In Junnan’s live stream footage, not a single child appeared at any point. Every time Junnan turned his camera toward the so-called child, there was only a lifeless paper doll standing there.
The viewers in the chat were completely stunned, and the discussion grew increasingly animated:
【The streamer’s acting is pretty good.】
【What’s wrong with the streamer? Having a mental breakdown in the middle of the night?】
【As expected of a small MCN studio—they really go all out! They actually dare to act like this, pretending to see a child while facing a paper doll. I’ll give you a full score for pantomime.】
【Are streamers’ acting skills all this good nowadays? Junnan, you’ve really got some serious commitment; that acting felt genuinely real.】
Looking at the discussions flashing across the chat, Jiang Wei’s brows knitted tighter and tighter. She really couldn’t tell whether this Junnan was just acting or if he had genuinely seen a child.
However, when she leaned closer to her computer screen to inspect more carefully, the paper doll somehow looked even more vivid and lifelike than when she had encountered it during her own exploration.
Until the image on Junnan’s phone suddenly spun wildly and finally froze into pitch darkness.
Jiang Wei bolted upright in her seat. The stream was still running, but only audio remained—
Junnan’s loud, terrified cries, massive crashing sounds, the tearing of fabric, a huge impact noise, heavy and panicked breathing, muffled groans, screams, and the sound of someone being dragged across the floor…
Was this still acting?
Jiang Wei immediately switched back to her own stream and spoke to the camera: “I’m heading out. Stream’s ending.” With that, she logged out of all her software accounts, took off her headphones, and shut down the computer.
She grabbed her bag, which had her peach-wood sword tucked inside. Taking a deep breath, Jiang Wei stepped out of her private booth to the front desk to settle her bill, quickly hurried out, flagged down a taxi, and immediately named the residential complex where the abandoned building was located.
She was going to rescue someone—and by the way, see if she could secure that paper doll.
Recalling her encounter when killing the small ghost, these underworld entities weren’t entirely indestructible. She had her peach-wood sword, the Wengzhong jade pendant hanging around her neck, experience in dealing with a small ghost, and her own little ghost assisting her—
Lifting her gaze to the road ahead, there weren’t many cars out at night. Jiang Wei urged the driver, “Driver, please drive faster—hurrier, please.”
Ten minutes later, Jiang Wei finally caught sight of the residential complex entrance. Before the car even pulled completely to the curb, she scanned the QR code to pay the fare, leaped out before the vehicle had fully stopped, and broke into a full-sprint dash, holding her bag tight as she ran all the way.
The old residential complex was as gloomy as ever. Not a single streetlamp functioned properly; they were either dim to the point of uselessness, flickering incessantly, or completely broken down.
Following her memory straight to the haunted house, she saw there was no body on the ground below. Jiang Wei switched on her phone’s flashlight, vaulted through the window, and headed straight for the other side of the living room. Peering out through the window, there was no body on the ground down there either.
Thank goodness nobody got pushed down.
Catching sight of the phone lying on the floor, she bent down and picked it up.
The screen was still lit, and viewers were still scrolling through the chat. Jiang Wei gave it a quick glance before stuffing the phone into her pocket, stepping out into the stairwell, and panting heavily as she began climbing the stairs.
The only sound around her was her own breathing. It seemed Junnan was no longer in the stairwell, so she needed to hurry.
Clutching the banister, Jiang Wei rushed upward two steps at a time.
Reaching the top floor, she paused to catch her breath before sprinting onto the rooftop.
Under the moonlight, on the spacious open terrace, a young boy dressed in a brightly colored, garish padded jacket was dragging a struggling Junnan—who had fallen and was desperately fighting back—step by step toward the edge of the roof.
Junnan had long been weeping tears and snot alike. Suddenly spotting Jiang Wei rushing in, he looked as though he had seen a savior; his dimmed, despairing eyes lit up instantly as he let out a frantic howl:
“Help! Help! Quick, call the police!”
