Time rewound to yesterday, just before Yuan arrived at the villa.

　　When he saw the horrifying scene reflected in the window through his telescope, his first reaction was to flee immediately and then search for clues about the ghost.

　　However, just as Yuan reversed his car and was about to drive away, suddenly... a bloody hand appeared on the hood of the car in front of him!

　　Before he could react, a patch of black completely enveloped the car window.

　　Yuan’s eyes could only see a wide-open mouth, and he was completely swallowed up!

　　And... the Yuan who appeared in front of Ziye afterwards was actually...

　　The moment Ziye saw the truth in the mirror, she dashed towards the nearby window, leaped out, and then ran desperately towards the fence without looking back!

　　Ziye repeatedly studied the blood inscription and finally came to a conclusion.

　　The inscription said that the ghost would transform into something that appeared "very normal" to them.

　　But the problem was that everything in the haunted house, even if it was like ordinary furniture, wouldn't be considered very normal by anyone.

　　The existence of the haunted house itself was already abnormal enough.

　　So under those circumstances, the only thing that could still be considered normal in the eyes of everyone was the resident.

　　"Thing"... Ziye was initially stuck on the literal meaning, and wasn't very confident in her deduction, but she soon felt relieved.

　　For the apartment, what was the difference between them and "things"?

　　They were just toys to be played with and tortured.

　　After reaching that conclusion, Ziye considered that the only person who had a chance to switch places was Yuan, who had gone to the villa earlier, and Li seemed to agree with her, because he had asked Ziye on the phone:

　　"Did you feel anything wrong with Yuan?"

　　In fact, Li asked Oda Saki the same question later, but she still said she didn't feel anything wrong.

　　Could it be a wrong guess?

　　He went one step further, letting Yuan answer the phone, asking him a few questions that only Yuan knew the answers to.

　　But he answered them all fluently.

　　At that point, Li basically ruled out his own assumption.

　　However, to be on the safe side, he still warned Ziye not to approach the mirror.

　　After all, Yuan might reveal his true form as a ghost the moment he stood in front of the mirror.

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　　Based on his past experience, some ghosts would occasionally reveal their true faces in the mirror.

　　Ziye was currently in danger, and if Yuan had been replaced by the ghost, she would be the next to die.

　　To survive, she had to find the ghost's transformed form, so she could leave the villa ahead of time.

　　In the end, Ziye also came up with this hypothesis and verified it using the mirror.

　　Ziye grabbed the fence, leaped over it, and landed outside the fence.

　　Then she took out the car keys that Wen had prepared for her in advance and opened the car door parked outside the villa.

　　She had just gotten into the car and started the engine when she glanced at the side with the corner of her eye... but there was no movement.

　　But this was even more terrifying...

　　As the car started, Ziye stepped on the gas pedal.

　　Suddenly, she saw from the rearview mirror... the terrifying evil ghost sitting in the driver's seat of Yuan's car behind her!

　　Ziye slammed the gas pedal, and the car instantly shot forward like an arrow!

　　These stretches of road in the suburbs were very deserted.

　　Ziye was only thinking about getting to the city, where there would be more cars and she could find a way to shake it off.

　　If... if only she had discovered it earlier...

　　Although she was constantly accelerating, the car behind her was still in hot pursuit.

　　However, Ziye wasn't nervous.

　　She had seen a rule in Li's notes.

　　Generally, the ghosts wouldn't press too hard on the chase during the journey back to the apartment, and residents had a good chance of escape.

　　The closer they got to the apartment, the more terrifying the ghost's pursuit would be, and the harder it would be to escape.

　　The fact that the evil ghost was pursuing her in the same way as humans, and didn't show any special abilities, such as suddenly appearing in her car or clinging to the outside of the car, and didn't act as exaggerated as in horror movies, where they could catch up to a car just by running or crawling...

　　Before returning to the apartment, she still had a chance to think about how to escape.

　　Li's notes said that ghosts could not be killed by any means.

　　Residents had experimented in the past, splashing black dog blood, hanging Zhong Kui's portrait, wearing crucifixes, getting amulets blessed by high monks from Mount Wutai, buying exorcism charms, none of it worked.

　　There was once a resident who bought a peachwood sword and tried to chop the ghost, but he ended up dying a horrific death.

　　In short, all the methods that folklore claimed could drive away or fight ghosts had been tried by residents, and none of them worked.

　　So, killing a ghost was absolutely impossible.

　　This was exactly the same as those unsolvable horror movies.

　　The only "solution" was to escape back to the apartment.

　　Ghosts are all purely mental existences, and residents can only escape using physically feasible material methods.

　　However, some people were still able to successfully return to the apartment.

　　To summarize... either their luck was extremely good, and the ghost was slightly slower, allowing them to enter the apartment, but the possibility of success was too low;

　　Or more often, because they had other residents as stepping stones, the ghosts would kill those residents, and then the other residents would escape to the apartment.

　　In other words...

　　If only one person survived and returned to the apartment, it would be incredibly dangerous.

　　Ziye had been trying to avoid this situation, but now it had happened.

　　She was alone, and even if she managed to survive now, the closer she got to the apartment, the more dangerous she would be.

　　From entering the residential area to that alley, and then to the apartment gate, if the ghost was hiding anywhere, she would be trapped in a desperate situation.

　　The alley leading to the apartment was particularly narrow, only wide enough for two people to pass through side by side, with nowhere to hide.

　　Li also mentioned a special point in his notes: there was a resident in the past who thought of a way to climb the wall next to the alley and run back to the apartment, but he found out later that... if he didn't walk in the alley, he could only end up in a dead end, and couldn't enter the empty land where the apartment was located.

　　That is to say... there was only one way to walk through that alley!

　　No other way existed!

　　And she could only walk, there was no other way!