Chapter 7: A Coffin in One's Mouth (Part 1)

  "Is that all?" I asked with a yawn.

  Yè èrliáng's eyes widened: "Is this still not enough?"

  "Not enough, far from enough." I sat up straight and pointed to the stack of printed materials in front of me, saying: "With just this little material, how can we possibly win an award at the Tianya Original Works Competition? Moreover, no matter how I look at these things, they don't seem like original materials, but rather something that has been processed."

  I've been really poor lately, and coincidentally I saw that Tianya Forum is hosting an original creation contest with a substantial prize. So I got the idea to participate, but it's not easy to write something good now. Tomb raiding is outdated, adventure is also out of fashion. Simply writing about some unknown ghosts scaring people doesn't have much meaning and feels unrealistic. So I found Ye Erlang, hoping he can find me some materials from his unit as inspiration.

  Ye Erlang is my best friend, when we were young everyone called him Ye Erniang, but after I found out that this was the name of his sister who died young, I never called him that again.

  Ye Erlang works at the Public Security Bureau, and I asked him to find some cases from recent years that the bureau found particularly unbelievable to use as material. In my opinion, if even professionals find them unbelievable, then writing about them will be more attention-grabbing. Although this goes against regulations, after I persuaded and assured him repeatedly that I wouldn't leak the original manuscript, Erlang agreed to help me out once. But what he gave me was a stack of printed documents that looked like manuscripts - the two stories above.

  Er Liang glared at me: "This is the original material, only I painstakingly printed it out word by word. The most unbelievable case in the whole bureau is these two."

  I sat up straight, looked at Erliang and said seriously: "Officer Ye, if you also want to participate in this competition, just say it directly, there's no need to be so evasive. To be honest, the two articles you wrote are not very good. The first one has a clumsy writing style, the second one is illogical, with too many inexplicable and irrelevant characters appearing, although your writing skills have improved a lot..."

  I suddenly stopped talking, because I thought: if this was written by Erliang himself, it would be impossible for his writing to improve so quickly in just a few days. I looked up at him: "Who wrote this?"

  Er Lang took a deep breath and spat out three words: "Chu Jiang Shan!"

  "Wait a minute!" I hastily raised my hand to stop Erliang from continuing, "You're getting me all confused, are you saying this was written by Chu Jiangshan?"

  Er Liang nodded: "Yes."

  I naturally knew the name of Chu Jiangshan, not from the first story above, but because I was also a loyal fan of his many years ago. I was even heartbroken for a while due to his bizarre suicide. However, Chu Jiangshan had been dead for many years, and Wang Qiang's death was only a year ago. How could such a situation occur? It is known that Er Liang swore that the case he found for me was absolutely real, and I also read Wang Qiang's book. In other words, the two people who died strangely in the above stories did exist in life. So what about Chu Jiangshan?

  I got a bit of a headache, rubbed my temples and looked up at Erliang, waiting for him to give me an explanation.

  "These two people were both found to have died from excessive fright after expert autopsies, but this conclusion cannot be made public."

  I nodded and said, "Okay, I admit that these two people died under suspicious circumstances. But what does this have to do with Chu Jiangshan? He's been dead for many years already. Do you really think there are ghosts in this world?"

  "Shortly after Wang Qiang's death, our bureau received a letter with the first story you just saw; and after Lao Chu was found dead in the park, we received another identical letter, which is the second story you saw. Neither letter had an address, but both were signed 'Chu Jiangshan', and from the postmark, it appears they came from the same place."

  "Huh?" I became a bit interested and leaned forward asking: "How did your department handle it?"

  "Of course, we wouldn't believe in such things. Everyone just reads it for fun and we've kept it on file as per usual. You want me to find some bizarre case for you? Do you think there's that many bizarre things out there? Anyway, since I've accepted your bribe, I shouldn't be too ungrateful. After selecting a few options, I think these two pieces are not bad. Just modify them and send them directly to the competition. (Total CEO: The Great Marriage of the Rich)"

  I was greatly disappointed, thinking it would be some kind of bizarre story, but it turned out that someone had written two articles using the name Chu Jiangshan to target these two death cases. From the writing style, it indeed resembles Chu Jiangshan's early style, most likely done by one of his fans as a prank, but it was too much and reckless, daring to send such a letter to the Public Security Bureau.

  Er Lang picked up the last piece of beef jerky on my desk and stuffed it into his mouth, patted his hand and stood up: "Of course, there are also strange places in these two cases, otherwise I wouldn't have shown them to you. That old Chu's room, you can go take a look."

  I was already disappointed earlier, so I didn't have much interest in the story and casually replied: "The case is already so clear, what's there to look at?"

  Er Lang stopped in his tracks, hesitated for a moment, and said: "What if this isn't a lie, but the truth?"

  I was taken aback and asked: "What did you say?"

  "Hey, that place is really strange," said Erlang Jing. After a pause, I was about to ask what was strange about it when Erlang suddenly shivered and rubbed his hands together: "Never mind, never mind, just thinking about it scares me. I'm out of here, next time I'll bring some photos over, if you win an award, treat me to dinner."

  I stared at the stack of manuscripts on my desk, remembering what Er Liang had just said, and suddenly became very interested in these two stories. I felt a strong urge to go take a look: what was so strange about Lao Chu's room?

  I asked Erliang for Lao Chu's address, and Erliang obviously didn't think I would really go to see Lao Chu. He hesitated, wanting to say something to me, but finally sighed and said, "You'd better go take a look, just be careful."

  The residential area where Lao Chu lives is far away but easy to find, and I easily found the place. There are no people living in the residential area, and there is no property management. Some areas inside have already started to grow weeds. Standing in the residential area, I looked up at the sign nailed on the outer wall of the building: Building 6. Lao Chu lives here, and I quietly counted that it's a total of 7 floors, and Lao Chu lives on the top floor.

  I stepped up the stairs, silently thinking about the plot in my mind, until I stood at the door of Lao Chu's house. It was here that a little girl with long hair pressed the doorbell she couldn't reach, and it was also here that a migrant worker asked "What did you see?" again and again. And now, it is me standing here.

  The empty corridor was filled with dust and leaves that had flown in from the window, I knew this was because no one lived here and there was no property management. Standing alone in such a corridor, what you could feel was a dead silence, and what you could hear was your own gradually heavier breathing sound.

  Er Lang reminded me to be careful, I don't think there are really ghosts in this world, but I still remembered these words in my heart. It wasn't until I arrived here that I realized I didn't have as much courage as I had imagined. Perhaps it was written too vividly, but it always made me involuntarily think of that little girl, wearing a black nightgown, looking up with a pale face, as if she was staring at me.

  Forget it, forget it! I stomped my feet and took out the tool from my pocket to unlock the door. The dust on the ground was kicked up by my feet, irritating my nose, and I couldn't help but cough. The sound of my coughing echoed in the corridor, accompanied by a strange feeling.

  Fortunately it wasn't a "da da" sound, I thought, and then pushed open Old Chu's door.

  Lao Chu was single and had no one to inherit his house after he passed away, so the place has been empty ever since. Plus, there are hardly any people in this neighborhood, so even though I didn't have a key, I wasn't worried about anyone seeing me use some unconventional methods to open Lao Chu's front door - something I learned from Er Liang. But as I pushed open the door, I still became extremely cautious, as if I was afraid of waking up the owner inside, even though I knew there was no one left in there now.

  I finally know why Er Lang said this place is strange.