The atmosphere inside the small room was stifling. The several guards were all a bit uncomfortable. Frankly, their first impression of
"Answer my question. Do you remember what the buyer looked like?" Chen Ge rarely spoke in this kind of tone. His expression was flat, his eyes fixed straight on Ma Fu.
Ma Fu was crammed into the corner of the wall, his body shaking violently. He seemed to have recalled something even more terrifying. His five fingers dug into his own flesh, and his head slammed against the wall over and over, as though he were trying to kill himself.
"We've asked him before, but the moment any question related to the buyer comes up, he has an episode." A guard placed his hand behind Ma Fu's head and pressed down hard, holding it in place.
Seeing Ma Fu's condition worsen, Chen Ge thought of a possibility — that buyer had done the same thing to him that Chen Ge had done.
Only Chen Ge had done it to avenge the phone ghost, while that buyer had terrified Ma Fu to make sure he wouldn't leak any information about him.
Chen Ge stepped into the small room and crouched in front of Ma Fu. Looking at this half-mad, half-witted human trafficker, he whispered softly in his ear: "Are you thinking of something terrible? I can see you're living in agony. Death must be a kind of release for you right now, isn't it?"
Chen Ge's voice grew lower and lower. Inside the small room, only Ma Fu could hear him: "If you don't talk, the children you killed will come looking for you. I can already hear their voices — they're coming from inside your body. They watch you day and night, every moment. Your backs are covered with the outlines of children. The sins you committed, you'll have to pay them back slowly."
Ma Fu desperately wanted to pull away from Chen Ge, but his shoulders were pinned by the guard. He couldn't move at all.
"Still not going to talk? If I can't get it out of you, then I'll have no choice but to find a way to delay your sentencing, keep you in this dark little room with them for a while longer. Just keep living like this. We'll meet again."
Just as Chen Ge was about to stand up, Ma Fu raised his head. The blood vessels bulged on his face, and his eyes were filled with thick red veins: "I remember now."
"You remember?" The guards nearby all found it incredible.
"Li Zheng, bring the voice recorder." Captain Yan was the first to react. He and Li Zheng entered the small room, and the group surrounded Ma Fu: "Go ahead and talk."
Ma Fu's lower body was splayed limp on the floor, his head bowed: "I spoke to the buyer on the phone. That person was extremely cautious — they were probably using a fake voice or a voice changer. It sounded like a boy of seven or eight."
"A boy?" Ma Fu's very first sentence surprised everyone in the room — both the police and the guards.
"Yes. I don't know how they got my phone number, but I'm absolutely certain that person was the buyer." Ma Fu's voice came in broken fragments, and there wasn't a trace of color on his face. "The voice sounded like a child, but the things that were said were nothing a child could possibly come up with. I don't know if someone was coaching them nearby, or if they'd been specially trained."
"You never met in person?" That was the point Chen Ge cared about.
"He was very cautious. He changed the transaction location several times, and in the end he told me to bring the child to Liwan Town. When I got there, he made another strange request — he said he'd pay me extra on the condition that I stay in Liwan Town for three nights." Ma Fu didn't sound like he was telling a story.
"What happened after that? And why did you kill that innocent child?" Captain Yan was present, so no one else spoke up.
"I'd gone through all the trouble of getting the child to Liwan Town. Leaving right away felt like such a waste. I thought about it for a long time, and in the end I agreed to his conditions." Ma Fu's expression was somewhat twisted, a jumble of fear and every manner of negative emotion. "On the first night, I had a dream. I dreamed the room was covered in children's handprints. Something was running around, and it eventually converged into a shadow that stood right beside my bed."
"Quit talking nonsense." The more the guards listened, the more convinced they were that Ma Fu had gone mad and was spouting gibberish.
"Let him keep talking." Captain Yan waved his hand. "That shadow — its height, its build, what it did in the room. Can you still remember?"
"The shadow..." The fear in Ma Fu's eyes intensified. "The shadow in my dream was the same height as me, and the build was about the same too. It felt like it was me. The dream was so real. When I wanted to get a closer look at the shadow's face, it disappeared."
"When I woke up in the morning, everything in the room was normal. I figured I'd just been overthinking things. But who could've known that the second night, I had the exact same dream. The shadow appeared again, and what was even more terrifying was that this time it emerged directly from behind me. It seemed to have completely become my shadow."
"I saw it clearly. I wanted to scream for help, but my body wouldn't move at all. I could only watch helplessly as that shadow climbed down off the bed and opened the wardrobe door."
"The child I'd brought along was inside the wardrobe. The shadow silently watched the child, right up until I woke up."
"On the morning of the third day, the buyer called me again and told me to deliver the child after midnight to Unit 3, Room 104, Mingyang Residential Complex in the Eastern Suburbs."
"That complex is right next to Liwan Town. It wasn't even finished yet. Apparently, not long after construction started, all sorts of strange things happened. To ward off evil, they renamed it Mingyang Residential Complex."
"As for what happened after that — you all know. The police suddenly showed up in Liwan Town searching for the child. The kid acted like he was possessed, crying and screaming..."
Ma Fu lay on the ground, sneaking glances at the people present. He didn't dare continue.
"Li Zheng, contact the duty officer at the branch office right away. Look up the address he just gave. I want the homeowner's information sent over within ten minutes." Captain Yan walked out of the small room. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to control himself and would lay into Ma Fu.
"You're done questioning, right?" The guard looked toward Chen Ge. He was the only one still in the room, deep in thought.
Listening to Ma Fu's words, Chen Ge recalled the shadow monster he had encountered outside the Eastern Suburbs water plant. It had been exactly the same height and build as him — it seemed to have the ability to become a living person's shadow.
"
He couldn't figure it out, and Chen Ge wasn't about to summon Zhang Ya over something like this. If Zhang Ya came out and then didn't want to go back in, that would be a truly serious problem.
After leaving the small room, he hadn't gone far when Captain Yan received a call from the branch office. The homeowner's information had been found.
"Mingyang Residential Complex has been under construction for seven years and still isn't finished?" Captain Yan stopped in his tracks. He stared at the information on his phone screen and waved Chen Ge over. "We've found the homeowner. His name is Jia Ming. We will investigate this matter to the very end."
"You found it that fast? Your efficiency is—" Chen Ge stopped mid-sentence, suddenly frozen in place.
"Jia Ming? Isn't that the name of Huang Ling's 'ghost' husband? No, that can't be right! The phone ghost incident was six or seven years ago. At that time, Jia Ming shouldn't have been possessed yet..."