Chapter 457: The Notebook Hidden in the Wall

After contacting Su Mi and putting away his phone, Lu Yibei stood up, carefully observing his surroundings before deciding to explore the building first.

With the experience from earlier, he didn’t go upstairs right away. Instead, he took a look around the first floor, confirming all possible exits from the building before beginning his exploration upward.

This apartment building was old and dilapidated, seemingly in even worse shape than the previous one. Even the stairs were full of cracks, and with every step Lu Yibei took, he worried they might suddenly collapse.

On the stairway walls, all sorts of words were scrawled in crooked handwriting, looking as if written by elementary school students.

[Li Guoqing, I love you!]

[For my birthday this year, I want a Little Tyrant learning machine to help with my studies.]

[Wang Xiaobao, screw you!]

……

Lu Yibei read as he walked, vaguely feeling that he had seen some of these phrases somewhere before. He pondered for a while but couldn’t recall.

With the earlier encounter with the strange old man in mind, he climbed the stairs slowly, pausing briefly at each floor to observe, making sure no one was hiding upstairs or following behind before moving on.

Around the fourth floor, he glanced outside through the stairwell’s ventilation window and saw that the crazy old man was still wandering in the open space outside the apartment. He let out a silent sigh of relief.

These old apartment buildings weren’t tall, only six floors in total. Even with his stop-and-go approach, it took Lu Yibei just about ten minutes to reach the top floor. Then, using the corner of a wall, he concealed himself and sent a message to Su Mi.

After sending the message, he stepped out from his hiding spot and stood in the corridor on the top floor, looking around.

The corridor floor was a mess-yellowed newspapers, broken glass, and even some kind of vegetable in a washbasin, now reduced to a lump of black sludge.

The apartment corridor was long, with sixteen rooms in total. In the dim light, standing at one end, it was hard to see what was at the other.

“Fruit born of the divine tree of Fusang in days past, king of myriad magpies, the one who defies misfortune with money, sovereign of the eight-hundred-li Taoyuan,……”

Lu Yibei muttered under his breath, hoping for the blessing of a deity to keep him safe on this trip.

Although this prayer text from his dream memory wasn’t complete, and he didn’t know which deity it referred to, he always felt it worked better than those temples around Hua City, which mainly served as scenic spots for burning incense and psychological comfort.

The doors of the first three rooms were open, completely empty inside. The previous tenants had left nothing behind. Lu Yibei quickly finished exploring them, sent a message to Su Mi, and then walked to the fourth room.

The door to the fourth room was locked. Lu Yibei jiggled the handle a few times, but nothing happened. He didn’t dare to break the door, fearing the noise would attract someone hiding nearby, so he retreated.

After a brief look around, he noticed that the window facing the corridor in the fourth room was half broken. He walked over, checked it out, and decided the opening was big enough for a person to squeeze through. Carefully, he climbed in.

The moment he landed, Lu Yibei almost wanted to turn around and crawl right back out through the broken window.

The curtains were tightly drawn, the light was dim, and the decaying furniture was covered in mold. The cobwebs in the corners were thick with dust, and the air was filled with an unbearable stench.

Of course, if it were just these things, it would still be tolerable.

After all, no one had been here for more than a decade, maybe even longer.

But lying right in the middle of the living room was a dog’s corpse, which was a bit much to accept.

The body had completely dried out, and beneath the decayed fur, its white fangs were exposed.

Countless bacteria and molds had multiplied inside it for who knows how many generations, only to perish in the end.

The unfinished concrete floor was covered in chaotic scratch marks, one after another, deep to shallow, ending beneath the dog’s paw.

Looking at those scratches, Lu Yibei could almost imagine how, after being forgotten here by its owner, the dog had met a desperate end in hunger and loneliness.

“Fruit born of the divine tree of Fusang in days past, king of myriad magpies, the one who defies misfortune with money, sovereign of the eight-hundred-li Taoyuan,……”

As if performing a ritual for the dead, Lu Yibei pressed his palms together and solemnly recited the prayer text for the dog’s corpse.

