Les trois histoires de fantômes de Jinzhong Deux Tai Sui détruisent la ville

Chapitre 6

"What's wrong?" Xu Xu asked hurriedly, still shaken.

"I was so nervous when I ran out that I gripped the handle too tightly."

Xu Xu stared in disbelief at Sun Jing's outstretched palm. The memory card lying there was tragically bent at a sharp angle in the middle, almost as if it were broken.

"Oh, oh, you...you..." Xu Xu was so angry that she could barely speak.

"Well, maybe it can be repaired and restored," Sun Jing said in a very guilty voice.

"How are we supposed to fix this kind of physical damage? You've got to put all that effort into it, ugh." Xu Xu gritted her teeth in frustration.

"Maybe it can be fixed." Sun Jing held the memory card in front of his eyes, as if he wanted to find a place with good streetlights to examine the damage properly, but he didn't pay attention to his footing, tripped over something, and fell forward. He landed on the ground in an extremely awkward position, and the memory card he was holding flew out of his hand.

Xu Xu was almost dumbfounded. She watched as the memory card flew straight to the alleyway next to the scaffolding before landing on the ground, then bounced back up with great elasticity and fell below the sidewalk.

He jogged over slowly, looked down at her, then looked back at Sun Jing, who had just gotten up and was still dusting himself off.

"Did you check the almanac before you went out today? Your memory card fell down the drain," Xu Xu said weakly, already deeply affected by the news.

If the memory card were intact, we might be able to pry it out of the drain and recover the data, but now...

The two people cast long shadows under the streetlights, looking dejected.

Reaching the entrance to Sun Jing's alley, Xu Xu sighed heavily again, saying, "If only I hadn't worried about whether anyone was following us."

Meaningless hindsight. Xu Xu wouldn't have complained like that if she hadn't been so extremely frustrated. After saying that, she waved to Sun Jing, turned around to call a taxi, but then turned back, took a tissue, and handed it to Sun Jing.

Sun Jing was taken aback.

"Your wound is bleeding again." Seeing that he didn't take the tissue, Xu Xu gently pressed it against his forehead, folded it a few times, and then placed it on his forehead again. She let go, and the tissue stuck to the wound without falling off. Xu Xu smiled, shrugged slightly, and walked to the side of the road, waving to an oncoming empty taxi.

As the taxi slowed down and came to a stop, Xu Xu heard a voice behind him say, "Want to come to my place for a drink?"

He slowly turned around and saw that Sun Jing was still standing there, not having left.

Xu Xu turned her head to look at the man, paused for a moment, and then said, "Do you know how ugly you look right now?"

The blood on his head had been wiped away, but the large bump was still very noticeable, and his clothes were wrinkled and covered in dust. Xu Xu wondered how Sun Jing could still show such a smile under these circumstances, as if he were a prince at a ball inviting a glass slipper girl sitting in the corner to dance.

"Perhaps you will feel..." He paused, as if searching for the right word, then said, "Satisfied."

"Oh my god, I think I'm experiencing the worst flirting of my life."

The taxi had already driven away. Sun Jing shrugged: "Okay, let me play the gentleman and call you another one."

"Considering your bad luck today, perhaps I should take pity on you." Xu Xu gave Sun Jingfei a seductive look. "Actually, I'm quite looking forward to seeing what other clumsy little tricks you have up your sleeve."

"A little trick, huh? You'll see."

The two walked deeper into the alley.

"After leaving Han Shang's place, I was thinking that the guy who hit me on the head with the clothesline must be very curious about who I am, the one who opened the door in the middle of the night." After saying this, Sun Jing opened the door and gestured "please" to Xu Xu.

"So even though he ran away in a panic, he probably didn't go very far. The house is a bit messy; that's always how it is in a single man's place. Have a seat, I'll go wash my face."

A few minutes later, Sun Jing reappeared in the room, having changed into clean clothes and cleaned her forehead, looking much better.

