Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 3 The Boundary of Death
Ran Qing in the room was stiff and frightened, not daring to move.

He huddled under the window, his limbs trembling.

It's not that I'm afraid of that thing appearing.

He has seen too much of that kind of thing since he was a child.

There were many things that died in more tragic and terrifying ways, and he had long been numb to the tragic deaths of those things.

What frightened him was the school uniform that thing was wearing.

A blood-stained school uniform from No. 3 Middle School...

That's his school uniform!
Ran Qing's face was a little pale.

He really wanted to go to the school building late at night to see if Li Hongye had returned to school.

But in his heart he hoped that Li Hongye was still alive and not killed.

Now, a girl wearing the uniform of No. 3 Middle School suddenly showed up at my doorstep...

"Don't let it be Li Hongye..."

Ran Qing curled up in the darkness, muttering to himself.

Li Hongye had never been to Qingyuan Road, where he lived, nor did she live nearby. Logically, even if she was truly dead, she wouldn't wander here.

——So the one outside is not actually Li Hongye?

Such a thought suddenly emerged in Ran Qing's confused mind.

The emergence of this thought seemed to give him courage, and his trembling body regained some strength.

But before Ran Qing could take any further action, heavy footsteps suddenly came from the dark corridor outside the door.

Pat-ta-ta-ta-ta-

The sound of the rubber soles of cloth shoes hitting the concrete floor was extremely harsh in the dark night.

Along with the footsteps came a strange stench.

In a blink of an eye, Ran Qing's room was filled with a strange and rotten stench like that of dead rats.

Ran Qing in the corner shuddered and sat up suddenly.

The students in the next few rooms were all asleep, and Old Chen's family downstairs also closed the door and prepared to go to bed.

At this time, someone would suddenly appear in the corridor on the second floor...

Pat-ta-ta-ta-ta-

The harsh, heavy, and slow footsteps were still slowly approaching.

The sound came from the stairs and was gradually passing through the corridor.

Getting closer and closer to Ran Qing's room.

In the darkness, Ran Qing swallowed, quietly reached out and grabbed the small red round mirror on the bedside desk.

A small round mirror wrapped in red plastic with a faded colored waterfall canvas on the back, the most common mirror of this era.

Cheap, affordable, but useful.

Ran Qing's grandmother told him that carrying a mirror with him sometimes helps.

Many things are afraid of mirrors.

But Ran Qing didn't have the chance to use it in the past, and he didn't know whether the mirror was really useful.

Now the strange footsteps were slowly approaching, and the only life-saving straw that Ran Qing could grasp in the darkness was this mirror.

He tried to clench it tight.

Nervously curled up in the corner, Ran Qing stared at the old wooden door and pointed the small round mirror at the door.

The wooden door, with its paint peeling badly, had been in disrepair for years, and the lock had broken several times. Once, Ran Qing woke up in the middle of the night to see a thief squatting beside his bed, rummaging through his belongings.

If we can’t even prevent petty thieves in the shanty towns, how can we prevent things outside?
Ran Qing was in a state of confusion.

The slow and heavy footsteps were still approaching.

As the footsteps got closer, Ran Qing's breathing became faster and faster, and his heart beat more and more violently in his chest.

His heart was pounding, and even his temples were beating along with it.

But at this moment, the footsteps outside the house stopped.

The footsteps finally stopped at Ran Qing's door and there was no more movement.

This sudden change made Ran Qing stunned for a moment - that thing, not coming in?

Or, can't get in?
Can the door block it?
Ran Qing stared at the wooden door intently, his back pressed against the cold wall, not daring to relax at all.

The thing outside the door was still parked in the dark corridor, and it didn't seem to intend to come in.

A little dim moonlight streamed into the room from the window behind him, allowing Ran Qing to barely make out the outlines of things inside. The thin, old, paint-chipped wooden door looked like it could be blown away by the slightest gust of wind.

The narrow room was dark and gloomy.

Ran Qing's mirror was fixed on the door, not daring to move it even a little.

There was still silence outside the door, no movement at all, and it seemed that the thing really had no intention of coming in.

But the disgusting stench in the air became stronger and stronger.

It was as if many rotten dead rats were crammed into the room.

Ran Qing almost wanted to vomit, his heart filled with horror and confusion.

Can such a thin wooden door really block out things from outside?

Or is it that thing is afraid of the mirror in the room and therefore doesn't dare to come in?
Is the power of a mirror really that great?

Ran Qing couldn't believe it.

At this moment, a light, slightly heavy floc suddenly fell on Ran Qing's head.

Ran Qing subconsciously reached out to grab it, but caught nothing.

And in the field of vision, similar flocs gradually appeared more and more.

The paint on the ceiling seems to be peeling off.

Strips of dark, fluffy wall skin floated down.

The walls around the house were also peeling off.

Next came the floor, Ran Qing's desk, and the bed he was sitting on... Everything in sight was mottled and falling off.

When Ran Qing saw this scene, his heart suddenly rose to his throat.

He suddenly raised his head and looked above his head.

But after the dark flocs on the ceiling fell off, I saw long and thin plant roots, rotten moss, and strange leaves growing out of the walls and cement.

In just a moment, the walls and ceiling were covered with moss and strange creeper-like plants.

The strong and persistent stench had almost reached its peak at this moment, completely filling Ran Qing's nasal cavity.

The hard bed beneath him was covered with prickly leaves and thorns.

On the desk next to it, dirty moss continued to spread and covered all the books.

The house he rented suddenly turned into a dirty and dilapidated house that had been abandoned for many years, with strange plants and moss everywhere.

Such an unusual scene made Ran Qing's heart beat wildly again.

He subconsciously looked towards the door, but was immediately startled.

——The moss-covered door frame was empty.

The old wooden door with peeling paint was nowhere to be seen.

There was no longer any obstruction between Ran Qing's room and the corridor outside.

Ran Qing hurriedly raised the mirror and aimed it at the door frame.

But nothing happened.

There was nothing in the corridor outside the door, and the strange thing that should have been standing at the door had disappeared.

The terrifying feeling of having thorns in my back and chills all over my body just now disappeared inexplicably.

Although the strong stench of decay in the air still persisted, the terrifying creature in school uniform was no longer there.

Ran Qing curled up in the corner, holding up the mirror and staring at the front, but he didn't dare to relax at all.

Everything in front of him was so strange. Ran Qing had never encountered such a situation in the past ten years.

Even though he didn't sense any danger, he didn't dare to be careless.

His gaze slowly swept across the overgrown house, his hand tightly gripping the mirror.

The rental house in sight was dark and smelly, but the reflection in the smooth mirror was normal, everything was really peaceful.

It was not until the angle of the mirror swept across a corner of the ceiling that Ran Qing's pupils suddenly constricted.

——There was something hanging from the ceiling above his head!
Ran Qing suddenly looked up, and with his eyes that could see dead things, he could clearly see that there was a dead person hanging from the ceiling above his head.

The rough rope was tightly wrapped around her neck, and the painful and hideous expression of her face, dying from suffocation, looked extremely creepy.

Just one glance and Ran Qing's hair stood on end and he shrank into the corner of the wall at the other end in fear.

Not afraid of this horrible corpse that suddenly appeared.

But it was the miserable and painful death of this corpse that he was extremely familiar with and would never forget.

——That's his mother!
(End of this chapter)