The Baby's Cry

After crossing the bridge, Zhang Chen rode for less than eight minutes before reaching the residential complex where his home was. Four large characters were mounted atop two massive stone pillars:

"Wanhe Garden." Zhang Chen quickly rode past the guardhouse.

Suddenly, a dark figure darted out. Zhang Chen immediately squeezed the brakes and stopped to look. It was the security guard, Uncle Wang.

Uncle Wang was in his forties and had congenital strabismus—meaning his Pupils were uneven. He had worked security in this complex for nearly six years. Though he was short and cross-eyed, he was honest, dependable, and responsible. He stubbornly stood guard from six-thirty in the morning until midnight, and it was rare to see him neglect the gate. Naturally, all the residents treated Uncle Wang well, and Zhang Chen greatly respected him.

"Oh, it's Little Zhang. You usually come home by nine, but you're so late today. The lighting is poor, and I was afraid a thief had slipped in. Sorry about that." Uncle Wang looked innocent after realizing he had stopped the wrong person.

"It's fine, Uncle Wang. Something came up on the way. I'll head back first." Zhang Chen smiled and rode into the complex.

After parking his bike, Zhang Chen started climbing the stairs.

"Grrr~~~~" A long rumble came from Zhang Chen's stomach. The sudden emptiness made him brace himself against the railing. "I shouldn't be this hungry just because I'm still growing, right?" Zhang Chen muttered as he went upstairs.

Standing at the door, he vaguely heard the television playing inside. Zhang Chen checked the time and found it was already ten-twenty. After considering how to explain himself to Mother Zhang, he took out his key and opened the door.

"Why are you back so late? The steamed egg with minced pork you like has gone cold. I'll heat it up for you." Mother Zhang's voice came from a chair in front of the television in the living room.

"Oh, I was coming back with my classmates. That short, chubby classmate had some trouble with his bike halfway there, so we took him home before coming back. He lives in XX, pretty far from us, so it took a while." Zhang Chen put on an innocent expression. After speaking, he could not help thinking of the man in the Black Windbreaker and what had happened to his heart. He shuddered. Mother Zhang said nothing after hearing him and simply got up to walk toward the kitchen.

Hearing that his mother had made steamed egg for him and seeing her head toward the kitchen, Zhang Chen felt deeply warmed. He thought about how he never talked back to his parents and always handled what he was supposed to do himself. But ever since he had become obsessed with CS and Warcraft, his grades had plummeted. He suddenly felt terribly ashamed before his parents.

Zhang Chen took off his backpack and walked into the living room. His family was not well-off, so they had not bought a sofa. There were only three wooden stools facing a twenty-eight-inch color television.

Before long, Mother Zhang brought over a bowl of tender yellow steamed egg, topped with fried minced pork. Zhang Chen swallowed first, then began wolfing it down. In less than two minutes, he had wiped out the entire large bowl. Strangely, even though his stomach felt full, he still had an empty sensation.

He did not pay it much mind, assuming he had eaten too quickly for it to digest.

"Mom, why isn't Dad watching TV?" Zhang Chen asked after taking the cleaned dishes into the kitchen.

"Your father is already forty. He might be tired from work. Ever since we moved here, he's been going to bed earlier and earlier."

As Zhang Chen watched his mother answer, he caught a flicker of anxiety in her expression, though it vanished immediately.

"Is Dad feeling unwell somewhere?" Zhang Chen frowned.

After talking with his mother for a while, he went to wash up and prepare for bed. Once he had changed into Pajamas and finished everything else, Zhang Chen went to the bathroom for one last piss before sleeping.

The bathroom at home had no toilet installed and still used an old-fashioned squat toilet. The moment Zhang Chen entered, a strange feeling arose in his heart. It was clearly a bathroom he had used countless times, so why did it feel so unfamiliar? He could even sense wisps of cold air seeping from the wall to his left, making his entire body uncomfortable.