Xu Xu stared at him and said, "Why do I feel like you're starting to keep me in suspense again?"

Sun Jingyi shrugged: "No way."

"What is this?" Xu Xu stared at his left palm, where there was a small thing.

"A USB flash drive is definitely more convenient than a memory card for storing data."

"Is this what you got?" Xu Xu's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

Sun Jing smiled and nodded.

"Where did that memory card come from?"

"Of course they're on my phone; I have lots of great photos stored there."

Xu Xu immediately recalled the scene of him walking with his hands in his pockets and realized what he had done.

"You liar!" Xu Xu exclaimed.

Sun Jing bowed slightly and replied, "You too."

Xu Xu glared angrily at Sun Jing for a while, then said, "You were actually planning this whole thing back then."

Sun Jing smiled again, and in Xu Xu's eyes, this hateful smile seemed to say: Look, this is the difference.

Fortunately, Sun Jing immediately composed himself, his smile vanishing, and said seriously, "I never expected to run into someone else in that room today. If I had been able to quietly obtain this USB drive, whatever my plans were after reading it, I would have remained hidden for the time being. But this blow..."

Sun Jing touched his forehead and smiled wryly, "You've dragged me into this immediately, sorry about you too."

Xu Xu tilted his head slightly, indicating that he didn't care at all.

"Although that person didn't know what I was going to do, since he was looking for something, he could easily guess my intentions. So I had to do something to minimize the danger. We both spoke quite loudly along the way, and if the person following behind had sharp ears, they could hear most of it."

Xu Xu saw the faint smile on Sun Jing's lips, spat, and said, "You're so smug."

"I only made you act in a play, why are you so resentful?"

Being scammed by a con artist is indeed a serious blow to Xu Xu, a con artist with ambition. However, she now plans to forget about it all, which at least proves that she had excellent judgment in choosing her partners, right?

"So now the person who ambushed you thinks you know nothing, and that what you got is destroyed, so you're safe," Xu Xu said.

"It's just a temporary respite from danger, since I'm already in his sights," Sun Jing said, rubbing his forehead with a hint of regret. "I threw the card out at the end to see how the guy hiding there would react. I never expected it to fall into such a ditch. What a coincidence! This fall was really a loss."

"Yes, what a coincidence," he said with a sigh.

The two of them looked up at each other simultaneously, then remembered the swaying scaffolding, and felt a strange unease, falling silent.

The slightly oppressive atmosphere didn't last long. Sun Jing turned on the computer, plugged in the USB drive, and said, "It's time to satisfy you."

Xu Xu pursed her lips and moved closer.

The USB drive contained only eight audio files, ranging from a dozen minutes to nearly an hour, all of which were recordings of Han Shang's dictation.

This wasn't recorded by Han Shang on short notice; the segment numbered one was recorded last December.

The first ten seconds of the recording are silent, with only a slight hissing sound, before a slightly deep female voice comes on.

"I've decided to re-staging 'Tale,' in order to... (her voice paused here, then skipped over what she was about to say) so there are some things I want to record in this way."

"A bizarre beginning," Sun Jing thought.

"I don't know who will hear what I'm saying, but what I'm about to say is all based on my own experiences. Please try to believe me." At this point, Han Shang seemed to take a deep breath, and then her voice finally became calm and normal as she began to recount her experiences.

"My name is Han Shang, I'm twenty-four years old. Since I was little, I've had some extremely depressing dreams. They're about many gatherings that took place in a room more than half a century ago, and the lives of Jews living near the Shanghai Synagogue (Note 1), which also happened decades before I was born. In recent years, these very unpleasant dreams have become more frequent, causing me serious psychological problems. So after graduating from the Acting Department of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, I didn't immediately become an actor, but instead went to East China Normal University to take the entrance exam for a master's degree in psychology. I thought I could solve my problems through psychology."

"Two months ago..." The narrator's tone shifted again here. "Yes, two months ago, it feels like a long time... but it's only been two months. I met Philadelphia, he's Fikry's nephew."

