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

Chapitre 20

There was a small hole in the floor not far from the gate, and there was something in the hole.

Sun Jing bent down and used a lot of effort to pull the thing embedded in the floor.

It turned out to be the heel of a high heel.

Sun Jing held the heel in front of his eyes and, judging from the break, it hadn't been broken for long.

He immediately remembered that when he called Xu Xu over the night he was knocked unconscious, she had changed her clothes and shoes, and was now wearing sneakers. Moreover, she seemed to have sprained one ankle, and wasn't very agile when jogging.

Given her unusual reaction at this moment, there is no doubt that Xu Xu has been here!

He looked up at Xu Xu. She was standing at the kitchen doorway, staring intently at the shoe heel in Sun Jing's hand, breathing rapidly.

Looking at the heel, Xu Xu's head suddenly throbbed with pain. She staggered back a step, one hand supporting her forehead, the other bracing herself against the stove. She knocked over a broken vase that had been lying there for who knows how many years.

The vase didn't break, but dozens of large cockroaches swarmed out of the opening, and a small portion of them even flew up and were in front of Xu Xu in the blink of an eye.

Most people find cockroaches extremely repulsive. They can stomp on one or two, but when dozens come at once, Xu Xu is so frightened that she forgets her headache and screams as she turns and runs away.

Her scream was so shrill that even the two men who had collected the toll at the street corner could vaguely hear it.

"Is someone calling?" the tall man asked suspiciously.

The short man sent the text message, put his phone away, and said, "Women always make a fuss. Besides, even if something happens, it has nothing to do with us. We'll only do what we're paid for, so don't worry about it."

"That's true. But you're really something, managing to charge them two hundred yuan."

"It's hilarious to see them putting on an act. Do they really think they can just walk in without going in? It's only two hundred yuan; consider it our reward for sweeping. Besides, they don't need the money, do they? It's a pity about this pretty girl; didn't they say only the guy was coming?"

The tall man shrugged, just like the short man had said. They weren't concerned about a large crowd since they were only taking a small amount of food. He bent down and put the warning sign that he had deliberately put down back up.

Demolition scheduled for tomorrow; danger, do not approach!

The short man glanced at his watch and said, "Traffic control will be implemented in half an hour. The demolition team should be here soon. I'll go and wake them up."

He walked into the building opposite number fourteen and soon called out two men, still reeking of alcohol. The two men took the hard hats and thanked him profusely. In their eyes, the two brothers who had only been working on the construction team for a few days were really nice people. Not only did they drink and play cards with him during the night shift, but they also covered for him for a few hours when he and his brother got drunk.

"Please take care of me in the future," the shorter man said.

"Definitely, definitely," the two replied repeatedly, smiling as they watched the tall and short figures disappear into the distance.

"I remember now."

There were a few cockroaches that had been stepped on and killed on the ground; the others had long since disappeared.

“I remember now.” Xu Xu looked at Sun Jing and said, “I remember everything that happened that day. I’ve been here before.”

Sun Jing breathed a sigh of relief. How fortunate! According to Dr. Wang, in such cases, the likelihood of further psychological trauma is greater than the chance of recovery.

"That noon, when I saw Han Shang get knocked down by a flowerpot, I closed my eyes to calm myself down. When I opened my eyes again, I turned my head to look this way," Xu Xu pointed down to indicate that the direction she was looking was No. 10 Old.

"I didn't dare look at the place where the accident happened right away, I wanted to calm myself down. But unexpectedly, I saw... I saw that the door to number fourteen was open, and standing inside the door was..."

Xu Xu stopped here, this was a crucial moment, but Sun Jing did not rush her.

Xu Xu choked for a moment, but ultimately didn't say what it was. Instead, she said, "It didn't look like a person. I didn't see it very clearly. He was backing away, and the door was closing. I only glanced at it. He was wearing a black robe, and his head was a skull."

She paused, looked at Sun Jing, and emphasized again, "No skin, no flesh, no eyes, just two holes. A bare skull."

No wonder, Sun Jing thought. Xu Xu wasn't originally that fragile, but he had scared her by holding a skull in front of his face at the mass grave, which had caused her to develop this problem.

"I didn't know what it was, and I wondered if I was seeing things. Besides, Han Shang died around that time; it's too much of a coincidence."

After we parted ways after dinner, I came back, wanting to see what was going on.

Sun Jing tightened her grip on the heel of her shoe.

"That day, the door was locked, and the police were busy not far behind me. But that didn't stop me, hehe." With a slow laugh, Sun Jing felt that her emotions had almost stabilized.

"After I came in, the two doors inside were unlocked, just like today. But there was one thing that was completely different. That day, the dust on the wooden floor was very thick. There were no footprints in the house on the right, but there were in this house, so I went into this house."

