Qianli City, also known as “River City,” was the only directly administered municipality in the mid-western region of Great Xia that stood on equal footing with major provinces.
Surrounded by rivers on three sides, its development in recent years had been astonishingly rapid due to its unique geographical location and historical significance.
Whether in economy, culture, population, or infrastructure, its level of development was enough to make outsiders marvel at how surreal it was.
Correspondingly, as the floating population swelled, while the local tourism industry made money hand over fist, the municipal burden on Qianli City grew heavier by the day.
At ten-thirty in the evening, the snack street near Tiansheng Bridge in the downtown area of Qianli City was at its peak traffic.
“Sweet skin duck! Sweet skin duck! It’s delicious, young lady, come in and have a taste!”
“Jasmine bracelets! White champaca bracelets! Twenty yuan for one, richly scented when worn, and keeps the mosquitoes away!”
“Ghost Buns! Ghost Buns, everyone loves them!”
“Wanzhou grilled fish, douhua rice, douhua fish, well water chicken, come on in!”
“Taro chicken, taro chicken, fatty intestine and filefish, delightfully fragrant!”
Tourists from out of town explored this wondrous city with curious eyes, letting out gasps of amazement from time to time.
Local vendors barked out their wares in the thick Qianli dialect, loudly ushering customers into their shops.
In a small plaza not far away, fountains surged as countless children of all heights splashed about in the water, shrieking and playing to their hearts’ content.
Aunties and uncles dressed in shorts and short sleeves, waving cattail-leaf fans, sat on benches beneath the green belts, chatting animatedly.
Exquisitely dressed urban white-collar workers and stylish young men and women in trendy clothes also bustled among the crowd.
Nan Zhi held an old fashioned popsicle, standing by the entrance of a milk tea shop to leech off the air conditioning.
She glanced at the time displayed on her phone every now and then, looking completely relaxed.
In front of the milk tea shop, two long, winding queues snaked out.
It seemed everyone planned to survive on ice-cold milk tea to fend off the stifling heat that lingered stubbornly in the air.
“I’m dying of heat, dying of heat... How can it still be this hot just under the moonlight...”
Zhang Qiuyu bounded quickly to Nan Zhi’s side and took a satisfying sip of the lemonade in her cup:
“Ah, heaven! In the sweltering heat of summer, four-yuan lemonade is the only thing worth stepping outside for.”
“Then why did you drag me out? On a day this hot, staying home to play games in the AC would be so much better.”
Nan Zhi bit off a piece of the popsicle, crunching down on the ice:
“We walked around all afternoon, bought barely two pieces of clothing, and I spent the whole time just eating.”
Throughout the afternoon: fried chicken, fried shrimp, grilled squid, sticky rice, marinated dishes, grilled skewers, sweet potato skin wraps, spiced dried tofu, stinky tofu...
She had basically sampled every best-selling snack in the food street.
—Thanks to cultivation, her appetite had grown considerably; otherwise, an ordinary person would never have survived to a second round after packing down so much food.
“If it gets late, I’ll drive you back! I just got my driver’s license last month, and I was just worrying about having no one to critique my driving!”
Zhang Qiuyu chewed on her straw and rolled her eyes dramatically:
“It’s Saturday! Are you seriously going to just sit at home squandering your time on video games?
Are movies not entertaining, murder mystery games not fun, malls not worth browsing, or milk tea not delicious?
You commute back and forth between home and work every single day, never straying from that two-point routine. If you don’t go out to have fun, how will you meet new people?
If you don’t meet new people, how will you find a boyfriend? What, are you waiting for Mr. Right to break into your house and stage a meet-cute during a home invasion?”
If someone really broke into her house...
They would either end up beaten to death by her, or scared to death by the flying rat.
Nan Zhi actually visualized that exact scenario quite seriously.
Having spent so much time together, one blink from Nan Zhi was all Zhang Qiuyu needed to know that she wasn’t taking the “finding a boyfriend” topic seriously at all.
Sometimes she wondered about it too.
Logically speaking, Nan Zhi was pretty, had a great personality, and was very dependable in handling things, so why didn’t she have any romantic spark with men?!
—Zhang Qiuyu had set Nan Zhi up on quite a few dates before, but basically none went anywhere.
To put it in the words of those handsome guys:
Your friend seems easy to get along with; she can chat with anyone and treat anyone like a friend.
Yet after spending time with her, even though she seems friendly and open with everyone, it’s impossible to fall in love with her.
Someone like that is cold to the bone, innately aloof, and suited only for friendship.
Becoming her lover is harder than ascending to the heavens.
“What’s wrong?”
Noticing Zhang Qiuyu’s hesitant expression, Nan Zhi looked over with the popsicle stick still between her lips:
“Weren’t we going to try that newly opened Thai restaurant? If we’re not eating, I’m heading back to play games—I haven’t saved yet.”
