Chapter 17: She Seems Blind Part 1

This old-style office building had a maximum of eight floors, and the boss’s office was on the 8th floor.

This floor had a reception room, a meeting room, and several vacant offices.

Jiang Wuning and Xu Xiye split up. She took the stairs all the way to the fourth floor, checking it with extreme speed. By the time she left, Little Li hadn’t even made it upstairs.

There was nothing she was looking for on the fourth floor. Jiang Wuning continued climbing the stairs to the 8th floor.

Pushing open the fire door and stepping into the hallway, an oppressive, chilling gloom hit her more intensely than on the lower floors. Jiang Wuning glanced at the value on her bracelet.

【Sanity Value: 440】

Ever since it stabilized, her Sanity Value hadn’t fluctuated much. But the scene before her was a spectacle unlike any she had ever witnessed.

In the long corridor, corpses hung from the ceiling in dense clusters, like a narrow forest of the dead.

These were the hanged Liu Linglings.

Right now, the Liu Linglings’ limbs dangled limp and weak, their necks crooked, faces pale and contorted. Their open eyes were filled with agony, venomous spite, and a hint of satisfaction.

On the floor, one after another, were women in white dresses, collapsed in pools of blood. That was Fan Yajun, the pregnant woman who had slipped and died in the restroom.

“Help me! Help me!”

Countless sharp voices surged forward in unison, like vengeful ghosts demanding lives.

And in the corners, against the walls, within the crevices, shadowy figures lurked, peeping at everything here.

What is it like to walk alone into a deserted office building late at night?

Standing at the entrance of a dark hallway, even if there’s nothing abnormal ahead, a primal fear can still creep up your spine.

And what does it feel like when that walkway is lined with identical plastic mannequins, all staring at you?

Whether or not you fear such things, they are guaranteed to cause a certain level of psychological pressure.

Now, what blocked Jiang Wuning’s path was one dead person after another, all staring at her. The psychological pressure they caused was imaginable.

If she wanted to see the company boss, she had to walk past these dead, one step at a time.

Jiang Wuning stood at the hallway entrance. Her pale, beautiful face was hidden in the dim light, the corners of her mouth perpetually lifted in an unchanging smile. It wasn’t from happiness or excitement; she just smiled unconsciously, even in a situation like this.

This was the anomalous phenomenon caused by the Pollution Source on the fourth night. If the fourth night was on this scale, what would the fifth or sixth night be like?

The level of pollution would decrease significantly during the day, but this was a door that could only be opened late at night when no one was around.

Jiang Wuning tilted her head, eerily like a stiff puppet. The puppet lifted its foot and stepped inside.

She wanted to test it.

First step. “Help me! Help me!” Cold hands grabbed at her ankles. The toes of the corpses hanging above brushed against her forehead, then passed through her body like phantoms.

For Jiang Wuning, she couldn’t touch their physical forms yet, and correspondingly, they couldn’t touch her either.

But the bone-chilling cold that passed through her body was now something she could tangibly feel.

Second step, third step… Jiang Wuning walked through one Liu Lingling and Fan Yajun after another, brushing past the hidden shadows peering from the darkness. After crossing about half the office length, in a daze, she saw Liu Lingling’s face disappear, becoming smooth and flat as if born without facial features.

Jiang Wuning did not stop, continuing forward.

“Help me! Help me! Help my child!” A woman’s hand grabbed her ankle, dragging her to a halt.

Jiang Wuning stopped, looking down at the Fan Yajun holding her. “Do you truly want to give birth to this child?”

Fan Yajun wouldn’t answer her question. In front and behind, countless more Fan Yajuns were writhing and crawling towards her.

“Help me! Help me! Help my child!” They repeated the plea endlessly.

Jiang Wuning pulled free from the hand and continued forward. This time, she needed to carefully navigate around the toes of the suspended, faceless women.

Arriving at the next office with a tightly shut door, Jiang Wuning saw her own face on Liu Lingling’s visage.

Countless versions of herself were strung up by the neck, suspended in mid-air. A wave of suffocating sensation washed over her, causing Jiang Wuning to involuntarily stiffen for a moment.

Her footsteps slowed. As she reached the meeting room, the floor beneath her feet seemed to turn into flesh and blood. With each step, sticky, bloody water splashed onto her, covering her lower body. She looked no different from Fan Yajun.

Jiang Wuning’s abdomen began to feel uncomfortable. The world before her eyes swayed. A woman’s face loomed large in front of her—it was Liu Lingling’s face, but it also seemed to be her own. That face stretched directly down from the rope, hanging right before her.

Liu Lingling.

Click-clack, click-clack. The sound of high heels striking the ground. Just from the footsteps, one could imagine a confident, beautiful woman.

“Liu Lingling.”

“Liu Lingling, congratulations! Top performer again.”

“Little Liu, you’re amazing. Pretty and capable. Who can compare to you?”

Liu Lingling’s family was very ordinary. Her father was a taxi driver, and her mother worked as a clerk at a paper mill.

The couple had mild tempers and never quarreled. Their daughter was outstanding and beautiful. An ordinary, simple, yet happy family of three.

Liu Lingling had always believed this, until she found a divorce certificate hidden in a drawer just before her college entrance exams.

At one of the most critical stages of her life, her parents were divorced… and had been for half a year.

Staring at that divorce certificate, Liu Lingling felt as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head, chilling her to the bone.