Although he didn’t know what the deity’s power was, weren’t deities supposed to protect souls? Whether it worked or not, it didn’t cost anything, so why not believe a little?

What harm was there in reciting it a few more times? After all, it wasn’t his soul that was troubled!

Hopefully, the dog would meet a good owner in its next life. With that thought, Lu Yibei sent a message to Su Mi and continued his exploration.

On the other side, it was nighttime.

Lights illuminated the Taoyuan scenic area, which had reopened to tourists, casting a brilliant glow over Magpie Bridge Mountain.

Gou Meng, disguised as a scenic area staff member, mingled among the tourists, observing those praying for love or healthy offspring. By studying their wishes, she accelerated her mastery of new power.

Incidentally, if she found someone particularly likable, she might use the power to grant their wish.

Suddenly, she sensed a faint prayer from a distant place. She looked out the window, tilting her head in confusion.

“Again! Who is it this time, are they out of their mind? The target of this prayer is… a dog?”

“Do they want it to become one of those breeding machines at a dog farm?”

“Psychopath!”

—

After softly reciting the prayer text several times.

Lu Yibei withdrew his focus, endured the foul smell in the room, and began searching around.

The furnishings in the house were mostly untouched; almost all the furniture remained. Next to the TV hung a very strange painting.

The painting depicted a chaotic city, lights swaying, rain and stones flying upward, stars beneath one’s feet, the city above, an old banyan tree with roots as lush as its crown…

All order had vanished, leaving only distortion and chaos in the city.

Lu Yibei vaguely felt he’d seen such a scene somewhere before. He paused, memorized the painting’s details, then continued forward.

Judging by everything in the house, the family had left in a hurry.

It was as if they had suddenly decided to go, and once gone, never returned.

He passed through the living room into the bedroom. The wardrobe was open, clothes messily pulled out and scattered on the floor, becoming a breeding ground for mold.

The bed was a mess, the quilt balled up. Lu Yibei stared at the lump, feeling as if something was hidden inside.

Normally, you shouldn’t touch these ghostly things-leave them alone and you won’t trigger unexpected danger.

But in this situation, being too cautious and not triggering certain “plot points” seemed to mean he’d never get enough clues.

What if the quilt was hiding a clue to help him find the Truth-Seeking Fellowship? Lu Yibei thought.

He hesitated for a moment, then, with a trace of anxiety, stepped forward, grabbed a corner of the quilt, and yanked hard.

The next moment, dust billowed up, and a black, foul-smelling lump suddenly flew out from the quilt.

Lu Yibei was startled, stepped back two paces, and stared intently.

It was a bird’s corpse; from the not-yet-fully-rotted feathers, it looked like a white dove.

Perhaps it had been a family pet.

Lu Yibei, “……”

He’d originally thought the dog in the living room would starve to death simply because the family hadn’t anticipated they’d never return when they left.

But now, seeing the dove’s corpse, he suddenly felt enlightened, a chill creeping up his spine.

The existence of the dove’s corpse proved that when the family left, they knew they wouldn’t be coming back, so they didn’t take anything with them.

Pet dove and pet dog-naturally, they couldn’t take them either.

A dog could be left at home, but a hungry dove would fly off to find food.

So, its owner chose to suffocate it in the quilt.

After reasonably guessing the situation at that time, Lu Yibei couldn’t help but curse in a low voice, “This is some kind of psychological defect, isn’t it? Even I, someone with suspected mental illness, think this is perverted!”

He searched the room for a while longer.

When Lu Yibei reached the desk in another bedroom, he made a discovery.

On the desk lay an old-fashioned red rubber notebook, spread open. On the yellowed pages, a sentence was scrawled in messy handwriting.

[Memory is deceptive; it only tells you what benefits you. Only when you leave memory behind can you be free.]

This sentence struck Lu Yibei like a heavy blow, making him shudder slightly.

Ever since that strange dream, it seemed he’d been experiencing a deception of memory.

He frowned, flipped through the notebook, trying to find more information. Soon, he found another passage.

[Some people are etched into memory forever. Even if you forget their voice, their smile, their face, the feeling you get when you think of them never changes.]

