Historias de fantasmas

Capítulo 23

He gently checked his breathing, then slapped him twice more, saying, "He's just dizzy. He's really too weak to handle."

Sun Jing picked up the flashlight, put away both stun guns, and sat on the ground. Only then did he realize that his heart was beating very fast.

Xu Xu sat down as well, and began to breathe rapidly.

Sun Jing reached out and held her hand; it was ice cold.

He hissed as he gasped for breath, his hand trembling.

Sun Jing quickly let go and asked, "How are you?"

"It's just a small burn on my hand, nothing serious."

The two sat there for a while before feeling their strength gradually returning. It had been an extremely dangerous situation; if they had both collapsed, they might never have had the chance to open their eyes again.

"What about him?" Xu Xu asked.

"Let's figure out how to get out first." Sun Jing said, reaching into Wen Zhenhe's pocket. Sure enough, he found a large brass key in his inner pocket, which was shaped just right to fit into the keyhole of the secret room entrance.

"As for this old guy, if we want to get the real wizard's skull, we still have to rely on him. But it's difficult to take him out now, and I don't want to tell those two guys that I actually left someone at home and forgot to take him with me," Sun Jing said.

“It’s more convenient at night. Anyway, we can lock the door, and he won’t be able to get out even if he wakes up. Without the stun gun and the wet handkerchief, he can only blow on the air, nothing special.” Because she was so badly frightened, Xu Xu now looks down on Wen Zhenhe’s air-blowing skills.

Wen Zhenhe's phone had already been found and thrown on the ground. Sun Jing poked it with a stun gun, and it exploded with sparks with a "bang".

Xu Xu quickly dialed the phone away, but was still shocked by the residual current.

"The battery will explode. Besides, even if we can't leave the phone to him, we can take it out and sell it. Every little bit helps."

"That's more straightforward."

"I think you're just trying to look cool. Who's buying it? I'm leaving."

They said they walked, but they actually crawled out. They unlocked the closet with a brass key, and the two of them climbed out one after the other, both taking deep breaths.

She locked the mechanism again. She closed the closet door. Slowly walking to the center of the room, she stomped heavily on the floor and said, "Old Man Wen's head is right here." Then she stomped her foot hard.

Sun Jing smiled and walked out the door.

As he walked down the corridor, passing a room, Sun Jing remembered seeing the inscription "Heaven rewards diligence" on his way in, and glanced at it casually. Then his expression changed.

He finally understood what Wen Zhenhe was in such a hurry for.

"One minute to go," the timekeeper announced. "Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight..."

The engineer placed his hand on the detonator.

A crowd of onlookers outside the cordon eagerly awaited the news.

"Run!"

Sun Jing grabbed Xu Xu's arm. "They must be surrounding us outside. Countless eyes are watching. How are we going to explain going out like this?"

"Is explanation more important or life?"

“If we go back, Wen Zhenhe will definitely not leave like this if she can take us down successfully. There must be another exit in the secret room.”

Xu Xu glared at Sun Jing, "You're betting on this? Even if there's an exit, can we find it before it explodes?"

Sun Jing stared at her.

He stomped his foot slowly. "Alright, the bet's on." He turned and ran back.

To unlock it, I frantically turned the wooden handle, but the passage opened at an unbearably slow pace.

They had no patience to walk down the stairs properly; they jumped in without a second thought, not caring whether they would twist their ankles. Although they didn't know how much longer until the explosion, everyone only had one life.

"You old bastard, you're faking it." Sun Jing heard Xu Xu cursing from below just as he was about to jump down.

When he got down there, he saw a secret door next to the winch, and Wen Zhenhe had obviously slipped out through it.

"Luckily he was faking it; he's not stupid after all. What are you standing there for? Hurry up and go inside."

It was called a secret door, but it was actually just a hole. Xu Xu and Sun Jing climbed forward one after the other.

The underground hall was built using a moisture barrier, as was this hole. When digging deeper into the underground hall, a large amount of soil and rocks would be unearthed. It seems that, to avoid suspicion, this soil and rocks were not transported out back then, but instead used to fill the moisture barriers under other rooms, leaving only this passage leading to an unknown destination.

After climbing for a while, Xu Xu called out from ahead, "I see him! That old bastard is climbing really slowly."

