L'affaire du messager fantôme - Le récit d'une âme qui quitte son corps

Chapitre 7

Spring Rain felt a suffocating sense of despair. She desperately reached out with both hands and actually touched the cold well wall. Her hands felt a slippery sensation—moss that had never seen the light of day. Yes, she was in a deserted village, at the bottom of a well in the backyard of an ancient scholar's mansion, sitting on a pile of bones of ancient people who had thrown themselves into the well, gazing up at the dim light of the sky above.

She has been imprisoned at the bottom of the well for a hundred years.

Just as Chunyu was about to shout out loud, the melody of Jay Chou's "Dong Feng Po" suddenly rang out—it was her cell phone ringtone, a call from someone she didn't know.

Whether she was in bed or at the bottom of an ancient well, Chunyu answered the phone before she could even see who was calling.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone for a few seconds, then a woman's voice suddenly came through: "We don't know what crime we committed that we have to be in the first level of hell to meet."

Chunyu was stunned. The other person's voice was so strange. She had never heard such a voice before. It was as if it was not coming from a human mouth. Both the rhythm and the timbre were very awkward. There were no pauses or transitions in normal speech. The pitch was almost completely the same, high-pitched and thin, like the voice of a eunuch in a movie.

But Chunyu still blurted out her question: "Who are you? Are you Qingyou?"

The person on the other end of the phone seemed not to hear her and continued speaking at the same pace: "I am Dianqi, a woman who was thrown into a well and died."

Wife-selling? A woman who was thrown into a well and died? Was she talking to a ghost at the bottom of the well? Chunyu knew what wife-selling was—it was an ancient custom in rural China where poor people would "rent" their wives to wealthy families as concubines at a high price, and then return them to their original husbands after the "rental period" ended.

The famous 1930s novel "The Mother of a Slave" uses the custom of wife-selling as its subject matter.

Before Chunyu could answer, the person on the other end of the phone continued, "I originally had a husband and son, but because my family was poor, I was pawned to the wealthy Ouyang family for three years to continue the Ouyang family line. A year later, I gave birth to a son for the master and wanted to return to my original home. But the master wouldn't allow me to leave and locked me in the backyard all day. Finally, one day, I escaped from the Ouyang family, but I was quickly caught and brought back. A woman escaping into a deserted village is an unforgivable crime, and according to the old law, I should be thrown into a well. So they pushed me into the old well in the backyard."

Immediately afterwards, a "plop" sound came from the phone, as if something had actually fallen into the well. Well water splashed onto the damp well walls, and then there was eternal darkness...

The narration just now was so calm, but in this eerie and strange voice, Chunyu seemed to see that wronged soul—she was wearing a loose robe from the early years of the Republic of China, with a large bun at the back of her head. She must have been very young, with a beautiful but pale face, sitting at the bottom of a dark well, telling Chunyu about her tragic life.

She was Dianqi, a woman who died in the early years of the Republic of China. She had always looked up at the sky from the bottom of the well, her eyes filled with an indelible resentment. Now, she was calling Chunyu from the bottom of the ancient well in the deserted village—no, she was sitting face to face with Chunyu, slowly extending her pale hand to stroke Chunyu's frightened face.

At this moment, Chunyu felt that Dianqi had grabbed her feet and was dragging her down. At the bottom of the dark well, there was an even deeper cave, which was the first level of hell.

Her body gradually sank into the muddy water, and everything was about to fall into darkness. Chunyu felt her consciousness growing increasingly blurred—"No!"

She suddenly screamed and kicked wildly until she kicked off the blankets covering her. Finally, Chunyu freed herself from the thick covers and sat up in bed. The bedside lamp was still on, illuminating her pale face. As if she had just climbed out of a well, Chunyu gasped for breath, as if she was still choking on water.

After catching her breath for a while, she noticed her phone. The call had ended, and a new text message had come in.

Chunyu picked up her phone with trembling hands and read the last text message: "You have passed through the first level of hell and entered the second level."

Looking at the text message, Chunyu was a little confused. Was what she had just experienced the first level of hell? Then, she nodded thoughtfully, as if she were playing a computer game and had only just passed the first level, and now she had to pass the second level.

If she had chosen "Dracula's Castle" or "Lanruo Temple" instead of "The Desolate Village Scholar's Residence," the experience would have been completely different. She wouldn't have received a call from the concubine, but would instead have spoken with the classic female ghost Nie Xiaoqian, right? Thinking of this, Chunyu couldn't help but smile bitterly again. As her breathing gradually calmed, Chunyu realized that the last text message she had received wasn't from Qingyou, but from a special number—741111. Chunyu found this strange and immediately checked her previous messages, but there were no records left on her phone, only this last one.

After sitting quietly for a while longer without receiving any more text messages, Chunyu finally breathed a sigh of relief.

A chill crept into the dormitory, making her shiver a few times as she wore only her underwear. She quickly burrowed back into bed. It was already 1:30 a.m., and Chunyu couldn't stay awake any longer. She turned off the bedside lamp and closed her eyes.

Forget about all those hellish levels—Spring Rain told herself this in her heart, and finally fell asleep from exhaustion.

The girls' dormitory fell silent again, while the cold wind continued to howl outside the window, and countless souls wandered alone in the dark night...

