Edited by musk
Warning: description of a dead body
Residential instance world
Yu Qinyan and Zhai Xiaoyi planned to have a look at the ground floor’s apartments first before heading to the basement.
Unsurprisingly, most of the doors were closed. The ones that weren’t, consisted of two storage rooms and a room that had additional empty garbage containers.
There wasn’t anything to see, and they soon arrived at the iron doors that stood at the very bottom of the stairway.
Zhai Xiaoyi tried to open it, but it didn’t even budge. He tried shoving it with his shoulders, but the cold and tall doors stood firm.
Yu Qinyan, ‘……..’ So did this mean that they had no business down here, or that this was a place they definitely needed to check?
He didn’t think himself to be one to bow before the slightest hardships, and so he spoke decisively, ‘Let’s go and ask the landlord for the keys. If he doesn’t have them, we have nothing to do here.’
Zhai Xiaoyi thought that his line of thought made sense, and agreed quickly. The two of them went upstairs to knock on the middle aged man’s door.
It was the middle of the night, but even then the man didn’t take too long to respond to the knocking.
Luo Feihan frowned as he looked at the two youths in front of his door. He was wearing a bathrobe on top of his pajamas, and had a pair of half-crescent glasses on his nose. It was apparent that he hadn’t gone to sleep yet.
The man let out a sigh after scruncitising the two, and waved them inside. He sat down at the dining table, inviting them over.
Yu Qinyan didn’t intend to sit, so he only stepped closer while Zhai Xiaoyi took this chance to sit down across the man.
Luo Feihan first began organising the pages of the newspaper he had previously been reading through, and only after finishing did he look up at the two visitors questioningly.
Yi Qinyan spoke, ‘We’d like to ask for the keys to the basement.’ He didn’t beat around the bush, and asked straightforwardly, ‘Can we borrow them?’
Luo Feihan’s expression eased. ‘If it’s just that, why didn’t you say so earlier? Sure.’ He stood up and unhooked a rusty key from the small cabinet before handing it to Zhai Xiaoyi. ‘No need to hurry, it’s fine if you bring it back tomorrow. No one really goes down there these days, so I probably won’t need it.’
Yu Qinyan thanked him sincerely, and the two left shortly after. Luo Feihan saw them out, and only when he closed the door behind them did his eyebrows uncontrollably furrow again.
The doors were easily opened with the help of the obtained keys. Yu Qinyan twisted the key in the lock, and pushed the cold steel gently.
The doors opened, and a waft of humid air rushed outside. The odour that the stale air brought out made their expressions twist disgustedly.
Zhai Xiaoyi and Yu Qinyan stared into each other’s eyes as they both covered the lower halves of their faces. It was apparent that they were both thinking the same; no normal basement would smell this way.
Zhai Xiaoyi asked helplessly, ‘So what now? Do you still want to go down?’
Yu Qinyan instinctively wanted to say no, but he decided against it at the last moment. He choked on the breath he took, and let out a cough before replying, ‘We’re already here, aren’t we?’
He looked at Zhai Xiaoyi’s reluctant expression and he suddenly felt the need to elaborate. ‘Wasn’t it you who said that this wasn’t a vacation? To solve the mystery we need to.. make some sacrifices.. Even if they’re sacrifices like this.’
Zhai Xiaoyi understood his reasoning, ah, he understood it extremely well. Still.. That pungent, sickeningly sweet smell from the dark basement.. He really didn’t wish to find out where it came from.
Yu Qinyan waved his phone around, ‘Come on, I’ll illuminate the way.’
Thus, Zhai Xiaoyi didn’t have any way to turn him down. He followed the other down the last few steps.
It was pitch black inside. The phone in Yu Qinyan’s hand was too small, and the light it could emit was not nearly enough.
The smell only got stronger and sweeter the deeper they walked inside.
Zhai Xiaoyi really felt like he couldn’t bear it anymore. He kept imagining all kinds of creatures moving around them in the dark, and couldn’t help but shudder.
