El Jianghu de Feng Qingcheng y Mo Xibei

Capítulo 4

Xiaoxia suddenly pulled me to a corner, her expression mysterious. The hospital bed was positioned between us and Nurse Huang, clearly indicating she had a secret to tell me. Nurse Huang tactfully found a stool to sit on and casually flipped through a magazine. The hospital bed blocked our view, preventing us from seeing each other directly.

Xiaoxia craned her neck to glance at Nurse Huang, and only after making sure she wasn't paying attention to us did she whisper in my ear, "I'm going to teach you a very interesting game now, called 'Knocking on the Yin Gate.' Didn't I just say that everything is divided into Yin and Yang, and houses are the same, divided into Yin houses and Yang houses? Don't think that the Yin house I'm talking about is a grave; what I'm actually referring to is the soul of the house."

"Do houses have souls?" I asked.

Xiaoxia gave me a disdainful look and said, "Of course it does. Everything in the world has a soul. Even a stone or a grain of sand has its own spirit, let alone a house. But not all houses have a soul. At least new houses don't. Generally, only houses that are over twenty years old have a soul."

I suddenly felt a little dizzy. Xia had said that even a grain of sand has a soul, but then she said that not all houses have souls—clearly a contradiction. I thought that if I didn't figure things out quickly and spend a few more days with Xia, I might go insane. So I urged her to tell me quickly.

Xiaoxia rolled her eyes at me and said, "You need to listen carefully to each step, or it will be dangerous."

I asked what dangers might be involved, but Xiaoxia didn't answer. She continued, "To play 'Knocking on the Door of the Dead,' you must choose a house with a spirit inside. Then, on a moonless night, around midnight, turn off all the lights in the house, close the doors and windows, and draw the curtains to create a dark, airtight room. After everything is prepared, knock on the door from inside the house, knocking twice each time, 'knock, knock, knock,' until you hear a knocking sound outside the door, 'knock, knock, knock,' then whisper, 'Who's in there?' If no one answers, open the door..."

Xiaoxia suddenly stopped talking, so I asked, "If you open the door, the game will end?"

Xiaoxia smiled mysteriously again and said, "Of course not. Opening the door is the beginning of the game, because once you open the door, you will find that the scene outside the door is exactly the same as the scene inside the door. It is another house."

Finally, we got to the point. I pretended not to believe it and said, "How could that be? There should be a street outside the door, not a house."

Xiaoxia said earnestly, "Because knocking on the door awakens the soul of the house, and the door is the connection point between the house and its soul. Inside the door is the real house, and outside the door is the soul of the house."

I said, "I don't believe you, you're definitely lying to me."

Xiaoxia got impatient with me and shouted, "I'm not lying to you, it's true, it's true..."

When Nurse Huang noticed that Xiaoxia was getting a little emotional, she wanted to come over to help. I immediately gestured to her with my eyes not to come over, and then said to Xiaoxia provocatively, "How do you know it's real? Have you ever played it?"

Xiaoxia grabbed my clothes and exclaimed nervously, "I've played with it before, so I know it's real. The soul of the house is right outside the door."

Xiaoxia fell into my trap, which made me secretly chuckle to myself, but I didn't show it. I continued to pretend I didn't believe her and raised my voice slightly, saying, "Since you've played this before, tell me the process, otherwise I will never believe you."

Xiaoxia gripped my clothes tightly, her eyes wide and fixed on me, as if afraid I would slip away. She moved to block my path, and only after confirming I couldn't escape did she slowly begin to speak…

"Our house was built before my parents got married, so it's over twenty years old now. That night, after my parents were asleep, I closed all the doors and windows in the living room, turned off all the lights, even the main power switch, and drew the curtains. Then I stood in front of the front door and gently knocked, twice each time, knock, knock, knock... I kept knocking, I don't know how long I knocked, but I knocked very patiently, and kept knocking..."

