Chapter 5: Sealed In

The air that greeted them in the new room was thick, clinging to the back of Lie Qiye's throat like old velvet. It wasn't just the dimness, a murky gloom that swallowed the flashlight's beam a dozen feet out, but the sheer… presence of the place. He stepped in, Ms. Wang a tense shadow beside him, followed by a audibly trembling Xiao Liu and a grumbling Manager Zhou.

Then came the click. Solid. Final.

Manager Zhou, who had been muttering about the "infernal draft" from the passage, spun around. "What was that?" He reached for the door they'd just come through. Or rather, where the door had been. Now, there was only a flat, featureless expanse of wall, indistinguishable from the rest of the grimy surface. He pushed, then slammed his shoulder against it. Nothing. Not even a hollow echo.

"No, no, no," Xiao Liu whimpered, her voice thin and reedy. "Not again."

Lie Qiye felt a familiar cold dread seep into his bones, a sensation as constant as the gnawing hunger in his belly. Another trap. Another dead end. "Try to stay calm," he said, though his own heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. "Maybe there's another mechanism." But he knew, even as he said it, that this place didn't play by rules of mechanisms and logic. It played by rules of despair.

Ms. Wang ran her hands over the wall, her face a mask of grim concentration. "It's sealed. Completely." She turned, her gaze sweeping over them, the flashlight beam in her hand cutting a swathe through the gloom. "We're stuck here."

The air in this new room was… peculiar. Lie Qiye sniffed. It wasn't the metallic tang of blood or the damp rot of the passage. This was different. A strange, cloying sweetness, like overripe fruit left in a dusty attic, mingled with the faint, unsettling aroma of old, cheap perfume and something vaguely chemical. Not bad, exactly. Just… weird. Unsettlingly weird. It made the hairs on his arms stand up.

"I can't..." Manager Zhou sagged against the unyielding wall, his bravado deflating like a punctured lung. "I can't keep doing this. We walk, we hope, we get trapped. Again and again." His voice was rough, laden with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle. "We need food. Water. A way out of this… this hell."

Lie Qiye understood. The hunger was a constant, dull ache, his stomach a hollow pit. His throat felt like sandpaper. Stress was a live wire thrumming just beneath his skin, making every shadow leap, every creak of the ancient structure sound like an approaching doom. How long had it been? Days? It felt like an eternity spent in this twilight labyrinth.

He forced himself to look around, really look. The flashlight beam skittered across stained, peeling floral wallpaper – a pattern of once-bright roses now faded to bruised purples and sickly yellows. Broken furniture lay scattered like fallen soldiers: an overturned armchair leaking its stuffing, a grandfather clock tilted at a drunken angle, its face cracked, its hands frozen at some forgotten hour. A low, wooden table lay on its side, porcelain teacups shattered around it, the pieces like jagged teeth in the dust.

The floor, under a thick carpet of grey powder that puffed with every step, seemed to be made of dark, stained wood, possibly parquet, though it was hard to tell beneath the grime. It was a large room, larger than the archive, stretching away into shadows that the flashlight couldn't fully penetrate.

"This place is huge," Ms. Wang murmured, her voice echoing slightly, confirming Lie Qiye's thought. "Maybe… maybe there are other exits."

Hope, that stubborn, unwelcome weed. It always found a way to sprout, even in the most barren soil. "We should look," Lie Qiye agreed, trying to inject some confidence into his tone. "Sticking together."

They moved cautiously, a tight knot of frayed nerves and dwindling hope. The flashlight beam, clutched in Ms. Wang's steady hand, danced ahead, painting fleeting pictures of decay and neglect. The strange, sweet-dusty smell seemed to grow stronger in certain areas, then fade, as if the room itself were breathing it out in patches.

Xiao Liu clung to Ms. Wang's arm, her eyes wide and darting. Manager Zhou, after his moment of despair, seemed to rally slightly, though his face remained pale and etched with strain. He kept muttering about his office, his comfortable chair, a life that felt a million miles and a lifetime away.

Lie Qiye found himself scanning the periphery, his senses on high alert. This building had a nasty habit of hiding its horrors in plain sight. The silence, too, was unnerving. Not the oppressive silence of the archive, but a waiting silence, as if the room held its breath.

***

They'd been exploring for what felt like an hour, though time had become a slippery, unreliable thing. The initial room proved to be just one part of a larger suite, connected by a wide, arching doorway whose oaken doors had long since rotted off their hinges. Beyond it, the space opened up even further, a vast, shadowy expanse that dwarfed their small group.

Columns, thick as ancient trees, rose into the oppressive darkness above, disappearing before the flashlight beam could find a ceiling. More broken furniture littered this area, interspersed with what looked like display cases, their glass shattered, their contents looted or decayed into unrecognizability. It felt like a forgotten ballroom, or perhaps a grand reception hall from a bygone, opulent era, now surrendering to ruin.

