Chapter 20: The Notebook Hidden in the Wall
After contacting Su Mi and putting away his phone, Luxianbei stood up, carefully observing the surroundings, and then decided to explore the building.
With the experience of encountering the strange old man earlier, he did not rush upstairs. Instead, he observed the first floor, confirming all the possible escape routes from the building before he began to explore upwards.
This apartment building had been neglected for years, and it seemed even more dilapidated than the last one. Even the stairs were filled with cracks, and with each step Luxianbei took, he worried that they might suddenly collapse.
On the walls of the stairs, various phrases were scrawled, the handwriting crooked and looking as though it had been written by an elementary school student.
“Li Guoqing, I love you!”
“I want a Little Tyrant learning machine for my birthday this year, to help with studying.”
“Wang Xiaobao, I curse your ancestors!”
……
Luxianbei followed the inscriptions, faintly remembering having seen some of the phrases somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall where after thinking for a while.
Having had the earlier experience with the weird old man, he ascended the stairs slowly. Every time he climbed a floor, he would pause briefly to observe, confirming that no one was hiding upstairs or following him before continuing.
Around the fourth floor, he glanced outside through a ventilator in the hallway and saw that the mad old man was still wandering in the open area outside the apartment. He secretly sighed in relief.
These ancient apartment buildings weren’t tall, only six stories in total, and even though Luxianbei moved slowly, he reached the top floor in about ten minutes. Then, using the corner of a wall, he concealed himself and sent a message to Su Mi.
After sending the message, he stepped out from his hiding spot and scanned the hallway.
The corridor was a mess, littered with yellowed newspapers, broken glass, and even some kind of vegetables rotting in a sink, turning into a pile of black mud.
The hallway was long, with a total of sixteen rooms, and the layout formed a “凹” shape. In the dim light, it was hard to see the other end of the hallway from where he stood.
“From the fruitful birth of the Fushang Sacred Tree, the king of thousands of magpies, a challenger defying bad luck with money, the monarch of the eight hundred miles of Peach Spring…”
Luxianbei muttered to himself, hoping for divine protection to ensure his safety on this trip.
Although this prayer came from a memory of a dream, it wasn’t complete, and he didn’t know which deity it referred to.
Yet he felt it was way more effective than the temples around Huacheng, which mainly served as scenic spots for burning incense and offering prayers, mainly providing psychological comfort.
The doors of the first three rooms were open, and the insides were completely empty. The tenants had not left anything behind when they moved out. Luxianbei quickly completed his exploration, and after messaging Su Mi again, he moved on to the fourth room.
The door to the fourth room was locked. Luxianbei turned the doorknob a few times, and when there was no response, he didn’t dare to knock, fearing the noise might attract anyone hiding in the dark, so he could only retreat.
After a brief observation, he noticed the window at the corridor side of the fourth room was partly broken and approached it. After a careful look, he felt that the opening was large enough for a person to pass through, so he cautiously climbed in.
The moment he landed, Luxianbei almost turned back and crawled out through the broken window again.
The curtains in the room were tightly shut, the light dim, and the decayed furniture was covered in mold. Dust hung in the spider webs in the corners, and a very unpleasant smell filled the air.
Of course, if it were just these things, it would still be somewhat tolerable.
After all, no one had come here for over a decade, if not longer.
However, in the center of the living room lay a dog’s corpse, which made it somewhat unacceptable.
The body had turned into a mummified corpse, and its decaying fur revealed gleaming white canine teeth.
Countless bacteria and molds must have thrived inside it before moving towards extinction.
The un-tiled concrete floor was covered with disordered claw marks, deep and shallow lines, ultimately stopping at the paws of that dog.
Looking at those claw marks, Luxianbei could even imagine how it had walked to its despair in hunger and loneliness after being forgotten by its owner.
“From the fruitful birth of the Fushang Sacred Tree, the king of thousands of magpies, a challenger defying bad luck with money, the monarch of the eight hundred miles of Peach Spring…”
As if performing a blessing for the deceased soul, Luxianbei clasped his hands together and recited the earlier prayer for the dead dog sincerely.
