Translator: Reina Editor: Killian
Lu Xia hastily lowered himself down to examine Sun Zheng. “Maybe it is some sort of acclimatisation reaction… I have heard of such things, about ‘it’ materialising.”
Sun Zheng turned his face to the side. His expression was still twisted in pain. “…What do you mean? What was that thing just now?”
Lu Xia shook his head. “I can’t put it into words. Don’t they always say that many ghosts would present themselves in their appearance before death? If I had to give a scientific explanation for it, it would be that the electromagnetic waves emitted by such ghosts would be very strong, and when these waves come into contact with that of living beings, they would either resonate or repel each other. So, we might have different reactions to it.”
Sun Zheng struggled to lift a corner of his mouth. “Oh? Seriously?”
It was obvious that he had only half-accepted this statement, and still had lingering doubts.
“Then tell me…” After a long pause, Sun Zheng spoke again, with a frown. “In this hospital, who would crawl… uh, and die in the corridor like this?”
“This…” Lu Xia had been thinking about this earlier, but he couldn’t come up with any ideas. Who would die in such a strange posture in a public hospital with many people coming and going? Wouldn’t it make more sense if it was some white ghoul in the mortuary? Or a shadow lying on the operating table?
The sight of those long bloodstains trailing across the ground lingered in his mind. He felt that there was something about them, but he was still unable to discern exactly what yet.
Sun Zheng’s condition seemed to have improved. He let out a sigh and straightened up, pressing a hand to his still-aching chest. He sensed Lu Xia stretching a hand out to him, and helplessly grabbed it, allowing the other to pull him to his feet.
“Okay, what should we do now?” Sun Zheng asked while holding on to Lu Xia, who was still a little unstable on his feet.
“Let’s look for Liu Qunfang’s information together.” Lu Xia switched on the flashlight again. A faint light lit up in the room. “However, we need to find another flashlight so that we can search separately.”
The flashlight swept across the entirety of the room. In the middle were rows of bookshelves, holding on them volumes and volumes of documents. They were marked based on their type, blueprints, contracts, and so on. There were even locked cabinets against three of the walls. Dust particles filled the air too, spiralling through the area lit up by the flashlight.
To their right was a small door. The door was ajar, with no light through it.
“That should lead to a secondary office. Let’s look over there first.”
They appeared to have temporarily forgotten the fear they’d felt outside the door, or perhaps it was because they saw a glimmer of hope. The two men leaned on each other and stumbled over to the secondary office.
As soon as they entered, they were startled by the mess of documents scattered all over the floor. It was as if a gust of wind had wreaked havoc through the room. There were even several boxes which had been emptied and simply carelessly tossed aside. There was almost no gap on the ground for anyone to walk through.
“Was someone sorting documents before this?” Sun Zheng asked while carefully supporting Lu Xia down into the chair behind the office desk.
“Sure doesn’t look like it…” The flashlight in Lu Xia’s hand swept over the document on the ground. “Look at the date on it, it’s from 2000.”
“2000?” Sun Zheng knelt down and picked the paper up. The year 2000 was indeed written on the bottom, but other than that, it seemed to just be an ordinary employee report card, with nothing special.
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.
Lu Xia couldn’t move his feet, only his hands, so he pulled the drawers open one by one, looking for a spare flashlight.
“Jbeiv la yf atja atfgf kjr rbwfbcf ibbxlcu obg lcobgwjalbc?” Vec Itfcu oilqqfv atgbeut j ofk rmjaafgfv qjqfgr. Cii bo la kjr qfgrbcji lcobgwjalbc jybea atf fwqibsffr. Pa kjr pera atja atfs kfgf lc j wfrr fjgilfg, rb atfs kfgfc’a jyif ab lvfcalos la lwwfvljafis.
“Ct! Xgfja!” Oe Wlj mtffgfv jr tf qjrrfv Vec Itfcu j oijrtiluta. Lf fnfc veu bea j qlfmf bo ygfjv ogbw ubv xcbkr ktfgf, jcv jrxfv, “Cgf sbe tecugs? Gb sbe kjca ab fja?”