"This floor… it's enormous," Manager Zhou breathed, his earlier despair momentarily replaced by a stunned awe. "How can a place like this exist inside that… that office building?"

A question none of them could answer. Lie Qiye just shook his head. Logic had checked out a long time ago.

It was Xiao Liu who heard it first. A faint sound, barely audible over their own soft footfalls and ragged breathing. She stopped dead, her head cocked. "Listen."

They all froze. Silence, then… a soft, rhythmic scraping. And a low hum. Not the building's pervasive, wrong hum, but a human hum. A tuneless, absentminded sound.

Lie Qiye flicked the flashlight beam towards the source of the noise, a dark alcove partially hidden behind a fallen cloth depicting a grotesque, leering face. The scraping stopped. The humming continued, a little louder now.

"Hello?" Ms. Wang called out, her voice tight. "Is someone there?"

A figure shuffled out of the shadows. Plump, disheveled, clothes smeared with dust and something darker that Lie Qiye didn't want to examine too closely. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, darted around wildly before fixing on them.

"Chen?" Lie Qiye blurted out, a jolt of disbelief and a strange, unwelcome relief coursing through him. Mr. Chen. The nervous accountant who'd offered them all his money for an escape.

Chen blinked, his head tilting like a curious bird. "Oh. It's you." His voice was flat, devoid of its usual panicked quaver. He didn't seem surprised, or particularly pleased, to see them. He clutched a small, sharp-edged piece of stone in one hand, the source of the scraping noise. With the other, he gestured vaguely at the wall behind him, which Lie Qiye now saw was covered in a sprawling network of bizarre, interlocking symbols, freshly scratched into the grime.

"Mr. Chen, are you alright?" Ms. Wang asked, taking a cautious step forward. "What happened to you? We thought…"

Chen's eyes narrowed, a flicker of something – fear? Suspicion? – crossing his face. "Alright? Oh, I'm more than alright." He chuckled, a dry, rasping sound that held no humor. "I see things now. The patterns. They're everywhere." His gaze drifted past them, unfocused. "They showed me."

"Who showed you, Chen?" Manager Zhou demanded, his voice sharp. "What are you talking about?"

Chen flinched at Zhou's tone, hugging himself. "Quiet. They don't like noise." He looked around nervously, then back at them, his eyes unnervingly bright. "You have to be quiet. And watch. Watch the walls. They speak, if you know how to listen."

This wasn't the Chen they knew. The frantic terror was still there, simmering beneath the surface, but it was… different. Distorted. His paranoia had taken on a new, almost religious fervor. He seemed less scared of being trapped and more scared of… something else. Something he thought he understood.

"Chen, we need to find a way out of here," Lie Qiye said, trying to keep his voice calm and reasonable. "Do you know if there's a way down? Stairs? An elevator?"

Chen's gaze sharpened, focusing on Lie Qiye with an intensity that was deeply unsettling. He was thinner than Lie Qiye remembered, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes ringed with dark circles. He smelled faintly of the room's weird, sweet-dusty odor, as if it had seeped into his very pores.

"Down?" Chen repeated, a strange half-smile playing on his lips. "Oh yes. There's always a way down." He gestured vaguely with his stone-clutching hand towards the far end of the vast hall, into the deeper shadows. "The master of the house always provides a way down. For those who are… invited."

His words hung in the stale air, heavy with an insinuation that made Lie Qiye's skin crawl. Invited? Master of the house? Chen was clearly not well. The things he was saying… they were the ramblings of a broken mind. Or worse, a mind that had been reshaped by this place.

Xiao Liu whimpered again, pressing closer to Ms. Wang. "He's… he's not right."

"No kidding," Manager Zhou muttered, eyeing Chen with a mixture of pity and revulsion.

Ms. Wang, however, seemed to consider Chen's words. "Show us, Chen," she said, her voice firm but not unkind. "Show us this way down."

Chen stared at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, he nodded slowly. "Perhaps. If you're worthy. If you understand the silence." He turned and began to shuffle off into the darkness from which he'd emerged, the piece of stone still clutched in his hand. He didn't look back to see if they were following.

Lie Qiye exchanged a glance with Ms. Wang. Her expression was grim. This was a risk. Chen was unstable, possibly dangerous. But what choice did they have? He was the only one who'd offered even a sliver of a possibility, however mad it sounded.

"Well," Manager Zhou said, his voice a low grumble. "It's either follow the crazy accountant or sit here and become part of the décor. I vote for crazy."

Lie Qiye nodded, a knot of apprehension tightening in his chest. "Let's go. But stay alert." He looked at Chen's retreating back. The man was acting strange, yes, but he was also someone who had survived alone in this part of the building. Maybe, just maybe, his madness held a key.

