Volume 7 Chapter 11: Tomb-Raiding Notes

This is the mysterious basement of a mysterious sanatorium, where a mysterious woman has done some incredible things. So, since she lived here, there must be some clues. If I can find a little, maybe I can understand the truth of some things. Even if it’s all useless information, I can still know what her life and mental state were like at the time.

I know almost nothing about what happened in this sanatorium, and all the clues are important to me.

I started searching, and I looked at everything I could see.

The building was low, and my body was quite depressed here, but the lighter’s lighting was more effective because it could shine far away.

In the blurry black and white images of the video, I couldn’t freely see the full view and details of the room, but now I could. I first imagined the real Huo Ling combing her hair, which was quite terrifying, and I shook my head to distract myself.

The Zippo lighter in my hand could burn continuously, but it was already so hot that I could barely hold it if I squeezed it a little more. I found a piece of ragged cloth on the table and wrapped it around it to continue using it.

In the faint light of the fire, I first looked at the walls. The walls of this room were painted white on all four sides, but now they were covered with dust. On the wall next to the door was a wooden stick with a clothes hook inserted into it. Newspaper was pasted on the bottom of the stick to prevent the clothes from touching the white dust on the wall. The stick led to a cabinet without a door, which should be where Holly changed clothes. When I looked closer, I found that the cabinet was scratched as if it had been scratched by something.

On the other side of the wall, there was nothing but the wires hanging on it, which were already completely gray. There was also a door opening to the next room, but I didn’t know if it was left unsealed during construction or if someone had smashed it open later.

Opposite the cabinet, there was a desk with two desks side by side, which were piled high with things that looked like newspapers and garbage that I couldn’t make out. On the wall next to the desk were a large number of papers, all covered in dust.

I blew off the dust and looked at them one by one. I found that the content of the wall was very trivial. I saw the electricity bill from the 1990s, some numbers written down casually and meaningless. These papers, which have almost become an integral part of the wall, should have been used as a telephone logbook at the time, because I remember the telephone was placed in this position. But now it is gone, leaving only a severed telephone line.

These things can’t give me any information. I can only know that she used electricity when she lived here. I sighed and then began to look for the documents on the table.

The papers were all in the dust, and a cloud of smoke rose up. I couldn’t care less, so I turned them over one by one. The inside of the paper was already rotten, and I disturbed some tiny centipedes. But these things were nothing compared to the snow-covered mountains of Changbai. I quickly turned the paper over and pulled out a few notebooks from inside.

I shook it out and found that it was a large notebook used to write drafts when there were no computers.

I opened it and saw three lines of text on the first page:

[Rear Room 2-3

Number 012-053

Category: 20, 939, 45]

What does this mean? I thought to myself, it seems to be the number of some kind of file. Could it be a handwritten document or a classic?

I flipped over the first page and found that it wasn’t. On the second page, there was a picture, drawn in ballpoint pen, and it was so messy that I couldn’t tell what it was at first.

I took a deep breath and looked carefully. It took me five or six minutes to figure out that it was a picture of an ancient figure, but this person obviously didn’t know how to draw. The figure was almost distorted and looked very strange. The ancient figure didn’t look like a person, but rather like a fox with a long mouth.

There were also many strange lines around the figure. After I realized that the ghost was a person, the meaning of these lines also became clear. They should be the background of the figure, something like mountains, rivers, temples, trees, etc.

I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking to myself, “What is this? Could it be a sketch of Huo Ling? Her hobbies are quite extensive.

I flipped through the pages, and then another thirty or forty pages, all of which were pictures like this. There was no text, so I put it down and looked at another one. It was the same, except that the first page was different. I didn’t know what it was, so I just put it aside and kept flipping through the pages. There was nothing else, except for a few lumps of something that looked like rags. I couldn’t even find a single piece of paper with any content.

I cursed again, thinking that when they left, they probably took everything with them that had any information.

But I was not convinced. I sat down in the place where Huo Ling had combed her hair, took a break, and opened the drawer in front of me to see what was inside.

It was the largest drawer in the middle of the desk, under the top. I pulled it a little and felt a door. The drawer was locked, and it felt heavy.

It’s not common to lock up discarded furniture after a move, and the feel of it suggested that there might be something inside. I stood up, took a coat hook from behind a door, inserted it into the gap in the drawer and pressed down hard. The gap in the drawer was enlarged in one go, the lock teeth came off, and I pulled it out.

I took out my lighter and shone it in. I gave a little YES and sure enough, the drawer was full of things. I put the lighter down on the edge of the drawer and started to look around.

This must be a woman’s drawer. There were a lot of small sundries in it, and it was very messy. Obviously, when she left, she had already taken the useful things with her, leaving behind a wooden comb, a small cake-like makeup case from the 1990s, and a stack of thick Contemporary Film magazines. These old magazines are very old. I remember when I was a child, I used to read them as pornographic magazines. There were also black iron hair clips, many empty envelopes and an empty photo album.

There were many envelopes, but they were all unused. I patiently opened them one by one to see what was inside, but there was nothing. There were no photos in the photo album either. I could tell that they had definitely been put there, but they had all been taken out.

Then I turned over the old magazines, page by page, looking extra carefully, but still found nothing.

I sat down in the chair, ignoring the dust on it, and looked across the table through the dim light of the lighter. It was dark and quiet, and my heart was disappointed. Obviously, if this seat belonged to Huo Ling, this woman was very careful and deliberately left no clues.

The coldness around me was already greeting me. I gritted my teeth and couldn’t give up. Damn it, Roger’s law, there can’t be nothing left. I’m sure I can find something! I encouraged myself again, although I was already a little desperate. I pushed the drawers one by one and got up to look at the desk across from me.

There was no chair to sit on, so I bent down and found that the largest drawer in the middle was still locked. This was a bit strange, so I repeated my old trick and pryed the drawer open.

I thought that I would see the same thing as before and that I would still have to look for clues in the garbage. However, to my surprise, when I pulled it out this time, the drawer was very clean, empty, and contained nothing. Only in the middle of the drawer was a large yellow envelope, bulging and as big as an A4 sheet of paper, placed there as if on purpose, waiting for me to see it.

“Huh?” I thought to myself, realizing something, and immediately picked it up to look at it.

It was a kind of labor insurance envelope from the late 1980s, made of kraft paper, with a faded portrait of Mao Zedong on it. I touched it and found that there was something very thick inside, but it had already been damp, and it felt very soft and fluffy. There was no writing on the envelope.

I felt that there was a way out, so I quickly turned it over and opened the envelope. I dug inside and pulled out an old work notebook that looked like a large magazine.

I was stunned, and when I opened the cover, I found a very beautiful cursive handwriting on the first page of the notebook: “I don’t know which one of the three of you you are, but whoever you are, when you came here and found this envelope, you must have been involved in something.

The tape is the last insurance procedure we set up. When the tape is sent, it means that the person who is keeping the tape can no longer contact me.

Either way, it means that I will probably be dead soon, so the tape will lead you here, so that you can read this notebook.

This notebook contains the results of our research over the past ten years. I leave it to you, so that you can learn what you want to know.

However, I must warn you that the contents involve some huge secrets. I once vowed to take them to my grave, but in the end I could not keep my promise. After reading these secrets, you will be faced with an uncertain future.

Chen Wenjin

September 1995