Sun Zheng took the flashlight and looked at the bread hesitantly. “Are you sure it’s still edible?”
“Why wouldn’t it be edible?” Lu Xia had already broken off a piece., “I’m starving anyway.”
“I’ll eat later.” Sun Zheng seemed to have yet to completely calm down from the previous incident, and was flipping through the documents on the ground anxiously as he held the spare flashlight. “It’s a little odd. Does the hospital regularly sort out the old documents? Why has all the information about the employees been dug out today?”
“Hmm… Ey mwo nuoh (I don’t know)…” Lu Xia spoke with a piece of bread stuffed into his mouth. Just as he turned around, his attention was immediately attracted by a piece of paper.
Sun Zheng started picking up the papers piled up on the floor too, and arranged them in number.
“Look, Lu Xia, many of the employees in this pile have resigned or are deceased. Do you think Liu Qunfang’s profile would be here?”
After not hearing Lu Xia’s answer for a long time, Sun Zheng raised his head in suspicion.
Lu Xia was staring at the two thin pieces of paper in his hand. He was staring at them intently, with a very serious expression on his face, and was so absorbed that he forgot where he was.
Sun Zheng walked over and saw the opened envelope under a dusty box on the table.
“To: Liu Qunfang”
Surprised, he turned his eyes to the letter paper in Lu Xia’s hand.
Because of the age and poor storage methods, many of the words on the letter have become blurred from water damage.
Sun Zheng went around behind Lu Xia, trying to read the letter, and the address at the beginning made him even more surprised.
“Granddaughter Qunfang:
I’m glad to hear from you.
I’ve retired for many years and gradually moved away from those things. I didn’t expect that you would write to ask about this.
I remember that you didn’t like my line of work and didn’t want to get close to me since you were a child. Probably, you, like many other people, also think that I was just a charlatan. Grandpa can’t explain, and doesn’t know how to explain to you. Because in my line of work, I realised that there are too many things which, other than the witness themselves, no one else would know about it or even believe the witness’ story. Sometimes, the witness might even start doubting themselves. To the normal average person, these odd incidents are just unfortunate accidents, or mere disappearances. But the reality is that many of my acquaintances have run into danger on the job. Some of them have died from it, and others have chosen to run from it all. Of the two seniors who introduced Grandpa to this line of work, one of them, who was living near Luxi, Jiangxi (do you remember that Grandpa went to Jiangxi for a long time and didn’t make it back in time for your 10th birthday?) went missing, and the other is still recuperating in a mental hospital to this day.
……
……
I advised you before, do you remember? This job of yours was introduced to you by your mother. I remember how happy you were when you came home with your first paycheck. Grandpa is sorry for pouring cold water on you then. I said you are full of yin and would attract evil spirits, so you cannot stay in that place. I wanted you to resign and change jobs immediately. Because of that, you refused to come over to Grandpa’s house for New Year’s Eve dinner on that Spring Festival. When I heard your mother describe the environment of that hospital, I was certain that that is the place where I have been “working” at. Do you remember that there was an abandoned brick factory in the southernmost part of our city? When you were a child, you once asked me where did our neighbour Auntie Zhang who’d disappeared go? I pointed to the brick factory and said she was there, but when you went back and told your mother, your mother gave you a spanking. In every city, every place where people congregate and live in, there will be resentment, and this negative energy will flow to a certain corner of the city, nourishing ‘it’. Many people who accidentally entered ‘it’ will end up being swallowed by ‘it’ and be trapped there forever.
Grandpa’s job is to rescue those who still have a chance to come out.
……
……
Don’t be anxious and don’t act rashly. Grandpa has sent a very capable person over to help you. He will be there in a few days. His name is Lu Xiaoyun. He is 25 years old this year, he is tall and thin, and I’d have to trouble you to help him make arrangements when the time comes.
……
……
Grandpa has been fighting ‘it’ for so many years. One day, Grandpa finally realised, I was wrong.
Liu Muran
April 10, 2001″
After reading the letter, Lu Xia seemed to have completely forgotten Sun Zheng’s existence too. He muttered under his breath, “…Brother… I finally have news of you…”
“Huh?!” Sun Zheng gaped. “What did you say?”
