembling uncontrollably. Clearly, this person was in a state of extreme fear.
It was a woman. Coincidentally, Lin Mo had seen her before - she seemed to live on the 4th floor. They would occasionally encounter each other going up and down the stairs. She was quite pretty, but now her face was streaked with tears, pale with fright. She clutched Lin Mo's pant leg, her face full of pleading.
Lin Mo wanted to ask, but she made a gesture for silence.
The implication was clear - no talking allowed.
Lin Mo nodded. Though he didn't know what had happened here, this woman was clearly so frightened her legs had gone weak and she couldn't walk. So he reached out to help her up.
The two made their way downstairs without a sound, in tacit understanding. However, the woman's body was so weak that she likely couldn't have taken a single step without Lin Mo supporting her.
Just then, Lin Mo felt an itch on his ear, as if something had fallen on it. He turned his head slightly to look - it was a clump of hair.
Almost simultaneously, an extremely strange laugh sounded from behind.
Upon hearing this sound, the woman in Lin Mo's arms immediately began to tremble all over, as if electrified. Looking at her closely, her eyes were filled with terror, desperately signaling to Lin Mo.
Lin Mo noticed that she was tightly covering her own mouth with her hand, trying hard not to scream out.
Clearly, this was someone striving to overcome their fear.
However, Lin Mo, who knew nothing of fear, turned his head to look without hesitation.
Behind them was a female ghost who had been hanged with hemp rope.
Her hair was disheveled, her tongue protruding extremely long, eyes bulging, with two streaks of bloody tears on her face, revealing a bizarre smile. The sight was utterly terrifying to the extreme.
Anyone seeing this scene would scream in horror.
The female ghost seemed to be waiting for them to scream, but Lin Mo's subsequent reaction not only left the woman he was supporting dumbfounded, but even stunned the ghost opposite them.
Lin Mo simply smiled at the female ghost, then turned his head and slowly helped the trembling woman down the stairs. They calmly walked to the second floor, leaving behind the black mist area full of hanged ghosts.
The woman in his arms saw this scene clearly.
She even inadvertently glimpsed the look of bewilderment on the terrifying female ghost's face, which seemed to convey a sense of questioning its own existence.