The empty inn was quiet and desolate. On the ceiling, the vintage chandelier, specially recreated to match the original style, emitted a soft glow, slightly dissipating the gloomy atmosphere.
The floor was spotless, with no blood stains or corpses—a month ago, at Li Fufeng’s suggestion, they had moved the two bodies to the master bedroom upstairs.
It was also since then that the ghost had stopped suddenly making a big commotion to scare them when they weren’t paying attention.
“Little Adams, we’ve come to stay again!”
Along with Liu Ningshuang’s familiar greeting, Li Fufeng walked to the reception desk in the ground floor lobby and placed an exquisitely packaged box of cookies on it. Besides this, he also had the latest issue of a comic weekly in his hand.
“—This is everyone’s lodging fee, please check and receive it.”
He said this in a serious tone, as if he was really paying some formal lodging fee. Then, he put down the things in his hand and said with a smile.
“These are the most delicious cookies from the most popular dessert shop here. They’re absolutely top-notch. I tried them and wanted to bring some to share with you. And here’s the latest issue of the comic weekly, with a new series starting!”
After doing all this, Li Fufeng left the reception desk, adopting a posture of no longer disturbing the other party’s enjoyment of food and comics.
He looked at Liu Ningshuang, who was putting on a brave face—just now when Li Fufeng was talking to himself, the little bit of courage Liu Ningshuang had mustered up had dissipated again. If it weren’t for maintaining her “cool can’t be lost” attitude and some curiosity that just wouldn’t go away, she wouldn’t come here again even if you killed her.“Since we’re idle anyway, want to play Aeroplane Chess?” Li Fufeng had completely seen through her current outwardly strong but inwardly weak nature. After all, growing up together, who was it that once ran out of the house crying and screaming while watching a ghost movie and almost climbed up a tree in one go? He didn’t expose her though, just held up the small box he brought, “Although you seem to have lost many times already.”
(TL: Aeroplane Chess (飞行棋, fēixíng qí) is a board game that originated in China and is also popular in other East Asian countries. It is a race game where players move their pieces (typically represented as airplanes) around a board according to dice rolls. The objective is to move all of one’s pieces around the board and reach the finish line first.)
The bitterness of being unlucky was poked, is being lucky something to be proud of? Liu Ningshuang instantly forgot everything else, no ghost or evil spirit could compare to the annoying lucky bastard. “Bring it on, it’s just good luck, right? Luck won’t always favor one person.”
The two took out the Aeroplane Chess and sat down on the sofa. Yin Xubai had no interest in such childish games and walked straight to the rooms in the depths of the inn. He was going to adjust various instruments and equipment that had been gradually moved here over the past month.
It was said that he had some inspirations and was researching some situations related to alternate spaces, seemingly involving something like magnetic field fluctuations… Anyway, Chu Xingrui only listened for a few sentences before feeling a headache, and of course had no intention of going over to Yin Xubai’s side to suffer.
He walked towards Liu Ningshuang and Li Fufeng who were about to start playing chess, eagerly raising his hand. “Count me in, count me in! My luck has always been pretty good too.”
This drew double the dissatisfaction from Liu Ningshuang. “Good luck doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, watch me defeat you with skill!”
The three immediately began a “great battle”.
More than half an hour later, Liu Ningshuang lay on the sofa with lifeless eyes. She had lost so badly that she had become a dazed salted fish, only wanting to pound the ground. “Damn it, damn it, damn it… Cursed lucky bastards! Does being lucky mean you can do whatever you want?”
“Facts prove that being lucky does mean you can do whatever you want,” Chu Xingrui laughed heartily, his tone very smug.
Li Fufeng, lying on the other end of the sofa, only raised his arm at these words, holding up one finger, and said concisely. “+1.”
Liu Ningshuang: … Double critical hit!
She fell back holding her head, as if she had lost her soul.
“How about it? Want to play together?” At this moment, Liu Ningshuang heard Li Fufeng’s voice, “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
“—With four people playing, it would be just right.”
“Four people? My big cousin wouldn’t be interested in such a childish game…” Liu Ningshuang grumbled inwardly, about to speak out, when she suddenly realized something and her body froze.
She maintained her position of lying slanted on the sofa, her head turning to the left side like a machine, bit by bit.
She saw that Li Fufeng had somehow sat back down properly in front of the coffee table diagonally behind her, with the Aeroplane Chess board in front of him. He was seriously looking at the empty space opposite him, extending an invitation.
