In the pitch-dark corridor during the blackout, only a wall stood between them.
Outside the glass wall were Ji Li and six others. Inside, the faint sound of a weeping woman echoed, though no figure could be clearly seen. The scene lingered in uneasy stalemate.
Ji Li raised his flashlight, shining it through the glass. He couldn't make sense of what was happening.
Why would there be crying on the empty fifth floor?
Though he felt little fear, the atmosphere was oppressive, pushing into something truly eerie. He forced himself to be cautious.
The beam of light darted across the room, blinding him briefly. Ji Li turned to Li Xing and the others.
Li Xing was holding up his hotel-issued phone with the flashlight on, trying to help search. Behind him, the four trembling workers did the same.
Ji Li hissed quietly: "Turn your lights off. Too many beams just make it chaotic—we can't see clearly."
Li Xing immediately pocketed his phone. The others followed suit.
Ji Li pressed his lips together. Still no trace of a living person. He muttered under his breath: "Did you hear wrong? There's no one inside."
The third persona sounded confused: *Since the door slam, I've heard a woman crying. Even now—you can hear it too, can't you?*
Ji Li glanced at the nearby office door. No sign of it having been opened, still tightly shut.
The whole situation on the fifth floor was off. The slam was real, but the door hadn't been touched.
And now, the weeping that had seemed distant before was strangely hollow up close, impossible to pinpoint.
He held still, listening carefully.
Then—just as the crying swelled to its peak—it stopped.
Ji Li's head snapped up. Realization struck, and he rushed to the office door, shoving it open.
"Everyone, stay together!"
As he stepped inside, his ears filled with mournful opera singing.
*Damn it—we've been tricked. That wasn't crying at all.*
*It was just opera being played in here!*
The second persona would've rolled its eyes if it had a face. The third said nothing.
Ji Li's expression soured. To think he'd wasted more than five minutes over a looping recording—it was embarrassing.
He looked up at the ceiling speakers. The haunting aria echoed from the office's sound system, no wonder it had seemed to come from everywhere.
On a desk nearby sat a Bluetooth speaker wired to a power bank.
Li Xing and the others looked uneasy. "Manager… seems like someone played us."
Ji Li waved it off.
"Not necessarily.
The opera must have only started recently. Otherwise Tongguan and Chang Nian wouldn't have missed it when they searched this floor.
That means someone was definitely here between their departure and our arrival."
Li Xing thought it through and nodded. "Then that door slam earlier must have been their reaction to the blackout?"
Ji Li frowned. Just a power outage—why flee in such panic, especially with no knowledge of the ghost?
Unless…
They saw it.
His mind raced. If so, they'd likely run downstairs. But he and his group had just come up—three stairwells in total—yet aside from that single slam, they'd heard no footsteps at all.
That was the real mystery.
Unwilling to let it go, Ji Li looked at the six people beside him. Including himself, that made seven.
If they could find the one who fled—the one who might have seen the ghost—it could confirm whether the killing rule was real.
He turned, preparing to lead them out.
Behind him, Li Xing scratched his head, eyeing the speakers above. The eerie opera still played, sending chills through him.
Then—
*Creaaak*
A faint sound froze him mid-step.
At the far end of the office, the glass door—shut until now—stood ajar, a sliver of darkness exposed.
Through the gap, a foot was visible.
The shadowed doorway radiated a suffocating, inexplicable pull. The moment Li Xing saw it, his mind seemed to cloud over.
A compulsion stirred.
*Go closer… Go closer…*
A voice rose in his head, unbidden yet undeniable.
Li Xing's eyes glazed over, his steps stiff as he slowly moved toward the door, one halting pace at a time.
In the dimness, the scene within grew clearer—the owner of that foot gradually coming into view.
A bloated figure sprawled on the floor, head twisted to one side, legs splayed limply, only the hands still locked in a grotesque grip on its own skull.
Drool pooled beneath its mouth. The body had clearly been dead for some time.
Beside the head lay a phone, its screen long since gone dark.
Li Xing stared at the pale, bloodless face. He should have recoiled, should have panicked—but in that first instant, all fear left him.
His thoughts froze.
All that filled his vision was that horrific, self-inflicted death. Unconsciously, he raised his own hands.
Left hand climbing toward his jaw, right hand pressing against his temple—he began to twist.
At that very moment, the hotel-issued phone in his pocket flickered to life.
Through the fabric, it glowed with a strange, eerie light.
*Thud*
Just as Li Xing was about to kill himself, a powerful kick from behind sent him sprawling. His chin slammed against the corner of a desk, splitting the skin.
At the same time, the phone in his pocket went dark.
Li Xing's senses cleared, but his body remained slack, as though he needed time to reclaim control over his limbs.
The office door swung fully open, and Ji Li forced his way in with the five staff members.
Ji Li's gaze turned icy. If the third persona hadn't noticed that one set of footsteps had fallen out of sync, he might never have realized Li Xing had been ensnared.
Now Li Xing lay crumpled on the floor, unmoving—his posture eerily mirroring that of the corpse.
As if he had become the room's second body.
You can read Eerie Overseer ahead by 60+ chapters ad-free and for free at htt ps://ravenarchives. com/book/eerie-overseer]. Bulk uploads are a bit tricky, so updates here might be irregular, but they'll keep coming.