Secret 1

Chapter 7
2006年9月24日，晚上21点01分。

In the empty residential building, hurried footsteps sounded from the fifth floor.

Ye Xiao opened the door vigilantly, and used a flashlight to illuminate the face of the person who came—it was the man in his 40s from the tour group, his name was Cheng Cheng, and he was also Huang Wanran's husband.He was wearing a set of expensive pajamas, and there was no one else in the dark corridor.

"The Frenchman is awake?"

The man in pajamas nodded, and Ye Xiao and Li Shu followed him down the stairs.

In the big room on the fourth floor, there was a 15-year-old girl standing in the living room, that was Qiuqiu, the daughter of Jiancheng and Huang Wanran.The girl inherited her mother's beauty, but she was so taciturn that it was hard to get close to her.

The injured foreigner was lying in the master bedroom, Huang Wanran sat beside him and took care of him, Ye Xiao went up and asked, "How is he?"

Candlelight illuminated Huang Wanran's face. This 38-year-old gentle woman was at her most charming age.She replied softly: "The wound is not serious. It seems to be all right now. He just woke up for a while and can still talk."

"What did you say?"

"It seems to be French. I didn't hear it clearly."

At this time, the Frenchman who was lying down began to speak again, uttering a few French words that no one in the room could understand.Li Shu sat by the bed and whispered something to the Frenchman, and he slowly opened his eyes.

"Do you know French?"

"No, I speak English."

Li Shu continued to talk to the French, and the French seemed to understand, so they answered in English with difficulty.Ye Xiao was worried about his health, but Huang Wanran indicated that it was fine.Cheng Cheng came up and put his arms around her shoulders, looking coldly at the people in the room.

Fortunately, this Frenchman can also speak English, and Li Shu's English sounds very good, the two exchanged a few simple words.Then Li Shu relayed in Chinese: "He is French, his full name is 'Henry Pepin', he is 35 years old, and he often lives in Paris."

Henry opened his eyes wide and terrified, looking at the Chinese people in front of him, as well as this strange house, the endless night rain outside the window, and the dim candlelight.Li Shu hurriedly comforted him in English, telling him that there are good people here, and they saved Henry's life.Ye Xiao urged again: "How did he pass out on the road?"

Li Shu pressed several questions, and Huang Wanran gave Henry a drink of water before he answered intermittently.Li Shu made a simultaneous translation: "They are a tourist group from France. The whole group arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday, and they left for the Lanna King's Tomb this morning."

"They also passed by the village that eats monkey brains?"

"No, they set off at eight o'clock in the morning. They drove past the village very early and didn't stop for lunch."

Cheng Cheng shook his head and said, "It seems that the French are luckier than us."

Li Shu communicated with Henry a few more words, and translated with difficulty: "They were eating lunch in the car, when a dog appeared on the road—the dog crossed the middle of the road, and the bus was driving too fast. It was too late to brake, and the dog was run over and killed on the spot."

"How miserable!"

Huang Wanran frowned with disgust, maybe she also has a dog at home.

Ye Xiao sighed: "Actually, long-distance drivers often encounter this kind of thing, especially on this kind of mountain road. They are afraid that these kittens and puppies will appear. If they are unlucky, the car will be destroyed!"

"The driver of the French tour group stopped the car and wanted to clean up the front of the car before driving away. Suddenly an old lady came out of the woods—Henry said that the old lady looked like a legendary monster with long white hair. With a stooped and thin body, wearing a black dress, he does not look like a local Thai, with deeply sunken eye sockets and a high nose bridge like a gypsy."

Then Henry spoke a lot of English, and it seemed that he had recovered a lot.Li Shu explained in Chinese: "The old lady cried bitterly while hugging the dog that was run over to death. It seemed that she had a deep relationship with the dog. She was covered in dog blood and kept chanting spells. The driver wanted to take the dog to death. She persuaded her to leave, but her vicious look made people frightened. The tourists on the bus felt sorry for her, and everyone pooled up a hundred euros to compensate her, but no one expected that the old lady would actually tear up the one hundred euro bill Broken!"

Cheng Cheng said contemptuously: "Maybe she doesn't know what the euro looks like at all."

Li Shu ignored this guy and continued to be Henry's simultaneous interpreter: "After the old lady tore up the euro, she read a long series of words that seemed to be curses to the bus of the tour group, and even used dog blood on the bus. What kind of symbol was painted on the car body. The driver was also frightened by her and did not dare to wipe the symbol. Henry couldn't tell the exact shape of the symbol, it was very weird anyway. The driver didn't care about the old lady anymore, and continued to drive the tourist bus. After about ten minutes, the car drove to the turning point of the road, and the driver suddenly trembled and convulsed!"

