Chapter 66: Exploring the Ghost Building (1)

"Guanzi, is the place you mentioned here?"

"Can't be wrong, the old mass grave was right here."

Chen Hao took off the red baseball cap on his head, revealing a mop of yellow hair, and looked up at the top of the building. The building's facade was still brand new, reflecting light slightly under the sun, but only if one didn't look too closely. If one looked closely, the building was truly lacking in maintenance; several windows on the second floor were shattered, and they looked like they had been broken for a long time, with absolutely no one caring for them. The streets in this vicinity were all like this, without even a ghost of a shadow.

Chen Hao put his hat back on. He was sixteen years old this year, skinny as hell like many boys his age, and bored as hell like many people his age. In the minus-five-degree temperature, he wore only a T-shirt and a baggy jacket, with a conspicuous necklace around his neck that hung all the way outside his T-shirt. Below, he wore jeans, a brightly colored belt, and a pair of high-top sneakers.

He was a student at a high school in this city. When it came to his studies, there was no hope, and when it came to his family's financial resources, there was also absolutely no prospect, so his future was actually equivalent to non-existent. However, as for being desperate, it didn't quite reach that point; he had a blind confidence in the future, a precise deduction of his own intelligence similar to observing himself through a funhouse mirror, and he firmly believed that he possessed significant leadership talent.

He had spent quite a bit of effort to maintain a small circle, and he was the leader of this circle because he could always come up with new ideas and lead everyone to successfully resist boredom, which was also a testament to his charisma as a leader.

Guanzi was a fat boy who lived up to his name. Although Chen Hao always looked down on Guanzi a bit—not only was his brain not very sharp, he didn't like to bathe and smelled a bit, and he even smacked his lips while eating... but, Guanzi was his most steadfast follower, his most stable second-in-command, so he generously reserved the position of his best buddy for Guanzi.

"Why do you think a place like a mass grave exists?" Chen Hao felt that before talking any more nonsense, it was best to appear a bit cultured, to seem like he was capable of deep thought, and to give their nonsense a layer of particularly meaningful brilliance by adding a sense of ritual. He pondered and said, "Even if a family is poor, they wouldn't have to bury them randomly, right? This 'random burial' must mean they didn't intend to pay respects in the future, unless it was someone without relatives or a homeless person. But if we're talking about people without relatives and homeless people, how many could there be? Can you even call that a mass grave? When it comes to a mass grave, it has to be a large-scale burial of corpses to be called a mass grave, right?"

Guanzi had been looking down, playing games. A while ago, he was addicted to Honor of Kings, and a while before that, he was addicted to PUBG. Later, he felt it was all too tiring and felt his body couldn't take it, so he recently switched to playing a Buddhist-style health-preserving game—Dots.

"I think it might be people who died from an infectious disease," Guanzi said without lifting his head. "Think about it, once an infectious disease in the past spread, it would definitely kill half the city, and many families would be wiped out. The work of burial should have belonged to the government, and it would be most reasonable for the government to bury such dead people in a concentrated manner, right?"

Chen Hao didn't speak, nodding with feigned profundity, though he was actually a bit annoyed that Guanzi could make so much sense. "There's no point in talking about this; whoever died is dead. Did you really hear that this place is haunted?"

"You bet," Guanzi immediately perked up, his head lifting from the phone screen. "This place was originally a ghost city, and this building is the king of buildings in the ghost city! Last month, that bunch of jerks from the Third Grade ran here during evening self-study to court death, wanting to film a parkour video on the stairs inside. As it turned out, I don't know how it was so evil, but no matter how they ran, they couldn't reach the top floor. Later, they realized something was wrong and started running down, and guess what? They ran all night and couldn't reach the first floor—they ran into a 'ghost wall'! Their families even called the police. This matter is absolutely true; my uncle is one of the police officers who responded to the call."

Chen Hao broke into a cold sweat in broad daylight. He looked up; the sun was just right, but this place under the sunshine was an empty city. The asphalt roads were clean, the trees were neat, and the buildings were imposing and brand new, filled everywhere with the atmosphere of a sweet life, yet the people who should have been moving through it were absent. This huge contrast made his scalp tingle.

"Did the police take them out when they went?" Chen Hao asked as provocatively as he could. "Do ghosts fear the police?"

"Maybe they do," Guanzi said. "Who doesn't know that people in the public security, procuratorate, and judiciary have a heavy aura of balefulness? Even now, some old people living in old houses are willing to find old things used by the police and courts to place in their homes; it's said to suppress evil."

Chen Hao went silent.

Guanzi said again, "Just take this matter, it really is very evil. Those students kept running in the stairwell and couldn't find the first floor no matter how they ran, but when my uncle and the others found this place and just opened the front door, the students inside walked to the first floor all of a sudden. The coincidence was that at that moment, the first ray of sunlight happened to appear on the horizon!"

"Don't tell me these brats were lying? Playing around outside all night and afraid of getting a beating after their families called the police?" Chen Hao said wisely.

"What you say also makes sense. At the time, the police didn't easily believe what they said. After they finished speaking that day, my uncle and the others didn't say a word and hauled them back to the police station. One reason was that their parents were waiting there, and the other was to give them a urine test. You tell me, in that situation, who wouldn't suspect they were high on drugs?" Guanzi said.

"So, were they actually on drugs?" Chen Hao asked hurriedly.

"Of course not. If they were on drugs, what would I be bringing it up for? Besides, if that were the case, the school would have expelled them long ago; they are still studying now," Guanzi said. "And, the strange thing about this matter is the discovery that came even later."

"What was discovered?"

Guanzi leaned closer to Chen Hao and said mysteriously, "My uncle said the most incredible part is that all of their mobile phones broke at the same time!"

"All the phones broke?" Chen Hao asked. "How many people?"

"Eleven!" Guanzi said in a low voice. "Eleven people's phones all broke together. Evil, right? Either there was no signal, or they were broken—broken completely, broken to the point where they wouldn't even turn on! Some of them threw their phones away immediately, feeling it was unlucky. Two of them sent their phones back to the factory for repairs, and guess what?"

"What happened?" Chen Hao asked, feigning calmness.

"It's said that the internal components inside were all broken, and every part was malfunctioning," Guanzi said. "Although there's no thunder in winter, even if they were struck by lightning to break their phones, there should at least be some scorched marks, right? Those phones looked perfectly fine on the outside, yet they were all broken!"

Chen Hao looked at Guanzi, his hair standing on end. Worried that Guanzi was deliberately trying to scare him, he said dismissively, "If that's the case, the ghost living here is quite knowledgeable about electronic products. Must be a newly dead one, right?"

"I don't know about that. How about it, Boss? I've finished saying everything; are we going in or not?" Guanzi tucked his phone into his pants pocket and looked at Chen Hao with his small eyes.

"Of course we're going in, what's there to be afraid of?" Chen Hao looked up at the sky; the midday sun was still hanging perfectly in the sky. "It's noon, the time when the Yang energy is at its strongest. Even if there are ghosts, we aren't afraid."

"Good, I'll listen to you." Guanzi perked up; he had wanted to go see it for a long time, but he just hadn't been able to successfully get anyone to go with him.