Chapter 52: The Woman in the Wall

"It's a twin room," I repeated.

"ID card," the man in the suit said, and I handed mine over to him.

After paying, he led us to a room and then left.

We didn't actually do anything after checking in. I sat at the desk playing on the computer, while Huang Ying lay on the bed to rest. I was afraid that in such a peculiar place, lying down with Huang Ying might lead me to truly do something worse than a beast.

About twenty minutes later, I looked over at Huang Ying. She had her eyes closed and was fast asleep. I walked into the bathroom, planning to take a shower and go to sleep as well—we still had classes tomorrow.

I turned off the computer and turned toward the bathroom.

However, just as I reached the doorway of the bathroom, I heard a faint sound coming from inside.

"Just like that, I'm hanging up first!" I vaguely heard someone say those words.

When we first came in, I clearly saw that the bathroom was empty. So what was this sound about? I felt a sudden sense of unease. Could we have checked into a haunted house?

Thud...

I pushed the door open and went in. There was nothing inside, but the sound was still there. I followed the source of the sound, and the closer I got to the wall, the clearer it became.

Finally, I pressed my ear against the wall, and the sound became even more distinct.

There were sounds of a struggle, followed by screams—the screams of a woman.

I hurried downstairs to find the man in the suit who had brought us up earlier.

Within two minutes, he followed me back upstairs.

Standing at the bathroom doorway, I could hear that the noises inside were still going on.

"Listen to that?" I motioned for the man in the suit to come over. He pressed his ear against the bathroom door for a moment, then turned to me and said,

"It's nothing, just a magnetic field anomaly!"

He opened the door, stepped inside, and tapped on the wall. After that, the sound vanished. I pressed my ear against the wall again—there wasn't a single sound left.

"Oh, I see. Then it's fine. Sorry to bother you!"

The man in the suit nodded and then stepped out of the room.

Just as he walked out, it suddenly occurred to me that when I had seen a magnetic field playing back past events at school before, if a magnetic field had preserved this, then something definitely must have happened here.

A struggle. A woman's screams. An act of violence must have taken place inside this room, and the one being attacked was a woman.

Besides that, I realized something else: the sound produced by a magnetic field in a given space should be relatively uniform throughout; it wouldn't be softer on the outside and louder on the inside!

It wasn't a magnetic field. Absolutely not.

I walked over to that same wall and pressed my ear against it again. Indeed, there was no sound at all.

Mimicking the man in the suit, I tapped twice on the wall. The sound that came back was just the sound of me knocking on the wall.

The inside of this wall was hollow. After knocking, that was the conclusion I reached.

I tapped around the surrounding area and found that the hollow space was rectangular, just about the size to fit a human body.

Something was terribly wrong. I immediately dashed back downstairs and called the man in the suit up again.

"There's something inside this wall!" I pointed at the wall and said, "And the sound just now wasn't a magnetic field—it was made by a living person!"

The man in the suit glanced at me, walked over to the wall, and without any warning, threw a punch straight at the surface.

Boom...

He smashed a huge hole right through the wall, leaving me utterly dumbfounded. That was made of concrete and ceramic tiles!

As soon as the large hole was smashed open, he turned to me and said, "Call the police."

I shifted to another spot and finally saw clearly what was inside: it was a woman, a severely decomposed woman.

Ugh...

I leaned over the vanity sink and dry-heaved. This smelled even worse than old man Wu's house!

Huang Ying had woken up at some point. Rubbing her nose, she asked, "What's wrong?"

As she spoke, her eyes were still heavy with sleep, and her body swayed slightly. I turned my head just in time to catch her looking like that. So this is how she looked when she woke up before being fully awake—she was just too adorable!

"Someone died here! We're leaving right now!"

My luck was terrible; even when renting a hotel room, I managed to run into a dead body. No matter how careless I usually was, I wasn't going to stay here another minute.

However, right at that moment, Huang Ying suddenly grabbed my arm urgently, signaling me to get out of there fast.

I had no idea what was happening. Apart from the time my soul was nearly sucked out, she had never been this tense before.

I turned to look at Huang Ying and noticed she was keeping her head down, not daring to look directly at the man in the suit. Meanwhile, the man in the suit continued to stare expressionlessly at Huang Ying and me.

Seeing how anxious even Huang Ying was, I didn't hesitate for a second and immediately fled the place.