Call my ass! Should she have the police come arrest a “murderous child” or arrest a paper doll? If she dared to call the police and report that a paper doll was committing murder, she’d immediately get slapped with a charge of filing a false police report.
Heaving chests rising and falling rapidly, Jiang Wei was still panting from her dash up the stairs. Hearing Junnan’s cries for help, the child abruptly turned its head to stare right at Jiang Wei. Its pitch-black pupils occupied nearly its entire eye sockets, looking exceptionally terrifying.
What was most terrifying to Jiang Wei was that in her eyes, this was a young boy, not a paper doll. When she came last time, what she clearly saw was a paper doll—why had it turned into a child wearing a floral padded jacket this time?
Had both she and Junnan been hit by an illusion, or had the paper doll actually gained sentience?
Humans naturally fear what they don’t understand, let alone facing a paper doll transformed into a child committing murder in the dead of night.
Pulling the peach-wood sword out of her bag, Jiang Wei’s heart hammered against her ribs. But remembering the feeling of the peach-wood sword piercing the small ghost in Zhou Fuzhen’s villa, she managed to muster a bit of courage.
Bracing herself, she fixed her gaze firmly on the child who was gripping Junnan and staring straight back at her, terrified the child might suddenly drop Junnan and charge at her.
Fortunately, as she slowly and cautiously closed the distance, it didn’t seem to make the paper-doll child feel threatened. It quickly turned its head back and resumed its vigorous dragging of Junnan toward the outer railing.
“Ahhh! Help! Someone help me, I can’t hold on much longer, sob-sob, it’s so strong!” Junnan shrieked at the top of his lungs. If this building weren’t abandoned and devoid of nearby residents, someone surely would have called the police long ago.
Jiang Wei finally closed in on Junnan and the paper-doll child. Sensing the distance was right, she instantly expanded her domain—the human-skin facade on the child instantly peeled away, revealing its true form as a paper doll.
Feeling the grip on his wrist loosen, Junnan looked up and saw that there was no child at all—it was simply a paper doll. Letting out a terrified shriek, he seized the opportunity to wrench himself free, scrambling away on all fours.
Jiang Wei had no time to worry about him. The moment the paper doll reached out its hand to chase after Junnan, she thrust her sword forward without a moment’s hesitation.
The peach-wood sword pierced straight through the paper doll’s chest with a thwack. A wave of triumph washed over Jiang Wei, thinking she had delivered a fatal blow. But when she tried to pull the sword back to follow up, the paper doll’s hand clamped down tightly onto the blade.
Jiang Wei was startled and pulled hard, only to find the sword stuck as firmly as if wedged into solid rock—she couldn’t pull it out at all.
Such immense strength.
Scattered paper scraps flaked off the hand gripping the sword, blown away by the night wind. The peach-wood sword was clearly inflicting some damage, but not enough to make it retreat.
Beads of sweat broke out on Jiang Wei’s forehead, and her arm began to ache. And this was with her domain suppressing it; without her domain, how terrifying would the paper doll’s strength be? No wonder Junnan, a fully-grown adult male, had struggled desperately and still been dragged up to the rooftop by the paper doll.
Jiang Wei wrestled with the paper doll over the peach-wood sword, neither side willing to let go.
A few minutes later, the paper doll’s hands began shedding more and more debris under the corrosive effect of the peach-wood sword. Finally reacting to the ongoing drain, its grip loosened slightly. Seizing the chance, Jiang Wei managed to yank her sword free, stumbling back a couple of steps.
The moment it let go, the paper doll lunged fiercely toward Jiang Wei, looking as though it was about to tackle her to the ground. Junnan, hiding a few paces away, shrieked in terror at the sight.
In the next instant, however, Junnan’s eyes widened in disbelief as he witnessed something he couldn’t possibly comprehend—
The paper doll’s movements suddenly slowed down, as if a hundred-pound weight had been abruptly dropped onto its body.