Reading this, Lu Yibei inexplicably thought of those people from his dream memories-Jiang Li, Gou Meng, Qing Ji, Bai Kai…

Lu Yibei patiently flipped through the entire notebook.

After a long while, he let out a long, heavy breath.

“Hu-!”

Aside from those two strange passages, the notebook contained no other information; the rest was all work notes from the mine.

A moment later.

Lu Yibei quietly observed in front of that broken window for a while. After confirming that the corridor was silent and the crazy old man wasn’t lurking outside, he slipped out the window, returned to the corridor, composed himself, and headed toward the remaining rooms.

The doors of several rooms ahead were all damaged, and those rooms were almost completely empty.

The door of the seventh room had fallen off entirely, lying on the ground.

Peering through the doorway, Lu Yibei spotted a globe in the living room, covered in strange markings and arrows.

The base of the globe was broken, and the sphere had rolled into a corner of the living room, covered in thick dust. At first glance, he almost mistook it for a human head and was nearly scared enough to turn and run.

Steadying himself, Lu Yibei tried smashing the globe with his iron rod, wanting to see if anything was hidden inside. Unexpectedly, with one hit, the globe bounced up, nearly leaping into his arms and showering him with dust.

Gotta say, those old craft factories really used solid materials!

With a sigh in his heart, Lu Yibei withdrew his attention from the globe and, in another empty bedroom, spotted that strange painting on the wall.

That painting again? Lu Yibei frowned, searched the room for a while, and soon walked out, disappointed.

Aside from the globe and that odd painting, he found nothing else in the room.

He continued searching room by room, occasionally stopping to send Su Mi a message to let her know he was safe.

Finally, just as he was about to give up, thinking Gu Qianqian’s home might not be in this apartment building, he arrived at the room at the end of the corridor.

The window of the room was intact, locked, and decorated with paper cuttings, looking as if someone had lived there not long ago.

Just as Lu Yibei was pondering how to get inside, a chilly breeze blew by.

With a soft creak, the door to the room opened.

Was the door not locked?

Lu Yibei looked at the slightly low doorway and the dark living room beyond the door, feeling the atmosphere grow increasingly eerie.

Suppressing the mounting sense of oppression in his heart, he rubbed the goosebumps on his arms, took a deep breath, and stood at the door, observing for a while. After confirming no one else was hiding inside, he finally entered the room.

The first thing he did upon entering was to lock the door behind him. Then he unlocked the window, pulled it open a crack to make sure it could be opened, and then closed and locked it again.

This room was at the end of the corridor, with the door and window offset from each other. If someone tried to break in, jumping out the window could buy a little time.

He dragged a table over to block the door, and only then did Lu Yibei carefully examine the room’s environment.

The furnishings were simple, and the furniture was almost identical to the room where he’d found the notebook earlier, making one wonder if the cement factory had issued them all uniformly.

After a brief inspection of the living room with no findings, Lu Yibei headed to the bedroom.

The bedroom door was tightly shut. He pushed it gently twice but couldn’t open it, unsure if it was locked or jammed by something.

Pressing his ear to the door, he held his breath and listened for a while. After confirming there were no strange noises inside, Lu Yibei gripped his iron rod and toilet plunger, stepped back two paces, and kicked the door hard.

Then…

With a bang, the door gave way, nearly three-quarters of the door panel broke off and fell into the bedroom.

All the interior doors in this apartment building were old wooden ones, and Hua City was a place of year-round high temperatures and humidity. Over time, these wooden doors had rotted badly, so this kind of thing was perfectly normal.

Actually, this was better-just tear the door down and not worry about any weird “door-opening kills”… Lu Yibei muttered to himself, bent over, and entered the bedroom.

As soon as he stepped inside, he saw that eerie painting on the wall.

“This…” Lu Yibei frowned and muttered, “Why is this creepy painting hanging everywhere? Could it be related to the Truth-Seeking Fellowship?”

Everyone has one at home, “worshipping” it-yeah, definitely has that cult vibe!

He stepped forward, intending to take the painting down for a closer look, but found the frame fixed to the wall with two nails.

