Chapter 49

  Chengzhou chased after Yuanyuan and that Pekingese dog all the way up to the third floor. As he stepped onto the last step of the stairs, he slowed down his pace.

  He could no longer hear the footsteps of the source, and did not know whether the other party had already run to a higher floor or had already run back home.

  That white Pomeranian was crouching in the middle of the third-floor corridor, quietly staring at him.

  Chengzhou stood at the staircase entrance, looking around left and right, wondering which side the Yao family would be on.

  This building is relatively old, the internal layout and the current one are quite different. The floor distribution is also completely different. Although it is also divided into left and right households, according to the suite type, there are two households in the recessed area on the right side, and three households on the left side.

  Cheng Chou decided to try the right side first. He walked into the recess on the right and knocked on the anti-theft door with "301" marked on it.

  No one inside responded to him.

  Cheng Zhou changed to room 302 again and tried to shout out: "Yao Fangqing, hello, I'm Cheng Zhou. Are you home?"

  He shouted several times, but the corridor was still eerily quiet.

  Cheng Zhou had no choice but to turn around and plan to knock on the door again on the opposite side.

  But...

  Chengzhou furrowed his brow, was it this dark just now?

  Although he felt that the corridor of this building was a bit too dim when he was downstairs earlier, the brightness was enough for him to see the blurry door number.

  It's only been a short while, but the third floor is now as dark as it would be at 7:30 in the evening. Cheng Zhou couldn't see the hands on his watch clearly and could only take out his phone to check the time.

  It's not even half past ten!

  How strange! It's really strange!

  Cheng Zhou was a little scared... Okay, he was very scared, his heart beating extremely fast.

  So he knew the phone couldn't get through, but still flipped out Li Jiacheng's phone number and tried to dial it.

  The result waited for a whole minute, and the phone was still in the connecting state.

  Chengzhou had no choice but to give up and use the glow of his mobile phone to search for the light switch in the corridor.

  Generally, the switch for corridor lights is either on the right-hand side wall of the staircase or in the middle of the wall facing the corridor. Some old buildings don't even have a switch and instead have a pull cord hanging down beside the light.

  Cheng Zhou remembered that he seemed to have seen a rope on the second floor, so he held up his phone and took a photo of the middle of the corridor.

  He's really mentally prepared!

  But! The pale face that suddenly appeared in the dark under the fluorescent light was still a great shock to him, and at this time he also felt someone touch his occipital bone!

  Chengzhou's soul was frightened away, his hand shook, and he directly threw his phone out.

  "Asshole!" Cheng Zhou burst into a loud scolding, pulling his throat to scold desperately, while shouting Yao Fangqing's name.

  "Yao Fangqing, what are you up to? Come out! Get out here!"

  "Bang." The corridor lights came on.

  Yao Fangqing stood in the middle of the corridor, her eyes filled with sadness and despair as she looked at Cheng Zhou.

  "Why did you come here? You shouldn't have come. I've already hurt so many people, I don't want to also..."

  "I thought you wanted me to come."

  Yao Fangqing picked up the phone from the ground and handed it to Cheng Zhou.

  The moment Chengzhou took over the phone, he heard Yao Fangqing whisper a sentence in his ear: "Find the root of the curse before that person does, quickly!"

  "Bang." The lights went out again.

  Cheng Zhou hadn't even had time to ask what that meant when he found the originally dark corridor restored to its original dull but still visible surroundings, and Yao Fangqing's figure had already disappeared in front of him.

  What is the source of the curse? What thing is it? Am I looking for a person or an object? And who exactly is that person?

  Cheng Zhou lowered his head to look at his phone. Although this phone was given away for free with a recharge, he treasured it dearly. Now, however, the screen of this phone had cracked into a fissure.

  Chengzhou tried turning it off and on again, and found that the phone seemed to still be usable. The time display... huh? Why had all the time displays turned to zero?

  "Woof!" The previously silent Jingba suddenly let out a cry.

  Chengzhou suddenly remembered the little white dog, looked up at the other person, but saw Jingba looking up at the upstairs.

  Cheng Zhou naturally followed his gaze upwards towards the building.

  A long-haired woman ran down from upstairs with tears streaming down her face.

  That is the woman on the first floor.

  The long-haired woman ran past Cheng Chou's face, and Cheng Chou found that she was barefoot, originally wearing high heels on her feet had disappeared.

  Jing Ba followed the woman running downstairs.

  Chengzhou didn't know what was going on, but he instinctively followed Jingba and ran downstairs.

  The third floor returned to an eerie silence.

  There was just an additional body sitting against the wall at the entrance of Room 302.

  The body had its eyes slightly closed, with a phone with a cracked screen and in shutdown mode placed beside the leg, and both hands were stretched out on either side of the body, motionless.

  Chengzhou ran to the first floor and found Jingba following Longfa girl into room 105.

  Cheng Zhou stopped in his tracks.

  The door of room 105 was closed.

  That only Kanaqiba came out from the wall, squatted at a distance from Chengzhou, looking at him, then got up and walked towards the door of room 105.

  "Alright, alright, I know." Cheng Zhou reluctantly walked to the door of room 105 and knocked.

  But just as his fingers touched the anti-theft door, he felt someone bump him from behind, and the force sent him tumbling into the room.

  Wait!

  I'm now...... I......!

  Cheng Chou looked at the entrance of Room 105 in horror and then turned his head to look at one of his legs which was still stuck in the door.

  How did I get in here?!

  Cheng Chou stood still for ten seconds, then shakily pulled out the right leg that was stuck in the door.

  It's okay, it was very easy to get out of there and nothing terrible happened like my right leg being stuck in the steel door.