Even if not animals, there were so many things that could be the origin of that smell.. He didn’t want to admit that he already had a suspicion in his heart as to where it was most likely coming from.
He swallowed loudly.
Yu Qinyan’s state of mind wasn’t any better than his, but he still tried to keep his calm. The old phone in his hand only managed to illuminate the vague outline of things around them.
He went around a row of tall shelves and stopped abruptly. There was something sticky under his feet.
Zhai Xiaoyi couldn’t see anything anymore. Yu Qinyan’s frame blocked the dim light from his line of sight and he accidentally bumped into the other as he took another step forward.
Yu Qinyan almost tripped from the sudden impact. His mind was in complete disarray and he didn’t want to imagine what he would be falling on if he did.. He threw out a hand and managed to stabilise himself as he grabbed onto something.
It was just that.. The thing under his fingers didn’t feel like the cold steel of the shelves, nor the whitewash of the walls. It felt more like fur, or.. Hair.
A pair of pale hands trembled uncontrollably. Yu Qinyan sucked in a breath and pulled his hand back as swiftly as he could.
His voice sounded hoarse and extremely unpleasant as he whispered, ‘There is a body here.’
Zhai Xiaoyi froze. He just managed to steady himself after bumping into the other, and now his entire body broke out in goosebumps after hearing him. On the other hand, his mind spun with inconceivable speed.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
They found a body.. No, it was Yu Qinyan who had found it. So what? Did they know whose body it was? Did they know how long it had been there? They knew nothing, absolutely nothing, and this situation appeared even worse than if they hadn’t even searched downstairs..
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Then again.. This was a corpse they were talking about. He tried to calm his breathing down before replying. ‘This.. We should search it.’
‘By we, you mean..’ Zhai Xiaoyi let the end of the sentence fade into silence. He wasn’t nearly shameless enough to pass all of the hard work to the other when they clearly were in the same situation.. Still, this was a dead body he wanted to search!
Zhai Xiaoyi had dealt with his fair share of strange occurrences growing up, but this place, this story, all of it felt too.. Too abbhorrent!
Yu Qinyan braced himself for the inevitable as he let out a shaky breath and crouched down. He slowly reached out his hand towards the dark lump on the ground, only stopping when his fingertips reached the person’s clothes.
He pulled his hand back, looking up at Zhai Xiaoyi in the dim light. He handed his phone to the other, asking for assistance. As he turned back towards the corpse, he felt a sudden bad premonition arise. ‘There.. There shouldn’t be ghosts here, ah?’
Zhai Xiaoyi thought for a moment before replying, ‘There probably are, but no one is here, don’t worry. In my opinion, as long as you’re respectful, they probably won’t mind.’
Yu Qinyan’s expression turned ugly. Be respectful? While he was inspecting a dead body? How?
Zhai Xiaoyi saw this and continued quickly, ‘You don’t need to do much; it’s enough if you state what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Maybe apologise a couple times..’
Yu Qinyan nodded reluctantly. He reached out as he muttered a line of apologies and grasped that person’s sleeve.
His hands were shaking uncontrollably, but there was nothing he could do about it. He slowly touched his way down to the corpse’s hand, wanting to feel the body’s condition. His expression only turned uglier as he traced the fingers.
‘It should be that it’s been here for some time now. At least a couple of months, a lot of it is..’ He wanted to say ‘decomposed’, but he couldn’t get himself to say it. He swallowed the rest of his words instead, and brought his hands to the front of that person’s garments.
He touched the abdomen behind the hand and made his way up to the neck through the chest. He reached out to trace the narrow shoulders and his fingers grazed the person’s jaw.
He could determine that the body was probably that of a boy. From what he’d just felt, he did mental calculations and drew the conclusion that the body probably belonged to a teenager.
He touched the body’s head, and his fingertips sank into a deep and sticky wound.
He pulled his hands back as if he had been scorched by fire. His breathing picked up again, but he managed to hold back from swearing out loud. Instead, he said, ‘It seems that he died because of a head wound.’
