Strange families, uncanny households

Gossip left her door open, staring at Gao Ming until they left the fifth floor of Building B.

"Didn't the anomaly event break out in Building A? Why have all the residents in Building B turned into ghosts too?" Zhu Miaomiao was pale. When she had met Gossip's eyes just now, she had nearly been scared to death.

"Fat Sister-in-Law was fine during the day. Maybe a ghost killed her shortly after we left." Gao Ming shook his head. "No, killed isn't the right word. She was transformed in the shadows too."

The protective charm in his palm was undamaged. If Uncle Wu hadn't lied, that proved neither Fat Sister-in-Law nor Gossip counted as an evil ghost.

The two of them didn't dare enter Building A directly. It was the center of the anomaly event, and they wanted to investigate the surrounding area first.

They had only gone a few steps down the stairs when Gao Ming heard footsteps. A young man with dyed blond hair and ear studs was wandering through the stairwell.

He was dressed entirely in black, blood dripping from his fingertips. His head hung low, as though he were looking for something.

Gao Ming didn't want unnecessary trouble, but as he passed the young man, the young man grabbed his wrist.

For an instant, Gao Ming wanted to lash out with his chains. But the young man made no further move, merely looking him up and down.

"Can I help you?"

"I saw your black bracelet and thought you were human livestock that had escaped from the Ghost Market." The young man chuckled and let go.

"Human livestock wearing black bracelets?" The black bracelet the young man mentioned was probably the Investigation Bureau's Black Ring. Clearly, he had seen other Investigators.

"They're different from us." His long bangs blew aside, exposing a horrific scar on his forehead and traces of blood at the corners of his mouth. "They broke a taboo."

"Then should we take our black bracelets off so no one else gets the wrong idea?" Gao Ming asked casually.

"No need. People who've broken a taboo have a different aura from ours." The young man pulled up his sleeve. His arm was packed with bloodstained Black Rings. "I just like collecting these things."

The young man headed upstairs. Despite the light from the bright red lanterns, he cast no shadow.

"Team leader, do you remember the young man who was murdered on the fifth floor of Building A in Sishui Apartments twenty years ago? He belonged to a small gang. He stole from his boss and was hacked to death in the stairwell." Zhu Miaomiao felt a chill creep over her. "His name was Ghost Boy. I think he was related to that Gossip."

"Let's get to the first floor."

Gao Ming had Zhu Miaomiao remove her Black Ring. Flesh-and-Blood Immortal wasn't a game he had created, so he was being even more cautious than usual.

Paper money lay scattered over the steps, braziers stood at the corners of the stairwell, and a faint scent of incense drifted through the air. Every household in the apartment building seemed to worship deities to protect their homes.

All the windows along Building B's first-floor corridor had been boarded up, with talismans pasted over them.

For a human, the barrier was a sheet of paper; for a ghost, it was a mountain range. But there were ghosts both inside and outside the building, so who were these things supposed to keep out?

Firelight flickered, brightening and dimming. Gao Ming looked deeper into the first-floor corridor. Someone was burning paper offerings at the stairwell entrance.

He approached slowly, then hurriedly stopped when he was still four or five meters away.

The person burning the offerings was an old man, skeletal and gaunt. His limbs looked like four wooden sticks, with wrinkled skin clinging to the bones.

He looked as though a gust of wind could knock him over, yet he carried an enormous baby boy on his back.

The baby had an adult's head and kept gnawing at the old man's shoulders. At the slightest displeasure, he punched and kicked the old man.

Whenever the old man tried to put him down, he clamped tightly around the old man's neck, driving his fingers into the old man's body and gripping his bones.

"Don't go any farther." The door beside Gao Ming wasn't locked. As he passed, it opened on its own, and a man's voice came from inside.

Gao Ming turned and found the room pitch-black.

He took out his lighter for illumination. Only then did he see a mound of yellow earth—a grave—inside the small rental room. A plump middle-aged man in plain clothes crouched on top of it.

