People Have Two Hearts

What was a human? What was a Ghost?

At that moment, Gao Ming could hardly tell them apart. Humans and Ghosts were both afraid, afraid the other would see them as strangers.

Gao Ming had once viewed the Shadow World's invasion of reality as nothing but a disaster, believing the games he had created would destroy the city. But now, other thoughts stirred in his heart.

Zhao Xi had returned, and the neighbors throughout the building were afraid, cursing, crying, and calling for help. Gong Xi had returned too, but his grandmother had been waiting for him all along. Even when her mind grew muddled and she could no longer recognize him, she still waited.

"Who's really in the wrong?"

Gong Xi let go of the old woman's hand and began gathering the photographs in the room. "We need to hurry. The Building Manager could come back at any moment."

"Are we moving to another floor?"

"No. We'll hide in a room with a white lantern first. Even the Building Manager won't dare go in there." Gong Xi pulled out a large trunk and carefully packed away the photographs and other belongings. "Want to come with us? You just clashed with the Building Manager. He might come looking for trouble with you too."

"Then let's hide there for now." Gao Ming had seen plenty of rooms with red lanterns in Sishui Apartments, but never one with a white lantern.

Once everything was packed, Gong Xi hoisted his grandmother onto his back and dragged the large trunk out the door.

He glanced both ways. When he saw the corridor was empty, he beckoned to Gao Ming. "Quick! Don't let anyone see us enter the White House."

They hurried toward the other end of the corridor. Gong Xi grabbed a large handful of paper money from the trunk and set it alight, then led Gao Ming back and forth through the Building Corridor.

The ashes scattered into the shadows. On their fourth pass, a white lantern appeared outside one of the rental rooms halfway down the corridor.

"Get inside, quick!"

As they pushed the door open, bone-chilling yin energy seeped into Gao Ming's body. His hair stood on end, and he drew in a breath of icy air.

"This looks like the room where that whole family was murdered!" Zhu Miaomiao gripped the Fire Axe, her body trembling uncontrollably.

"That's right. This is the room." Gong Xi's expression grew a little frightening too. After entering, he seemed far less alive, and his face turned deathly pale.

Laying the trunk flat on the floor, Gong Xi took out various offerings and arranged them outside the bedroom door. He knelt and recited with utmost reverence, "This dwelling has a master. Let all four directions be informed: those who must leave, depart; those who must come, enter. Let the house god take its rightful place, and all others stand aside. With grains of every kind, we shall provide offerings for generations."

After kowtowing several times, Gong Xi took out a wooden plaque and placed it among the offerings.

"What are you standing around for? Come pay your respects." Gong Xi lit several candles. "Every household in Sishui Apartments used to worship deities, but later, they were only allowed to worship the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal. Anyone who dared worship another god in the building was sure to suffer disaster."

"But that doesn't look like the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal you're worshipping now, does it?" Zhu Miaomiao saw the words "House God" written on the plaque.

"The haunted homes with white lanterns are exceptions. These families suffered disaster because they refused to worship the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, so you have to worship other gods here." Before Gong Xi finished speaking, cracks appeared in the wooden plaque. Then it shattered right before him.

The candles went out. An icy wind blew, and the thick black curtain separating the living room from the bedroom swayed slowly. A paper effigy of a little girl poked her head out.

At the sight, Gong Xi hurriedly dropped to his knees and kowtowed over and over.

The black curtain fell. An eight immortals table stood in the bedroom, with seven paper effigies of different ages seated around it. A bowl of red rice sat before each of them.

In the pitch-black room, the paper effigies slowly turned their heads.

People said that when painting paper effigies, you drew the eyes but never the pupils, and that paper horses should stand firmly without raised manes. Many paper artisans used needles to pierce holes in place of pupils, but every paper effigy in this room had human eyes.

"Did we interrupt their family dinner?" Gao Ming edged backward. He could feel all eight paper effigies staring at him!

The little girl tottered out of the bedroom. She came up to Gao Ming, reached into his pocket, and took out Bai Xiao's Black Ring and the protective charm Uncle Wu had given him.

Gao Ming did not dare stop her. He watched her open the charm and shake out the scraps of photograph wrapped inside.

The scraps seemed to have been torn from a family portrait. Their presence also seemed to be what gave the otherwise ordinary-looking talisman paper its special power.

"Is this your photograph?" Gao Ming looked up. At some point, the seven paper effigies in the room had appeared before him, standing together like a family. Blood-red rice clung to the corners of their mouths, and strange expressions marked their faces.

Even Gao Ming, who had witnessed plenty of terrifying scenes, felt deeply unsettled now. Their stares made his skin crawl.

The girl tossed the protective charm into a brazier, took Gao Ming's hand, and led him into the bedroom. An old man in a tattered padded jacket was hiding in a corner.

