“How can that be?”

The policeman at the desk frowned upon hearing his colleague’s words.

“That child was so big, but his eyes were gouged out, his stomach disemboweled, and he didn’t put up a struggle? A little old fellow who had been lying down for many years could be knocked down with one punch, right? To put it bluntly, in a hospital as big as the Central Hospital, how could the nurses allow a person lying in the vegetative state ward to run to another person’s room? And it caused such a big incident…..”

“Why else would I say this was nefarious?” 

The uniformed middle-aged man in the room wore a solemn expression.

“We also interrogated the nurses and the relevant personnel in the ward, and they all said they didn’t see anything wrong that day…..it’s like they just magically lost the ability to see. The nurse’s station wasn’t far from that ward, but neither the nurses on duty nor the caregivers hired by others in the ward heard the victim make a sound.”

“Oh, right, the strangest thing about this incident isn’t that the old person ate human entrails and eyeballs…..”

As he spoke, the middle-aged man clicked the mouse and played a security surveillance video on the computer screen.

The video displayed that the time was two o’clock in the morning, and the camera was pointed at what seemed to be a garden path. The lighting was very dim. There was no movement for a long time on this path surrounded by bushes and trees. Not even a wild nocturnal cat or dog could be seen.

Until suddenly, a white figure broke into the scene.

It was a boy, whose lower half was soaked in blood. His head was lowered, his legs swinging very stiffly as he walked somewhere extremely unsteadily.

“Hiss…..”

The people in front of the computer watching the footage together gasped involuntarily.

“W-what is this?”

“This is the nighttime surveillance footage of Qiming Secondary School,” the middle-aged policeman said quietly, his voice very tense.

“A nurse immediately called the police after discovering the incident at the Central Hospital, but when we arrived, there was no one in the ward aside from the elderly person whose mind had already regressed to the state of a toddler.”

The colleague whispered in disbelief: “But h-his eyes were eaten, ah? And his stomach was even cut open. How is this possible?”

The air conditioner in the office was an antiquated thing from who knew how many years ago, yellowed by cigarette smoke. In summer, everyone complained that the shabby air conditioner didn’t cool well enough.

But now, as they gathered together in front of the computer to look at the files and evidence, there was an insidious feeling in their hearts, and an inexplicable chill ran from the top of their heads to their chests.

“Right, so when we first got there, we searched the Central Hospital.” The policeman who spoke stared closely at the boy on the surveillance video, a bit of cold sweat on his forehead. “Who would expect a person to hike so far with such serious injuries? It can be considered that encountering such an attack and suffering huge mental trauma could cause abnormal behavior, b-but…..”

He couldn’t finish his sentence.

There was a brief silence in the office.

None of the people here were rookies with tofu in their heads. They all knew very well that people…..especially normal people, would find it difficult even if they were stimulated to inexplicably run several kilometers away from the Central Hospital to Qiming Secondary School under such circumstances.

Someone stared at the screen and couldn’t help but say: “The way he walks is a little strange.”

“Why does it look like someone is pulling him forward…..”

However, they could clearly see that Song Cheng was the only one in front of the camera.

“The tech department has analyzed this video. There are no traces of modification. No one is holding him up. If there is, then that person is someone we can’t see—”

The young policeman spoke tremblingly, and as he spoke, he couldn’t help but look around him.

Sure enough, he found that the faces of the colleagues around him were a little stiff.

“Why is it all so nefarious like the Xiao family back then, ah?”

It was unknown who inexplicably brought up that incident from many years ago.

All at once, the tragedy that shocked the country over a decade ago appeared in everyone’s minds. And even the experienced and knowledgeable police officers all shuddered when they heard the Xiao family spoken of.

“Set aside all those strange and confusing things in your minds,” the oldest police officer said sharply.

“Cough, Captain Zhang is right…..this case hasn’t been studied in detail yet. Won’t thinking about those things interfere with our train of thought?”

Someone immediately spoke as if relieved from a burden, glossing over the Xiao family.

“In addition to this Qiming student, there seems to be a teacher who has also inexplicably disappeared? Is there any connection between the two?” someone else asked.

“That’s right, the Qiming teacher who molested students.” Captain Zhang rubbed the bridge of his nose and said in a heavy voice, “In fact, the school has been looking for that male teacher. After meticulously inspecting the school surveillance, they discovered Song Cheng, the victim in our case.”

At this point, Captain Zhang stopped speaking.

What he didn’t say was that if it hadn’t been for this incident, it was likely that the school wouldn’t have even thought of checking the situation in the Xiao Family Haunted House.

And as for the body of the boy named Song Cheng, it might have been many days before anyone discovered it.

“I also heard that the boy’s posture was very strange when he was found.”

