Chapter 23: Fear Will Make It Stronger

"Wu...... President Wu?"

The subordinate called out tentatively; his voice sounded especially jarring in the empty stairwell, carrying a tremor he himself didn't even notice.

No one answered.

Only that lamp was struggling in vain, stretching his shadow on the wall, then shrinking it, twisting it into various weird shapes.

He fumbled to pull out his phone, his fingers shaking, pressing the lock-screen password wrong several times.

Finally, he opened his contacts, found Wu Cheng's number, and dialed.

"Sorry, the number you have dialed is turned off......"

The icy mechanical female voice, in the dead silence of the corridor, was like a death-summoning charm.

The subordinate refused to give up and dialed again.

Still turned off.

He felt his heart about to jump out of his throat.

He knew Wu Cheng always carried his phone on him, and it still had at least half its battery.

It was impossible for him to have dialed it off.

Unless...

The other party went to a place outside the signal range.

But how could that be possible?

Just as his mind was a tangled mess,

"Whoosh—"

Outside the window, a sharp whistling of an object plummeting at high speed rang out!

The subordinate's motion froze abruptly; he turned his head and saw a black slice cut across the moonlight.

Moments later.

"Bang!!!"

Downstairs came an extremely dull, bone‑crushing, flesh‑splattering thunderous boom!

The subordinate's blood turned to ice throughout his body.

He moved mechanically, step by step, to the railing at the stairwell corner, trembling as he poked his head out.

In the green belt below the residential complex, a corpulent body was twisted at an inhuman angle, like a discarded sack of rags.

It was Wu Cheng.

"Ah——!!!"

A piercing scream shattered the complex's tranquility.

The police arrived at the scene shortly thereafter.

When they saw yet another corpse that had fallen from a height, several young officers' faces already looked off.

"Another jump?"

"How many this month?"

The technicians immediately pulled up the complex's surveillance footage.

A weird scene unfolded.

In the surveillance video, Wu Cheng and his subordinate entered the complex and went into the stairwell.

Then, there was nothing after that.

Whether it was the exit to the rooftop or any exit of the building, Wu Cheng's figure never appeared again.

"Captain, the surveillance...... the surveillance is fine." The officer in charge of monitoring reported, face ashen, "He just...... just appeared directly on the roof and then jumped down."

This result made all the officers present feel a chill that went deep into their bones.

Wu Cheng was a senior executive of Han De.

Therefore, unlike previous cases, the police attached great importance to it and that night specially allocated investigative resources.

They did not hastily close it as a suicide, but instead combined it with similar cases for a thorough investigation.

The likes of Mad Dog Qiang now had a chance to clear their wrongful accusations.

However, as the results of the in‑depth investigation emerged, they only left the criminal investigators handling the case even more worried and frowning.

This was already the third "jump‑to‑death suicide" incident in Jiang Hai City this week.

The three victims had no suicidal motive or signs whatsoever.

It was as if they had been controlled.

No, not only that.

If one jumps from the roof, they should first have gone up to the roof.

But neither the surveillance nor any witnesses saw them go upstairs.

It was as if...... they vanished in the corridor and then reappeared at the edge of the roof.

For a moment.

Various rumors began to spread wildly on Jiang Hai City's citizen forums and social media.

"West City Haunted Building Keeps Claiming Lives!"

"Never take the stairs, or you'll be taken by a 'ghost wall' and forced to jump!"

Panic, like a plague, began to spread silently in the city's shadows.

The next day, morning.

Jiang Hai City First Hospital, VIP ward.

The glaring sunlight streamed through the gaps in the blinds, falling on Xiao Zhang's pale face.

His eyelids twitched, then he slowly opened his eyes.

The smell of disinfectant, the pure white ceiling, and the waves of pain from his abdomen made him instantly recall everything.

The villa, darkness, his heartbeat, that ghostly apparition with a huge hole in its chest, and... his colleague's gun that had accidentally discharged.