"Strange. Was our bathroom always like this?" Zhang Chen looked left and right but could not see anything different about it. Thinking he was simply being overly nervous, he did not dwell on it. He walked a few steps forward to the trough and relieved himself.

After using the bathroom, Zhang Chen was about to return to his bedroom when he paused outside his parents' room. Then he reached out and opened the door. In the dim bedroom, his father was already lying in bed, sleeping soundly. Yet Zhang Chen sensed a strange aura from him. If he had to describe it, it was "cold." The faint aura emanating from his father was exactly the same as the feeling in the bathroom.

Zhang Chen also noticed a detail. It was only spring, and the indoor temperature was close to twenty degrees Celsius, yet his father was covered by two quilts. In Zhang Chen's eyes, his father had always been exceptionally robust. Even in winter, he had never seen him use two quilts.

Zhang Chen returned to his bedroom full of confusion, threw himself onto the bed, and suddenly recalled everything that had happened that day.

"The man in black first told me there was something in my house and that I should be careful. Then he told me to burn incense and pray to Buddha. Could it be true?" Zhang Chen thought it over carefully and suddenly remembered that.

"If that man was a ghost, and what he said was true, then what happened at home—the bathroom and Dad..." Zhang Chen actually frightened himself with his own speculation.

"Right, Dad and Mom bought this place so it would be easier for me to attend school in town and so I wouldn't have to take the bus into town early every morning. I remember when they bought the house, about a year ago, I only met the woman selling it once when I went with them. She was probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and she was quite pretty. I wonder why she wanted to sell the house."

Zhang Chen knew that his parents were both ordinary workers. Their combined monthly income did not even exceed 2,500 yuan. Supporting him in school in the county town was already difficult enough, let alone saving money to buy this nearly one-hundred-square-meter apartment in town, even if it was secondhand. Thinking about it now, it truly was strange. After all, Zhang Chen was only fourteen, and too much had happened tonight. His head felt like it was about to explode.

"Damn it, sleep. Whatever it is, I'll deal with it tomorrow." Zhang Chen pulled up the covers, closed his eyes, and prepared to sleep.

Once his eyelids covered his eyes, it was not truly dark. He could still see scattered specks of light. But Zhang Chen did not realize that after closing his eyes, what greeted him was genuine darkness. His consciousness emptied, and at the very instant he was about to fall asleep, an aged voice sounded in his mind.

Zhang Chen

Main Soul Slot Status: Activated

Main Soul: Gluttonous Ghost

Satiety: 0%

Compatibility with Current **: 30%

Secondary Soul Slot Status: Not Activated

Number of Skill Slots: 3

Used Skill Slots: 0

Physical Condition: Poor

Perception: High

Overall Evaluation: Poor

Zhang Chen woke with a start at the sound, thinking he had dreamed it. He smacked his lips, paid it no mind, and went back to sleep. This time, he slept soundly and gradually drifted into the Dreamscape.

Zhang Chen had a dream. He stood outside his own front door—or rather, outside a home with exactly the same layout as his, but completely different decorations and furnishings.

At that moment, the door opened. A man in a suit carried a woman in a wedding dress through the door. They appeared to be newlyweds, and this home was probably their bridal chamber.

The two looked deeply in love. Zhang Chen watched from one or two meters away, but he could never make out their faces clearly. When he tried to approach for a better look, he found that no matter how long he walked, he remained in the same spot.

Zhang Chen stayed still, but the scene before him kept changing. It was as though he were watching a movie on fast-forward; five minutes showed nearly an entire day. In Zhang Chen's view, their relationship was very good. More accurately, the woman was utterly obsessed with the man. At every moment, she clung to him, leaned against him, and even kissed him or made more intimate gestures.

Then one day, the woman held a white slip of paper. Zhang Chen could not see what was written on it, but from her movements and behavior, he could tell she was extremely nervous, even frightened.

Then the man came home. After seeing the paper in the woman's hand, he first looked somewhat saddened and pulled her into his arms. The woman in his embrace seemed to be crying bitterly, but Zhang Chen felt that the man was thinking about something else.

