Everyone has played hide and seek before.
One person hides, one person counts, and when the count is finished, they go searching.
Of course, the specific rules may vary slightly, but they're generally similar.
Lin Mo began counting.
"I'll count to 20, then I'll come find you, so hide well."
He called out.
The split-headed ghost didn't respond.
Clearly, it hadn't fallen for the trick. It was definitely an experienced player.
In the dead of night, in a nightmare world isolated from the outside, Lin Mo stood alone in the eerie corridor of a haunted building, playing hide and seek with a terrifying evil spirit. And soon, he would have to go find it. If he couldn't find it, the evil spirit would come for him instead.
There probably wasn't a more thrilling game in the world than this.
Lin Mo counted loudly and slowly to 20.
"I'm coming to find you now!"
After saying this, Lin Mo walked in the direction where the split-headed ghost had disappeared earlier.
The game of hide and seek had already begun, so they could only play it through.
What was known now was that this split-headed ghost was very powerful, no less than the killer Zhou Li and the charred corpse. When encountering it, it would actively request to play hide and seek.
Being found by it meant death.
Of course, refusing to play with it would probably also result in death, and even faster.
Lin Mo took an unconventional approach, actively proposing to play, and successfully switching the role of the hider to that of the seeker.
One was passive, one was active, and their significance was naturally different.
There were quite a few rooms on these five floors, and Lin Mo went into each one to check.
He didn't find the split-headed ghost.
He even searched all the nooks and crannies, but still nothing.
Instead, he found many corpses of victims, including some that were clearly the bodies of nightmares. These corpses had all been violently dismembered, and Lin Mo deduced that nine out of ten were probably killed by the split-headed ghost.
This once again proved the split-headed ghost's combat prowess.
All the rooms on the fifth floor had been searched.
It wasn't found.
Lin Mo fell into deep thought.
Earlier, he had clearly seen it disappear in front of him, and the stairway was behind him, so the split-headed ghost had no way to go anywhere else.
But why couldn't he find it?
Had it gone to another floor?
If so, the search area would be too large, making it even less likely to find the split-headed ghost in a short time.
If he couldn't find it within the time limit, the roles of seeker and hider would be switched, which would definitely be unfavorable for Lin Mo.
Lin Mo thought for a moment, then took out a pencil and diary, placing the pencil tip on the paper.
"Xiao Yu, do you know where that split-headed ghost is hiding?"
This was Lin Mo's tactic.
He planned to cheat.
Xiao Yu was a planchette spirit, most skilled at prediction and detection. Asking her to tear apart the split-headed ghost might be a bit difficult, but if it was just to detect its location, he believed it wouldn't be hard.
Sure enough, Lin Mo felt a cold little hand grasp his own, and then a line of text was written in the notebook.
Looking down, it read: "Sixth floor, Room 607, under the bed in the left room."
Lin Mo smiled: "Xiao Yu, thanks."
That split-headed ghost was quite sneaky, actually taking an unconventional route and secretly going up to the sixth floor.
Thinking about its ability to ignore gravity and walk on ceilings, Lin Mo figured it must have crawled out the window and gone up along the outer wall of the building.
Without Xiao Yu, it would have been very difficult for Lin Mo to find the split-headed ghost.
This time, Lin Mo had a clear target and headed straight for Room 607 on the sixth floor.
The moment he opened the door, Lin Mo was startled.
This place was too similar to the old room Mao Mao had described, no, it was exactly the same.
And under the bed in the left room.
Could it be the place where Mao Mao had hidden before?
At this moment, Lin Mo, holding a brick, took a deep breath, walked to the room's doorway, and pushed open the wooden door.
Sure enough.
This room was identical to the one Mao Mao had sketched, and looking out the window, one could see the burned-out residential building not far away.
Next to it was a wooden bed.
Lin Mo crouched down and peered under the bed.
The split-headed ghost was contorting its body, hiding under the bed, looking outward, and in that moment, Lin Mo came face to face with it.
"Found you."
Instantly, a look of resentment and defiance appeared on the split-headed ghost's face. It violently flipped over the wooden bed, the bed board shattering, and its head began to repeatedly smash against the ground, the sound chilling to hear.
Lin Mo took a step back towards the door, just standing there expressionlessly holding the brick, watching it.
Clearly, this split-headed ghost was a bit of a sore loser and had gone berserk.
The room was left in shambles by its destruction.
"Not satisfied, huh? Let's go another round. This time I'll count to thirty, want to bet I can still find you?" Lin Mo started to provoke it.
He was goading it, just to ensure that in the next round, he would still be the seeker and not the hider.
"Fine."
After hearing this, the split-headed ghost immediately leapt out.
Lin Mo began counting loudly.
With Xiao Yu around, no matter where the split-headed ghost hid next, Lin Mo would quickly find it.
Perhaps because his relationship with Xiao Yu had become quite close, she no longer mentioned the limit of three questions per day, which undoubtedly gave Lin Mo a lot of room to maneuver.
The result was an increasingly confident Lin Mo facing an increasingly frustrated split-headed ghost.
Obviously, in the past, hide and seek had been the split-headed ghost's specialty. Whether it was the hider or the seeker, it had always been the final winner.
But after encountering Lin Mo, no matter where it hid, it could be found.
This made the split-headed ghost somewhat distraught.
In over a dozen games of hide and seek, Lin Mo also noticed some patterns.
Although the split-headed ghost would move between floors, it only operated on the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors, never going up to the eighth floor or down to the fourth floor.
This could be understood as these three floors - five, six, and seven - being its range of activity.
There must be other formidable nightmares on the other floors of Building No. 2, which restricted it from crossing boundaries.
So, what would happen if the split-headed ghost was forced to cross those boundaries?
Perhaps it would conflict with nightmares from other floors.
As they say, two tigers cannot share the same mountain.
What Lin Mo needed to do was to force the split-headed ghost to cross floors, and then he could just sit back and watch the tigers fight.
This time, the split-headed ghost had already lost its composure.
It was more violent than ever before, with malice and killing intent so thick it was visible to the naked eye. That malevolence stretched its skin, and at this point, the split-headed ghost looked covered in wounds, appearing increasingly terrifying.
Lin Mo knew that playing this game with such a fierce ghost was like licking a knife's edge or dancing ballet on a cliff's edge.
This was much more thrilling than playing those well-produced horror games.
"Let's play one last round. I'll count to 100, you hide well. This time, don't let me find you so quickly." Lin Mo's face bore a hint of disdain, perfectly portraying arrogance and conceit.
This time, he gave the split-headed ghost enough time.
He hoped it would use this time to run to a place outside of these three floors - five, six, and seven.
Glaring fiercely at Lin Mo, the split-headed ghost ran out like a gust of wind.
Calculating that there wasn't much time left until 3 AM, Lin Mo had to use this time to do something useful.
Slowly counting to 100, Lin Mo first asked Xiao Yu about the split-headed ghost's location.
"It's on... the fourth floor, Room 409... It... disappeared."
Looking at the words in the diary, Lin Mo's face was full of confusion.
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