Upon hearing that the incident involved the famous actor who died suddenly last year, Xu Xu raised his eyebrows, while Sun Jing began to twirl his ring.

"It was at a small salon discussing mysticism. At the time, I didn't believe in these things at all, so I said a lot of refutations. Right there, Philadelphia received a call from the police informing him that Fikryn was dead. Shortly after the funeral, Philadelphia came to me. He was in a very bad state and said he was having a big problem. What I said at the salon made him think of seeking help from me. He wanted me to analyze a... curse, and he wanted me to tell him that everything that happened could be explained by psychology, and that none of it was real."

"I couldn't do it. I think these things were probably destined to happen to me. The source of the curse was Zweig, the very popular German writer of the early 20th century. Before his suicide in 1942, he wrote an autobiography. In it, he mentioned the curse, about his plays. He believed that his plays were responsible for the deaths of three of the most famous stage actors and a director at the time. In general, whenever he wrote a play, misfortune would occur among the cast and crew before the official performance. This led Zweig to eventually abandon plays altogether and turn to novels and biographies. And when Philadelphia was sorting through his uncle's belongings, he found a previously unpublished manuscript of a play by Zweig, namely *Tale*."

Upon hearing Zweig's name, Sun Jing and Xu Xu both thought of the play "Tale." Han Shang then brought up "Tale" as well, describing a dead man uttering a curse that would kill, which chilled them to the bone.

"Fei Ke-qun had already begun preparations for rehearsing 'Tale,' when he died of an asthma attack. Fei Ke-qun, however, planned to continue producing 'Tale,' directing and starring himself, and had already cast Xia Qi-wen as the female lead."

Hearing Xia Qiwen's name, both of them felt a pang in their hearts. She was an actress as famous as Fei Kequn, and she had also died shortly after him.

"After everything was in place, Philadelphia discovered the curse in Zweig's autobiography and began to worry about his safety. But the entire production was already underway, and he couldn't bear to stop. So he came to me, probably just seeking some psychological comfort. Of course, I didn't believe in such a curse, just coincidence or some kind of psychological pressure and suggestion that could cause harm—that's what I thought at the time. Heh..." A chilling chuckle came from the speaker, "But things soon changed."

"First, my dreams progressed to the point where I was hallucinating, and then Xia Qiwen committed suicide by jumping off a building. Regarding my hallucinations, I always saw famous people in those scenes, such as Zweig, Freud, Dali, and my great-grandfather. He was Jewish and had been a rabbi at the Shanghai Synagogue. Ah… a lot happened that gradually changed my attitude towards psychology and mysticism. Finally, I went to the Synagogue, and in some hallucinations, I saw my great-grandfather bury a box."

A pause of a few seconds.

"She likes to keep things mysterious, just like you," Xu Xu said to Sun Jing.

"What's with the mystery? She obviously found the box." Before Sun Jing could finish speaking, Han Shang continued from the recording.

"I found the box in the basement in front of the Ark of the Sacred Relic. Then I realized that those hallucinations were largely real. I think some mysterious force allowed me to inherit some of my great-grandfather's memories. In the box, besides my great-grandfather's savings, there was also a record. He had participated in an experiment conducted by Freud, who had turned to mysticism in his later years. He wanted to prove that deep within the human heart, in the endless abyss beneath the subconscious, there was a door. That was the source of all great power, the path to a mysterious and incredible world."

"The experiment was designed by Freud, who required participants to perform a ritual daily using a special Medinzo relief bronze plaque, a work by Camille, created specifically for this experiment."

"What is Metanzo?" Xu asked slowly.

"The angel closest to God in Judaism has thirty-six wings and thirty-six thousand eyes. Nothing can escape his perception, making him a bridge between God and mortals," Sun Jing replied, pausing the recording.

Xu Xu imagined a person covered in eyes and shuddered: "How ugly. Where's Camille?"

