Chapter 71: Wang Family Funeral Home
The daytime work was very simple. The only thing that seemed dangerous was collecting Chen Hai’s body.
After smoothly completing these tasks, the remaining time was quite free.
Until nightfall, no further abnormalities appeared.
At shift change, Meng Ning’s condition was already extremely poor. Even though she felt fear in her heart at the arrival of night, the fatigue of her body and mind had already made her almost unable to keep her eyes open.
“You go sleep first. In your current state, even if something unexpected happens, you won’t be able to react.”
Seeing that Meng Ning was somewhat unwilling to go back to sleep, Xiao Ping could only persuade her like this.
Meng Ning following them would be of no use and would only waste time. In this state, she might accidentally become a burden. Xiao Ping really didn’t want her to come along.
“.Alright, you all be careful.”
Meng Ning didn’t want to be alone, but she really couldn’t hold on anymore. Her head was dizzying, and her body was utterly exhausted. She knew that what she needed most right now was rest.
After Meng Ning left, the sky had completely darkened.
In the duty room, the two waited for the patrol time to arrive.
“Are we patrolling in the same order as they did yesterday tonight?” Xiao Ping asked.
Lu Jinzhao thought for a moment: “Change the order. Keep the morgue for last, and put the mourning hall before the morgue.”
Last night, abnormalities only appeared in these two places, so put these two places at the end.
“Understood.” Xiao Ping nodded.
“Just in case, each of us should carry two candles.” Lu Jinzhao added.
Last night there was no power outage, but that was only the first night entering the platform.
Time passed bit by bit. Lu Jinzhao could feel her heart slowly rising, and the tense atmosphere spread in the small duty room.
The funeral home, where people could occasionally be seen during the day, seemed to enter another world as soon as night fell. Not to mention guests, even the staff couldn’t be seen.
It was as if the vast funeral home only had a few of them as passengers left.
Drip
Drip
It was the sound of time passing bit by bit.
“It’s about time.” Lu Jinzhao glanced at the clock and stood up.
Xiao Ping couldn’t explain why, but when he first boarded this train, he thought he was the oldest among the four with the most social experience, and he should take the leading position in the team during the mission.
But after entering the platform, this leading position had unknowingly been taken by the girl in front of him.
At first, he thought she would be a troublesome existence, but as the mission progressed, Xiao Ping surprisingly found that this somewhat gloomy-tempered girl had an unexpectedly steady and wise personality.
Many times, she was far more decisive than him, and her character seemed good too. At least, she was willing to remind him.
So Xiao Ping was also willing to temporarily follow her command.
Time had reached 11 p.m. The two took their equipment and walked out of the duty room.
Tonight was exceptionally quiet. Not only were there no human voices, there wasn’t even any wind. As Lu Jinzhao walked on the road, she could only hear her own footsteps and Xiao Ping’s.
Their first patrol location was still the service hall.
“Huh?”
Before getting close, Xiao Ping let out a sound of doubt.
“I remember Meng Ning said that when they patrolled, the lights in the service hall were on. I didn’t remember wrong, right?”
His tone carried some surprise and uncertainty. After seeing Lu Jinzhao nod to confirm he hadn’t remembered wrong, his complexion worsened a bit.
They weren’t sure if there was a requirement to turn off the lights in the service hall at night, so the pitch-black building ahead suddenly became uncertain.
“Maybe the person who got off work yesterday forgot to turn them off?” Xiao Ping tried to find a reason.
“Let’s go take a look first.” Lu Jinzhao didn’t hesitate for long.
No matter who turned off the lights, they had to go check.
“.Okay.”
Even though Xiao Ping didn’t want to get close, given the situation, he could only follow Lu Jinzhao’s footsteps toward the pitch-black service hall.
They were fairly familiar with the layout of the lobby. Besides coming here the first day, they had walked through the locations they needed to patrol today twice during the daytime.
The moonlight inside the platform was never bright enough, and the streetlights along the road couldn’t illuminate the building at all. They could only observe this building, which was at least thirty years old, through the light from their flashlights.
During the day when approaching here, they always saw the renovated exterior of the building. It wasn’t very trendy, but at least it was clean and tidy.
However, at this moment, when their flashlight beams shone on it, whether it was an illusion or the shadow of a tree falling on it, Xiao Ping always felt he saw a fleeting mottled mark on the wall surface.
Like some indelible stain.
But when he shone the light again, he couldn’t see any abnormality.
“Was it an illusion?”
He looked for a long time, and there really were no filthy marks on it. Probably… he had seen wrong.
To be cautious, he asked Lu Jinzhao: “Did you see anything on the wall just now?”
He hoped Lu Jinzhao would say she saw nothing, but…
“There seemed to be some marks, but they were blurry and flashed by.”
Lu Jinzhao had clearly seen it too.
The service hall with its suddenly turned-off lights—something had indeed gone wrong?
Things suddenly became more tricky. The service hall that was safe last night had an abnormal change tonight. Xiao Ping felt like retreating.
“Standing here counts as patrolling, right? Can we not get closer?” he asked.
Lu Jinzhao neither shook nor nodded her head, just saying: “I’m not sure, but I will go closer to check. If you don’t want to go, you can wait here for me.”
【Why say it like that?】
At this already tense moment, a line of blood script suddenly appeared before her.
【Telling him that this counts as having patrolled already, or telling him that this absolutely doesn’t count and he must enter the service hall, either way could kill him. Why use such a blurry phrasing?】
Lu Jinzhao’s gaze sharpened, extracting two pieces of information from the parchment’s words.
First, standing here without getting close doesn’t count as patrolling, and it will lead to death.
Second, entering the service hall will lead to death.
Didn’t the parchment know that saying this would give her information?
Lu Jinzhao slightly lowered her eyes, then confirmed that it had said this deliberately.
The parchment didn’t lie, but it absolutely wouldn’t help her. Revealing this information could only be to harm her.
She needed to think about what trap was hidden in this information.
First, it could be confirmed that they couldn’t enter the service hall. Not entering, but just looking from the doorway, counted as completing the patrol.
After all, Meng Ning hadn’t entered the morgue last night either.
But the premise was that they must “reach the doorway,” not just look from afar.
Looking at it this way, there didn’t seem to be any trap hidden in this information?
Was the parchment just guiding her to do something that would harm her companion?
Or harboring malice, wanting to see her appearance trapped in fear?
