Chapter Seven: The Mysterious Case Ten Years Ago

  We entered the police station and were arranged in a room, asked to fill out a form first, then waited for about half an hour. A big-bellied man walked towards us.

  Li Jian Tian, Director of Dongyang Municipal Public Security Bureau, has been in office for ten years. He is nicknamed "Iron-faced Golden Strongman" because he has a stern face and handles matters decisively and impartially, never showing favoritism. Due to his uprightness, he doesn't know how to flatter or fawn, so he hasn't been promoted all these years.

  "Since our superiors are taking this matter very seriously, I will personally take your statements." Li Jian Tian said to us with a stern face.

  "I took a look at the information you filled out, and it seems that both of you are students from the medical college. Are you two in a relationship?" Li Jian Tian looked at us with interest, glancing back and forth between our faces, but somehow felt that we didn't quite match up.

  "Yes."

  "No."

  Lin Mo and I replied together.

  Lin Mo glared at me fiercely, with a look of disgust on his face.

  "Is it really so? You must answer truthfully." Li Jian Tian asked sternly.

  "I wish it were, but it's not yet." I said with a shameless face.

  "First tell me what you've seen and heard, you start first." He didn't pursue it further, pointing at me and asking.

  "We started swimming in the pool, and suddenly heard a scream from the Ferris wheel side. We rushed over to find the deceased. As medical students, we were already half-doctors, so before confirming that the victim was dead, we needed to give them emergency treatment. Unfortunately, the person had already died. Lin Mo, who majors in forensic medicine, performed a simple autopsy on the body and found that the right thumb of the corpse was missing. The second female corpse was discovered by me, submerged in the corner of the pool. When I pulled her out, she was already dead. Coincidentally, all the fingers except for the thumb on her left hand were also gone."

  "Alright, you tell me." He pointed at Lin Mo again.

  "The situation is just as Yang Guo said." Lin Miao continued.

  "Alright, I have a question about what you just said," he said to me.

  "You started by saying you were on the Ferris wheel, and then rushed to the swimming pool. How did you know there was a body in the pool?" Li Jian Tian's voice became stern.

  Lin Mo also looked at me with confusion.

  "I'm telling you, it's a feeling, believe me?" I said with a serious face.

  To my surprise, Li Jian Tian's expression didn't change at all, and he seemed very calm, I thought he would take me in as a suspect, but instead, three words slowly emerged from his mouth.

  I believe.

  "You can all go back now. If there's anything else later on, I'll let you know. Yang Guo, stay for a moment. Lin Mo, wait outside for a bit."

  "Yang Guo, I believe you, but you have to tell me, what exactly did you see?"

  "A boy, none of them can see." I said truthfully.

  Li Jian Tian's expression suddenly became tense at this time.

  "Yang Guo, come here tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock sharp. The situation is urgent, so be punctual. You go first." Li Jian Tian said with a sigh.

  Li Jian Tian returned to his own office, walked to the bookshelf, took out a file, and the file was pressed at the very bottom, as if it had been sealed for a long time.

  This is a top-secret file from ten years ago. When Li Jian Tian had just taken office, he encountered a tricky homicide case. One night, eight people mysteriously died, all with the same posture, and each person's body was carved with the words "I'm back". There was a witness who provided false testimony due to his incoherent speech and was detained for two months. Later, that person went mad. The case remains unsolved to this day.

  "Maybe things from ten years ago can be laid to rest." Li Jian Tian said in a low voice.

  On the other hand, I and Lin Mo returned to school, originally carefree and happy, but now worried and anxious.

  "Yang Guo, tell me, what exactly happened." Lin Mo finally couldn't help but ask me.

  I hesitated for a moment.

  "I always feel like I can't see through you, what are you hiding from me?" Lin Mo continued.

  "Silently, I still can't tell you now. I don't want you to be implicated. When the time is ripe, I will tell you. Don't ask anymore." My face was solemn.

  "Alright, you mustn't hold on by yourself, I'm your good friend." Lin Mo said a very heartwarming sentence.

  "I don't want to be your good friend, I want to be your boyfriend." I said seriously.

  "Haha, you're kidding me, right? You're really funny." Lin Mo laughed.

