Mu Geshen’s method for finding the person—or, more accurately, the soul—was simple: elimination.
They would search the classrooms one by one, wandering around like headless flies. Eventually, even a blind cat was bound to stumble upon a dead mouse. One way or another, they would find it.
An Ping’s way of addressing Mu Geshen had undergone a complete transformation. He’d gone from “Mu,” or “big brother,” to “Master Immortal.”
Now he stood clutching a broom, trembling from head to toe.
“M-Master Immortal, are we really just going to walk straight out there?”
Mu Geshen had just told him that the Three Paths Interstice was crawling with filthy supernatural things. And all they had was a broomstick. What good was that supposed to do?
“An Ping’er, if you’re really that scared, there’s also a mop bucket here.” Mu Geshen nudged the bucket beside his foot. “I can put it over your head for you.”
Negotiations went nowhere. An Ping drooped like a wilted plant, his face full of misery.
“Then I’m begging you, please make sure I get out of here alive!”
“Sure. Just pay me.”
An Ping was instantly delighted. His family was reasonably well-off, and he could be considered a second-generation rich kid. Any problem that could be solved with money wasn’t a problem at all.
“Of course! How much do you charge?”
Mu Geshen fished a handful of coins out of his pocket and casually tossed them into the air.
“When I first came in, I cast a divination and determined that the class representative’s soul is somewhere inside the Octagonal Building. I’ll throw in that reading for free. The building has eight floors, with ninety-six classrooms in total. Pick any classroom you like, and I’ll divine whether there’s a soul inside. Three thousand yuan per reading. Thank you for your patronage.”
An Ping wasn’t stupid. He immediately sensed something fishy.
“Wait. Can’t you just cast one divination and tell me which classroom the soul is in?”
“I can. That’ll be three hundred thousand yuan per reading. An Ping’er, have you made up your mind?”
An Ping staggered and pointed at him, speechless for several seconds.
“You—you—you…”
“I’m a profiteer.” Mu Geshen helpfully supplied the rest of the sentence.
“Coming right up.” Mu Geshen flicked a coin with his finger, sending it spinning through the air. “Why did you choose this classroom?”
“No particular reason,” An Ping replied. “Room 103 was our classroom in our first year of high school.”
“What’s there to divine about that? Since you have a clue, just go in if you want to.”
An Ping had the nerve to be curious but not the courage to act on it. “No, no. If the reading says there’s nothing inside, I’d rather not go looking for trouble and invite some supernatural nonsense.”
The coin dropped into Mu Geshen’s palm. He glanced at it and smiled. “A good start! There’s something related to the class representative in Room 103.”
“Is it her soul?” An Ping asked hopefully.
“Hard to say. It could be a nightmare puppet, or something else entirely. But it’s definitely connected to the class representative.” Mu Geshen smiled pleasantly. “If you want a more precise answer, I can do that, too. But that’ll cost extra.”
Always smiling politely, always ready to pounce when money was involved. An Ping was utterly speechless.
“Forget it. Let’s go have a look first.”
The two left the storage closet. Outside, the birds were shrieking so loudly it seemed the sky itself was ringing. White bird droppings fell with a constant splattering patter, occasionally hitting the corridor. An indescribable stench permeated the entire area: a stuffy, oppressive dryness mixed with a murky, fishy smell. The air seemed stagnant, yet somehow carried a sharp, piercing chill.
Room 103 was at the other end of the corridor. Mu Geshen was taller than An Ping, so he held the school uniform over both their heads as they strolled leisurely toward the opposite end.
An Ping was a nervous wreck. He desperately wanted to run across as quickly as possible, but he didn’t dare go alone. In the end, he had no choice but to grit his teeth and cling tightly to Mu Geshen, looking like a corked gourd about to burst from anxiety.
At last, they reached the door of Room 103.
Mu Geshen seemed to sense An Ping’s unease. He gripped the doorknob but made no move to turn it, deliberately dragging things out as though he were enjoying a show.
“Ready? Shall we go in?”
“AAAAAH! Will you please stop messing with me?!” With the birds shrieking so loudly that no one could hear him anyway, An Ping finally threw caution to the wind and shouted at the top of his lungs, “JUST OPEN THE DOOR AND LET’S GO IN!”
Before his words had even faded, the door creaked open.
An Ping didn’t dare look. He covered his eyes and asked, “Master Immortal, what’s in there?”
Mu Geshen’s voice came from inside the room. “It’s fine. Why don’t you come in and see for yourself?”
Mu Geshen’s idea of “fine” didn’t necessarily mean that everything was fine. Nevertheless, An Ping opened his eyes as if preparing to face his own death.