While he didn’t know what divine power that deity possessed, wasn’t a deity supposed to provide protection? No matter if it worked or not, it didn’t require payment, might as well believe in it!
What difference would it make to chant it a few more times? After all, it’s not me who’s troubled!
Hopefully, the dog would meet a good owner in its next life? Luxianbei thought, and after messaging Su Mi again, he continued his exploration.
Meanwhile, it was nighttime.
The Peach Source scenic area, reopened to tourists, was lit up, making Magpie Bridge Mountain sparkle.
Disguised as a scenic area staff member, Jumeng mixed among the visitors, observing those praying for love and health for their children, accelerating her grasp of new powers by studying their wishes.
By the way, if someone caught her eye, using her powers to fulfill their wishes wouldn’t be out of the question.
Suddenly, she sensed a faint prayer from a distance and looked out the window, tilting her head in confusion.
“Here it comes again! Who is it? Is their brain malfunctioning? This time the wish object… is a dog?”
“Are they trying to make it one of those breeding machines in a dog breeding facility?”
“Insane!”
————
After softly chanting the prayer a few times, Luxianbei steeled himself to search the room, enduring the unpleasant smell inside.
The furnishings in the room remained mostly untouched, and almost all the furniture was present. Next to the television hung a peculiar painting.
The painting depicted a chaotic city, lights flickering with rainwater and stones flying towards the sky, stars underneath, a city in the sky, an old banyan tree with roots as dense as its canopy…
All order had been lost, leaving only distortion and chaos in this city.
Luxianbei vaguely felt he had seen such a scene somewhere before. He paused for a moment, recorded the content of the painting, and continued forward.
From the looks of everything in this room, the family had left in a hurry.
It was as if they made a sudden decision to leave and never returned.
Crossing the living room to enter the bedroom, he found the wardrobe wide open, clothes scattered everywhere, fallen to the ground, becoming a breeding ground for mold.
The bed was a mess, the quilt wrapped into a ball. Luxianbei stared at the quilt, feeling like it might be hiding something.
Logically speaking, one should not touch such eerie things indiscriminately; nothing would happen if not touched.
However, in this situation, being overly cautious without triggering the specific “plot” seemed impossible to obtain sufficient clues.
What if the quilt was hiding the clues that could help me find the Seek Truth Mutual Aid Society? Luxianbei thought.
After a moment’s hesitation, carrying a hint of anxiety, he stepped forward, grabbed a corner of the quilt, and pulled hard.
In the next moment, dust flew, and a dark, foul-smelling object suddenly burst from the quilt.
Luxianbei was startled, stepping back a couple of paces to get a clear look.
It was a bird’s corpse, which, judging by the not yet fully decomposed feathers, looked like a white pigeon.
Perhaps it was a pet raised by this family.
Luxianbei, “…”
He had thought that the dog in the living room would d*e of hunger simply because the family had not anticipated that they would never return.
But now, seeing this pigeon’s corpse, he suddenly felt an epiphany, a chill running down his spine.
The existence of this pigeon’s corpse proved that the family had realized when they left that they would never return, hence they did not take anything.
Pets like pigeons and dogs could not be taken.
Dogs could be locked in a house, but pigeons, when hungry, would fly away and find ways to forage.
So, the owner chose to suffocate it under the quilt.
Reasonably conjecturing about the situation at that time, Luxianbei couldn’t help but curse softly, “This is truly psychologically flawed. Even a person like me who has suspected symptoms of mental illness thinks it’s perverse!”
He continued searching in the room.
When Luxianbei reached a desk in another bedroom, he made a discovery.
On the desk lay an old red rubber notebook, opened, with yellowed pages inscribed with a messy sentence.
“Memory can be deceiving; it only tells you things favorable to yourself. Only when you leave your memory can you find freedom.”
This sentence hit Luxianbei like a heavy blow, causing his body to tremble slightly.
Ever since he had that strange dream, he seemed to be experiencing a deception of memory.
Frowning, he flipped through the notebook trying to find other information, and soon discovered another passage.
“Some people will remain etched in memory forever, even if you forget their voice, their smile, or their face, the feeling you have when you think of them will never change.”
