Chapter Twenty-Six — The Third Basement Level

The bell tolling at 3:00 AM echoed through the empty floors of the Xinhua Department Store like the horn of some ancient ritual. Shen Mo and Su Wangying slipped into the freezing air of the archives like ghosts, moving without a sound. Time seemed to have congealed here, with only dust motes dancing restlessly in the beam of their flashlights.

Archive box M19830417 sat quietly on the shelf, but the moment Shen Mo touched it, his heart sank. It was too light. Upon opening it, his premonition became reality—it was empty, save for a slip of white paper stamped with the words "Destroyed per Regulations," staring back like a mocking, blank face. The date of destruction was the very day after they had begun their investigation into the department store.

"Someone is watching us, and they got here first," Shen Mo whispered, his voice unable to mask the chill within it.

Su Wangying did not respond; her gaze was drawn to an inconspicuous iron locker in the corner. It wasn't meant for official files; it looked more like a personal storage unit. The door was unlocked, containing only a tattered, worn-out hardcover notebook.

"A duty log." She flipped open the yellowed pages, and a wave of musty air rushed out. The handwriting was delicate and neat, recording the trivialities of day after day, until one page where the ink had blurred slightly with age.

October 17, 1983.

Su Wangying’s heart skipped a beat. She leaned into the light beam, deciphering the words: "22:15, emergency call from B3. Pregnant woman suffering from convulsions and premature labor. Male infant survived 37 minutes, nameless. Cause of death: respiratory failure. Family unreachable en route to hospital."

The brief lines felt like a boulder pressing against her chest. At the very bottom was a signature in delicate script—Chen Huilan.

"Sister Chen..." Su Wangying looked up abruptly. "They all said she was the only one who dared to go down there to save people that day."

As the words left her lips, the emergency lights above emitted a high-pitched electrical hiss and suddenly died. The entire archive room was swallowed by infinite darkness. Shen Mo immediately pulled Su Wangying behind him, his tactical flashlight cutting through the dark like a blade, pointing directly at the log.

On the last blank page of the open book, a deep red liquid was slowly seeping out from the paper fibers, coalescing into a crooked line of text: "She didn't leave; she is waiting for the list."

The blood-red words seemed to carry a biting cold, flickering with an eerie light under the flashlight.

The next day, the bright sunlight dispelled the morning haze but could not dissipate the cold in their hearts. By cross-referencing details from dozens of oral history recordings and personnel files, they confirmed a shocking fact: the nurse from back then, Chen Huilan, was now the night shift manager of the Xinhua Department Store archives.

Under the guise of "history students researching the evolution of the shopping mall," the two met Chen Huilan during the day. She was a taciturn old woman with gray hair and cloudy eyes, seemingly having lost interest in everything in the world, apathetically repeating words like "regulations" and "procedure."

That was until Su Wangying pulled up a photo on her phone and gently pushed it toward her. The photo showed an infant's ankle bracelet with a blurry serial number engraved on it—the only piece of debris Su Wangying had found in the pile of discarded radios on B4 that didn't belong to a radio.

The moment Chen Huilan’s gaze touched the photo, something shattered in those cloudy eyes. Her liver-spotted fingers began to tremble uncontrollably, finally pressing down hard on the image until her knuckles turned white.

"That day... they wouldn't let the ambulance go down," the old woman’s voice was hoarse and dry, as if sanded down by sandpaper. "They kept shouting over the walkie-talkies, 'There’s no one down here,' 'Situation under control.' When I carried the child up, he was still opening his eyes... so small, looking at me..."

Her tears finally broke through, rolling down her cheeks. "But they said there was no B3 floor in Xinhua Department Store, so whoever died... wasn't a person."

The words hit Shen Mo and Su Wangying like a heavy hammer. So, those thirty-seven minutes of life had been defined as "non-existent" from the very beginning.

Trembling, Chen Huilan pulled a scrap of paper from her inner pocket, wrapped in layers of plastic, yellowed and brittle from the passage of time. It was a photocopy of the emergency report she had hidden for forty years. On the back of the form were names written in dense rows—eighty-seven in total.

"These were... all the stall owners on B3 that day."

After obtaining the list, Shen Mo immediately dove into a technical analysis of the department store. He pulled the elevator operation data from the last month and discovered an eerie pattern: every time "B4" appeared on the elevator screen, the main control system would experience a fraction of a second of disconnection, immediately followed by the connection of an unregistered backup control module. The physical origin of the signal pointed shockingly to the abandoned water tank room on the roof.

