Before explaining where my friend currently lived, I should first say a few things about him.
I met him at university. His full name was Zhu Changan, so I called him Chang'an. He was also a second-year student at Xianshui University, a dashing young man dressed from head to toe in designer clothes.
Although he spoke normally enough so far, he was actually a famous heir, with a father who wielded considerable power in the government and an extremely wealthy family. I had no idea exactly how rich he was. At the very least, it was beyond the imagination of an ordinary student like me, and I had no interest in that sort of thing anyway. Still, I would occasionally hear people at school maliciously call him "Young Master Zhu."
To say that this malice was entirely rooted in hatred of the rich would be an overgeneralization. If my reputation at school was merely that of an eccentric, Chang'an was hated by everyone. The simple explanation of "hatred of the rich" was not enough. The real reason lay with him.
He was a notorious "spoiled young master" on campus. I often heard that he relied on his father's status to act high-handedly and cause trouble. There were even rumors that he frequently went with a group of unsavory friends to certain indecent places where students had no business going. Over time, he was ostracized by the vast majority of people who kept themselves respectable.
There were hidden circumstances behind his bad reputation. However, he had indeed done some bad things, and my relationship with him had begun when we got into a fight.
Going into the whole story would take a long time, so for now I would focus on where he currently lived.
I didn't know whether this was a case of being influenced by those around him, but like me, he had some interest in urban Ghost Stories. Since he had no other close classmates at school, he rented a place off campus. As luck would have it, there was an ordinary residential community near Xianshui University with an unoccupied apartment where someone had died. It was on the Fifteenth Floor, making it a high-rise residence.
The "someone had died" part didn't mean that an old person had suddenly died inside, or that a tenant had lost hope and slit their wrists there. It meant that a truly horrifying murder had taken place there.
The murder had occurred eight months earlier. The tenant before Chang'an had been found disemboweled in the bathroom by an unidentified person. The scene had been horrifically bloody, frightening even the neighbors next door into moving away. The murderer's identity remained a mystery, and they were still at large. It was perfectly understandable that no one dared rent the apartment.
I had heard that the place was haunted at night, so I went there to investigate and stayed for three days and three nights. Nothing happened. That had been less than two weeks ago. Afterward, Chang'an rented the place under the pretext of testing his courage and moved in on a whim.
"So it really is haunted? Did the previous tenant turn into a Vengeful Ghost and come after you?"
"No, it isn't..." He shook his head repeatedly. "It's the basement. I found a basement."
"So it's only a basement..." I was disappointed at first, but then noticed something strange. "...Wait, did you just say 'basement'? In that apartment?"
"Yes, in that apartment on the Fifteenth Floor."
Still shaken, he explained the whole story to me:
It had started the night before last, when he saw a video on a website of someone cleaning an old carpet. Carpets—especially shag carpets—easily hid dirt and grime. Video uploaders would even deliberately find particularly filthy carpets to wash and film. After watching it, he thought of the black shag carpet in his living room.
It had already been there when he moved in, and he had no idea how many tenants it had welcomed before him. He had never paid it any attention, but now he had begun to feel uneasy about it. Black was naturally a color that hid dirt, so there could be a huge amount of grime trapped inside. It might even contain the previous tenant's blood, and he would be none the wiser. He decided to replace it.
But when he lifted the carpet, the floor beneath revealed something that had no business appearing in ordinary daily life.
It was a complex "Magic Circle," drawn in black pigment.
Could a previous tenant have been a chuuni with black magic on the brain, leaving this thing behind? It was only natural for Chang'an to think so.
He soon noticed another impossible-to-ignore object within the Magic Circle: a square wooden hatch set into the floor, about a meter long and a meter wide.
Driven by curiosity, he opened the hatch.
But beneath it lay a staircase descending into darkness so deep that he couldn't see the bottom.
He was immediately stunned.
Was this a basement? But this was the Fifteenth Floor! How could there be a basement on the Fifteenth Floor?
He quickly came up with a convincing explanation—the staircase probably led to the residence below. To be safe, he didn't go down. Instead, he went outside to ask the residents downstairs, then entered their apartment to take a look after receiving permission.
There was no staircase in the apartment below, nor was there an open hole in the ceiling.
For a moment, he was plunged into indescribable terror.
That dark staircase led to a space that did not exist in reality.
-
I was deeply fascinated by his description, and my curiosity surfaced.
"Did you go down?"
Chang'an slammed his hand on the table and shouted involuntarily, "How could I possibly go down?"
The waiters and customers in the café all looked over. He coughed awkwardly and sat back down.
"In any case, I never went down. I've temporarily moved to a nearby hotel, and I really don't dare keep living there." After calming himself, he said, "But I haven't ended the lease yet, and I still have the key."
I nodded and continued asking questions. "Then did you try lighting up the space beneath the staircase?"