Huang Wanran was fascinated, as if watching a horror movie, and hurriedly took another sip of water for Henry.Looking at the rainy night outside the window, the Frenchman spoke a lot of English tremblingly, his tone becoming more and more fearful.

Ye Xiao basically understood, but still asked Li Shu to interpret again: "The driver seemed to be possessed by a demon, and the car drove wildly on the road, and Henry was also shaken to motion sickness, he opened the window and poked his head out to vomit. No Thinking of the bus rushing out of the cliff, it just threw his whole body out of the car window. He only felt a whirl, screams from the car behind him, and then fell down on the road and lost consciousness."

"This kid is really a blessing in disguise!" Shaking his head, Li Chengli said, "Otherwise he would die under the cliff!"

Henry wanted to struggle to get up, and asked how the other people in the car were doing in English.But Li Shu didn't answer him directly, worried that the terrible truth would irritate him, and only said that he was found lying alone on the road.

Then, Huang Wanran asked Henry to continue to rest, and set up to let her sleep in another room, and he would accompany the Frenchman beside him.

Ye Xiao and Li Shu walked out of the room and asked Huang Wanran to lock the doors and windows.They took another look at 15-year-old Qiuqiu. The girl just stood aside indifferently, as if wrapped in plastic film, bright and hard to touch.

They went up the dark stairs to the room on the fifth floor.Ye Xiao lit the candle again and asked, "Do you believe what the Frenchman said?"

"It's unbelievable—the driver of the French tour group was possessed by a demon? Is it the old woman's curse?" Li Shu couldn't help but sat down on the sofa, as if he was at home, "Do you know Gu?"

"insanity?"

Of course Ye Xiao knew what it was, but shook his head pretending not to understand.

"Witchcraft, which is common in Southwest China and Southeast Asia, may also be a kind of poison and insect control techniques. Usually, old women cast voodoo, and people who are inflicted with voodoo will suffer catastrophe! I have edited several books The thriller novel about 'Gu', many times I have insomnia after reading the manuscript in the middle of the night."

"Don't rule out this possibility. However, I think this Frenchman may be lying!"

"why?"

"Intuition—the police's intuition." Ye Xiao said calmly, "Maybe today is a strange day, and we will come to this strange city."

"Strange?"

Just when they were racking their brains, there was an earth-shattering loud noise in the night outside the window, and then the floor and walls began to shake...

"My God! What's that?"

They flung themselves to the window in terror.

At this moment, a crack opened in the window pane on the third floor.

The loud noise was deafening like thunder, and with the torrential rain pouring down outside, the whole building was trembling.

"what!"

Lin Junru covered her ears and hid in a corner in fright, the dust stained her skirt.A wall lamp fell from the wall and shattered with a loud noise outside the window.Another girl hurriedly blew out the candle before it fell and caused a fire.

While the room was plunged into darkness, the loud noise gradually subsided.

After 30 seconds, everything returned to dead silence, only the endless rain in the dark night.

"What's that sound?" Lin Junru was still hiding in the dark corner, holding her head in her hands and said, "Based on my experience in Taiwan, this may be a high-intensity earthquake!"

"You really are from Taiwan?"

"I was born and raised in Taipei - the first minute after an earthquake is the most destructive, seven years ago my mother died in the '1' earthquake."

"sorry."

Another 3 minutes passed, but the floor and walls did not shake anymore. Will there be aftershocks?Lin Junru got up cautiously, patted the ashes on her skirt, and poked her head to the window to have a look. The rainy night outside was pitch black, and she could only faintly see the building opposite the green trees.Lin Junru let out a long breath, but her heart still did not calm down. The tragic experience seven years ago told her that waiting for the moment when a disaster is about to happen is the most frightening thing.

In addition to the heavy rain outside, she also heard some kind of slight sound, what is the girl on the other side doing?There was no light in the room, and the other person's face could not be seen clearly. The voice was as soft as a flying insect flapping its wings, lingering in the ears of the two young women.

I couldn't help but turn on the flashlight. In a circle of white light, there were the half-opened eyes of the woman opposite, and the earphones hanging on her temples—it turned out that she was listening to MP3.

"Oh, I thought it was an earthquake coming again!"