  Cheng Chou waited at the Xuan Guan for a while, and heard loud quarreling sounds coming from one of the rooms inside, with the voices getting closer and closer, as if someone was about to come out.

  Cheng Zhou hurriedly, and couldn't help but think why he could pass through the door. He looked left and right, saw a milk subscription advertisement on the shoe cabinet, immediately grabbed it, and shouted inside: "Excuse me, your house door is not closed, may I ask if you need to subscribe to milk?"

  "Crash!" A glass container was smashed, and the originally beautifully dressed long-haired young woman rushed out with her hair disheveled.

  A middle-aged woman also ran out, "Look at what you've become for the sake of that freeloader! Isn't it just a matter of breaking up with him? Then break up with him! I'd be delighted if you broke up with him sooner! Your dad said he'd introduce you to the office director from his factory, who's young and promising, only thirty and..."

  "What's so great about the office director? He's already bald at thirty! And he's so short, I'm still taller than him even when I wear high heels!"

  "They have a proper job, graduated from a proper university with a master's degree, earning over 6,000 yuan a month, and to top it off, they're the boss's nephew, their future is absolutely boundless! What does your Ming Ge have besides his face that can compare to them?" The middle-aged woman was also furious.

  "Ming Ge is better than him! Who said Ming Ge doesn't have a job? He's a professional gamer, with an income of around 4,000 yuan per month. He's not living off his wife at all!"

  "Didn't he have an easy life? Your grandma saw him talking to Yao Fangqing, that broken shoe, with such a familiar and intimate attitude, Yao Fangqing even gave him a package of snacks, didn't you see how happy he was?! Your grandma also saw him getting out of a middle-aged woman's car, carrying several bags of men's clothing from TV commercials, and you still say he didn't have an easy life?"

  "Stop it, stop it! All you do is speak ill of him! Don't you just want me to marry that bald man? What's the future for me? It's all because Father wants to curry favor with their factory director, and he's eager to send me over! I've had enough of you all! Had enough of this family! And what about that old woman who loves to wag her tongue, why doesn't she just die already?"

  Cheng Zhou stood at the door and awkwardly called out "hey" twice, but the mother-daughter duo arguing not far from him seemed to have noticed nothing.

  They won't ignore me, will they?

  Chengzhou walked forward two steps in confusion and went straight to the mother-daughter pair who were getting more and more agitated.

  The sound of boiling water rose, but neither mother nor daughter went to tend to it.

  A middle-aged woman seemed to be annoyed by her daughter and slapped a long-haired girl on the ear.

  The long-haired woman seemed to be stunned by this slap, and when she reacted, she suddenly pushed the middle-aged woman like a madman.

  The middle-aged woman's occipital bone hit the wall, and the woman's mouth was slightly open, but nothing came out.

  The long-haired woman seemed to be unaware, feeling infinitely wronged and angry, she grabbed the things around her and threw them at the middle-aged woman, cursing loudly as she did so.

  Just then, a voice of an old woman came from outside: "Yingying, what are you doing? You're making so much noise that people outside can hear it."

  Yingying, the long-haired girl, upon hearing the old woman's voice, not only didn't calm down, but instead seemed to be fueled by fire, and rushed into the room next door.

  Chengzhou followed up and went forward.

  Yingyin rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the kettle of boiling water.

  Chengzhou heard the old woman outside seemingly talking to someone, mentioning Mingge and Yao Fangqing several times.

  Yingying might have been driven mad by that slap, or perhaps the shock of breaking up with her boyfriend was too much for her. She grabbed a kettle of boiling water and rushed to her room, opening the window facing outside, and poured the scalding water down!

  Cheng Chou wanted to grab the woman, but when he touched her arm, it was as if he had been electrocuted, and he retreated several steps back.

  The familiar curses and screams rose up, just like what they had seen and heard outside the door before.

  Cheng Zhou shook his arm, wondering if it was an illusion, but the previous move actually felt very comfortable? It was as if energy had been injected into his body.

  Chengzhou still wanted to touch the long-haired girl, but he didn't dare to casually touch her without knowing the consequences. Moreover, this occasion and scene were not suitable for him to verify anything.

  Afterwards, the long-haired woman seemed to come back to her senses amidst the old lady's mournful cries, but everything was already too late.

  The long-haired girl sat on the bed covering her face and crying loudly, shouting "Mom" while she cried.

  Chengzhou turned around and saw a middle-aged woman who had bumped into the wall staring straight at her daughter's room with wide eyes.

  Chengzhou felt that the woman's expression was a bit off, so he walked over and lightly touched her.

  This time there was no feeling of electric shock.

  The woman's arm was touched by him and moved slightly, but that was all, without a second reaction.

  Cheng Zhou swallowed his saliva, unfortunately, where he stood made him clearly see what happened to the middle-aged woman.

  There is a nail stuck deep in the back of the woman's head.

  That nail was probably originally used to hang a calendar, or perhaps it was used to hang other things, and had been nailed into the wall for many years. In any case, the person who originally hammered in that nail probably never imagined that one day it would pierce through someone's occipital bone and leave them hanging on the wall.

  Cheng Zhou stood still, his mind was so confused that he couldn't think of anything.

  He didn't know what to do at this time and didn't know how to react.

  He didn't even know if he was alive or dead now.

  Nor does he know whether everything he sees is real or illusory.

  The long-haired woman's wailing and the old lady's mournful cries outside the door blended together, piercing his eardrums.

  The white Pekingese appeared again, walked around Cheng Zhou's legs twice, and then made a gesture towards the gate.

  Chengzhou didn't react in time.

  Until some hesitant knocking sounds came up.

  "Yingying, are you at home?"