Finally, I heard a knocking sound at the door. It was very soft, easily masked by my knocking. I even suspected that the knocking had been going on for a while, but I hadn't noticed it. The knocking was rhythmic, one knock, one knock, one knock... just like my knocking. Every two knocks I made, there was one knock from the outside. I was both surprised and delighted. I wanted to open the door, but I was also afraid of what terrible thing might be waiting for me outside.

"I hesitated for a long time, but curiosity finally overcame my fear, and I suddenly opened the door, only to find nothing outside, just pitch black. As I felt disappointed, a chill ran down my spine and spread to every part of my body, accompanied by a tingling sensation on my scalp. The reason I felt fear was because there should have been a street outside the door; even without a moon or streetlights, it couldn't have been pitch black."

"I knew I had succeeded. What lay outside the door wasn't a street, but another living room, which explained the darkness. The feeling of surprise and joy returned, but this time the 'surprise' far outweighed the 'joy.' Curiosity emboldened me once more, and I stretched out my hands, groping in the darkness, stepping into the living room outside..."

"Bang!"

Chapter 11 of "The Mysterious Files 2 - The Critical Point Between the Bizarre and the Real"

Chapter 11 of "The Mysterious Files 2 - The Critical Point Between the Bizarre and the Real"

Xiaoxia suddenly raised her voice, almost startling me, but she continued nonchalantly, "A loud bang suddenly rang out behind me, nearly making my heart jump out of my chest. I quickly turned around and rushed towards the door, but it was locked. I tried to open it, only to find myself locked out. Just as I was at a loss, I heard a knocking sound from the other side of the door, knock, knock, knock... each time with two knocks, the same rhythm as the one I had just knocked."

"I knew I was trapped inside the house's spirit. I was terrified and desperately wanted to escape. But the door was locked, and I was in my pajamas with no key on me... The key, yes, the key. If I could find the key, I could leave this hellish place. But where was the key? In the room, in my room."

"My parents' and my room are both on the second floor, mine is on the left, and theirs is on the right. I rushed upstairs like a madman, but because it was so dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, I tripped over the coffee table after only a few steps. I struggled to get up, and when my hand touched the ground, I felt something cold—a knife, a fruit knife on the coffee table. I gripped the knife tightly with both hands as if I had found a lifeline, because I didn't know if something terrible was lurking in the darkness."

I gripped the fruit knife, leaned against the wall, and walked up to the second floor, entering the room on the left. The curtains weren't drawn, and faint starlight shone through the window, illuminating the room. Although the starlight was faint, I had been in darkness the whole time, so I could see everything in the room clearly by its light.

"This isn't my room. Although I'm certain I went into the room on the left, this isn't my room; it's my parents' room. The sight of them sleeping peacefully in bed is the best proof. As I turned to go to my own room to find the key, a terrifying thought flashed through my mind: This is the soul of the house. How could my parents be here? If my parents are here, then will 'I' be here too?"

Just as I was lost in thought, a cold voice sounded behind me: 'Are you looking for me, or this?'

"I turned around in terror, gripping the fruit knife tightly in both hands. I saw 'me'—another me—sitting on the edge of the bed, gently shaking a bunch of keys in her right hand, and holding a fruit knife to my father's neck in her left. I yelled at her, asking who she was and what she wanted."

"She pressed a fruit knife against my father's neck, saying she was me, and that I knew what she wanted to do. I knew she wanted to kill my father, so I rushed forward and fought her. When I slashed a deep gash across her face with the fruit knife, she gave me a strange smile and said I couldn't kill her. Then she disappeared, but her voice came back immediately. It turned out that my parents, who were lying in bed, had both become 'me.' They sat up and said together that I couldn't kill them. I was terrified, but also furious. I grabbed the fruit knife and lunged at them, stabbing and slashing wildly at them..."

Xiaoxia's parents died from excessive blood loss due to multiple stab wounds, including a ruptured major artery. The murder weapon was the fruit knife Xiaoxia mentioned. I suspect that Xiaoxia killed her parents while in a state of mental instability, and her mental instability was most likely due to the "knocking on the yin gate" ritual.

