In the kitchen, the human wearing a hat and mask had strikingly youthful eyes beneath her bangs.
She inadvertently glanced up and immediately spotted Qin Linge walking beside Xu Dengming.
Her gaze shifted away almost instantly, the movement so abrupt it seemed deliberate as if she didn’t want Qin Linge to notice her.
Not just Xu Dengming noticed this; the others caught it too.
After walking a few steps, Jin Zhiran finally asked, “Sister Qin, do you know that chef inside?”
Qin Linge paused before answering quietly, “She was an intern in my batch. She didn’t pass the probation assessment due to low scores. I didn’t expect her to be assigned to the residential building.”
A heavy silence fell over the group at her words.
While they knew unsuccessful interns might be reassigned, the variety of positions still surprised them.
Fang Jialing remarked dryly, “Being a chef isn’t bad at least it’s stable.”
Xu Dengming pondered too.
The Management Bureau clearly considered each person’s abilities when assigning posts.
Given her disastrous cooking skills, her options seemed limited if she failed probation.
Jin Zhiran ventured, “About those assessment scores you mentioned…”
Qin Linge explained, “Based on past experience, someone evaluates our performance during probation. But the evaluators and criteria are usually undisclosed.”
Jin Zhiran sighed.
Fang Jialing frowned, his earlier enthusiasm for after-dinner gatherings gone.
At the stairwell, he waved lazily in farewell.
Dong Shaodan, who also lived on the fourth floor, nodded politely.
“See you tomorrow.”
The third to break away was Xu Dengming.
With an apologetic smile, she said, “I just arrived today and haven’t unpacked yet. I’ll head back first.”
Qin Linge, looking weary, agreed, “Let’s go together. I’d like to turn in early too.”
She resided in Room 301, close to Xu Dengming.
Yawning, Jin Zhiran nodded as well.
Only Lin Yunhui lived on the opposite side of the building.
She seemed to want to say something but ultimately just smiled.
“Rest well-we might have activities tomorrow.”
As their footsteps faded, the corridor lights flickered faintly with a soft crackle.
Xu Dengming returned to her room.
Opening the door, she entered the roughly ten-square-meter private space in Room 303, its walls covered in stain-resistant brown wallpaper.
The room felt stark and unfamiliar.
A single bed stood in the center, its bare mattress accompanied by a simple desk.
A dusty wardrobe leaned against the wall.
Sleeping directly wasn’t an option—while Xu Dengming wasn’t particular about living conditions, she saw no reason to endure discomfort unnecessarily.
She wiped the bed down before laying out her bedsheet.
While rinsing the cloth in the bathroom, she passed through common areas several times, noting with surprise that the apartment even had a designated kitchen space.
But perhaps because none of the residents had any intention of cooking for themselves, the kitchen counter appeared spotless, looking as though it had never been used.
The living room of Unit 303 was small, but with only a sofa placed inside, it felt surprisingly spacious.
Outside the living room was a small balcony meant for enjoying the view.
The balcony wasn’t sealed off, but Xu Dengming had no plans to go out there to explore or clean-thick, dark-green ivy, nearly black, coiled tightly around the iron railings, occupying most of the space.
After considering the difficulty of clearing those plants, she decided to temporarily be a good intern who respected the natural environment.
Once she finished cleaning her own bedroom, Xu Dengming looked at the rag in her hand and decided to tidy up the common areas as well.
She even found a mop in the bathroom.
The mop was old, its wooden handle covered in a layer of moss, and the remaining cloth strips on its head were sparse.
It seemed more suited to be classified as recyclable waste than a cleaning tool.
Xu Dengming planned to ask the dormitory staff tomorrow if she could request a new set of cleaning supplies.
10:00 PM.
Finally done with her tasks, Xu Dengming changed into her pajamas and leaned back comfortably on the bed, scrolling through her phone.
The wind had been blowing all day, and the air was heavy with humidity.
She had long suspected it would rain, and sure enough, the rain arrived at night.
Even inside her room, she could hear the sound of raindrops hitting the vines.
Suddenly, Xu Dengming felt a strong urge to look outside.
But the outdoor lighting was dim, and the building’s exterior walls were thick with ivy.
All she could see were water stains gradually forming on the glass.
Like many residents of Sanjiaorong City, Xu Dengming didn’t particularly like the rain.
After all, whenever it rained, the city’s signal tended to weaken—a quirk that had directly led to a correlation between bad weather and the sleep schedules of university students.
