I Have a Rather Bold Idea

Black stains lingered on the corridor floor. From downstairs came the faint sound of nails scraping, as though something was drawing closer.

Gao Ming left 2706 and knocked softly on the door of 2707. "Teacher Yao? It's Gao from Building Four. We talked about growing flowers before."

"Why won't you listen!" Seeing Gao Ming not only venture into the corridor but even knock on a neighbor's door, the investigator stamped his feet in panic. "The hallway is dangerous! Some of the neighbors might have been replaced by something, too. We could run into a ghost at any moment! Get back here!"

"The old man in 2707 is seriously ill, but..."

"No buts!" The investigator grabbed Gao Ming's clothes. "Once you're caught up in an anomalous incident, forget about saving anyone else. If you can get out alive and bring back useful information and rules, you'll already have made an enormous contribution to the whole city!"

He pulled hard, but Gao Ming wouldn't budge. "Stop trying to play the saint! You have no idea how terrifying anomalous incidents are. You're going to get us all killed!"

Gao Ming didn't want to waste time explaining himself to the investigator. He gripped the door handle, his voice growing colder. "Teacher Yao, I know you're in there. If you don't open the door, I'll break it down."

The investigator had been about to keep persuading him, but Gao Ming's next words left him momentarily speechless. This hardly sounded like a saint trying to help his neighbors.

The lock turned, withered mugwort leaves fell, and the old door swung open. Wearing glasses, Teacher Yao looked at Gao Ming. "Come in."

"Don't just walk into a neighbor's home! If a ghost has already killed them, then what we'll be facing..." Before the investigator could finish, Gao Ming dragged him into 2707. He stared at the closed door, his mouth still half-open.

"I got your message and turned off the microphone and camera ahead of time." Teacher Yao slipped a black glove over the top of his phone, covering the camera.

"This is urgent, so I'll keep it brief." Gao Ming took out Zhao Xi's Phone. "I suspect that all those seemingly normal neighbors in the group chat are fake. They only seem to appear in the video call."

"You even started a group chat behind my back?" The investigator had only just noticed the group chat.

"I don't quite understand what you're saying. Aren't you and I both real?" Teacher Yao taught at a Police Academy. He was quick-witted and knowledgeable, but tonight's experiences went beyond anything he understood.

"If we think of corpse resurrection as a horror game, the three of us are the players. The other neighbors in the group chat might be something else, or they might just be fabrications the phone created to deceive us." Gao Ming stared at the group video call. "Zhao Xi's corpse is climbing toward the fifth floor. Once he enters Huang Mingming's home in 2501, we'll pry open the door to 2607. If its resident, Jiaqi, is different from the person in the video, that'll prove my theory."

"The ghost wants to pry doors open, and so do you?" The wrinkles on Teacher Yao's face bunched together, while the scar on the investigator's face twitched.

"If we stay inside, Zhao Xi will catch us sooner or later. If I have to choose how to die, I'd rather die trying to survive." Gao Ming still couldn't be completely certain of Teacher Yao's identity. If Teacher Yao was a ghost, all his deductions would be wrong. That was why he wanted to check 2607 and, while he was at it, get close to Zhao Xi. He was a cautious man.

"Aren't you being a little reckless?" The investigator had seen ordinary people caught in anomalous incidents in Xinhu, but almost none were as brazen as Gao Ming. "There's a ghost out there! It'll kill you!"

"I don't think it's wise, either." Teacher Yao coughed. "Why don't we run downstairs while the corpse is crawling into 2501, leave Lijing Apartments, and seek help? I'm sure the city has people who specialize in handling this sort of thing."

"It does, but isn't one of them trapped here with us?" Gao Ming walked past the investigator and looked through the curtain of rain toward his own home in the opposite building.

He quietly considered it. I only brought in one blank memorial photo. If I'd brought that 'family portrait' of Mom and Dad, too, would they come over in the middle of the night to bring me cake? Maybe I can try it next time.

Another scream came from Zhao Xi's Phone. Gao Ming looked down. Huang Mingming in 2501 had broken down in terror.

His neighbors had died gruesomely one after another, and the pressure of that thing ascending floor by floor was overwhelming. Every nerve in Huang Mingming's body felt as though it was being scraped with a knife. He began shouting at his phone's camera.

