DA chapter 9

 

Lin Jia quickly left Room 303. As he walked down the corridor, he stopped at a spot where he could see below, but those below couldn’t see him. He stood there silently, looking down.

Buzzcut, Glasses, and Liu Ying were unaware that Lin Jia had already left Room 303. They were still guarding their post, dutifully keeping blogger Xiao Wu trapped.

Only then did Lin Jia retreat, letting the cat face the corridor and let out two meows.

They had an agreement that the cat’s “meows” were signals representing Lin Jia’s movements. One meow meant to gather and wait for Lin Jia to announce his findings, and two meows meant to disperse.

The light in Room 302 had never been turned off. Lin Jia silently locked the door, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

The cat had been saying something, but Lin Jia was dizzy and couldn’t hear clearly. It was the result of falling into darkness and encountering sudden danger. After easing up for quite a while under the bright lighting, he rubbed his brow and said tiredly, “Sorry, I didn’t hear.”

Cat: “…”

It gave him a suspicious look and saw that he did indeed looked unwell.

The cat ran to the bathroom, turned on the light, and came back to ask, “Feeling any better now?”

Lin Jia: “Mm.”

Even though he sounded weak, the cat noticed his breathing had calmed down.

Curious, it asked, “Since you weren’t feeling well, why did you go into the corridor just now?”

Lin Jia said frankly, “I don’t trust them.”

The cat fell silent, its emotions complicated.

Despite feeling unwell, he still went to check on things—That showed how frightening Lin Jia was.

Although he hadn’t heard what the cat had saying earlier, he could guess. Lin Jia said, “Things outside the camera are the netizens.”

Blogger Xiao Wu was filming a video. Outside the camera were the viewers watching the video, weren’t they?

The cat quickly asked, “How did Shi Luo die?”

Lin Jia said, “Bad comments.”

In the special video about Shi Luo, there were many vicious remarks. The comments said that Shi Luo had no brain, so his brain was dug out.

The cat was shocked. “Are the comments becoming reality?”

It hurriedly asked, “What about you guys? Were any of you filmed?”

Lin Jia: “Mm.”

Unfortunately, the pinhole camera recorded all of them. Everyone’s face was on camera; no one escaped.

Cat: “Holy shit.”

“You—you—you guys will die? You too?”

Agitated, it jumped onto Lin Jia’s lap, its claws hooking into his clothes.

Most high-end clothing is fragile, and the cat’s claws tore the silk.

Lin Jia didn’t immediately push the cat off. He narrowed his eyes. The cat’s reaction was intense—it seemed to care a lot about him. Because of his personality, Lin Jia didn’t believe in unprovoked kindness. He assumed the cat must want something.

However, he temporarily set aside his suspicions toward the cat because he had more urgent problems.

“They won’t die for now,” Lin Jia said. “Bad comments becoming real has certain conditions.”

The cat didn’t realize that Lin Jia had thoroughly examined it inside and out. “What conditions?”

Lin Jia: “Likes and comment counts.”

“White Shadow Documentary (Part 1)” showed everyone’s faces. The video was full of conflicts and drama and racked up 17k likes and 892 comments, yet everyone was still fine.

“White Shadow Documentary (Part 2)” received over 100k likes and 7,524 comments, and then Shi Luo died.

“When the number of likes and comments surpasses a certain threshold, the negative comments become real, and the characters in the video die according to those comments,” said Lin Jia. “As for the video about us, the likes and comments are few.”

When the cat noticed that Lin Jia said they won’t die for now, it asked, “What about you?”

Lin Jia: “Don’t know.”

The negative comments on Shi Luo’s video only mentioned the “brain,” yet his eyes disappeared along with it. It seems his original guess when he got the pinhole camera was right—the eyes in Yile Apartment were cameras.

Shi Luo died because of the bad comments from netizens. The missing eyes were then the medium through which the netizens watched.

Netizens no longer needed blogger Xiao Wu to film and upload videos. They could freely access whatever content they wanted.

Some netizens wanted to watch a special on Lin Jia, and so one of Shi Luo’s eyes appeared, hidden in the wardrobe, observing Lin Jia’s every move from the darkness.

Perhaps, by now, some netizens were commenting on him. The like and comment counts were probably skyrocketing, waiting only to surpass the death threshold.

Due to the danger he was in and the mental exhaustion he experienced after leaving Room 303, he allowed the anxious people waiting for answers to disperse.

Meanwhile, in another room of the Yile Apartments—

The person living there tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. No one can sleep while hanging by a thread.

“… Am I going to die?”

“Did Lin Jia find the cause or not?”