‘Okay, okay, let’s try to find out his identity then. Maybe he has his ID or something..’ Zhai Xiaoyi couldn’t bear looking at the process of feeling the corpse up. He could imagine what the other’s state of mind must be like if even he himself felt like throwing up.
Yu Qinyan thought that his words were reasonable. He looked for pockets on the corpse’s clothes, but didn’t find anything like a wallet or even just money. After looking through the pants, he remembered that he seemed to have felt an additional pocket over the body’s heart.
He reached in, and pulled out a laminated card with a ribbon on it. He waved Zhai Xiaoyi closer so that at least part of the card could be illuminated.
Zhai Xiaoyi stared at the printed photo on the shop assistant’s card, and had a really, really bad feeling. His expression sank as he helped Yu Qinyan stand up by pulling him up by his sleeve.
‘This isn’t good.. You also understand why this isn’t good, right?’
Yu Qinyan understood. Oh, he absolutely understood, alright? He didn’t bother replying as he ran outside, almost tripping on several tools lying on the ground. He spoke as he pulled Zhai Xiaoyi with himself, not even caring to close the door behind the two of them. ‘We have to tell Wei Cai and Yang Meili. This changes absolutely everything!’
The two of them hurried upstairs, only to find another body in the ground floor’s corridor. Zhai Xiaoyi’s face paled as he looked down at the person.
At the same time, in an apartment dimly lit by the street lamps.
Qi Cheng stood at the window, watching the dark city through the half-pulled curtains. There were no visible emotions in his eyes. When he determined that it was time to begin, his expression also changed abruptly.
He turned to the girl bound to a chair in the middle of the room, looking down at her with complex emotions. He stepped closer to the chair and bent down to check if the rope had become loose anywhere.
Yang Meili was dumbfounded under the gaze filled with intense apathy and contempt. She only reacted when she felt the ropes tightening against her skin, which made her want to start struggling.
She stared back at the teen with wide eyes and a tense look as she tried to kick at him, although to no avail. ‘You.. Let’s talk about this! You don’t actually want to do anything to me, do you?’
Qi Cheng didn’t reply. He dodged a couple of her kicks, but didn’t bother to evade all of them and held her knees down directly instead. He grabbed another two metres length of the leftover rope, and bound her calves to the chair nimbly.
It was the efficiency of someone who’d had years worth of experience.. Yang Meili instantly paled, but still didn’t stop struggling.
Her voice sounded almost pleading as she spoke, ‘Hey, I know, you definitely don’t.. Look, we can talk this through properly. You just let me go and I will not say anything to anyone about this.. Alright?’
Qi Cheng frowned and shook his head. He walked to the cupboard and said as he looked through all the cutlery he could find, ‘You’ll get this later. You’re not going anywhere anymore.. You’re already here, do you think that I’d waste all this effort if I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do?’
Yang Meili watched his back and bit at the inside of her mouth as she thought her chances through. She could plead, or.. She could scream.
‘Help! If anyone’s out there, come and help me! Quickly! Help me!’ She yelled as loudly as she could, and let out another ‘help me’ that sounded more like a scream than a plea, as she watched the teen in front of her turn around and look at her with what seemed like a shallow feeling of pity in his eyes..
Qi Cheng didn’t move to stop her from screaming, but simply watched on indifferently as she gradually lost all hope instead. There wasn’t anyone coming to save her, not today, and not ever.
Wei Cai woke up in a dark corridor. Looking at the sky outside, it seemed that a long time had passed. It was already nearing daybreak.
Only then did he register what woke him up. He knit his eyebrows as he touched the spot where the loud slap met his cheek. He looked up to see his two teammates standing in front of him.
Zhai Xiaoyi frowned as he kneaded his palm. Hitting people.. It really wasn’t a comfortable feeling at all.
Yu Qinyan’s expression was rather ugly as he watched Wei Cai struggle to stand up. His legs felt like they were made of a liquid substance and kept buckling under him.. His head hurt more and more as he struggled to move.
