Translator: Reina Editor: Killian
Lu Xiaoyun was silent for a while, then suddenly said, “Did someone die at the stairs on the third floor?”
There was a brief second of silence both inside and outside the tape.
Yan Yang stammered, “You, how do you know…”
The rest of his words were cut off. After several seconds, there was only the sound of footsteps as they climbed the stairs.
(Lu Xiaoyun must have covered Yan Yang’s mouth, Lu Xia thought.
Yan Yang must have shut up when Lu Xiaoyun glared at him, Sun Zheng thought.
Counting their footsteps, step by step, after thirteen, the footsteps became lighter.
During the whole process, Sun Zheng’s nerves were high-strung, his expression stiff because of the tension, until he suddenly felt a hand stretched out from beside him and held his hand, which comforted him a little.
They both heard it. That voice is crystal clear.
Accompanied by Lu Xiaoyun and Yan Yang’s footsteps.
Sun Zheng and Lu Xia shared a look. They were certain the footsteps came from the third floor, and were incredibly close to Lu Xiaoyun and Yan Yang right now. It was as though they could see danger slowly approaching Lu Xiaoyun and Yan Yang in the tape.)
The footsteps of the two people sounded again. Judging from the echoes, they had already reached the corridor of the third floor.
There was only a click, the sound of the door being opened, and then it was closed again.
“Huh—” Yan Yang exhaled deeply. A loud sound came from the tape. Sun Zheng and Lu Xia tensed up, and only realised later that it was from Yan Yang tossing the tape recorder onto the table.
“You almost suffocated me to death!” Yan Yang grumbled, then paused, before lowering his voice. “Wh-Where did you hear about the incident on the third floor?”
There was a voice pulling a chair, followed by another voice, “I haven’t heard of it.”
Yan Yang snorted in disbelief. “So what if the old man fell down the stairs and died. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. At the molecular level, humans are just made up of some nitrogen , oxygen, carbon, water, protein, lipids, carbohydrates, and the like. After we die, we’ll go from being organic matter to inorganic matter. Things like ghosts, afterlife, are all just imaginary…”
(Lu Xia saw Sun Zheng nodding along with this statement initially, only to show an unconvinced expression in the next second, and felt a sense of glee.)
“When did he fall to his death?” Lu Xiaoyun completely ignored Yan Yang’s tirade.
“Probably, about three years ago? I heard from the nurses that he was blind and old, and accidentally fell down the stairs and died on the spot.”
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.
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“What is he saying?” Lu Xia frowned.
“He’s calling ‘Grandpa’! He’s right next to them!” Sun Zheng hissed.
“‘Grandpa’? Could it be…” Before Lu Xia finished speaking, he heard the conversation in the tape start again.)
“What does it have to do with that child patient of yours?” Lu Xiaoyun’s voice had no ups and downs, and his tone was so flat that it seemed devoid of emotions.
“I didn’t expect you to be someone who likes to gossip like this, and even choosing such an uninteresting topic to gossip about,” Yan Yang joked in a low voice, “Let me tell you, he is Gao Letian’s grandfather. Gao Letian came to see a doctor three years ago… pfft, ouch, haha!”
(At this time, Sun Zheng tightened his hold on Lu Xia’s hand again.)
Yan Yang started laughing suddenly. He drew in breaths between wheezes. “I heard from Dr. Liu that the kid was throwing a tantrum, saying he had a stomach ache, and demanded his grandpa to go buy bananas for him. His grandpa is blind. He coaxed the child while walking out with his cane, and… Ouch, haha, ow, why are you scratching my feet, hey, ouch, it hurts!”
The air froze for a second. In the tape, Lu Xiaoyun replied in the same flat tone, “I didn’t.”
(Lu Xia squeezed down on Sun Zheng’s hand. They could practically visualise Yan Yang’s stunned face at this moment, pale and bloodless, staring speechlessly at Lu Xiaoyun.)
There was a sudden rustling sound in the tape, probably Yan Yang struggling and falling off his chair, followed by a long series of continuous hitting sounds.
“Lu Xiaoyun, come and help me!!”
Yan Yang yelled hoarsely.
Then the sound on the tape was complete chaos. The already loud noise was now mixed with human voices, merging with the sound of chairs being overturned, making it impossible to discern what exactly happened.
(“It’s the same situation as what I faced,” Sun Zheng whispered, his expression clouded. “That boy ghost grabbed him.”
Lu Xia didn’t speak. He looked at Sun Zheng and hesitated to speak. It could be heard from the tape that although the two people were flustered, this kind of situation should be commonplace for Lu Xiaoyun, so he was not too worried. But if he hadn’t heard Sun Zheng’s voice at that time, if he hadn’t thrown the key, then… he didn’t dare to imagine what would have happened.
He realised it was a kind of irrational lingering fear. From the perspective of an outsider, hearing what happened to Lu Xiaoyun and Yan Yang here made him understand even more deeply that danger was everywhere around them.
There was a subtle emotion budding in his heart. His hand twitched around Sun Zheng’s. He’d initially planned to let go quietly, but clenched around it subconsciously when he felt Sun Zheng’s hand tremble.
Side A of the tape came to an end and broke with a snap. Sun Zheng turned it over manually. Probably because the two men in the tape were too busy dealing with the crisis and didn’t notice that the tape was ending. This middle portion was not recorded, so they wouldn’t know how Lu Xiaoyun solved the crisis. When the recording resumed, there was a period of blankness and noise at the start before the now-calmer voice reappeared along with the sound of a door slamming shut.)
