He just broke up with his girlfriend and is already living with the devilish rich girl.

Rumors about Yonghua Building have circulated in the old town for over a decade.

The earliest rumor was that he jumped off a building.

A woman dressed in a red wedding gown jumped off the rooftop and landed on the concrete floor of the courtyard.

The next day, the cleaners went to clean the floor, and the water pipes were running for three hours, but blood was still seeping out from the cracks in the bricks.

Later, the property management pried those bricks off and replaced them with new ones. The next morning, the new bricks cracked on their own, and a red, unidentified liquid would seep out from them from time to time.

Every year on November 14th thereafter, someone dies in the building.

The first person to die was the supervisor in charge of the building's renovation.

The elevator plummeted from the ninth floor to the first floor. The rescue team pulled the man out of the deformed car and found that all his bones were broken.

The second person to die was the building's property manager.

He received an unknown phone call in the middle of the night while he was on duty, telling him to go to the ninth floor immediately.

The next morning, he was found stuffed into the exhaust fan vent on the ninth floor.

After that, everyone died in different ways.

The only thing they had in common was that each of them had an extra red line on their body.

Wrapped around the wrist, sewn onto the lips, tied around the ankle, the knot is the same.

The knotted buttons on an old-fashioned cheongsam.

Later, some experts were invited to perform rituals, and things gradually calmed down for a while, but most people still moved away.

Only some resettled residents and elderly people who simply couldn't afford to move away remained here.

The shops are open during the day, selling vegetables, fish, and dried goods, bustling with activity and lively atmosphere.

But at 5 p.m., all the merchants packed up their stalls on time, the iron gates were pulled down one by one, and the locks on the roller shutters were fastened one by one.

It wasn't even completely dark by 5:30, but the entire building was already deserted.

Three months ago, another incident occurred.

A visitor from out of town checked into a guesthouse in the building.

He went insane the next day and is still in a mental hospital, where he sits up and claps his hands at 3 a.m. every night.

They took photos and laughed, saying the bride was so beautiful.

The Supernatural Affairs Bureau sent people to check on the situation here many years ago, but only two of them returned, and both of them lost their memories.

They can't remember anything, and the remaining person is still out of contact.

...

...

Bai Ziheng rode an electric scooter with Zheng Xingguang on the back. Both of them wore helmets and moved slowly along the empty road.

Zheng Xingguang told Bai Ziheng the information he had found about the building, but Bai Ziheng remained silent.

This woman's electric scooter is pink, and it has a windshield with a smiling sunflower on the front.

The car was already small; Bai Ziheng was nearly 1.9 meters tall, and Zheng Xingguang was 1.75 meters tall, so the two big men squeezed into the car.

From a distance, it looks like two bears riding a rabbit.

Zheng Xingguang's legs were curled up, his knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of him, and the visor on his helmet was flapping loudly in the wind.

"Brother Bai."

"explain."

"How about I borrow my sister's car? Her car is really impressive, it's an SUV, spacious, and has air conditioning—"

"Need not."

"Brother Bai, don't you think this little electric scooter is too pitiful? I feel like it's about to suffocate from all the weight we've put on it. Let's borrow one from my sister."

"The poor do not eat food offered with contempt."

Zheng Xingguang remained silent for five seconds, carefully considering whether the classical Chinese phrase was appropriate in this context.

"Brother Bai, you mean we shouldn't rely on others to complete our mission, right?"

"almost."

"So, the key issue isn't the car itself, but dignity?"

"right."

"This car isn't yours. If you borrow it, you're handing over your dignity to someone else. When people ask about it later, and you say you borrowed it, where will you put your face? You'll lose all your dignity."

"Yes, that's right."

"I understand, Brother Bai, you only drive the car you bought yourself."

"...No, that's not it."

"?"

"This belongs to my sister. It was borrowed."

Zheng Xingguang almost fell off the back seat.

"Isn't this still borrowed?!"

And so, the electric scooter bore a weight it shouldn't have had to carry, and after many hardships, finally arrived at the Yongle Building in the old city.

The electric scooter emitted a weak beeping sound and stalled completely in front of the building.

The car lights flashed twice and then went out. The sunflower windshield spun in the night wind and tilted to one side.

The Yonghua Building stood before me.

During the day, it's a fairly lively mixed-use building with a vegetable market on the first floor, a clothing wholesale market on the second floor, and residential units on the third and top floors.

The courtyard was filled with bed sheets and duvet covers drying in the sun, and the neighbor's radio could play from dawn till dusk.

But now it stands darkly in the night, fourteen stories high, with only a few windows lit up.

The roller shutter door at the entrance was half-drawn, revealing the dark, gaping entrance underneath.

Several styrofoam boxes were piled up on the open ground in front of the door, and rotten vegetable leaves spilled out of the boxes, rolled several times in the night wind, and came to rest at Bai Ziheng's feet.

The iron gate was covered with talismans, and the cinnabar characters on the yellow paper had bled into a blurry red blot, like blood that had been smeared with someone's finger.

Zheng Xingguang stood at the door and looked at the building. He then took out a palm-sized bronze compass from his backpack.

The compass needle initially pointed steadily south, then began to tremble.

Zheng Xingguang frowned, holding the compass in his left hand and pulling a red thread from his sleeve with his right.

One end of the red thread was held in the mouth, and the other end was wrapped around the compass base, three times, and tied in a knot.

"The heavens have three gates, the earth has four doors, and the opening and closing of yin and yang depend on the stars."

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, don't miss the mark when using a copper needle to distinguish gold."

He chanted the incantation in a very low voice, each word emphasizing the slight trembling of the red thread.

The compass needle gradually stabilized, pointing three-tenths of an inch west of south, and then stopped moving.

Zheng Xingguang waited three seconds, then said again, "Those on this side, obey my command."

The needle didn't move.

The distance is a normal three-thirds south of west, with no deviation.

"Brother Bai, I've finished my investigation here."

"All routine tests are normal. The compass has no reading, the red line is not responding, and the abnormality index of the miracle fluid is only at level E. According to the regulations and procedures, this reading is not even below the warning line, so we can go in directly for investigation."

After Zheng Xingguang finished speaking, no one responded to him.

"Brother Bai?"

He turned around.

Bai Ziheng stood on an open space five meters away, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, with several cigarette butts scattered at his feet.

Zheng Xingguang looked down at the cigarette butts, then looked up at Bai Ziheng's face.

"Brother Bai, what's wrong...?"

"I'll be waiting for you here."

Bai Ziheng took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it between his fingers, his expression very serious.

"You go in, I'll stay outside, we'll work together from the inside and outside."

"Tell me what's going on inside via walkie-talkie, and I'll be waiting for you outside."

"If something rushes out from inside, I can stop it at the door; if something rushes in from outside, I can also stop it at the door."

"This location is of great strategic significance."

Zheng Xingguang opened his mouth, stunned for a long while. Then he couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Bai Ziheng's face darkened: "What are you laughing at?"

"No, no, no, I wasn't laughing, I just—"

You smiled.

"I was born with upturned corners of my mouth; it's a physiological characteristic, not a smile."

Zheng Xingguang tried his best to keep a straight face, but the corners of his mouth still twitched uncontrollably.

"Brother Bai, are you... afraid of ghosts?"

Bai Ziheng's expression visibly changed.

"Hey! Don't say that word in the middle of the night! Don't say it!"