Wang Jinqiao was a man who didn't believe in superstitions. He didn't believe in past or future lives, nor in gods and ghosts. He only knew that when a person dies, it's like a lamp being extinguished; no matter how powerful they were in life, after death, they are just a handful of yellow earth. He had been in this line of work for several years and had seen at least eight hundred, if not a thousand, corpses. Those who died from illness, accidents, suicide, or homicide—at first, he would still be moved by some of the scenes, but later, he just grew numb.

In Wang Jinqiao's eyes, a corpse was just a piece of lifeless meat. Can a corpse move? The answer to that question was something Wang Jinqiao had never doubted. A dead person naturally couldn't move, and even if one occasionally twitched, it could be explained by physics. So that night, when he heard a sound coming from the freezer, his first reaction was that some living creature had gotten trapped inside.

Wang Jinqiao didn't think much of it. He walked nonchalantly to the freezer, raised his hand, and pulled open the drawer containing the corpse. He carefully searched inside but didn't find the small animal he imagined had been accidentally locked in.

The body bag lay quietly in the drawer, blocking his view and making it impossible to see the corpse inside. Wang Jinqiao suddenly noticed that the zipper on the body bag was partially unzipped. Seeing this, he began to curse under his breath, guessing it must have been the new, reckless employee who had forgotten to zip it up completely.

Wang Jinqiao zipped it up, pushed the drawer back in, and sat down on the chair outside again, playing on his phone to pass the night watch.

The nights at the funeral parlor were incredibly silent. The fear of death always kept people away. Wang Jinqiao thought of the family that had been brought in during the day, thinking to himself how truly tragic it was. It was a family of five; except for the wife, the husband, his parents, and their child had all died in the same car. The state of their bodies was beyond description—the most gruesome Wang Jinqiao had seen recently.

After the bodies were delivered, they contacted the family member to inquire about the subsequent funeral arrangements.

Wang Jinqiao had a deep impression of this family member. She was a young, beautiful woman, but she had a sinister and unsettling air about her. When he asked about the funeral arrangements, the woman was absent-minded, only perking up when he asked about the time for cremation.

“No hurry.” Her face was deathly pale, yet she wore bright red makeup. At first glance, she looked just like a heavily made-up corpse from the funeral parlor. She said, “No hurry to cremate them.”

“But leaving them here isn't a solution,” Wang Jinqiao said, his tone very careful, afraid of touching a nerve. “It's better for them to be laid to rest as soon as possible.”

Unexpectedly, the woman burst into laughter at his words. Her laughter was filled with incomprehensible mockery, directed less at Wang Jinqiao and more at herself. She said, “Rest? You think burying them will bring them rest?”

Wang Jinqiao was stunned.

The woman told him coldly to keep the bodies, as she wasn't considering cremation for the time being. Before Wang Jinqiao could ask why, she turned and left, muttering something as she went. Wang Jinqiao didn't hear clearly, only vaguely catching words like “come back, together.”

Many people react strangely to losing loved ones, so Wang Jinqiao didn't take it to heart. It wasn't until just a moment ago, when he sat back down in front of the computer, that he suddenly remembered: the corpse that had made the noise belonged to the woman's deceased family.

At this thought, Wang Jinqiao's mouth felt a little dry. He licked his lips and turned up the volume on his phone.

The office was deathly quiet, the sound of the funny video on his phone echoing off the walls. But amidst the exaggerated laughter, a faint yet jarring sound began to grate on Wang Jinqiao's nerves.

The sound was faint and thin, coming from the back of the room. It was a sticky, soft noise, like some kind of mollusk crawling on the floor.

Wang Jinqiao grew agitated. He desperately wanted to ignore the sound, but it was like a maggot boring into bone, constantly drilling into his ears and pounding against his eardrums.

“Fuck!” With a curse, Wang Jinqiao slammed his phone onto the table, stood up angrily, and headed for the freezer room.

“What the fuck is it, get out!” Wang Jinqiao cursed as he flicked on the freezer room light again. The moment the light came on, his vision went dark for a second, unaccustomed to such a piercing glare. When his pupils adjusted and he saw everything clearly, his breath caught in his throat.

The freezer before him was open, and the corpse inside had vanished. The empty drawer stung Wang Jinqiao's eyes. His first reaction was that someone had broken in and stolen the body, but after observing the area around the freezer, a fine layer of cold sweat quickly broke out on his forehead and the tip of his nose.

The freezer drawer was open, the body bag unzipped. A grotesque trail of blood stretched from the drawer, crawling up toward the ceiling.

Wang Jinqiao realized something. He trembled like a leaf, and a desperate moan escaped his lips from extreme fear. He slowly craned his neck and looked up.

