Chapter 8 Manchu Archives

  Just as Qin Zhong saw the old man turn around, he found that behind the old man's back, there seemed to be a person lying down. This person was facing his back towards Qin Zhong, and the clothes on his back were already tattered and moldy. The long messy hair fell behind this person, and half of his pants leg covered his lower body.

  What shocked Qin Zhong the most was that this person's legs seemed to be incomplete, his feet were black and had no flesh. Some minced meat kept falling from his trouser legs, and in the minced meat, a large number of corpse ants kept crawling out.

  "What is this? What is this?" Qin Zhong couldn't help but exclaim.

  Just as Qin Zhong was speaking, Old Geng turned around, looking at Qin Zhong with a surprised expression: "Little Zhong, what's wrong with you?"

  Qin Zhong stood up straight, his expression calm, as if he was ready to fight again. He repeated in a low voice: "Behind you!"

  "What's behind me?" Old Geng turned his head and took a look, seemingly not noticing anything: "What's wrong with you? Are you tired from yesterday's events? I think you should take a good rest. I'm leaving now." As soon as he finished speaking, Old Geng turned around and walked out the door. After he left, Qin Zhong rubbed his eyes vigorously with his hands, and when he opened them again, there seemed to be nothing behind Old Geng's back anymore.

  He let out a sigh, what was that thing, he carefully looked down at the floor of the delivery room from just now, the old cement floor had been cleaned up by Old Geng until it was spotless, seemingly without anything on it, Qin Zhong felt that what he saw earlier might have all been an illusion.

  Qin Zhong felt his body was very tired, he took his grandfather's notebook and went upstairs. His curious attitude made Qin Zhong lean on the window again, looking at Old Geng's back. In Old Geng's back, there was still a long-haired figure following him. Although Qin Zhong couldn't see that figure clearly, in his mind, the scene just now had already deeply entered Qin Zhong's heart.

  Qin Zhong's curiosity got the better of him, and suddenly he felt that being here was absolutely not a mistake. However, he still gritted his teeth, stubbornly enduring the exhaustion, deciding to finish reading Grandfather's notes before going upstairs to rest.

  In the following days, Qin Zhong repeatedly read his grandfather's notes several times. However, he found that the second half of the notes were written by his father, but many things were not clearly written, and many things were guessed, and more than half of the things he had not seen with his own eyes, just heard about them. These things brought great interest to Qin Zhong, and in these notes, Qin Zhong understood a lot of explanations about strange things.

  With this explanation, he finally recognized the figure behind Lao Geng's back. In fact, it was not scary at all, but ordinary people had never seen those eerie things before and had countless speculations about them. However, Qin Zhong concluded that the only way to deal with ghosts and monsters is to conquer them.

  Grandfather Qin Zhong's notes referred to the ghost he saw as a "life-taking ghost". Generally speaking, if such a ghost presses down on one's body, it is basically not good. Older generations all say that evil spirits possess people, with lighter cases resulting in serious illness and heavier cases resulting in death.

  Qin Zhong suddenly felt that something was not quite right. If what Grandfather said was true, then shouldn't Old Geng be seriously ill? Just as he was thinking about this, someone came running up from downstairs, and it was Old Fang.

  "Qin Zhong, are you still here?" Old Fang was panting, as if he had encountered something urgent.

  "Oh, I've been staying here for a few days now. I wonder what Uncle Fang is doing coming here?" Qin Zhong put down the notebook in his hand and stood up, stretching his waist.

  Lao Fang approached Qin Zhong and said: "Old Geng is dead."

  "What?" Qin Zhong's first reaction was the things written in his grandfather's notebook, and he felt a chill in his heart. Had his grandfather's words all come true?

  "Hey, come with me. As the director of our institute, I should at least go take a look. Old Geng is actually not bad, it's a pity." Old Fang said, pulling Qin Zhong's hand and heading out.

  Qin Zhong walked to the first floor's mailroom and looked inside again, he found Da Ya cleaning: "Hey, Da Ya, come with me quickly, Old Geng has left."