Whether a house has a soul, I don't know, but it's certain that a house has a magnetic field. When Xiaoxia was practicing "knocking on the door of the spirit," she turned off the main power switch, closed the windows, and drew the curtains, thus isolating most external interference and making the house's magnetic field purer. During the knocking process, she was highly focused and excessively tense, and combined with the influence of the house's magnetic field, she was highly likely to experience hallucinations, potentially leading to a tragedy within those hallucinations.

But was Xiaoxia's killing of her parents purely due to the "knocking on the ghost's door"? I have reservations about this question. As far as I know, Xiaoxia's parents were extremely strict about her studies, and shortly before the incident, they had a major argument about her having a boyfriend. Therefore, I cannot rule out the possibility that Xiaoxia subconsciously harbored thoughts of patricide and matricide, and the "knocking on the ghost's door" was merely the trigger that released those subconscious desires.

[End of File Six]

File Seven Silver Immortal Murder Case

Author: Seeking No Desire

First published on: Tianya Ghost Stories (Reposting should be done responsibly)

A high school teacher surnamed Zhao was crying incessantly in front of me, her tears soaking through tissue after tissue. I couldn't tell if she was crying from sadness or fear, or perhaps both.

It took me quite a while to calm Ms. Zhao down a bit so she could tell me what had happened. She told me the story while sobbing, and although her words were incoherent, I could still manage to understand what had happened.

Every summer, the middle school where Teacher Zhao teaches organizes a trip for its graduating students, ostensibly to "broaden their horizons and strengthen relationships," but in reality, it's just a way for school leaders to squeeze one last penny out of the graduating class. Although the trip costs more than the market price and the routes are very off-the-beaten-path, not participating will cause problems for the school when it comes time to graduate. So, everyone reluctantly "enthusiastically" participates, as if it were a "donation" to the school.

Each graduating class's homeroom teacher is required to act as a tour guide, leading their students. Teacher Zhao has been a homeroom teacher for several graduating classes, and thus has acted as a tour guide several times. She's been to the tourist destination many times before; every school-organized trip comes here—to this very remote so-called resort.

The resort was located on a remote island. Apart from a few simple shacks, there were no other buildings, making it feel like a deserted island where you might encounter some natives at any moment. There wasn't much to do on the island; besides barbecuing and swimming, you could only stare blankly at the television, which often had a poor signal.

This godforsaken place, where even birds wouldn't lay eggs and dogs wouldn't defecate, would attract very few tourists even if they were given free admission, let alone those paying exorbitant fees. Yet, the school invariably chooses this place for every organized trip, regardless of summer or winter. The school's decision is truly baffling; no one would believe that the leadership hasn't secretly accepted bribes.

Although Ms. Zhao would complain with her students every time she came to this "desert island," and secretly curse the school leaders as hypocrites, none of these complaints and curses could change the reality. For the next three days, she, along with her students and other teachers, had to stay in this godforsaken place.

Swimming, playing beach volleyball, grilling chicken wings… the daytime passed quite easily, and before you knew it, dusk was falling. However, when Teacher Zhao planned to take the students to find a good spot to watch the sunset, they encountered a situation where "the sunset was infinitely beautiful, but the rain was even heavier." The weather during the rainy season is unpredictable; just moments ago, the sky was clear and blue, but suddenly a cool breeze swept in, followed by large dark clouds, and a torrential downpour began.

It started raining, ruining their only form of entertainment. Everyone had run back to their rooms, those makeshift sheds, hoping to watch TV and play cards, but first the TV couldn't get a signal, and then the power went out—the island's only generator had broken down.

The students began to complain, and when the teachers went to the resort management, all they received was a pile of candles. Incited by some mischievous students, the group started to jeer and demand to leave. However, leaving wasn't easy; unless one was a strong swimmer who could swim for tens of kilometers in the wind and rain, they would have to leave. There were no boats on the island, and none would come to pick them up before the agreed time.

