Ji Li was not the only occupant, but he was the first to arrive at Old Yu Street.
A call from the "agent" brought him to this solitary building thirty minutes early, a place he would be unable to leave for the next two days and nights.
Entering through the archway open to traffic, Ji Li's footprints stamped themselves into the black concrete as the man with a cane walked step by step into this residential building named after a street.
With his luggage on his back, Ji Li passed through the archway and entered the center of a square Corridor-style Old Building.
The ground floor was paved with stone bricks. Around it stood rundown storefronts, where faded signs could still vaguely be seen. More often, though, there were tightly locked doors and windows, with dusty clutter piled behind them.
The entire place was cast in shades of blue-gray. Looking up from the lowest floor, Ji Li felt as though he had climbed into a "square well."
A frigid snowflake drifted down through the narrow sky, landing atop his hair before raindrops melted it away.
Ji Li sat within the "well," watching the overcast sky wedged between the gaps of the old buildings on all four sides. Sunlight had nearly vanished. He knew this would be another night of sleet.
What he saw and what he thought gradually overlapped with the Old Yu Street of legend. This place was steeped in decay, ruin, and the air of approaching death.
The airtight ring of high-rises enclosed this crowded, cramped living space. No matter how strange the things that happened here were, they would no longer be surprising.
The viewpoint descended from the sky and focused on Ji Li's upturned pupils, where a pair of hazy white figures was reflected.
Ji Li