Chapter 7: The Shadow Approaches
1. Bad Stalker
The old residential areas in Linzhou appear in a decadent gray-yellow hue under the cover of dusk, like an oil painting worn by time.
Ouyang Lanlan tucked herself into the shadows of an abandoned newsstand, the cold metal seeping through her thin sweatshirt, yet she remained oblivious. All her senses, as if drawn by invisible threads, focused on the blue figure who had just parked his electric scooter a few dozen meters away—Huang Qiang.
This was her fourth time stalking him. Each time, it felt like playing a heart-pounding death game. Fear was a constant background hum, humming deep in her ears, blending with the city's evening din, making her temples throb. She forced herself to breathe, and every breath carried the unique scent of an old neighborhood: a mixture of oil smoke, garbage, and damp mold.
She watched Huang Qiang, carrying several takeout bags, walk toward the entrance to Unit 3. His steps had a peculiar rhythm—not fast, but each one steady, even a bit light and airy, a strange contrast to the harsh noise of the electric car's engine. Ouyang Lanlan's fingers subconsciously dug into the rusted edge of the newsstand, a bit of peeling paint wedging between her nails.
She had already filled three or four pages of her notebook, her handwriting a little sloppy due to nervousness:
On December 5th, at 6:47 PM, I returned to the complex. My electric car's battery level showed about one-third full. Instead of going upstairs, I sat down by the flower bed for about five minutes, seemingly resting, but my eyes scanned every window.
On December 7th, during the lunch break (1:10-1:40 PM), he appeared at the entrance of "Maker Cafe" in Area B of the Science Park. He paused briefly, but did not pick up any food. He seemed to be waiting for someone. (Before the target appeared, a man in black briefly spoke with him. His appearance was not clearly visible, and he left first.)
On December 8th, I delivered food to the "Yuerong" beauty salon. The wait was longer (approximately 25 minutes), exceeding the normal delivery time. (Note: This location is where most of the employees are young women.)
December 10th, today's route: This morning, I spent most of the morning in the eastern commercial district, then appeared near my company at noon, and then returned to the old city in the west in the afternoon. The route was inefficient, seemingly aimless, or perhaps... another purpose?
These fragments of information were like scattered puzzle pieces. She desperately tried to piece them together, to glimpse the hidden pattern, but she always felt a thick fog blocking them. She needed something more definitive, something that could completely sever his connection to Longdu and that nightmare. Confirming his name was the first step, but it wasn't enough. She needed his address, more specific behavioral patterns, even to hear that creepy laugh again.
So, she took the risk of going to the takeaway station that afternoon. Looking back now, every detail made her fingertips cold with fear.
As she walked toward the storefront, which reeked of sweat, cigarettes, and takeout boxes, her calf muscles trembled slightly. The gazes of the riders, gathered together smoking and chatting, a mixture of curiosity, scrutiny, and a hint of the instinctive scrutiny of a low-class man regarding a suddenly appearing working woman, made her feel uneasy.
Ouyang Lanlan tried to keep her voice steady, but couldn't help but say, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Huang Qiang. Is he the rider here?"
One of the riders looked up, his eyes quickly sweeping from her high heels to her calves and waist, finally lingering briefly on her face before replying, "I'm going out to deliver food now. I can't tell when I'll be back. What's going on?"
This was the expected answer. Ouyang Lanlan actually knew that Huang Qiang was out delivering food, and she just wanted to tentatively ask for some information about Huang Qiang, "Does he have a brother?"
The rider shook his head, and Ouyang Lanlan fled away. She didn't seem to understand why she had come here for such a strange reason. What was the point of asking? She was confused by her mind and left a terrible hidden danger.
After the peak delivery time in the afternoon, Huang Qiang returned to the station. The riders burst into laughter and said, "Qiangzi, you're so good! When did you find a beautiful girlfriend?"
Amidst the crude jokes, Huang Qiang's reaction was as bland as a glass of stale water. "How can I have a girlfriend?"
The riders said again, "Really? They came to see you at noon!" This time Huang Qiang looked up and asked in confusion, "What does he look like?"
"She's tall and thin, with short hair, wearing high heels, and has a round face and big eyes!" The riders described her in unison.
"Oh, maybe there's something wrong with the takeaway." Huang Qiang responded without showing any emotion on the surface, but he kept it in mind.
He was suspicious. He had to be. A normal person would have some emotional outbursts in such a situation, but he wasn't. He was completely calm, which in itself was abnormal.
