"Cheng Ping'an... Cheng Ping... Cheng An..."
A soul-summoning-like call came from overhead, its features impossible to distinguish. It sounded like the voices of men, women, young, and old blended together, all calling the same name.
At first listen, it sounded like "Cheng Ping'an." But on closer inspection, it was an echo of the two names "Cheng Ping" and "Cheng An." Yet because the tone and intonation were so similar, it forcibly created the illusion that they were calling the same person.
"Drip, drip..."
The ceaseless sound of dripping water mingled with the voices, soft one moment and heavy the next, sometimes near and sometimes far away.
The familiar scene stirred a deep-seated sensory memory. A faint trace of blood seeped into his nostrils, coyly worming its way into his nasal cavity.
Qi Si opened his eyes and found himself sitting in a chair, dressed in a psychiatric patient's straitjacket. Belts and buckles tightly restrained his neck and limbs, allowing him only small movements back and forth.
His head was secured to the back of the chair, and tape had stuck his eyelids open, forcing him to stare straight ahead with his eyes wide open.
In his line of sight was an iron bed without sheets, its four legs firmly welded into the cement floor.
A naked female corpse lay on the bed. A great mass of blood flowed from her abdomen, slipping through the gaps in the bedframe and dripping from the edges of the iron like a curtain of water.
A beam of cold white light from the incandescent lamp on the ceiling fell directly over the woman's corpse. The stark contrast between light and shadow gave the scene the texture of an oil painting.
The blood beneath her invaded every corner of the canvas like an inexhaustible supply