"Awake?"

A clear, cold voice, tinged with a bit of fatigue, sounded from beside him.

Xiao Zhang turned his head and saw Qin Zhixia sitting beside the bed.

She still wore her crisp high ponytail, but the dark circles under her eyes could not be concealed.

"Qin Team..." Xiao Zhang's voice was hoarse to the extreme; he struggled to sit up.

"Don't move!" Qin Zhixia pressed him down, "The bullet was just taken out—do you want it to go back in?"

Xiao Zhang stayed still; looking at Qin Zhixia, his eyes lost their usual banter, leaving only a trembling certainty.

"Qin Team... Is there really a ghost in this world?" Xiao Zhang's hoarse voice strained as he struggled to sit up.

He was not asking a question; he was stating a fact he had verified with his life.

Qin Zhixia looked at him, without directly refuting him as she usually would.

Her gaze was complex, filled with fatigue, confusion, and even a hint of... wavering.

"Last night... Li Zhenhu died, right? What happened after that?" Seeing Qin Zhixia not answer, Xiao Zhang hesitated a moment, then asked.

Qin Zhixia fell silent for a moment, then slowly began to speak, recounting the night that had shaken the entire Jiang Hai City police force:

"Li Zhenhu definitely died. After you were sent away, all personnel involved in the operation on the scene were isolated and received psychological counseling and detailed questioning."

Qin Zhixia's voice was low, as if she were recalling a nightmare she did not wish to mention again.

"The result... was terrible."

In her mind, scenes from the interrogation room surfaced.

A young policeman clutched his head, repeatedly muttering incoherently, "There's a ghost."

A veteran criminal police officer, battle-scarred, stared blankly at the ceiling, unaware that his cigarette had burned out.

"Most people's mental states were severely affected; they firmly believed they had seen something supernatural, and our worldview, everything we held onto, was completely shattered that night."

"However..." Qin Zhixia shifted tone, "There is one exception."

"Who?" Xiao Zhang asked.

"Old Ma."

Qin Zhixia was referring to an old criminal police officer in the detachment who was about to retire, having spent his whole career seeing every kind of storm.

She slightly closed her eyes, and the image from her memory surfaced.

In the interrogation room, Old Ma appeared unusually calm.

"I didn't see the ghost you're talking about." Old Ma puffed on his cigarette, his eyes cloudy yet clear, "That thing was aimed at Li Zhenhu. In life he did wrong, owed someone a life, and they came to collect—it's only just."

"I've been a cop my whole life, catching bad guys, with no ghosts in my heart. It wouldn't find me."

Old Ma's words were simple and blunt, yet like a bolt of lightning, they struck the minds of everyone on the Project Team.

After reopening his eyes, Qin Zhixia looked at Xiao Zhang and said, word by word: "We combined everyone's testimonies, including Professor Chen's final analysis before his mental breakdown, and reached a... astonishing conclusion."

Xiao Zhang held his breath, even forgetting the pain from his abdominal wound.

"What conclusion?"

At that moment, Qin Zhixia's eyes regained their sharpness, the piercing insight of a Criminal Investigation Team Captain returning to her gaze.

"That 'thing'... its manifestation seems related to our own 'will.'"

"Will?" Xiao Zhang puzzled.

"Yes." Qin Zhixia nodded, "According to comparing all testimonies, we found that those with firm will, whose psychological defenses were not broken by fear—like Old Ma—could not see it at all."

"On the contrary, those whose hearts wavered, who were affected by the scene and felt fear, saw it more clearly and suffered greater effects. Only when their psychological defenses completely collapsed... would that thing truly 'materialize' before them."

Qin Zhixia said this, paused for a moment, looked into Xiao Zhang's eyes, and uttered the final inference that made everyone feel a chill down their spine.

"In other words."

"Fear... will nourish it."

"Our fear is the weapon that makes it stronger, and also the key to its descent."