“Do you have a lighter?” Jiang Wei suddenly turned her head and shouted loudly at Junnan. Seeing Junnan staring blankly like an idiot, she anxiously urged, “A lighter!”
She had just summoned her little ghost to grab the paper doll’s legs, but the entity’s strength was so overwhelming that she feared the little ghost couldn’t hold on for long.
Seeing the greyish-blue hands of the little ghost gripping the paper doll begin to tremble with exhaustion, Jiang Wei gripped her peach-wood sword and looked back at Junnan.
She saw him trembling as he fished a lighter out of his pants pocket, and she immediately barked, “Throw it here!”
To maintain her domain, Jiang Wei couldn’t move, so she simply extended her right hand toward Junnan. The lighter cut through the air in a parabolic arc. Immersed within her own domain, her special “omniscient field of view” allowed her to track the trajectory of the lighter with absolute precision. Reaching out with her left hand, she caught the lighter effortlessly and accurately.
The next second, she clicked the ignition, thrust her left hand forward, and set the paper doll—which was right in front of her—ablaze.
With a whoosh, flames burst across the paper doll’s body, instantly swallowing it whole.
Fearing the raging fire might harm her little ghost, Jiang Wei recalled it. Freed from its bindings, the little ghost tumbled to the ground, rolling a few times to escape the boundary of Jiang Wei’s domain.
Without the suppression of her domain, the flames quickly shrank down.
Just as Jiang Wei wanted to step closer to the paper doll and re-expand her domain to trap it inside, she noticed that although the fire had diminished, it was still burning. Within mere moments, the paper doll had dissolved into countless sparks of charred paper debris, fluttering and turning to ash in the air before being swept away by the wind in the blink of an eye.
The surroundings suddenly grew profoundly silent—deadly silent.
Jiang Wei still stood right where she was, holding the lighter in one hand and the peach-wood sword in the other. Her chest heaved rapidly from the exertion of the fight, and she panted audibly.
Junnan leaned limply against an iron rack near the wall, bruised and battered, his clothes torn to shreds like a beggar’s—a truly miserable sight to behold.
A gust of wind blew past, and Jiang Wei finally snapped back to reality. The paper doll had been burned to ash; it was over.
Exhaling a long breath, she stood straight and slid the peach-wood sword back into her canvas bag. Only now did she have the bandwidth to look around. So it was this dark tonight. So looking down from the rooftop, the surrounding trees were this dense. So the night wind was this chilly, and the terrace this spacious…
As her body relaxed, every muscle in her frame began to protest with soreness and tension from running, climbing stairs, and wrestling with a super-powered paper doll.
How could a mere paper doll have so much strength?!
Still, it was finally settled! And she had successfully rescued someone!
Turning her head to look at Junnan, she walked over and handed back his lighter and phone.
Junnan took both items back mechanically, muttering “Thank you,” “Thank you” over and over. After repeating it a few times, he suddenly snapped back, raised his eyes to meet Jiang Wei’s gaze, and then burst into tears.
Jiang Wei rubbed her bangs, patted his shoulder in consolation, and then turned around to head downstairs. Her entire body ached; she wanted to go back to her dorm and sleep.
Seeing this, Junnan leaped up and trotted along closely behind her like a little duckling following its mother.
The hazy moonlight stretched their two shadows out long, and longer.
On the other side of the city, in Tiger Brother’s office, A-Liang sat completely frozen.
As the chief assistant to “Tiger Brother,” the internet’s most popular ghost-hunting streamer, A-Liang followed all peer live streams for industry observation and analysis. The moment Junnan started his stream tonight, A-Liang had tuned in. Initially, viewer numbers were low and everything seemed normal, but the moment Junnan suddenly began talking to a paper doll, the stream’s atmosphere shifted entirely.
What shocked him even more was that after Junnan performed his routine of “mistaking a paper doll for a child” to boost stream traffic, he went on to broadcast half an hour of total black screen—featuring nothing but audio, with zero visuals.
