Chapter 1 The Beginning

Cheng Wen sat on the chair in his rented room, his feet tapping incessantly on the floor, the vibrations from his shoes stirring up the dust and ashes.

The orange glow of the cigarette butt was the only light source in the entire room. Cheng Wen anxiously puffed out smoke, occasionally sticking out his tongue to lick his dry lips.

"Why isn't he here yet?"

Cheng Wen muttered to himself, reaching under the chair to pull out a steel baseball bat. He walked to the door, wanting to see how far Cheng Wu had gotten.

Before he could reach the door, a series of knocks sounded: tap, tap, tap.

*He's here.*

Cheng Wen's heart leaped with joy. He bent down, put his eye to the peephole, and looked outside through the glass lens.

All he saw in the peephole was a field of red.

?

Cheng Wen blinked and peered into the peephole again, but still, only red.

*Is there a red "Fu" (Good Fortune) character, the kind used during the Spring Festival, pasted on the door?*

Cheng Wen wasn't sure about his memory. Hesitantly, he spoke softly to the outside, "Cheng Wu, is that you?"

There was no response.

Cheng Wen licked his parched lips, gripped the steel baseball bat tightly, and just as he was about to pull open the door, he heard the sound of cloth shoes scraping against the concrete floor outside.

*Shua la, shua la.*

The footsteps weren't heavy, but they were extremely slow, making it easy to imagine an old woman with a hunched back and faltering steps, pacing back and forth outside the door.

Cheng Wen raised his voice slightly, "Cheng Wu?"

Instead of a reply, the loud, aged voice of an old woman rang out, "Er Zhu, Er Zhu? Is that you?"

"...That damn old hag."

Cheng Wen cursed inwardly, worried that the old woman was too noisy and would wake the other residents in the building. He had no choice but to lean the baseball bat against the corner of the wall where it couldn't be seen from outside, and reach out to push open the security door.

The door opened to reveal an old woman standing in the corridor, her hair completely white, her face aged, her back hunched, and a cloth bag clutched tightly in her hand.

"Er Zhu, where's Er Zhu?"

Cheng Wen saw the bulging bag in the old woman's hand, his eyes widening. He quickly said, "Er Zhu is inside, Grandma. Please, come in."

"Oh, okay."

The old woman nodded slowly and raised her foot.

*Thud.*

The sound of something heavy falling came from outside the security door.

*Gurgle, gurgle.*

An irregular sphere fell onto the concrete floor of the corridor outside Cheng Wen's room, rolling continuously.

By the moonlight, Cheng Wen could see clearly what the sphere was.

A head.

Cheng Wu's head.

Cheng Wen was all too familiar with his twin brother's face.

But at this moment, Cheng Wu's eyes were opened to their limit. His bloodshot, crimson eyes were filled with boundless fear, his mouth agape, as if trying to scream but unable to make a sound.

From the severed neck, a few spurts of blood occasionally shot out from the blood vessels.

*Sizzle, sizzle.*

Cheng Wen instantly understood what the field of red he had seen in the peephole earlier was—Cheng Wu's bloodshot eyeballs pressed against the security door.

He felt his scalp tingle, his legs trembling. Looking at the old woman's mocking smile, he wanted to scream, but his vocal cords were like a rusty conveyor belt, unmoving.

His usual bravery and bullying of the weak had turned into the most primal and essential cowardice and fear.

He hurriedly slammed the security door shut, his trembling fingers struggling to lock it.

Grabbing the steel baseball bat from the corner of the wall, Cheng Wen took two steps back and screamed, "Help! Fire! Fire!"

Cries for help in the middle of the night often don't garner assistance from neighbors, but shouts about a fire attract all the nearby residents.

Cheng Wen gripped the baseball bat and shouted loudly, but he didn't hear any footsteps from the corridor. The entire building seemed to have fallen into absolute silence, without a sound.

He forced himself to calm down, staring intently at the door, slowly retreating, grabbing the phone from the coffee table, and dialing the police.

As a local hoodlum, he was usually the one forcing ordinary people to call the police, but now, in his panicked state, Cheng Wen had to treat this call as his only lifeline.

*Beep, beep, beep.*

The call connected quickly. Cheng Wen shouted into the phone, "Hello?! This is Jing..."

"Hee hee, hee hee."

A narrow, slow laughter came from the other end of the phone, interrupting Cheng Wen.

"Hee hee, hee hee, good grandson, please open the door for Grandma."

The voice of the aged woman rang out from the phone. Cheng Wen instinctively dropped the phone, as if his palm had been scalded by steam hotter than a hundred degrees.

*What's going on?!*

Cheng Wen didn't dare to breathe loudly. He silently rushed to one end of the living room, pushed open the window, and looked down.

The height difference of over twenty meters made him dizzy—the residential building still retained the rough, grainy walls of the last century. The window edge had less than a palm's width of narrow space, making it extremely difficult for anyone to find a foothold to climb.

Outside the security door, the gentle knocking gradually became louder without him noticing.

*Thump! Thump! Thump!*

It was as if an iron hammer was pounding on the security door.

The steel-reinforced door was hammered with a dent, and a sliver of moonlight leaked in from the crack in the door, spilling onto the soot-covered floor.

The pain of his twin brother's death was completely washed away by the fear of death.

After a moment's hesitation, Cheng Wen tucked the steel baseball bat into his belt at his waist, bent down, and climbed onto the windowsill.

He strained to twist his hand, clung to the raised windowsill, his upper body pressed against the edge of the window, his lower body slowly reaching outside the building.

With his feet dangling naturally, Cheng Wen struggled to maintain his balance, trying to get his legs, swaying from side to side, to reach the windowsill below.

While he was struggling, the deadly knocking suddenly stopped, and the world returned to silence.

Cheng Wen stopped climbing down. He seemed to sense something, staring intently at the door that had been cracked open.

*Crack—*

A hand, a hand as flat as a piece of paper, reached in from the crack in the door.

Then came the arm, the head, the neck, the upper body, the lower body.

The old woman, with one hand bent forward and the other bent back, a strange smile on her face, squeezed in diagonally from the crack in the door like a piece of paper.

Because she was holding a tilted posture, Cheng Wen could only see half of her face.

That wrinkled face was extremely "translucent," with clear lines and contours, and he could see all the tiny blood vessels distributed within it in the moonlight.

Cheng Wen suddenly remembered the tricks he had seen as a child. This was a shadow puppet, a shadow play.

"Grandson, where are you?"

The paper-like old woman slowly turned around, kept her body in a horizontal position, and showed half her smiling face to Cheng Wen, "Ah, so you're here."

The shadow puppet old woman waved her hands back and forth frantically, but her whole body remained horizontal, rushing towards Cheng Wen.