"She was a beautiful woman, Rodin's lover. It's said that her talent put even Rodin under pressure."

"Is it really that beautiful?" This was actually Xu Xu's main concern.

"I've seen the photos; they at least met my aesthetic standards. It's a pity he went insane later."

"Beauty is often accompanied by misfortune." She let out a long, mournful sigh.

"You will live a long life," Sun Jing said.

Xu Xu rolled her eyes, but couldn't think of a retort, so she said irritably, "Keep listening."

The atmosphere in the room was a little better than the oppressive atmosphere before.

"This experiment began in 1911 and lasted for many years. I don't know when it ended, or even if it ended at all. All I know now is that after Freud's death, someone else took over the experiment. However, my great-grandfather Wilton came to China in the 1930s and stopped attending the regular meetings of the experimenters, and his daily rituals were abandoned after a period of time. This was related to his severe headaches and increasingly worse mental state. Today I am certain that this was caused by the rituals, and another consequence of the rituals was that some of his memories were passed to me through dreams four generations later."

"It seems that many strange things are happening to the participants in the experiment. These mysterious things are not under the control of the participants themselves, such as the curse that happened to Zweig. He could feel the terrible power in his script, but he could not change it and eventually had to stop writing."

"The above are clues that Philadelphia and I obtained during our investigation of the curse, combined with the resurgence of memories that weren't originally mine. What I find hard to understand is that Philadelphia, who was initially terrified of the curse, suddenly became relaxed in the period before his death. Rather than saying he found a way to break the curse, it's more accurate to say he no longer believed in its existence. Perhaps it's because of Fick's cause of death; now it seems more like a murder. But there are still too many inexplicable aspects, and besides, he's dead now too."

When Han Shang said this, her voice was filled with obvious sadness. It immediately made her relationship with Philadelphia clear.

"Three people connected to the play *Tale* have already died, while each previous curse only resulted in one death. Is this curse particularly vicious, or were some of the deaths merely accidents? I believe even if Zweig were still alive, he himself wouldn't know. But… because… I think he…"

Han Shang started speaking three times, but couldn't finish her sentence. After a few seconds of silence, she spoke again.

"I think my choice wasn't rational, but that's how people are. I'm going to re-enact The Tale. Maybe I'll die, maybe I won't. And another thing I want to do is figure out as much as possible what exactly happened with the experiments that caused the curse and these memories imposed on me. Freud is dead, but the experiments are still going on. What happened to those people afterward? Could something even more terrible happen? I can remember more and more things, and I think maybe some clues will suddenly appear in my head."

"A terrible...and magnificent experiment. I was actually a product of this experiment, but it's still hard to imagine that Freud could actually design it. This is far more important than all his achievements in the first half of his life combined. He opened Pandora's box, pointing out the path to the ultimate end. Following it, will it lead to destruction or rebirth? I need to find this path again, to see if it has become desolate in these decades, or if someone has quietly moved forward a bit further. When I have new progress, I will record a second recording."

The first recording ends here.

Sun Jing lit a cigarette, slowly stretched out his hand, and asked for one as well.

Taking a deep breath, Sun Jing began playing the other recordings in order.

Memories passed down from Han Shang's great-grandfather, Wilton, whether dreams or fleeting hallucinations, are always silent. In the scenes depicting the gathering of experimenters, she can see Freud lying on a recliner, listening to the accounts of each participant. The faces of the experimenters become clearer, but she no longer sees famous figures like Dali or Zweig, making it difficult to identify them.

At the beginning of this year, amidst the sounds of firecrackers during the Lunar New Year, Han Shang suddenly saw the scene of the gathering again. This time it was slightly different; a middle-aged man was standing next to Freud. He was Sven Hedin (Note 2).

Was he a new experimenter, or Freud's special assistant, and perhaps succeed him as the experiment director after his death? Han Shang couldn't tell, but this famous explorer from the early 20th century left enough footprints in China for Han Shang to follow.