"A normal person's footprint?" Sun Jing asked.

"It's hard to say; it's not just one or two clear lines of footprints. It's rather messy."

"Is it in every room?"

Xu Xu pointed to the ground, drawing an arc as he pointed towards the depths of the corridor, "There's none in the kitchen or toilet along this corridor. There aren't any in the rooms in front either, all the way to the door of the largest room at the very end."

Sun Jing imagined the scene: an empty house, long abandoned and covered in cobwebs, yet many footprints appeared on the ground. Even he himself would feel a tightness in such an environment, let alone Xu Xu, who had seen the skeleton.

"I'll just follow the footprints," Xu Xu said, and started walking forward.

Sun Jing followed her forward. The corridor was empty, as were the rooms on both sides, containing nothing but two worn-out chairs and half an empty cardboard box. On one wall was a large sheet of paper with the four characters "Heaven rewards diligence" written in calligraphy. The calligraphy was poor, likely left by a previous owner; it had turned dusty and was illegible, with no clear signature. Sun Jing initially wanted to go up and see if the writer had left their name, but then slowly stopped.

“That day, when I was almost here, a sudden gust of cold wind came.” Xu Xu smiled at Sun Jing. “It sounds a bit mystical, but that’s how I felt at the time. A cold wind swirled and blew up in the corridor. With so much dust, you can imagine what it was like. I could only squint and look down, watching the footprints on the ground fade away as the wind blew them away, and they disappeared in a moment.”

"I was really scared. I was thinking about whether to back out when I felt something in front of me. I barely managed to look ahead into the wind, and there it was, standing right at the doorway."

Sun Jing looked in the direction she was pointing; it was the innermost room on the right side of the corridor.

"He was dressed like a black hooded coat, covering his entire body, and under the hood was his head, a head full of bone. His two eye sockets were facing me, and I think he was looking at me. I was terrified, even more so than when I saw a cockroach. I didn't scream very loudly because as soon as I opened my mouth, gusts of wind and dust rushed in. I ran back, trembling, my legs were weak, and I almost tripped at the door. At that moment, I thought he was grabbing my foot and preventing me from leaving, so I didn't dare to look back and just struggled desperately. Only after I got out did I realize that my heel was stuck in the floor."

Xu Xu chuckled self-deprecatingly, "This was the most embarrassing thing I've ever done. I was out in the sun for ages before I recovered. I took a shower when I got home, then went straight to sleep. When I woke up, it was already evening. This ghost story is too absurd. No one would believe me if I told them, and it would make me look cowardly and lose face, so I had to keep it to myself. That night, I went to Wujiang Road and ate a lot, trying to forget about it. If I hadn't happened to be on Wujiang Road, close to where you are, I wouldn't have been able to get here so quickly after receiving the call."

"Ghostly encounter? I think someone is just playing tricks," Sun Jing said.

Believing in the existence of mysterious phenomena and believing in the existence of ghosts and gods are two different things, and believing in the existence of ghosts and gods and believing that what Xu Xu saw was indeed a ghost are also two different things.

"You're a little nearsighted, how much?" Sun Jing asked.

"A little over two hundred but less than three hundred."

"The sunglasses you wore that day weren't prescription, right? So when you stood on the street and looked at the people across the street, it was always a little blurry. As for the second time, the wind was blowing against your face, and it was all dusty, so you couldn't even open your eyes and wouldn't be able to see very clearly."

"But his head is just a skeleton, I'm sure I'm not mistaken. And why would there be a draft in the room?"

Sun Jing shook his head, but asked, "So, you haven't been inside this room before?"

"No."

"Then let's go in and take a look."

This is a large room of about 30 square meters, with floral curtains drawn, and the light is dim.

"Pull up the curtains a little to let some light in," Sun Jing said.

She slowly walked to the window and lifted a corner of the curtain. Outside were two-story old-style shikumen houses in the alley behind, half of which had already been demolished.

Sun Jing squatted on the ground, examining the marks on the floor by the light. After a while, he stood up and shook his head. It was similar to the area outside the corridor, a very light layer of dust. There were no human footprints—if their opponent was human.

I slowly lowered the curtain, and as soon as I let go, several pieces of fabric fell down. This fabric curtain had long been brittle from being exposed to the sun.

Sun Jing's gaze swept around the empty room, finally settling on a large closet.

The closet was nearly three meters wide, and its two wooden sliding doors were not fully closed, leaving a gap. The closet was not floor-to-ceiling; it was a meter off the ground, rising all the way to the ceiling—this layout was rather unusual.

In older houses, there are often built-in closets that don't reach the floor, but that's usually due to objective limitations. For example, if there's a staircase behind the wall, placing the closet higher up can utilize the space above the stairs, but space must be left below for the stairs. However, these two closets are against a partition wall, with another small room behind them, so there are no objective limitations.

