Chapter 8

Just as Gu Feiyin was about to fall asleep, the sound of sweeping came from the doorway again. The rough noise echoed through the night, as if something hard was scraping the ground, sending shivers down her spine.

Unable to ignore it, she got up to take a look. Under the faint moonlight, she saw a hunched figure standing outside her door, dressed in a blue-black cotton-padded jacket and holding a bamboo broom.

Swish-

Swish swish-

Swish swish swish-

It seemed as though the figure knew Gu Feiyin had come out. Its stiff head turned 360 degrees to look at her, its wrinkled face a mix of green, white, and purple, its eyes dull and lifeless.

The Old Lady glanced at her, then turned her head back and continued sweeping.

Gu Feiyin said, “I’m sorry, but the noise you’re making is too loud. I need to sleep because I have to get up early for work tomorrow. Could you please sweep downstairs instead?”

The Old Lady: “…”

The two of them stared at each other for a while. Gu Feiyin frowned seriously. “Is that not possible?”

The Old Lady looked at her for a moment, then, clutching her broom, tiptoed downstairs. Her hunched figure swayed back and forth, and soon she disappeared into the darkness.

She was surprisingly easy to talk to, a very reasonable old woman.

But the noise downstairs seemed even louder and more chaotic now. Faintly, she could hear someone shouting something like “Old Lady, wah wah wah ah ah ah,” but it didn’t last long, as if someone had been choked off.

She really couldn’t understand these people. She had no idea what was so fun about this unfinished building.

She went downstairs to take a look and found that the newcomers were hiding in a small room on the fourth floor, shivering inside.

Both the Neighbor Miss and the Old Lady were standing at the doorway of the room, but they didn’t go in, as if they were deliberately teasing the people inside. The Neighbor Miss was hopping up and down in front of the door, full of energy, her head occasionally hitting the ceiling and bouncing back. It seemed like she was about to break through the ceiling, and every now and then, she would let out a giggle. The Old Lady, holding her broom, walked back and forth in the hallway, slowly sweeping the floor. Whenever there was a sound, she would twist her neck, which could rotate 360 degrees, and look over with a lifeless but serious expression.

After all, this was an unfinished building, with no doors or windows, and it was open on all sides. You could see everything at a glance, and even if you were hiding inside, you could clearly see what was happening at the doorway. The cold wind blew in gusts, chilling everyone to the bone.

Outside the window, snow was falling, and the room felt even colder.

“Bang bang bang-”

“Swish swish swish-”

In the darkness, eerie sounds drifted back and forth in the hallway.

The group inside the room clung to each other, trembling uncontrollably. Soft sobs and desperate pleas for mercy slipped through the cracks of their bravado.

Gu Feiyin, wrapped in her cotton-padded coat, sat down by the staircase. The commotion had somehow invigorated her, leaving her more alert than ever. She hadn’t been sitting long when she heard a faint beep-beep sound near her feet. She glanced around and spotted a dark, discarded phone on the ground.

These people are so careless, she thought. How could they leave something so precious lying around? If I had a phone, I’d definitely wear it around my neck on a chain!

Meanwhile, Tao Lizhi was on the verge of tears.

It had all started innocently enough. He and his buddies had skipped class to grab some barbecue. As they chatted, the conversation turned to the infamous unfinished building by the river. Years ago, a few people had died there, and after the contractor fled, the construction was abandoned. No one dared to take over the project. The place was said to be cursed-locals claimed that if you walked by at night, you’d hear strange bang-bang noises coming from inside. Some even swore they’d seen figures moving in the building, but when they went to investigate, there was no one there.

The stories had spread far and wide, and the unfinished building had become a notorious haunted site.

But Tao Lizhi, a man who had gone through nine years of compulsory education, didn’t believe in ghosts. So, with a bold declaration, he rallied his friends to come and debunk the myths.

There were five of them in total. Armed with the flashlights on their phones, they entered the building. At first, everything seemed fine. Sure, the place was eerie, pitch-black, and covered in cobwebs, but there was nothing particularly strange about it. When they reached the second floor, however, they noticed a woman standing by the window.

At first, they thought they were seeing things. But as they got closer, they realized it really was a person-a thin, frail-looking woman with her back to them.

They exchanged glances, none of them thinking she could be a ghost. After all, the world was full of people pretending to be supernatural, but there were no real ghosts. They even wondered if she was there to jump off the building.

What they didn’t notice was that the distant cityscape and the twinkling lights of nearby homes, which had been visible when they first entered, had now vanished. Thick darkness enveloped everything, as if they’d been cut off from the rest of the world.

Tao Lizhi was the first to approach her. “Auntie,” he called out, “what are you doing here? You should go home…”

The woman turned her head-literally turned. Her head rotated 180 degrees to face them, while her body remained motionless. Her pale face was streaked with blood streaming from her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Her dull, gray eyes gleamed with excitement as she stared at them.

…

“Ahhh-ghosts!!!”

Tao Lizhi’s teeth chattered in terror, his mind completely blank. The guys behind him were even more terrified, their souls seemingly leaving their bodies. It took them a moment to snap out of it, and then they all scrambled to run for their lives!