2. Silent gaze
After that rash prying, Ouyang Lanlan forced herself to stay dormant for two days. She tried to resume her normal life, going to work on time, going to lunch with Lin Jingliang and the others, and even trying to join in her colleagues' discussions about celebrity gossip and shopping discounts.
But the dark circles under her eyes revealed her insomnia. She was often distracted, holding a coffee cup for a long time and forgetting to take a sip, and was often slow to respond to other people's calls.
Her brain was like an out-of-control radar, constantly scanning the surrounding environment. Any blue figure or the sound of an electric car would make her jump with fear.
She knew she had to stop; it was too dangerous. Qin Chuan was still investigating in Longdu; she should wait and trust in the experts. But another, more powerful force seized upon her—the feeling of being watched, threatened, and the overwhelming urge to tear through the other party's disguise and seize the initiative herself. It coiled around her mind like poison ivy, leaving her restless.
On the evening of the third day, her impulse overwhelmed her reason again. Somehow, she appeared near the neighborhood again. This time, she found a more secluded spot, hiding in the narrow groove formed by the roller shutter of a long-closed hardware store.
The light here is darker, and there are several trash cans in front as obstructions, but through the gaps, he can still clearly see the unit door and the row of parked delivery electric vehicles. Through observation over this period of time, he knows that Huang Qiang often comes here to deliver food or rest.
She waited for nearly forty minutes. Darkness fell, and the streetlights came on, casting dim, lonely halos of light on the ground. The evening breeze blew, bringing a chill. Just as her feet were numb from the cold, and she was about to give up, she began to laugh at her own futility and foolishness, when Huang Qiang appeared.
He parked his electric bike, and unlike usual, he didn't seem to have any takeout to deliver tonight, so he walked into an old residential complex empty-handed.
Ouyang Lanlan subconsciously held her breath and followed quietly.
He walked slowly inside, the light from the street lamp outlining the profile of his drooping face. It was plain, but it revealed an indescribable tranquility, even a dead silence.
Ouyang Lanlan followed behind, neither hurried nor slow. Time ticked by, breathtakingly slow. People were still coming and going on the streets of the neighborhood, lights flickering, young and old walking, their voices laughing and talking as if from another, distant world. Ouyang Lanlan's heartbeat grew louder and louder in this silent pursuit, nearly pounding her chest.
Suddenly, he turned around without warning and looked straight at Ouyang Lanlan who was not far away.
It was an extremely calm, cold, scanning scrutiny, like a machine reading a barcode—fast, efficient, and emotionless. Yet, you could sense that he was very slowly and with a clear purpose, turning his face precisely in Ouyang Lanlan's direction! His movements were so smooth that they didn't seem accidental, as if he had already known what was there.
Ouyang Lanlan's muscles tensed instantly, and blood rushed to her head and then quickly receded, leaving behind a cold fear and a naked sense of exposure. She subconsciously tried to tighten her body, but found herself unable to move at all, as if nailed to the spot by some invisible force.
At a distance of about one meter, she could clearly feel his eyes locked on her with incredible precision. It was not a doubtful glance, nor a blank scan, but a long, silent, solidified, naked stare.
His face was expressionless. No anger, no threat, no curiosity, not even a trace of human emotion. Like a bottomless well, all light and emotion cast into it met with no response. But that gaze itself was a form of ultimate oppression and declaration.
He knew, he had always known. He was just watching, watching what this foolish woman who was trying to spy on him wanted to do, what she was capable of.
Ouyang Lanlan felt as if she had been stripped naked and thrown into the snow, unable to even tremble a fingertip. Fear, like icy water, flooded her mouth and nose, snatching away her breath. She could only endure, naked and forced, this silent judgment and warning. All the sounds of the world faded, leaving only her own deafening heartbeat and those two icy gazes that pierced her soul.
I don’t know how long it took, maybe only a dozen seconds, but it felt like a century.
Huang Qiang's gaze finally shifted. He turned around again and continued walking forward, ignoring Ouyang Lanlan behind him.
Only when his figure completely vanished did Ouyang Lanlan feel as if every bone in her body had been pulled out, and she slumped to the ground in an instant. The hard touch penetrated her clothing, yet she felt nothing. She gasped violently, her chest aching as if it were about to explode. Cold sweat had already soaked her back, clinging to her skin, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably.
That gaze, that long, silent, emotionless one, terrified her more than any ferocious threat. It completely shattered all her courage and hope, making her realize clearly that she was facing a cold, inhuman monster beyond common sense. And her pitiful tracking skills, in the eyes of the other party, might just be the prelude to a boring game of cat and mouse.