“After we made such a commotion, the night watchman would probably be here soon.” Yan Yang was obviously still in shock, panting, his voice shaking a little. “What are you doing on the door?”
“Nothing much. Just making sure that nothing will enter this room in the future.” Judging from Lu Xiaoyun’s tone, he seemed to be unaffected by whatever had just happened.
“What are you randomly pasting on! Stop messing around, we’d be goners if the hospital finds out about this…” Yan Yang panicked, then as though recalling the danger just now, he lowered his voice again.
(“Is this why the third room here is safe?” Sun Zheng turned his head and asked Lu Xia, “What did your brother do?”
“I don’t know either…” Lu Xia met his gaze then uneasily turned away.
Sun Zheng didn’t care too much. He moved closer to the tape and nodded. “The boy’s voice has disappeared.”)
“Look, what is this?” Yan Yang continued talking.
“You don’t have to raise your foot so close to me. It’s a child’s handprint.”
“Sure enough, sure enough…” There was a trace of fear in Yan Yang’s voice. “Is, is it a ghost? I always felt that that Gao Letian had a dark energy in him, that he is not human!”
“Is that so?” Lu Xiaoyun calmly asked, clearly denying the hypothesis.
(Sun Zheng and Lu Xia also looked at each other. Did the child really enter the chasm?)
“You don’t believe me? Let me tell you. I specifically asked about the child’s situation. It was his grandfather who brought him to see a doctor that day. When the accident happened, Nurse Yang downstairs, the one who looks a bit cute, witnessed it. She said she saw his grandfather leading him out, and the child even smiled at her and said, ‘Hello, nurse-jiejie!’ Because the child was very cute, her impression of this encounter was pretty strong. Then when his blind grandfather reached the stairs on the third floor, who knew if someone pushed him or what, he tumbled down immediately, all the way down to the bottom. There was so much blood and he died instantly. Furthermore…” Yan Yang lowered his voice. “They all say that the child suddenly vanished in front of their eyes! Because he reappeared later, everyone thought it was a mistake. Hey, look, how did this kid manage to come out in the end? Most likely as a ghost.”
Lu Xiaoyun didn’t answer.
“You’ve also heard of it, right? Those kinds of ghost babies that people would raise specially. It inhales other people’s life force and makes trouble at home. Why else would he come to the hospital once a year, and also specifically during this time, it’s probably because it doesn’t have enough yin energy and needed to hide away here to replenish its stock…” Yan Yang talked more and more vigorously, as if he had completely forgotten what happened just now.
(“This fledgling young man is too reckless, too bold, and has a poor memory,” Lu Xia commented sullenly.
Sun Zheng glanced at him, thinking, your evaluation of yourself is quite accurate.)
Lu Xiaoyun didn’t answer Yan Yang’s words at all, Lu Xia knew that his brother was someone who habitually ignored boring, baseless comments.
“Nurse Liu is also unlucky. The child clamoured that he wanted to go exploring and she really dared to bring him around, even to my office because he said wanted to scare me in here. In the end, he sure did replenish his yin energy pretty well these two days…”
“Liu Qunfang only brought him here once. ”
The air froze again.
“Really?”
“Are you afraid? ”
“No, no! Don’t come any closer!” They could hear Yan Yang’s fear even through the buzzing hissing of the tape. “Then what was that footprint on the first day?
(“What’s going on? Didn’t that kid deliberately leave the footprints?” Sun Zheng also pinpointed the disconnect with their earlier hypotheses, and turned to ask Lu Xia.
Looking at Sun Zheng’s face, Lu Xia suddenly seemed to be hit by something in the head again, and only managed to answer after a long pause. “I don’t know. Even he himself doesn’t know what happened. There must be a deeper mystery to this. In Yan Yang’s entry in the record book, there was something he didn’t fully comprehend either.”
Sun Zheng felt a sudden unprecedented sense of terror. Lu Xia looked at his pale face, and said again, “Zheng, I may be a little dull , I just realised…”
The tape started to sizzle again, and Sun Zheng made a gesture to keep quiet.)
Lu Xiaoyun was silent for a long time.
“What is it?”
Yan Yang asked again, raising his voice.
“He’s probably looking for him to play.” Lu Xiaoyun finally opened his mouth, but he only uttered this one confusing sentence.
“Huh?”
There was the sound of a chair dragging across the floor. It seemed that Lu Xiaoyun stood up.
This time, his tone of voice in the tape was a bit colder. “There is something wrong with this hospital, there are too many accidents. Compared with other chasms, the air here is different too. This is a bottomless pit with no exit. ”
(The chill in the words seemed to have directly penetrated several years of time and old tapes, into the hearts of Sun Zheng and Lu Xia.
This is a sign that Lu Xiaoyun is a little angry, Lu Xia secretly said in his heart.
But what Sun Zheng felt was shadows welling up layer after layer. Even Lu Xiaoyun said that this place is a bottomless pit with no exit. Was there any possibility for them to get out?)
“Write a record according to the hospital’s request. I will tell you exactly how to write it. Don’t tell others about it. I need to investigate the problems with this hospital.” Lu Xiaoyun’s tone was still cold.
“Huh? But…”
Snap.
The tape broke off right here again, returning to the female voice of New Concept English again.
“Where’s the news on the next tape?” Sun Zheng was anxious.
Lu Xia held him down: “Don’t worry, it should be at the end. They should have recorded a message telling us how to find the second tape.”
a demon child??? 😱 thank you for the chapter!
There’s always something creepy about children in horror genre!! 😭
Thank you for reading!
I don’t know how to feel about the ghost kid 😭
Ah this is an even more unusual chasm than others it seems… very ominous