Kuang Feifan's expression shifted instantly upon hearing He Shaoqing's sharp exclamation, and he demanded nervously, "What is it? What happened?"

As he spoke, he rushed toward He Shaoqing's position, only to watch He Shaoqing cry out and step into the room, his voice muffled: "Uh... nothing, nothing, this room is seriously filthy."

Kuang Feifan caught up just then, peering around the doorway. As expected, the interior was unlike the hallway; there was no carpet. The bare wooden floor, showing its original color, was covered in dust, clearly imprinted with He Shaoqing's footprints. A few pieces of furniture stood inside, draped in white cloths thick with accumulated grime, evidently left behind when the previous occupants moved out.

He Shaoqing approached, pinched the corner of one white cloth with two fingers, lifted it, glanced beneath, pursed his lips, and let the cloth drop. He wiped his fingers on his trousers, then turned to Kuang Feifan at the doorway. "It's a desk, looks quite old. I wonder why they didn't take it."

Using the slivers of moonlight filtering through the window, he surveyed the other pieces of furniture but found nothing suspicious. He Shaoqing stood in the center of the room, scanning the space, and shrugged at Kuang Feifan. "Nothing here. I'm checking the next room."

Kuang Feifan remained outside the doorway, feeling that something was fundamentally wrong, yet unable to pinpoint the exact source of the unease. He glanced back at the solitary room on the opposite side, paused in thought, and said, "I'll check that one."

With that, he turned toward that room. But in the brief moment of turning, his peripheral vision accidentally swept across the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the doorway. In that instant, he thought he saw the reflection of the room’s interior—and right in the center, where He Shaoqing had been standing, there seemed to be another person beside him. No, not just another person; behind He Shaoqing's head, there was another head...

It happened in the blink of an eye. Kuang Feifan spun around violently to face He Shaoqing, only to find him alone in the room, still standing in the center, his gaze now fixed on Kuang Feifan.

"What's wrong?" He Shaoqing noticed the strange look on his face and quickly asked.

Kuang Feifan looked again, genuinely finding no anomaly. He managed a strained smile and shook his head. "Nothing, maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me just now."

He Shaoqing emerged from the room, messing with his hair in front of the facing mirror, complaining, "This filthy place, my head is covered in dust. Let's finish this inspection quickly so I can go bathe. Damn it, where did that purse-snatcher run off to?"

Kuang Feifan ignored the jab, merely cautioning, "Be careful by yourself."

He Shaoqing rolled his eyes at him. "Hurry up, stop dawdling like a girl."

By now, Kuang Feifan had reached the space between the two opposing mirrors situated before the doorway of the room facing him. Simultaneously, He Shaoqing reached the entrance of the next room, kicked the door open with a shout, "Anyone in there? Come out, I'm the police!"

The utterly unexpected occurred. At almost the same instant, both men were slammed by a powerful force. The doors before them swung silently inward, and with startled cries, they were shoved stumbling into the rooms. All their agility and flexibility were useless; they tumbled into their respective rooms, landing in ignominious heaps.

With two sounds of "creak... slam," the doors of both rooms closed tightly.

"Damn it, what the hell was that?" Kuang Feifan, thrown flat on the ground, scrambled up immediately, shaking his head to calm his suddenly frantic heart. He was beginning to realize that the events unfolding now were no longer mere illusions or psychological tricks, as he’d initially suspected; some unknown force within this building was at work. Just then, he caught sight of a woman in a red dress.

The woman in red, as seen by Kuang Feifan, stood by a window in the corner of the room. Outside, a full moon hung dead center, its dark markings strongly resembling a face wearing a sinister grin. Moonlight streamed through the glass panes, casting the distinct, unbroken shadows of the window lattice onto the dusty floor.

Kuang Feifan stared wide-eyed. He keenly noticed that the shadow on the floor showed only the window; the shadow of the woman in red by the window was missing.

His gaze returned to the woman. She was perpetually facing away from him, so her features were completely obscured, revealing only her shoulder-length black hair.

Before Kuang Feifan could study her further, a faint, childish, ethereal voice entered his ears: "I want this toy to stay with me..." The voice sounded like that of a very young child who had only just learned to speak, yet Kuang Feifan felt an intensely perverse quality in the tone. Just then, his peripheral vision seemed to catch a flicker of shadow passing close beside him.

Before Kuang Feifan could see clearly what had moved nearby, the silhouette of the woman in red blurred and vanished instantly from his sight. Immediately following this, a bone-chilling, icy gust of wind, carrying immense, cold force, surged toward Kuang Feifan as if to devour him. In the haze, he sensed a streak of red afterimage within the wind, and Kuang Feifan seemed to feel the palpable aura of death emanating from the power.