To his surprise, it really was just as Mu Geshen had said. It looked like a perfectly ordinary room.
Although the doorway belonged to a classroom, everything beyond it had changed. The walls were bare, unfinished concrete, and a battered, dilapidated bed sat in one corner.
Mu Geshen stood in the middle of the room, surveying his surroundings before offering his assessment.
“This is a coffin room.”
“What did you say?” An Ping’s heart had only just begun to settle, but now it leaped straight back into his throat. “A coffin room?”
“No windows on any of the four walls. No ventilation, no natural light, but the ceiling leaks.” Mu Geshen pointed upward. “Imagine it: a coffin buried underground, slowly rotting over the years, with water gradually seeping down from above… Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
An Ping’s imagination had already sprinted straight toward zombies and Chinese-style mummies. A chill ran through him.
“What does this room have to do with the class representative?”
“The class representative entered the Three Paths Interstice because of an unresolved emotional knot. Whatever is in this room should be connected to what’s going on inside her mind.”
Mu Geshen looked around. Then, quite suddenly, he walked over to the bed and bent down, pulling something out from underneath it.
It was a plastic washbasin containing a heap of blackish, mushy material.
An Ping’s imagination had wandered so far off the rails that he had no idea where it was going anymore.
“What is that? Internal organs? A stillborn baby? Placenta?”
“You’ve been reading quite a lot of novels, class rep.” Mu Geshen peered into the basin. “The ingredients in here aren’t nearly that complicated.”
“Then what exactly is it?”
“Leftover food, excrement, and vomit.” Mu Geshen held the basin with an utterly calm expression. “All from a living person, not a dead one. Someone was probably locked up in this room and had to eat, drink, relieve themselves, and vomit into the same basin. This looks like several days’ worth.”
“Was it the class representative?” An Ping’s imagination immediately took off again. “Was she kidnapped? Or sold into some remote mountain village, where she gave birth to a stillborn baby?”
“Try reading fewer sensational headlines in your spare time. If the class representative heard you saying that, An Ping’er, your miserable life would probably be over.”
“That’s a minor issue. The important thing is to rescue her first… What are you doing?!”
An Ping’s voice suddenly shot up an octave.
Mu Geshen had actually reached into the basin and pinched something out of it.
“What is that?” An Ping forced himself to approach, fighting back his nausea. “Is it really a stillborn baby?”
“An Ping’er, do you have some kind of obsession with stillborn babies?” Mu Geshen said helplessly.
He took out a packet of tissues and slowly wiped the object in his hand clean.
It was a sunshine doll—a little handmade ghost-like charm traditionally hung up to wish for good weather.
“This is another kind of nightmare puppet, the same type as the ones upstairs. But it carries less ill fortune. You could call it a low-end version.” Mu Geshen held the doll by its head and gave it a little shake. “It won’t attack anyone, so you don’t have to hide all the way over there, An Ping’er.”
An Ping would have loved to retreat another twenty-five feet. He stood stubbornly at the other end of the room.
“What does this thing have to do with the class representative?”
“There isn’t enough information to tell yet.”
Mu Geshen pulled out another handful of coins.
“Let’s keep going. Which room should we check next?”
An Ping thought for a moment. “Room 207. I remember the class representative has a pretty close friend who studies there.”
There really was something in Room 207.
When they pushed open the door, they found an office inside.
After having his nerves put through several roller-coaster rides, An Ping had finally managed to calm down a little.
“This shouldn’t be a school office.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“I often go to ask teachers questions, and I’ve been to several subject departments. None of their offices are decorated like this.” An Ping looked at the words Traditional Chinese Studies framed on the wall. “Besides, our school has never offered a class in traditional Chinese studies.”
“You’re the top student. I’ll take your word for it.”
Mu Geshen made a circuit of the office, then stopped in front of a row of glass-fronted bookcases.
The cabinets themselves looked quite ordinary. The strange thing was that they were filled with clocks. Every single clock had stopped, and each one showed a different time.
“What does this mean?” An Ping had noticed the collection, too. No matter how he looked at it, the scene was bizarre. “Is there something wrong with these clocks?”
“I’m looking at the times displayed on them.” Mu Geshen tapped on the glass cabinet, deep in thought. “Eight thirty-five, nine thirty, ten fourteen, eleven oh seven…”
He turned to An Ping.
“An Ping’er, do you know the school’s class schedule?”
An Ping didn’t understand at first. “The class schedule? You mean the timetable?”
“No.” Mu Geshen had clearly been away from school for so long that he was struggling to express himself. “I mean the daily schedule. What time each period starts and ends, that sort of thing.”