"Uncle Wu?" Gao Ming recognized him at once. "You survived getting caught up in a level four anomaly event? You really have been hiding your talents, old man."

Uncle Wu badly wanted to pretend he did not know Gao Ming. He had made the protective charm he sold Gao Ming himself, apparently using photographs of the dead. "Ahem. You people really have a death wish. You actually came in."

"Aren't we doing this to save more people?" Gao Ming pulled Uncle Wu to his feet. "You didn't tell me the truth before."

"Every word I said was true. These paper effigies are the wronged souls from that Family Annihilation Case. I make offerings to them every year, and they've been protecting me." Uncle Wu pushed Gao Ming aside. "You repay kindness by biting the hand that helps you. Everyone from that bureau of yours is a lunatic who won't listen to advice."

"You've met other people from the bureau?"

"He ate the meat. He might already be dead." Uncle Wu moved to the doorway. Behind him stood a small altar. Apparently, he came to the murder house every year to make offerings to the victims. He had originally done it only to ease his conscience, never expecting it to save his own life after the strange tale invaded reality.

"What exactly is going on in this apartment building? Why do some residents have deformed flesh, while others have become ghosts? And why are some investigators who broke taboos being treated as human sacrifices and dragged to the butcher shop?" Gao Ming had finally found a living person he could talk to. No matter what happened today, he would not let Uncle Wu leave.

"Meeting you was my bad luck." Uncle Wu wrapped his tattered padded jacket tighter around himself. The room was cold, and he wore the thickest clothes of anyone there. "Come watch this recording."

He took an old camcorder from beneath the altar. A family of four was celebrating a birthday, with the father filming. They had just lit the candles when someone knocked on the door.

The mother went to answer it. Then came screams and running footsteps, and the camcorder fell from the father's hand.

Blood flowed through the room. The family of four lay in pools of blood. Hearing the commotion, the neighbors tried to check on them, and the killer ran into their home too.

Eight people from two families were murdered in the apartments, just like that.

After committing those atrocities, the deranged killer did not flee the scene. Instead, the killer drew strange symbols inside the room, then committed suicide.

"The Family Annihilation Case? How did you get this recording?" Even Gao Ming, who worked in a Maximum-Security Prison, found the footage horrifying.

"I... was on patrol that night. When the killer went upstairs, the killer walked right past me." Uncle Wu's eyes filled with guilt. "If I'd noticed something was wrong sooner, maybe the tragedy wouldn't have happened."

"Then why didn't you give the recording to the police?" Gao Ming was puzzled.

"Keep watching." The footage continued playing. After the tragedy, the first people to arrive were not the police, but people from the Charity Association.

It was as though they had known this would happen. They entered the room and removed some things from the killer's body.

"The Charity Association was involved, but there wasn't any direct evidence." Uncle Wu was frightened. "The killer was dead, so the investigation couldn't go any further. If I hadn't taken the camcorder, this video might have mysteriously vanished. Don't ever underestimate the Hanhai Charity Federation's influence. They've built so many schools, hospitals, and welfare facilities. Countless poor people see them as their hope."

"The Hanhai Charity Federation really did help the poor in the past, but that might not be true anymore." Gao Ming was not targeting the Charity Association. He was targeting Situ An.

"Ever since Sishui Apartments was completed, the Charity Association has been moving things inside. But most of those things were meant for the dead." Uncle Wu was no fool. He remembered everything. He placed two red candles and four white ones before him. "The people from the Hanhai Charity Federation have been deliberately raising Ghosts, and they succeeded. The two most dangerous Ghosts in this building are the killer who committed the Family Annihilation Case, with an overwhelming urge to kill and a Flesh and Blood heart, and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal Statue that the residents worship. That clay statue has awakened, growing a heart formed from thoughts."

"Apart from those two, the residents can roughly be divided into four types." Uncle Wu took out the four white candles. "Appearance comes from the heart. Under the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal's influence, these four types of residents have manifested the life aspect, death aspect, desire aspect, and karmic aspect."

"The life aspect means outsiders like you and me, who retain our humanity. The desire aspect means people like that rental agent. The desires deep in their hearts have been stirred up, and their flesh is no longer like ours. They can never leave this place and can only become followers of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal. The death aspect means people who don't have long to live. Shadows shroud their bodies, and black writing covers them. They can only cling to life by eating the meat on the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal's offering table. Finally, there's the karmic aspect. The wronged souls of many victims are trapped in this building. They have nowhere to go, are filled with resentment, and are seen as ill omens."

Uncle Wu carefully pushed the white candles aside. "Residents of the four aspects aren't that frightening. I think we should be able to escape as long as we kill the two most terrifying Ghosts."

"Old man, you may have overlooked another force." Gao Ming brought over another red candle. "Situ An, the vice president of the Hanhai Charity Federation, is in the building too."

(End of chapter)