Liu Lingling could easily have embellished the phone call she overheard and spread it around. But she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to become that disgusting.
She could still climb back up. She didn’t want to stay on this downward path all the way to the bottom.
【Fight!】
【The outstanding are always envied.】
She wrote two lines on a sticky note.
However, fate did not favor her. Something even worse happened.
That night, after socializing with a client, she woke up naked in a hotel bed. She was the only one in the hotel room, but all the evidence made her painfully aware of what had happened.
In that moment, it felt as though Liu Lingling was plummeting from a height into an abyss, a fall that would never reach the bottom.
Ah!!!
It was a piercing scream that only happened inside her heart. Not a single sound escaped into reality. It was as silent as a grave, and Liu Lingling was the corpse inside it.
Report it to the police?
These things were hard to explain. In the end, it would just become grist for the gossip mill.
Wasn’t she responsible, too?
She was. She should have been more cautious.
Just let it be. No one would know. Just let it be.
Liu Lingling landed that big deal, but she didn’t feel the slightest bit of joy. All those previous rumors, she could once listen to them as just rumors. But now, it felt like she had made those rumors true.
Liu Lingling was like an over-inflated balloon, ready to burst with the slightest pressure.
Two months later, someone pricked it with a needle.
During those two months, every single nerve in her body was stretched taut. She tuned out all her colleagues’ gossip. The moment her name drifted into her ears, her heart would clench painfully.
Just when she thought things would just stay like this, just when she was ready to resign, her world went black.
Someone was spreading lewd rumors about her in an anonymous group chat.
To others, they were lewd rumors. Some details were too specific to be believable. Otherwise, what? Were you hiding under her bed watching?
To others, they were lewd rumors. To Liu Lingling, they were facts.
The color of the bedsheets, the color of her underwear. The corner of the room where her clothes were scattered. The state she was in when she woke up. The marks on her body…
Liu Lingling felt like she was being strangled. She gasped for air, retreating to her home as an escape.
Someone had seen. Someone had been hiding under the bed, watching her through the cracks.
That angle must have been from under the bed.
She finally told William everything. William said, “Let’s break up, Lingling.”
Liu Lingling’s face was covered in tears. “Okay.”
He didn’t believe her.
Liu Lingling was transferred to an assistant position, handling vast amounts of sales documents every day.
Everyone looked at her with strange eyes. Everyone talked about her behind her back.
Every look, every word, was a knife, cutting her until she was bloodied and disfigured beyond recognition.
She always worked overtime until very late, the last one to leave.
She heard the whispers of monsters.
She really has no shame.
Shameless.
Looking half-dead. Why doesn’t she just die and get it over with?
Why won’t she just go die?
Just die!
Liu Lingling felt trapped inside a completely sealed vacuum. No matter how she charged and rammed, she couldn’t escape.
She thought of revenge.
She would hang herself in the office, forcing everyone to remember her death state. She would become the shadow hanging over their heads for a lifetime. She wanted them to live in perpetual fear and unease.
And that peeper hiding within the company—she knew who it was now.
She wanted that despicable person to never forget it.
【I won’t let any of you get away with this!!!】
The moment Liu Lingling stepped onto the table, a smile lifted the corners of her mouth. At that moment, she felt satisfaction and hatred.
The rope tightened around her neck. Agony crashed in. Jiang Wuning’s chest heaved violently, and her footsteps became noticeably sluggish.
Jiang Wuning always said that the details of the story weren’t so important, because everything would become clear in the end.
It was as if she had experienced Liu Lingling’s entire life in an incredibly short time. All the good, the bad, the despairing—were torn open and shown to you.
As soon as one cycle ended, another began. Jiang Wuning experienced it over and over. The further she went, the more intense and twisted those emotions became.
Besides Liu Lingling’s, there were also Fan Yajun’s and Sharp Head’s.
Fan Yajun was very plain-looking. Her husband was very ordinary. A useless husband, a life of trivialities. Every time she saw the perfect Liu Lingling, she felt a lump of resentment in her chest.
Liu Lingling wanted a promotion; Fan Yajun wanted one, too. She felt stifled, agitated. When the perfect Liu Lingling showed flaws, she became the best target for attack and venting.
She took the snippets she overheard and added fuel to the fire. She didn’t even need to do much; plenty of people would help her.
At first, it was within controllable limits. Later, that tear grew wider and wider.
The pressure of work, the misery of pregnancy—everything became unbearable. And Liu Lingling had overheard her phone call.
Afraid her secret would be exposed, she launched a preemptive counterattack, unleashing her panic and malice without restraint.
Once some things started, they were beyond her control. She didn’t know how many others in the shadows harbored the same dark thoughts as her.
Fan Yajun didn’t really want to do this, but she still did it anyway.
Until the moment she saw Liu Lingling’s body suspended in mid-air. In that instant, immense terror engulfed her.
Fan Yajun regretted it, couldn’t sleep, felt guilt-ridden, and was terrified.
On that rainy night, Fan Yajun happened to be staying late at the company handling some matters. She called her husband to pick her up. While waiting, she went to the restroom.
Boom!
Thunder roared, and Fan Yajun nearly jumped out of her skin. Just then, the lights flickered twice and went out.