Lu Xia finally noticed Sun Zheng’s presence. He came to his senses, folded the letter paper in his hand, and said, “That Lu Xiaoyun is my brother.”
“Your, your brother?” Sun Zheng was still in shock. “How did your brother get involved with Liu Qunfang’s grandfather?”
Lu Xia didn’t answer his question directly. He had a look of admiration on his face. “My brother is a professional but I’m just playing around here. I don’t really understand much about what’s going on… But now, I finally found some information about my brother.”
“Your brother, like her grandpa… are in this line of work?”
“You can put it this way. In 2001, he suddenly said that he was going to a place to do something, so he packed up and left. We still received messages from him intermittently for the first few months, and he’d report that he was safe or something, but in 2002 he completely stopped contacting us. We had such a situation before, so we didn’t pay much attention at first. But after a long wait, there was still no news from him at all, and we didn’t know where he went, so we started to search for him anxiously. And in the blink of an eye, it’s been so many years…”
“But, didn’t you say that you came here because your uncle asked you to…” Sun Zheng glared at him. “You lied to me?! The dean isn’t your uncle at all, you’re just here to look for your brother?”
Lu Xia showed a helpless expression. “I did ask the dean about my brother’s news. You see, I suddenly received this last month, and on it was this hospital’s address…But I don’t know who sent it…”
He fumbled around inside his clothes: “When I was in that room earlier and thought I was going to die, I wanted to pass you this…”
Sun Zheng interrupted him angrily, and the key he just took out fell to the ground with a clang. “So you came here with a purpose? And you tricked me into following you onto your search route? Don’t tell me that entering this godforsaken place was also part of your plan?”
Lu Xia bent down to pick up the key with a wry smile. “No. I didn’t expect that either.”
Sun Zheng stared at him fiercely, clutching at his chest in silence.
Lu Xia looked at Sun Zheng apologetically, not knowing what he could say. He kept silent for a while, before guiltily passing over the other half of the bread.
“Here… you’d better eat something…”
Sun Zheng glared darkly at him, then turned around to leave.
“Wait, Zheng, where are you going?!” Lu Xia turned pale with shock. He couldn’t stand up on his own, and could only frantically try to grab onto Sun Zheng to pull him back.
“I don’t want to follow the route you’ve set anymore. I’ll find my own way out.” Sun Zheng proclaimed while walking towards the door.
As soon as he reached the doorway, he felt something sticky under his feet, and immediately lowered the flashlight to his feet—
“Wait! Did you forget there’s still that thing outside?!” Lu Xia cried anxiously, “You…”
Lu Xia, who was looking at him from a distance, suddenly felt that his breath caught in his throat. He wanted to call Sun Zheng’s name, but he couldn’t make a single sound.
He saw a pool of blood slowly seeping in from the crack under the door of the archives.
Rustle. Rustle.
Sun Zheng’s head was lowered, his face pale, and his eyes were fixed on his feet. No one touched the door in front of him, but it opened by itself, gently, as if blown by a gust of wind.
Rustle. Rustle.
Sun Zheng was looking at the pool of blood that he’d stepped on. That thick pool of red was spreading outward in the darkness, filling his entire vision.
Then he felt a cool breeze blowing, and he moved his flashlight upwards. The halo of light shook, trailing up from the ground.
A pair of eyes, a face, were staring straight at him.
“Zheng!!!!!!!”
Lu Xia stood up abruptly, but fell to the ground.
He struggled to crawl forward a few steps and raised his head.
Sun Zheng was gone. There was no one here.
The door to the archives was still shut.
There were no traces of blood left on the ground either.
Sun Zheng had disappeared. There was only him left.
The author has something to say:
Don’t say that Sun Zheng is too impulsive. He’s just in shock. The reason why Sun Zheng is so pissed is because this actually isn’t the first time Lu Xia lied to him. Also, someone asked me about the bread scene… that’s just because I felt like they would be hungry if they haven’t eaten anything for so many hours!
Noo Sun Zheng 💔
Should not have been reading this at night, I should’ve waited till tomorrow 😭