A-Liang had initially assumed Junnan was experiencing technical difficulties, but he never expected that midway through, Vivian herself would actually appear in Junnan’s stream footage. When she picked up the phone and gave those two looks toward the camera, it was dripping with drama.
As expected of a film academy student, that single glance within such a brief window of time conveyed multiple complex emotions like “anxiety,” “worry,” and “apprehension.”
The chat exploded instantly as viewers flooded the screen: [I was wondering why Vivian went offline; so she went to rescue Junnan!], [Wow, Vivian came to save Junnan!].
If the sounds of fighting and screaming during the black-screen segment had left viewers somewhat puzzled, Vivian’s appearance made everything crystal clear.
Damn, these small-time streamers really know how to play! They even design multi-person plotlines now—are they starting to put on skits right in the middle of a live stream? What do you call a single-take performance? This right here is a textbook single-take performance!
During the subsequent stretch, although the phone was tucked inside Vivian’s pocket and remained a black screen, the accompanying sound effects propelled the streaming narrative forward. A swarm of curious onlookers flooded in to watch the spectacle.
Viewers who joined from the very beginning continuously explained the lore of the stream to newcomers. A bunch of bored people listened to the audio feeds and speculated wildly about what was happening in real time.
With intense discussions and curious spectators piling in by the droves, Junnan’s stream vitality was somehow successfully revived.
A black-screen stream where popularity increased rather than decreased—did that even make sense?
What the hell kind of marketing trick was this? What kind of play style?
A swarm of viewers scoured the comment section for theories, driving the stream’s heat higher and higher—Holy crap, live streams can be played like this too?
A-Liang was utterly stunned.
When the stream finally concluded, A-Liang called his colleagues over to watch and analyze what operational techniques Vivian and Junnan had employed.
A-Liang took direct screenshots of the plot-theorizing chat messages to keep as reference so they could copy the strategy later—
[Did the beauty sister who just showed up fall down?]
[Sounds like kicking a door open; I think I even heard the wind.]
[Listening to the beauty sister’s breathing and footsteps, she must be heading upstairs—is she going to the rooftop?]
[Probably. Just now I kept hearing a rustling sound amid the running and heavy panting—like paper shaking or rubbing against paper balls. Could that be sound design for a running paper doll? Holy crap, if I managed to deduce that, I’m an absolute genius.]
“I can’t even imagine it—for a ghost-hunting stream, the popularity after going black-screen was higher than before.”
“I just don’t understand this world anymore. Even if you asked me to design a stream strategy, I’d break my head and never come up with a black-screen stream.”
“Holy crap, the comment count is blowing up. All these people guessing what’s happening look like novelists.”
“This kind of marketing method… marketing geniuses!”
“Holy crap, these youngsters really know how to play.”
“Pioneers!”
“Badass!”
A-Liang and the others gasped in continuous amazement, feeling their worldview taking a beating. Compared to these genius streamers, they were absolute trash.
A few minutes later, Tiger Brother was also dragged out to watch the stream, and it didn’t take long for him to lose his composure—
“I’m going to take a taxi right now and get my paper doll back!” Tiger Brother slammed his desk and leaped to his feet, preparing to hail a cab to Vivian and company’s exploration site.
“Tiger Brother, Tiger Brother, calm down.” A-Liang hurriedly grabbed Tiger Brother, shouting to dissuade him.
“That paper doll was bought by me! Its eyes were poked open with blood from my own fingertip! Why can’t I take my paper doll back?” Tiger Brother grew increasingly furious. It was one thing for this female streamer named Vivian to use his paper doll to get popular, but now she had even found some rookie to stage a comeback show.
Couldn’t they buy a paper doll of their own?
“By the sound of it, they seem to have burned the paper doll,” another staff member chimed in nervously to talk Tiger Brother down.
“That’s my paper doll! What right do they have to burn it? My paper doll! Mine! There was even my blood on that paper doll! My blood! Mine!!” Tiger Brother continued shouting wildly, his tone laced with unyielding frustration.