After realizing that making a fuss would be pointless, the students had no choice but to enjoy a "romantic" dinner by candlelight, after which they would have to find their own ways to pass the time.

Chapter 12 of "The Mysterious Files 2 - The Critical Point Between the Bizarre and the Real"

Chapter 12 of "The Mysterious Files 2 - The Critical Point Between the Bizarre and the Real"

Ms. Zhao was also feeling bored, sitting alone in her room, wondering how to pass the time, when there was a knock on the door. Outside stood three girls she usually got along with; they were all class officers: Vice Class Monitor Xiaofen, Life Committee Member Xiaomei, and English Subject Representative Xiaolei. After chatting for a while, Xiaofen suddenly suggested playing with a Ouija board, and Xiaolei immediately agreed. Xiaomei, however, was a little scared, saying that playing with a Ouija board might attract evil spirits, but not playing would be too boring, so she finally agreed.

Once you've decided to play, you need to prepare the props. A large sheet of white paper is easy to find, and a pen is also easy to find, but the most important thing—the saucer—is nowhere to be found. Without a saucer, you can't play Ouija, so what should you do?

"How about we try playing Kokkuri-san instead!" Whether it was Xiaofen or Xiaolei who suggested it, everyone immediately agreed. Kokkuri-san is similar to Ouija board games; it's a spirit-summoning game played with coins. Everyone has one or two coins on them, so it's not hard to find.

There are actually two ways to play the Kokkuri-san game. One is similar to the Ouija board game and is less dangerous. The other is a game that can only be played by one person. After summoning the Kokkuri-san, you cannot touch the coin, but the coin will move on its own on the paper. The success rate of the latter method is very low, but if it succeeds, the player usually dies because the ghost summoned is invariably a vengeful spirit who died unjustly.

There were four of them, including Teacher Zhao, and none of them wanted to be haunted by evil spirits, so they didn't have to play the latter game. Light a candle at each of the four corners of the table, lay a sheet of white paper flat on the table, and draw circles the same size as coins on them. Label each circle with the starting position, a number, and common words such as yes, no, good, no, have, none, male, female, water, fire, etc., as well as common surnames. Once everything is ready, the game can begin.

Xiaofen seemed quite adept at this game, so she was chosen to invite the Silver Spirit. After everyone placed their index fingers on a one-yuan coin, she began to murmur, "Silver Spirit, Silver Spirit, please come to my side from the abyss of darkness... Silver Spirit, Silver Spirit, please come to my side from the abyss of darkness..."

Xiao Fen kept chanting the incantation to summon the Silver Lily. She didn't know how long she chanted, but the coin, which had been cold but had become warm after absorbing the warmth of the four people's index fingers, suddenly began to move slowly. The coin moved very little and only circled around the starting position.

Although she had often heard of spirit summoning games like Ouija boards, this was Ms. Zhao's first time playing one herself. So, watching the coin slowly move, she forgot her teacher's role and excitedly exclaimed, "It's up! It's up! It's really up! What should we do next?"

Xiaofen said to Teacher Zhao like a teacher reprimanding a student, "Don't make a scene, or Yinxian will be unhappy. We need to ask Yinxian a few questions first..."

Xiaofen asked Yinxian about her age, gender, and surname, and the answers were: 99, female, and water. Upon hearing the answers, everyone frowned. Xiaomei said, "It's possible Yinxian said she's 99 years old, but is there anyone with the surname water?"

The three girls all turned their gaze toward Teacher Zhao.

Teacher Zhao thought for a moment and said, "Yes, there is a surname Shui in the Hundred Family Surnames, but it is very rare here. At least, I don't know anyone with the surname Shui."

Then everyone started asking questions about things they already knew, such as their age, exam scores, etc., and Yinxian answered truthfully without a single mistake. After that, everyone started asking questions about things they didn't know, such as what their future job would be like, whether they would find a suitable husband, and what their future husband's surname would be.

Gin-sen answered all the other people's questions, though whether they were true or not was still unknown. However, no matter what Mei asked, the coin always remained "no" when it came to anything about the future.

