A police officer from the Technical Department rushed in, sweating profusely and with a very serious expression. He was holding a laptop in his hand. "Captain Zhang, take a look at this. This is something the internet surveillance team just discovered."
Officer Zhang and Xiao Zhao rushed over to take a look, "What is this?"
"It's a fairly well-known video-sharing website with bullet comments. The staff from the internet monitoring department discovered the video by accident." He clicked on the video.
After the webpage finished buffering, the beginning of the video was completely black. After half a second, the background suddenly flickered, and a forest came into view, with a small hill flashing by in the distance.
It's clear that it was filmed with a mobile phone, so the resolution and frame rate are a bit low. Half of a woman's face appears in the frame, and the camera starts to pan. It's the woman holding the phone up straight, using the phone's flashlight to illuminate the road ahead, and then turning on the camera to capture the scene in the distance.
As dusk settled, the camera shakily panned as a woman walked by. The nearby beautiful forest appeared somewhat eerie and unsettling in the slightly dark shot.
There was only a narrow path ahead, and the broad canopy of trees blocked the last rays of the setting sun. Only dappled, sparse light shone through the branches and leaves, making the forest exceptionally dark and desolate.
The woman walked slowly, stumbling along the mountain path. The further she went, the more unsteady her movements became. The surrounding trees grew denser and denser, and the trees in this area seemed to have mutated, their branches intertwined and densely packed, baring their fangs and claws, looking quite ferocious.
For some reason, Officer Zhang suddenly felt a chill as he watched, as if he himself were in a terrifying forest, able to truly feel the environment the person filming the video was in.
As the setting sun's light grew dimmer, the camera could only capture cool tones. At that moment, the image suddenly paused for a few seconds, then began to shake erratically.
The people watching the video in the office felt their hearts pounding.
The female protagonist in the video adjusted the angle little by little, and a white shadow vaguely appeared directly in front of her.
Officer Zhang moved closer to the camera, wanting to get a clearer look at what it was. However, the woman in the video had already turned around and started running away frantically. She was very panicked, as if she had suddenly seen something extremely terrifying and was so frightened that she turned and ran.
Splash--
The woman pushed aside the obstructing branches and fled swiftly along the mountain path. She didn't know how long she ran before she finally stopped.
Officer Zhang and Xiao Zhao's fists clenched and unclenched intermittently, their heartbeats rising and falling with the progress of the video.
The video has no voice and the picture is blurry, but it miraculously conveys a strange sense of dread, as if everyone who sees it can feel it.
Suddenly, the scene shifts, and a white shadow darts out. It's probably a person, with a chillingly pale complexion, rapidly approaching the female protagonist in the video.
Just then, the screen suddenly jerked, the camera flipped again, and the white figure lunged forward.
Snap!
The phone's camera lens became a mess; this was a result of panicking.
Upon closer inspection, she realized that the white figure was a decaying corpse dressed in mourning. The woman was struggling through the dense forest when she heard a sound. Turning around, she saw a hillside covered with trees behind her, and one pale figure after another was wandering in the woods.
Thump--
The screen jolted violently and then abruptly stopped.
Officer Zhang slumped back in his chair, trembling, took a deep breath, and broke out in a cold sweat.
That video was good enough to be a clip from a horror movie. It was just a few shots filmed with a mobile phone, but it was incredibly scary.
He opened the video again with unease, and rewound it to the beginning. He saw the face of the phone's owner— Ning Yun!
The situation has become more complicated.
All the known clues are that Ning Yun and a man named Liang Rong drove to the suburbs, but unfortunately the surveillance cameras along that route were unexpectedly damaged, and all the data was lost. They have no idea what happened. When the police arrived at the scene, they only saw a car accident and blood, but the people were gone, without leaving any trace, as if they had evaporated on the spot.
Later, a cleaning worker found a phone that showed Ning Yun, covered in blood, being dragged slowly down by a shadowy figure and disappearing in a mysterious way. Anyone with inside information would know that Hou Qingxu had a subordinate named Yan San who controlled the Ghost Shadow.
The third clue is the video on the website, in which Ning Yun is chased by a group of white-clad monsters, not knowing which remote mountain valley she is in.
The disappearance case is becoming increasingly perplexing. Officer Zhang frowned and glanced at the video on the website again.
"Quickly, notify the relevant departments to delete this video!" he decisively ordered. "This thing seems to be able to instill fear through video!"
"Actually, as soon as I discovered the video, I immediately had my colleagues in the internet monitoring department delete it. I also had them investigate the source of the video, and we should be able to find out who uploaded it in a little while," said the officer from the Technical Department, his tone somewhat uneasy. "I'm worried that since the other party can upload it to this website, they might be able to spread it in other ways. Perhaps we should hand it over to the professionals."
Officer Zhang sighed deeply and remained silent. He was unaware that the video had already gone viral online.
"The woman in the video is Ning Yun, the eldest daughter of the Ning Family. I heard online that she went missing, causing quite a stir." After watching the video, a netizen, A, couldn't contain his excitement and frantically typed out his gossip.
He also sent a private message to the person who uploaded the video, and after some conversation, he learned that the other party had reposted it from another website, but had shamelessly labeled it as original.
The uploader complained, "The video was deleted by the website shortly after it was uploaded, and someone even contacted me demanding an explanation of its source. This is outrageous! I didn't do anything suggestive or suggestive, why are they taking it so seriously?"
Netizen A was somewhat surprised. He continued searching online and found that the video was indeed being continuously deleted. Fortunately, he had already cached it beforehand.
"This must be official intervention; otherwise, it's unlikely that all platforms would delete it at once." He rested a finger on his chin, pondering quietly. As a horror movie enthusiast, he loved that video. It was like a mockumentary; although the image quality was rough, it inexplicably stirred up the most primal fears in people's hearts. He watched it again and again, completely unable to stop!