032 past 2

'So, now, how should I start the investigation?'

Li Chengyi looked back at the position where he had entered, which was on the side wall of the highest level entrance of the parking garage.

Descending, one level after another, should be the entire cavity of the Grecius Parking Garage.

'So, how should the method of leaving the Blind Spot correspond to the actual location?'

As Li Chengyi pondered, he stepped forward slowly.

The two silver-white engineering spiders by his side followed, lighting up the surroundings.

'According to the company's information and the think tank's suggestions, I need to find the safety exit used by the staff here first. Because the normal entrances and exits are blocked.'

Li Chengyi looked back at where the entrance ramp should have been.

There indeed stood a wall that completely sealed it off, and the wall was covered with many grey-black stains, scattered like splattered paint.

'Then let's look for the safety exit first.' Li Chengyi moved slowly, his gaze involuntarily drifting from time to time towards the small red door in front of him on the side.

In the Blind Spot, that place was the certain exit from which all the face monsters appeared.

It was just unknown what lay behind that door in reality...

With that thought, he steadied himself and straightforwardly headed to the nearest red maintenance door.

According to the Blind Spot information collected by the company, no dangerous situation like the Blind Spot had ever appeared in reality.

So, it should be, safe.

Li Chengyi grasped the handle of the maintenance door.

Through the gloves, he could almost feel the coolness and roughness.

Click.

The handle slowly turned.

Whoosh!

Suddenly he pulled it open.

The door swung wide, revealing darkness inside.

An engineering spider slowly crawled over from the right wall, illuminating the interior.

A face!

A ghastly white, smiling human face!

It abruptly appeared in the white light, facing Li Chengyi.

He staggered back a step, gasping for air, almost falling to the ground.

With the white light, he could now see clearly.

Hanging in mid-air inside the door was a male head that seemed to have been processed, not rotted.

The man wore a smile, his eyes open, gazing at the doorway, his hair tied with a rope, suspending the entire head in the air.

Whoever opened the door would see him at first sight.

'...What the hell is this!!' Li Chengyi's chest heaved rapidly, at the moment he saw the face, he almost donned the Floral Dress and took action.

'What's the matter?' asked Dongdi Jiajier's voice.

'Nothing, just a corpse.'

'Hurry up.'

'Understood.'

Li Chengyi didn't close the door but avoided the hanging head and entered the maintenance door from the side.

Inside the narrow door space, there were unexpectedly quite a few items lying around.

Apart from the basic cleaning tools, there were scattered fragments of white bones and torn clothes on the floor.

Beyond that, there was nothing else found.

Suppressing his disgust, Li Chengyi quickly got up and walked back to the entrance.

Suddenly his body tingled, his scalp seemed electrically charged, losing sensation in an instant.

From his angle looking outside.

He could clearly see, on the left side of the maintenance room entrance, someone seemed to be standing there.

That person stood just outside the door, silently hiding.

Only, he seemed to have carelessly revealed a hand, noticed by Li Chengyi.

'How could there be someone here??' Li Chengyi's heart pounded like a drum, his breathing suddenly became rapid.

Just as he began to calm down a bit, the hand suddenly retracted and disappeared.

Sss..

Threads of purplish-black Floral Dress silently covered Li Chengyi's arm.

He inched forward, moving.

When he reached the doorway, he suddenly dashed out.

With a 'puff', after taking several steps into the hall, he stabilized his balance and looked back.

Outside the maintenance room, there was nothing by the door.

Around him, for tens of meters, there were only old, broken gray walls.

'Not right!' Suddenly Li Chengyi seemed to notice something.

On the doorframe where the hand had been, close to the wall, he moved closer and saw that the wall seemed to be inscribed with something.

He made a gesture as if taking a photo.

Instantly capturing the images on the wall and sending them to Dongdi Jiajier.

'What is this?'

'A... symbol? Seems like... a crawling person? Or a drawing?' Dongdi Jiajier's voice was choppy and intermittent, signaling some connection issue.

'I'll continue,' Li Chengyi answered.

He suddenly recalled the ghastly pale hand he had seen on the ground and felt a vague confusion between illusion and reality.

He suspected that what he saw was not a hallucination, but very possibly a premonition of the Blind Spot.

According to the records, very few people would occasionally experience Blind Spot premonitions while investigating Blind Spots.

This had nothing to do with how much time was left in the interval between Blind Spots.

'If it really is a premonition, then...'

Li Chengyi was well aware that a premonition wasn't just a premonition, but that one could truly be harmed.

It was akin to entering the Blind Spot space for a very brief moment, rather than a dream or illusion.

This he had tested before.

'Trouble...'

He kept his arms covered in the Floral Dress and quickened his pace, moving through the underground parking garage.

'The exit must be close to the surface.'

'It's very likely related to that crevice.'

'According to the pattern, if I were a worker, I should leave an observation point on every floor. Otherwise, it would be impossible to know what's happening on the lowest level. So... the exit or observation point must be in a location that's inconvenient for most people to access but safe to observe everything...'