They followed Chen deeper into the vast, shadowy hall. The scale of this floor was truly immense, far larger than anything they could have imagined lurking within the confines of their ordinary office building. Broken chandeliers hung like skeletal remains from the unseen ceiling, their crystals glinting faintly in the flashlight beam. The air grew colder, the strange sweet smell now mixed with a damp, earthy odor, like a freshly opened grave.

Chen led them past more ruined alcoves and overturned, grand furniture, his pace surprisingly steady despite his shuffling gait. He didn't speak, just occasionally paused to touch a wall, his fingers tracing invisible lines, his lips moving silently.

Finally, he stopped before a section of wall that looked no different from any other, save for a series of deep, deliberate scratches that formed a crude spiral. He pointed at it with his stone.

"Here," he whispered, his voice raspy. "The way down begins here. For those who truly wish to leave the surface." He looked back at them, a manic gleam in his eyes. "But be warned. What lies below… it remembers."

Lie Qiye stared at the wall. There was no door, no obvious opening. Just more of the same decaying grandeur. Was Chen completely delusional? Or was there something they weren't seeing?

Then, with a low groan of tortured mechanisms, a section of the floor directly in front of the spiral-marked wall began to shift. Not a trapdoor, but something far more unsettling. The parquet flooring itself seemed to… depress, sinking slowly downwards, revealing a dark, narrow opening that hadn't been there moments before. A ramp, leading into absolute blackness.

A cold draft, smelling of wet earth and something else, something ancient and unpleasantly organic, wafted up from the newly formed passage.

Chen smiled, a ghastly, knowing grin. "See? A way down. Just as I said." He looked at the dark ramp. "This floor is but a parlor. The real house… is below."

The hunger, the exhaustion, the constant stress – it all coalesced into a single, desperate thought in Lie Qiye's mind: they had to find a way out. And if "down" was the only direction offered, then down they might have to go. Despite every screaming instinct telling him otherwise.

Lie Qiye stared into that gaping maw. The ramp descended at a steep, unfriendly angle, disappearing into a blackness so complete it seemed to drink the light from the hall above. The cold draft intensified, carrying with it the scent of decay, of things best left undisturbed.

"This is… this is not good," Xiao Liu whispered, her voice barely a breath. She tugged at Ms. Wang's sleeve, her eyes fixed on the dark opening as if it were the gullet of some subterranean beast.

Manager Zhou let out a shaky breath. "Well, it's a way. Can't say I like the look of it, or our tour guide, but what else is there?" He gestured vaguely at the vast, indifferent hall around them. "Wait here to become another one of Chen's wall scribbles?"

Ms. Wang shone the flashlight down the ramp. The beam was swallowed almost immediately. "Chen," she said, her voice steady, "you've been down there?"

Chen, still grinning that awful grin, nodded slowly. "A little way. Just to see. The master… he welcomes new guests to the deeper parlors." His eyes glittered. "It's much quieter down there. More… truthful."

Truthful? Lie Qiye shivered. What kind of truth resided in a place that smelled like an open grave? But the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, the sandpaper in his throat, the crushing weight of their endless, fruitless searching… it was a powerful counter-argument to caution.

"We don't have much choice, do we?" Lie Qiye said, his voice hoarse. He looked at Ms. Wang, then at the others. Their faces, pale and strained in the dim light, reflected his own desperation.

Ms. Wang met his gaze, a grim understanding passing between them. "No," she said softly. "No, we don't." She took a deep breath. "Alright, Chen. Lead the way. But slowly. And no tricks."

Chen's smile widened, if that were possible. "Tricks?" he chuckled, a sound like dry leaves skittering across stone. "The house plays its own games. I'm just… an usher." He turned and, without further ceremony, shuffled onto the ramp, his form quickly consumed by the oppressive darkness.

One by one, with Ms. Wang taking the lead after Chen, flashlight held out like a fragile ward, they stepped onto the descending path. The surface was surprisingly even, though slick with a fine, damp grit. The air grew heavy, pressing in on them, thick with the smell of wet soil and something else… something metallic and faintly sweet, like spoiled honey mixed with rust. It was a suffocating, claustrophobic darkness, the flashlight beam only carving out a small, trembling circle of visibility. The walls of the passage, when the light brushed them, were bare, cold stone, slick with moisture.

Manager Zhou grunted behind Lie Qiye. "Smells like my Aunt Mildred's root cellar, if she'd buried a body in it."

Lie Qiye didn't reply. He was too busy trying to keep his footing on the surprisingly steep incline, his senses screaming that this was a terrible, terrible idea. Yet, his feet kept moving, one in front of the other, carrying him deeper into the unknown. Down. Always down.