Splitting up really did make things more efficient. By around seven thirty, they had found every Mourning Hall on the first floor belonging to one of the three surnames.
There weren't many halls for the Ma family. There were two in all.
There were seven for the Yang family.
The Zhao family had the most, with a full ten.
That made nineteen Mourning Halls that were potential suspects.
The search area was still fairly large, but at least they had ruled out a substantial number.
The Fatty was peeking into a Mourning Hall at that moment. "Doctor, are we supposed to push open the coffins in all nineteen halls next, then find clues about the ghost on the first floor inside them?"
In theory, that was exactly what they had to do.
But Gu Mian's way of thinking had always been a little different from everyone else's. He didn't like doing things by the book.
He glanced at the nineteen open Mourning Hall doors. To make them easier to identify, they had left the potential suspects open and shut the doors of the rest.
"I'll take a look around first." Gu Mian put his hands in the pockets of his white coat.
Pushing open nineteen coffin lids would be a major undertaking. If they were unlucky, it could take an hour, and they still hadn't explored the second or third floors. They didn't have much time to waste.
Chu Changge was standing in front of one of the open Mourning Halls, apparently considering something.
Gu Mian didn't go much farther. He went straight over to him. "What are you looking at?"
Chu Changge glanced up at Gu Mian. "Take a look at this Mourning Hall."
As he spoke, he pointed inside.
Gu Mian followed his gaze.
The hall didn't seem any different from the others, at least not at first glance.
It had the same glaring white fluorescent lights, the same wreaths crowded around a huge coffin, and the same black-and-white Obituary Photo.
The deceased was a middle-aged woman.
She had short hair, though not the conventional kind. It looked a bit like the landlady's hairstyle in a movie. Her head was oddly shaped, like a flattened potato, and even her features seemed to have been squashed.
Her eyes were small and a little long. At first glance, she looked like a fox with smiling, narrowed eyes. Since she was smiling, deep crow's feet creased the corners of her eyes.
Her nose was low, with a slightly upturned tip that revealed most of her nostrils. Her lips were thin, pulled into a smile.
Overall, it looked like a flat-nosed fox's face had been stamped onto a flattened potato.
There was also a condolence couplet on the wreath.
"In memory of Ms. Yang. With deepest condolences, Xuzhou Public Security Department."
Chu Changge pointed to the couplet on the wreath. "The others usually had couplets sent by younger relatives, colleagues, or their workplaces. This one's different."
Hearing that, Gu Mian studied the five big characters on the wreath: "Xuzhou Public Security Department."
That Xuzhou Public Security Department clearly couldn't have been Ms. Yang's workplace.
Gu Mian hadn't met many female colleagues in the public security system, but he knew that a hairstyle that looked like it had been struck by lightning wasn't exactly regulation.
In other words, the deceased Ms. Yang hadn't worked in law enforcement, yet the Public Security Department had sent a condolence couplet.
And she probably hadn't been very old when she died. Her Obituary Photo made her look only a little over forty.
"She died unexpectedly in her forties, and the Public Security Department sent a condolence couplet. Don't you think her story might be unusual?" Chu Changge pushed up his glasses.
"It is pretty unusual," Gu Mian agreed. "And according to your test, the three ghosts correspond to three vehicles. One of them is a prison van, which is also connected to the Public Security Department."
By then, the others had gathered around. One of them even boldly ventured a guess.
A middle-aged man named Hao Laoshi spoke up. "Could it be that the prisoner in the van escaped, and this Ms. Yang tried to stop him out of a sense of justice, but ended up sacrificing herself?"
It was possible.
"Any guess without evidence is just hot air." Gu Mian glanced at the coffin in the middle. "First, we need to gather evidence."
The Fatty shuddered. "Doctor, you seem unexpectedly enthusiastic about finding ghosts."
Gu Mian rolled up his sleeves. "Of course. I'm doing this for the greater good. Come on, let's push open the coffin."
The three players who had stood by from the start still had no intention of helping. They all huddled by the door, waiting for the others to push the coffin open.
But things didn't always go according to plan.
Gu Mian knew there was something wrong with this Mourning Hall, and he knew a ghost might emerge once they opened the coffin.
But he hadn't expected something to happen when they had barely pushed the coffin lid halfway open.
"Creak—" The black-lacquered coffin lid shifted open, leaving a narrow gap. Beneath it was nothing but darkness.
Gu Mian leaned forward to see what was inside. The moment he did, everything went black before his eyes, as if he'd suddenly gone blind.
But the screams that immediately rang out around him made it clear that there was nothing wrong with his eyes.
The lights above them were the problem.
Every light on the first floor had gone out at once. Not a trace of light remained in the darkness. Gu Mian reached out to his side and felt something soft and bulky.
The Fatty's scream burst beside his ear. "It came out! It's grabbing my belly! Run!"
Gu Mian immediately heard him scrambling away as if he were clutching something. The soft, fleshy sensation in his hand vanished too.
Most of the screams came from the doorway.
The gaunt man, the middle-aged man, and the freckled girl all gave as good as they got. Their cries rose one after another like a trio of portable loudspeakers.
They shrieked in panic, some of them even losing their voices, but they didn't forget to run while they were at it.
In the darkness, Gu Mian heard the three voices growing fainter and fainter, with the occasional sound of someone falling.
Only after all the screams had faded away did Gu Mian's eyes begin to adjust to the darkness.
He was still standing in the Mourning Hall, not having moved an inch.
It wasn't that he was trying to show off his bravery and contrast himself with the others. He'd experienced so many strange things already that they were as ordinary to him as eating or drinking. He'd long since lost the kind of excitement most people felt.
Life had tried to kill him so many times that he'd learned to keep calm in a crisis and think clearly in the face of danger.
For instance, just now, he'd been giving one question some serious thought—
"Why did they all run?"
Finding the ghost seemed to be their goal. Why had every single one of them bolted so quickly?
As he thought, he glanced around, trying to make out what was around him.
The Mourning Hall's door was still open, and a faint light seeped in from outside.
There were no windows in the hall, so the only light came through the doorway. If it closed, Gu Mian wouldn't be able to see anything.
A row of wreaths by the door had toppled over, probably knocked down by the others as they fled in panic.
The huge black-and-white Obituary Photo faced the doorway. In the darkness, her face looked even paler. Her eyes were blurred, but it seemed as if she were staring right at him.
The heavy coffin had only been pushed open a crack. Gu Mian looked inside, but it was pitch-black. He couldn't see a thing.
He didn't have anything he could use for light, and he couldn't just stick his head inside.
There was nothing for it. Gu Mian had to look for a light source first.
But the moment he turned around, he bumped into something.
It was undoubtedly a person.
The person lost their balance when he bumped into them and fell. Their head hit the coffin beside them with a bang, making a sharp sound. It seemed like quite a hard knock.
But they didn't make a sound. They simply clutched their head, stubbornly got back to their feet, and shuffled back to Gu Mian's side.
"Xiao Qiao?" Gu Mian asked, his voice rising and falling.
The silhouette finally responded. "What?"
Before you continue