3. Junior high school survey
The air in the northern Longdu City was dry, cold, and acrid, a stark contrast to the warm, humid air of Linzhou. Qin Chuan wrapped his old jacket tightly around him, his collar turned up, and walked through the narrow, noisy streets of the urban-rural fringe.
This is where Huang Qiang Junior High School is located. Time seems to pass more slowly here, preserving more traces of the past and the hustle and bustle of the city. The air is filled with a complex smell of coal smoke, cheap snacks, and some kind of industrial waste.
Through scattered information provided by elementary school teacher Liu and various inquiries, he tracked down several students who might have been in the same class or year as Huang Qiang. The process of meeting them wasn't smooth. Many had long since left Longdu, and those who remained had vague memories of events from nearly twenty years ago, or were reluctant to discuss them out of a sense of commercial prudence. Qin Chuan had to use some of his past connections, even spending a lot of time and money on cigarettes, to pry open some gaps.
The first person I met was Sun Wei, who now ran a small auto parts shop. The storefront was greasy, and the floor was littered with parts. His hands and face were also stained with black grease. When he heard Huang Qiang's name, he frowned, thought for a long time, rubbed his hands vigorously with cotton gauze, and then suddenly slapped his thigh with an expression of mixed contempt and curiosity: "Oh! You mean that Erkazi? I remember him! Huang Qiang! Maybe he's gay!"
The shop was filled with the strong smell of motor oil and metal. Sun Wei, cigarette in hand, recalled in his heavily accented dialect, "He was like that when he first transferred here. Tsk, his hair looked like it had been gnawed by a dog, all uneven. He must have done it himself or had it shaved by some cheap barber shop! His clothes were tattered, too, not much better than his dad's work clothes. He hunched his neck, looked at people with evasive eyes, and startled anyone who spoke to him, like a frightened rabbit. No boy wanted to play with him? They all thought he was effeminate and unlucky! The girls also thought he was weird and didn't want to play with him."
He paused, as if recalling something specific, and lowered his voice with a hint of hidden excitement. "Oh, right, there was one time that left a deep impression on me. It was a physical education class, free time, and I don't know who started it, maybe a few guys were bored, so they blocked him in a corner behind the equipment room and insisted on pulling down his pants to see if he was a boy or a girl. He was so scared that he started crying loudly, his face turned pale, and it seemed like he even peed his pants! He cried so miserably. Then his brother rushed over from nowhere, like a demon, with red eyes, and swollen. He picked up half a brick from the corner and smashed it, beating those guys so badly that their noses and faces were swollen, and they ran away in panic. His brother was quite fierce at that time, as if he didn't care about his life."
"His brother?" Qin Chuan immediately grasped this information point and handed him a cigarette.
"Well, there was a brother who didn't study hard and just hung out in society. He wasn't very old, but looked quite mature. He had a scar on his forehead, which made him quite intimidating. After that, he would occasionally come to pick him up from school and was quite protective of him. With him around, no one dared to bully Huang Qiang openly. But I don't think I saw him on the street after that? I can't remember, it seems like something happened?" Sun Wei took the cigarette, put it behind his ear, waved his hand, indicating that he was not interested in the follow-up, and turned around to work on his pile of parts again.
The second person Qin Chuan met was Zhou Qian, now a gentle kindergarten teacher. Qin Chuan deliberately arranged a meeting at a relatively quiet and comfortable dessert shop, trying to create an atmosphere more conducive to evoking delicate memories. Zhou Qian was well-dressed and softly spoken, and when she recalled Huang Qiang, her face showed obvious sympathy and a hint of regret.
"Huang Qiang was actually really pitiful back then." She gently stirred the milk tea in her cup with a spoon, her eyes a little vague. "Now that I think about it, he wasn't born that gloomy and withdrawn. I remember when he first transferred to our class, although he was very quiet, there was still a little light in his eyes. Occasionally, he would secretly watch when he saw girls playing cat's cradle, but then it quickly disappeared."
She sighed, "I don't live close to his family, but there are some classmates who do. I heard them whispering that his father violently forced him to change. I think he was born a girl in elementary school. I can't remember the details, but it was the Sunday before school started. His father thought he was old enough to look like a girl anymore, so he dragged him to shave his head. I heard he cried, struggled, and begged his mother, but it was no use. He cried so hard that he vomited. His brother even had a fight with his father because of it."