Overflowing frustration.
When Jiang Wei returned to her dorm, it was already past midnight. The dorm manager auntie knew she was doing ghost-hunting streams and that her late returns weren’t just messing around, but rather internships and work. Although she wasn’t thrilled about being disturbed from her sleep, she still opened the door for her and offered a couple of reminders to stay safe at night.
Jiang Wei apologized and thanked her, resolving to buy some fruit for the auntie later—it was embarrassing to keep troubling her.
To her surprise, none of her roommates were asleep when she got back. It turned out Zhou Fuzhen had watched her stream and knew she went to rescue Junnan, so she had kept her roommates up to pull an all-nighter and wait for updates. The moment Jiang Wei stepped through the door, Zhou Fuzhen poked her head out from her bed, peering at Jiang Wei in the phone’s glow with deep concern:
“How is it? Are you okay?”
If she hadn’t feared interrupting Jiang Wei during important business, Zhou Fuzhen would have called her while watching Junnan’s stream.
“I’m fine, everything went smoothly.” Jiang Wei patted Zhou Fuzhen’s hand, chatted with everyone for a bit, and went off to wash up.
By the time she climbed back into bed, her roommates were still chattering away, asking what had actually happened.
Zhou Fuzhen knew ghosts existed in this world, and while her other two roommates remained somewhat skeptical, they were equally fascinated by such stories.
Now, hearing Jiang Wei mention that she had burned a paper doll inside the abandoned building, everyone grew excited.
By the time Jiang Wei answered a million “whys” and pacified her roommates, everyone was practically dropping with exhaustion. Though she originally wanted to carefully examine her harvest from the trip, she ended up passing out instantly without looking at a thing.
The next morning, Jiang Wei woke up bright and early. Taking advantage of the time when her classmates were either heading to the cafeteria, preparing for class, or sleeping in, she climbed alone up to the rooftop of the dorm building.
She found this spot fantastic: high vantage point, far away from other buildings, and located in a drone-no-fly zone—she could do whatever she wanted here without anyone seeing her.
In the faint light of dawn, Jiang Wei sat on a stone platform to check her fear value—66 points!
Goodness gracious, she was almost at the hundred mark. Sure enough, experiencing genuinely terrifying things in reality was far scarier than watching horror movies. Although she had been scared last night too, she probably only gained around 10 points of fear value from that; the lion’s share had been contributed by Junnan, who looked thoroughly traumatized.
Her advent value had risen to 41%, but still showed no visible changes. She had no idea what this metric was actually for, so she left it for ongoing observation.
Jiang Wei scrolled down, eagerly tapping into [Blessings], where a new entry had indeed been added—[Paper Doll].
Opening her domain and summoning the paper doll, Jiang Wei walked a circle around it. Up close, the garish clothes painted onto its body appeared somewhat faded.
Squatting down in front of the paper doll, she reached out and waved her hand in front of its eyes, but it showed no reaction. As expected, once stored inside [Blessings], they completely lost their independent consciousness.
“Let’s see if you dare harm people anymore!” Jiang Wei wore an expression of stern righteousness and gave the paper doll two slaps across the face. Ouch, hand hurts.
Why is this thing so hard? Isn’t it made of paper?
Its paper skin looked thin and brittle to the eye, yet punches and slaps couldn’t breach it at all. She picked up a sharp stone to try cutting it, but the effect on the paper doll was negligible.
The things that looked the most fragile turned out to be extremely tough—truly bizarre.
From now on, it could just squat in the [Blessings] interface and obediently help her uphold justice.
Jiang Wei ordered it to kick and scratch the wall. The hard brick wall was actually gouged into pieces of debris by its scratching. Its strength was basically on par with an adult male—and this was after it had been killed once and weakened; before that, its strength must have been even greater.
Simply terrifying.
Fortunately, she had suppressed and burned the paper doll promptly. If she had dragged it out any longer, she might have been the one in trouble.
