Bai Yulao: The Night Watcher's Debt to the King of Hell

Su Wantang was startled by Lin Shoumo's words. As she got closer, she could see the two shadows clearly. They were pitch black and definitely not human!

Lin Shoumo pulled her into the evidence section on the second basement floor of the police station.

Su Wantang walked ahead, her footsteps heavy, as if trying to dispel the chilling feeling behind her.

Lin Shoumo followed behind, his hands in his trench coat pockets, his right fingertips pressed firmly against the scorching bronze bell on his chest.

"arrive!"

Su Wantang stopped in front of a heavy, explosion-proof glass door, entered the password, and underwent iris scanning.

With a long beep, the heavy metal door slowly slid open, revealing rows of safes inside, resembling morgue freezers.

"This is it!" Su Wantang pointed to a black lead box labeled "Top Secret-039" in the far corner. "Ever since it was locked up, the two colleagues responsible for guarding it have both taken extended leave, saying their homes are haunted!"

Lin Shoumo did not go forward immediately; he stood at the door with a furrowed brow.

In his field of vision, the so-called lead box was surrounded by layers of black, fluffy material invisible to the naked eye.

The flocculent material seemed to be alive, slowly wriggling, trying to squeeze into the gaps in the lead box, or perhaps, to crawl out from inside.

"Junior brother, are you sure you want to see it now?" Lin Shoumo's voice was a little hoarse. "Everyone who comes into contact with this thing becomes very strange!"

"Such a heavy aura of malevolence..." Lin Shoumo put on his radiation-proof gloves, his eyes resolute: "If we don't figure this out, the next person to disappear without a trace will be me!"

Su Wantang walked to the lead box, took a deep breath, and suddenly lifted the lid.

There was no howling wind or ghostly wails as I had imagined.

On the black velvet cushion lay a ring, its entire surface exhibiting a pale, bony appearance.

But in Lin Shoumo's eyes, this was not a gemstone at all, but clearly an eyeball that had been solidified by some special process and was still pulsating.

The red glow wasn't reflected light, but rather a blood-red light emanating from within.

"bite--!!!"

The moment Su Wantang's gaze fell upon the ring, the bronze bell on Lin Shoumo's chest suddenly emitted an unprecedentedly crisp sound.

This sound was not a knocking sound, but rather like a high-frequency shriek that instantly pierced Lin Shoumo's eardrums and reached the cerebral cortex.

"Senior sister, don't look!" Lin Shoumo shouted, trying to push Su Wantang away, but it was too late; his hand passed right through Su Wantang's body.

It wasn't that he turned into a phantom, but rather that the surrounding space—the cold evidence room, the cold safes, even the dust floating in the air—all shattered like a broken mirror in that instant…

Darkness surged in like a tide, then vanished in an instant. In its place came a blinding, stark white spotlight.

……

"Where...am I?"

Su Wantang's voice trembled as she realized she was no longer standing in the evidence room, but sitting in a huge, dimly lit audience area.

The surrounding area was filled with indistinct figures, each one seemingly molded from gray clay, with no facial features, only outlines.

Beside her, Lin Shoumo was clutching his chest, his face pale and breathing heavily.

"Illusion!" Lin Shoumo gritted his teeth and squeezed out the three words. His bronze bell was burning hot and vibrating wildly. "This ring... it's a memory device!"

It forcibly implanted the memories of "that person," and even some kind of resentment, into our consciousness!

"That person?"

Lin Shoumo raised his hand and pointed to the center of the stage.

There, only a solitary spotlight shines.

A man stood under the light.

Su Wantang's pupils dilated instantly. The man was wearing a well-tailored black suit, tall and slender, yet appeared somewhat thin.

His face appeared as white as paper under the bright light, and his eyes were as deep as a stagnant pool.

"Zhang Hansheng?!" Su Wantang exclaimed, "Is he the one who picked up the gold bars at the scene of Xiaoyu's car accident?"

"Shut up, look!" Lin Shoumo grabbed her hand, his palms were covered in cold sweat. "This must be a memory from a long time ago."

This ring is actually related to him... that hiker definitely didn't find it by chance!

Zhang Hansheng spoke on stage.

His voice was eerily calm, as if he were narrating someone else's story, yet it solidified the entire illusionary space into a kind of transparent and heavy crystal.

"...Oil splattered on my arm, causing blisters. When my parents came home from get off work, the first thing they said was, 'How much oil did you waste? Do you know how expensive eggs are?' They didn't even ask if it hurt!"

The sound echoed in the empty hall, carrying a dull and enormous frictional sound, like the movement of a glacier.

Su Wantang felt as if an invisible hand was squeezing her heart.

As a criminal investigator, she had seen countless criminals' excuses and confessions, but she had never heard such a calm and honest confession.

Zhang Hansheng recounted how he stood on a stool to fry eggs when he was five, how he was scolded after falling while learning to drive when he was six, and how he counted the cracks in the ceiling when he had a fever when he was seven.

Every word is like a scalpel, precisely cutting open the seemingly warm facade of family life to reveal the festering wounds beneath.

"Is life just about being criticized, comparing yourself to others, and then hitting a ceiling all by yourself?"

Su Wantang subconsciously glanced at Lin Shoumo beside her. Lin Shoumo, a philosophy major, had a terrifyingly solemn expression as he stared intently at the man on the stage.

"He's deconstructing things using philosophical language!" Lin Shoumo murmured softly. "He's stripping the concept of 'human being' from its 'tool' attribute!"

Su Wantang listened carefully and heard rustling sounds coming from the gray sea of ​​people.

That was the sound of a notebook falling, the sound of a body moving, and even more so, the sound of something deep within countless people shattering.

"At twenty-two, I searched through every philosophical classic I could find, trying to understand why people live. The answers I got only more confusion."

Others worry about specific things—salary, wedding house, professional title. What I worry about is…whether the existence of our entire race is a huge, tragic misunderstanding?

Lin Shoumo closed his eyes, as if at this moment, he felt a poignant resonance with that man across time and space…

"I understand now, we're all locked in a cage!"

A cage forged from generations of inherited feelings of scarcity, fear, distorted expectations, and unseen rules!

Zhang Hansheng's voice suddenly rose, carrying a penetrating force:

"This civilization has a hidden yet powerful logic—to instrumentalize people. In the family, children are treated as a means of old-age security or a status symbol; in society, people are divided into different classes and used as resources; and in the depths of evil—"

He paused.

The large background screen in the illusion suddenly lit up without warning.

"ah--!"

Su Wantang suddenly covered her mouth.

The footage is a raw, unedited video. Cold, restraining straps; a battered body under a warm, yellow spotlight; beads of blood seeping from eyelashes as they are violently combed…

Su Wantang turned pale with fright and almost fell to the ground. Lin Shoumo was not much better off, but he still held Su Wantang firmly and continued watching.

There is no sound in the video, but it is precisely because there is no sound that the visuals have an even more terrifying power to devour everything!

The scalpel flew, and the body's internal organs were ruthlessly removed one by one and placed into a container of special medicine.

Finally, the much lighter body was thrown into the feed inlet of a roaring industrial meat grinder without hesitation.

"Click...creak..."

The heavy, mechanical sound effects of chewing flesh and bone were deliberately amplified, and Su Wantang felt a churning in her stomach. Even though she knew it was an illusion, the physiological nausea still felt terrifyingly real.

"This is objectification!" Lin Shoumo's voice was as cold as ice. "Senior sister, this isn't just murder, this is... an entire industrial process..."

The video freezes on the bottomless darkness of the feeding port, where red blood is still flowing. A living person was "disposed of" just like that!