They had initially tried to run downstairs, but the woman who had been behind them suddenly appeared on the staircase. She hopped with a stiff body, one step at a time. Sometimes she jumped so hard that her head got stuck in the ceiling above. She swayed and twisted her bizarre body before falling back down, her blood-red eyes staring straight at them…

There was no way they were going to face her head-on. They frantically ran upstairs instead.

They ran fast, while the woman kept hopping, often getting her head or feet stuck. They managed to shake her off quickly, but by the time they reached the fourth floor, they didn’t dare go any higher. They were afraid that if they went too high, they might fall to their deaths-and they were also terrified of running into something else.

“Is that thing still chasing us?”

“She’s… she’s still downstairs…”

Bang-

Bang bang-

The sounds grew closer and closer, like a death knell.

They exchanged glances, seeing the raw fear etched on each other’s faces. Cold sweat poured down their bodies, soaking their shirts front and back.

“What do we do? What do we do? She’s going to catch up soon! Should we jump?”

“This is over ten meters high! Jumping would either kill us or leave us crippled! Are you serious? Damn it! I dropped my phone! Someone call the police, quick! Get them to save us!”

Right! In their panic, they’d completely forgotten about calling the police.

Fumbling and shaking, they dialed the emergency number, but for some reason, there wasn’t a single bar of signal. Every time they tried to call 110, all they got was a series of beeps.

This only deepened their despair.

“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I’m too young to die!”

“I don’t want to die either! I’ll never skip class again, wuwuwu…”

They were like trapped animals, desperately searching for a way out.

Just then, the sound of sweeping came from above them. At this point, they weren’t foolish enough to think it was a person making that noise. A chill ran up from the soles of their feet.

It’s over!

Tao Lizhi was the first to react. He led the others into a small room nearby. The group of fearless boys, who had once vowed to conquer the world together, now huddled in a trembling heap, their faces streaked with tears of fear.

Tao Lizhi was truly convinced that this was the end for him, especially when the old lady with the broom started sweeping outside the door. The swish-swish sound of the broom felt like it was scraping against their flesh, sending chills down their spines. To make matters worse, the woman who had been hopping around finally made her way up, her head now embedded with several chunks of stone!

Don’t ask how he knew-he’d peeked out and seen her standing in the doorway, bouncing up and down. Tao Lizhi couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to crash through the ceiling. Would the whole building collapse from her relentless bouncing?

But it was also at this moment that he noticed something strange: the two ghosts outside didn’t seem to be entering the room. One was sweeping at the doorway, and the other was bouncing around outside, neither making any move to come in.

A glimmer of hope sparked in Tao Lizhi’s heart. He whispered to his friends huddled behind him, “Stop crying! They can’t come in! As long as we wait until sunrise, we’ll be able to get out of here!”

“Really? They’re not coming in?”

“No, they’re both at the door! They’re not coming in! I think there’s something in this room that’s keeping them out.”

It was like finding a way out in the darkest of times-a sudden ray of hope in the face of despair.

Tao Lizhi and his friends hid in the room for over half an hour, and sure enough, the ghosts didn’t enter. One just kept sweeping, her head twisting unnaturally but not doing anything particularly dangerous. The other made a lot of noise, but she stayed at the doorway. As long as she didn’t come in, even if she knocked down the wall, it didn’t matter.

For now, they were safe. They just had to survive until dawn!

Cautiously, Tao Lizhi and his friends peeked toward the door. Just as they were starting to feel relieved, a head suddenly appeared in the empty doorframe-as if it were embedded in the wood. The chin rested on the doorframe, and long hair swayed in the wind. The eyes rolled around, and to their horror, there was no body attached to it!

The head opened its mouth and asked, “Did one of you drop something?”

The Neighbor Miss stopped bouncing, and the Old Lady stopped sweeping. Both turned their attention toward the room.

“…………”

“…………”

“…………”

The boys’ teeth chattered, their eyes rolled back, and with a series of thuds, they all fainted.

The two ghosts turned their heads in unison to look at her.

Gu Feiyin said, “Looks like you scared them unconscious.”

The two ghosts: “……”

Gu Feiyin slept soundly that night and woke up at dawn. She wrapped herself in her blanket and basked in the sunlight by the window.

That’s when she saw several people running frantically out of the building below. They were in such a panic that they stumbled and fell multiple times, constantly looking over their shoulders as if being chased by a monster. One of the men suddenly looked up and saw a long-haired woman in white standing tall in the window, looking down at their狼狈 (disheveled) state with an air of amusement, as if everything that had happened was just a game.

Tao Lizhi shuddered, let out a scream, and ran for his life, not daring to look back.

Gu Feiyin shook her head. She didn’t understand why her neighbors had such peculiar hobbies. They’d spent the whole night guarding these boys, and now they’d scared them into tears first thing in the morning. Weren’t they worried about traumatizing people?

She went downstairs and saw the Old Lady sweeping with her broom. Gu Feiyin said thoughtfully, “I’m going out to look for a job. You can sweep as much as you want while I’m gone, just don’t sweep away my blanket.”

The Old Lady gave her a sharp look, twisted her head, and walked away, as if she was in a bit of a mood.

Gu Feiyin didn’t quite understand, but her mind was quickly occupied with thoughts of finding a job. The moody old lady was soon forgotten.