It was still a bit dangerous.
Before the sun had completely risen, heavy gray clouds blanketed the sky.
Jiang Wei then summoned her little ghost, making the two of them stand in height order.
“Count off,” she whispered with a smile.
The little ghost let out a couple of eerie wails, while the paper doll didn’t make a single sound. Still, Jiang Wei nodded in satisfaction, looking like a female general reviewing her troops.
She now had two foot soldiers under her command, both of them child laborers.
One was a baby around a year old, and the other a child around seven or eight. Next in line wouldn’t be an eleven- or twelve-year-old kid, would it?
As she happily admired her two mighty generals, fine raindrops suddenly began sprinkling from the sky.
The rain grew heavier. Jiang Wei raised a hand to shield her head and looked down—the paper doll, which hadn’t even scratched under a sharp stone, began showing numerous wrinkles the moment it came into contact with water.
Hurriedly recalling the paper doll and the little ghost, she dashed under the eaves for shelter.
The rain poured down harder, rapidly escalating into a torrential downpour. Leaning against the wall beside the stairwell exit under the eaves, Jiang Wei watched the heavy rain cascade down and felt a surge of exhilaration.
An impulse rose within her to expand her domain and contend directly with the torrential rain. Would there ever come a day when she truly possessed the ability to control rainwater?
Over the next few days, the content of “Junnan encountering danger while live streaming, and Jiang Wei ending her stream to rescue him” was clipped and edited by countless viewers, spreading rapidly across major long-form and short-form video platforms.
Jiang Wei’s follower count surged accordingly, climbing all the way past forty thousand. The number of MCNs and advertisers sliding into her direct messages multiplied rapidly.
Aside from attending classes, Jiang Wei spent her days checking direct messages and filtering through reliable advertisers, keeping herself wonderfully busy.
“Weiwei, that handsome male streamer you rescued said he’s never filming ghost-hunting videos again,” Zhou Fuzhen said after dinner, scrolling through her phone on her bunk before poking her head out to tell Jiang Wei.
“Junnan?” Jiang Wei put down her pen, pulled out her phone, and checked the video Zhou Fuzhen sent her.
This video was also a stream clip where Junnan announced in his own live stream that he was transitioning to a lifestyle blogger and would never do ghost-hunting again. Later on, he solemnly addressed the camera: “Sister Wei will always be my Sister Wei. She’s too badass.”
Jiang Wei laughed, looking up at Zhou Fuzhen. “What a pity; his ghost-hunting stream traffic was pretty high. I gained followers, and he gained quite a few too.”
“Between traffic and life, I’d choose life too,” Zhou Fuzhen sighed. Although she was also interested in the supernatural, she was an armchair enthusiast—if a real ghost popped up, she’d still be terrified. “Weiwei, I saw a post today where someone claimed they encountered a supernatural event, and the comment section had other people saying they experienced it too. I don’t know if it’s real or just made up.”
“Send it over, let me check.” Jiang Wei walked over to Zhou Fuzhen’s bed, resting her chin on the edge of the mattress as they both held their phones, reading posts and chatting.
The poster claimed they had encountered a ghost maze on their usual daily commute home from work and were trapped for two hours.
The comment section was far more varied. Most people thought the poster was making up stories or was drunk, but some people chimed in saying that they used to not believe it either, but started believing after encountering bizarre events themselves.
Jiang Wei read the comments one by one. She saw someone mention seeing a crawling shadow while taking a shortcut home from work;
Someone said a small meat shop downstairs from their apartment was sealed off and swarmed by police. In the end, the shop wasn’t reopened or transferred, but instead sealed shut into a solid concrete room using cement. All through the cementing process, police officers remained stationed on-site to stand guard;
Someone said a few of their coworkers suddenly went crazy, and the police locked down their company for half a month. Everything inside the company—desks, chairs, potted pothos plants—was hauled away to parts unknown, and even the wallpaper on the walls was scraped clean;
Someone else said they lost their memory after staying at a hotel, and when they woke up, two days had already passed…
Some of the descriptions were exceptionally realistic, prompting Jiang Wei to click into the users’ profiles. Sure enough, she found a few individuals detailing the cause and effect of their supernatural encounters in depth, with some even posting evidence of calling 110 to prove they weren’t lying.