What “innately aloof”? This girl is just an outright homebody who’s terrified that getting a boyfriend will get in the way of her gaming!
Zhang Qiuyu shook her head, tossing the stray thoughts from her mind.
“Let’s go, let’s go! That place is a viral restaurant, reservations only.”
She pulled Nan Zhi along, her face full of excitement:
“I just grabbed a queue number online. If we head over now, we can eat in half an hour!”
...
...
The Thai restaurant Zhang Qiuyu reserved was on the forty-third floor of Green Ti New City near Tiansheng Bridge.
This building had sixty-nine floors in total, with hundreds of units inside, virtually none of which housed original residents; they were all leased out as commercial shops.
In the prime, high-priced location around Tiansheng Bridge, this skyscraper took “spatial efficiency” to the absolute extreme: below was a bustling commercial street, while inside was an entire commercial hub.
Gyms, movie theaters, hair salons, extracurricular activity centers, early childhood education centers, vintage clothing boutiques, apparel shops, board game cafes, escape rooms, French restaurants, Thai restaurants, Japanese eateries...
A single skyscraper encompassed everything, so visitors often didn’t go “window shopping on the street,” but rather “skyscraper shopping.”
During peak hours, just taking the elevator could easily require an hour-long wait to reach one’s destination floor.
Fortunately, Nan Zhi and her friend had good luck and only waited fifteen minutes before boarding an elevator.
The elevator space was cramped, and within the narrow metal box, people tried their best to maintain a polite social distance.
Accompanied by the crisp chime of the elevator bell, the car opened its wide mouth and spat out the “cargo” from its belly piece by piece.
Gradually, the crowd inside thinned out considerably.
While Nan Zhi browsed game walkthroughs on her phone, two boys and two girls stood beside her. Judging by their age, they looked like high school students, but all dressed in exceptionally trendy styles.
The youthful vitality radiating from within them was simply something adults constantly tainted by the scent of a weary salaryman could never match.
Seeing that few people remained in the elevator, the leading high school boy suddenly drew out his tone and said mysteriously:
“Hey, do you guys know this building is haunted?”
“Huh? For real? That thrilling?!”
“Aiya! I told you not to talk about it! Don’t talk about it! In the dead of night, are you asking for death bringing this up?”
The boy’s companions had mixed reactions, and while the others in the elevator appeared to be zoning out, their attention was actually captured by what the boy was saying.
Nan Zhi also accurately caught the keywords, quietly pricking up her ears.
—This scene felt rather familiar.
She wondered what had become of the person who told her a ghost story in the elevator last time.
“I heard it from my dad too. He used to work on construction sites and heard people talk about it—they said there’s something wrong with this building, and accidents happen every single year.”
Seeing everyone’s gaze focus on him, the boy felt a bit pleased with himself and flaunted his knowledge with an air of deliberate mystery:
“Everyone knows a fire broke out in this building seven years ago, right?
The current building was renovated afterward, and even the top three floors were added after the fire. Do you guys know why?”
Nan Zhi frowned slightly.
Seven years ago, she hadn’t yet moved to this city, so she wasn’t very familiar with that fire.
However, when she chatted with colleagues, someone would occasionally mention it.
Opinions varied on the cause of the fire, but there was a widely circulated version:
It was said that a psychiatric patient, unable to accept their illness, ran out while lucid to take revenge on society.
That lunatic brought two buckets of cooking oil into the building and ignited clutter piled up in the stairwell.
Combined with the building’s flawed fire safety measures back then, the flames grew bigger and fiercer until they were completely out of control.
Even now, when locals cursed people, they would often say things like, “You fire-starting idiot,” “Do you have a bump on your brain too?”, or “Just like that fire-starting idiot, you ought to go to hell.”
Of course, after the building was reconstructed, fewer and fewer people brought it up.
“Let me tell you, there’s a reason for all of this. Back then, after the renovation, the building was originally going to reopen, but... the hauntings were too severe.”
The high school boy shook his head and lowered his voice, speaking deliberately:
“If you look at this building from the outside, don’t the newly added top floors look like a giant crucifix?
If you look from the side, it looks like a blade laid horizontally.
My dad said it’s because the ghosts burned to death in the building are too ferocious, so they built the new floors to suppress them and keep them from causing trouble!”
In the dead of night, the boy’s words seemed to carry a cold draft, sweeping chillingly across the nape of everyone’s neck.
Especially since they were currently inside the very building, the sense of immersion was all the more intense.
The fire seven years ago.
The renovated skyscraper.
The bizarre structure on the roof.
Ding—
The elevator chime sounded once again, the silver-white doors slowly slid open, and a young couple holding hands hurried out of the elevator.
Except, by the look of their hasty retreat, they seemed to be fleeing in panic.
Rate on N.U.