‘What’s up with you? Do you have issues with your blood-sugar level or..’ Zhai Xiaoyi hurried to help him up.
‘……’ Yu Qinyan stopped to look at him for a moment before he held Wei Cai’s other arm. ‘He’s probably been put to sleep. Do you remember what happened?’
Wei Cai leant on the two of them as he tried to stand. He felt strength gradually return into his limbs.
‘We.. Yang Meili and I went to check the old woman’s apartment according to plan. She was looking through the rooms while I searched the kitchen. I wanted to call her over but I got attacked before I could say anything..’
Yu Qinyan nodded, ‘You guys getting attacked could be said to have been within expectations. Did you see who did it?’
‘Yeah. I saw his face, even if only for a moment before I blacked out. I only know that I’ve seen him before, but I have no memory of how or when.’
‘What did he look like?’ Zhai Xiaoyi asked, helping Yu Qinyan support the other towards the stairway.
They were on the ground floor, which meant that Wei Cai wasn’t only knocked out but also dragged all the way down to this deserted corner of the building.
Fortunately, after the two of them left the basement, they came face to face with the scene of Wei Cai lying on the cold ground motionlessly at an instant. Otherwise who knows how long it would have taken them to even find him..
‘It was a man.. Right, it was a teenage boy. I was wondering too, how could a scruffy kid like him deal with me, but only for a moment. After that, the sedatives kicked in and I forgot.’
‘Alright. What do you think happened to Yang Meili then? Is it possible for her to also be like.. this?’ Yu Qinyan’s mind was quick to come up with all kinds of scenarios.
If it wasn’t for how weak he became, Wei Cai’s state could be called quite decent.
If all Qi Cheng had in mind was really just to put the both of them to sleep and leave them behind, that would make no sense. He had to have other plans for Yang Meili, while Wei Cai was just someone he had to briefly dispose of..
‘Maybe.’ Wei Cai’s mind still felt muddled from whatever the boy had used to knock him out. ‘Then shouldn’t she be here too? If the kid didn’t want us to investigate the old lady’s apartment, he could have just dumped the both of us here. But Yang Meili isn’t nearby at all..’
‘I have a bad feeling.’ Yu Qinyan didn’t waste any time explaining his theory, and pulled the other two to walk faster instead.
Zhai Xiaoyi almost had a hard time keeping up. ‘Wait, wait, where are we running? Have you even considered the fact that if he could knock him out with such ease, we might not be safe either? What use is there, serving ourselves as the main course like this!’
Yu Qinyan stopped abruptly, his expression darkening. ‘You’re right. We have to be able to protect ourselves if we want to protect others. Do you know how to open locks?’
Zhai Xiaoyi only blinked as a response. Weren’t they just talking about fighting head on, how did the topic change to lockpicking so quickly?
But after giving the topic a thought, he shook his head. ‘There’s no reason to. The doors to the storage rooms are open. Remember?’
He pushed one of the doors open he recalled wasn’t one of the apartments. The three of them didn’t waste much time standing around, and hurried to search through the iron shelves inside.
Yu Qinyan was looking through the shelf furthest from the entrance. His method of searching was quick and efficient, and he soon found a rusty crowbar in a corner.
Wei Cai wasn’t as fortunate as him. He spent a lot of time fumbling around the room, and only after some time did he find an axe to his liking.
Zhai Xiaoyi didn’t know much about the usage of household items in dangerous situations. He had no idea what would be a good choice in such case of emergency.. It was probably due to his luck that he still managed to find a somewhat useful weapon, a small wallet of sharp sewing scissors.
Yu Qinyan spoke as he looked outside at the corridor that led to the stairway. ‘We should all be ready for whatever is to come. Let’s expect the worst and hope for the best, alright?’
Wei Cai nodded at him. The muddle-headedness he had felt after waking up was long gone, and he could think clearly again. ‘Alright. Battle plan. We go to the room, and break in. Kick the door in if necessary, do whatever we need to do. Then, all of us attack the kid. He might be able to deal with me alone, but if it’s the three of us, we should be fine.’
