Chapter 8: Eating a Pancake and the Weird Things in the Old Building
In the photos Lin Zhuyue posted, the balconies of the residential buildings were still mostly empty. But at the location she marked on the seventh floor, there was a vague, somewhat transparent shadow.
Ye Yangjia looked at the photo and said:
"It could be a real person. Didn't they say someone lives there?"
"Maybe it really is a ghost."
Wen Miyan enlarged the photo and looked at the blurry figure.
"In the information we obtained, wasn't the woman working at the dance hall wearing a flowery dress the one who hanged herself? Occasionally, cameras and photographers can capture them, but they're not very noticeable in photos. With some processing, they can be seen more clearly."
"That's true, you guys handle it, yawn..."
Ye Yangjia took out a steam eye mask from the car and said,
"I drove all night last night and didn't rest today. I want to get a good night's sleep before arriving at the scene. It's a big no-no to deal with a hanged earthbound spirit in a tired state. If you have any questions, please post them in the group chat. Wake me up an hour before arriving at the destination and I'll take a closer look."
After saying that, he put on an eye mask and wax earplugs and fell asleep in the passenger seat.
Wen Miyan took out her notebook, uploaded the photos from her mobile phone to her computer, opened Photoshop, and performed a series of processing on the photos, including inverting the colors, exposing them, and then sharpening them. After completing the processing, she sighed and sent the processed photos to the group.
In this processed photo, the originally blurry and transparent woman has become much clearer. She is standing on the balcony, looking downstairs through the unopened glass window, her pale face, which has been inverted with color, as if she is looking at someone, as if she is looking at the camera that captured her.
So, this photo becomes creepy.
There was a feeling that the woman in the photo was staring at him through the photo, and this feeling made Lin Zhuyue feel a chill on his back.
Nanjiang City is not close, but it is not as far as Yuancheng. It can be reached without crossing the north-south dividing line.
After driving on the highway for four hours, Shi Can saw the sign for Nanjiang City. However, the accident site was in the old city of Nanjiang City, which was not very close to the highway exit in the new city. So after getting off the highway, he had to drive for another hour.
Ye Yangjia was awakened at this time.
He removed the wax earplugs from his ears and rubbed his eyes.
"Can you open the window? I want some fresh air."
"Whatever you want."
Shi Can turned on the turn signal and turned right at the intersection. There were quite a lot of electric vehicles and pedestrians at this intersection, so in order to avoid accidents, Shi Can focused entirely on driving.
Wen Miyan said, "Okay."
Lin Zhuyue also said that it was no problem.
Ye Yangjia opened the car window, letting the wind blow to wake him up, listening to the hustle and bustle of the city at night, and opened his phone to check his chat history.
There was some traffic jam near the scene of the accident. Although it was already past the evening rush hour, there was still a lot of traffic, and electric vehicles squeezed into every available gap, making driving even more difficult.
Shi Chan has a bad feeling:
"Tsk, that's not the case, is it...?"
Lin Zhuyue asked blankly, "What's going on?"
"Well... that's the situation."
Wen Miyan pointed to the place where the incident had occurred, a corner of which could already be seen.
Lin Zhuyue was even more confused:
"So many people, what are they doing?"
Wen Miyan sighed and said:
"That ghost-hunting team disappeared during the live broadcast, Zhuyue, do you know what this means?"
Lin Zhuyue thought about it carefully. After a few seconds, she suddenly realized and said, "The netizens will know about it."
The location where the ghost-hunting team disappeared was cordoned off and guarded by police. However, because the disappearance occurred during a live broadcast, the incident caused an uproar online, with many people checking in and some even eager to sneak past the cordon to investigate.
"How annoying."
Shi Can drove the car to the opposite corner of the scene and said,
“Sometimes I really wish technology could go back 20 years.”
The incident happened in the old city area, and there were many onlookers nearby, which made the already scarce parking spaces even fewer.
Fortunately, the best hospital in Nanjiang City is located diagonally opposite the scene of the incident. Although it has been located here for many years, it has undergone several renovations and expansions and now has at least a thousand acres of land and two-story underground parking lots.
After driving the car to the second underground floor of the hospital, Shican picked up his phone and was about to make a call, but he clicked his tongue again.
Ye Yangjia asked: "What's wrong?"
Shi Chan pressed the button, unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car:
"No signal, a common problem in underground garages. We need to go upstairs."
The other three people also unbuckled their seatbelts and got out of the car.
Shi Chan locked the car and walked out, asking as he walked:
"Such a large hospital should have a cafeteria, right?"
"Yes, but the food in the hospital cafeteria is not good."
Wen Miyan took a step forward to catch up,
"After all, patients have to eat too. There's no technology involved in the food, and it's low in salt and oil. It's very healthy, so healthy that it's hard to eat."
Lin Zhuyue stood beside the car, looking confused.
"...Aren't you going to get your equipment? Aren't you going on a mission? Why are you talking about the cafeteria?"
