"Brother Fugui, that figure—did you get a good look at his face?" Huai Yi asked nervously. Once he had confirmed which room it was, his first thought had also been of Wan Ming.
But seeing the figure had been the best he could do. The fat man shook his head. "No."
Nobody wanted to go back and check now. They decided to stick to the original plan and look for clues outside the manor.
Not far beyond the manor was a street. The group walked along it, observing their surroundings. It felt like a town from a Western movie, and a rather run-down one at that. Almost all the shops on either side were closed. Through the grimy windows, they could see crooked shelves and trash strewn across the floors.
The farther Bai Xiaojie walked, the more uneasy she felt. She watched Western horror movies often, and the scene here seemed almost identical to the haunted, remote towns in those films.
She had far less experience than Miao Qing and Liu Hui. This was only her second mission.
Every decrepit door was plastered with sheets of paper. When the wind blew, the loose sheets slapped against the doors with a pap-pap sound, like white funeral banners calling the dead.
Jiang Cheng stepped forward and pulled one down. The writing had faded badly over time, but there was a photograph in the middle: a bearded man.
"It's a missing-person notice," Miao Qing said, looking at the photo.
"These... they're all missing-person notices." Liu Hui stared at the papers covering the shop doors and windows, then turned around, her voice strange. "It's not just one person. A lot of people have gone missing from this town."
Ouyang Huanbin looked toward the other end of the street. Missing-person notices covered the doors along