Old Yang's voice was very soft, and clearly trembled.
The question had barely left his mouth.
The Fountain Pen began trembling uncontrollably, while the three candles flickered erratically, as if a breeze stirred by someone passing had swept through.
The atmosphere in the classroom had grown tense to the extreme, oppressive beyond measure.
Rustle, rustle... rustle, rustle...
Rustle... rustle...
The three of them gripped the Fountain Pen. Their arms and palms remained perfectly still, yet the pen tip began moving again.
The blood-red ink, carrying a faint fishy smell, slowly seeped onto the white paper. Large blotches, small blotches, some darker and some lighter, like blood oozing from cuts in human skin.
The Ouija could not write out words like a living person to tell you the answer.
Either you had to prepare some answers on the paper beforehand, and it would choose from them.
Or it would draw symbols that looked meaningless to outsiders, yet which the person involved could somehow read.
That was what people meant by ghosts drawing incomprehensible talismans.
But now.
Stroke by crooked stroke, the ink connected into a distorted character on the white paper.
"Hang..."
"Was he hanged?"
Old Yang wondered.
Could this fellow named Xiao Ming have been hanged somewhere?
The pen in their hands did not stop. After the first character, Hang, it twisted and jerked its way into a second character—Tower.
The character was somewhat complicated.
The pen tip passed over it, with many strokes overlapping one another.
But it could still be made out with some effort.
"Tower crane?"
Old Yang was puzzled at first, but then he recalled a piece of news from several years ago.
At a construction site nearby.
A contractor who had incurred enormous gambling debts had, under pressure from creditors demanding repayment and workers demanding