"This is the last video my sister sent me before she disappeared. I've been searching for the room shown in the video ever since, keeping an eye out for any clues about it."
"Hard work pays off. While browsing the campus forum, I stumbled on a post about the urban legends of Jiujiang Medical University. One of them was called the Weeping Statue."
"Legend has it that if you find the statue after midnight, you can ask it to verify whether a statement is true or false. If the statement is fact, the statue will shed tears of blood. If it's a lie… something terrifying will happen."
Ma Ying pulled up a screenshot of the post from her phone's photo album. At the end of the post was an image, and by sheer coincidence, the statue in the picture was identical to the one her sister had filmed.
A Western-style sculpture of an adult male, slightly larger than life-size, with an ugly face. Inscribed on the base was a single line — Lies are draped in enviable coats, while truth is always hideous.
"I messaged the original poster to find out where he got the photo, but he never replied."
"Later, I tracked him down through my advisor. He said he'd snapped the photo on a whim inside an abandoned warehouse. He just thought the sculpture matched the urban legend well, so he uploaded them together."
"Ever since the other departments moved to the new campus a few years ago, no one has set foot in that warehouse. If he was telling the truth, the statue is almost certainly still sitting in there."
Ma Ying and Liu Xianxian were the kind of best friends who shared everything. Ma Ying was bold and straightforward — once she trusted someone, she held nothing back.
"I really hope we find it this time. I just want to know the answer."
The two girls climbed over the railing and slipped into the abandoned teaching building.
"It always feels strange coming in here. I keep getting the sense that there's someone else inside besides us."
Afraid that turning on their lights would attract the security guards' attention, neither Ma Ying nor Liu Xianxian used their phone flashlights. Feeling their way along the walls, they inched forward toward the far end of the corridor.
"It's such a waste that this building sits empty like this. I don't know why the school would rather leave it vacant than rent it out," Ma Ying murmured to herself. She was scared, but she didn't want to show it in front of Liu Xianxian. She seemed to have genuinely taken Liu Xianxian as her closest friend, always walking ahead to scout the path with Liu Xianxian protected behind her.
The smaller-framed Liu Xianxian followed in Ma Ying's footsteps. Once inside the building, her nerves kicked in too. "Xiao Ying, after our last few visits here, I tracked down some seniors who graduated a few years ago and asked around. They said the building wasn't shut down for ordinary reasons — and the same goes for the other departments moving to the new campus."
"What reasons?" Ma Ying was tall and looked sturdier than most girls, but that didn't mean she was brave.
"Something to do with the cadavers. This building was sealed off mainly because it's too close to the laboratory building." Liu Xianxian glanced out the window. At two in the morning, the Forensic Medicine building of Jiujiang Medical University presented a bizarre scene.
If you divided the campus into four quadrants — east, south, west, and north — the east, south, and north all had at least some lights. The west, however, was plunged into total darkness.
"Apparently the largest underground morgue in all of Jiujiang is buried on the western side of our campus. Keeping the lights off after midnight is a tradition left over from a long time ago — the 'teachers of the body' work so hard during the day, they need their rest at night. But do you actually believe that explanation?" Liu Xianxian's voice was strange, and her complexion today looked especially pale.
"It is a bit odd."
"There are plenty of other strange things about this school. Do you remember what our counselor told us when we first enrolled? Absolutely no one is allowed to enter the western campus alone after midnight. When someone asked why, the counselor just stammered and dodged the question. It wasn't until we asked the seniors that we found out — years ago, a freshman went out late at night to hit up an internet café, saw someone waving at him from across the way, and ended up running into the western campus in the dead of night. Inside one of the labs, he found a cadaver specimen that had been tampered with."