Witchcraft

  The next morning, I decided to go find Duan Yuwen. At first, I planned to follow the new address on the letter, but Liu Zhen shook his head and told me that the address on the letter was fake, and my father had given him the real address that night. I thought about it and said to myself, "That makes sense. If he's hiding something, then the address on the letter wouldn't be so simple."

  At this time, my body had almost completely recovered, the swelling on my left arm had disappeared, and there were only a few red spots on my wrist. I couldn't help but admire Bu Jin's medical skills. Seeing that my condition was improving, she walked over to me and asked me to lower my head. I was a bit confused, but I did as she said. As soon as I lowered my head, Bu Jin suddenly slapped the back of my head with great force. My brain went numb, and I let out a loud sneeze. She quickly caught something in her hand. In an instant, I saw a green beetle-like creature shoot out of my nose, its shiny green shell covered in thick blood. Seeing this, I felt extremely nauseous and almost vomited. But Bu Jin flipped her wrist, and the green beetle suddenly disappeared, I don't know where she hid it.

  I took a look at Bo Jin, her expression was calm and composed. I knew that even if I asked her what this was all about, it would be pointless. With her personality, she would definitely just shake her head and brush me off, so I didn't bother asking.

  I'm not a curious person by nature, and I've always been someone who takes things as they come. But what happened just a few hours later was beyond my wildest imagination, and even I couldn't help but be deeply drawn in, unable to tear myself away.

  We paid a few more days' rent at the old boss of the inn, put both mine and Bojin's luggage there, and walked out of the inn.

  We hailed a taxi and Liu Zhen told the driver the address. To my surprise, the address was so remote. I'm not familiar with Kunming, but judging from the direction of the taxi's progress, it was heading southeast, and after more than an hour, we left the city and arrived at a small unknown town.

  The town is not big, and today's weather is somewhat gloomy, as if it's going to rain, so the streets of the town seem very quiet, just like they've been abandoned.

  The taxi driver didn't seem familiar with this place either and only found No. 19 Pinghua Street after asking pedestrians for directions.

  And the address given by my father was just this: 19 Pinghua Street, without a detailed door number.

  We got off the bus and in front of us was a rather dilapidated old apartment building. From the outside, this apartment building is not high, only four floors, and the location is particularly bad. The sunny side has a row of balconies, but they have been blocked by the newly built residential buildings in front, blocking out the sunlight. It seems that except for noon, residents here can't see the sun at all.

  The exterior of the apartment building is a white lime wall, with much of the skin already peeled off. Due to years of not seeing sunlight, the walls are covered in moss. On the outside staircase passageway, a large "demolish" character is written, seemingly having been there for a long time. As I look up along the wall, it seems that only a few households live in the entire building, thinking that they might be nail households and the developer has no way to deal with them.

  I was somewhat surprised, although in my imagination, Duan Yuwen's residence wasn't supposed to be very good either, but the place in front of me was really too shabby. I asked Liu Zhen for confirmation, and he replied that it must be here, absolutely no mistake. So, the three of us went upstairs along the outer staircase.

  As I entered the corridor of the building, a big fat mouse suddenly rushed out, followed by an unbearable stench that hit me in the face. As I walked further forward, I saw a large black cat let out a "meow" and also rushed out, probably to chase after the fat mouse from earlier.

  The corridor was very long, and the light was very dim because there was only one window at the end of the corridor, and no light had come in yet. The two sides of the corridor were all residential units, with gray old iron doors that seemed to be able to kick open with one foot. The passageway was filled with garbage, and what surprised me was that there were so many stray cats here. Since the lower two floors were uninhabited, we went directly from the first floor to the third floor, and in this short distance, we encountered no less than seven old cats. These cats had big heads, lazy movements, but very sharp eyes. In addition, cat feces and rotten fruit could be seen everywhere in the corridor, and the strong stench was probably coming from there.

  "It seems like this place has become a paradise for stray cats. This broken-down place, is it even habitable for humans?"