  "What? What's going on? I'm still helping him clean up the room here, and now it's all for nothing." Da Ya said, following Qin Zhong and Lao Fang out of the archives.

  Lao Fang drove the car and soon they arrived at Lao Geng's home.

  Lao Geng's family lived in a shantytown on the outskirts of the city, and their house was the last one in the row. The only courtyard belonged to Lao Geng's family, where he had two sons and a daughter. His wife had died early, and now he too had passed away, leaving his children wailing until they were dizzy. After all, Lao Geng had been very close to his children, and now the one person closest to them was gone, causing them immense pain.

  However, what made them even more painful was that the old Gou died suddenly. Since Old Gou returned home, he had a serious illness and didn't survive for a week.

  The hospital's conclusion was myocardial infarction, but the look of Old Geng's death didn't seem normal at all. There was a thick layer of black air on his face. When Qin Zhong saw his feet, he found that they had already started to turn black, and the blackness was unbearable. He wondered if the hospital doctors would consider it poisoning when they came to check.

  Qin Zhong shook his head when he saw Lao Geng's corpse, thinking that if it was as Grandpa and Dad had said, then Lao Geng's death was definitely a case of being haunted to death.

  "My condolences, Lao Geng was a good man, he will go to a better place." Of course, this is just a comforting phrase.

  Lao Geng's eldest son was straightforward, and after listening to Qin Zhong's words, he sneered: "If you hadn't sent him back home, he wouldn't have ended up like this. He's been bedridden since the day he came back. Let me tell you, my old man's death is absolutely related to your decision."

  Qin Zhong was even more astonished, could it be that he had just taken the position of Guan Zhang and already had to face such a situation? Moreover, he had let Old Geng come back not for anything else, but to let him return home and enjoy his twilight years, who would have thought that he would still be misunderstood by his family.

  Qin Zhong rubbed his head: "I didn't want to send him back home, but let him come back and enjoy some good fortune, who knew he would encounter such a thing."

  "Alright, don't say anything more, you're not welcome here, leave."

  The people in Lao Geng's family actually spoke to themselves like that, and Qin Zhong didn't have anything to miss. However, what Qin Zhong wanted to figure out was where the ghost he saw had gone. Had Lao Geng died, and the strange thing also disappeared? After thinking about it, Qin Zhong still decided to leave, not wanting to bring more trouble to this family.

  Out of the old Geng's house, Qin Zhong circled around and went to the backyard of his own home. He peeked through the gap in the wall and saw that it was all the members of the old Geng's family who were busy with their work in the yard.

  Seeing this scene, Qin Zhong's heart was indeed a bit uneasy. After thinking about it, he decided to go to the archives himself, because he felt that with one more night, he could understand the central idea and intention of his grandfather's notes and the part written by his father.

  But just as he turned his head back, he suddenly saw that Lao Geng's second son was holding a military knife in his hand and pointing it at Qin Zhong: "What are you doing sneaking into our backyard?"

  "What's going on, what is this?" Qin Zhong was extremely shocked. Could it be that Old Geng's son wanted to chop himself into eight pieces? That couldn't be right, could he also become a hero who dies in this place today?

  The old Geng's eldest son walked up to Qin Zhong and handed over the military knife and a set of files: "Young man, I think these things should all belong to your archives. They're useless to us, so I'll return them to you on behalf of my father. From now on, our Geng family has nothing to do with your archives."

  "Oh, okay, I'll take these two things then." Qin Zhong held the two items in his hand, stopped and looked back at the wall of Old Geng's courtyard, shook his head and left.

  Waiting for Qin Zhong to return to the archives room, he suddenly found that the light in the archives room was strangely dim, dark and almost without any light.

  Qin Zhong returned to his grandfather's office, where he found several books on the bookshelf about various explanations for paranormal events. He read through them thoroughly and seemed to have gained a deeper understanding of these strange occurrences.

  When he saw the old Geng's son gave him that set of files, it was actually written "Manchu file", it seems that this thing is very useful to himself. However, after he read through the file, he suddenly understood what his grandfather and father left behind in their notes.