Huang Mingming, 2501: "I can hear nails digging at the door! Zhao Xi's head seems to be hanging from my doorframe! Save me! We've been neighbors for over a decade. Please help me!"

No matter how Huang Mingming shouted, none of the surviving neighbors answered.

Veins bulged across his face as Huang Mingming snatched the fruit knife from the coffee table. "He'll catch you, too! You'll get what's coming to you!"

The lock on the security door seemed purely decorative. Blood seeped inside, the door slowly opened, and fingers squeezed through the gap one after another.

Driven by extreme terror, Huang Mingming screamed and charged at the security door, raising the fruit knife and slashing in front of him.

The investigator and Teacher Yao were both riveted by the video. They trembled with fear.

"Don't just stand there! Get ready to head to the sixth floor!" Gao Ming found Teacher Yao's toolbox. "We only get one chance!"

"Are we really going over there? Be reasonable!"

"I'm already being very reasonable." Gao Ming led the two men to the sixth floor. In the video on the phone, Huang Mingming was fighting the corpse on the fifth floor, yet the stairwell was deathly silent. Now Teacher Yao noticed something strange, too.

Without needing another word from Gao Ming, he took out the tools and prepared to pry open the door to 2607.

In the group video call, Huang Mingming had gone mad with fear. His phone had fallen onto the sofa, and on camera he was hysterically swinging the fruit knife.

"You killed yourself, and you still won't leave us alone! Go after the people who bullied you if you've got the guts! You deserved to be a pathetic loser your whole life!"

Black blood splattered across the living room. Zhao Xi's ruined body writhed on the floor as Huang Mingming gripped the knife with both hands, repeating the same motion over and over.

Clothes and skin were torn apart together, but nothing Huang Mingming did could stop Zhao Xi from drawing closer.

Bones knocked against one another. Zhao Xi's corpse, riddled with holes, slowly opened like a shattered mouth.

Shadows spread. Huang Mingming had nowhere to dodge; Zhao Xi's skin almost completely enveloped him.

The horrifying sight sent chills down the spines of both the investigator and Gao Ming as they watched. In the video, the enveloped Huang Mingming was still struggling with all his strength, but it was futile. His legs moved toward the balcony against his will, and Zhao Xi's skin covered his arms.

"Spare me! Zhao Xi! I know I was wrong! I shouldn't have falsely accused you of stealing cargo from the port! I'm sorry! I really was wrong!" Broken bones burrowed into the backs of his hands. Driven by some force, Huang Mingming grabbed the window frame and pushed the glass window open.

The downpour instantly soaked Huang Mingming's face. He wailed and begged for mercy, his expression twisted with ugly pain, yet his body slowly climbed onto the windowsill.

A few days ago, the real Zhao Xi might have been just like this.

"Zhao Xi! Let me down! Let me down!"

As though he had heard Huang Mingming's plea, Zhao Xi wrapped himself around Huang Mingming's back, and they plunged from the window together!

The investigator's hands and feet went cold as he watched. The "ghost" in this building was even more terrifying than he had imagined. "Ordinary anomalous incidents don't involve an actual ghost. We're in serious trouble this time!"

Bang!

With a sharp crack, Teacher Yao and Gao Ming pried open the door to 2607 together. They stood in the doorway and looked inside.

Thick dust covered the tables and chairs. Room 2607 was pitch-black, as though no one had lived there in a long time.

"The neighbors in the phone's video are all fake. What we saw of Zhao Xi killing them one by one was fake, too. It's all a reflection of the darkness inside Zhao Xi." Teacher Yao looked at Gao Ming with admiration. "You were right about everything!"

"What are you planning to do next?" The investigator turned to Gao Ming as well.

Leaving the group video call, Gao Ming browsed through Zhao Xi's Phone. It contained many snippets of daily life he had filmed himself: his sister-in-law playing with her child, his elderly adoptive mother cooking in the kitchen. Zhao Xi desperately wanted to join them, but all the rumors made him afraid, and deep down, neither his sister-in-law nor his adoptive mother welcomed a disabled man like him.

Besides these glimpses of daily life, the lonely middle-aged man also filmed himself. No one thought anything of him, so he talked to himself. His phone became his confidant, and big data catered to his emotions, too. In that sense, the phone really was more like his The Only Family.

"I have a rather bold idea." Gazing at the dark stairs, Gao Ming spoke as though talking to himself. "I want to have a heart-to-heart with the dead."

(End of chapter)