Perhaps because she stayed up too late last night, Chunyu didn't wake up until eight o'clock in the morning.

Rubbing her eyes, she got out of bed, hoping that everything from last night was just a dream. However, she dared not look at her phone again, afraid of seeing those text messages again.

Xu Wenya had returned to the dormitory at some point and was sitting blankly on the lower bunk opposite, engrossed in texting on her phone. She was curled up in a ball, looking more like a toy doll. Looking at Xu Wenya, Chunyu suddenly felt a little worried and tentatively asked, "Where did you go last night?"

Xu Wenya slowly raised her head, seemingly quite displeased that Chunyu had interrupted her texting. She muttered, "Can't you see I'm busy? What business is it of yours where I go in the middle of the night?" "I'm worried about you getting into trouble." "Hey, don't mess with me." Xu Wenya glared at Chunyu, but her voice sounded weak. After speaking, she continued to lower her head and text.

Having nothing more to say, Chunyu shook her head and ran out of the dormitory.

Today is Saturday. Although she doesn't have classes, she's currently preparing her graduation thesis for next year.

I was planning to go out and do some research today, but I haven't been in the mood to go out these past few days.

Chunyu's proposed paper title is "Mobile Phone Text Messages and Human Communication".

Perhaps influenced by the "thumb generation" around her, she started thinking about this topic last year. Moreover, this topic is quite novel; it seems no one else has written about it before, and teachers would find it refreshing. She has been preparing for this for a whole year, consulting numerous books on the history of human communication, and even planning to intern at a company that operates a text messaging service.

In the past few days, she has attempted to complete the opening of her paper—"The history of human communication can be roughly divided into five stages according to the tools and mediums used: the first stage is the physical era of primitive people communicating with body language; the second stage is the oral era of tribal people communicating with real language; the third stage is the handwritten era of ancient people communicating with written characters; the fourth stage is the ten-finger era of modern people communicating with keyboards; and the fifth stage is the thumb era of contemporary people communicating with mobile phone text messages."

Although she wrote it that way in her paper, Chunyu herself wasn't sure if text messaging could change people's lifestyles. But she believed one thing would never change: the subtle emotions between people. However, after these few days of bizarre events, Chunyu could no longer concentrate on writing her paper. The thought of being alone in her dorm room, smelling the lingering scent of Qingyou, made her feel an overwhelming pang of sadness.

Spring Rain thought of two words—hell.

Thinking back to the text message she received in the middle of the night, and reflecting on her feelings these past few days, she felt like she was already in hell.

hell?

Do you know what the 19th level of hell is?

Yes, Qingyou paced around in circles that night and finally asked the same question. Last night, Chunyu received a text message from the deceased Qingyou with the same question: "Could Qingyou's death really be related to hell?"

Spring Rain shrugged helplessly. But she still wanted to know, what exactly is hell?

Perhaps the answer can be found in the school library.

Yes, that's the decision. It's 5 p.m. now, and there's only one hour left before the library closes. Chunyu took off running out.

The winter sky darkened early, and Chunyu, head bowed, ran breathlessly through the bushes to the school library.

The university library, built in the 1950s, is one of those seemingly sturdy Soviet-style buildings. However, it hasn't been renovated for many years, and the interior is dilapidated, with insufficient natural light. Even with all the lights on, it still looks somewhat eerie. Normally, the library is quite crowded, but today, perhaps because of the cold weather, the large reading room is deserted, appearing particularly empty in the dim light. Only a few students are seen reading or sleeping. Walking in such a quiet and cold place, Chunyu could only walk with her breath held, trying not to make a sound, like a floating ghost. This environment easily evokes images of 19th-century European libraries, or the French film *Crimson Rivers*, which tells a brutal story of a university town.

Chunyu carefully made her way through the reading room to the back rows of enormous bookshelves. The book she was looking for belonged to the social sciences and was located in the very last few rows. The school library had a total of forty rows of bookshelves, housing approximately 100,000 books. Passing the first few rows, she could see couples whispering and whispering sweet nothings to each other. Chunyu thought to herself, "They really know how to pick a spot."

When she reached the last few rows of bookshelves, there was no one left, only rows of books that hadn't been touched for years, quietly emitting the smell of decaying pages.

Looking at these almost forgotten books, Chunyu suddenly had a strange thought: they were like unclaimed corpses, and the bookshelves were their coffins. Now, what she had to do was open the coffins, dig out the corpses inside, and dissect them like a forensic doctor solving a case, to see if there were any clues to solve the case.

She took a step back, her eyes scanning the bookshelves. Finding a book about hell among so many social science books was like finding a needle in a haystack. After what seemed like an eternity, she suddenly heard footsteps—who else could be coming at this hour?

Footsteps echoed among the bookshelves in front of her, growing softer as they drew closer. It was like a strange gust of wind, loud in the distance but vanishing the moment it reached her. Chunyu strained her ears, even parting the spines of the books in front of her to peek behind the shelves, but found nothing. The footsteps seemed to have disappeared into thin air; perhaps they never existed, and it was just her imagination?

Just then, her gaze fell on the top row of books on the shelf, where the title of a book seemed to be printed on the spine.