The camera had been placed on top of the television to record, and the angle captured exactly what
The lights flickered on and off. Crouching in front of the television, Chen Ge slowly began to experience an illusion—as though he wasn't watching a recording, but rather looking at the living room behind him.
The lights in the living room were still flickering, and the frequency of the flickering in reality gradually seemed to overlap with the frequency of the flickering in the recording.
When the lights in the TV screen dimmed, the lights in the living room dimmed along with it, and before long, they brightened simultaneously.
"The recording is affecting reality? No—a ghost is behind this." Chen Ge didn't turn around; his eyes remained locked on the slowly opening bedroom door in the recording.
Every time the lights dimmed, the bedroom door opened a few centimeters wider. When the lights flickered for the seventh time, Chen Ge saw a strand of black hair emerge from behind the bedroom door.
"Long hair—it's probably a woman. Could she be the second owner of the house?" Chen Ge still didn't turn around. He simply tightened his grip on the skull-crushing hammer.
When the lights dimmed for the eighth time, the strand of hair swayed in a draft, and half a face began to peek outward.
Chen Ge stared at the face in the recording, silently counting. The duration of each dimming seemed to be fixed.
The face crouching at the bedroom door in the recording tilted outward, and just as it was about to be fully revealed, the lights in both the recording and reality went out simultaneously!
"
The skull-crushing hammer smashed into the sofa. Chen Ge's eyes swept across the room.
The room was pitch black. Something was faintly moving.
After a few seconds, the lights came back on.
Nothing had changed in the real living room, but the bedroom door was now open—exactly as it had appeared in the recording!
Chen Ge glanced back at the television. The screen was nothing but static—the recording had ended.
He kicked the sofa aside and watched the tape slowly winding. When Xu Yin's voice came through, he began walking slowly toward the bedroom.
The wooden door was half-open. Several strands of a woman's hair lay on the floor. Chen Ge picked them up and rubbed them between his fingers.
"Keep testing my patience like this, and I'll burn the lot of you to ashes."
He stepped forward. The bedroom was a mess—odds and ends scattered across the floor. Several rows of wooden planks had been nailed across the wardrobe, and the nightstand beside it had been sealed shut as well.
"Every piece of furniture that could be opened has been sealed with wooden planks. What on earth is hidden inside them? And which tenant left those recordings?"
Looking at the room full of furniture sealed with planks, an idea formed in Chen Ge's mind: "Could the tenant who filmed these recordings have discovered the cause of the haunting through the footage? Is that why they nailed the drawers and wardrobe shut?"
The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. That tenant must have seen a ghost climbing out of a drawer—from some piece of furniture. To prevent it from happening again, they had sealed every openable piece of furniture in the room.
Chen Ge stopped in the middle of the bedroom. Another question occurred to him: "Including the female ghost just now, I've encountered three ghosts in total. All three can move freely in and out of this room—which means sealing the furniture with planks didn't work. In other words, the owner of this house most likely missed sealing one drawer. And that unsealed drawer is probably the one I'm looking for."