The woman on the opposite side was 25 or [-] years old, with a pair of big eyes inlaid on Guazi's face, which looked like a Buddha statue under the beam of the flashlight.She didn't seem to hear Lin Junru's words, she still leaned against the wall with her earphones on, blinked her long Jie Mao, and closed her eyes peacefully.

Where do you seem to have seen it?Lin Junru shook her head in admiration: "You can really calm down! We are trapped in this ghost place, and there may be a big earthquake at any time. I'm already in a cold sweat, but you seem to be on vacation."

In fact, the other party had already heard what she said, so he responded with a mysterious smile, with the tip of his nose slightly raised, and the corners of his mouth twitching: "What we need most now is music."

"Music?" But in this quiet and cold night, music is really out of bounds, Lin Junru smiled bitterly and said, "Is it so important?"

The woman on the opposite side was not afraid at all, but seemed to be enjoying the feeling of fear, suddenly opened her eyes again, and said in an unusually standard northern dialect——

"When the music sounds, you feel like you are in the ocean. Every note that appears is like a stirred-up wave, caressing your face; you want to catch her, but she has already passed your body and drifted to the other shore, so face to face For music, you can only listen quietly."

Her voice was neither fast nor slow, sending out sound waves in the light circle of the flashlight, rippling in this dark room, seemed to be able to dissolve all the silence, as well as Lin Junru's instinctive fear.

"Ah——" Lin Junruo was also moved by her, so he turned off the flashlight beam and let the other party continue to listen to MP3 in the dark, "You are so good!"

"Hehe, that's not what I said."

"Who said that?"

"Socrates."

It turned out to be what the ancient Greek philosophers said. It seems that Mr. Socrates is also a music enthusiast, which reminded Lin Junru of the cash drawers in Taipei and Shanghai.

"By the way!" Lin Junru patted his head suddenly, "Until now, I still don't know your name?"

"Top top."

"Sounds familiar, what do you do?"

A pair of beautiful eyes flickered in the darkness: "Musicist."

"singer?"

The other party was silent for a moment and replied: "It's okay."

"Oh my god, I remembered, I saw you sing on TV, it was very good! Top? Is that you?"

"Yes, you can also call me Ding Ding."

The conversation between the two young women in the dark did not wait for the expected violent aftershock.Ding Ding took off her MP3 earphones, stood up and lit a candle, the dim light illuminated her face, the bright eyes under the long eyelashes, combined with the eyeliner and the outline of the face, she had the feeling of a woman in a Dunhuang mural.

"Top top? No wonder your face is so familiar." Lin Junru just sat down on the bed. This is a double bed, which should have been slept by a couple.She touched her shoulder and said, "In such a scary place, I will definitely not be able to sleep alone. Can we both sleep here?"

"Ok."

He sat cross-legged on the bed, but didn't intend to sleep.She was thinking about everything that had happened on this trip, from the coup d'état that had happened when she first arrived in Thailand, to the amazing Buddha statue she saw in the ancient city of Ayutthaya.There is also the thrilling journey of the tour group starting from Chiang Mai today.In the afternoon, she was amazed to see a city in the mountains, as silent as if asleep.The hidden memory in her mind seemed to be awakened at once—it was it, the city in front of her, surrounded by mysterious rain and fog, that summoned her here from far away Beijing.

Also, the man I saw when I came out of the toilet in the evening.She knew his name, and knew about him in the novel, but what kind of person was he?Looking at his eyes in the mirror, they seemed to be covered by a layer of fog. What did he want to say?
Lin Junru had already lay down with difficulty, she blew out the candle beside the bed, and said to herself: "Will there be aftershocks tonight?"

Ding Ding was still sitting cross-legged, her slender waist and body contours resembled a sleeping god in the dark.Suddenly, she heard something—it wasn't a loud noise outside the window, nor was it the precursor of an earthquake, but a slight, soft sound in the living room. She couldn't tell what it was. Get goosebumps.

She finally stood on the ground, walked gently into the living room, and irradiated every corner with the flashlight.There seemed to be nothing unusual, but there was something wrong with their suitcases, and Lin Junru's suitcase had a hole.The voice came from the kitchen again, Ding Ding walked in on tiptoe, only to see a few black shadows passing through the ground.Her heartbeat accelerated violently, and she shot the ground with a flashlight, chasing her all the way to the bathroom.

The light beam was aimed at the bathtub, and she saw several huge mice!

The black mice quickly jumped into the bathtub and then into the open drain. They twisted their bodies like snakes and quickly disappeared into the flashlight beam.Ding Ding was so frightened that he almost fell down, and took a deep breath to calm himself down.Then she found a bunch of rags and plugged the bathtub drain firmly.But she was still worried, and pressed it with a basin of water.