Of course, perhaps this was done to keep things away from the ground, so they could be stored in a dry place. But the room was empty, and at first glance, there was nothing else to suspect.

Sun Jing pushed open a sliding door to the closet, revealing a complete space inside. It wasn't multi-tiered, but rather about two meters deep. He sniffed and suddenly smiled.

“We’ve found the place,” he said.

"What did you find?" Xu Xu walked over and peered inside.

"Take a sniff."

"It's nothing, it's normal, maybe a little musty. What's wrong?"

"If this cabinet had been kept closed, even if it wasn't completely sealed, there wouldn't have been this much of a smell. Right now, the air inside is almost the same as the air outside."

Xu Xu immediately understood, "This cabinet was recently opened, and it must have been left open for a while. But why are there no footprints on the floor?"

"Perhaps... it was blown away by the wind."

Xu Xu shivered.

The cupboard was empty. Sun Jing and Xu Xu peered inside for a long time but couldn't find anything wrong. Sun Jing thought for a moment and closed the sliding door. He tried to pull the inner door, but it wouldn't budge; it seemed stuck.

The sliding door looked simple: two horizontal bars fitted with three thick wooden planks to form a door. Xu Xu touched and knocked on the stuck door, but the door was so thick that he couldn't hear clearly; it seemed like there was something mysterious inside.

Sun Jing pushed herself up and squeezed into the closet, standing behind the jammed door to examine it. Xu Xu followed closely behind, climbing in as well. The closet was spacious enough for both of them without feeling cramped. She saw Sun Jing running her hand back and forth along the bottom horizontal bar. Then, she grabbed a section in the middle and pulled inwards, slowly raising the bar, which was about a foot long, like a handle.

There was a round hole at one end of the handle, the purpose of which was unknown. Sun Jing held one end in each hand. It wouldn't turn clockwise, so he tried turning it counter-clockwise.

A slight clanging of chains. Xu Xu felt her feet move slightly and quickly stood up. This made it much easier for Sun Jing to turn around. Soon, the bottom panel on the left side of the closet was removed, revealing a dark, square hole.

“This must be where your great-grandfather held his secret gatherings,” Xu Xu said. “But why hasn’t the person who texted you shown up yet?”

“Maybe he’s waiting for us inside,” Sun Jing said.

There was a thin layer of dust on the joint between the movable bottom panel of the closet and the side panel. Otherwise, they would have noticed this movable panel when they were looking at it from outside. How could someone have already gone in? Xu Xu was about to refute, but then she remembered what Sun Jing had said earlier about it being blown away by the wind. She immediately swallowed her words and felt uneasy.

"So...should we go down?"

Sun Jing looked at Xu Xu and said, "I'll go downstairs, you stay outside."

Xu Xu gritted his teeth, bent over, and quickly climbed down the steep steps of the passage.

"Hey!" Sun Jinggang called out, and slowly half of his body had already gone down.

"Be careful," Sun Jing said, letting go of the handle and slowly climbing down.

When he landed, Sun Jing took a breath; the space wasn't as damp as he had imagined.

The sunlight, blocked by the curtains, refracted into the closet and then into the secret room, leaving only enough to slightly dilute the darkness on the floor before it could continue.

The space here is very cramped, barely enough to allow a person to stand upright, and less than two meters high. Subtracting the one meter of height of the closet from the ground, the remaining space was created by excavating deeper into the original moisture barrier.

The secret room was very small. To be precise, the secret room was only as big as the closet above.

She was climbing down quickly when she slipped and bumped her leg on a low table. Rubbing her sore spot, she asked Sun Jing, "Is there a fire?"

On the low table were three thick white candles, half-burnt, which had not been lit for who knows how long.

Sun Jing lit the white candles one by one, then suddenly exclaimed, "Close it!"

"As soon as I let go of the handle, the door closes automatically, little by little. You see there's a winch over there; it's for opening the door."

Looking slowly, I saw a metal disc mounted on the wall next to the stairs, which was much easier to turn than the wooden handle above.

At this moment, Sun Jing lit three candles. The secret room was now truly bright. The candlelight flickered, and shadows twisted and swayed on the walls and concrete floor, until a large, flat mouth suddenly appeared, startling the two men.

When they first came down, they thought the small room was only the size of the closet upstairs, but now they realized something was wrong. The wall facing the staircase to the secret room was only half there, and only the top half. The bottom edge of the wall was a meter below the ground, and with the current candlelight, they couldn't see anything inside.

Of course, both of them knew that it was the moisture barrier layer under the original floor of the room, about thirty square meters in size, just like the room above. What truly made them jump to their feet was the sight of a hand!