“Of course I know. What about it?” An Ping calculated it mentally. “We have five periods in the morning, classes start at 7:50, and lunch break starts at 11:50… Wait a minute.”
He looked up at the cabinet again.
“I think I get it.”
Mu Geshen hummed in acknowledgment. “Not bad. You caught on quickly.”
All the times displayed on the clocks in front of them corresponded to the breaks between classes.
“Except this one.”
Mu Geshen had finished examining the entire cabinet. He took out a clock and held it up.
“The time this one shows is a class period.”
He looked at the object in front of him and smiled slightly.
“Found it.”
Behind the clock sat a glass jar filled with loose change.
Mu Geshen took out the jar and shook it. Amid the coins, the head of a little sunshine doll peeked out.
Its facial features had been drawn with watercolor markers. It wore an expression somewhere between crying and smiling, its mouth stretched into a rather sinister grin.
“It was buried in the coins?” An Ping watched as Mu Geshen pulled out the doll, feeling both confused and horrified. “What does this mean? Collect all seven dolls and summon the dragon?”
“From the time shown on this clock onward, all the times displayed on the clocks behind it are out of order.” Mu Geshen closed the glass cabinet. “Don’t touch any of the other clocks.”
An Ping immediately snatched his hand away from the cabinet.
“Then what do we do next?”
Mu Geshen pulled a key ring from his pocket and threaded the sunshine doll onto it, as though adding another key.
“Come on. Let’s go to the next room.”
Behind the third door was a kitchen. It was spacious, resembling the school’s main kitchen. An Ping found a decapitated sunshine doll on the chopping board.
Mu Geshen glanced at it and immediately said, “Let’s go. There’s nothing useful in this room anymore.”
Behind the fourth door was a restroom. The sinks were full of filthy standing water. Mu Geshen dismantled the drainpipe and fished a completely soaked sunshine doll out of the plumbing.
“This one barely qualifies. There’s probably still some hope for it.”
Behind the fifth door was a convenience store, where they found a sunshine doll inside a discarded instant-noodle cup. The sixth room was the broadcasting studio, the seventh an equipment room, and the eighth a washroom. Then came the ninth, the tenth, and so on…
The two made their way from the first floor up to the sixth. By then, Mu Geshen’s key ring was covered in a whole bunch of sunshine dolls.
An Ping had begun to understand a little of what was going on.
“You’re collecting these dolls? Do they have something to do with the class representative’s soul?”
“Not a bad theory.” Mu Geshen’s voice came from ahead of him. “Care to take another guess?”
“There are too many possibilities. I can’t figure it out.” An Ping shook his head. “Master Immortal, just give me a straight answer.”
“Having a good imagination isn’t a bad thing. Make bold hypotheses, then verify them carefully.”
Mu Geshen stopped in front of a door. This was the room he had just identified through divination.
“You want a straight answer, An Ping’er? One thousand yuan per sentence. Thank you for your patronage.”
An Ping promptly turned away and pushed open the door.
In the middle of the room stood a computer.
As An Ping approached it, his imagination had already generated hundreds of possible horror-movie scenarios.
“Should I turn it on? What if a female ghost crawls out of the computer?”
“Sadako crawls out of a television. A computer probably isn’t the right size for her.” Mu Geshen walked over and pressed the power button without hesitation. “It’s just a computer—”
He paused.
“—Not!”
The screen flashed on with a sharp snap.
A piercing scream burst out of the computer, mixed with indistinct sobbing and laughter. The screen was filled with sunshine dolls, violently slamming their heads against whatever lay in front of them, as though desperately trying to escape from inside the computer.
Their expressions varied wildly. Some looked deranged, others vacant and foolish, and still others filled with venomous resentment. Yet every single one of them stared fixedly at An Ping and Mu Geshen.
Even more horrifyingly, those pale heads were actually bleeding. In the blink of an eye, the entire screen had turned bright red.
Mu Geshen glanced at An Ping, who was frozen in terror.
“Are we leaving or not?”
“W-Wh-Wh-What?!”
“They’re about to come out.” Mu Geshen pointed at the computer.
Before he had even finished speaking, the screen made a sharp crack, and several fractures appeared across it.
An Ping belatedly let out a howl and shot straight out of the room.
“That was a pretty good scream just now. You’ve got the sound of someone wailing at a funeral down pat.”
Mu Geshen followed An Ping out and shut the door behind them.
“An Ping’er, do you have anything you can use to defend yourself?”
“What kind of thing?” An Ping was still badly shaken. “Are those sunshine dolls really going to come out?”