"Is it Sunday?" Qin Chuan's heart sank suddenly, and the date that had been bothering him rang in his mind like an alarm again!
"Yeah, I remember it very clearly, because school started the next day, Monday, and I heard from his elementary school classmates that the girl was her neighbor." Zhou Qian nodded affirmatively, a look of pity in her eyes. "The next day he came to school, looking dazed, with a blank look in his eyes, as if his soul had been taken away. He was wearing a pair of old men's clothes that were obviously ill-fitting and who knows where they got them from. He huddled in his seat and didn't move the whole day. He didn't respond to anyone who spoke to him. Actually, everyone gradually found out a little about his family. Some girls privately sympathized with him and thought his father was too much. But we were young at the time and didn't know how to help him. Instead, his weirdness made him even more isolated."
She paused, then continued, "Sometimes I think he was quite pitiful. Actually, no matter what, if you put it in perspective today, our society is actually quite tolerant of homosexuality and gender dysphoria. But back then… well, we were all still young, and society wasn't that open. We didn't understand him, so he became even more withdrawn and hardly spoke to anyone. Later, he dropped out of school before graduating. I heard he went out to work, I think at a gas station."
A protective brother? Dropping out of school? A gas station? Each piece of information weighed like a heavy stone, dropping into Qin Chuan's heart, stirring up layers of chills.
The violent "correction" that took place on Sunday undoubtedly planted seeds of distortion and hatred in Huang Qiang's heart. If Huang Qiang is truly the murderer, his choice to commit the crime on Sunday night against women with long hair and then cut their hair is no coincidence! This is most likely a morbid repetition and twisted revenge for childhood trauma! He distortedly transferred his fear and anger toward his father, the abusive father, onto the victims, who symbolized the "recognized" female identity he could not possess. Cutting hair is a form of deprivation, a deformed form of "ownership" and "punishment."
4. Revenge
However, if it is just a discovery that Huang Qiang has been distorted by a major physical and mental trauma during his growth period, it does not seem to be enough to prove that Huang Qiang will definitely become a serial killer. But as Qin Chuan's pursuit becomes more urgent and in-depth, he discovers a more horrifying inside story, which reveals an unknown side of Huang Qiang and makes Qin Chuan think about it carefully.
After much trouble and using many of his accumulated connections, he finally found the former middle school principal, now eighty years old and bedridden, through a retired comrade from the Education Bureau. The elderly man lived in a quiet but somewhat run-down neighborhood in the north of the city. The house was filled with the faint smell of medicine and the unique scent of old age.
Communication requires immense patience. The old man's thoughts are sometimes clear, sometimes hazy, and his memory is like an old film covered in thick dust, requiring repeated guidance and confirmation before it can be played back intermittently. Qin Chuan sat in an old rattan chair beside the bed, leaning forward slightly, trying to grasp every valid message in the old man's vague words.
In the dim light, accompanied by the occasional vague city sounds coming from outside the window, a past that was covered by the dust of time and was far more horrifying than one could imagine flowed out intermittently from the old man's old and shriveled lips and teeth.
"Huang Qiang? Oh, that kid. What a sin, what a sin." The old man's cloudy eyes stared at an old water stain on the ceiling, his fingers unconsciously and nervously twisting the shiny corner of the quilt. "That incident caused a big uproar, alarmed the whole school, and it almost, almost resulted in a death."
It was the first semester of Huang Qiang's third year of junior high. Long-term repression, isolation, and family violence seemed to have completely deformed his already fragile mind. The onset of puberty manifested itself in him in an extremely distorted and terrifying way. He secretly and obsessively developed a crush on the class monitor, a handsome, well-educated, cheerful, and popular boy.
This kind of "infatuation" is silent and terrifying, full of twisted possessiveness. He would stare at the other person for a long time, motionless, with his eyes fixed; he would secretly pick up the other person's discarded draft paper, used tissues, and mineral water bottles, hiding them like trophies; he might even follow the other person home. Finally one day, his abnormal behavior was noticed by the boy and his friends. The boy felt extremely disgusted, frightened and humiliated. On a crowded occasion after school, in front of many classmates and passing teachers, he insulted the boy extremely harshly and loudly: "Pervert!" "Shemale!" "Monster!" "You are a monster that is neither male nor female!" "Stay away from me, it's disgusting! I want to vomit when I see you!"