Suddenly, a hand rested lightly on the back of his shoulder, and he turned his head in horror, only to see Lin Junru's blank face: "What did you see?"

"mouse."

Lin Junru's face was earthy and said: "Huh?"

"The rats are gone, big rats."

"Before the arrival of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons, rats are usually the first to respond. They will predict the disaster and run for their lives."

Ding Ding returned to the bedroom calmly: "Then let the disaster happen earlier."

It was already ten o'clock, and the thunderous sound had never sounded again, and there was still a palpitating heavy rain outside the window.

On the fifth floor of the residential building where the tour group stayed, next to Ye Xiao and Li Shu's room, a dark candle was burning.The jumping candlelight illuminated Sun Zichu's face, opposite him was the young tour guide Xiao Fang.

"Why did the voice stop again?"

"earthquake?"

"The devil knows!" Xiao Fang waved his fist excitedly, "What should I do? What should I do?"

The tour guide is the most nervous person in the tour group. He bears the safety of more than a dozen tourists on his shoulders. Any mistakes are his responsibility—and now he doesn’t know how to compensate the tourists?

Food poisoning...beast attack...driver lost...lost comms...don't even know where I am!Any one of the crimes is enough to make him lose his job.If something happened to someone, he was even in danger of going to court-and all this imagination was based on the fact that they could return to the world.

What if, what if you can't get out?
Xiao Fang immediately slapped himself.Don't think about it anymore, I hope everything is just a nightmare, and I wake up in the hotel in Chiang Rai tomorrow morning.

"I'm sleeping, call me if you need anything." Sun Tzuchu patted Xiao Fang on the shoulder, "Hey, I wanted to take a closer look at the legendary tomb of King Lanna, but now I walked into another tomb!"

This guy has no taboos about speaking, he fell asleep when he walked into the next bedroom, leaving Xiao Fang sitting alone.He looked at the difficult night outside the window, and thought of the eyes everyone looked at him today, the faces full of suspicion, as if they wanted to swallow him up.

Xiaofang majored in international tourism in university, and joined one of the largest travel agencies in China right after graduation.At the beginning, I took foreign tourists to travel in China, which is a very enviable profession.This year, the travel agency suddenly adjusted internally, and he was transferred to the Overseas Tourism Department.His English and French are good, and he originally wanted to lead the European group.But because of the personnel struggle of the travel agency, he was dispatched to Southeast Asia.Xiao Fang was already holding back his anger, but he didn't dare to explode, so he could only swallow his anger and go to Thailand to check out.

When he stepped into the Lanna King's Tomb half a year ago and saw the huge tomb, his whole body seemed to be drained.He followed his colleagues in the travel agency and stepped into the dark underground palace of the king's tomb. The lights illuminated the coffin of King Lanna, and the legendary queen lay in it.Xiao Fang touched the sarcophagus secretly, and found that it still had the temperature of a living person.He hastily withdrew his hand back, and saw a strange Buddha statue carved on the opposite cave—it was so real, with lifelike eyes wide open, it seemed that it was not carved on a stone, but a picture that had been carved by time. Washed black and white portrait photos.

The Buddha statue in the underground palace is smiling at Xiao Fang.For a moment, he felt something conquered, as if his soul had stayed here forever.

In this memory, he slowly closed his eyes, and that mysterious smile was in front of him...

I don't know how long it took, it was about midnight, and there was a slight knock on the door.

Xiao Fang opened his eyes vigilantly, walked to the door in the dark, and asked loudly, "Who?"

But no one answered outside, could it be his hallucination?When he was about to go back to sleep, the knock on the door rang again—no, it was definitely not a hallucination, there was really someone outside.

He asked loudly who was outside the door, but the person only knew to knock on the door without any answer.Xiao Fang looked back in fear, and ran to Sun Zichu's room, only to find that the bed was empty!He hurriedly turned on the flashlight and searched in the bathroom and kitchen, but Sun Zichu had long since disappeared.

God, where did this guy go?

Xiao Fang was the only one left in the room, standing anxiously behind the door, while the terrible knocking sound continued.Xiao Fang took a deep breath, holding a flashlight in his left hand and an iron wrench in his right.

After trembling for a few seconds, he slowly opened the door.

However, the corridor was dark, and he looked around with a flashlight, but he couldn't even see a ghost.

(End of this chapter)