Bai Yulao: The Night Watcher's Debt to the King of Hell

When we came out of the museum, it was completely dark outside.

The Southern Capital in 2600 AD was not the dazzling and extravagant city one might imagine.

People of this era have long since abandoned the neon lights and steel jungles that were built to show off technology, just like they did centuries ago.

The streets are wide and quiet, and the buildings on both sides are a wonderful fusion—the main body is solid gray concrete with strong lines, but it is cleverly integrated with the flying eaves and lattice of classical Chinese style.

Without the interference of holographic projection, the streetlights cast a cool white light, stretching the shadows of the city to an extremely long length, exuding a solemn, even somewhat oppressive, sense of order.

Su Wantang opened the door of the black sedan. The car had a retro design with smooth, rounded lines and no superfluous decorations, only an extremely deep hum when the engine started.

"Hold on tight!"

The car silently glided into the night, passing through the cluster of buildings that resembled silent behemoths, and sped toward the edge of the city.

Inside the carriage, Lin Shoumo fiddled with the small bronze bell in his hand, watching the street scene rushing past the window, and suddenly said, "Officer Su, the layout of this Southern Capital City looks more and more like a giant Bagua formation."

However, it seems that the "eye" for gossip has been sealed off.

"Stop using your feng shui nonsense." Su Wantang's eyes were fixed ahead, her hands firmly on the steering wheel. "The place we're going to is Restricted Area No. 09. According to the records, that's the former headquarters of the Bliss Group six hundred years ago!"

"Six hundred years ago..." Lin Shoumo murmured to himself, "That was the 'Iron Age,' the most restless and greedy period of mankind."

The buildings of that era were all these obelisks reaching straight to the sky, as if they wanted to etch their desires onto their foreheads!

As the car slowed down, the surrounding scenery began to look desolate.

Those orderly modern buildings gradually disappeared, replaced by large tracts of wasteland surrounded by barbed wire.

At the edge of the wasteland, a huge black silhouette stands out starkly in the night sky.

It was a skyscraper that was only half-built.

It is completely different from the current architectural style that emphasizes "blank space" and "breathability".

It resembled a massive, rough concrete tombstone, standing straight up in the ground. The broken glass curtain wall looked like festering sores, and the dark windows wailed in the night wind, like countless open mouths.

The car stopped in front of a rusty iron gate. The warning sign on the gate was long since faded and illegible, but the words "Military Restricted Area" were still faintly visible.

"We're here!" Su Wantang turned off the engine and took out two black flashlights from the storage compartment in the passenger seat.

This flashlight has a minimalist design, with a cylindrical metal body and no extra buttons. Pressing it produces a blinding beam of light—in this era, it is the most practical and reliable lighting tool, more secure than any fancy technology.

"Let's go!" Su Wantang handed Lin Shoumo a handkerchief. "That coordinate points to the third basement level."

Lin Shoumo took the flashlight but didn't get out of the car immediately. He stared at the dark entrance of the building, and the bronze bell in his hand vibrated slightly.

"Officer Su, something's not right here." His voice was low. "It's too quiet! A 600-year-old ruin should have the sound of wind, insects chirping, and even the sound of beams and pillars breaking."

But here... there's not a sound at all, as if it's been sealed off by time and space!

"That's your imagination!" Su Wantang pushed open the car door, and a cold wind carrying the smell of mustiness and rust rushed in.

The two of them, one in front of the other, stepped over the collapsed iron gate and entered the desolate ruins.

The lobby was covered in a thick layer of dust, and every step you took kicked up choking clouds of dust.

The beam of the flashlight cleaved through the darkness, illuminating the mottled walls all around.

There are still propaganda posters from 600 years ago on the wall. Although the colors have long faded, the huge gold ingots and smiling faces on them look particularly eerie under the strong light.

"The elevator is definitely not working!" Su Wantang pointed towards the back of the lobby. "Let's take the stairs!"

The staircase leading underground was like a bottomless black hole.

The two slowly descended the concrete stairs. Their footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, amplified infinitely in this deathly silent space.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

When she reached the basement level, Su Wantang suddenly stopped. The beam of her flashlight swept sharply behind her.

"What's wrong?" Lin Shoumo asked.

"Listen..." Su Wantang turned off the flashlight.

Darkness engulfed them in an instant. Lin Shoumo held his breath, his ears picking up the subtle vibrations in the air.

In that deathly silence, a faint sound of chewing could be heard...