Sun Jing and Xu Xu hadn't lingered up there for long, but Wen Zhen, having been punched, was still clumsy despite feigning unconsciousness; his waist ached terribly when he twisted it while climbing the tunnel. Knowing the scheduled detonation time, he had been climbing with all his might, and even though he could hear Xu Xu's voice behind him, he couldn't go any faster.

But the hope of escape was just ahead; Wen Zhenhe had already seen the iron lid. Next to the iron lid was the entrance to the air-raid shelter. In the last century, countless air-raid shelters of all sizes were built underground in Shanghai, some large, some small, and some interconnected.

Wenzhen and Wanxing had already moved the iron cover when they scouted the terrain beforehand. The closer they got to the cover, the wider the cave passage became, and he was finally able to arch his back and climb to the iron cover at twice the speed he had before.

Xu Xu and Sun Jing had almost caught up with Wen Zhen and her backside when suddenly, a muffled thunderclap sounded, and the entire passage shook.

The load-bearing walls were completely destroyed, and within three seconds, the entire building collapsed, shrouded in smoke and dust.

For Xu Xu and Sun Jing, those three seconds were filled with a dense rumble of thunder, the sound of a brick-and-mortar building collapsing and falling. The muffled thuds from hundreds and thousands of pounds of broken walls colliding with each other created a deafening roar. Without strong nerves, the sound waves from just this small hole could make someone faint.

Some people would collapse to the ground in such a situation, while others would unleash several times their strength. Fortunately, Sun Jing and Xu Xu belonged to the latter group. In the three seconds when the passage shook like an earthquake and seemed about to collapse at any moment, their speed of crawling forward actually increased. Sun Jing's foot suddenly became heavy, and the ground behind him collapsed. He struggled desperately and finally managed to free himself, but his shoe remained in the dirt.

Xu Xu had already crawled to Wen Zhen's side when a thick steel bar, covered in cement, pierced straight down from above, penetrating his lumbar spine. He was covered in blood, but he wasn't dead yet. In his final moments, instead of wailing, he muttered curses.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it, two minutes early."

"Learn to set your watch next time." Xu Xu said without any pity and went into the air-raid shelter.

Wen Zhenhe coughed sharply. Sun Jing, who was following behind, glanced at him and was about to leave when he felt that Wen Zhenhe's gaze was a little strange.

"Is there anything you want to say?" Sun Jing asked him.

Wen Zhenhe stopped coughing, but her breathing became increasingly weak.

“I wasn’t here in 1969,” he said softly.

"Is this what you wanted to say?"

"Hurry up and come down!" Xu Xu urged him from below.

Wen Zhen tilted her head and forced a smile at Sun Jing, "I...I like...beautiful women."

"What the hell!" Sun Jing thought as he jumped into the air-raid shelter. "This old man is still spouting nonsense even after he's been soaked to the bone."

Human nature is the most elusive thing. Never assume you understand it enough, or you will make mistakes more dangerous than when you were young and reckless.

Ten trillion lines

Sun Jing leaned against the bed, looking at the morning newspaper that Xu Xu had brought up for him before leaving.

From yesterday afternoon until six hours ago, he had never experienced such passionate sex, and it felt great. But what he remembered most was that hour in the secluded room.

There was no news about the small street in the newspapers. The construction team might need another day or two to clear the site completely, after which they would discover Wen Zhenhe's body and the skeletons in the underground hall.

Those hands that didn't decay should be crushed by now. I wonder if the police will be able to find anything unusual about these three skeletons. It will probably take them some time to confirm Wen Zhenhe's identity.

Probably no one but myself and Xu Xu will ever know the truth.

Sun Jing adjusted his pillow to make himself more comfortable. He didn't want to get up right away. The curtains were half-open, and although it had just rained, the sun was shining brightly. The sunlight shone on the blankets, making even the tiny dust particles in the air clearly visible.

Sun Jing put down the newspaper and stared blankly at the dust swirling in the air.

He had a vague feeling that something was wrong; a certain unease lurked deep within him. What was the problem?

Is it Wen Zhen and those last two inexplicable sentences?

Confused and unable to make sense of things, Sun Jing suppressed his thoughts, picked up a magazine from beside the bed, and flipped through a few pages.

This magazine primarily focuses on urban consumer information, with a third of its pages dedicated to food. Sun Jing hadn't had breakfast yet, and looking at the pictures made him hungry. He flipped to the restaurant recommendations, deciding to choose one to eat at with Xu Xu that evening. For Xu Xu, surviving such a close call meant she needed to relax; for him, it was about fully enjoying life, and adventure was just one part of it.

