Chapter 38: Seeing a Corpse Again
Ning City and Rong City were separated by a province. Geographically speaking, Ning City was further north, a standard first-tier coastal metropolis. Whether in politics, economics, or construction, Ning City was second to none domestically.
When Jiang Si received Shen Hu’s call, he was carrying his suitcase off the high-speed train. The biting cold wind blew directly at him; the corners of his upturned eyes instantly turned red, and even the tip of his nose took on a reddish hue.
“…What did you just say?” Jiang Si sniffled. Caught off guard by the cold and surrounded by the noise of passengers, he hadn’t heard the voice in his earphones clearly.
“I asked where you are? I saw your shop wasn’t open just now. Are you at home?” Shen Hu repeated with good temper.
“No.” Jiang Si pushed his suitcase, avoiding pedestrians as he walked slowly. “I just got off the high-speed train. I came to Ning City to handle some matters.”
“You’re in Ning City?” Shen Hu was stunned. “That works out perfectly. Hai Di said he wants to meet you. This saves him the trip of running over there.”
The hubbub of voices around him suddenly went silent. Jiang Si heard every word clearly, yet his feet couldn’t take another step. He stopped in the middle of the road. He heard his own voice ask, “How would he know about me?”
“I told him,” Shen Hu said. “He asked me about the soul-wandering period, so I told him.”
Jiang Si’s tense heart relaxed. Someone behind him urged him to hurry up, so he continued pushing his suitcase and stepped onto the moving walkway. Jiang Si said, “Understood. I… I’ll contact him when I’m free.”
“That’s good.” Shen Hu had other matters to attend to, so he hung up after speaking.
Jiang Si stared at his phone for a few seconds, deciding it was better to deal with the pile of matters in front of him before dealing with Hai Di. He had booked a hotel before coming. Upon leaving the high-speed train station, he took a taxi to the hotel to drop off his luggage, then went to his former workplace to find someone.
Skyscrapers towered into the clouds, row upon row. The massive glass curtains reflected the sunlight; standing beneath them for too long gave one a sense of vertigo. Jiang Si had added a jacket, and now stood downstairs with one hand in his pocket, looking up at this exquisite building with mixed emotions.
Three months ago, when he left here, he definitely never thought there would be a day he’d return.
Joining the stream of glamorous white-collar workers, Jiang Si walked into the building. The first floor was the reception hall. Jiang Si gave the receptionist his name and appointment time. After calling to confirm, the receptionist smiled at him, “Mr. Jiang, please wait over by the sofa for a moment. Manager Ge said he will be free in a little while.”
Jiang Si agreed and walked toward the waiting area. After he finished a round of a mobile game, he still hadn’t received any message from the other party. With just a little thought, Jiang Si knew what they were doing.
The old power play tactic again.
Too lazy to indulge him, Jiang Si stood up to call Ge Kai. Just as he was about to turn and leave, he heard someone call him from behind.
“Is that Jiang Si?” The voice held hesitation.
Jiang Si looked back and discovered it was an acquaintance. It was Ge Kai’s assistant. Jiang Si hadn’t had much contact with her; when he resigned, she had just arrived as an intern, so they had only exchanged a couple of sentences.
The girl seemed to have run down; the hair on her forehead was a bit messy, and her ID badge had been flung behind her shoulder. Meeting Jiang Si’s gaze, she was a bit embarrassed. She straightened her badge and introduced herself, “I’m Zhao Susu. Brother Jiang, we’ve met a few times.”
Jiang Si was around 1.8 meters tall, so standing in front of him, Zhao Susu had to tilt her head back to look at him. Coming from an art background, she always maintained a keen sense for beautiful things. Seeing Jiang Si now, her eyes couldn’t help but light up again and again.
Such a pity. Why did this person have to resign? Otherwise, going to work every day would have had some motivation.
“Hello.” Jiang Si ended the call, put away his phone, and asked, “Does Ge Kai have time now?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Manager Ge specifically pushed the meeting to tomorrow just to make time to see you,” Zhao Susu said busily. As she led him to the elevator bank, she let out a strange “Huh?” sound. “It’s actually fixed. That works out; let’s take this one.”
Jiang Si didn’t comment and followed her into the elevator car with the shortest line.