‘About that, I wanted to ask something..’ Zhai Xiaoyi frowned as he spoke up.
Yu Qinyan spared him a look. ‘If that’s what you wanted to ask, yeah, it isn’t fair. That’s the fucking point. This way we’ll win and, you know, Yang Meili won’t get murdered?’
Zhai Xiaoyi appeared somewhat stunned. ‘That’s not what I..’
Wei Cai agreed, ‘Your heart’s in the right place, but that’s not something necessary for what we’re about to do.. Whether it’s fair to the killer, do you think that really matters?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that..’
‘That’s good then. It’s best if the three of us can agree at the moment.’ Yu Qinyan looked back at him with raised eyebrows once more before he pushed the door open.
The three left for the first floor.
At the same time, inside the apartment.
Qi Cheng left the cupboard behind reluctantly. He had gotten most of his experience from using knives, and he could be said to be the most efficient with kitchen knives as a tool. He felt that it was rather ironic that he still chose to kill his last victim using a completely different method.
Yang Meili’s screams had long become barely audible sniffles. From time to time she let out a louder sob, but her overall situation seemed stable. She almost looked calm, but Qi Cheng was clear on the fact that she had only blacked out due to panic.
She wasn’t struggling anymore, which made the ropes against her skin loosen somewhat. Qi Cheng didn’t intend to tighten them. He reached out to touch the irritated skin on her forearm that had been rubbed red from the constant movement.
He frowned. Although he had done this countless times, he didn’t like to cause pain that wasn’t completely necessary, ah.. However, it wasn’t like the woman had a long time left before passing. He looked up at the clock, watching as the pointer neared that certain moment in his existence..
A sudden thought made him straighten up. He had done this countless times, no? He had committed the greatest mistakes of his life over and over again during the past few decades..
But what if he chose not to finish it this time around? Would he finally be able to leave this living hell behind?
The interest in his gaze as he watched Yang Meili in front of her piqued. The woman had her eyes only slightly open, watching him dazedly through the slit as tears rolled down her cheeks uncontrollably.
Qi Cheng was still thinking. Back then, they had made the circumstances of his task very clear. He needed to do certain things and he needed to do them exactly the same way he did once, a long long time ago..
But what if he didn’t? What if he chose not to do it this time around?
Qi Cheng wasn’t a simple person. He used to like to think that he was special, that the way he thought differed from other people, that he was better because of that.. But didn’t that turn out as just the perfect recipe for tragedy?
Qi Cheng wasn’t like anyone else he knew. He was more intelligent, more unique, more.. But where did all of that get him? Wasn’t it just better to be a regular person if being anything more would lead to a doom like his?
The only sound in the room was the clicking of the clock on the wall. The needles got closer and closer to the triple number..
Qi Cheng stood up, dusting his hands off. It was time to carry on, no matter whether he wanted to or not.
The weapon for the last murder was a rather simple and crude one; the leftover rope.
It felt like time was progressing way quicker than on any other day. The group of three made their way to the top of the stairs in only a couple of minutes, yet it felt like an eternity.
The door to the woman’s apartment looked just as normal as any of the other doors along the corridor. The faint colors of the gradually lightening sky painted the walls a hue of pink, and the orange light emitted by the street lamps outside overlapped with the dark shades.
Wei Cai walked at the front, inspecting their surroundings as if suspicious that someone would jump out to fight them. As they reached the door of the apartment, Yu Qinyan gestured for the other two to stop.
He plastered his ear onto the door and listened for any noises from inside.
There was a clock ticking in the apartment.. And a barely audible shuffling noise.
Yu Qinyan held his hand up, looking into the eyes of the other two before gesturing forward.
Qi Cheng was just like anyone else.
He had secrets and desires that he held deep in his heart.
Although he had lost hope for most of these to come true on that warm night such a long time ago, and although the other had taken away most of what was his, he still had something that made his name inseparable from the word ‘human’.