After Liu Lingling’s death, all sorts of ghost stories about her circulated in the company.
Some said she had turned into a vengeful ghost, silently pressing up against you from behind, reaching around to strangle you.
Some said that if you inadvertently looked up, you’d see Liu Lingling’s corpse hanging from the ceiling, her pale face drooping down, staring fixedly at you. And in a daze, a rope would silently slip around your neck.
Fan Yajun crouched inside the restroom stall, too terrified to move. A chill ran down her back. She felt something pressing against her from behind and also hazily saw the corpse suspended above her head.
She held her breath. Only after waiting a long time with nothing happening did she stiffly stand up.
She opened the stall door. As she walked out, her foot slipped. Thump! She fell heavily to the ground.
A sharp pain hit her. A warm liquid flowed from beneath her, instantly staining a large swath of her skirt red.
So much blood.
Fan Yajun felt dizzy and faint. Several times, she failed to get up from the floor.
“Is anyone there?”
“Help me…”
“My child… help me…”
Her voice was very weak. The sounds of the pouring rain and thunder outside completely drowned her out.
Fan Yajun couldn’t stand up. She started crawling little by little. Deep red blood smeared a trail across the floor.
Eventually, she grabbed the sink counter and pulled herself up. Leaning on the counter, she moved forward. In her peripheral vision, from the mirror, she seemed to see something flash past.
Fan Yajun turned her head. A bolt of lightning struck outside, illuminating her pale face and the pair of feet suspended in the mirror right above her head.
From blood loss and sheer terror, Fan Yajun was literally frightened to death.
Sharp Head had a voyeuristic addiction. When he couldn’t control himself, he would deliberately pretend to pick something up, getting down on all fours, pressing his face sideways to the floor, and peering through the gap under the restroom door.
His target wasn’t Liu Lingling specifically. He just wanted to peep. His subject could be anyone.
Liu Lingling’s and Fan Yajun’s deaths made him lay low for a while. Until one night, he saw a girl in a short skirt enter the elevator. The elevator doors closed and it slowly ascended.
Sharp Head stood outside. In that moment, the urges he’d suppressed for so long surged up all at once. He pressed himself against the elevator doors, using both hands to try and pry open a crack to look inside.
The elevator car was rising. Even if he pried open a crack, he wouldn’t see anything. Yet, for a voyeur, the process of peeping was what mattered most.
The imagination inside his head, the slightest sound—that was enough to excite them.
Sharp Head was sprawled there just like that. Swish—the doors were pulled open. His body lurched forward with the inertia, and he fell.
The elevator descended, crushing Sharp Head, who was left with barely half a breath.
Three people, three types of death. Jiang Wuning almost forgot who she was, remembering only the agony of dying.
The deeper she sank, the deeper the pollution, the deeper the pain she felt.
She was only two meters from that office with the open door. She just had to walk over and find the Pollution Source, and she could purge it.
But Jiang Wuning didn’t move.
She raised her hand, her gaze resting on the bracelet for a long time. After a while, she lowered it.
【Sanity Value: 69】
This wasn’t enough.
Not enough to enter the office and kill the Pollution Source.
She could push forward, but she couldn’t guarantee killing it. That meant she needed a way out.
Right now, her Sanity Value of 69 was her way out.
Jiang Wuning looked ahead. Her vision was blurred; everything before her seemed to twist and sway. There were several figures inside the office—sprawled on the floor, suspended in mid-air. They were probably the same things as those in the hallway. Jiang Wuning could no longer see them clearly.
The Pollution Source was inside there.
She pulled out a palm-sized gun and raised it, aiming at one of the figures.
Bang.
The figure vanished, but nothing else changed.
Jiang Wuning aimed at a second one and fired a second shot.
Failure.
Still no effect.
All sorts of sounds were constantly in her ears—noisy, sharp, ear-piercing. After the two shots, the Pollution Source seemed startled by her, and the intensity of the pollution increased. One specific sentence in her ear gradually became clearer, branded into her mind like a searing mark.
【Just die!】
【Just die!】
【Just die!】
A noose appeared before her. Jiang Wuning was still holding the gun, but she felt an involuntary urge to slip her neck right into it.
【Jiang Wuning】
【Jiang Wuning】
Amidst her struggle, Jiang Wuning seemed to hear another voice.
【Jiang Wuning】
Calling her name. This voice sounded like… Xu Xiye.
Something pressed down on her gun-wielding hand.
Unlike the cold hands that grabbed her ankle, this thing had warmth.
Xu Xiye?
In her current state, Jiang Wuning couldn’t accurately judge. But whether it was Xu Xiye or not, she couldn’t continue.
She needed to retreat.
The stairs were too far. She could only take the elevator.
As she retreated, the thing pressing her hand tugged her a few times, as if correcting her direction.
Someone pressed the elevator button before she could. Jiang Wuning was pushed inside.
“Sister Liu, could you help bring her down? She seems to have gone blind.”
It was Xu Xiye’s voice, but she didn’t see any normal figure.
“Oh, sure,” another voice replied.
The elevator doors closed. In Jiang Wuning’s world, the elevator was extremely crowded. She remembered the abnormal elevator incident and fumblingly pressed all the floor buttons.
As she did this, she didn’t notice Sister Liu looking at her with an indescribable expression.
