The Visitor

The terrifying, sinister scene Gaoyang had imagined never materialized. In fact, the house was pitch-black, and the air that greeted him carried the mingled smells of mold and decay from a place long abandoned.

Officer Huang closed the front door and found a pull cord in the darkness. He tugged it.

"Bzzzz-click." A low-wattage bulb struggled for a long while before finally flickering to life. The room was dim, but bright enough to see.

The main room was square, its interior walls coated in badly peeling white paint. The concrete floor had a greenish tint, and a ceiling fan thick with dust and cobwebs hung overhead.

An old red wall clock hung on the wall opposite the front door, its Western styling conspicuously out of place. It was still ticking away, its pendulum swinging.

An old sideboard stood beneath the clock, with a black-and-white television on top and a half-meter antenna connected to its back. Several dark, low chairs sat in front of the sideboard. There was no sofa; the family probably sat on those chairs to watch television. A calendar hung on the left wall, illustrated with landscape paintings of famous scenic and historic sites. Beneath it stood an old sewing machine. Several green ceramic jars were stacked in the corner, seemingly filled with pickled vegetables.

That was everything in the main room. There was nothing else. It truly had been an age of material scarcity.

Officer Huang walked over to the sewing machine and dabbed a finger against it, picking up a thick layer of dust. He frowned. "Strange."

"It is strange." Gaoyang had more or less finished looking around, too. "It feels like nobody's lived here for ages."

"Well, obviously. It's been thirty years!" Wang Zikai said.

Gaoyang smiled wryly and explained patiently, "In our world, these murders happened thirty years ago. But in this world, they happened less than two weeks ago. Isn't the village still holding the funeral for Hua Zi's family?"

"Oh, right!" Realization dawned on Wang Zikai.

That intelligence. Incredible.

"And there's more. There are still large bloodstains in the front yard, but there isn't a single sign of a struggle in the main room." Officer Huang clicked his tongue. "Come on. Let's check the other rooms."

Officer Huang led the way into the bedroom on the left. A double-happiness character was pasted on its door, suggesting it was the bridal chamber. Sure enough, when he switched on the light, everything was red: the quilt, the pillows, the window drapes, the lanterns, the artificial flowers, the wardrobe, the dressing table...

Like the main room, everything in the bedroom was coated in dust. It felt both vivid and aged, both festive and strange.

"A girl married into this family. On her wedding night..." Officer Huang left the bridal chamber and returned to the main room, pondering. "Something happened. Then, by the next morning, the whole family had been dismembered, their bodies scattered throughout Gu Family Village. The bride's head still hasn't been found."

"Stop!" Pang Jun squirmed with discomfort. "We're not here to solve the case. Let's figure out how to get out of here instead."

"I know. That's why I want to solve it," Officer Huang said.

Gaoyang nodded. "I also think we have to find whoever killed the whole family if we want to leave."

"Do you have any leads?" Officer Huang asked.

Gaoyang tried to analyze the situation. "There are no signs of a struggle inside, so the family must have been dismembered when they were either unable to resist or had lost the will to. As for where the dismemberment happened..."

"In the front yard," Qingling said.

"Right." Gaoyang thought for a moment. "That's all I have for now."

Officer Huang pulled over a chair and sat down. "My team leader back then wasn't an Awakened, so he definitely wouldn't have considered these two questions when investigating."

"First, were Hua Zi and his family humans or Beasts, or a mix of both? Second, was whoever killed them a human or a Beast?"

"Speaking of Beasts..." Gaoyang hesitated for a moment, but asked anyway. "Officer Huang, how many types of Beasts do you know about?"

Officer Huang looked at Gaoyang. After a brief hesitation, he decided to answer honestly. "At this point, to hell with the rules. Wu Dahai told me their organization has encountered four types of Beasts so far: Infatuation Beasts, Wrath Beasts, Greed Beasts, and Delusion Beasts."

"Greed Beasts? Delusion Beasts?" Qingling's interest was piqued.

"Greed Beasts are also called Assimilators, and Delusion Beasts are also called Observers," Officer Huang said. "I don't know the specific varieties of Greed Beasts, either. But Wu Dahai said the most terrifying thing about them is that they can become human through some method."

Everyone sucked in a breath, except Wang Zikai, whose expression remained indifferent.

"What do you mean?" Qingling didn't understand.

"Exactly what it sounds like," Officer Huang said gravely. "They don't disguise themselves as humans. They become human. That's why they're called Assimilators."

Something else occurred to Gaoyang. "But humans are divided into the unawakened and the Awakened."

"The Awakened," Officer Huang said with certainty. "Greed Beasts can become Awakened. No Beast ever attacks an unawakened human. That's an ironclad law of this world."

"Then is a Greed Beast that becomes an Awakened a human or a Beast?" Gaoyang was confused.

Officer Huang shook his head. "If we make it out of here alive, perhaps we can ask someone from the Twelve Zodiac and get a clear answer."

"What about Delusion Beasts?" Qingling asked.

Officer Huang shook his head. "All I know about Delusion Beasts is that they exist. Nothing else."

Gaoyang's mind raced. If Baili Yi hadn't lied to him, then besides Infatuation, Wrath, Greed, and Delusion Beasts, there should also be Life Beasts and Death Beasts. But Gaoyang didn't intend to mention them. He knew nothing about those two types yet, and bringing them up would only cause needless panic and undermine morale.

Although it was a stretch, Gaoyang still tried to explain their predicament with a line of reasoning he could understand. "Suppose-and this is only a hypothesis-that the thing behind the massacre is a completely new type of Beast we don't know about yet. Then could this Gu Family Village we're in be a domain it created?"

"You mean," Qingling's gaze shifted, "if we find it and kill it, we can leave?"

"Gaoyang's theory is a relatively reasonable explanation, given what we know." Officer Huang nodded slightly. "It's also the approach most worth trying right now, and we need to try it as soon as possible. We've gone over twenty hours without food or water. Under normal circumstances, we won't last three days, and we have no more than two days in which we can still act effectively."

Gaoyang glanced at Wang Zikai. "Except you. Your body's undergone special modifications, so you should outlive us."

"Of course!" Wang Zikai looked immensely pleased, then grew excited again. "I'm the guy who's going to save the world! How could I get trapped in a shithole like this? You guys drag that thing out. Leave the rest to me!"

Knock, knock, knock-

Gaoyang spun around. He was the closest to the door-someone was knocking.