The World Below Surface

The girl, who had a bamboo skewer protruding from her eye socket, clutched her face and sobbed, her tears mingling with the crimson fluid and heavy cream, while the others watched with amusement, their laughter ringing out loud. Soon, they resumed their festive mood, eager to dig into the cake.

"Hey, look at that. Is that the new neighbour?" one of them whispered to the birthday girl, nudging her elbow. "Should we ask them to join us for a slice?"

Lu Yan, who was passing by, tried to ignore them and keep walking, but a group of girls intercepted him.

"Hi there, are you new around here? Come on, have some cake." One of them offered him a paper plate, on which lay a piece of cake slathered with white and red cream, looking sickeningly rich.

Lu Yan said nothing and shook his head, turning to leave, but they blocked his way again.

He looked back, and his eyes widened in horror. The girls' faces had transformed in a blink, becoming deathly pale, with their pupils glowing a sickly green. Blood seeped from their bloated faces, forming fissures like broken pottery. One of the girls cocked her head, and it fell to the side of her shoulder, exposing a gruesome wound that almost severed her neck.

"W-why... aren't you eating..."

"D-don't... go..." another one whimpered.

Lu Yan wanted to back away, but they had already encircled him.

"W-why... are you leaving... why... are you leaving... why... are you leaving?" they repeated, their voices sounding like warped records.

As the sun climbed higher, casting a cold light on them, Lu Yan noticed something even stranger: these creatures cast shadows in the sunlight. He steadied his nerves and listened intently, hearing their ragged breaths.

Were these things, human or ghosts?

Lu Yan stood frozen, as they drew nearer and nearer to him, so close that... one of them pressed her head against his shoulder.

He felt the thumping of her heart in her chest.

Lu Yan held his breath and closed his eyes.

The dreadful crimson figure loomed before him once more. Amidst the swirling darkness behind his eyelids, the blood-red silhouette crept closer and closer, until Lu Yan felt its putrid breath on his face, and a coldness that seeped into his bones, as if it came from the abyss.

Yet, unlike before, it seemed to have retreated a bit from him, only advancing when he closed his eyes.

Lu Yan snapped his eyes open, breaking the spell. The "girls" who had surrounded him moments ago were gone, leaving him a narrow escape. He seized the chance and ran out of the neighbourhood, not looking back.

He knew this method was too risky. He couldn't be sure that the next time he closed his eyes, the figure wouldn't pounce on him and tear him apart. He had to keep moving, keep alert.

Soon after he left, those girls materialised one by one, their spectral green eyes locked on his fleeing figure.

And behind them, a faint hint of red shadow lurked, watching and waiting.

A gust of wind swept through the neighbourhood, rattling the windows and doors of the abandoned houses, but no one came out to investigate. No one lived here anymore.

One window, worn out by years of neglect, had its latch blown off by the wind, and slammed against the wall with a loud bang. It revealed the interior of the house, which was empty and dusty, except for an ancestral hall with a black-and-white portrait of a young girl. She had the same face as the girl who had invited him to her birthday party downstairs.

The neighbourhood was eerily silent. Glancing through the windows of the buildings, none of them seemed occupied; instead, each one contained an ancestral hall, a portrait, a name.

Some people couldn't afford burial plots, so they bought houses in remote suburbs to store their urns.

Sometimes, when a neighbourhood is too quiet, it's a bad sign.

Lu Yan made his way through the less crowded areas of the town, pulling his hood over his face to avoid attention. He avoided eye contact with anyone he met, and wandered aimlessly with the crowd.

Spirit Vale Town... Spirits...

Did spirit mediums really exist here?

Lu Yan didn't believe it. But now, he wasn't so sure. Everyone he saw seemed strange, almost unnatural. And the townspeople seemed to have a sixth sense for outsiders. Every time he passed by them, they stopped talking and stared at him with unsettling eyes.

**

"This town is really strange. Despite such a gruesome murder having occurred, it's as if nothing happened at all. No one seems to even discuss it." Jiang Yu said, as he headed towards the library in the town.

He had a plan: to scour the library for any local chronicles that might shed some light on the mystery, or failing that, to visit the museums and see what clues they might offer.

Behind him, several other taskers trailed along, among them Yu Huai Yao.

Yu Huai Yao had joined them later; he had been shadowing Lin Chu incessantly, much to her annoyance. She figured that since he had some background in archaeology, he could be useful in gathering information. So she persuaded him to abandon the idea of going to the police station and instead follow Jiang Yu's lead.

Lin Chu, on the other hand, concocted a flimsy excuse to slip away from Shen Zhu and joined Di Ying's team.

Di Ying headed to a different commercial street, one that backed onto a school. It was one of the most crowded areas in the town, but since it was still winter break, the campus was eerily quiet.

Lin Chu caught up with them as they were posing as a group of parents looking for schools for their children and asking around.