*Smack! Smack!*

The sound was very soft, with a moist, sticky quality, like someone chewing on cartilage in the middle of the night with a mouthful of phlegm in their mouth.

"Up there!" Lin Shoumo suddenly turned on his flashlight. The beam of light did not sweep towards the ceiling as before, but instead locked onto the shadow of the stair railing.

A beam of light pierced the darkness.

At that moment, Su Wantang felt like her scalp was about to explode!

That was no ordinary spider.

The thing was hanging upside down above the handrail, and it was about the size of a washbasin.

Its eight legs are not chitinous exoskeletons, but eight pale, slender human leg bones with black hair wrapped around the joints, gripping the spider web in an extremely contorted posture.

Its trunk was a swollen, translucent, grayish-white sarcoma.

Through that thin film, you could clearly see a shrunken human face wrapped inside—a woman's face, her features contorted in pain, her mouth wide open, screaming silently.

The chewing sound just now came from this tumor. The woman's face had a twitching moth with a human face in its mouth.

Gum!

The spider swallowed, and the woman's face inside the tumor rolled its eyes, seemingly enjoying its meal.

"Officer Su..." Lin Shoumo's voice was no longer teasing, but instead carried an unprecedented chill, "Don't move, don't breathe!"

The thing seemed to sense the light; its eight leg bones tightened abruptly, and the woman's face on the tumor slowly turned, staring intently at Su Wantang.

Its mouth—the mouth that was stretched to the roots of its ears—was strangely upturned, revealing a smile.

Immediately afterwards, a high-pitched voice, like a child's pinched throat, squeezed out from that face:

"Do you want... more gold...?"

Snapped!

Su Wantang could no longer hold back and suddenly pulled the trigger, sending a high-frequency shockwave crashing onto the stair railing.

The monster let out a piercing scream—not like a wild beast, but like the simultaneous screams of hundreds of women—and instantly exploded into a cloud of black smoke, dissipating into the air. Only a pile of charred ashes remained.

"Go! Go quickly!" Lin Shoumo grabbed Su Wantang and the two ran inside.

As the two ventured deeper, a feeling of being watched intensified, as if every brick and every speck of dust in the entire building was staring at them.

Finally, they arrived at the third basement level.

Here is a huge metal security door, violently damaged and twisted open, as if something had desperately tried to break free from it.

The beam of the flashlight shone in.

This is a huge underground vault.

But there were no gold bars inside.

In the center of the empty hall, there was an operating table.

The operating table was rusty, but the dark red marks on it were still clearly visible. Next to the operating table, a pile of clothes was neatly stacked.

All the clothes were red with floral prints.

There were dozens of them, each torn to shreds and stained with blackened blood. They swayed slightly in the draft, like a group of hanged puppets.

"Officer Su, look at the ground!" Lin Shoumo's voice suddenly became extremely dry.

Su Wantang lowered her head.

On the edge of the flashlight's beam, on that thick layer of dust, a string of fresh footprints appeared.

These footprints are strange.

It was only half there, like someone walking on tiptoe, the footprints extending all the way to the pile of red clothes, and then... disappeared!

At the very top of that pile of red clothes, there was a black and white photograph from six hundred years ago.

The photo shows a young man in military uniform whose face has been slashed by a sharp blade, but a large smiley face has been painted on his split mouth with bright red nail polish.

Next to the smiley face was a line of crooked writing, in modern simplified Chinese characters, not classical Chinese:

"He's not dead yet, he's inside the wall!"

Su Wantang felt a chill run down her spine and straight to her head, and her palms, which were holding the flashlight, were covered in cold sweat.

"Who wrote this?" She turned abruptly, her flashlight sweeping around. "Besides us, has anyone else been here?"

Lin Shoumo didn't speak. He stared intently at the cement wall.

He hadn't noticed it before, but now, shining a flashlight at it from the side, he discovered that the seemingly smooth concrete wall was actually covered with densely packed writing.

The same name was repeatedly carved countless times until the wall was worn away, exposing the steel reinforcement inside.

Zhang Hansheng! Zhang Hansheng! Zhang Hansheng...

The marks varied in depth, some looking as if they had been dug out with fingers, and still contained traces of darkened blood.

And deep within the wall, through the etched cracks, one could vaguely see... a grayish-white eyeball.

It had no eyelids, and its pupil was a tiny black dot, no bigger than a pinhead. It was embedded there in the rough concrete, and as the flashlight beam moved, the eyeball actually rolled around a little.

Immediately afterwards, a deep, nasal sigh came from inside the wall:

"Sigh... here we go again!"