"I did. It seemed to be a little over three meters deep, and there was a gray concrete floor at the bottom." He spoke dejectedly. "I don't know anything beyond that. I didn't dare go down to investigate."
"Other than me, have you told anyone else about this?"
"Yes. I told my younger sister yesterday, but she didn't believe me."
"You mean Zhu Shi? You also met me yesterday afternoon. You told Zhu Shi, but not me?" I was displeased.
Zhu Shi, Chang'an's younger sister, was a year younger than both Chang'an and me. I had met her several times before.
This year, she had entered her first year at Xianshui University. Unlike the infamous Chang'an, her first impression evoked images of streams, clear springs, and misty lakes. She was a delicate, ink-wash-painting-like female student.
It was perfectly normal for her not to believe Chang'an. In other words, no normal person would believe his story.
Chang'an quickly gave two awkward laughs and steered the conversation back, adding, "Also... when I encountered that incident the night before last, I called the police right away."
"You called the police?" I frowned reflexively.
Given my current position, it was difficult for me to feel any sense of security around the police.
"And then? You told them something strange had happened in your home, and they actually came?"
"How could I tell them that directly? I made up a reason to get the police there first. Then, after they arrived, I lifted the carpet again in front of them, but..." Chang'an's expression grew increasingly grim. "It disappeared. The wooden hatch had vanished without a trace, and the entrance to the basement was gone. There was only that suspicious Magic Circle on the floor. They treated me as someone who had made a false police report, and I was almost detained."
Just then, he noticed my expression and hurriedly explained, "Wait, I really wasn't lying to you. I really saw the basement!"
"Although I personally want to believe you..."
In the past, many of the people who had personally experienced paranormal incidents and whom I had visited shared a common trait. They swore that they had encountered paranormal phenomena in certain situations, but whenever I accompanied them, or investigated on my own based on the clues they provided, the paranormal phenomena disappeared without a trace.
Chang'an's situation now was remarkably similar to those experiences of mine. He claimed to have encountered something strange, but only he could come into contact with it. Whenever anyone besides him was present, the strange phenomenon would hide itself.
How could I believe him wholeheartedly?
Still, he was my friend, and I wanted to give him at least the most basic level of trust.
"Believe me! I know you've encountered many people who deceived you before, so I didn't talk to you at school yesterday afternoon. I was afraid you'd think I was one of them!" he said in desperation. "But...but! Last night, I suddenly couldn't let it go. I felt that, both emotionally and rationally, I should still come discuss it with you. You may be the only person willing to believe me now..."
"Last night, suddenly?" I caught the key point. "Around what time?"
"Huh? Um...around ten, I think?" he answered uncertainly.
That was when I had just encountered Maza.
If Chang'an and Maza were both telling the truth, then I should originally have missed the strange incident Chang'an experienced. Yet, because of Maza's disaster-attracting constitution, Chang'an, far away in another place, had suddenly changed his mind and brought clues about the incident to my door.
There were many suspicious points in Chang'an's testimony, yet it corresponded with Maza's account to a certain extent...
As I worked through the logic connecting the two incidents, I said to Chang'an, "Words alone prove nothing. Take me to your place and let me have a look."
"Okay, but..." he hesitated.
I countered, "Isn't the reason you came to find me precisely so that I could accompany you to look at the apartment again?"
"...Yes. That definitely wasn't a hallucination or nightmare caused by being alone. It was a real supernatural phenomenon. I suppose I hoped you could help me prove that..." He admitted it at first, then grew hesitant again. "But what if it doesn't appear this time either..."
"Just take me there." My tone was firm. "I promise that even if there's nothing beneath the carpet, I won't blame you."
After things had been laid out so plainly, he had nothing more to say. We hurriedly filled our stomachs at the café before heading to the apartment together.
We passed through the entrance to the community, then went through the security door of the residential building and took the elevator all the way to the Fifteenth Floor. Chang'an took out his key, opened the door to the apartment, and led me into the living room.
For a place where someone had died, it looked no different from an ordinary person's home. In fact, Chang'an's time living there had given it a little more of a lived-in feel. To put it plainly, there was more clutter. Several wrinkled shirts and pairs of pants had been tossed onto the sofa, while the trash can was filled with takeout containers holding leftover sauce and grains of rice.
Between the sofa and the television was the black shag carpet he had mentioned. It looked like an ordinary old carpet, with several large brown English letters printed on it. Put together, they spelled "carpet."
"So...I'm going to open it." Chang'an swallowed.
I didn't presume to act on my own in his home, so I urged him verbally. "Go ahead."
It took him more than ten seconds to gather his courage. Then he crouched down, gripped the edge of the carpet with both hands, and suddenly flipped it up.
On the floor beneath the carpet was a complex Magic Circle drawn in dark, murky pigment.
At the center of the Magic Circle was a light-brown wooden hatch.
Before you continue