Looking at this passage, Luxianbei inexplicably thought of the people in his dream, Jiang Li, Jumeng, Qing Ji, Bai Kai…
Luxianbei patiently flipped through the entire notebook.
After a long while, he exhaled a long breath.
“Hu—!”
Besides the two somewhat strange passages, the notebook had no other information, with the rest consisting of work notes from the mine.
————
Moments later.
Luxianbei quietly observed at the broken window, confirming the corridor was silent and the mad old man was not lurking outside, before he crawled out of the window and returned to the hallway. He adjusted his mood and headed toward the remaining rooms.
Several rooms down the hallway had broken doors, and almost all were completely empty.
The door of the seventh room had completely fallen off, lying on the ground.
Peering through the doorway, Luxianbei discovered a globe covered in strange marks and arrows in the living room.
The base of the globe was damaged, and the sphere had rolled into the corner of the living room, covered in thick dust. At first glance, he thought it was a human head, nearly startled enough to turn and run.
After steadying himself, Luxianbei attempted to strike the globe with an iron rod to see if it hid anything, but to his surprise, when he struck it, the globe bounced back, almost knocking into him and covering him in dust.
He had to admit that the materials used by previous craftsman factories were solid!
After a moment of reflection, Luxianbei shifted his focus back from the globe and noticed that quirky painting on the wall of an empty bedroom.
This painting again? Luxianbei frowned, entered the room to search, and soon walked out with disappointment.
Inside that room, besides the globe and that peculiar painting, he did not find anything else.
He continued searching each room, occasionally stopping to send Su Mi messages to report his safety.
Finally, just as he was about to give up and conclude that Gu Qiqi’s home might not be in this apartment building, he arrived at the door of the room at the end of the hallway.
The window of the room was intact, the door was locked, and it was decorated with window flowers, looking as if someone had lived there not long ago.
As Luxianbei was pondering how to get in, a cool breeze blew through.
Accompanied by a soft “creak”, the door opened.
The door was surprisingly unlocked?
Luxianbei gazed at the somewhat low doorway and the dark living room behind the door, feeling the atmosphere becoming somewhat eerie.
He suppressed the growing sense of unease, rubbed his arms as goosebumps arose, inhaled deeply, stood in front of the door, and surveyed for a while, confirming there was no one else hiding inside before stepping into the room.
The first thing he did upon entering was to lock the door behind him, and then he opened the window’s latch, pulling it open a crack, checking it could be opened before closing and locking it again.
This room was located at the end of the “凹” hallway, with the door and window positions staggered. If someone wanted to break the door, jumping out the window would buy him some time.
After moving a table to block the door, Luxianbei carefully began to observe the environment of this room.
The layout of the room was very simple, and the various pieces of furniture bore a striking resemblance to those in the room where he had discovered the notebook, making one suspect they were supplied uniformly from a cement factory.
After briefly inspecting the living room, finding nothing, Luxianbei walked towards the bedroom.
The bedroom door was tightly shut. He gently pushed twice but couldn’t open it; he wasn’t sure if it was locked or stuck on something.
Pressing his ear to the door and listening intently for a moment, confirming there were no strange sounds from within, Luxianbei tightened his grip on the iron rod and toilet stick, took two steps back, then kicked the door violently.
Then…
With a loud “bang!” the door crashed open, nearly three-quarters of the door panel fell into the bedroom.
The doors inside this apartment building were all old wooden doors. As Huacheng is a city with high temperatures and humidity year-round, these wooden doors had severely decayed over time, resulting in such situations being quite normal.
In that case, it was good that the door was taken down directly; there was no need to worry about some inexplicable “door-killer” suddenly attacking… Luxianbei silently cursed as he bent down to enter the bedroom.
As soon as he stepped into the bedroom, he saw that peculiar painting on the wall.
“What…” Luxianbei frowned and muttered, “Why does it always have this weird painting hanging? Could this painting be related to the Seek Truth Mutual Aid Society?”
Everyone has one at home, as if to “worship” it. Hmm, it has the flavor of a cult!
Approaching the wall, Luxianbei intended to remove the painting for a closer look but found that the frame was secured to the wall with two small nails.