“We’ve already provoked them. This door probably won’t hold them back for long.”
Mu Geshen locked the classroom from the outside, then suddenly said, “The birds have stopped calling.”
At some point, the birds had indeed fallen silent. Yet the hysterical screaming behind the door continued, creating a strange echo throughout the corridor.
Mu Geshen blinked.
“This building is about to wake up.”
“What do you mean, it’s about to wake up?!”
Before An Ping could finish speaking, a scraping, crackling sound came from deep within the corridor.
“Those are the nightmare puppets. There might be other things, too. We’ve woken them up.”
Mu Geshen looked into the distance.
“Whoa. They look pretty impressive. And they’ve even brought weapons.”
An Ping made the fatal mistake of looking back.
Far down the corridor, a mass of pale figures was gradually approaching. They were the same paper effigies he had encountered in the classroom earlier.
Some of them were holding objects resembling wooden rulers. Whenever they reached a classroom door, they knocked on it once. The door would then swing open, and even more paper effigies would emerge.
Their pace grew faster and faster.
Suddenly, one of the paper figures lunged forward. It leaped high into the air, its bright-red mouth stretching wide open mid-flight, and charged straight at An Ping—
“Off you go!”
Mu Geshen grabbed An Ping by the collar, swung him through the air, then flung a handful of coins backward.
The coins pierced straight through the paper effigy, which immediately collapsed to the ground, weightless and limp.
At the same time, An Ping was thrown directly upstairs.
“Room 707! Open the door and see what’s inside!” Mu Geshen’s voice rang out from below.
The throw was so powerful that An Ping crashed straight through a doorway before he even had time to land properly. He hit the floor hard, leaving his head spinning.
After finally managing to get back to his feet, he stumbled out into the corridor and looked at the room number.
Sure enough, it was Room 707.
“Are you okay?!” An Ping craned his neck, trying to look downstairs.
A coin immediately smacked him back.
“Don’t get distracted!” Mu Geshen shouted from below. “Check what’s inside the classroom first!”
An Ping shouted back at the top of his lungs, sounding like a ghost wailing at a funeral. “THE WHOLE ROOM IS FULL OF DOLLS!”
An entire room of sunshine dolls.
Some were hanging from the ceiling by their necks.
Others had nails driven straight through their heads and were pinned to the walls.
The floor was littered with scraps of shredded cloth mixed with blood-red stains, as though the dolls had been torn apart limb from limb.
Before An Ping had even finished speaking, Mu Geshen climbed up as well and glanced into the classroom.
“We’ve found all the ones that can still be saved. Looks like all the ones that are completely dead are in here.”
An Ping was utterly bewildered. “What do you mean, the ones that can still be saved? And what do you mean, completely dead?!”
“Stop trying to make everything rhyme and hold on to this.” Mu Geshen handed him the key ring. “The class representative’s soul is all here. I’ll throw you to the exit, and you just need to take it outside.”
As he spoke, he reached for An Ping’s collar.
“Wait, wait, WAIT!” An Ping kicked and flailed in midair. “I’ll pay extra! I’ll pay extra! Just explain what the hell is going on!”
“How much extra?”
“You name the price!”
“Ten thousand?”
“Deal!”
“Then thirty thousand. Thank you for your patronage.”
Mu Geshen continued holding An Ping by the collar, but instead of throwing him outside, he took off running with him.
“This Three Paths Interstice isn’t very large. The class representative has been unconscious for too long, and her consciousness is about to merge completely with the entire space. The rooms we just opened were showing her memories—or, more accurately, the knots in her heart.”
“The things in those rooms were her memories?”
“Exactly. The Interstice has nearly finished digesting the class representative. Piecing together her consciousness from inside it is extremely difficult. What I was doing just now was actually divining the location of the remnants of her consciousness.”
Mu Geshen continued running as he explained, “Every sunshine doll represents a fragment of the class representative’s mind and consciousness. Every time one is destroyed, a little more of her soul is swallowed by the Three Paths Interstice. Eventually, it’ll devour her completely, and she’ll become one of the Interstice’s puppets.”
“So all the dolls in Room 707 were the parts of her consciousness that had already died?” An Ping asked incredulously. “With so many of them dead, can we still save her soul?”
“You get what you pay for. Rest assured, boss.” Mu Geshen said confidently, “The ones we just found that are still alive are enough. I guarantee I’ll return your class representative to you in one piece.”
An Ping hurriedly packed everything away.
“Then where are we going now?”
“Running for our lives. The nightmare puppets are formed from the dead sunshine dolls. We just woke up an entire room of them, and these things multiply quickly. They’ll probably catch up with us any second.”
