The corridor was long, its walls coated in white paint. Every few meters, a rusted iron door stood sealed with yellowed tape that looked like it had been there for ages.
"Come to think of it, I never really paid attention on previous visits. This looks like a cadaver transport corridor."
Some medical schools had dedicated passageways for moving bodies — typically located underground, with smooth floors to make pushing carts easier. Another telltale sign was a layer of white paint on the walls, with no other decorations to speak of.
"Stop gawking, let's just get to the storage room." Liu Xianxian tugged on Ma Ying's arm, holding her phone as she stepped into the corridor on the right.
On the left was the cadaver vault. On the right were ordinary warehouses for miscellaneous supplies and decommissioned equipment.
The two walked along the corridor for a long while before Ma Ying suddenly heard what sounded like footsteps behind them. She stopped immediately and shone her phone's light back down the hall.
"Xiao Ying? What's wrong?"
"Someone might be following us." Ma Ying wasn't entirely sure. When she strained to listen, the footsteps seemed to have vanished.
"Maybe you heard wrong?" Liu Xianxian forced an awkward smile onto her face. Smiling in the face of fear had become something of a habit for her.
"Let's get inside the warehouse first. This corridor is a straight shot with nowhere to hide."
Picking up their pace, Ma Ying and Liu Xianxian quickly reached the first corner, where a battered wooden door stood waiting.
The lock was badly damaged, and all manner of dark scuffs and marks covered the door panel. Strangest of all, someone had scrawled two characters on the door that neither of them could explain — "Paradise."
"That's weird. Last time I was here, I'm pretty sure I closed the door properly."
The door hung half-open, as though someone had slipped inside after they left.
"Be careful." Ma Ying put both hands on the wooden door and pushed it open, then paused at the threshold rather than going straight in.
The girl might have seemed rough around the edges, but she was actually detail-oriented beneath the surface. She held up her phone and swept its light across the room, panning over row after row of shelving. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
"This time we stay together — no splitting up." Ma Ying took the lead, looking after Liu Xianxian.
The teaching building had been sealed off for years, so theoretically no one should have set foot in this warehouse for a long time. Yet strangely, there was very little dust inside, as though someone came in to clean on a regular basis.
All of Jiujiang Forensic Medical College's miscellaneous items had been piled in here, stuffed to the brim with every oddity imaginable.
The shelves held all sorts of bottles and jars, some still filled with a thick, orange-red liquid — likely former organ specimen preservatives.
There were plenty more things like that. An ordinary person walking in might have turned tail and fled in terror, but as forensic medicine students, Ma Ying and Liu Xianxian didn't find any of it particularly frightening.
Past the middle of the shelving, things got messier. Fire extinguishers, broken photocopiers, and dead computers were stacked against the walls. Chairs and desks were piled on top of each other, drawers overflowed with haphazardly stuffed reports, and broken sports equipment lay discarded in the gaps between chairs.
Further in still were costumes the drama club no longer used, worn-out drawing boards and easels from the art club — a whole heap of useless items.
When Jiujiang Medical University relocated to its new campus, most of the cleared-out junk had been dumped right here, filling every last inch of space.