Chapter 3: Surveillance

In an instant, Yang Xiao slammed the door shut, then turned and ran, braving the rain all the way to the residential complex's security office, where he pounded on the glass, giving the three security guards playing Fight the Landlord inside a fright.

After hearing Yang Xiao's account, one guard stayed behind to keep watch, while the other two took rubber batons and accompanied Yang Xiao back.

After using the key Yang Xiao provided to open the door, the older guard first shouted a few times inside to bolster his courage; it was deathly silent inside, and as the switch was pressed and the lights came on, the long-lost sense of security returned—it was the guard who had turned on the lights after some fumbling.

Yang Xiao was the last to enter the room, but the next second he was stunned: the Script Box on the table was gone, and the envelope, the Invitation, and even the scattered cards had all vanished. "No, wait, where is my Script?"

A moment later, the younger guard put away his rubber baton and walked out of the bathroom, his gaze toward Yang Xiao becoming strange. "Brother, forget about the other things for now; do you want to come in and take a look?"

After speaking, the guard stepped aside; the bathroom was not large and could be seen at a glance, but the scene inside the bathroom left Yang Xiao dumbfounded: there was no water on the floor, and the small shower stall was clean and dry.

At this time, the older guard, who had been patrolling the room, also walked over. "There's no water in the bathroom; I just checked, the showerhead is dry, and besides, there are no wet footprints on the floor."

"How could this be?"

A complex feeling of horror slowly crawled up Yang Xiao's back; he was certain he had heard the sound of water and had also seen that strange black shadow, and the lights in the room had dimmed bit by bit—this was absolutely certain!

"Young man, are you under too much pressure? Relax, there is no hurdle that cannot be crossed."

The middle-aged guard tried to comfort him; he had originally intended to have Yang Xiao check for valuables in the room, but seeing this, it was unnecessary—the living conditions of this tenant did not look like someone who would possess valuables.

After saying this, the two guards intended to leave; a few minutes earlier, their colleague who had stayed behind called to say that the surveillance cameras nearby had not captured anyone running out of the building recently, only Yang Xiao himself.

"Wait! I'm going with you; I want to see the surveillance footage!"

Yang Xiao grabbed a few clothes and stuffed them into his bag, then took his old laptop; he definitely would not come back to live here until this matter was cleared up. According to the development of standard horror movies, those who don't believe in evil are always the first to die.

10 minutes later, Yang Xiao sat in the inner room of the security office, facing the screen, checking the recent surveillance footage bit by bit; in the footage, his figure hurried upstairs, then ran out at an extremely fast speed, and before leading the guards back, no one else had entered or exited the stairwell.

Slowly dragging the progress bar, Yang Xiao wanted to see earlier surveillance footage; although he was unwilling to admit it, it seemed he had truly encountered a supernatural event, and he suspected that everything was related to that mysterious Script Box—otherwise, there was no reason why only the box would be missing.

The Script Box was definitely not a hallucination, because those three thousand yuan were still tucked in his pocket at this moment.

"Nothing..."

Yang Xiao checked the earlier surveillance, his face becoming increasingly pale; he saw himself standing at the stairwell entrance seeing Zhao Ge off, and after that, absolutely no one had entered or exited the stairwell, and the next event was himself going out with an umbrella to eat.

There was no courier at all.

No landlord.

None of them...

Then who sent this Script to him? And what exactly was the thing knocking on the door outside at that time?

Cold sweat seeped out along his forehead, and still in the lingering fear, he couldn't help but feel a bit fortunate; luckily, he hadn't opened the door at that time.

It was impossible to go back and live there tonight; Yang Xiao quickly recalled the similar supernatural scripts he had written and the horror movies he had watched in his mind, and he decided to stay in a hotel—one located in a bustling area, the kind with high popularity; he also had to consider safety on the road, and taking a taxi alone was dangerous, so he decided to hire two familiar guards at a high price to escort him.

100 yuan per person; this money could not be saved.

The journey was very smooth; Yang Xiao opened the car door, and outside was a chain hotel; he had already booked a room on the way, the hotel location was excellent, and the surroundings were quite lively; looking at the people coming and going, Yang Xiao also breathed a sigh of relief.

The guards who received the money couldn't help but be polite. "Brother, we aren't doing this for this bit of money; we are responsible for the safety of the tenants."

"Yes, yes, yes." Yang Xiao left his phone number with the two, reminding them that if anything happened at his home, they should notify him in time—it wouldn't be a free notification, there would be a reward—and also, don't go wandering around for no reason.

The two agreed readily, then took the same taxi they had arrived in and went back; before leaving, the taxi driver took a few extra looks at Yang Xiao—after all, when they arrived, three grown men were squeezed in the back row, with Yang Xiao sitting in the middle, and paired with the guards' uniforms and Yang Xiao's slightly pale, delicate face, the driver naturally took Yang Xiao for some minor celebrity.

After checking in, Yang Xiao went to the room, and after confirming that the showerhead would not leak, he breathed a sigh of relief and threw himself onto the soft bed; along the way, the blurry black shadow that rushed out of the bathroom kept appearing in his mind—it seemed to be a woman.

After resting for a moment, Yang Xiao sat up, turned on the television, and flipped to a random channel.

In fact, besides the hotel, he had also thought of other places, such as a lively bar or an internet cafe, which could also serve as a temporary shelter.

But as a supernatural author, he had unfortunately written scripts like Mute Guest Bar and the Stealing Face Ghost set in an internet cafe, which had brought him deep psychological trauma.

In the scripts, except for the few protagonists, everyone in the bar and the internet cafe was a ghost; once a wrong choice was made early on and one entered the door, there was almost no way out; Yang Xiao projected himself into it and finally decided it was better to stay in a hotel.

Of course, he was not prepared to call his few friends to keep him company; it wasn't just that he didn't want to drag his friends down, but more importantly, he was worried that the person who came might not be his friend.

Currently, there was only one clue: the Script Box; Yang Xiao sat at the table, opened his laptop, and after connecting to the hotel's Wi-Fi, he searched for the four characters "Fengmen Ghost Opera" on Baidu, but other than a bunch of messy advertisements popping up, he gained nothing.

After thinking for a while, Yang Xiao suddenly thought of the address on the outside of the package; after tentatively inputting the three characters "Fengmen Town," he finally got feedback: this address was real, and it was in the Fengnan Province where Yang Xiao was located, about 100 kilometers away from Rong City; according to the introduction, it was a small town mainly focused on tourism.

No. 144 Fengmen Town also existed; it was a flour processing plant named Jinfeng Flour Mill No. 2, but the data showed that this flour mill had gone bankrupt many years ago.

There wasn't much official information about this flour mill, and it was all vague; following the old routine, Yang Xiao switched to the Tieba forum and actually managed to pull up some posts about the Jinfeng Flour Mill No. 2 in Fengmen Town; the title of the top post immediately attracted Yang Xiao's attention:

【Taboo! Supernatural Events at Jinfeng Flour Mill No. 2 (With Pictures and Truth)】