Before long, the man helped the woman toward the bedroom. Casually, he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it in Zhang Chen's direction. On the paper ball, Zhang Chen could only make out the four words "Fangren Hospital." He crouched down, preparing to pick it up, when...

"Waaah~~~~ Waaah~~~~~" A baby's cries entered Zhang Chen's ears. The scene before him instantly vanished and became his own bedroom.

"Was that a dream? I've never had such a clear dream before." After waking, Zhang Chen recalled what had happened in the Dreamscape. Every detail was perfectly imprinted in his mind.

"Waaah~~~~ Waaah~~~~~" Another wave of crying came. Zhang Chen sat upright in bed and put on the glasses from his bedside table. It was not that a baby crying was frightening, but because the source of the sound was inside this home.

"This crying... it doesn't seem to be coming from upstairs or downstairs. It's coming from my house. In the middle of the night, did someone leave a newborn baby here for us to raise? No, that can't be right. We live on the third floor. If they were going to leave one, they'd leave it on the first floor." The more Zhang Chen thought about it, the stranger it seemed. He simply got out of bed to investigate.

Just as he put on his shoes, the crying came again. This time, Zhang Chen was certain that it came from inside his home.

Step by step, Zhang Chen slowly opened his bedroom door. Since the baby's cries rose and fell, the moment he stepped out, he heard the bone-chilling crying coming from his bathroom. At that moment, light was already shining through the gap beneath the bathroom door.

"Is my house actually haunted?"

At this point, Zhang Chen's nerves were stretched taut, and all sleepiness had long vanished.

"Damn it, I didn't even die after jumping into the river today. I refuse to believe in this crap."

With his spirits roused, Zhang Chen grabbed the bathroom doorknob, twisted it fiercely, and shoved the door open.

Red. Everything was red. How could this be his bathroom? It was practically hell. The ten-square-meter bathroom was covered in thick red blood—on the floor, ceiling, and walls. A powerful stench of blood flooded Zhang Chen's nostrils. At the same time, a drop of dark red blood fell from directly above him, landing precisely on the back of the hand he had used to open the door, before turning into a wisp of green smoke and vanishing.

Yet this sight did not make Zhang Chen retreat. His gaze fell upon a fat baby lying between the toilet and the wall on the right. Why call it fat? Because the baby's body was bloated and faintly bluish all over. It did not look naturally plump, but swollen from soaking in water.

The baby was repeatedly smashing the wall with its swollen Right Hand, as though something was inside it.

As Zhang Chen looked at the baby, seemingly unaware of the abnormalities in the bathroom, he actually clutched his stomach and walked toward it, continuously murmuring, "So hungry, so hungry, I really want to eat."

The baby seemed to notice Zhang Chen approaching and stopped crying and pounding on the wall. Slowly, it turned its face around. Looking closely, its face seemed to have been submerged in water for far too long. Most of it had already rotted away, with even some blisters. Both its eyes had rolled white and bulged outward, a horrifying sight.

Yet after seeing such a terrifying baby, saliva actually dripped from the corner of Zhang Chen's mouth. He muttered, "I really want to eat."

The baby opened its mouth, and rows of yellow teeth rapidly lengthened and sharpened. It turned its body toward Zhang Chen, seemingly ready to pounce. Yet Zhang Chen still looked as though he had lost his soul, walking toward the baby one step at a time.

Then something unbelievable happened. The baby's rotten face suddenly showed a trace of nervousness. Its sharp teeth instantly receded, and it turned around and leaped into the toilet.

"Ah~~~~" A sound mixed with the wails of countless people came from the toilet hole. As Zhang Chen approached the toilet, he seemed to be struck by an invisible force and was violently hurled out of the bathroom, crashing into the wall outside the door.

The impact instantly woke Zhang Chen. Looking at the tightly shut wooden bathroom door and remembering how strange he had acted moments earlier, he immediately ran back to his bedroom and shut the door.