“En, he was kneeling toward the wall. It looked like……he was worshiping, but the direction wasn’t right.”

The police went through the files and found the photos of when Song Cheng’s body was first discovered.

In the photos, the body of the young man who had died due to excessive blood loss was stiff. But inexplicably, his extreme fear could be seen from the posture of the corpse.

Captain Zhang stared at the photo and couldn’t help but think: What was he afraid of?

He was so terrified that he didn’t dare to look back.

The middle-aged man glanced toward the corner of the photo. Behind Song Cheng’s body was just an ordinary wall.

The wall was covered by wallpaper that had long gone out of fashion, on which spots of mildew had arisen due to neglect. No matter how Captain Zhang looked, he couldn’t see any issues.

However, if it was the Xiao family…..

“Oh, right.”

After a short period of unnatural silence, the young policeman spoke again.

“For boys Song Cheng’s age, a cell phone is like an organ outside their body, and they’ll pretty much always carry them around. But no matter if it was at Song Cheng’s home, the hospital, or his place of death, we didn’t find his cell phone.”

“His phone was deliberately taken away.”

*

[Heh, A Xiu.]

[My A-Xiu, how do you cry so beautifully?]

Deep in a dilapidated urban village, inside an ancient illegally-built apartment.

In the shadows, a strange and sticky whisper sounded softly.

“Wu—”

Holding a yellow talisman, Li Xiu’s grandmother walked back and forth in front of this door several times.

But in the end, she didn’t dare actually walk into the room.

She could only stand stiffly in front of the door, her body shaking and trembling.

And the moment the sound came from the room, she suddenly raised a hand to press it hard against her mouth, forcing the frightened sob in her mouth back into her throat.

The old woman looked incomparably terrified. Her eyes were wide, very wide, and she backed away fearfully.

It was as if just behind the closed door existed some utterly terrible, absolutely twisted thing.

It wasn’t until she left the hallway that the grandmother staggered and half-fell to the floor.

Two lines of tears flowed from her cloudy eyes.

The old woman put her hands on the floor and half-crawled, half rolled toward the door. She just huddled at that door and sat there for a long time. Only then did her thin, withered face gain a little more color.

“Such a sin, ah…..” the grandmother murmured.

“Truly such a sin.”

Even as she didn’t dare enter the room due to fear, behind that wooden door was still just a room that Li Xiu was familiar with each day.

The floor was dusty, the lighting was dim, and there was cheap, useless junk everywhere.

But at this moment, there was something else going on under the bed where Li Xiu kept a bowl of uncooked rice every day.

Under the dusty bed was a cracked and bloodstained cell phone.

The screen was on, with a scene playing continuously.

It was exactly the scene from a few days prior, when Li Xiu was forcibly taken to the Xiao Family Haunted House, bullied and humiliated on the ground, and maliciously recorded.

However, if Li Xiu were to actually see this video, he would be extremely shocked. Because the scene recurring on the screen just now was completely different from what he and Fang Qian’an remembered.

[Wu…..]

In the dim room, a youth whimpered as thinly as a kitten.

There was no foul language, no collective bullying.

The tall, arrogant bullies just stood transfixed in front of the cell phone camera the whole time, heads bowed slightly.

They were motionless, as stiff as corpses nailed to the spot one by one.

And Li Xiu was huddled in the corner, surrounded by them.

The boy’s face was deathly pale, like someone who was trapped in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. He raised his head slightly, eyes extremely unfocused. There was a constant faint twitch to his body.

Next to Li Xiu was Fang Qian’an.

Like a savage beast, the boy was on all fours in front of the thin, weak youth.

In the video, that strange, jerky, bizarre sound came from his throat.

[“A-Xiu. Mine…..”]

In the frame, Fang Qian’an was stroking the boy’s face, neck, and even his chest in an incredibly intimate way, with strange and awkward movements. Although Li Xiu was obviously not fully conscious, every time he was touched by “Fang Qian’an,” he would reflexively avoid it. In order to stay close to Li Xiu, “Fang Qian’an” had to adjust his posture slightly, and at certain angles, the camera would capture his profile.

That was to say, the eye on one side of his face was shown.

In the eye socket, two pupils were squeezed together.

The wicked, demonic double eyes quivered slightly, reflecting a bloody light under the setting sun.

*

Creak—

Huddled at the door with her back to the room, the grandmother suddenly heard the sound of a door opening.

She completely stopped moving, breathing so rapidly that she could almost die in the next second.

[“Grandmother, where is A-Xiu?]

Amidst her huffing and puffing, the grandmother seemed to hear a hoarse voice.

[“I’m hungry.”]

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The Author Has Something to Say:

Gege: I also want to eat an Angus beef fish roe burger. QAQ

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Chapter 25 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 27