Fu'an Apartment

Wang Qi kept urging Chen Ge to leave; from the perspective of a stranger, he was being overly enthusiastic.

Chen Ge did not agree immediately. After listening to Wang Qi's story, he vaguely felt that the other man was hiding something.

"I've told you everything I can. There's still time to leave now; once it's past midnight, this apartment building will turn into something else." After saying this, Wang Qi brushed the dust off his clothes, turned around, and walked out of the apartment building.

It wasn't until Wang Qi's back disappeared into the night that Chen Ge realized he had originally intended to find a tenant in the building to understand the situation, but now, his doubts hadn't decreased—they had only grown.

This person has major issues. Is he actually crazy? Recalling Wang Qi's turbid eyes, Chen Ge felt a bit uncomfortable. The man's eyes were filled with a fatigue and pain that could not be faked. It seems he must have loved his wife very much.

Chen Ge walked back. When he passed the woman's room on the first floor, he hesitated for a moment and tried knocking on the door.

"Hey, newcomer." The door to the woman's room remained motionless, but the door behind Chen Ge opened halfway, and a tall, thin man leaned against the frame.

He looked to be in his thirties, unkempt, with his hair and beard almost grown together, and a peony tattooed on the back of his exposed hand.

"Who are you?" Chen Ge turned around, alert.

"That guy who was putting up missing person notices earlier isn't a tenant in our building. There's something wrong with his head." The tall, thin man tapped his own temple. "Don't believe a word he says. If you get too close to him, something bad will happen."

This was the first time Chen Ge had seen the tall, thin man. Although the other party looked sloppy, his tone was the most normal among the few people he had encountered so far. "That man's behavior is indeed strange, but perhaps he has suffered a great blow because his wife went missing."

"Did he tell you his fiancée went missing near this apartment building?"

"Yes."

"And did he say the police told him that, which is why he keeps coming here to look?"

"That's right."

"Heh." The tall, thin man chuckled. "I've lived in this place for nine months and have never seen the police come here. That lunatic is lying to you. All that talk about ghosts and vengeful spirits is complete nonsense."

He pulled a cheap cigarette from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "How could there be ghosts in this world? At most, it's just someone pretending to be one. Alright, it's getting late, you should hurry back to your room."

Chen Ge thanked the man and turned to leave.

As he walked up the stairs, he couldn't make up his mind. One of them is definitely lying. But who?

Perhaps he was too deep in thought, because by the time Chen Ge regained his focus, he had already reached the third floor.

The paint-chipped numbers were printed on the corner of the floor, and the voice-activated light overhead emitted a dim glow. Chen Ge looked to both sides; this floor had not been renovated. The ground was dirty and messy, with traces of burning everywhere, and the wall plaster was peeling severely, looking like crisscrossing scars.

Why is only the third floor not renovated? Lack of funds, or some other reason?

The voice-activated light quickly went out, and the entire apartment building plunged into darkness quite abruptly.

Chen Ge worked in a Haunted House year-round and was relatively accustomed to the dark. He didn't panic and took out his phone. Just as he was about to turn on the flashlight, he suddenly saw a figure walk quickly through the dark hallway.

"Who's there?" The light from the phone's flashlight illuminated the third floor, but the figure had already vanished.

Chen Ge wanted to go in and search, but unfortunately, footsteps could be heard from downstairs at that moment.

Is that the landlord? If that grumpy, limping landlord saw him wandering around the third floor, he would inevitably be scolded. Chen Ge thought for a moment, put away his phone, and quietly retreated to the second floor.

Coming down from the stairwell, Chen Ge saw a short, fat middle-aged man walking out of a room on the second floor carrying a washbasin. The man had been humming a little tune and seemed to be in a good mood, but upon seeing Chen Ge, he immediately tightened his face, lowered his head, and walked past quickly.

What's that supposed to mean? Do I look that scary? Returning to his room, Chen Ge hugged his backpack and lay on the bed. It feels like there isn't a single normal person in this apartment building. Everyone looks like a murderer...

Thinking of this, Chen Ge sat up abruptly. The task issued by the phone only requires me to find the murderer, but it didn't tell me how many murderers there are. Thinking about it this way, there really might be more than one! After all, it involves a family extermination case; the possibility of a group crime is very high. No, I need to hurry and check the case from back then.

Chen Ge took out his phone. His conversation with Wang Qi wasn't entirely without gain; at least he had figured out one thing: Ping An Apartment used to be called Fu'an Apartment a long time ago.

He typed "Han Jiang Fu'an Apartment" into the search bar, and after scrolling through a few pages, shocking words crowded into Chen Ge's eyes.

"Family of four brutally murdered! Did the killer vanish into thin air?!"

"Accident? Or murder! What caused the fire at Fu'an Apartment?"

"Hidden corpses in the building lead to a case within a case!"

Chen Ge browsed through all the information related to Fu'an Apartment and felt his body go cold. Reality is often more terrifying than fiction, because these are things that actually happened, things that might even befall him one day.

Five years ago, villagers saw Fu'an Apartment on fire and called the fire department.

After the fire brigade extinguished the blaze, they began to investigate the cause and assess the damage.

It was supposed to be a routine matter, but as the investigation progressed, more and more suspicious points began to emerge.

The concrete was cracked, the glass fragments from the windows were small, and the smoke stains on the cracks were faint; this indicated that the fire had not only burned fiercely but at a very high temperature, spreading rapidly.

The fire scene had multiple ignition points that were unrelated to each other, which is a typical characteristic of intentional arson.

The nature of the case changed instantly. The local public security department intervened and subsequently found four corpses in the building's wreckage—exactly the family of four who ran the apartment.

This case caused quite a stir at the time, and the police went all out, but because the fire had destroyed the scene, they searched everywhere and found no trace of a fifth person, let alone catching the killer.

The apartment building was sealed for a whole year. Later, according to relevant laws, it was transferred to the original owner's father, and it was from that time that Fu'an Apartment was renamed Ping An Apartment.

A family of four burned to death, and the killer is still at large. It's no wonder there are legends of it being haunted here. Having figured out the case from back then, Chen Ge felt a bit more grounded. Looking at the webpage on his phone, he suddenly noticed a detail. The report says the original owner of the apartment building was forty-one when he died. Later, the building was transferred to his father. Calculating the age, the current true owner of the apartment building should be sixty or seventy years old.