Chen Ge's shadow stretched long and thin under the weak orange glow of the streetlamp, a solitary silhouette in a neighborhood that seemed to have forgotten the concept of night-time bustle. The only other movement came from a scrawny tabby cat that darted across the cracked asphalt, its paws rustling plastic bags like dry leaves. The quiet was so complete that Chen Ge could hear his own heartbeat, steady but alert, echoing in his ears. Who would have imagined that a city as alive as Jiujiang could harbor a street this still, this forgotten? He walked deeper between the buildings, the pavement uneven beneath his sneakers, the air growing heavier with each step. A faint, sour odor clung to the breeze—rotting food, uncollected trash, the slow decay of a place left to fend for itself. The deeper he ventured, the more the residential area felt like a pocket of time detached from the rest of the world, a place where the living and the dead might share the same narrow corridors.
The buildings on either side loomed close, their facades stained with years of grime and neglect. Trash bags, split open by claws or weather, spilled their contents across the alley: soggy cardboard, half-eaten takeout, plastic bottles glinting dully in the lamplight. Occasionally, something small and quick—a rat, a cockroach—would skitter out from the refuse and vanish into the shadows. Chen Ge's nose wrinkled, but he pressed on. The apartment block he sought stood at the end of the lane, six stories of crumbling concrete that looked older than the others, as if it had been built first and then abandoned by progress. Dirty streaks ran down the walls like tear tracks; the stairwell entrance was choked with cigarette butts, crumpled flyers, and a single child's shoe, its velcro strap dangling like a broken wing. A peeling advertisement taped to the wall confirmed the address: Hai Ming Apartments. Room 303 waited somewhere above, and with it, the black phone's Trial Mission.
Chen Ge checked his phone—7:54 p.m. Doctor Gao and Men Nan would arrive soon, and once they did, moving freely would become complicated. Better to scout the layout now, while the building was still his alone. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and stepped into the stairwell without calling ahead. The ceiling was oppressively low, barely 2.1 meters, forcing him to duck slightly as he climbed. Iron railings lined the stairs, cold to the touch, and every few steps a frayed red string was knotted around the metal—superstition, perhaps, or a landlord's half-hearted attempt at warding off bad luck. The moment he crossed the threshold, a strange odor enveloped him: not foul, not sharp, but cloying, like milk left too long in the sun. Residents might have grown numb to it, but to Chen Ge it was a warning bell, a scent that seemed to ooze from the very bricks.
It smells like food gone sour, he thought, pausing on the first-floor landing. He swept his phone's flashlight across the corridor, searching for the source, but the beam revealed only peeling paint and a row of battered doors. The smell was everywhere and nowhere, baked into the building's bones. There was no overhead light; the bulb sockets were empty, wires dangling like severed veins. Four apartments crowded the landing, their doors close enough that a raised voice would carry. Even standing outside, Chen Ge caught muffled snippets: a television laugh track, a kettle whistling, the low murmur of an argument. Sound insulation was a joke here; every life leaked into the next. He moved on, climbing silently to the third floor, his footsteps soft on the gritty concrete.
On the third-floor landing, the atmosphere shifted. Room 301 blared a game show, the host's voice shrill and artificial. From 302 came a man's heated phone call, the same two sentences looping like a broken record: "Stop forcing me. Do you two wish to push me to my death?" The words were raw, desperate, but Chen Ge's focus zeroed in on 303 and 304—both silent as tombs. He pressed his ear to 303's door, the wood cool against his skin. Nothing. No breathing, no footsteps, no hum of a refrigerator. Just the faint, sour smell seeping under the doorframe. He knocked lightly—three soft taps. Instantly, the television in 301 dropped to a murmur; the man in 302 ended his call with a curt "I said no." The entire floor fell into a hush so complete Chen Ge could hear his own pulse.
He knocked again, a full minute of rhythmic taps, each one met with silence. "Men Nan? You home?" he called, voice low. No answer. Just as doubt crept in—wrong address, wrong night—the door to 301 creaked open. A middle-aged man leaned out, unshaven, eyes bloodshot, the reek of cheap liquor rolling off him in waves. "Hey, kid, who you looking for?" he slurred, scratching at a mosquito bite on his cheek until fresh blood welled under his nails. Chen Ge kept his tone neutral. "Men Nan, Room 303. Medical student at Jiujiang University. Heard he's been sick, came to check on him." The man snorted, wiping his fingers on his shirt. "Wrong place. Ain't no Men Nan here. And trust me, 303's been empty since…" He trailed off, glancing at the door as if it might open on its own.
Chen Ge pressed gently. "My friend said he lives here. You say you don't know him—how can you be sure he's not inside?" The man's eyes narrowed, the alcohol haze sharpening into something wary. "Someone died in there. Years ago. Room's been locked ever since. Landlord won't rent it—bad luck." He lifted his blood-streaked fingers, studying the crimson under his nails with detached curiosity. "Stop knocking. You'll stir things up." With that, he retreated, slamming the door. The television stayed low; Chen Ge could almost feel the man's ear pressed to the other side, listening. The clue was gold: someone had died in 303, and the room had stood vacant ever since. The black phone's mission venue was confirmed.
Chen Ge stepped back, mind racing. Midnight was the deadline; entry had to happen before then. Doctor Gao would arrive soon, and explanations would slow him down. He studied the lock—old, single-cylinder, probably pickable with the right tools—but forcing it now risked alerting the neighbors. The sour smell was stronger here, curling under the door like a living thing. He glanced at his phone: 7:59 p.m. Time to move. The key was not just getting in, but doing it quietly, before the building's restless spirits—or its living tenants—decided to interfere.