'So...' Li Chengyi recalled the analysis provided by the company's think tank and quickly locked onto several potential locations.

He jogged along, his crisp footsteps echoing solitarily and eerily in the underground's silent space.

The echo of his footsteps continually reverberated, transmitting layer by layer into the depths below.

Soon, Li Chengyi arrived at the location of the crevice he had discovered earlier.

He quickly felt around on both walls.

"Found it!" he suddenly exclaimed in surprise, discovering a crevice half a person wide!

But to his astonishment, the crevice didn't look deliberately excavated; instead, it seemed like a natural crack from the wall splitting apart.

He looked left and right; all around him was darkness, the spider-bot's light only illuminated a twenty to thirty meters distance, and the darkness engulfed everything beyond that.

He could see nothing, hear nothing.

After making sure it was safe, he stood before the crevice, took a deep breath, and commanded a spider-bot to crawl in through the edge.

The white light instantly illuminated everything within the crevice.

He observed intently and found that the crevice was very deep, extending to where the eye couldn't see.

"I found the crevice and am about to go in," he whispered.

"Hiss... Hiss..." But in the AR, besides the hissing of the current, there was no response.

Obviously, the signal here was too affected, making communication impossible.

Li Chengyi steadied his face mask, turned sideways, and began squeezing his body into the crevice, little by little.

He barely managed to squeeze in and continued inward, following the spider-bot.

After moving about ten meters or so, suddenly.

Li Chengyi's gaze swept over the wall ahead, which seemed to have inscriptions carved on it.

He directed the spider-bot to move over, illuminating the section of the wall.

The inscriptions quickly became clear.

They were Yi Country's script, crooked and twisted, not like an adult's handwork but more like a child had etched them out with a small knife.

'Mom said that when you're in despair, as long as you sing that song in your heart, you'll definitely find hope, you'll definitely find a way to survive!'

'It's so noisy outside, they've started yelling again. That's how patients are, but Dad never yells, he only smiles.'

'Why don't they call Dad when it's time to eat?'

'The meat is really tasty today. Why didn't Dad come?'

'It's been so long since I've seen Dad...'

A line of distorted text gradually became visible as Li Chengyi ran his fingers over them.

'Mom stopped coming too; is it just me left?'

'It started outside again. Close my eyes, hum a song, and everything will pass.'

'I've sang so many, many times... Why hasn't Mom come yet?'

'Hungry...'

The writing abruptly ended there.

Li Chengyi frowned and continued to feel and search around, but found no other traces.

Click.

Suddenly, a crisp sound echoed from the hall outside the crevice.

The remaining engineering spider-bot outside suddenly flickered with white light.

Then, with a 'poof', it went out.

Now, only the engineering spider-bot next to Li Chengyi was still on.

He turned his head and stared intently at the exterior of the crevice.

There was only him down here! It's an underground ruin more than two hundred meters deep!

How could there be any other sound!?

His body tensed, his hands hung down, pressing against the stone wall, his breathing hushed, ready to put on the Floral Dress and burst out at any moment.

But just then, his right foot touched something hard.

A thought crossed Li Chengyi's mind, and he slowly looked down, using the AR glasses to look in that direction.

There on the ground, was a V-shaped metal tag, captured quickly by the glasses, then adjusted and magnified.

It was a metal tag threaded with a fine line.

Although V-shaped, the tip at the base had been worn quite round, likely the tool used to carve the inscriptions on the wall.

While keeping his gaze on the exterior of the crevice, Li Chengyi carefully used his toe to flick the tag upward.

He bent down, hooked it with his hand, clasped it tightly, and brought it up to his eyes.

The tag was the size of a walnut, silver-black in color, with many decorative patterns of leaves and vines.

On the back, there was a line of fine writing.

'Dongdi Jiajier'

A name!?

Li Chengyi's spirits lifted, this could very likely be an identity tag with an engraved name!

He quickly took a photo and uploaded it to Ding Chongyi.

Crack.

Suddenly, another faint noise came from the outside, possibly footsteps.

Li Chengyi's scalp tingled as he stared hard at the exterior of the crevice once again.

After a few seconds of pause, he slowly pocketed the tag, inching his way out of the crevice.

At the same time, a semi-transparent Floral Dress began to faintly appear over his entire body.

It was the trace of the Floral Dress being worn.

Pop!

Suddenly, Li Chengyi's gaze sharpened, his foot stepped forward, and he abruptly burst out of the crevice.

Thump!

The wall was hit hard by his right arm, clad in the Floral Dress, creating a row of small holes.

Those were the spikes from the Floral Dress's built-in knuckle dusters.

Unfortunately, there was nothing outside the crevice, it was silent.

Li Chengyi stood still, withdrew his hand, and cautiously surveyed the surroundings.

Strangely enough, the other engineering spider-bot that had just been damaged was now nowhere to be seen.

"Shh... Found it!" Ding Chongyi's voice suddenly came through. "The name you found, this Dongdi Jiajier! He's the only survivor from the Grecius Parking Garage incident who lived to be ninety-eight years old!"