Luo Yonghua's voice sounded like a narrator's, and as I listened, I couldn't help drifting off. His intense fear didn't rub off on me. Still, I heard and understood every word he said. That understanding stirred up a fear in me that was completely different from his.
Just as I'd suspected—and as October had already said—Luo Yonghua was connected to Li Moqian's kidnapping.
At first, Luo Yonghua hadn't known Li Moqian, the online influencer. He was still in school back then. His father was dead, and his mother had fallen into a deranged state after his father's death. His relatives avoided their family like the plague. That was understandable. Although Luo Yonghua's family were the victims, his father's death had been so horrific and bizarre that it was only natural for ordinary people to keep their distance from anyone believed to be possessed.
Luo Yonghua hadn't resented this state of affairs at all.
In a voice tinged with both fear and excitement, he said, "I often went to play by a river near my home. There were plenty of fish and shrimp in it, as well as frogs and crabs. I even caught some snails. They were all easy to catch. You could go down beside a bridge and reach the riverbank, then catch all those things. I... I used them for my experiments for a long time, but they weren't like people... Those things were still different from people. But I couldn't get my hands on any people. There was no way. I was too young back then. My dad had died like that, my mom was out of her mind, none of our relatives came by, and the adults kept the neighborhood kids away from me."
By the end, Luo Yonghua sounded frustrated and dejected, with a trace