The public and complete humiliation and exclusion became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
But Huang Qiang, in a profoundly twisted way, didn't direct his hatred toward the boy who insulted him. Instead, he obsessively directed all his resentment and urge for revenge against the female student committee member with whom he had a close relationship at the time, with whom he frequently discussed studies and participated in competitions. In his utterly twisted logic, he believed it was this woman's presence that stole the class monitor's attention, making it impossible for her to "accept" him. Perhaps he paranoidly believed that if he were a "real," perfect girl, he could completely replace her, or even do better.
The venom of hatred fermented silently within him, nurturing a terrifyingly calm plan of revenge. He began observing the girl more covertly. He discovered that every afternoon after school, she would go alone to the old, relatively deserted water room behind the teaching building to fetch water. She would usually pass a secluded staircase leading to the girls' dormitory.
The details of the plan slowly formed in his mind, his composure uncharacteristic of a fourteen-year-old. He used his pocket money to buy a bottle of the cheapest, sticky, scarlet strawberry jam at a small shop far from school. One afternoon, he filled a thermos with freshly boiled water, and the jam and water combined to create a simple "sulfuric acid" solution.
The afternoon of the operation was sweltering. As soon as the school bell rang, he slipped out of the classroom and hid in the shadows around the corner of the staircase. His heart pounded in his chest, not out of fear, but with an almost religious excitement and nervousness about putting his plan into action. He listened to the voices in the teaching building grow and fade, the familiar, slightly brisk footsteps of the girl approaching from afar, calculating the rhythm. He clutched the cup of scalding "mixture" tightly in his hand.
Just as the girl was walking up the stairs with the thermos and about to turn the corner, he suddenly rushed out from the shadows, pretending to rush down the stairs, mumbling "Sorry, please make way" and "Excuse me", and then he bumped into the girl precisely and "accidentally"!
The force of the collision was so great that the girl screamed in surprise, lost her balance, and the thermos fell onto the stairs with a dull shattering sound. At that moment, the mixture of boiling water and sticky scarlet jam in Huang Qiang's hand was splashed all over the girl's neck and arms without any waste!
"ah--!!!!"
A shrill, inhuman scream instantly shattered the tranquility of the campus at dusk! The extreme pain and fear contained in that sound sent chills down the spines of everyone who heard it!
The scalding water immediately caused terrifying blisters on the girl's delicate skin, and the intense pain nearly made her faint. The sticky red jam dripping down her face looked like the horrific sight of concentrated sulfuric acid corroding her flesh! The girl instantly believed she was disfigured. The extreme pain and the even greater fear of being "disfigured" caused her to completely collapse on the spot. She collapsed to the ground, wailing and screaming hysterically and desperately. She frantically tried to wipe the substance off her face, but this only intensified the pain and made the scene even more horrific.
The school was completely shocked. Students gathered from all directions and teachers ran over in panic.
The girl was rushed to the hospital, and the old principal personally talked to him. Even after so many years, that scene still frightened the old man, and his voice trembled slightly when he recounted it.
"That child," the old director gasped, his eyes drifting out the window, as if he saw the silent figure from that year again. "He lowered his head from the beginning, remained silent, and his fingers trembled constantly, like a frightened and wronged child. We questioned him for a long time, using both emotional and logical persuasion, and only then did he slowly raise his head." The old man paused, his face revealing an incredible expression, a mixture of fear and confusion. "His face was very strange, his eyes were empty, but his hands kept shaking, and his voice was trembling."
The director imitated Huang Qiang's trembling, even somewhat innocent tone at the time: "'I just wanted to drink a glass of hot juice, and then I went downstairs and didn't see her coming up, so we bumped into each other.'"
"Thinking about it now, I don't see any remorse or panic in his expression. I can't explain the fear he displayed at the time. It was like an act, practiced many times." The old man recalled, but then turned around and said, "But I can't say anything without evidence. One irresponsible act can ruin a child. I can only suppress the doubts in my heart. Only after so many years and my age do I dare to speak out."
Fortunately, the scalding mixture mostly splashed onto the girl's neck and arms, with only a small amount splashing onto her face. After emergency treatment, although her neck and arms were left with severe burns and blisters, causing excruciating pain, her appearance was preserved—a blessing in disguise. However, the emotional trauma was immense. The girl experienced extreme fear and pain, and for a long time, she struggled to recover and required psychological intervention.
The girl's parents were furious upon learning of the incident and reported it to the police, demanding severe punishment. However, because Huang Qiang's account fit the description of everyday situations and he was just a child, most people wouldn't associate him with such ulterior motives, making it difficult to characterize him as intentional injury. Furthermore, since he was under 14 at the time and therefore completely criminally incapable, the police were ultimately unable to pursue criminal charges against him.