After playing for a while, Xiaomei started to get upset because she kept getting the answer "no" to her questions, so she said she didn't want to play anymore. Although everyone wanted to play more, they were too embarrassed to ask her to continue because they saw Xiaomei's unhappy face.

Everyone agreed to end it, and Xiaofen said to the coin, "Silver God, Silver God, thank you, please go back now!"

As soon as Xiaofen finished speaking, the coin landed on the "no." She frowned, and the others felt a growing unease. She repeated the question several times, but the coin remained on the "no." Finally, she said, "Gin-san, Gin-san, don't you want to go back?"

The coin moved slightly but remained on the "no" sign. Xiaofen said again, "If you want to go back, why don't you go back?"

This time, the coin moved to the character for "water".

Everyone was confused, wondering what Yin-xian was trying to say. Xiao-mei suddenly trembled with fear and said, "If I can't return it, fine, I'm not playing anymore." As she spoke, she tried to pull her index finger away from the coin.

Xiaofen tried to stop her, but it was too late, because Xiaomei's index finger had already left the coin. The moment the index finger separated from the coin, the candles at the four corners of the table went out, and outside the room, the wind and rain roared, thunder roared, and lightning flashed across the night sky.

Teacher Zhao and Xiao Lei both withdrew their hands out of fear. Xiao Fen's scream rang out in the darkness: "Oh no! Yin Xian is angry!"

The flash of lightning illuminated the room for a moment, revealing that Xiaofen's index finger was still pressed on the coin, which was guiding her finger to spin wildly across the paper.

Xiaomei and Xiaolei screamed and rushed out of the room in fear. Teacher Zhao also wanted to rush out, but as a teacher, she couldn't abandon her students. So she cried out in terror to Xiaofen to quickly pull her finger back. But Xiaofen screamed even more in terror that she couldn't pull it back, as if it were stuck.

Teacher Zhao was terrified and panicked. Just as she was about to help pull Xiao Fen's hand off the table, Xiao Fen suddenly flung her hand, and the coin flew out of the door. Xiao Fen screamed in fright, "Quickly find the coin, or we'll all be dead!"

Teacher Zhao was already at a loss, and Xiao Fen's words only made her more frightened and helpless. She rushed out the door and groped in the dark in the pouring rain to find a small coin.

However, Teacher Zhao searched for a long time but couldn't find her. When she thought about why she didn't ask someone for help, she discovered that Xiao Fen was also missing.

That night, all the teachers, students, and resort staff braved the rain to search for Xiaomei and the other two girls, but they only found Xiaofen and Xiaolei. The next morning, they finally found Xiaomei, but she was already a cold corpse.

Xiaomei was found on the beach. A forensic examination determined that she died by drowning. All indications suggest that she was likely drowned on the beach with her head held underwater. There were signs that she had struggled before her death; her clothes were torn in several places, and her hair had clearly been roughly pulled.

The investigation proceeded in an eerie atmosphere. Xiaofen and Xiaolei insisted that Xiaomei was killed by the Silver Spirit. But when I asked them where they went after leaving the room, their answers became contradictory. One minute they said they were looking for a coin, the next they said they were looking for Xiaomei, and finally they simply said they were possessed by the Silver Spirit and remembered nothing. Clearly, they were lying.

After repeated questioning, Xiaofen and Xiaolei finally confessed the truth. It turned out that Xiaomei was dating a handsome guy in their class, which aroused their jealousy, and they had long harbored a murderous intent. On the night of the incident, a torrential rain and power outage created favorable conditions for them. To escape punishment, they deliberately took Xiaomei to Teacher Zhao's room to play with silver coins, hoping to pin the murder on the silver coin.

