Chapter 00083: A Ghost Knocks at the Door (Part 1)
# A Ghost Knocks at the Door (Part 1)
Chapter 83
Novel: AFK Game: Portal to Another World
Chapter 83: A Ghost Knocks at the Door (Part 1)
Just yesterday, he had called to confirm if Audel could go out.
On the phone, Qian Sen had sounded fine, apart from being a little tired.
Who would have thought that just one day later, when they met again, his face would be so pale it was completely drained of color, and he would collapse, devoid of strength, right at Li Chengxi’s doorstep.
“Quick, quick, drag me inside and close the door.”
He was still conscious, but he seemed extremely weak, his voice feeble and lacking energy.
Seeing this, Li Chengxi didn't bother asking questions.
He tossed aside his crowbar and grabbed Qian Sen under the armpits, dragging him into the house.
At that moment, he smelled a thick stench of blood.
He looked up and saw a long trail of dark bloodstains leading from the doorway where he had dragged Qian Sen.
“Fuck, what happened to you? Are you hurt?”
Moving from the dim light outside into the bright interior, he could clearly see a leather belt tied tightly around Qian Sen’s right arm.
The blood was flowing from his arm and was still dripping onto the floor.
“I’ll call 120 right now. Hang in there, don't you dare fall asleep.”
Even without much medical knowledge, Li Chengxi could tell he must have lost a lot of blood.
His first instinct was to call for an ambulance immediately.
“Wait, don't call an ambulance yet. Close the door, and let me use your phone for a moment.”
“Do you want to die? What are you waiting for? We need to call an ambulance now!”
“I’ll explain later. Hurry and close the door.”
Seeing how insistent Qian Sen was, Li Chengxi stuffed the phone from his trouser pocket into his hand and stepped over the glaring bloodstains to slam the front door shut.
When he turned around, he found that Qian Sen had already made a call.
“I need to buy insurance.”
Qian Sen said into the phone:
“Buy a policy for each of my brothers, parents, wife, and child. It's very urgent, I need it done immediately if possible.”
No way, you’re still thinking about buying insurance at a time like this?
Li Chengxi was baffled, but then he recalled scenes from spy movies.
This call, could it be a coded message for a contact?
After saying this, Qian Sen fell silent.
There was no sound from the other end of the phone either.
He just waited quietly for about ten seconds before hanging up and returning the phone to Li Chengxi.
“Why are you giving it back to me? Hurry up and call 120!”
“My injury can’t go to 120. Don’t worry, I just called for backup.”
“Then shouldn't you treat it? I can see you're still bleeding.”
“If you have any bandages, it would be best to wrap it for me.”
Audel must have seen that Li Chengxi hadn’t come back up after going downstairs, because she was now peeking into the warehouse.
“Go upstairs and get the first-aid kit. It's under my bed in my room, a white metal box.”
She didn’t ask any more questions, immediately clattering up the stairs and then clattering back down, carrying the box.
By now, Li Chengxi had already picked up the scissors used for opening packages and cut open Qian Sen’s sleeve.
Under the bright incandescent light, a terrifying, twisted wound was clearly visible on Qian Sen’s arm, stretching from his elbow all the way to his shoulder.
Some parts of the wound were, in the most literal sense, deep enough to see bone, making Li Chengxi's scalp tingle.
Taking the first-aid kit from Audel, Li Chengxi held an iodine cotton swab with a pair of tweezers, momentarily unsure where to even begin.
After using more than ten iodine swabs, when he finally looked away from the wound, even his own white walls seemed to have a green tint.
Honestly, a wound like this was a bit too much for an ordinary person like Li Chengxi.
“I bought these bandages before I started college. I don't know if they're expired.”
Li Chengxi used to be on the school volleyball team, and he liked to wrap bandages on his hands when he played, which was why he had them.
“Go ahead and use them. If you don't wrap it, I’ll bleed to death sooner or later.”
Li Chengxi tried his best not to look at the horrifying wound, his mind struggling to recall the bandaging techniques he had learned during military training in college.
“Your bandaging technique is actually quite proper. I thought you'd just wrap it around randomly.”
“You can thank my drill instructor from college military training for that. Where else would I have learned the spiral bandaging method?”
Starting from the elbow and wrapping all the way to the shoulder, Li Chengxi, worried it wouldn't be enough, wrapped it several times, three layers thick inside and out.
Seeing that no blood was seeping through the bandage, Li Chengxi finally breathed a sigh of relief, but the sight of the stains on the floor was still shocking.
“What on earth happened?”
“To put it simply, I was careless.”
Leaning against a storage shelf, Qian Sen said:
“Do you know about the haunted house in the nearby residential complex?”
“Uh… I've heard of it. I think a family of three from out of town who came here to do business used to live there. Later, the wife got addicted to gambling and lost their entire family fortune. The husband, in a fit of rage, killed his wife and child with a pair of scissors before taking his own life. That was almost ten years ago.”
Li Chengxi was still in high school when he heard about it.
It was a big deal at the time, and it wasn't far from here.
“After that, no locals dared to rent that apartment. Only outsiders who didn't know would be tempted by the cheap rent. But I heard that several tenants in a row either fled or fell seriously ill. It seemed very unlucky.”
During that time, Li Chengxi wouldn't even dare to pass by that residential area on his way home from school; he would take a detour just to avoid it.
“Could the haunting be real? It's been ten years and it’s still not resolved?”
Since mages and cultivators existed, the existence of ghosts didn't seem that strange.
“Actually, the haunting was just a rumor. According to our investigation, the out-of-town tenant who claimed it was haunted had just heard the story of the murder-suicide and made up the ghost story on purpose to get their rent money back from the landlord. So, we didn't pay it much mind at the time. After confirming there were no supernatural forces at play, we just left it alone.”
“Then why bring up that haunted house now?”
“Because someone recently reported a public disturbance.”
Apparently, residents near the so-called haunted house kept hearing the sound of someone walking around above them.
Occasionally, it would sound like someone was jumping upstairs, the noise loud and continuing late into the night.
Many people had already called the police, and the police did come to investigate.
Especially after hearing it was an unoccupied haunted house, they made a point of finding the landlord to open the door.
Sounds coming from an unoccupied house like this might mean a wild animal had gotten in, or perhaps some fugitive criminals were hiding out, so of course the police wouldn't ignore it.
But when they opened the door, there was no one inside.
There wasn't even a trace of anyone having lived there; a thick layer of dust covered everything.
However, the noise continued to occur frequently.
After the police were called out several times with no results, the matter came to the attention of Section Nine.
“I thought it was just some minor ghosts, so I took a new intern in with me to investigate the situation. But I never expected there would actually be something hiding in there.”
“What was it?”
“I didn't get a clear look, but it was probably some kind of ghost or monster. It looked like a large, distorted shadow. I had the rookie run first while I covered the rear, and I barely managed to escape.”
“And then you ran over here?”
“Yes, I lost my phone during the fight. You're an insider, someone in the know, and you're very close. I took the back alleys to get here.”
“Then the intern who went with you should report to headquarters, right?”
“Our rookies don't know how to contact headquarters until they've completed their probationary missions.”
“…You guys really need to change your system.”
“That’s not my call to make.”
Qian Sen shook his head.
“I was originally planning to go find Lei Lei, but I really didn't have the strength to climb up to the fourth floor. Just knocking on your door took all the effort I had. It's a good thing I have a habit of wearing a belt, otherwise I might have collapsed in an alley.”
If that had happened, it would have been major news.
(End of Chapter)