What struck her as even more ludicrous was that Di Ying and her team members each carried a stack of missing person posters, slapping them on every surface they could find.

The posters were woefully inadequate, containing only names, genders, and rough estimates of height and build based on Yi Zhen Zhen's description.

"Sister Di, didn't we agree in the meeting not to tip off the enemy?" Lin Chu cautioned her.

If Lu Yan happened to see all these posters, he would surely smell a rat.

Di Ying: "It's fine, let's just put them up."

She stuck a piece of A4 paper with someone else's name on it. By some twist of fate or design, Lin Chu's phone number was on it.

**

Meanwhile, Shen Zhu grew restless, aware that darkness would soon fall if they kept dawdling. She finally summoned her courage and led a few people to the police station.

**

Lu Yan strolled along the path, occasionally catching the curious glances of people. He maintained his composure, even going so far as to advertise his own number.

He knew that these people all watched to catch him, and his biggest edge was that they had no idea what he looked like.

But...

Lu Yan made a daring move.

The world was experiencing another anomaly; normally, when the taskers entered, the world would revert to normal. But now... even though the task was still in progress, it felt no different from his everyday reality.

Lu Yan had no idea how it all started. A faint voice in his head whispered that it was his fault, but he refused to accept that. He was nothing but a normal person, after all.

What was wrong with this mission? What was the origin of the town’s strange phenomena?

And what had his future self gone through?

Lu Yan could still recall the wish he had made once, to live long enough to unravel all the mysteries. Had his future self lost his protection after finding out the truth, or was it because that truth was somehow linked to the elusive “gods”?

The thought sent a chill down his spine. He pulled his clothes tighter around his body and kept walking forward.

He heard a loud bang as he passed by a shop. He turned and saw a plastic mannequin lying on the ground, having fallen from the glass display window.

The shop assistant, who had been absorbed in her phone, jumped up and ran over to pick it up.

“Strange… I could have sworn this mannequin was wearing a red dress.” She muttered, puzzled, as she propped up the mannequin. She scanned the shop, feeling that something was amiss, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was. She shrugged and returned to her phone, her mind wandering.

When she looked up again, she gasped. One of the mannequins in the window was gone.

Only the other one remained, standing still in its spot.

“Oh no! Someone must have nicked it!” She exclaimed, panicking. Then she slapped her forehead, remembering that there were CCTV cameras in the shop. She quickly went back to the computer to check the footage.

But… what she saw on the screen made her eyes widen in disbelief.

The mannequins in the window, which were clearly… clearly just dummies, were somehow moving, slowly walking out of the shop, one by one.

“No way, how is this possible…”

A surge of terror gripped the shop assistant's heart, making her feel as if her soul was about to escape her body. In a panic, she let go of the mouse and tried to run away, but then she saw the mannequin's eerie gesture. It was as if it had signalled something to her before it left.

With a shudder, she forced herself to sit back at the computer, her hands shaking uncontrollably. She reopened the image that had haunted her moments ago and zoomed in on it repeatedly.

It had to be a ghost... But what did the ghost want to tell her?

The image was still blurry, so she strained her eyes to see better. She noticed some dark shadows on the screen, which she attempted to wipe off with her hand, but to no avail. The screen was spotless and clear, with nothing on it.

The problem was not the screen, but her eyes. They felt itchy and irritated. The assistant did not pay much attention to it, rubbed her eyes, and resumed her inspection.

As the picture became larger, the movement of the mannequin grew more distinct. It looked like it was raising its hand, pointing to its own eyes.

Eyes? What was wrong with the eyes?

She rubbed her eyes again, hoping to clear her vision, but then she felt something odd in her eyes. She walked over to the large mirror in the shop, usually reserved for girls who wanted to apply makeup, and examined her eyes closely.

"Oh, it's just a fallen eyelash, that's all," she muttered to herself, pulling apart her eyelids to locate the short eyelash and trying to rub it out.

She failed. No matter how hard she rubbed, it was useless. She only managed to pull out a tiny bit. The assistant reached out again, pinching with her fingernails carefully, and to her surprise, she caught hold of it, pulling it out slowly.

That was strange, wasn't it supposed to be an eyelash?

Why... did it get longer the more she pulled?

This was not an eyelash! It was hair!

She kept pulling, and the thin black strand of hair got longer and longer...

No! What was this?!

She had already pulled out a hair that was over a metre long, but it still showed no sign of ending, and with every tug, more hair came out, longer and longer, as if feeding on her fear.

"No... please..."

The assistant was on the brink of tears, pulling frantically, oblivious to the fact that in the mirror, something was happening to her eyeball.

If one looked closely, they would see that there was a word on her eyeball.

**

Meanwhile, Lu Yan made his way to the town's library.

He was unaware that not far behind him, a mannequin was following him closely.

But the mannequin's eyes had been gouged out, leaving only two black holes.