The nails were small and already showing signs of rust…

Maybe it’s worth a try?

Lu Yibei examined the nails on the frame, moved to the side, and wedged his iron rod into the gap between the frame and the wall, prying hard.

Crack!

With a sound like wood snapping, the frame flew off, and something came with it, shooting out from the slightly hollowed wall and landing on the floor with a thud.

Lu Yibei froze for a moment, waved his hand to clear the dust and musty smell in the air, and looked closely.

He saw a square black cloth bundle lying in the corner not far from him, one corner flipped open during its tumble, revealing the edge of a notebook inside.

It looked just like the notebook he’d seen earlier.

Probably issued by the cement factory.

“A notebook hidden behind the picture frame?” Lu Yibei muttered, turning to look at the square hollow carved into the wall, his gaze sharpening.

There must be something important inside-otherwise, why go to such lengths to hide it?

He stepped forward, carefully lifted the black cloth bundle with his iron rod, and pulled the notebook in front of him.

Lu Yibei bent down to pick up the notebook, left the bedroom, and went out onto the balcony.

He opened to the first page of the notebook. By the dim gray sunlight outside the window, the first thing he saw clearly was a name written on it.

“Cao Wei… is that the name of the notebook’s owner?” Lu Yibei muttered.

Below the name, as if it were a preface, was a sentence.

[Open your eyes and see the illusion; close your eyes tight and seek freedom.]

“To close your eyes and seek freedom, isn’t that… dreaming?”

Lu Yibei curled his lips and kept flipping through. On the second page was a simple construction diagram, with a table below recording some data. He couldn’t tell what it was for. Amidst the mass of data and diagrams, a passage was written in tiny characters.

[I love this world, and I love my life, but they are both fake.]

He turned two more pages. They were all data and diagrams related to mining work, and almost every page hid a passage among the diagrams.

From the content, it seemed like the owner of the notebook was jotting down their feelings during work breaks.

[Today, a few people who claimed to be doctors came to the mine and took Old Luo away. But I can’t figure out what illness he had. Was it just because he told everyone that this world is fake?]

[Today, Xiao Yang was also taken away by those doctors. I came home thinking about what happened during the day and couldn’t sleep at night. If they could take Old Luo and Xiao Yang, then they could take me too.]

……

Each passage revealed a strong sense of oppression, making it feel as if a weight was pressing on your chest, neither rising nor falling.

Old Luo, Xiao Yang, and this “I”-could they all be members of the Truth-Seeking Fellowship?

Were those who took them really doctors?

If I keep digging, will I be taken away too? Lu Yibei thought anxiously. Just as he was about to keep reading, a sudden noise came from the corridor.

“Ding-ling-!” came the sound of metal clashing.

It was faint, like an iron rod or some other metal scraping across the floor.

At the sound, Lu Yibei immediately became alert. He quickly closed the notebook, stuffed it into his backpack, slipped into a spot on the balcony out of sight from the corridor, pressed himself against the wall to hide, gripped the toilet plunger and iron rod in his hands, and listened intently to the sounds outside.

“Sha-sha-!”

Someone was walking down the corridor, stepping on the sand and grit formed by the concrete and bricks on the ground, making faint, soft noises.

Who could it be? Was it Gu Qianqian? Or was it that crazy old man from before?

Lu Yibei, sticking close to the wall, exposed just one eye and looked toward the corridor.

He took only a glance before quickly pulling his head back.

Through the window in the living room, he saw the tall, slightly hunched figure of the crazy old man in the corridor, and the twisted, writhing black shadow behind him.

“……”

Damn, he actually followed me here. This is trouble. I wonder if he’s noticed me.

If he has, and rushes in to attack, I’ll have the element of surprise. If I ambush him, I should have a good chance of winning, right? Lu Yibei thought.

As he pondered, the faint footsteps in the corridor gradually faded away and soon disappeared completely.

The crazy old man seemed to have left.

Lu Yibei waited in his hiding spot for a while, repeatedly poking his head out to look through the living room window, until he was sure the crazy old man had really left.

However, just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a strange laugh suddenly came from below him.

“Heh heh-!”