This thing, his only possession, was fear. Fear of the future, fear of the past, fear of the inevitable and fear of what he could become.. All of these things terrified him. In the end, wasn’t it only human to be afraid? Wasn’t it the only thing he had that gave him the right to call himself that..
Because Qi Cheng wasn’t human anymore. He knew this extremely well, and yet he chose to deceive himself with all those dark emotions..
He held the rope around the girl’s delicate neck, watching the clock near that time. His fingers tightened slowly as the pointer jumped from 4:42 to 4:43..
In truth, he’d had thoughts of disobedience before. He had thought of not going through with his task countless times.. But he was afraid.
It was ironic, really fucking ironic that the thing he guarded as his most valuable virtue, this last straw that connected him to what he had once been was what held him back from ending his circle of constant suffering..
It was fear. He was so, so afraid of dying even after such a long time..
But he’d died once, hadn’t he? This existence, was it anything more than a vague afterimage of what had once been?
The pointer left the thirty second mark. It was time for him to decide. As long as he let go now, as long as he just kept his fingers away from the rope.. He could be free.
Freedom, maybe it would be just like before, or maybe it would be death.. What did the difference matter to him? As long as the circle ended, as long as he..
He had made his decision.
The pointer went over the twelfth mark. A second passed, then another.. In that moment, it seemed as if everything would be over, that it would be fine.
Qi Cheng didn’t dare move his line of sight from the clock. The needle drew a circle just as slowly as it would any other minute. It was almost over. There was less than thirty seconds until it would hit 4:45..
The teenager looked down at his hands with astonishment. There was deep fear in his eyes and an inexplicable glint as he watched his fists tighten around the rope.
It felt as if there was someone holding his hands and forcing him to kill.. He finally realised how naive he had been. He wanted to laugh in anger, but only a muffled sound came out of his mouth.
So it was like this.. Was this how things had been all along? Giving his everything.. The meaning behind those words really was indescribable.
The room was empty.
Wei Cai stood at the door that they had kicked open. It hadn’t even been closed.. There wasn’t anyone inside.
None of them uttered a word as they stood silently, watching the curtains flutter in the light breeze.
They had.. Could this have been a miscalculation?
The author has something to say:
Any guesses as to who the body might belong to? Well, it’s not a hard one to guess, but it’s fun nevertheless. I remember writing this chapter, as well as the fact that after I finished it, I lost inspiration for this storyline for quite some time. Fortunately, that was weeks ago already. Due to this short period where I lacked inspiration, there’ll be other sideplots coming soon, for example, in the next chapter.
Chapter 32 will be about a character I find very interesting. I’m currently considering writing a short story about his experiences, just a couple of chapters’ length. It’s a rebirth story, but the catch is that he doesn’t do too many things differently. It’s something along the lines of, ‘right, so throughout your life all of your decisions had weight to them, all of your choices had their consequences, and really, there is nothing to regret. The weight is carried by yourself, and even after death, you feel that all of them were worth it. Then, you’re reborn. What then?’ This, of course, will probably just be integrated into the novel as a sideplot, but since most of it doesn’t play out in the same timeframe as the main storyline, it might just become an extra I’ll update towards the end.
Talking about the end of aad, in my outline of the story there are four arcs, which divide the novel into two parts. These can be called the first and second volumes, or whatever else you like. The first two arcs will be one volume, and the last two another. I’m estimating the first one to be about 80 chapters, we’re currently around 40 chapters after five months of writing, which is to say that I expect to finish the first volume in about another six months or so.
Naturally, these are only some rough calculations and there is no guarantee that I will have the same amount of time(and enthusiasm) to write during the school year as I’ve had so far, but one can still hope..
At last, about my personal life. I’m turning 18 soon, which means that I’ll be able to make a ko-fi sometime this week. Although I do hope that you guys can support me in this way, I completely understand if you can’t or simply don’t want to. I really don’t know how all of that works and I just want to say that in case you do want to support me through ko-fi, I’m endlessly grateful, and if you’d like to support me in another way, the comment section is always there. I appreciate every single comment I get, I hope you all know that.
thanks for the chapter <3