That night, Shen Mo snuck up to the rooftop alone. The water tank room was rusted, the air thick with the strange stench of iron rust and stagnant water. In a corner, he found the signal source—a massive, ancient array of old-fashioned relays. Countless wires were tangled together in a chaotic mess; their connection method bore a slight resemblance to 1980s elevator control systems, yet they were "parasitizing" the modern elevator network in a completely illogical way.

What made his skin crawl even more was a yellowed duty roster posted on the control board. Most of the table was blank, with only three lines filled in at the bottom in a stiff, rigid script. Those three names were the three maintenance workers who had recently gone missing. In the "check-in time" column next to their names, one identifier was written clearly: B4:00.

They hadn't gone missing; they had gone to "work."

This realization made Shen Mo understand that the B4 floor was a loop that "completed" itself. As long as its existence was covered up, it would consume those who tried to uncover the truth, making them part of the lie. To break the loop, one couldn't use conventional physical means; one had to override it with a more powerful "cognition."

A bold plan took shape in his mind—a "cognitive bait." In the name of the building's demolition office, he created a formal notice and solemnly posted it inside the cabin of the haunted elevator. The notice was simple: "By decision, the original B4 floor of Xinhua Department Store is to be re-planned for public investment. To compensate for historical issues, the families of the original B3 merchants have priority for entry."

He installed a micro-camera in a concealed spot in the elevator and waited for the bite.

The first day was calm. The second day, the same. It wasn't until the third afternoon that a janitor responsible for floor cleaning entered the elevator. His eyesight was poor, so he leaned in close to the red notice, reading it word for word: "...B4 floor... soon to be open for investment..."

Before he could finish, the elevator jolted violently, and all the floor buttons went dark. With a teeth-grinding screech of metal, the cabin came to a halt. On the display, the blood-red "B4" emerged once more.

This time, Shen Mo and Su Wangying were prepared. Wearing light protective gear, they stepped into the distorted space the moment the elevator doors opened.

The sight before them made them gasp. The B4 floor had "evolved." It was no longer an empty concrete space; the surrounding walls were pieced together from countless rotten, old counter boards, exuding the scent of damp wood. The floor was carved with dense rows of names using a sharp tool—the missing repairmen, and many others they did not recognize. In the center of the space sat a lonely duty desk, with three sets of brand-new work uniforms laid out neatly, the tags on their chests bearing the names of the three repairmen.

It was like a sacrificial altar, waiting for new "attendants" to report for duty.

Su Wangying took a deep breath, walked to the center of the room, and took the photocopy of the emergency list out of her pocket. She cleared her throat and began to read in a clear, steady, and respectful voice.

"Wang Jianguo."

As the words fell, a piece of the wall to her left peeled off, falling to the ground and turning into dust.

"Li Xiuqin."

Another board fell away.

Word by word, every time she read a forgotten name, a piece of the "material" that made up this false space disintegrated. Those names were no longer cold symbols, but powerful incantations, dismantling the cage built of lies and oblivion.

When she reached the last name, Su Wangying paused, her voice trembling.

"Chen Huilan."

The moment the name was uttered, the entire floor began to shake violently, and the sharp, piercing cry of an infant echoed from near and far, as if right beside her ears. All the wooden boards on the walls peeled away frantically at the same time, revealing the true concrete walls underneath.

Shen Mo seized the opportunity, pulled out a lighter, ignited the "investment notice," and threw it into a rusted iron basin in the corner. Flames shot up, and under their glare, a clear, original layout map of the B3 floor emerged on the concrete wall opposite.

The moment the flames died out, the entire space seemed to be gripped by an invisible hand and collapsed instantly. A sense of intense weightlessness hit them, and the two fell hard to the ground.

Blinding white light prevented them from opening their eyes. When they adjusted, they found themselves sitting on the cold floor of the real B2 level. The elevator doors were wide open, and everything had returned to normal.

It felt as if they had just woken from a nightmare.

Shen Mo panted, immediately checking the tactical recorder hanging on his chest. He wanted to replay the footage to confirm if the B3 layout map had been captured. He pressed the replay button, and the screen lit up, but the latest video file made his pupils shrink.

The video duration was three minutes longer than the time they had started recording after entering B4. And he clearly remembered pressing the pause button after Su Wangying began reading the list to save battery and storage. Yet, the indicator light on the recorder clearly showed that the recording had never once been interrupted.