The man's shoes were buried in the yellow earth, and both his hands were hidden behind the gravestone.

Seeing Gao Ming stop, the middle-aged man continued, "The old man's called Zhou Ji. He's had a hard life. Even at his age, he still has to support his son. His son refuses to work, and on top of that, he forces the old man to pretend to be sick so he can scam welfare payments."

"A person like that is nothing but a parasite." Zhu Miaomiao stared at the old man in the distance. She couldn't understand why he still had to suffer so much after becoming a ghost.

"I've had enough of watching it too. Why don't we work together and get that baby off him?" the middle-aged man suggested. "All you two have to do is lure Zhou Ji over here."

"Sure."

"Close the door for me first. We don't want him getting suspicious," the middle-aged man said, pretending it was an afterthought.

Gao Ming seemed not to give it much thought and walked straight to the doorway. But just as his hand was about to touch the door, he suddenly snatched it back.

Almost at the same instant, arm after arm reached through the gap in the doorway, grasping at empty air.

The plump middle-aged man's expression changed at once. All color and kindness vanished from his face. His body sank into the grave mound, and arms emerged from every corner of the room.

Slam!

An icy gust blew the door shut, trapping all the arms inside.

"Are you two here to look at rooms?"

A sinister voice suddenly rang out. Gao Ming and Zhu Miaomiao turned to discover an Old Lady with a deeply wrinkled face standing behind them. Neither knew when she had approached.

Five bony fingers clutched a yellow talisman. The Old Lady pasted it in the center of the door, and the strange noises inside immediately stopped.

"All the good rooms in this building are locked. Any door that opens for you so freely is bound to mean you harm."

After pasting up the yellow talisman, the Old Lady coughed a few times. She jingled the key ring in her hand and raised her head. "Have you two found a room you like?"

Only the whites showed in her eyes. The wrinkles on her face bunched together like Dragon Scales. She wasn't tall, but Gao Ming felt immense pressure from her, as though he were facing not a frail Old Lady, but a vicious beast.

"What should we call you, ma'am?"

"They all call me Spirit Medium." The Old Lady jingled her keys and headed toward the other end of the corridor. As she passed the brazier by the entrance, she glanced at the baby boy on Zhou Ji's back. He immediately released Zhou Ji's neck and burst into terrified wails.

"Keep crying and I'll send you to the Ancestral Hall."

At those few words from Spirit Medium, the baby immediately shut his mouth and curled up on Zhou Ji's back.

After walking down the corridor, Spirit Medium took out a key and opened the rental room at the far end of the first floor.

The room was near the communal toilets and had one of the heaviest concentrations of yin energy in the building.

"Ma'am, may we come into your room?" Gao Ming was a little nervous. He noticed that Spirit Medium's home was unusual. Clay statues of all sorts of ghosts and gods stood inside, and the walls were covered in illegible talismanic scrawls.

"If you're here to look at rooms, wait outside. If you want to find the way you came in, come inside. There are things I can't say out here." Spirit Medium rummaged through a large pile of talismans. After a moment's consideration, Gao Ming and Zhu Miaomiao entered.

The Anomaly Event on Sishui Street was already out of control. Inside the Strange Tale, it felt like another world—absurd, uncanny, and steeped in unease.

"Ma'am, why is everyone in this building so strange?" Gao Ming had seen Zhao Xi after he became a ghost. Within the Strange Tale, Zhao Xi had retained his appearance at death.

"What seems utterly false may be real; what seems utterly real may be false." Spirit Medium bowed three times before one of the ghostly deities. "What looks normal isn't necessarily real, and what looks distorted isn't necessarily false. Perhaps what you're seeing now is what they truly look like."

She lit a white candle and offered three sticks of incense. Once she had finished, Spirit Medium sat in the room's only chair. "You two will change soon too, just like the others who came in. You'll become your truest selves. When that happens, you won't be able to leave, even if you want to."

(End of chapter)