Zhao Susu knew the main purpose of Ge Kai’s meeting with him today, so she took advantage of the elevator ride to chat a bit more. “Brother Jiang, we’ve all seen the contributions you made to the company. Everyone respects you a lot. Since I joined the company, I’ve always heard other colleagues talking about you.”
The elevator numbers jumped continuously, going from 1 slowly to 9, then climbing higher.
Jiang Si glanced at her with a faint smile and said, “Heard Ge Kai and Zhang Shuo cursing me, right?”
“…” Zhao Susu hadn’t expected him to be so blunt. She laughed dryly, “How could that be?”
“It’s fine, I curse them every day too,” Jiang Si said nonchalantly.
Zhao Susu was rendered speechless by this remark, unable to say another word.
What on earth?
Is it really okay to be this direct?
What happened to us all being hypocritical adults?
Her palms sweated from nerves. She let her imagination run wild—they wouldn’t start fighting when they met, would they? Should she intervene?
Before she could come up with a solution, the speeding elevator suddenly stopped, followed by a violent jolt. All the lights went out.
The elevator car, which had been filled with the murmur of discussion, went silent for a moment before voices erupted. Someone said, “Don’t panic yet. Everyone lean against the elevator walls, don’t move around!”
“Call! Call security quickly!”
“Turn on a flashlight!”
Several phone lights illuminated the small elevator car. In the reflection of the clean elevator walls, Jiang Si saw his own face—half in shadow, half exposed by the light—staring back at him expressionlessly.
Zhao Susu also took out her phone. squinting, she realized there was no signal at all. “What’s going on? That shouldn’t be right. There used to be a signal in the elevator.”
Several others discovered the same problem and were bewildered. But the urgent task was to find outside help, so they could only press the emergency help button on the elevator panel.
Inside the sealed elevator, the temperature kept rising, and the anxious atmosphere continued to intensify. At this moment, Jiang Si asked Zhao Susu, “Was this elevator just maintained?”
Zhao Susu was surprised. “How did you know? When I came down earlier, I saw it was cordoned off. I didn’t expect it to be usable so soon.”
Jiang Si said, “I just saw someone tear off the sign.”
“What crappy property management; just fixed and broken again,” Zhao Susu frowned and cursed under her breath. Although her mouth was cursing, her body was honestly pressed tight against the elevator wall, knees slightly bent in a defensive posture.
“It’s really hot to death.” In no time, she was sweating profusely. Zhao Susu raised her hand to wipe it. Just as her fingers wiped her forehead, another drop of water landed. She felt something was wrong; the direction… it seemed to be dripping from above.
Was it leaking?
She looked up. The next second, her pupils constricted, and her whole body went cold. One hand covered her mouth, and the other clutched Jiang Si’s sleeve deathly tight. She squeezed a sentence out through her teeth: “Look up, there’s someone!”
Jiang Si looked up. By the reflected light of the mobile phones, a clear human face was on the ceiling of the elevator car, staring down with round, unblinking eyes.
At first glance, it looked like a human face had been peeled off and pasted onto the elevator.
When it first came into view, Jiang Si was also startled. After reacting, he realized it wasn’t right. That wasn’t a face peeled off and pasted there; someone was lying on top of the elevator looking down at them.
“What do we do? What do we do?” Zhao Susu shivered continuously, her voice hoarse with fear. She didn’t dare scream loudly, afraid of startling others and causing an accident that might make the elevator fall.
But even if she didn’t say it, others noticed something was wrong.
Screams rang through the cramped elevator. The office workers who had barely managed to stay calm just moments ago now lost all composure, their legs turning to jelly one by one.
“Don’t panic yet, maybe it’s a reflection,” Jiang Si comforted her. “It’s so dark right now; it’s normal for everyone to see things wrong.”
Zhao Susu looked at him with panic mixed with even more shock, almost saying, “What kind of nonsense are you talking about?”
But the next second, that human face began to twist. The eyeballs rolled around in the massive sockets, seemingly searching for suitable prey. The bruised and purple face suddenly split open into a wide mouth, revealing a long, whitish tongue, from which sticky saliva dripped down drop by drop.
This was the water stain that had landed on Zhao Susu earlier.
Seeing this scene, Zhao Susu nearly went mad, unable to control a low scream any longer.
“Ahhhhhhh—”
The elevator jolted violently at that moment. A creaking sound came from the top, sounding like the elevator cables were slipping.