The school came under immense pressure. Although no criminal conviction had been filed, the repercussions were so severe that Huang Qiang's family, feeling they could no longer continue attending, expelled him. Simultaneously, under pressure from the school and the neighborhood committee, Huang Qiang's already impoverished and struggling family was forced to fork over their savings, taking on substantial debts, to pay the girl's family a substantial sum for medical expenses, ongoing treatment, and emotional distress. This compensation nearly wiped out the family and left them completely humiliated in the neighborhood.
The incident was eventually handled vaguely as "a regrettable and serious accidental conflict," and gradually faded into obscurity. Although many people privately discussed Huang Qiang's malicious intentions and that the matter was more complex than it appeared, the lack of direct evidence proving intentional harm ultimately led to silence.
As for his "very fierce" brother, the only one who had protected him, the old director vaguely remembered him, a complex sigh flashing in his cloudy eyes: "It seemed like it was not long after that incident, maybe a month or two? His brother also dropped out of school and went out to work. I really don't know anything about that. I rarely heard from his family after that."
When Qin Chuan left the old director's house, tiny, icy snowflakes were drifting across the sky of Longdu. The cold air was pervasive, but he felt a deeper chill spreading from his tailbone all the way to the top of his head, causing his scalp to tingle.
Although the police have concluded the case, if the speculation is correct, he is dealing with far more than a simple criminal. This is a demon whose mind was completely twisted and damaged in childhood, and who, even in his adolescence, displayed astonishing calmness, cruelty, and criminal talent. His distortion is systematic, his cruelty is ritualistic and symbolic, and his concealment and patience are extremely terrifying.
5. Stare at your prey
The nights in the south are cool now, completely different from the dry and cold weather in the north.
The brightly lit apartment building in Linzhou had finally fallen asleep, with only a few windows still lit, like sleepy eyes. A figure stood silently in the shadow of the leafy old camphor tree below, almost blending into the darkness.
Huang Qiang raised his head, his gaze like a precision-guided missile, traversing the mottled walls and tangled electrical wires, locking onto a window on the tenth floor with off-white curtains drawn. That was Ouyang Lanlan's residence. He had stood there quietly for over half an hour, like a stone statue forgotten in time, without a single unnecessary movement.
The evening breeze rustled the leaves, and in the distance, the faint sound of passing vehicles could be heard. His face was expressionless, almost eerily calm. Only those eyes, faintly reflecting light in the darkness, betrayed a glimpse of an extremely complex inner workings. There was cold curiosity, a scrutiny like evaluating prey, a deep-seated confusion about why "she" kept appearing, and perhaps even a faint, strange connection, akin to the very act of "looking," that even he couldn't identify or understand.
He slowly pulled his right hand out of his pocket and raised it to chest level. His fingers nervously moved ever so slightly in the air, as if stroking an invisible strand of hair in the air. The movement was so gentle it was almost affectionate, yet it carried a strange, tingling quality.
He just "stroked" the air, facing the window, and remained still for a moment.
Then, without warning, extremely slowly, he turned around. His movements were so gentle that they made no sound, like a cat accustomed to nocturnal travel. Without even glancing at the window, he walked deeper into the darkness of the unlit alleyway. His figure was quickly swallowed up by the thick night, as if he had never appeared.
In the apartment on the tenth floor.
Ouyang Lanlan lay on her side in bed, the thin quilt kicked up to her waist. The aromatherapy incense burned silently, its sleep-inducing smoke lingering in the air. She seemed to be asleep, but her sleep was extremely restless. Her brows were tightly furrowed, a fine layer of cold sweat oozed from her forehead, and her eyeballs were moving rapidly beneath her eyelids, indicating that she was trapped in a deep nightmare. Her lips moved silently, and occasionally a muffled sob or two escaped from the depths of her throat. Her fingers clenched the pillowcase tightly, her knuckles turning white from the strain.
The moonlight outside the window tried to squeeze in through the gap in the curtains, casting a narrow, pale band of light on the floor, like an insurmountable boundary river, quietly connecting the quiet fear inside the house with the cold gaze outside the house that had just dissipated.
She had no idea that she had become the object of someone's silent gaze from outside the window, and even less did she know how close that silent, paranoid shadow had come.
The cold threat is no longer just a premonition; it has quietly seeped into the cracks in the door.
(End of Chapter 7)
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