Not only had they divorced, but they each already had new lovers.

They would have new families, leaving her behind, stuck in place.

The truth behind the gentleness was detachment and indifference; the absence of quarrels was because they had long been utterly disappointed.

Liu Lingling cried, saying, “I don’t know why it suddenly became like this. They asked me who I wanted to follow, Dad or Mom. I’m not that stupid. This time, I could see it clearly—neither of them wants me.”

Liu Lingling’s childhood friend confessed to her: “It’s okay, Lingling. You still have me. I like you. We’re both 18 now. We can be together, date, get married. We’ll have a new family.”

Liu Lingling said, “Okay.”

After two years of dating, her childhood friend went abroad as an exchange student. He gave himself an English name: William.

Liu Lingling and William became a long-distance couple. They were still in love and often chatted and video-called online.

After graduating from university, Liu Lingling looked for a job while William continued his studies abroad.

Liu Lingling had underperformed in her exams and chose a poor major. Finding a suitable, high-paying job amidst intense employment competition was incredibly difficult.

Liu Lingling ultimately chose sales—a job with a low entry barrier but a high ceiling.

She felt she could do well.

“Lingling, you’re amazing! Any tips you can share?”

Yes, she could do well. Some people admired and appreciated her, while others envied her.

“I’m so envious of people with good looks. It’s so easy to get by with a pretty face these days.”

“If you’re so envious, go get plastic surgery.”

“Forget it. I rely on my abilities.”

“I heard someone saw Liu Lingling coming out of a hotel with that guy.”

“Who? That big client of hers? The fat-eared, bald one? No way.”

“Who knows.”

Liu Lingling had always known there were people gossiping about her at the company. She didn’t care. Everyone gossiped; she wasn’t the only one.

The performance pressure in sales was immense, and for Liu Lingling, it was even more so. She no longer had the energy she used to for chatting and video-calling William.

She still loved William and wanted to build a new family with him.

She wasn’t sure if it was an illusion, but occasionally, she felt like someone was secretly watching her.

It was probably just her imagination. Liu Lingling couldn’t find the person and didn’t dwell on it. She spent more time maintaining client relationships and expanding her network. She was always among the top performers. She wanted that promotion.

Liu Lingling and William had a fight. Sometimes, tracing the root cause of a lovers’ quarrel is difficult.

Liu Lingling didn’t know, either. She only knew the consequence was insomnia. The next morning, she couldn’t eat anything. After arriving at the company, she felt nauseous and threw up. This was followed by several days of fever and weakness.

She was sick—a cold plus gastritis. She had to stop and rest for a while.

She spoke with William. At first, there was concern and worry, but later, the conversation turned to her drinking at business socials.

Sometimes, some things were impossible to refuse.

That call ended in silence.

“Did Liu Lingling get pregnant?”

“Hard to say. She’s been gone so long. Could she be recovering from a miscarriage?”

“Too heartless. It’s a child she carried, after all. She really just went and did it?”

“Maybe she doesn’t even know who the father is.”

“Hey, stop it, stop it. Little Liu, you’re here? Heard you were sick. Feeling better?”

“Yeah, if you’re not fully recovered, rest a few more days. Nothing is more important than your health.”

“I’m fine. Just gastritis.”

“Oh, gastritis. That condition can be serious if it gets bad. You should drink less in the future. You just don’t know how to take care of yourself.”

“Thank you, Sister Fan. I know.”

Restrooms, tea rooms, stairwells—places like these were always filled with gossip. Such things weren’t necessarily true, mostly speculation peppered with question marks. “Perhaps,” “maybe,” “who knows”—these uncertain words could often pierce a person’s heart like a sharp needle.

They wouldn’t listen to your explanations, because the intent was malicious venting from the start.

Colleagues suspected her of inappropriate relationships with clients behind her back. The things William didn’t say out loud were essentially the same. Suspicion, arguments, followed by long silences and cold wars.

Because of her illness, Liu Lingling had to hand over some of her clients to colleagues. Due to her emotional state, her energy, and a variety of other reasons, Liu Lingling lost several deals. When a person starts on a downward slope, it’s frighteningly easy to slide down quickly.

That was Liu Lingling. In just a few months, she had nearly hit rock bottom.

Her superiors were utterly disappointed. During meetings, they reprimanded her for being unsociable and told her to communicate more with colleagues if she didn’t understand something at work. But all Liu Lingling saw were her colleagues’ gloating and mocking eyes.

And the words that stabbed at her like knives.

“Liu Lingling has lost so much weight. Too skinny, really not as pretty as before.”

“As expected, all her previous deals were landed because of her face, right?”

“Wasn’t it because of her body?”

“Haha.”

“People like her really corrupt the atmosphere. Useless trash who can’t do anything without selling themselves.”

“So disgusting. She’d eat anything.”

Why was she always hearing these things? Why? Were they doing it on purpose?

Liu Lingling felt suffocated, as if a transparent plastic bag was wrapped over her head. Her body trembled, sweating, struggling to breathe.

Fan Yajun was pregnant. Liu Lingling overheard her arguing in a hushed voice on the phone.

This child had come at a bad time. Once a working woman gets pregnant, she loses many competitive advantages. But terminating the pregnancy wasn’t a decision easily made either.

Fan Yajun was capable and had good connections. Her demeanor made people feel comfortable. But she was also the one who always made ambiguous remarks that guided those rumors.