Old Hou's given name was Hou Tianshi; legend had it that naming a child with the character for "stone" would ensure a hard life, but whether his life was hard or not remained unseen—what was evident was his lack of fortune. Due to his limited education, Hou Tianshi had practically never held a formal job, subsisting instead on odd jobs and odd labor. It wasn't until the town built the affiliated hospital for the medical college and urgently needed staff—coupled with his reputation for being honest and conscientious—that he finally earned the position of handyman there. Over time, few people remembered his real name; instead, he became known as Honest Hou, or simply Old Hou.

Since it was a medical college, teaching naturally accompanied the medical treatments. The college buildings sat behind the hospital, and thus, the hospital morgue was logically situated in the college basement. Bodies released by family consent were used as specimens for college coursework.

Old Hou wasn't initially assigned to morgue duty. However, no one else could sustain the position for long, especially the night shift. As a result, Old Hou was forcibly assigned to that post, and he had remained there ever since.

Years of working the night shift, particularly guarding the morgue entrance, inevitably led to encounters with inexplicable, strange occurrences—like the sound of knocking coming from inside the refrigerated cabinets where the bodies were stored. Such things would terrify anyone.

Besides honesty, bravery was another one of Old Hou's virtues, but he wasn't immune to fear. Fortunately, there was a Taoist temple in town, and Old Hou had long been acquainted with the old priest, giving him some insight into bizarre happenings and simple countermeasures. Consequently, whenever the morgue was empty during his night shift, he would light three sticks of incense at the doorway—a practice that proved effective most of the time.

Last night was no exception. Unless a body arrived at the hospital late at night, necessitating a trip to the morgue past midnight, Old Hou was always alone there.

The "basement" referred to the first subterranean level beneath the teaching building located behind the main hospital structure. If the hospital needed to deliver a body to the morgue, there was an elevator and a staircase leading underground from outside the teaching building.

The subterranean area spanned two floors. The second basement level was primarily for body storage and occasionally opened for teaching purposes. Given that the basement was used for storing the deceased, one could imagine the temperature was unnaturally low, with currents of cold air wafting out from the ventilation shafts.

Thankfully, it wasn't like the scenes often depicted in movies, where only a dim chandelier swung faintly in the wind. Instead, the entire basement corridor was lined with fluorescent lighting, providing relatively ample illumination. However, the white light cast by these fixtures draped the whole hallway in a chill, eerie, and unsettling atmosphere.

After a day of activity, the teaching building settled back into silence. At eight o’clock, after handing over his duties to the day staff, Old Hou made a brief patrol before returning to the duty room. Normally, if the adjacent hospital didn't send over any more "business," he could essentially consider his work done.

But not that day. Several bodies remained outside the refrigerated cabinets in the morgue. Later that night, he had an additional task: to empty a few of the morgue's freezers to make space for these new arrivals.

The reason for the delay was the possibility that the families of these few bodies might come seeking them.

At his age, his duties during his shift consisted almost entirely of sleeping or watching television—it was like this almost every day. He brewed a pot of tea, turned on the TV, and settled onto the sofa to pass the time until he suddenly felt the need to use the restroom.

The route from the restroom back to the duty room required passing the morgue room. It was precisely as he passed the doorway that Old Hou thought he heard a strange sound—something like a low moan or whimper.

Old Hou instantly froze, a tingling sensation shooting from the top of his head down to his toes. Although the sound was faint and lasted for less than a minute, the hallway was empty save for Old Hou, and there was no other discernible source for the noise. The sound could only have originated from the morgue next door.

His hand moved involuntarily to grasp the doorknob of the morgue. Suddenly, a wave of profound cold washed over him, spreading throughout his body. Whether it was the cold air seeping through the door crack from inside the morgue or the draft blowing from the corridor’s ventilation shafts, the indescribable chill seemed to engulf him from all directions. More bizarrely, in the brightly lit corridor under the fluorescent lights, he could vaguely perceive churning, rolling currents of air nearby, as if the cold had somehow given the air shape, causing it to constantly undulate.

Old Hou instinctively raised his hand to rub his eyes. As he did so, the hand resting on the doorknob accidentally exerted a gentle pressure, and the morgue door swung open with a sudden push.

Unexpectedly, the spring-loaded door, which should have closed silently, emitted a grating creak-creak, sounding precisely like an ancient wooden door being forced open. The sound of friction, like something gnawing on bone, set his teeth on edge.

"Gulp..." Old Hou swallowed hard. Only one fluorescent light was on inside the morgue, making the interior somewhat dim. Besides the cabinet doors of the rows of metal freezers along the sides reflecting the cold, pale light, the center of the room held two parallel gurneys, each draped with a white sheet. Beneath those white cloths lay stiff, rigid corpses.

Old Hou let out a soft breath, and instantly, white vapor plumed from his mouth. He startled slightly; the temperature in here was excessively low.

A tremor of apprehension began to creep into his heart. He turned back and pressed the light switch on the wall, flooding the ceiling with all the available fluorescent fixtures, and then he searched for the thermostat controlling the indoor temperature.

He had only taken two steps inside when he noticed something strange: on the outermost gurney, the white sheet covering the body had partially pulled back, exposing the shoulders and the head of the corpse beneath.

Old Hou couldn't help but glance at the face. The deceased was a woman, her features still quite young, though her once delicate face was now tinged black, her cheeks sunken, and her eyes half-open, half-closed, as if filled with lingering reluctance.

Seeing that face, Old Hou let out a soft sigh. To pass away so young, reluctance was understandable; perhaps that was why her eyes hadn't closed completely.

With a touch of melancholy, he slowly walked over, first casually picking up the report clipped to the side of the body’s gurney to glance at it. He learned the body had arrived that morning, the cause of death a traffic accident—the driver had fled after hitting her. He supposed the investigation would continue; he hoped they’d find the culprit.

By this point, Old Hou had subconsciously dismissed the earlier sound as a hallucination, and the fear that had gripped him was slowly being replaced by a burgeoning sense of sympathy. He moved unconsciously toward the head of the body, intending to pull the white sheet back over her face.

But in the very instant his hand grasped the corner of the displaced sheet, the corpse’s hand, resting flat on its side, suddenly moved, jerking as if in a spasm, and landed squarely on Old Hou's arm...