Mr. Nangong stared intently, three words echoing through his mind in rapid succession: Trouble, trouble, trouble! The story of how he had placated his wife’s persistent inquiries—the one where he claimed he had to go pick someone up—surfaced unbidden.

That morning, just as Mrs. Li finished recounting the scheme hatched by Li Taizheng, a kaka-ka sound emanated from the door of the morgue. Nangong, assuming it was someone from the Old Li family arriving, scrambled up from the floor and went to the door to greet them. To his surprise, standing outside was only a worker dressed in funeral home overalls. Nangong intended to ask him for the location of cooler A12, but the worker acted as if he were air, brushing past his shoulder and heading straight toward Mrs. Li.

Mrs. Li, looking like something between a person and a ghost, sat on the floor with eyes wide, scrambling backward while shrieking, "Don't, don't come near me..."

Before Nangong could even process what was happening, the worker drew a bronze dagger from his waist and plunged it deep into Mrs. Li’s sternum.

Vivid scarlet blood instantly jetted forth from her chest cavity, splattering across the worker’s face, clothes, and the floor. Simultaneously, the woman spat a mouthful of blood onto the arm gripping the dagger, then fell backward with wide, staring eyes.

Next, the worker lifted Mrs. Li’s still-warm corpse and placed her back inside the cold storage drawer she had just occupied. He shut it firmly, turned around, and offered Nangong a smile.

That smile sent a shockwave through Nangong, raising every hair on his body. He was utterly paralyzed, unable to decide whether he should call the police or flee in that very second.

The worker then walked over to another cooler, slid the drawer open, retrieved an item from the body inside, and held it out to Nangong. Nangong numbly extended his hand, and a dazzling, brilliant gold ring dropped into his palm. He looked down; it was precisely the ring that Old Li’s daughter had asked him to hold onto earlier.

"You?" Nangong managed only one word before his breath hitched. He simply could not reconcile what he was seeing: this person had killed Mrs. Li, silently located Old Li’s corpse, removed the ring, and was now handing it to him. Who was this man? Why kill Mrs. Li? How did he know what others intended to do? Nangong was utterly bewildered by the barrage of questions, gripping the ring unsure what action to take.

"With this handling, she’ll never crawl out again," the worker said, kicking lightly at the cooler holding Mrs. Li’s body, smiling at Nangong as if answering the unspoken questions swirling in his mind.

"Why kill her?" Seeing the man so composed after committing murder, a sudden surge of anger ignited in Nangong’s chest. He glared and demanded, "Why kill her?"

"I didn't kill her; she was already dead. See for yourself!" With that, the worker pulled open the previous cooler. Mrs. Li was there again, looking withered and small, lying peacefully inside with her eyes closed. Only this time, there was utter silence; her hands, which had moments ago been pounding the cabinet walls, were now folded neatly over her chest—a perfect presentation for viewing the deceased. The wound that the dagger had supposedly inflicted on her sternum had vanished without a trace.

Nangong looked around wildly. Where was the sprayed blood? The floor was spotlessly clean; the worker's clothes were pristine white. It seemed as if nothing at all had happened here—no woman named Xiao Linghua had crawled out of a cabinet, no one had recounted a horrifying story to him, and no one had entered to murder the so-called Mrs. Li. Everything felt like an illusion, vanishing as swiftly as it appeared. Looking again at the female corpse in the cooler, Nangong found himself unable to confirm that this was indeed Xiao Linghua.

Of course, without the woman’s own testimony just moments before, he wouldn't have recognized her in the first place. But now, everything seemed to have been erased by a giant rubber. Except for the memory searing his brain, there was no physical evidence remaining. The struggle between believing himself and believing that nothing had occurred felt like a fish bone lodged in Nangong’s throat, suffocating him.