After repeatedly failing to load any webpages, Xu Dengming gave up on pre-sleep entertainment and prepared to go straight to bed.
She shuffled over in her slippers and turned off the light.
The sole illumination in Unit 303 instantly vanished, plunging the entire apartment into a thick, inky darkness.
When vision fails, the other senses sharpen.
The sound of wind rustling through leaves became unusually clear in the night.
The damp breeze seemed to have slowly breached the walls, creeping from outside into the room.
Even though it was late November, the night wind that slipped in was strangely light and gentle.
It didn’t feel cold at all—instead, it carried an unexpected warmth.
It was almost as if this breeze were the rhythmic breath of a living creature standing right beside Xu Dengming, its warm, soft exhalations brushing against her skin.
“……!”
On the verge of sleep, Xu Dengming was jolted awake by an eerie sensation deep in her chest.
She bolted upright in bed, instinctively reaching for the bedside lamp-only to grasp empty air.
A second later, she remembered she was no longer in the Sunflower Apartments.
She immediately grabbed her phone, intending to use its screen as a light source.
She turned on the screen, and after a brief delay, a pale electronic glow finally lit up, becoming the room’s only faint source of light.
Of course, there was nothing in the room.
The doors and windows were tightly shut, not letting in even a whisper of wind.
All the strange sensations from moments ago seemed like nothing more than a dream, dissipating the moment she opened her eyes.
Xu Dengming quietly surveyed her surroundings.
It was her first day here, and she wasn’t yet familiar with the place.
Now, observing the bedroom in the darkness, she felt an overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity.
Even when faced with familiar things, humans occasionally experience a sense of bewilderment, wondering, What exactly is this?
Let alone Xu Dengming, who had only just moved into Room 303 today she truly didn’t know her own living space.
Cautiously, she moved toward the door.
She remembered the bedroom light switch was near the doorway and considered using her phone’s flashlight to locate it.
But perhaps the light’s range was too limited-she couldn’t spot it immediately.
The room was deathly silent, so quiet it was as if the unknown creature from earlier had deliberately held its breath.
Xu Dengming’s fingers twitched unconsciously as she prepared to activate [Observer’s Eye], intending to determine whether another unknown presence lurked in the room by tracing the threads of fate.
In less than a second, the Level 10 skill activated smoothly.
But the moment it did, a sharp, buzzing hum exploded in her mind—as if someone had hammered her temples twice with brutal force.
Her vision instantly darkened.
For a moment, she lost all perception of her surroundings.
Her body swayed uncontrollably, the light from her phone flickering wildly as she nearly crashed to the floor with a loud thud.
This was beyond Xu Dengming’s expectations [Observer’s Eye] didn’t consume much mental energy, especially when focused on a single target.
The cost was negligible.
But the world was always full of surprises.
Had she checked her system panel at that moment, she would have seen her mental energy plummet by nearly half the instant she activated the skill.
That she could still maintain basic rationality was only thanks to her recent use of [Riverwater That Cleanses the Gaze], which had expanded her mental sea.
The buzzing, like the frantic fluttering of moth wings, flooded her skull like an inverted tide.
She wanted to cover her ears or take out her dagger and carve them off entirely, if only to silence the noise.
-When madness becomes unbearable, pain becomes an acceptable suffering.
Xu Dengming took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down as she quickly swallowed a small mental recovery pill.
The buzzing gradually subsided, the tremors in her pupils fading.
The earlier incident hadn’t been a malfunction of the skill-it was because she had glimpsed too many threads of fate at once.
People carried threads.
Too many threads formed a net.
And now, countless dark, mist-like threads of ominous fate had densely filled the entire room.
Xu Dengming had been standing in this net all along, completely unaware.
The threads stretched up from the floor, down from the ceiling, out from the walls-like the arms of water spirits, tangling around her like seaweed, weaving through her brows, her cheeks, the gaps between her fingers.
An unfathomable number of fates flooded her consciousness.
The veins in her head pulsed, her thoughts grinding to a halt, temporarily unable to interpret anything due to the sheer overload.
Tap.
Just as Xu Dengming tried to forcibly focus his mind to observe the origins of those threads, the bedroom light abruptly turned on without warning.
After adapting to the darkness, the white light was glaringly bright.
The shadows that had filled the room moments earlier vanished in an instant, leaving the space empty, cold, and silent—as if everything before had been nothing but Xu Dengming’s hallucination.
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