003. Count Heartbeats_1

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Thump—

Thump—

Thump—

In the darkness, every sound became exceptionally clear.

Lu Ban could hear the mating calls of stray cats downstairs, the noisy quarrels from some household, and the faint chirping of insects that daytime clamor had masked.

The clearest was the sound of his heartbeat.

The normal human heartbeat rate is sixty to a hundred times per minute; five hundred heartbeats, less than ten minutes—a length of time neither short nor long.

Lu Ban counted his heartbeats attentively, focused entirely; gradually, he found that all other sounds had disappeared.

Thump—

Thump—

Thump—

Dead silence, with only the sound of his heartbeat proving the fact of being alive.

Suddenly, Lu Ban found that his heartbeat seemed to slow down, he had just counted to a hundred, but it felt like several minutes had passed.

It's normal for the heartbeat to slow down as the body relaxes, Lu Ban tried to convince himself of this.

Thump—

As his heartbeat slowed, Lu Ban felt his consciousness also beginning to blur.

Squeak—

Just then, the wardrobe by the wall seemed to make a noise, as if something had bumped out from behind the door, accompanied by a faint sound of opening and closing.

What was it?

Lu Ban was suddenly startled, his consciousness moved towards the wardrobe, almost opening his eyes to check.

But after that opening and closing sound, the world fell silent again, as if the previous sound was just an unnecessary illusion of Lu Ban's.

He gripped the crowbar tightly, waiting for a possible attack that never came.

In the vast space, only the sound of Lu Ban's heartbeat remained, continually slowing.

Thump—

Is my own heartbeat so slow?

How much time has passed?

If this heartbeat continues to slow down, will I die?

It seemed that as his heartbeat slowed, Lu Ban's brain also began to lose function.

Scritch—

At that moment, a sharp, high-pitched, heart-wrenching scratching sound came from above Lu Ban's head, near the bed.

Scritch, scritch, scritch—

The scratching sounds were continuous, right beside Lu Ban's ears, closer and closer, and finally, interwoven with the almost inaudible heartbeat as if scratching on his scalp!

It seemed to want to rip open Lu Ban's skull and pull out whatever was inside!

Scritch, scritch, scritch—

"Forget it!"

Lu Ban was no longer willing to continue this task, if things continued this way, he was afraid he wouldn't even see tomorrow's sun.

Clutching the crowbar, Lu Ban prepared to open his eyes and find a way to give that thing encircling him a good whack.

But only then did Lu Ban realize that he couldn't open his eyelids at all.

Not just his eyelids, but his hands, legs, body—everything was immobile as if something was pressing down on him, rendering him incapable of any movement.

"!!!"

The scratching sounds grew louder and faster.

Lu Ban tried to struggle, but remained in the same position throughout; he felt something beneath the bed scratching at the wooden board, the sharp object scratching over and over endlessly.

Scritch, scritch, scritch—

In such an extremely bizarre and tense situation, Lu Ban suddenly felt that his left hand could move slightly.

He moved his fingers, trying to relax his whole body's tension.

The next moment, he touched a warm, soft, delicate hand.

Lu Ban immediately felt his tension dissipate, his whole body relaxed, as if he could wake up from this nightmarish reality at any moment.

The surrounding scratching noises seemed to disappear as well.

Lu Ban took a slight breath of relief.

The next moment, a chilling thought spiraled up from the bottom of his heart.

"I live alone... whose hand is this?!!"

A greater sense of incongruity surged up from where that hand touched him; Lu Ban shuddered, feeling the fingertips brush lightly over his forearm, upper arm, neck, cheek—making that sense of shuddering even more pronounced.

In such a state, what Lu Ban found admirable about himself was that he was still counting his heartbeats accurately even now.

"Four hundred ninety-six, four hundred ninety-seven... five hundred!"

The moment he counted to five hundred, Lu Ban felt all the pressure that had been applied to his body suddenly vanish.

The next moment, Lu Ban woke up.

He opened his eyes and found himself lying in bed, the crowbar lying beside him, not in his hand.

Lu Ban sat up.