The nails were tiny and had started to show signs of rust…
It seemed worth trying?
Luxianbei examined the nails on the painting frame, moved to the side of the frame, and inserted the iron rod into the gap between the frame and the wall, prying it with force.
“Crack!”
Accompanied by the sound of wood breaking, the frame flew off, something was pulled from the slightly hollow wall as it fell, landing on the ground with a “thud.”
Luxianbei was taken aback, waved his hand to disperse the dust and mold in the air, and focused his gaze.
There was a square black cloth bundle lying in the corner not far from him, one corner of the bundle had been exposed during the fall, revealing the corner of a notebook tucked inside.
It looked like the same notebook he had seen earlier.
It should have been uniformly provided by the cement factory.
“A notebook hidden behind the painting?” Luxianbei murmured, turning to look at the square hollowed-out space in the wall, narrowing his gaze slightly.
Inside must be something very important, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been hidden so carefully!
He stepped forward, carefully opened the black cloth bundle with his iron rod, pulling the notebook out to examine.
Bending down to pick up the notebook, he left the bedroom and stepped out onto the balcony.
Flipping open the first page of the notebook, taking advantage of the dim sunlight coming through the window, the first thing he saw was a name.
“Cao Wei… is this the name of the notebook’s owner?” Luxianbei murmured.
Below the name, it seemed like a preface written in a sentence.
“Open your eyes to see the falsehood, close your eyes to seek freedom.”
“Closing my eyes to seek freedom, doesn’t that mean… dreaming?”
Luxianbei pursed his lips and continued flipping through the pages. The second page depicted some simple construction diagrams, and the table below recorded some data that he couldn’t discern the purpose of. Among numerous data and illustrations, there was a passage written in very small font.
“I love this world and my life, but they are all fake.”
Turning another two pages, they were filled with data and figures related to mining work, and within these numerous illustrations, nearly every page contained a passage.
The content resembled that of a diary during breaks, where the owner recorded their feelings.
“Today, several people claiming to be doctors came to the mine and took Lao Luo away, but I don’t understand what illness he had. Is it just because he told everyone that this world is fake?”
“Today, Xiao Yang was also taken away by those doctors. When I returned home, I couldn’t sleep at night, thinking about the daytime events. If they could take Lao Luo and Xiao Yang, they would not hesitate to take me as well.”
……
Each passage disclosed a strong sense of oppression, making one feel as if a weight was pressing down on their chest, leaving one unable to breathe.
Would Lao Luo, Xiao Yang, and this “I” all be members of the Seek Truth Mutual Aid Society?
Were those who took them truly doctors?
If I continue to investigate, will I also be taken away? Luxianbei thought anxiously, just as he was about to continue flipping through the pages when a sudden commotion sounded in the hallway.
“Dingling—!” A metallic collision rang out.
Soft, like iron rods or other metal scraping against the ground.
Hearing this, Luxianbei immediately became alert, quickly closing the notebook and stowing it in his backpack, darting into a blind spot on the balcony, pressing against the wall to conceal himself, gripping the toilet stick and iron rod tightly, listening attentively to the sounds from outside.
“Shush—shush—!”
Someone was walking down the hallway, treading on the granules formed by concrete and bricks, making faint sounds.
Who could it be? Is it Gu Qiqi? Could it be that other mad old man?
Luxianbei, keeping close to the wall, peeked out with one eye towards the hallway.
Just a glance, and he quickly pulled his head back.
Through the living room window, he saw the tall, slightly hunched figure of the mad old man in the hallway, along with the twisted, writhing shadow behind him.
“……”
d*mn, he actually tracked me here. This is bad, I wonder if he’s discovered me.
If he finds me and charges in to attack, shouldn’t I have a high chance of winning if I hit him first? Luxianbei thought.
While he pondered, the weak footsteps in the hallway gradually faded away, soon disappearing completely.
It seemed the mad old man had left.
Luxianbei waited for a moment in his hiding spot, repeatedly peeking out towards the living room window until he confirmed the mad old man had indeed departed.
However, just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a strange laughter suddenly echoed from below him.
“Hehe—!”
