Frightening Joke: Above the Mist
Chapter 170: Reducing Staff

Chapter 170: Chapter 170: Reducing Staff

However, plans always fail to keep up with changes.

That night, just as Bai Yanliang, Yu Sheng, and Li Mu sat down to discuss their thoughts in detail after dinner, a nearly suffocating sense of dread suddenly welled up in their hearts.

Li Mu’s face changed abruptly, "Is it Fog Gathering? No... It’s not been a month yet, right?"

Yu Sheng clutched her heart, the intense heartbeat almost made it hard for her to breathe, and the burning sensation in her palms was extremely evident, "Open the door quickly..."

Li Mu hurriedly opened the door, ushering Yu Sheng away from Bai Yanliang’s presence.

This time, Bai Yanliang clearly saw the difference between himself and them.

When Li Mu opened the door, what he and Yu Sheng saw was the vast white expanse of Fog Gathering, but Bai Yanliang only saw a normal courtyard, and a small black cat napping on a stone table.

When Li Mu and Yu Sheng stepped over the threshold, their figures suddenly disappeared.

Feeling the tremor in his heart, Bai Yanliang removed the silver-white key hanging around his neck, first closing and then reopening the door.

This time, he saw...

Li Mu, Yu Sheng, Feng Xiuxue, Lu Guo... A lot of people had already appeared in Fog Gathering.

Is it really different?

Bai Yanliang pulled out the key, hung it back around his neck, and walked into Fog Gathering.

...

Inside Fog Gathering.

Unexpectedly, this time everyone seemed a bit slow, as Bai Yanliang was usually the last to enter, yet even he had already stepped into Fog Gathering, and still, quite a few were missing.

Originally, no one paid much attention, however, as the time slowly approached three minutes, and exceeded it, everyone was stunned.

"Why are so many people missing? They’ve already surpassed three minutes; are they trying to die?"

"Could it be... only we received the call from Fog Gathering?"

"No, something happened to them." Lu Guo’s voice interrupted everyone’s discussions.

He looked at everyone and said seriously, "A few days ago, I ran into a Water Ghost in reality, almost died, I want to ask you all, have any of you had similar encounters?"

"Yes." Gu Pingsheng was the first to answer, "Three days ago, at the hospital where I work, I unintentionally went up to the sixth floor, but the entire hospital has only five floors, the sixth floor I entered... was terrifying."

Everyone’s eyes were on Gu Pingsheng, as a chief surgeon, he possessed a calmness that most people found hard to reach, but even he, when recalling what he saw on the sixth floor, couldn’t help but shiver, unwilling to speak further.

"I have, too," Qi Nian said, looking at everyone, "On my way home from work, I encountered a bride in a red wedding dress. My friends couldn’t see her; only I could..."

"Interesting." Song Que flicked his fingers, tossing a coin into the air, "The night before last, someone called my name from outside the window. I ignored it, because I live on the... twenty-third floor."

Yu Sheng glanced at Bai Yanliang, then at everyone, "I’ve experienced it too..."

Bai Yanliang looked at her a bit surprised, only to hear Yu Sheng say, "These days, I’ve been vaguely hearing my brother calling my name, but he has clearly disappeared..."

Indeed, Yu Sheng might have thought it was a hallucination born of anxiety over Ren Wudao, but a few times might be understandable, ’always’ signifies a problem.

Then, all present roughly explained the supernatural events they had encountered.

Just as Lu Guo speculated, everyone had encountered ghostly events.

Actually... not entirely everyone, there was one person who hadn’t experienced any strange occurrences.

Bai Yanliang.

But he had always been low-key and rarely spoke, so Lu Guo automatically skipped over him.

"The situation is clear now, those who haven’t come may never appear again." Lu Guo’s voice spread out, suddenly casting silence over the surroundings.

Fog Gathering, already more than half empty.

Of those present, Bai Yanliang knew most.

Li Mu, Feng Xiuxue, Du Shangjing, Zhou Li, Lu Guo, Song Que, Li Yuejun, Gu Pingsheng, Qi Nian, Jiang Li, Yu Wenxuan, Xu Zhifei...

After the last mission, only thirty-one remained, and now only eighteen were still in Fog Gathering.

If Lu Guo’s words hold, those thirteen who didn’t come may have already died in reality...

Though it sounds like just a simple number, upon closer thought, that’s thirteen lives.

Bai Yanliang raised his head, looking at the long, scarlet beams of light "above" Fog Gathering, life is so fragile in front of such unknown eerie forces.

So fragile that he doesn’t even know when he’ll silently die too.

But unlike most people, Bai Yanliang neither fears nor resists death.

Soon, in the white void of Fog Gathering, a series of blood-red names appeared.

Qi Nian, Song Que, Zhou Li, Bai Yanliang, Yuan Jie, Yang Mowan.

Again me...

This time, even the others selected couldn’t help but turn to look at Bai Yanliang.

This can no longer be described as mere bad luck.

There must be some secret on Bai Yanliang!

Indeed, Bai Yanliang does have a secret, unknown to others but unmistakable to Fog Gathering; Bai Yanliang bears a fully formed key.

However, rather than concerned, Bai Yanliang felt a sense of perplexity about it.

If the key is the reason he’s always selected, then there should be another who should be selected each time too—Feng Xiuxue.

Yet, the fact is, Feng Xiuxue also looked at him in disbelief at the moment.

Clearly, Feng Xiuxue was also completely baffled as to why Bai Yanliang was so "unlucky."

Bai Yanliang wore a helpless expression; no matter what, he had to make a statement. What he meant was, I don’t know what’s going on either, believe it or not, it’s up to you.

In fact, Bai Yanliang had come to realize that the key left by Yanren is a unique existence among keys, at least... it’s different from Feng Xiuxue’s.

Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen, but currently, it’s mostly bad.

It not only attracted the attention of mysterious individuals to Bai Yanliang but also continually threw him into terrifying and bizarre tasks.

The six stepped forward, and Bai Yanliang took a glance at the "companions" this time. Apart from Song Que and Zhou Li, he hadn’t even spoken to the other three.

However, Qi Nian he was familiar with, since she entered Fog Gathering the same day as him, and excluding Feng Xiuxue, she was the "first" to exploit the rules to eliminate an unbeatable fierce ghost.

As for Yuan Jie and Yang Mowan, although he hadn’t interacted with them, given they survived multiple times and evaded fierce ghost attacks in reality, they seemed to not be ordinary people.

Bai Yanliang optimistically thought this task should be relatively easy.

However, when decryption appeared, everyone was dumbfounded.