One of the restaurants had a familiar name—Linshui Xuan. Sun Jing thought for a moment and remembered that Ouyang Wenlan had asked the chef from this restaurant to make his delicious wild mushroom dish.

But according to the magazine's description, this is a Cantonese restaurant; how could the chef cook Yunnan cuisine? No. It should be the other way around: how would Ouyang Wenlan know that a Cantonese restaurant's chef could cook Yunnan food?

Sun Jing twirled the jade ring on her hand a few times. Then she dialed the reservation number published in the magazine.

"No, I didn't make a reservation. A friend of mine orders food from your restaurant; I don't know the name of the dish, but it's made with a kind of wild mushroom from Yunnan. I'd like some if possible."

"We are a Cantonese restaurant, we don't serve Yunnan wild mushrooms. Are you sure you haven't made a mistake?"

"Oh, could you please have your chef answer the phone? I'd like to describe it to him in more detail. It's definitely your restaurant; I've seen your name on the delivery van."

"This..." It sounded like the person on the other end was about to hang up.

"Or you might remember me, my friend is a man in his nineties named Ouyang Wenlan," Sun Jing added.

"Over ninety years old? Oh, I remember that, but... we do have a customer in his nineties who regularly orders custom food, but he orders cat brains, not wild mushrooms."

Sun Jing suddenly rolled off the bed, and half of the blanket fell to the floor.

"Hello?"

"...Thank you." Sun Jing hung up the phone, a chill running down her spine.

It's a cat's brain!

Ouyang Wenlan kept a group of cats, always replacing them with new ones, because he ate cat brains.

Trust is like a dam; it may seem sturdy, but if the first small breach occurs, it will collapse in the blink of an eye.

When trust is gone, doubts arise one after another.

Sun Jing finally understood why he was uneasy. Wen Zhenhe saw through his and Xu Xu's trick immediately, but his decision to go to Ouyang Wenlan to implement the "second plan" stemmed from Wen Zhenhe's reminder.

This is definitely not a well-intentioned reminder!

Think about his reaction when they first met Ouyang Wenlan. He didn't say anything about the wizard's skull, but instead asked how much they knew. He was trying to probe their knowledge, but after his visit to the mental hospital, he had a brain fart and blurted everything out.

By the way, it was Ouyang Wenlan himself who first mentioned the name Han Shang, just to steer the conversation toward what he wanted to know. Had Han Shang really visited him? Such an important figure who bought the skull from Hedin—even if they didn't get anything from a meeting, shouldn't he at least mention it in a recorded statement? It's likely that Wen Zhenhe didn't introduce her, Han Shang wanted to see him but was turned away, or perhaps she simply hadn't found out where Ouyang Wenlan lived.

Xu Xu mentioned the oracle bone exhibition for birthday celebration to Ouyang several times, but Ouyang remained silent until Xu Xu told him about his great-grandfather and Han Shang. Only then did Ouyang Wenlan relent and agree. At that time, he must have already made up his mind to take action to resolve the trouble.

The solution to this problem was simple: he would lure himself to the secret room at number fourteen, wait for Wen Zhenhe to knock him down, and then be crushed to death by the collapsing building. Just like Han Shang being killed by a flowerpot, there would be no trouble. To ensure he would keep the appointment after receiving the text message, he even revealed the secret that number fourteen was a gathering place for experimenters.

And slowly... slowly...

Sun Jing suddenly jumped up, dressed as quickly as possible, and rushed out the door.

Xu Xu agreed to help Ouyang Wenlan complete a longevity-praying ritual, which required a wizard's skull. Although the skull in the safe the day before yesterday was fake, the real one... the real one was in Ouyang Wenlan's hands, not Wen Zhenhe's!

What kind of witchcraft is this?

The text message emphasized that he should go alone, while during the same time period, Ouyang Wenlan asked Xu Xu to help him prepare for this ghostly witchcraft!

If Ouyang Wenlan had known about his relationship with Xu Xu, and if Xu Xu hadn't slept in the same bed with him the night before last, she would definitely have gone to the Ouyang family's house.

How foolish! I should have been wary when Ouyang Wenlan mentioned his research on witchcraft. He'd done such in-depth research on Shang Dynasty witchcraft; if he were truly a fame-seeker, how could he not have published it? What could be more illustrious than writing books? There must be a reason he didn't; there must be something fishy going on!