The authenticity of these accounts was impossible to verify, but from piecing various bits of information together, Jiang Wei still vaguely sensed that some of them were true. Ever since she acquired this mysterious phone of unknown origin, the entire world seemed to have undergone subtle shifts. The strange occurrences she encountered weren’t isolated incidents either.
With the world growing unstable, Jiang Wei’s original plan of getting rich quick off fear value shifted. She decided she’d better save up fear value and use it to arm herself and ensure her own safety instead.
She had made a huge profit helping Zhenzhen’s family kill the small ghost, and the money exchanged from gold beans was safely stored away. Combined with the income from live-streaming, her living expenses and tuition fees were basically covered.
She still needed to work hard and earn money honestly; wealth couldn’t be built on shortcuts, nor could she walk down crooked paths.
Over the next few days, Jiang Wei accepted a sponsorship for a flashlight. The up-and-coming creator who approached her was quite a character: after gaining some traction, he had no idea what he was thinking, but he had ordered a whole batch of flashlights in bulk. When they failed to sell, he started reaching out to other streamers to help push them.
Most streamers rejected him, but Jiang Wei’s streams happened to be a rare case where flashlights actually came in handy.
The pay wasn’t much—1,000 yuan—on the condition that she display the creator’s flashlight link throughout her next three live streams, showcase the flashlight during the broadcasts, and pitch it appropriately when the moment arose.
Jiang Wei signed a contract with him and received the money the very same day. Next up was deciding where to go for her next live stream exploration.
Just as she was hesitating between [Overnight Cemetery Challenge] and [Abandoned Primary School Campus Exploration], Jiang Wei received an invitation from Tiger Brother—Abandoned Hospital, collaborative exploration, Saturday night.
Jiang Wei accepted readily without a moment’s hesitation.
Tiger Brother was picking the location, Tiger Brother was handling the publicity, and Tiger Brother—the top dog up-and-comer in the ghost-hunting niche—was bringing her along for an expedition. That was literally sending a pillow right when she felt sleepy.
On Saturday night, Jiang Wei prepared all her equipment early on: all electronics fully charged, appropriate athletic gear worn, looking sharp and refreshed.
When she left, Zhou Fuzhen repeatedly urged her to stay safe, worried that a young girl going out alone to explore with strangers might be dangerous.
Jiang Wei scratched her head. Dangerous—her?
Armed with her little ghost and paper doll, she was the danger incarnate.
Patting Zhou Fuzhen’s arm to reassure her, Jiang Wei set off early and arrived ahead of schedule.
The abandoned hospital was located right behind the old bus station. A dozen or so years ago, this area had been the central business district for the small towns surrounding Jianghai City. Over years of urban development and expansion, this once-prosperous zone had instead turned into a desolate, abandoned wasteland.
The old bus station was still operational, but departures were sparse, shutting down completely at 10:00 PM.
Bypassing the bus station, Jiang Wei stood by the roadside, gazing out at the vast, dim expanse before her. Overgrown weeds and lush trees dominated the area. The concrete paths of the courtyard had long been swallowed up by mottled moss and wild grass bursting through the ground, while the buildings deeper inside were covered in creeping ivy. Their dilapidated state made it completely impossible to imagine what they had looked like back when they were in use.
Areas abandoned by humanity had been aggressively reclaimed by vegetation. Devoid of streetlights, the darkness made the architecture look eerie and menacing, like a steel monster waiting to devour flesh and blood.
It lurked there, waiting for reckless challengers like Jiang Wei and the others to enter, as if it had been waiting for a very, very long time.
As she exhaled a breath, a rustling sound suddenly erupted from the bushes to her side.