Things had already escalated so far between the two of us that explanations felt pointless. There was still a wall between us—Bai Qi’s body was barely cold; forgiveness didn’t come that easily.
“I—” I hadn’t even decided what to say when a familiar voice called my name from outside. Thank God. I shut my mouth and looked ahead. Sure enough, Er Shuai was waiting at the gate of Gangliao City University of Technology.
The car rolled to a stop and I saw him: tall, thin, black-rimmed glasses. He’d spotted my car from a distance and waved. Gu Yuan killed the engine and Er Shuai practically leapt in, eyes rimmed with dark circles.
He smiled at me shyly. “Lanlan, I’m so glad to see you.”
I returned the smile out of politeness. “You haven’t been sleeping well, have you? You look awful.”
He scratched his head, embarrassed. “Yeah… I’ve been at the studio a lot these last few days. Something’s off there—especially at night. I even called Third Master to come take a look.”
“So you’d already been in touch with him?”
“Of course. This is weird. It needs people like you to investigate.”
While they chatted, Gu Yuan cleared his throat. “Ahem… come on. Lead us to Li Xiaoqian.”
Er Shuai finally shut up and pointed. “It’s that technology building. I work up there as a programmer. Li Xiaoqian is our boss’s client—she’s been showing up almost every night lately.”
He took a long drink of water and then spilled the whole story.
After I left, Chu Yancheng had been arrested. Lin Pingxi, the studio director, immediately tried to void his contract and demand compensation. Nothing would sway him—Li Xiaoqian even pleaded and couldn’t change his mind. Everyone assumed the deal was dead and Er Shuai half hoped he could take a day off to check on me.
Then, in a matter of minutes, Lin Pingxi did a complete about-face. The moment Li Xiaoqian reappeared, he dropped the termination and insisted on continuing the partnership. The sudden flip made everyone uneasy; no one expected their normally stern boss to be so weak-kneed. Nobody looked good in that light—why was he so taken with her?
A few days later, Er Shuai had already left work when he realized he’d forgotten his keys. He went back for them and that’s when things turned wrong.
The studio felt like an icebox. Frost seeped from the doorframe; a white breath puffed from the gap. He didn’t dare open the door. Instead he circled the building and came to the glass wall by the boss’s office. The cold was stronger there; the glass had a riming frost that glistened like tiny blades. Then he noticed—this frost had a red tint, like frozen blood.
He froze. Boss was still in there—something must have happened.
He crouched near an uncovered vent where the boss’s broken air conditioner had been removed. From that small hole he could peer inside. The matte glass usually let you make out silhouettes, but through the vent everything was black. He leaned in, heart pounding, and at first he thought it was his imagination—then something red started to writhe and crawl out of the vent.
It wasn’t a snake. It was a tongue.
Er Shuai nearly screamed but clamped his mouth shut and fell back to the floor. His hands and knees scrambled as he tried to retreat. Only then did the full picture register: behind the frosted glass stood a woman, drenched in red. I don’t mean she was wearing blood—she had no skin. Her eyes were open from forehead to chin, entirely exposed, and they stared down at him without blinking.
How long she’d been watching him, he didn’t know. Through the vent he’d only seen the mouth—the red writhing thing was her tongue.
He wanted to bolt, but before he could get very far the woman stepped through the glass wall and came out of the office. She was carrying a human leg. Blood dripped from the thigh socket. Er Shuai recognized it immediately—his boss’s leg; the boss had a long scar in that spot.
As she lunged at him, something white flared from his chest. The woman was thrown backward with a scream, slammed against the wall, and then simply vanished.
Er Shuai felt his pockets and remembered—some time before I’d given him a talisman. That charm had just saved his life. He didn’t stay to think about it. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore and then called Gu Yuan in a panic. “There’s something wrong at the studio,” he said.
When he finished his story he wasn’t pale or shaking. Not at all. He told it as if reciting a weird anecdote, which surprised me—any ordinary person would have been crippled with terror after what he’d seen.
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
He scratched his head and grinned a little. “At the time? Yeah. I thought I was done for. But then I thought—how many times have I already gone through? Reborn, reset, whatever you want to call it—I’ve seen worse. This is nothing.”
He paused, suddenly earnest. “Besides… there were things I hadn’t had a chance to tell you yet. I’d be pretty annoyed to die before finishing them.”
He said that right in front of Gu Yuan. Gu Yuan’s face went long and sour, as if the world had just cheated him out of something.