  As soon as I finished speaking, a rusty iron gate behind me creaked open. I turned around to see an old lady in her late seventies. The old lady had sparse hair, with the remaining few strands lying flat on her head. Her face was dark and wrinkled, her eyes were somewhat cloudy, and her face was covered in age spots. She had a severe hunchback, with her back resembling a camel's hump. Her dry hands reminded me of Ajuna, except that they were covered in bulging veins, which looked like giant earthworms crawling on the back of her hand from afar.

  "Who says people can't live here? Am I not human? If you don't like it, hurry up and leave." The old lady's tone was very strange, sounding a bit like the lyrics of Peking Opera.

  I saw the old lady's face was pale and her speech was eerie, I couldn't help but be startled. In my heart, I thought: with this appearance, whether you are human or ghost, I really need to think carefully about it.

  But Liu Zhenke was much more steady than me, he respectfully said to the old lady: "Auntie, we came here to find someone."

  "Looking for someone?" The old lady raised her cloudy eyes, looked at Liu Zhen hesitantly, and said: "You bunch of young whippersnappers, what are you looking for here? Most people living here are like me, with one foot in the coffin, half dead already. What person could you possibly be looking for?"

  "We're looking for someone named Duan Yuwen," I said.

  "I've never heard of such a person, you can go." The old lady said as she turned around, and with this turn, I couldn't even see her head, but only saw her hunched back that had become deformed.

  Liu Zhen saw the situation and immediately stopped the old lady, saying: "Auntie, don't be in a hurry, think carefully again, we have this Wang Chengbao's address, it's written right here."

  At the sight of Liu Zhen blocking his way, the old lady suddenly came to her senses. Her old face was almost stuck to Liu Zhen's nose, and she opened her mouth to reveal a set of black and incomplete teeth. She said viciously: "I'm telling you, there is no such person, just leave quickly and don't disturb our peaceful life as half-dead people. Otherwise, even after I die and become a ghost, I won't let you be at peace!"

  After finishing speaking, the old lady turned around and slammed the iron gate shut with a "bang".

  "My god, this old lady is sick," I said.

  Liu Zhen hastily covered my mouth and said, "Don't say that, she can hear."

  "What's wrong?" I shook off Liu Zhen's hand and deliberately said loudly: "This broken apartment is so small, can't I find it by myself? No need to ask her. I hate this kind of old man the most, not only does he have a stinky mouth when speaking, but also likes to rely on his age and act superior. He deserves to live alone here with no one taking care of him."

  Liu Zhen exerted his strength and pulled me to one side, "Can you say a few less words?"

  I calmed down and thought what I said earlier was a bit too much, but still didn't want to let it go, complaining: "This isn't about me saying two fewer sentences, listen to what that old man said earlier, what kind of nonsense is that? And now he's haunting us, not letting us be at peace, honestly."

  I was speaking, when Bo Jin suddenly made a silencing gesture beside me. I was taken aback, as Bo Jin had been quiet since we arrived here, and her sudden reaction surprised me somewhat.

  Liu Zhen also felt strange and stopped talking to me. For a moment, the entire dimly lit corridor suddenly fell silent. I don't know if I was infected by the atmosphere of this dimly lit corridor or purely because of Bu Jin's psychological effect, but I suddenly felt very tense.

  Bo Jing saw that we didn't say anything, so she pointed to the iron gate where the old lady had just walked out. Liu Zhen and I didn't understand her meaning at first, looked at each other, and then wanted to go forward together.

  But as soon as my foot moved, a shrill cry suddenly came from the old lady's iron gate. Liu Zhen and I were both startled, not because of the suddenness of the cry, but because of its mournfulness. It was a kind of cry that seemed to be made before death, a mournful sound like a sharp sword, piercing through your skin, making people who heard it get goosebumps all over their body.

  "My god, what a sound." I involuntarily lowered my voice and asked.