Zhao Susu rolled her eyes and nearly fainted, but Jiang Si supported her just in time. The politeness engraved in her bones made her instinctively say, “Thank you.”
“Mn.” Jiang Si asked her, “Do you have paper?”
Zhao Susu shook her head. A man nearby heard and handed over the folder in his hand. “Will this do?”
Jiang Si took it, flipped it open to check two pages, and confirmed again, “I’m tearing it?”
“Tear it,” the man said in despair with a pale face. “It’s uncertain if we can even walk out of this elevator today; why would I still care about work?”
“F*ck, if I knew I’d encounter this kind of bad luck, I should have resigned!”
“…”
Jiang Si didn’t say much more. He tore off a sheet of A4 paper and folded it back and forth a few times into a strange shape. He took out his lighter and lit it.
The flame jumped instantly, attracting everyone’s attention—including the human face on the elevator ceiling. It stared fixedly at Jiang Si, finally deciding on its first prey. The features protruded from the flat ceiling at breakneck speed, sliding down like a layer of melting plastic, opening its huge mouth to swallow Jiang Si whole.
“Burn paper into a vessel, detain the ghost within—”
With a flick of two fingers, the ashes from the burnt paper didn’t fall. Instead, they formed a circle layer by layer, floating in the air.
“!” The face finally realized something was wrong and tried hard to retreat, but it was sucked in by the irresistible suction of the ash ring. Before it could finish a hoarse scream, it vanished from everyone’s sight.
The paper ashes then fell to the floor.
Silence was the Cambridge of tonight.
Everyone present was a highly educated social elite. Seeing such an anti-scientific scene, no matter how many books they had read, they couldn’t say a word at this moment. Eyes wide, they offered Jiang Si their highest respect.
Jiang Si handed the document back and said politely, “Thank you.”
“…You’re welcome,” the man said blankly, unsure what expression to make.
After a long time, Zhao Susu let out a “Holy crap,” breaking the weird atmosphere in the elevator.
She asked tremblingly, “Brother, didn’t you make movies?”
“I changed careers,” Jiang Si answered calmly.
Those around who heard the conversation had surprisingly consistent expressions: That’s not changing careers, that’s fcking cultivating immortality, isn’t it?*
Before long, security guards realizing something was wrong hurriedly called people to pry open the elevator and rescue those trapped inside. Strangely, the expressions on everyone’s faces were indescribable, as if they had been struck by a blow, each one looking out of it.
“What happened? Is an elevator malfunction that big of a blow to people?” The security guard scratched his head, puzzled.
“You don’t understand,” the man who offered the file muttered to himself.
“Physics doesn’t exist in this world anymore.” Turns out not only are there ghosts, but there are actually people who know magic!
Then what did their hard work every day count for? Has the outside world developed to this extent?
“Huh?” The security guard looked blank.
Jiang Si wasn’t disturbed by their strange gazes. Seeing everyone was out, he asked, “Was this elevator repaired just today?”
The security guard finally met a normal person and answered honestly, “It was under repair for over a week, just got back into normal use.”
“No wonder,” Jiang Si said.
Security Guard: “Huh?” What code words are you speaking?
“You guys should call the police.” Jiang Si pointed to the top of the elevator. “There is a corpse up there.”
Zhao Susu, who had just recovered from shock, suddenly heard this: “!”
The other eavesdroppers: “!!!”
Security Guard: “!?”
“Impossible! How could there be a corpse!” The security guard denied it immediately. “We checked everything; absolutely no problems. Today was just an accident.”
Jiang Si was too lazy to argue with him and dialed the number on his phone directly.
Ge Kai, who was brainstorming negotiation tactics in his office, grew impatient when no one came up. He called Zhao Susu, but no one answered.
Outside the office was chaos. He frowned and went out, about to scold them for chatting instead of working. A colleague saw him come out and hurriedly called him, “Brother Ge, come quickly, I heard something happened downstairs.”
“What happened?” Ge Kai asked.
“Someone died inside the elevator. The police just pried the elevator open and carried the person away.” The person lowered their voice deliberately. “Guess who reported it?”
“Who?” Ge Kai had a bad premonition.
“It was Jiang Si!” The person couldn’t keep their voice down, cracking with surprise. “He actually came here! And he discovered this murder case!”
Ge Kai was startled. “Then where is he?”
“He went with the police to give a statement, of course.”
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