Maybe the room was too quiet, making the person uneasy and prompting them to make some noise. They muttered, “What if Lin Jia found the cause but refuses to say it? What then?”

“Sssss.”

“Seriously, why did I have to ask about that White Shadow?”

“If I hadn’t asked about White Shadow, Blogger Xiao Wu wouldn’t have installed the camera!”

“Sssss.”

“What should I do? I don’t want to die. I should…”

“Sssss.”

It suddenly opened its eyes and stared at the fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling.

If it wasn’t mistaken, just now, it seemed…some strange sound abruptly joined its muttering.

Was it an auditory hallucination caused by extreme tension?

They didn’t know. They didn’t dare speak again and held its breath instinctively.

Because they held their breath, the “ssssss” sound became louder.

No mistake!

There really was a strange noise!

The person jerked upright and flung off the blanket that had been pressed beneath them.

The sound seemed to be coming from under them, but beneath the blanket was empty—there was nothing there.

They clutched the blanket, their heart rate spiking sharply.

No, the sound wasn’t under the blanket. But the “ssssss” sound persisted and grew louder.

Their legs went weak, and they collapsed onto the floor.

The sound was clear now. It wasn’t a hissing sound, but a hushed whisper. Because the whispers were unclear, they sounded like a hiss.

Someone was whispering. There were people in their room.

Where?

Where were they hiding?

They twisted their stiff neck and scanned the room mechanically. The room wasn’t big. There was basically nowhere to hide. Even the wardrobe was just a simple clothing rack made of two metal poles.

Oh no—there was one place someone could hide.

Sitting on the floor, their line of sight sweep under the bed.

But they didn’t dare look into that dark space.

They wanted to run, but they were paralyzed by fear.

All they could do was pull the blanket over their head, hide under it, and press both hands over their ears.

Ssssss.

The whispering continued.

Ssssss.

It was becoming more frequent.

Ssssss.

The sound grew louder and closer.

Ssssss.

They felt something push against the blanket and open a small gap. Something squeezed through it and slipped under the blanket.

In that instant, their heart leapt to their throat, their blood froze, and their body temperature plummeted.

They saw it. The thing that had crawled under the blanket was an eyeball—Shi Luo’s eyeball.

The moment they saw it clearly, the whispering suddenly became loud.

The content made them unable to breathe. Overwhelming terror enveloped them completely.

—

Inside Room 302.

The cat was extremely anxious. “We can’t just wait to die! There must be something we can do!”

“There is.” Lin Jia rubbed his thumb against the side of his index finger. The cat was definitely going to press him for details, so he continued without being prompted. “Delete the videos the blogger posted and avoid being seen.”

The cat lowered its head, thinking.

Deleting the videos meant going to Room 303 again. This time, Buzzcut and the others had blocked blogger Xiao Wu, so he probably wouldn’t leave Room 303 again. Difficult.

If weren’t for the cat’s night vision, the eye hidden behind the wardrobe would have seen Lin Jia’s every move. Who knew if the eye would follow them or hide somewhere else to watch in secret? That was also difficult.

The cat, frowning miserably, concluded: “Difficult.”

“Not that difficult.”

Before the cat could respond, Lin Jia suddenly stood up, grabbed the back of the chair with one hand, twisted his arm, and swung it. The chair left his hand and drew a perfect parabola through the air.

It crashed into the glass window. With a loud crash, the window shattered like falling rain.

The eye hidden behind the glass window wasn’t expecting a chair to fly through it. Struck by a chair leg, the eye burst apart and the fluid inside splattered. Finally, it fell out of the Yile Apartment with the chair.

The cat froze. “When did you notice…”

“It specifically wanted to watch my segment,” Lin Jia sneered. “How could the eye not follow?”

“Let’s go. We can’t stay here.” Lin Jia opened the door and walked out.

He had only destroyed one of Shi Luo’s eyeballs. The other was still unaccounted for. By breaking the window, he shattered one eye and opened an unobstructed recording path for the other.

There was no reason to stay in Room 302 anymore.

However, Lin Jia didn’t return to Room 103. When the cat asked where he was going, Lin Jia said he was looking for the other eye.

The cat was stunned. “Why?”

Lin Jia suddenly stopped and gave the cat an unreadable look.

The cat felt chills crawl up its back under Lin Jia’s stare. “I…”

“Not very useful, but plenty of trouble,” Lin Jia answered, withdrawing his gaze. “Eliminate the hidden danger.”