  Liu Zhen also had a terrified look on his face and said: "I don't know, it sounds like...it's like the cry of an infant."

  Bo Jing shook his head and finally said a word: "Cat."

  Cat? I was startled, and indeed there were many stray cats wandering around this apartment building. The sound just now obviously came from that old lady's house. I thought to myself, could it be that this old lady is too lonely living alone, so she took in a stray cat as a companion.

  I told Liu Zhen my theory, and he nodded in agreement, indicating that it was very possible. Although we were both startled earlier, neither of us thought much about it at the moment, and we just wanted to find Duan Yuwen as soon as possible. But Bo Jin seemed to be still bothered by the cat's meow, and what made me feel even stranger was that she sniffed the dirty walls on both sides after walking only a few steps. Seeing her action, my heart skipped a beat, thinking that the last time she did this was in the hotel, and afterwards, she said that someone had died in the bathtub, and then conjured up a ghostly shadow.

  My heart suddenly cooled down. Could it be that someone had died in this apartment too? I secretly prayed that Bu Jin wouldn't conjure up another ghostly apparition in a little while. Fortunately, after more than ten minutes passed, Bu Jin just kept sniffing the walls and didn't make any other moves.

  Liu Zhen also felt that Bu Jin's actions were strange and abnormal, and he threw me an inquiring look. I shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I didn't know what she was doing either.

  Soon, we knocked on all the doors on the third and fourth floors, but strangely, we didn't find Duan Yuwen.

  Many iron gates here are ajar because the residents inside have long since moved away, leaving only empty houses, so there is no need to lock them up.

  What shocked Liu Zhen and me was that almost every unlocked room had cats, some more, some less, with one or two in some rooms, while others had over a dozen. The sizes of the cats also varied greatly. What was terrifying and disgusting, however, was that some rooms even had several dead cats, which were quite large and looked ferocious. What was most unbearable was that next to the dead cats, there were smaller cats eating the flesh of the dead ones.

  Although I'm not afraid of cats, since childhood, I've heard old people tell ghost stories where cats, especially black cats, appear and nothing good happens. So, I've always had some reservations about cats. When we opened the door and found several old cats staring at us with alert eyes, I felt a chill in my heart and a sense of panic.

  The whole building, we only saw three households. One was the old lady's house, and the other two were a couple in their sixties living in one room, and a painter in his fifties living in another room. Although they were younger than the old lady with a terrible appearance, they all looked sickly, really like what the old lady said, a group of people who had one foot in the coffin.

  We searched around and the only conclusion we came to was that this building wasn't prepared for humans, but for cats. Moreover, it seemed like the people living here all had a somewhat gloomy feeling. Only an old couple were relatively friendly towards us, but they said that the residents of this apartment building hardly interact with each other, so they didn't know if someone named Duan Yuwen lived here or not.

  Although we were disappointed, but we didn't give up. At the end of the third floor, we found two households, just opposite each other. Judging from the cleanliness in front of the door, both households should be inhabited. Liu Zhen and I both felt that Xiang Yuwen must be in one of them, but when we knocked on the door, no one answered.

  Liu Zhen said to me: "I think that Yu Wen has probably gone out, you also said he was a black car driver, maybe he went out to pull a living."

  I nodded in agreement. It was almost noon by then, and I felt a bit hungry, so I said: "Let's find a place to eat around here, after we've eaten our fill, we'll wait here for him, and give him a surprise."

  Liu Zhen expressed his agreement, and only Bu Jin hesitated and lingered in front of one of the doors, her nose stuck to the door seam, as if she was still sniffing something.

  We left the apartment, I complained as we went downstairs. Suddenly, a young figure came from downstairs and bumped into us head-on.

  I raised my eyes and felt a little familiar. Upon closer inspection, that thin and pale face, as well as the sickly and weak demeanor, wasn't it the person who almost knocked me down in the bathroom on my first night in Yunnan? How did he end up here?