Catastrophe Containment Facility
Chapter 722 - 712 Which One is Real?

Chapter 722: Chapter 712 Which One is Real?

Tap tap tap, tap tap tap...

In the dead of night, the sound of marbles being played with came from the upstairs apartment.

Zhao Xueling woke up startled from her dreams, casting an irritated glance at the ceiling.

She had often been awakened by the sound of marbles at night, a nightmare that had persisted for five years. In the beginning, she had considered going upstairs to confront the noise.

But upon doing so, she had discovered that the elderly couple living above were her company leader’s parents.

The couple had been late in having children—a set of twins, no less. The small duo often played with marbles when they couldn’t sleep at night.

Because it involved her superiors, Zhao Xueling had no place to vent her frustration and thus learned to tolerate it.

After all, was she expected to quarrel with the elderly gentleman and lady?

Sometimes she and her husband found it strange. It was understandable when the children were seven or eight years old and knew no better, but now they must be at least twelve or thirteen. Why were they still playing with marbles every night?

With forbearance, one becomes accustomed, and now their entire family even found the sound conducive to a deeper sleep.

But today, upon hearing the marble sounds, Zhao Xueling felt an inexplicable sense of panic, and the noise seemed much clearer than usual, which had jolted her awake.

She sat up, wiping off her cold sweat, to find her husband standing at the window. She thought about going back to sleep, but then she heard faint sobbing coming from her son’s room.

"Did you hear that? Lele seems to be crying. Can you go check on him?"

Seeing that her husband did not respond, Zhao Xueling reluctantly sat up, got out of bed, opened the bedroom door, and went to Lele’s room.

She didn’t notice that outside her window hung a head, staring intently at her with a piercing gaze!

Upon opening her son’s room door and turning on the light, she saw Lele, trembling uncontrollably, wrapped tightly in his blanket.

"Lele, did you have a nightmare?" she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and gently patting the blanket.

Lele peeked out, trembling, and said to Zhao Xueling, "Mommy, there’s something under my bed. Can you get it out for me... please?"

Zhao Xueling didn’t take much notice, assuming it was a mouse or something of the sort. So, she grabbed a flashlight, squatted down, and shined it under the bed.

But upon seeing what was under the bed, Zhao Xueling’s face went pale, and she collapsed onto the floor, weak at the knees.

There indeed was something under the bed, but that something...

...was her son Lele!

The Lele under the bed put his finger to his lips, trembling, and whispered, "Mommy, don’t make a sound, there’s a monster on the bed!"

In that instant, not only did Zhao Xueling’s scalp tingle, but her heart nearly stopped out of fright.

Why were there two Leles? Which one was real?

She opened her mouth in terror but found she couldn’t scream, and her legs were too weak for her to run immediately. She could only lean against the wall to slowly stand up before painstakingly moving away from the room.

Now, only her husband could offer her a semblance of safety.

But when she laboriously returned to the master bedroom and turned on the light, the scene before her caused her to collapse emotionally.

Her husband, in white pajamas, stood beside the bed, his heels lifted and his neck appearing to be strangled by something pulling him upward, his face wearing a kind expression as he looked down at the bedroom floor.

On the floor, two toddlers in red cotton-padded jackets, with rosy cheeks and white teeth, were kneeling!

These toddlers looked exactly like the two children Zhao Xueling had seen upstairs five years ago!

No wonder her husband had not replied earlier, for he had already been in this eerie stance by the bed. No wonder the marbles sounded so clear today—they were playing in her home.

What was even more terrifying was that she saw a man’s silhouette outside the window, crawling past it like a spider!

All these horrors compounded, leaving her bereft of the ability to think, only able to sit on the ground with tears streaming down her face, yet unable to take any action.

Behind her, her two ’sons’ kept softly calling her, urging her to drive away the monsters under or on the bed.

On the other side, the three people in the main bedroom seemed harmonious, but that only made her more horrified.

Why had her husband changed like that, and where did those two little boys come from?

Now, what she hoped for most was that she could faint, for even immediate death would be more relaxing than enduring this kind of torture here.

"Thud, thud, thud!"

The knocking sounded, and her two ’sons’ simultaneously stopped calling for their mother; the two children stopped playing with marbles, and along with Zhao Pan standing by the window, all turned their gazes toward the door in unison.

Their scleras... were completely pitch black!

After the knocking, Zhao Xueling seemed to suddenly regain her strength, emitting a piercing scream before rushing to the door, attempting to open it.

But the door, which should have opened with a gentle twist, now seemed to have become one solid piece; no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move the handle at all.

"Excuse me, checking the water meter, please open the door," said a man’s voice from outside.

"I can’t open this doo..." Zhao Xueling cut off her words halfway, then stopped, as a pale little hand quietly covered her mouth—one of the children who had been playing with marbles!

The person outside didn’t seem to notice anything odd: "Oh, the door’s broken, huh? Then I’ll let myself in. If I can’t check the meter, they’ll dock my pay."

Swish!

A black sword pierced through from where the door lock was, nearly stabbing Zhao Xueling’s palm, then the security door was effortlessly pulled open, revealing a man in a black trench coat at the door.

The man poked his head in, looking at Zhao Xueling with a surprised tone, "Hey, your place is quite lively! The Xihong City Government should have informed everyone, lately, you should go out less..."

Before he could finish his sentence, a marble shot towards his eye with enough force that it could have blinded him if it had hit.

The man seemed to be taken by surprise, and the marble approached without him even blinking.

And then, the marble shattered.

Yes, the marble shattered, the one with enough force to rival a bullet; on hitting the man’s eye, it turned into powder.

But the man simply rubbed his eye as if he had just gotten some sand in it.

"Kids, for safety’s sake, it’s better not to play with marbles. How about Uncle teaches you to play with water guns instead?"

The man took out a cartoonish-looking water gun and aimed it directly at the boy, pulling the trigger. A jet of water shot out, piercing through the boy’s head, cutting a glass behind him in half and carving a deep gash in the wall.

Zhao Xueling shuddered, this power, and you call it a water gun?

"And you two in the bedroom, no need to pose anymore, come join the water fight," the man said as he sauntered into the bedroom and directed a water gun at both Zhao Pan and another girl, one shot each.

After being hit by the water gun, Zhao Pan and the two marble-playing children immediately fell to the ground but didn’t shed a drop of blood.

"You kids sure know how to play; pretending to be dead after being hit by the water gun," the man put away the water gun and let out two awkward chuckles, heading towards Lele’s room, his expression turning solemn.

This man was, of course, Wen Wen. He claimed to be checking the water meter and had a water gunfight with three ghosts.

One was purely for fun.

The second was to confuse the thing in Lele’s room!