"The complex was abandoned halfway through construction. The wiring was never even finished—there's no way they could have turned the power on. So what's generating that light inside the buildings?"
Four half-finished towers loomed in the center of the complex, and the faint glow seeping from within was like a row of half-open eyes, watching the approaching living with ill intent.
"Chen Ge, don't drift too far from us—stay on guard!" Li Zheng called back when he noticed Chen Ge hadn't followed.
"Got it." Chen Ge knew Li Zheng was worried about him and quickened his pace to catch up. "I just think it's strange. If there's no electricity running to the buildings, why would certain rooms be lighting up?"
"Could be a lot of reasons. Maybe moonlight reflecting off the windows. Maybe homeless people have moved in and made it their home. Whatever the case, when you step into a building that's been sitting empty for years, you have to be careful." Li Zheng seemed to have some unpleasant memories of his own. "Abandoned warehouses, factories, and buildings on the outskirts of town—they're magnets for all kinds of criminals. And there are the crazies who love conducting all sorts of mysterious rituals. The more desolate the place, the more they're drawn to it. A case I handled before—the culprit was stealing corpses from a hospital, convinced he could summon demons out of legend. We ended up catching him in a stinking sewer on the outskirts of the city."
"Summoning ghosts in a sewer? Did he ever stop to consider how the ghosts would feel about that?"
Li Zheng had clearly been about to say something else, but Chen Ge's response left him momentarily at a loss for words. "Your train of thought is truly impossible to predict sometimes. Forget it—I'm not going to get into it with you. Just remember that it's dangerous in here."
Mingyang Residential Complex was vast. The four unfinished towers stood before them like four tombstones covered in inscriptions of names.
A night breeze swept through, setting the grass and trees swaying, their branches and leaves rustling. Standing at the base of the buildings and looking up produced a deeply unsettling sensation—as if these four towers could collapse at any moment, burying everything within the complex.
"Why don't we check out where that light is coming from first?" Li Zheng suggested. "The closest glow is on the second floor of Tower One, left corner. If it's on the way, I'd recommend we go take a look at what's actually producing that light."
"It's on the way. Room 104 is on the tenth floor. Before we head up, we can check every room along the way—we might find something useful." Tian Lei knew the complex well; he had handled matters involving the property owners before.
"Room 104 is on the tenth floor? How do they number their rooms?"
"The first two digits are the floor number, the third digit is the room number on that floor. 104 means the fourth room on the tenth floor," Tian Lei explained to Chen Ge.
"But there are four towers in total. Doesn't that mean there are four rooms numbered 104?"
"The rooms on the tenth floor of Tower One are numbered one through four. Tower Two's tenth floor runs from five to eight. So the situation you're describing doesn't exist."
"The room numbers across different towers are continuous?" Chen Ge was simply curious, but what Tian Lei said sparked a thought in his mind. "Why would the architect design it that way?"
"Apparently it was the investors' request. They originally planned to build aerial skywalks connecting all four towers into a single structure, turning Mingyang Residential Complex into a landmark building for Jiujiang. Too bad a few of the investors died in accidents one after another before it was ever completed."
"Keep it down, both of you—we're going in." Captain Yan raised his police-issue flashlight and was the first to step into the pitch-black stairwell.
"Turning four towers into a single structure…" Chen Ge filed that detail away. Those investors had died under murky circumstances, and there was definitely more to the story than met the eye.
Once inside the stairwell, the temperature dropped noticeably. A cold, damp chill permeated the air, and with every breath it felt as though someone were blowing a gust of icy wind directly against one's heart.
Several rivers cut through the eastern outskirts of Jiujiang, making this area considerably more humid than the rest of the city. Moss and mildew clung to the corners of the walls, which were wrinkled and peeling—a finger running along the surface could easily tear off a large strip.
"The light we saw from outside is coming from this room." The group arrived at the left corner of the second floor and stopped before one particular room.