Reacting purely on instinct, Kuang Feifan retreated rapidly, attempting to evade the incoming force. However, as fast as he moved back, the force moved faster, reaching him in the next breath.

Kuang Feifan was aghast. Without time to think, he threw himself sideways with all his might, aiming for where he remembered the doorway being. To his shock, his body slammed hard against the wall. Immediately afterward, the great force behind him crashed into him. Caught between the two impacts, Kuang Feifan felt an unprecedented dizziness, his body went weak, and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Unaware as he lay there, the force that struck him instantly reformed into the woman in red, her long hair obscuring her face. Her pale, greenish fingers, like talons, shot toward his neck. But the moment her hand brushed against his throat, she snatched it back as if burned by fire. The woman in red recoiled, stood beside Kuang Feifan, head bowed, seemingly contemplating for a moment. Then she drifted sideways, slowly merging into the wall until she disappeared entirely, leaving behind only a bright, crimson cross mark etched upon the surface.

Leaning against the wall, Kuang Feifan recollected the recent events and managed a bitter smile. It seemed tonight would be arduous. Perhaps it was the sensation of the cold, hard wall behind him, but his mind felt surprisingly clear, and his internal energy was almost fully recovered. He slowly tucked his useless phone back into his pocket.

Suddenly, he felt something touch the back of his neck. His heart clenched, and he instinctively rolled sideways, breaking contact with the wall, spinning around sharply to stare. His eyes widened in shock: a pair of small, pale blue hands was emerging from the plaster.

Kuang Feifan's profession was forensics, which had exposed him to the structures of the human body. Even without relying on technical knowledge, common sense told him that judging by the size, these must belong to an infant, not long born, though they were withered to skin and bone.

What was even more unsettling was that after the withered little hands slowly groped their way out of the wall, Kuang Feifan stood frozen in horror, because they were only hands—the wrists behind them were empty.

At this moment, Kuang Feifan could no longer suppress the terror surging within him. A deathly chill swept through him, and his body trembled uncontrollably, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

The ordeal was not over. After emerging from the wall, the little hands dropped to the floor with a soft thud and began to slowly writhe forward across the dusty surface.

What was happening? If he had mentally categorized the woman in red as a ghost, what kind of monster was this pair of hands?

Ghosts, it was said, were formless, mere wisps of spirit, often visible but untouchable. Yet here he was, nearly choked by the woman in red, and now faced with a pair of small, infant-like hands crawling on the floor. He could clearly see the serpentine trails they left in the dust as they moved.

He wasn't unfamiliar with gore and cruelty; his job sometimes took him to crime scenes, where he had seen dismembered limbs. But seeing a disembodied limb moving defied belief. He remembered someone saying that seeing a moving part was often more psychologically damaging than seeing an entire moving corpse.

Perhaps his brain was becoming muddied from shock, but Kuang Feifan could only stare at the small hands. He remained in a half-crouched posture, his body rigid, as the hands seemed to be controlled by an invisible force. Though their movement appeared slow, they were soon close to his face, lifting and lowering alternately, about to touch his own hand resting on the floor.

Kuang Feifan, frozen by sheer astonishment, suddenly sprang up as if electrocuted, yelling hysterically. He stomped his foot down hard onto the floor, with the frantic energy of a woman spotting a cockroach. He stomped and stamped repeatedly, but though the hands seemed to crawl slowly, their dodging speed was lightning-fast. No matter how hard he stomped, he only stirred up clouds of dust; every strike missed.

After half a minute of this mindless kicking and shouting, Kuang Feifan snapped back to lucidity. He tensed his entire body and retreated several swift steps. The withered little hands seemed to register his movement, ceasing their evasion and accelerating their approach toward him.

Kuang Feifan's face was ashen, his expression savage. He pointed a finger at the dry little hands and roared, "Damn it, what the hell do you want?"

The little hands seemed to pause upon hearing his outburst, then scrambled forward a few quick times. Both small palms pressed down hard, then instantly sprang upward, lunging directly toward Kuang Feifan’s face.

Kuang Feifan’s eyes went wide. His body instinctively arched backward, executing a perfect Iron Plank bridge to successfully dodge the attacking hands. Immediately following this, using one hand to support his backward-leaning body, he swung his leg up and kicked fiercely into one of the small palms.

The pair of hands spun in an arc through the air and landed back on the floor with a thwack. After tumbling blindly for a couple of circles, they sprang up again and rushed toward Kuang Feifan once more.

"Is this ever going to end..." Kuang Feifan yelled, executing a sideways flip to evade the attack. Unexpectedly, this time the direct assault was a feint. Midway through, the hands abruptly curved, maneuvering around to his flank just as Kuang Feifan started to rise. A palm struck his shoulder.

"Ah..." Kuang Feifan couldn't help but let out a sharp cry.

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