"Under special circumstances, spiritual masters must pay attention to secrecy when carrying out their missions. There are so many onlookers outside, and we are fighting in the building with thunder and fire. If this gets posted online and goes viral, the Spiritual Master Mansion will punish us."
Shi Can took a few steps and said,
"When we get a signal, call the police and have them find a way to disperse the crowd. We'll use this moment to quickly grab a meal and recharge, and get a feel for the surroundings. Once the crowd disperses, we'll come back to get our equipment and go into the scene to rescue people."
Shi Can's thinking is very organized and there is nothing wrong with it.
"I kind of hate him though."
Ye Yangjia walked past Lin Zhuyue,
"But your partner's expertise in this kind of thing is impeccable. Just trust him at this time."
The stairs they took to go upstairs were located in the outpatient building. Except for the emergency room and some special clinics, the outpatient clinics were only open during the day. Now it was night, and the incandescent lights in the outpatient building had been turned off, leaving only a relatively dim light that was enough to illuminate the road.
They walked out of the outpatient building.
Fortunately, the hospital not only has a cafeteria, but also a pancake stall at the hospital gate at nine o'clock in the evening.
"Add two eggs, two crispy pancakes, pork tenderloin and pork floss, less spicy food, and no green onions."
After Shican made his request, he walked aside.
"Hold it for me when you're done. I'll make a phone call."
The stall owner served Shi Can first, and Lin Zhuyue, Wen Miyan and Ye Yangjia looked up at the place where the incident happened at the opposite corner of the intersection.
The incident occurred in an old residential building with a main building and two wings. The main building was directly opposite the hospital. Lin Zhuyue looked up slightly and could see the window where the woman in white appeared in the photo.
"It's opposite the hospital, and the hospital is in the southeast corner, and the residential buildings are in the northwest corner. This feng shui..."
Wen Miyan shook her head and said,
"No professionals were hired to inspect the building when it was built, and the people who designed and planned it don't know anything about this."
Lin Zhuyue read some books:
"If the feng shui is bad, the residents will suffer from poor health, be prone to accidents, and lose money, right?"
Ye Yangjia nodded and replied:
"That's right, and there are worse things than this."
Lin Zhuyue asked: "What is it?"
Lin Zhuyue's question seemed difficult to answer. Ye Yangjia took the pancake that the stall owner had prepared for Shi Can and said to Lin Zhuyue and Wen Miyan:
"You guys order first."
Lin Zhuyue said to the stall owner:
"I want the tenderloin, and leave the rest as is."
The stall owner was a woman in her fifties with a fashionable short red curly hair. As she was making pancakes on the steaming stove, she couldn't help but ask:
"Your accent doesn't sound like you're from Nanjiang."
Ye Yangjia nodded and brought it up in a casual tone:
"This girl is from Yuancheng and just came to our place. We all came from Zhejiang."
"Are you here to see that haunted building too?"
Auntie cracked an egg with one hand, scraped it on the pancake with a scraper, and said in the tone of an elder,
"Hey, you little girls and boys, I know you all like to join in the fun, but I mean well. Take my advice, don't even think about going to that haunted building for excitement. It's not a fun place."
Seeing that he might be able to get some information, Lin Zhuyue pretended to be curious and asked:
"Auntie, what's going on in this building?"
"I've been selling pancakes here for many years. I used to have a shop downstairs from that building, but something happened there and I had to babysit my daughter's child, so I stopped. Then I wanted to make some money, so I came here to set up a stall again."
My aunt introduced her relationship with the "haunted building" across the intersection, and said,
"People outside say this building became uninhabitable after that poor girl hanged herself. But I've been downstairs for a long time, and I know for sure there was something strange about this building even before she hanged herself. People living upstairs say they often hear knocks on the door, but when they open it, no one's there. There's also the sound of glass marbles rattling in the middle of the night... There's a lot of stuff like that."
"I remember clearly that the year before that girl hanged herself, a young man was riding his bicycle downstairs. There was a ditch in front of his bicycle. He fell in and drowned. The ditch was only as deep as a palm. Isn't that weird?"
Auntie shook her head:
"It's because of these things that people in the building are gradually moving out. No one wants something like this to happen to them or their families, right?"
A palm deep?
Lin Zhuyue looked at his hands.
How could someone drown in such a deep ditch? Even if he raised his head or struggled, his mouth and nose wouldn't get stuck in it. Could it be that he fell on his head and lost consciousness, unable to move, and therefore drowned?
At this moment, a picture suddenly flashed through Lin Zhuyue's mind.
A young man wearing a plaid shirt and glasses was lying on the edge of the ditch. He struggled hard to get up, but a purple, slightly transparent hand tightly grasped his neck and pressed him into the smelly dirty water.
That hand was like steel, and no matter how the young man struggled, he could not shake it at all.
A biting coldness climbed up the spine along the tailbone and lingered at the back of the neck.
A hand fell on the back of Lin Zhuyue's neck.
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