After a moment of silence, it seemed as if a gentle breeze quietly passed by, and the dice on the table rolled, finally stopping on the “six” side.
Then, a chess piece wobbled and floated up.
It seemed as if someone sat down on the sofa beside Liu Ningshuang, and a cold little hand brushed against her arm.
“Ah—!”
Liu Ningshuang let out a scream that could be described as tragic, leaping up from the sofa like a rabbit, and “whoosh” she rushed out, so fast that she left only a blur.
Li Fufeng: !
Chu Xingrui: !!!
To be honest, they weren’t scared by the chess piece floating in mid-air, but were startled by Liu Ningshuang instead.
Chu Xingrui was a bit scared at first, but Liu Ningshuang’s reaction confused him. He looked at Liu Ningshuang who had run out wildly, then turned to Li Fufeng. “Has she always been so afraid of…cough.” Considering a certain presence, he didn’t say the word “ghost”. “Has she always been like this?”
“Mm, actually she’s usually quite brave.” Li Fufeng’s mouth twitched, trying to save face for his friend, “Probably… it’s an overreaction because she’s not familiar with the little one?”
As if to verify Li Fufeng’s words, in less than two minutes, the inn door was opened again, and Liu Ningshuang, who had just run out wildly, walked in leisurely, her demeanor elegant and composed, looking even unusually ladylike. It was as if nothing had happened earlier, and everything had just been everyone’s illusion.
She coughed lightly twice, moved a stool to sit across from the sofa on the other side of the coffee table, trying her best to control her eyes from drifting in a certain direction, her expression as solemn as if she was going to the battlefield.
“Didn’t you say we were going to play Aeroplane Chess? Let’s play!”
Perhaps her reaction amused a certain little one, making the little fellow find it interesting too. The dice rolled in mid-air again, signaling the start of the game.
The other two people also politely ignored what had just happened, pretending nothing had occurred, although they couldn’t suppress the smiles at the corners of their mouths and eyes.
The four “people” thus happily started playing chess.
…No, only they were happy, while I had nothing. Liu Ningshuang was practically crying a river in her heart.
To be precise, only Li Fufeng and the invisible little one were truly immersed in the joy of the game; Chu Xingrui was a bit scared, a bit novel, and a bit uncontrollably curious; as for Liu Ningshuang…
A melancholic BGM played in her heart.
But regardless, everyone had some uncontrollable excitement in their hearts—they were very clear about what everything happening now meant! It meant that the ghost was finally willing to communicate.
The four played several rounds of flying chess before stopping.
“I’ll go check on how my big cousin is progressing,” Liu Ningshuang felt the time was right, the earlier embarrassing incident had been turned over, so she found a random excuse to slip out of the living room.
“Go ahead,” Chu Xingrui was also starting to feel bored, so he found a place to curl up and started playing a mobile game.
The only one who could still happily continue playing flying chess with the little one was Li Fufeng.
While playing chess, he also talked to the little one, though it was basically just him talking to himself. It was mostly things like “How have you been feeling lately?”, “Did you like the chocolate I brought last time?”, “Don’t you get bored staying here alone every day without anyone else?” He sounded just like a caring elder relative who rarely gets to see a child living away from home.
The speed at which the chess pieces fell in mid-air became slower and slower, as if the other person was distracted by listening attentively to what he was saying.
“By the way, have you really not reconsidered? Mom and Dad could stay with you forever in a different form. You actually know that staying like this isn’t very good, right?”
At this moment, Li Fufeng suddenly spoke up, touching on the sensitive topic of “cremating the bodies” from before.
But this time, he wasn’t met with a violent gust of wind.
The floating chess piece slowly stopped in mid-air.
Seeing this, Li Fufeng’s eyes lit up, and he pressed on. “If you don’t believe us, you can follow us the whole time when we send Mom and Dad off.”
The chess piece fell heavily in mid-air.
Li Fufeng started guessing. “Is that a yes? Or a no? Can’t do it? You can’t leave this place?”
The chess pieces on the table flew up and fell down repeatedly, and Li Fufeng finally made a judgment, tentatively saying. “You agreed, but you can’t go yourself?”
He suddenly reached out his hand and grasped the chess piece suspended in mid-air, only feeling as if a cold sensation flashed by.
Li Fufeng smiled slightly.
“Then, leave everything to me. Don’t worry, I’ll personally take them away, and I’ll personally bring them back.”
“Hey hey hey, it’s settled just like that?”