No sooner had he spoken than the entire building shook violently. The ceiling came crashing down, and a huge mass of nightmare puppets lunged at them, baring their teeth and shrieking horribly.
Mu Geshen simply turned the An Ping he was holding into a weapon, swinging him around in a wide circle to clear a path.
An Ping was completely disoriented. One paper figure bit off his shoe, and before he could even recover, another white face appeared right in front of him. With its eyebrows askew and its eyes crooked, it shrieked at him:
“Is it not a pleasure to have friends come from afar?!”
An Ping: WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL IS THIS THING?!
“Hey, not bad. It’s even cultured.” Mu Geshen laughed.
He leaped down to the floor below, landing right in front of the broadcasting room. He kicked a paper figure that had wrapped itself around him through the doorway, then locked the door behind it.
The door shook violently, and the shrill sound of fingernails scraping against it rang out.
Before An Ping could breathe a sigh of relief, deafening music suddenly blared throughout the building.
“THE SECOND SET OF NATIONAL BROADCAST CALISTHENICS FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS—THE TIMES ARE CALLING!”
An Ping nearly choked. “Of all the places you could’ve kicked it, why did you have to kick it into the broadcasting room?!”
“No. 1 High School’s morning exercises are seriously outdated.” Mu Geshen sighed. “But we should be grateful. At least they didn’t play the music they use for ceremonies. Our school uses Zhu Bajie Carrying His Bride as the background music for the annual awards ceremony.”
An Ping: “…”
More classroom doors opened, and more and more paper figures crowded around them.
Mu Geshen used An Ping as a battering ram to clear the way. Against the stirringly patriotic music of the broadcast exercises, the two fought their way through the building to the third floor, accompanied by a relentless rhythm of “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Two, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!”
Mu Geshen kicked open a classroom door and swiftly dealt with the paper figures that lunged at them from inside.
“Look around. See if there’s any Old-Steam-Pickled-Cabbage Beef Noodles.”
Only then did An Ping realize they were back in the convenience store they had visited earlier.
He found a packet on the shelf.
“What do you need this for?”
“Not the packet kind. Find the cup version.” Mu Geshen stood guard at the doorway. “Unless you want to make instant noodles in a plastic bag.”
“Of all the times to be thinking about food, why are you still thinking about eating?!”
“When the class representative wandered into the Three Paths Interstice, she was eating pickled-cabbage noodles. We ate pickled-cabbage noodles when we came in, too. This stuff is the link connecting us to the outside world. We have to eat it to get out.”
Mu Geshen kicked a paper figure a good eight yards away.
“Move faster. My legs are getting sore.”
“Right away, right away!” An Ping hurried to speed things up. “Your coins work so well. Why do you insist on fighting hand-to-hand?”
“I’m saving money.”
“…Pretend I never asked.”
After a great deal of effort, An Ping finally dug out a cup of Old-Steam-Pickled-Cabbage Beef Noodles.
Mu Geshen then dragged him to the washroom to get some water before throwing him into another room.
“Wait until the noodles are ready, then eat as much as you can. We should be able to get back soon.”
An Ping looked around the room.
“…Why do I have to eat in here?”
“The yin and yang energies in the Three Paths Interstice are colliding. This is the place with the heaviest yin energy, and it’s also the least stable. That makes it easier to leave from here.” Mu Geshen explained, “It’ll take a while for the noodles to soften. An Ping’er, do you have anything you can use to defend yourself?”
An Ping looked around.
“Would a toilet plunger work?”
“Not a stick or a club. With your fighting skills, you’d be giving yourself away for free. Something like a protective talisman would be better—ideally, something that wards off evil spirits.”
An Ping pulled a red cord out from under his clothes. A jade clasp was tied to the end.
“Would this work?”
“Yes.”
Mu Geshen bit his finger, smeared some blood onto the jade clasp, then stuffed it into An Ping’s mouth.
“Just hold it in your mouth. Don’t spit it out or swallow it. That way, if something suddenly appears, it won’t be able to get close to you.”
An Ping mumbled around the jade. “What about you?”
“I need to clear out the things outside. This Three Paths Interstice is unstable, and I have to make sure nothing else escapes.”
Mu Geshen walked out.
“Save me a bite of the noodles when they’re ready. I’ll be back soon.”
With that, he closed the door.
An Ping was still worried. He was just about to follow Mu Geshen outside when he discovered that the door had been locked from the outside.
Then he realized something.
With the jade clasp in his mouth, how was he supposed to eat his instant noodles without accidentally swallowing it?
And he was doing all this in a freaking women’s restroom.