He found it. The mangled corpse was there, hanging from the ceiling, its single remaining eye blinking at him.

A drop of blood fell, landing squarely on Wang Jinqiao's cheek. He felt a sharp pain in his heart, his vision flipped, and everything went black.

“Holy shit, holy shit!!!!” Liu Xi screamed when he saw this, almost throwing his phone again.

Luckily, Lin Banxia reacted quickly enough to stop him.

“Ah—ah—how did he just die? What the hell happened?” Liu Xi said. “What on earth did he see??”

Compared to Liu Xi, who was trembling with fear, Lin Banxia was much calmer. From their perspective, they had only seen the scene of Wang Jinqiao's sudden death, not what was on the ceiling. But he figured it wasn't anything pleasant.

Lin Banxia felt this wouldn't do. He said in a low voice, “Let’s call the police.”

Liu Xi said, “Right, right, let's call the police.” Before Lin Banxia could stop him, he snatched the phone, intending to dial 110.

“Wait!” Lin Banxia said. “Let me record this footage with my phone first.”

Liu Xi said, “Right, right, record it.” His mind was a mess, but when he went back to the previous page on his phone, the footage was gone.

Lin Banxia sighed at the sight, thinking to himself that this thing was as bizarre as he'd expected.

“How is it gone?” Liu Xi realized he couldn't find the video no matter how hard he looked, and he started to panic. “How did it just disappear?”

“Don't panic,” Lin Banxia said. “It's just a video...”

Liu Xi gave a bitter smile. “Brother Lin, I don't want to panic either, but who has ever encountered something like this?”

'Didn't my friend just have a run of bad luck? Now it's your turn,' Lin Banxia thought. But he kept it to himself; he couldn't possibly say that aloud. He said, “I'll go check out the funeral parlor after work. You should head home and get some rest. Think about it, if something bad is going to happen, it will happen at the funeral parlor. What could possibly happen to you?”

Liu Xi thought about it and said nothing, but judging by his troubled expression, he had probably replayed every horror movie he'd ever seen in his head a hundred times over.

The rest of the night was especially hard to get through. Liu Xi, who had been drowsy earlier, was now restless and unable to calm down.

Lin Banxia didn't try to calm him. After encountering something like this, it was nearly impossible for a person to stay calm. Wasn't Ji Leshui the best example?

When it was finally time to get off work, Liu Xi left in a hurry. Before going, he urged Lin Banxia not to go to the funeral parlor, saying the thought of the open freezer in the video made his blood run cold.

Lin Banxia waved at Liu Xi, gesturing for him to hurry home. Liu Xi sighed and trotted off.

The sky was already light, and people were beginning to stir. While most were heading to work, Lin Banxia was leisurely getting off his shift. He got on a bus headed for the funeral parlor and, sitting by the window, replayed the video from last night in his mind.

As he went over it in his mind, Lin Banxia suddenly realized he had overlooked a crucial detail.

After getting off the bus, Lin Banxia went straight to the funeral parlor. Security was much tighter due to the murder and the stolen body. Fortunately, Lin Banxia was a familiar face and managed to slip inside.

The crime scene was still cordoned off, so Lin Banxia couldn't enter. He could only stand by the window and peer inside. His gaze swept across the room through the glass, and he soon found what he was looking for: the location of the surveillance camera.

A funeral parlor was a sensitive place, after all, so the camera placement was quite thorough.

There was one in Wang Jinqiao's office and one in the freezer room where the bodies were kept, but neither matched the angle he and Liu Xi had seen in the video.

That video had cleverly captured both rooms, positioned so that they couldn't see what happened inside the freezer but could clearly see that Wang Jinqiao had entered the freezer room and been scared to death by something overhead.

So, the source of the video wasn't a surveillance camera at all? Was it recorded by someone on-site?

Lin Banxia took a step back. He couldn't determine what angle could have produced such a video. The only thing he could confirm was that the top-down perspective was not from a position an ordinary person could reach. Besides, if someone had been right overhead filming with a phone, how could Wang Jinqiao possibly not have noticed?

As Lin Banxia was looking, a hand tapped his shoulder. He turned to see a young man in a police uniform, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Hello, Police Uncle,” Lin Banxia said earnestly, straightening up.

“Let's skip the ‘Uncle’,” the young police officer said. “I can't be much older than you. What are you doing here?”

Lin Banxia said, “Visiting an old friend.”

The officer said, “Aren't they all dead? You can see them from here?”

Lin Banxia said, “Isn't he clinging to the ceiling right there?”

The officer: “...”

Lin Banxia: “Haha, just kidding.”

The officer took out his handcuffs. “Friend, why don't you come with me.”

Lin Banxia: “...” He really shouldn't have run his mouth.