When the others returned, they all showed expressions of surprise upon hearing about the agreement between the two from Li Fufeng.
“That’s amazing, my little Li!” Liu Ningshuang exclaimed in admiration. To her, ghosts were at the very top of the food chain, and Li Fufeng could even handle beings at the top of the food chain. This was simply a good job, super impressive!
In any case, everyone was quite happy.
This time, when they went to move those two corpses, they indeed didn’t encounter any obstruction or sabotage, and smoothly brought them out of the hotel.
At this point, everyone realized that according to Li Fufeng’s relay, the ghost temporarily couldn’t leave the hotel. So if they took the bodies out but didn’t fulfill their promise, or if they took samples from the bodies for research, the ghost wouldn’t know.
“Tsk, indeed still a child, too easy to fool!” Chu Xingrui exclaimed thus, “Li Fufeng, if you were to go kidnap children, you’d succeed every single time.”
Despite saying this, no one intended to violate the agreement. Even though someone mentioned they could collect some blood from the bodies or something similar, even Yin Xubai, who had been eyeing those two corpses covetously wanting to collect some samples, didn’t agree.
—Although he didn’t think taking a few samples was excessive, once an agreement was reached, it should be kept. In this regard, Yin Xubai was also a very principled person.
Moreover…
“I’m not capable of deceiving children.”
With even Yin Xubai saying this, the others were even less likely to object. Under the special channel opened by the Special Case Investigation Team, the two corpses were sent to the crematorium that very day.
That night, the inn door was opened again.
Li Fufeng brought the urn containing the ashes overnight.
There was actually no need to be so urgent; everyone’s idea was to bring it along when they came the next day, but Li Fufeng seemed to always have a kind of ability to empathize with people’s hearts and a strange sense of responsibility.
He always felt that it wasn’t good to let the little one stay alone in the inn separated from mom and dad even for just one night, and perhaps the little one had been waiting for him to bring back the ashes. As the person who proposed this agreement, he had a responsibility to fulfill it.
Therefore, Li Fufeng came directly without waiting for the next day.
After greeting as usual, Li Fufeng looked around, placed the urn he was holding in the cabinet behind the reception desk, carefully examined it, felt this place was appropriate, and then stepped back.
He had just turned around when he heard a “pop” sound, and the old TV on the wall suddenly lit up.
It started up directly without anyone controlling it.
Li Fufeng opened his mouth in surprise.
The screen flickered with static, then turned into a blank background, like a snow-white drawing paper.
Lines gradually began to be drawn on the “drawing paper”, then another, and another… Line after line sketched out a hall with furniture on the screen. And diagonal short black lines symbolizing raindrops.
Looking carefully, one would find that the gradually forming indoor structure was almost identical to the layout of this inn.
“This is…”
Two little figures were sketched out in the picture, then the static image became dynamic, and the little figures started moving on the screen. A figure painted entirely black walked to the center of the screen, with horn-like protrusions on its head like a demon king.
The two little figures fell down, and red lines began to spread. Another little figure came down the stairs, the black figure leisurely chasing it like a cat chasing a mouse. The little figure scurried all over the screen, then fell.
The entire screen turned into large patches of red.
The smile on Li Fufeng’s lips gradually faded.
He had already figured out what this simple animation represented.
“…Is this what happened that night?” he spoke softly, “Is this what you saw?”
As his words fell, the screen changed again, showing the familiar news channel, with the anchor’s familiar and rigid script: […Once again reminding all citizens to be cautious, the serial killer ‘K’, who has taken thirteen lives, is highly likely to have entered our city…]
Soon, the image on the TV screen switched again.
This time, it showed a little boy who looked only four or five years old, standing in the hall playing with a toy car, waving his arms and legs, looking very happy. Two shadowy figures, a man and a woman whose faces couldn’t be clearly seen, stood beside him, smiling as they watched him.
The scene changed once more, showing the little boy slightly older, sitting on the ground covering his bleeding knee and crying, while the woman with an unclear face gently comforted him.
Maintaining a frequency of changing about every three seconds, the images on the TV screen flashed rapidly. The main character was almost always that little boy, sometimes with the couple appearing, sometimes with some children of the same age, but except for himself, the faces of others were always blurry.
Li Fufeng vaguely understood and murmured, “Are these your memories? Are these the things that left deep impressions on you? Can I consider that you already see me as a friend, little Adams?”
At this point, he smiled.
“…This way of communication is quite special.”
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