We were quite a distance away from the hotel before I finally asked Huang Ying, "What was that about?"

"That person just now was very dangerous!"

I frowned. Very dangerous? For someone to make Huang Ying feel that way, could he be a ghost that had lived for hundreds or even thousands of years?

"Is he a ghost?" I asked.

Huang Ying shook her head. "He's human."

If he was human, then there were only two possibilities: either he was an extraordinary person with mystical skills like Stone, or he was a ghost-catcher like my grandfather.

I was puzzled. If that was the case, why didn't he do anything earlier? Given that he could make Huang Ying feel threatened, his power must have been immense.

"Let's hurry!" I suddenly understood why his expression upon seeing Huang Ying had been so unusual compared to how he looked at others, and why a simple knock on the wall by him had completely erased the sounds inside. Right now, there was a high chance he might come after us.

I instinctively hailed a taxi and dialed my grandfather's number from inside the car.

"Grandpa, we might be in trouble!" I said. Although the man in the suit hadn't made any aggressive moves, I had a very bad premonition.

First came the mysterious woman connected to the dormitory head's death, then Stone, followed by my new deskmate "Chen Xiaoyao," and now, an extra "man in the suit."

Not a single one of these people was ordinary.

Take the mysterious woman, for instance. To this day, I didn't even know the slightest bit of information about her.

Then there was Stone. Grandpa had actually left him to stay by his side—even I didn't get that kind of treatment.

Next was Chen Xiaoyao. Although I had never seen him do anything extraordinary, my intuition told me he was definitely not simple.

Finally, there was the man in the suit from just now. Since he could make even Huang Ying feel a sense of danger, his strength went without saying.

"What's wrong?" Grandpa asked.

"I can't explain it clearly over the phone. Can you come into the city?" I brought it up once more. Every single event happening around me now was filled with bizarre anomalies, and I felt that even more terrifying things were waiting for me ahead. I wasn't worried about Chen Xiaoyao because, strong as he undoubtedly was, he surely couldn't be stronger than Huang Ying. But this man in the suit was a massive, unpredictable wild card.

"Not coming." Grandpa refused flatly without a second thought. "Call me if you run into trouble!"

Then he hung up the phone with a series of beeps.

At this point, I really couldn't understand Grandpa anymore. I was his own flesh and blood grandson; even with all sorts of reasons, he shouldn't be this heartless.

Since he had hung up, I simply stopped calling him back and had the taxi drive us straight home.

Only after returning to my small rented apartment did the tension in my chest ease up a bit. Home was always a safer place, even if it was just psychological comfort.

I lay awake the entire night. The mysteries surrounding me were growing denser, and I had to tear them apart one by one.

The next day, when I arrived at the classroom, Chen Xiaoyao was already sitting in his seat.

He was bowed over his black notebook, writing something.

"Morning!" I greeted him.

"Morning."

About a minute later, he stopped writing, put the notebook away, looked up at me, and asked, "Did you stay up late last night?"

Having not slept at all last night, I must have had dark circles under my eyes!

"I had insomnia," I said with a forced smile.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" he asked, studying me.

"Uh... yes!" Huang Ying's face flashed in my mind.

"What does it feel like to be in a relationship?" There was no discernible expression on Chen Xiaoyao's face.

"Well... it's hard to put into words. You'll have to experience it for yourself!"

Why was he asking these questions today? Could it be that beneath this guy's calm exterior, he was even more impatient and desperate than I was?

"Oh," he replied simply. Then he turned his head back down and continued reading his book.

I took out my textbook as well, slumped over the desk, and pretended to read—no, actually pretended to read.

"Are there really ghosts in this world?" I asked, feigning confusion. Actually, I was already clearer on this fact than anyone else, but I wanted to slowly dig out Chen Xiaoyao's secrets.

"Yes," Chen Xiaoyao answered without even turning his head.

To be able to answer so affirmatively that ghosts existed, without the slightest hesitation, could only mean one thing: he had seen ghosts before.

"Do all people turn into ghosts when they die?" I continued playing dumb.

Sure enough, he replied, "People are reincarnated after death. Only those who aren't reincarnated become ghosts!"

By now, I was basically certain that Chen Xiaoyao knew how to catch ghosts, and it definitely wasn't something he had just heard about outside as he had claimed.