Translator: CinderTL
Jiang Cheng didn't reply, knowing that what he was about to hear would be the truly useful information.
"During the building renovation, workers accidentally discovered a secret room after moving a heavy cabinet."
"Inside the room, they found strangely shaped candelabras, each holding a white candle, arranged in a very peculiar pattern."
"Later, we learned that the pattern was called a hexagram."
"At each point of the hexagram, there was a chair, and on the wall facing each chair hung a dark red velvet cloth."
"When the workers pulled back the cloth, they found a large mirror behind it, roughly the height of a person, with a heavy black wooden frame."
Hearing about the mirror on the wall and the chairs arranged around it, Jiang Cheng immediately thought of the warehouse at the Activity Center.
The layouts were nearly identical, both resembling the setup for some kind of ritual.
He had a feeling they were getting closer to the source of the abnormality.
As Curator Zhou spoke, his expression grew increasingly grave, and his gaze toward Jiang Cheng became strange, even tinged with fear. "That's not the strangest part. The workers... the workers also found other things in that secret room."
"What was it?" Jiang Cheng asked softly, not wanting to press too hard and risk upsetting the kind-hearted library curator.
"Corpses," Curator Zhou replied, instinctively tightening his collar. His voice had shifted, losing its earlier warmth. "Not adult corpses—all infants."
"They were preserved in glass jars, the kind used in medical exhibitions," Curator Zhou explained, trying to clarify. "There were so many—dozens, I heard. Different sizes, representing various stages of fetal development."
"The jars were lined up on shelves, one after another. They say the largest fetus even had a good amount of hair."
Curator Zhou's words quickly conjured vivid images in Fatty's mind: dozens of fetuses, ranging in size, floating in glass jars. Occasionally, one or two mischievous ones would suddenly open their eyes, as if waving hello.
Fatty shuddered, dragged his chair closer to Jiang Cheng, and scooted even closer.
"The workers who first went in had never seen anything like it. The moment their flashlight beams swept across the jars, they panicked, scrambling out on all fours and immediately calling the police."
"Later, the police reported that the infants had already lost all vital signs before being preserved as specimens."
"In other words, they were all stillborn."
"But the source was problematic. This foreigner had secretly purchased them through illegal transactions from a nearby Maternity and Infant Hospital."
"When the police arrived, they thoroughly searched the secret room. I heard they found all sorts of strange things inside."
"Oddly shaped silver artifacts, jars and bottles filled with unknown substances, and the rest were books—lots of books."
"In short, the room resembled a small research laboratory."
"As the police investigation deepened, they unexpectedly discovered that the foreigner's identity was also fraudulent."
"The name he was using was fake. The person who had called him by that name had died many years ago. He was an impostor."
"Armed with this solid evidence, the police rushed to the hospital."
"But since the incident, the man had remained in a coma. The doctors said they couldn't predict when he might regain consciousness."
"The police had no choice but to instruct the doctors to notify them immediately if the patient showed any signs of waking up."
"Unexpectedly, that very night, the on-duty nurse discovered during her rounds that the man had vanished. The entire hospital searched all night, but he couldn't be found."
Curator Zhou sighed, casting Jiang Cheng a meaningful glance. "The next day, he was found here, right in that secret room."
"When we found him, he was already dead."
"Dead again?" Fatty's face twisted into a "holy shit, why does it always end like this?" expression.
"Again?" Curator Zhou tilted his head, his gaze fixed on Fatty's chubby face, his expression a mixture of confusion and suspicion.
Just as Fatty tensed up and Jiang Cheng frantically tried to come up with a cover story, Curator Zhou's next words cut through their thoughts.
"How did you know there was more than one death?" Curator Zhou asked, his eyes narrowing on Fatty.
Fatty stammered, "I..."
"He guessed," Jiang Cheng interjected quickly, changing the subject. "Curator, has something else happened besides this man's death?"
Curator Zhou gave Fatty another strange look, sizing him up. Perhaps seeing his blank expression and judging him incapable of keeping secrets, he let it go and turned to Jiang Cheng, lowering his voice. "Don't interrupt me again. Let me finish."
"The man died in the secret chamber, but the circumstances of his death..." Curator Zhou paused, pressing his lips together. "They were very strange."
"He was lying in the center of the chamber, his feet facing the mirror. There were no injuries on his body. His eyes were closed, his face serene, and his hands were folded over his abdomen. Beneath his hands lay a large, silver crucifix. He looked... like he was asleep."
At this, Jiang Cheng's pupils trembled slightly, while Fatty gasped, drawing in a sharp breath. They were all too familiar with this method of death.
Xiaoting, and Xiaolin from the previous night, had been found in the same state, their bodies still warm.
"Later, we discovered several lines of writing near the mirror that hadn't been there before. It must have been left by the man."
"We asked the school's foreign language teachers to translate it, but they couldn't understand it. Eventually, we photographed the text and sent it to some old professors at the Great Capital City Research Institute, begging for their help."
"But we never expected..." Curator Zhou shook his head. "This caused a real uproar."
"A few days later, early one morning, a group of about a dozen people suddenly arrived. They were all wearing black trench coats and black leather shoes, led by a middle-aged man with graying hair. The others were young, in their early twenties."
"They hadn't notified us beforehand. They simply drove all the construction workers off the site and took over."
"The police were there too, helping them maintain order."
"Then, as if they'd heard something, they immediately began taking a headcount of the workers."
"Back then, we were rushing to meet the deadline, so we had multiple floors under construction simultaneously. With workers from all the projects combined, there were over a hundred people bustling around, making it incredibly difficult to manage."
"But when we tallied everyone up, we were stunned," Curator Zhou said after a moment's hesitation, lowering his voice. "Several people were missing."
"The site supervisor was completely bewildered. He stammered, explaining that he'd seen them just yesterday afternoon. How could they vanish overnight?"
(End of the Chapter)
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