What disappeared from Shi Luo was a pair of eyes. One eye had followed Lin Jia. The other eye’s whereabouts were unknown, but Lin Jia believed that eye was no longer recording. He just didn’t know who was being watched now. Sooner or later, he would come into contact with that person—and once that happened, he would appear in the eye’s footage and be exposed to the viewers.

Furthermore, once the threshold for malicious comments is reached, that person would also has two eyes. If the transmission isn’t stopped in time, it would spread like a plague, and Yile Apartment will be full of eyes.

The cat needed time to grasp Lin Jia’s point. It still wanted to ask how he planned to find the eye.

But then it worried that Lin Jia might notice something was off about it, so it forced itself to stay silent.

Inwardly grumbling, it thought, “I just helped Lin Jia retrieve the camera from the electrical box, and he forgot about it so quickly! How heartless!” Yes, it had many problems, but that was because its brain didn’t work well. There was a reason for that, too.

Ignoring the cat’s silent grief, Lin Jia went up to the second floor alone. He casually knocked on a door. Glasses opened it.

Glasses hid behind the crack of the door. “Didn’t two cat meows mean that…”

Lin Jia cut him off. “Go get the others.”

“?”

Glasses trembled and pointed at himself. “Me?”

Lin Jia pushed the door open and stepped inside. The cat hurried in after him.

Lin Jia turned back toward Glasses. Seeing that he still hadn’t moved, Lin Jia asked impatiently, “Is there anyone else?”

Even his eyebrows twitched slightly, as if he were being reprimanded by a superior.

Glasses nodded frantically.

He was so nervous that he bumped into the doorframe on his way out.

With Lin Jia watching, Glasses didn’t dare waste time and rushed to complete the task.

After he left, Lin Jia scanned the room.

The cat knew he was searching for the eye and helped. First, it jumped onto the windowsill to check outside.

Lin Jia came over and lowered the curtains.

Then, the two of them searched inside. By the time Glasses brought everyone over, Room 202 had been completely turned upside down, but there was still no sign of the eye.

“What are you looking for?” Buzzcut asked as he was the first one to enter.

Seeing that everyone was present, Lin Jia briefly but accurately relayed the discovery in Room 303. Everyone’s expressions turned ugly.

Lin Jia: “The eye must be following one of you. Go find it.”

Since it was a matter of life and death, no one dared to waste time.

The group scattered instantly, each returning to their room to search.

Lin Jia waited in Room 202. Since that room had already been searched, Glasses helped the others.

After a long while, people returned one by one.

Everyone shook their heads; none of them found the missing eyeball.

Lin Jia pressed his lips together and swept his gaze across the group.

Glasses asked, “Could the eye not be following us?”

Before Lin Jia could respond, Buzzcut said, “Impossible.”

The Fishman wants everyone dead in the Fish Belly. There was no reason for one eye to work while the other took a vacation.

Buzzcut asked the others: “You sure you searched thoroughly?”

Sister Fang said, “Yes, we searched inside and out several times.”

Their lives were at stake, so no one dared to be careless. Moreover, some rooms housed two people, and both had searched. The rooms weren’t large. They were certain nothing was overlooked.

Buzzcut still didn’t believe it. He wanted to go through each room again.

Lin Jia spoke up: “There’s no need to waste time. It’s highly likely that eye isn’t in the rooms.”

Buzzcut looked at him, as did everyone else.

The high school boy swallowed nervously. “Then… where is it?”

Lin Jia: “On one of you.”

Xiao Mei recoiled two steps in fear. Liu Ying stammered, “What do you mean?”

If the eye wasn’t in the room, but had to follow someone, then it could only be on that person.

Everyone suddenly felt itchy all over and touched themselves—their shirt pockets, hoods, and inside collars. Some even took off their clothes off to search. But they found nothing.

So, all eyes turned toward Lin Jia.

Seeing that Lin Jia already knew, Buzzcut said with a complicated tone, “Just say it.”

Pockets, hoods, and collars could hide an eyeball, but if it were hidden, it wouldn’t be able to see. Otherwise, the eye that Lin Jia had smashed wouldn’t have peeked at Buzzcut through the crack in the wardrobe.

There was only one place where the eye could stay and still have a view: the eye socket.

For Shi Luo’s eyeball to occupy someone else’s socket, the original eye would either have to burst or be dug out.

The eyes have extremely complex nerves. Any method of replacing the eyeball would destroy the ocular tissue and optic nerve. Because the optic nerve connects directly to the brain’s sensory system, the agony of losing an eye would kill a person if left untreated.

But Yile Apartment had no treatment.

Lin Jia said with faint regret, “One of us is already dead.

“But they don’t know it.”

 

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