Everything in the room was as usual.

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The cabinet doors were shut tight, and the head of the bed was clean. There were no strange things around him.

Lu Ban felt his heartbeat, which quickly surged, as if he had just finished a hundred-meter dash.

"Did I just... fall asleep?"

Had he actually fallen asleep during such a dangerous and bizarre task?

Lu Ban always thought of himself as cautious and deliberate, one to plan before acting.

He hadn't expected to be so bold.

"Uh, but counting heartbeats in a dark environment might indeed be very hypnotic... oh right."

Lu Ban thought of the task and picked up his flashlight, turning it on and getting out of bed.

The shadows under the bed grew even denser, a depth of darkness that not even the flashlight could dispel, as if harboring something unusual.

All around was silent, without any sound.

Lu Ban bent down—the floor was ice-cold, and the bed boards creaked under pressure.

He looked under the bed.

Underneath the empty bed, there was only the accumulation of dust, and...

That ridiculously dressed Blu Blu Road doll!

The moment he saw those heavily made-up eyes, the scratching sound resurfaced, this time inside Lu Ban's skull, shredding his brain, grinding away at his sanity, reaching directly to the abyss's end.

Scritch scratch scritch—

Some bizarre creature was about to burst forth from Lu Ban's brain!

"!"

In the moment that thing was about to erupt, Lu Ban opened his eyes.

He heard the chirping of insects outside the window, the high-pitched howls of cats, the sound of water droplets falling from an improperly closed faucet in the washroom hitting the basin.

He was back in reality.

At least here, it was the world he knew.

Lu Ban didn't know what had just happened, what the source of those sounds was, or how he could have dreamed another dream within a dream.

He turned on the light.

Driven by curiosity, Lu Ban went to the edge of the bed, leaned down, took a deep breath, and prepared to look under the bed again.

Indeed, the desire to court death can be addictive, and curiosity could not be abandoned; the current Lu Ban only wanted to see what exactly was under the bed.

He shone the flashlight underneath.

Garlic, a cross, hundred-dollar bills, and a lot of salt.

Besides that, there was only a thick layer of dust.

However, on the dust, there seemed to be the staggered tracks of some creature crawling past.

The tracks seemed to be of something struggling from outside the bed towards its original place or trying to break free from the dark constraints and wriggle outward. Following these tracks, Lu Ban found that they disappeared in the area illuminated by the light, unknown where they ultimately led.

Was it cockroaches? Rats? Or perhaps... that comically smiling puppet?

A high sanity score of eighty points told Lu Ban that it was better to explore the area in front of him later.

He sat up and looked at his phone: 12:30 AM.

The experience from a moment ago had taken thirty minutes?

He found it unbelievable.

Five hundred heartbeats, thirty minutes—if his heartbeat count was correct, then that frequency was too low.

With such a long time of oxygen deprivation, he should have been dead by now... Lu Ban dared not ponder it further.

All demons and ghosts are products of subjective idealism.

One's cognition and consciousness are also subjective.

So, as long as he didn't care, the ghosts couldn't harm him!

As expected of me.

As he thought this, he saw the font on his phone screen twist and turn into the cold system text.

[Congratulations on completing the task.]

[Now proceeding with the settlement.]

[Task exploration level: 30%]

[Task completion status: Mediocre]

[Having closed your eyes, you failed to glimpse the true nature of this room. However, after making aquaintance, you have now become friends.]

[You have earned Silence Points: 100 points.]

[You have received the novice guide task reward: Inherent Skill: All-In.]

[You have received the occupational reward: A video that cannot be opened at night.]

[Settlement completed]

[With inspiration coursing through you, do you feel a strong impulse to create?]

[Choose to complete the occupational development task to receive the advanced rewards.]

[Welcome back to the Silent Lands.]

The text gradually faded, and Lu Ban subconsciously looked again at the gloomy shadows under the bed.

At this time, his phone suddenly chimed with a notification.

Lu Ban hurried to check it and saw that there was suddenly a new video file in his phone's storage.

The file name was: [A video that cannot be opened at night.]