While I was astonished that they would murder their classmate out of jealousy, I couldn't help but admire their astonishing ingenuity. It's impossible that they had premeditated this; their entire plan must have originated from the moment the rain or power outage began. The resort was located in a remote area, making it virtually impossible to predict the local weather. Their plan required two crucial conditions: torrential rain and a power outage. When it started pouring rain, everyone would stay indoors, giving them the opportunity to invite Xiaomei and Teacher Zhao to play Gumiho. Furthermore, during the downpour and power outage, it would be less likely they would be discovered when they forcibly dragged Xiaomei to the beach. Afterward, they drowned Xiaomei on the beach; the seawater would inevitably soak their clothes, and the torrential rain would conveniently conceal this.

Their plan was almost perfect, completely misdirecting the investigation towards the fictitious Kokkuri-san. If I didn't have the ability to detect lies, they probably would have escaped punishment.

After the case was closed, I met with Teacher Zhao once. She said she often dreamed of Xiaomei. In her dream, Xiaomei, soaking wet, kept saying to her, "Take me back...take me back..."

[End of File Seven]

Chapter 13 of "The Mysterious Files 2 - The Critical Point Between the Bizarre and the Real"

Chapter 13 of "The Mysterious Files 2 - The Critical Point Between the Bizarre and the Real"

Files Eight Snake Curse

Author: Seeking No Desire

First published on: Tianya Ghost Stories (Reposting should be done responsibly)

A fire broke out in the middle of the night one night in a dormitory building for workers in a large garment factory, less than a month after its completion. The fire was extremely fierce. When the fire brigade arrived, flames were shooting out of every window of the dormitory. Four fire trucks simultaneously sprayed water to fight the fire, which was not extinguished until dawn.

The fire claimed 18 lives, all of whom were garment factory workers asleep in their dormitories. The authorities took the incident very seriously and ordered a thorough investigation. Preliminary investigations revealed that the fire was caused by the garment factory's violation of regulations by storing flammable materials such as fabric and finished garments in the dormitories, which lacked any fire-fighting equipment, leading to the tragedy.

Simply labeling it as a "violation" shifts all responsibility to the garment factory owner—a common tactic used by the government. But is it really just a simple matter of "violation"? The fact that this case was assigned to me for investigation already indicates there's more to it than meets the eye.

On the night of the fire, most workers worked overtime until late at night, which was actually the case every day, and the workers felt helpless about it. Because if they didn't work overtime, they wouldn't get overtime pay, only a meager basic wage. If they could get that, it would be fine, but usually, not working overtime meant business was bad, and bad business meant they wouldn't be able to pay wages. Therefore, although working overtime every day was exhausting, the workers all hoped to work overtime.

After get off work, the workers returned to their dormitories to shower and sleep. Everyone was exhausted, so they fell asleep as soon as they lay down. The sudden fire in the middle of the night woke the workers, who fled the dormitories. Because there were over three hundred workers in the dormitories, some chaos was inevitable, but the majority managed to safely evacuate to the open area outside.

The dormitory was newly built, and although it lacked any fire-fighting equipment, it still had fire escape routes, so even in the event of a sudden fire, the workers could safely evacuate. However, in this fire, a staggering eighteen people perished, all burned alive while lying in their beds. Did they not wake up when the fire broke out? This is almost impossible. Even if the workers' frantic screams during their escape didn't wake them, surely they would have been awakened when the flames burned their bodies! Yet they remained in their beds, without even struggling, lying there like corpses until they became truly dead.

I initially suspected that the eighteen victims might have died before the fire, or even that someone had murdered them and then set the fire to cover up the crime. However, I quickly dismissed this possibility, because the victims lived in eleven different rooms; killing them in a short time without alerting others would be virtually impossible, even if the number of perpetrators was no less than the number of victims. Unless, of course, the survivors in those eleven rooms were all the murderers.

Just when I was racking my brains trying to figure it out, the nineteenth victim appeared. This victim was named Xiao Zheng, and he died mysteriously the day after the fire. It was a mysterious death because when he died, his face was black, his eyes were rolled back, he was convulsing, and he was foaming at the mouth—clearly, he died of poisoning. However, the forensic doctor didn't find any toxins in his body, and he lived and ate with his coworkers, and hadn't gone out alone before the incident. So how could he have been poisoned?