The black phone had never steered Chen Ge wrong, its cryptic prompts always unraveling into truths that defied logic yet demanded action. Men Nan's illness, with its relentless nightmares of a strangling figure, had to be tethered to Room 303—the mission's designated venue. The neighbor's revelation of a death in that vacant apartment only tightened the knot of certainty in Chen Ge's gut. He glanced at his watch: 8:00 p.m. sharp. Doctor Gao and Men Nan were due any minute, and lingering in the corridor risked drawing more attention from the building's wary tenants. Chen Ge pulled out his phone and dialed Doctor Gao, his voice low to avoid echoing in the cramped stairwell. The sour smell clung to his nostrils, a persistent reminder that Hai Ming Apartments was no ordinary place. The black phone's Trial Mission hinged on this location, and every detail—the smell, the silence, the red strings on the railings—felt like a piece of a larger, sinister puzzle.
Doctor Gao answered on the first ring, his voice tinged with concern. "Chen Ge, are you at the apartments? I was worried you'd have trouble finding the place, so Men Nan and I have been waiting at the entrance to the residential area." His thoughtfulness was characteristic, but Chen Ge could hear the strain beneath his words, the weight of Men Nan's deteriorating condition pressing on him. Chen Ge kept his explanation brief, recounting the neighbor's claim about Room 303's deadly history and its subsequent vacancy. "Meet me on the third floor, but keep it quiet," he said, his eyes scanning the dim corridor for any sign of movement. Minutes later, the sound of shuffling footsteps ascended the stairs, and Doctor Gao appeared, guiding Men Nan behind him. The sight of the young man stopped Chen Ge cold, a visceral shock rippling through him at the drastic change in his appearance.
Men Nan was barely recognizable as the tense but human figure from earlier that day. His head hung at a perverse angle, almost perpendicular to his spine, as if an invisible hand pressed down with unrelenting force, crumpling his neck into an unnatural slump. His face, pale and slick with sweat, contorted in a grimace of pain and exhaustion, his eyes darting wildly despite the dim light. He moved like a marionette with cut strings, each step a struggle against the weight bearing down on him. Chen Ge's gaze flicked to the door of Room 303, then back to Men Nan, his confusion evident in a raised eyebrow directed at Doctor Gao. The doctor caught the look and shook his head subtly, his expression grim. "His condition has worsened dramatically," he whispered. "The medication is barely holding him together. Let's get inside first—304, his room." The urgency in his voice brooked no argument, and Chen Ge nodded, stepping aside to let them pass.
Men Nan fumbled in his pocket, producing a key with trembling hands. The corridor's weak bulb cast long shadows, making the simple act of unlocking the door a torturous ordeal. His fingers shook violently, the key scraping against the lock but failing to find its mark. Frustration flashed across his face, his breath hitching as if on the verge of another outburst. Chen Ge moved quickly, sensing the young man's fragile state. "Let me," he said, taking the key and sliding it into the lock of Room 304 with a practiced twist. The door creaked open, revealing a small, meticulously clean apartment. Doctor Gao guided Men Nan inside, and Chen Ge followed, but the moment he crossed the threshold, a wave of that same sour odor hit him, stronger now, curling into his lungs like a living thing. His eyes watered slightly, and he fought the urge to cover his nose, his instincts screaming that this was no ordinary stench.
The room was tidy to the point of obsession—bed made with hospital corners, desk clear of clutter, waste bin empty and scrubbed clean. Yet the smell persisted, seeping from the walls themselves, as if the apartment had absorbed years of decay. Chen Ge's mind flashed to Ping An Apartment, to the body sealed behind a reinforced wall, but he dismissed the thought almost instantly. A standard apartment wall, thin and hollow, couldn't conceal a corpse without obvious signs—bulging plaster, damp stains, or a stronger rot. This was different, subtler, as if the building itself exhaled the odor of something long dead. Chen Ge's gaze lingered on the wall separating Room 304 from 303, where the smell seemed to concentrate, a faint pulse of wrongness emanating from the shared partition. Another body? No, the logistics didn't add up, but the connection to the vacant, cursed room next door was undeniable.
Doctor Gao noticed Chen Ge's scrutiny, his brow furrowing as he settled Men Nan in a chair far from the bed. "What are you looking for?" he asked, his voice low to avoid agitating his patient. Chen Ge inhaled shallowly, the smell coating his throat. "Don't you notice it? That weird odor—it's strongest right here," he said, tapping the wall between the two rooms. Doctor Gao paused, sniffing the air with a clinical detachment. "There's something, yes, but old buildings like this often carry strange smells—mold, bad plumbing, years of neglect." His explanation was rational, but it didn't satisfy Chen Ge, whose experiences with the black phone had taught him to trust the unnatural. Men Nan, meanwhile, refused to approach the bed, his body rigid as he stood in the corner, his lowered head and darting eyes radiating fear.
Chen Ge leaned closer to Doctor Gao, keeping his voice to a whisper. "What's wrong with him now? He's avoiding the bed like it's poisoned." Men Nan's condition had visibly deteriorated since morning, his unnatural posture and refusal to sit painting a picture of terror that went beyond psychological distress. Doctor Gao's face tightened, his eyes flicking to his student with a mix of pity and helplessness. "He's terrified of falling asleep," he murmured. "In his last dream, the figure strangling him was closer than ever, hands around his neck. He's convinced that if he sleeps again, it won't be a dream—it'll be the end, his eternal slumber." The words sent a chill through Chen Ge, the black phone's mission hint—"He came from the Third Sick Hall"—echoing in his mind. Men Nan's fear wasn't just of the dream but of the entity behind it, a presence that might be lurking in the walls of Room 303, waiting to cross the threshold.