  "Yeah, I was just kidding, haha." I couldn't help but laugh along with him, but a pang of sadness hit me. "Yeah, how could I possibly be worthy of her? A toad wanting to eat swan meat?" I shook my head in despair.

  The next day at 9 o'clock, I arrived on time at the Public Security Bureau. Li Jian Tian had been waiting for a long time.

  "Yang Guo, come with me to a place."

  I followed him onto the bus and soon arrived at the destination.

  Municipal Psychiatric Hospital.

  I felt strange at this time, what brought me here, I calmed down and didn't ask him.

  Followed into the mental hospital, an old man came out to greet him.

  "Director Lao, how has your health been lately?" Li Jian Tian asked as he stepped forward.

  It turned out to be the director of a mental hospital.

  "Director Li, it's been a long time. My body is still the same old self, can still hold on for a few more years, haha." The director was quite nonchalant about it.

  "Director Lao, I've come this time to see her." Li Jian Tian quickly got to the point.

  "Oh? She's much more stable now, whatever you do, don't stimulate her again." The director instructed.

  Followed Li Jian Tian into a room.

  The room was very empty, with only a table and several chairs, and a woman in her thirties wearing the uniform of a mental hospital, looking haggard. She looked up as Li Jian Tian walked in, and her expression began to panic.

  "He's back, he's back, you're all going to die, hahaha." Before Li Jian Tian could even open his mouth, the woman had already begun speaking wildly.

  It was then that I started to feel uneasy, sensing the terror that permeated every word and line of the woman's writing.

  Li Jian Tian signaled me not to be nervous.

  "Who is he after all?" Li Jian Tian asked.

  "The devil, he is a demon from hell." The woman grabbed her hair and pulled it out, feeling very painful.

  "What exactly did you see ten years ago?" Li Jian Tian asked tentatively.

  "A pair of red eyes, he's smiling at me. Don't ask me anything, I don't know anything, ah..." The woman cried out wildly.

  "Haha, you scoundrel! You didn't believe me, did you? Scoundrel, you'll come to no good end!" The woman suddenly rushed towards Li Jian Tian in a frenzy, but the chains on her hands and feet couldn't be shaken off.

  Looking at the woman's red eyes staring tightly at Li Jian Tian.

  Li Jian Tian seemed lost in thought and ordered someone to take the woman away.

  "Yang Guo, sit down."

  "Do you know why I called you here?"

  "I don't know." I was puzzled.

  Li Jian Tian gave me a detailed account of the case ten years ago.

  "Ten years ago, she told you the same thing, but I didn't believe her. I thought she was crazy and had her locked up in a mental hospital."

  I nodded.

  "Why do you believe me?"

  "Because of what happened at your medical school a few days ago, I started to believe that this world might really have such things."

  It was like a bolt of lightning had struck me.

  "You must have heard about the incident where the anatomy building's storage room was sealed off at your school, right? That day at noon, we received a report that someone had discovered two mummified corpses, one male and one female, in the storage room. After investigation, it was confirmed that they were medical students, a couple who had gone missing the night before and were found dead the next day with their bodies completely dry, as if all the blood had been drained from them. The forensic examination showed no wounds on their bodies, which is impossible for humans to achieve. Later, an inspection revealed a hidden passageway in the storage room that led to a large pit, but our officers who went down never returned. An old professor from the medical school came and stopped us, saying this was the school's forbidden area, and if disturbed, the school would be plagued forever. Your principal is a believer in the supernatural, so he called in a Feng Shui master to investigate. The master couldn't sit still and left immediately, leaving behind only one sentence: "Ghost tomb, seal it with red walls." After sealing it off, even stranger things happened the next day - two corpses were found outside the school's rental house, a female student committed suicide inside the school, and an old professor died. What's more, they all had direct or indirect connections to the storage room. The woman in the rental house was a teacher at the medical school who discovered the mummified bodies; the girl who jumped off the building was a reporter for the school newspaper who happened to be interviewing that day; and the old professor was the one who stopped us."

  "Why didn't I know these things?"

  "Because there had been a previous incident of someone jumping off the building at your school and committing suicide, they were afraid that this time it would make a big fuss, so they blocked the news."

  Li Jian Tian was like telling me a story, but I couldn't help opening my mouth wide in surprise. It turned out that the ghost grave wasn't just as simple as what Chang Ai Ai had said.