Chapter 631: The Haunting Silence of the City

There are no ghosts in this world…

Then what was it that I just saw?

Lu Xin crouched beside the body of a vagrant, watching intently to see if it might somehow stir back to life so he could speak with it, ask why it had wept so bitterly, and determine whether it was truly dead or still clinging to life.

But his cigarette, now burning down to a few glowing sparks, showed no sign of any change.

Lu Xin sighed helplessly, thinking that it was beyond revival.

With a touch of disappointment, he abandoned the idea of giving it another push to see if life would return.

After all, this poor soul had died beneath the bridge, and he couldn’t bear to show too little respect.

……

He dragged his suitcase and slowly emerged from beneath the bridge arch.

He had planned to hide here for the night, but with a dead vagrant already in place, he needed to find another spot.

No sane person would choose to stay overnight under a bridge where a corpse lay exposed, right?

Step by step, he moved out of the tunnel, feeling an even deeper stillness around him.

It wasn’t the calm after a dispersing crowd; it was as if the entire city had emptied out.

Although the city boasted modern buildings and bright streetlights in the distance, Lu Xin felt it was curiously devoid of sound—only the rustling of his suitcase wheels echoed softly.

Gradually, his eyes adjusted from the darkness under the bridge to the faint glow of distant streetlights.

But just as he was about to leave the tunnel, he paused and instinctively lifted his head.

Before him, a pair of legs swayed gently, nearly colliding with his head.

He had been so absorbed with his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the legs appear.

Frowning at the slack, powerless legs, the bluish tint of the skin, and the tiny white leather shoes, Lu Xin leaned sideways and circled around them. Lifting his head once more, he realized that a body was hanging from the bridge.

It was a woman, in her thirties, whose slender handbag strap was tied around a bridge pillar, suspending her body.

The strap was drawn tight, and her appearance was downright eerie.

Her face was ashen with a sickly purple hue; her mouth contorted in pain, while her tongue protruded unnaturally.

She hung there silently and lifelessly.

“When did you get here?”

Lu Xin looked up at her, a slight frown creasing his face.

Just moments before, when he had first entered, there hadn’t been anyone suspended here.

He couldn’t imagine that even under the bridge he wouldn’t be able to hear if someone was abruptly hanging there.

Moreover, judging by her appearance, she hadn’t just been hanged.

As Lu Xin’s puzzled gaze lingered on her, the woman’s eyes suddenly snapped open from beneath her tangled hair.

She gazed at him silently, and then her figure gradually faded away.

“That’s even stranger…”

Lu Xin shook his head lightly, staring at the railing as if nothing had ever appeared.

He couldn’t explain what he had witnessed. After a brief moment of reflection, he hoisted his suitcase and climbed out from under the bridge, glancing at the empty streets, the tightly closed shopfronts, and the softly scattered glow of the streetlights.

Somehow, he felt that something about this city had changed.

Yet he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

The only certainty was that in this once-vibrant metropolis now succumbed to a deep slumber, walking alone on the streets felt profoundly lonely.

……

……

Standing idly by the roadside wasn’t enough, so he pulled his suitcase and continued forward.

The night wind whirled, gusting past him.

The monotonous sound of the suitcase wheels rolling over the concrete broke the silence.

Not knowing where to go, he had no option but to trudge along with his suitcase.

As he surveyed the quiet city and the silent streetlights, he felt as if the gigantic city and its bright lights were watching him back.

Perhaps within those buildings—or even inside the parked cars along the street—there were people.

But sleep had already separated him from all of them.

After what felt like an eternity, he arrived at a busy intersection and paused.

Not because he had reached his destination, but because in the distance he spotted something odd.

It was two dark shapes, like broken pieces of wood, with a streak of vivid red between them.

Staring intently, Lu Xin recognized a person lying on the ground, their body split into two. A deep depression marked the middle, where bright red blood and crushed innards had spilled all over, much of it smeared on the pavement.

It appeared to be the aftermath of a terrible accident.

From the gruesome scene, Lu Xin could only imagine the horrific violence of the crash.

As he stopped to take in the tragic sight, the upper half of the victim seemed to sense his gaze.

Crawling along the pavement, the victim’s head, turned away from Lu Xin, slowly and mechanically rotated.

Blood oozed from its eyes and nostrils, creating a disturbingly vivid red stare fixed on Lu Xin.

“Clack, clack, clack…”

Suddenly, with a forceful push, both arms dragged the severed body across the ground, crawling toward him.

Perhaps because half of the body was missing, it moved astonishingly fast.

Lu Xin stood there in silence, watching as a long trail of blood stretched behind it.

But just as it neared his feet, the figure began to fade, until it vanished completely.

Looking up, he saw that the lower half had also disappeared, along with any trace of the sticky red substance on the ground.

It was as if he had been hallucinating the whole thing.

……

……

“But if this is a hallucination, then aren’t these visions far too vivid?”

Lu Xin pondered this question as he continued dragging his suitcase forward.

Gradually, he sensed more and more strange occurrences in the city.

There was a car parked by the roadside, inside of which sat a man with a ghastly pallor, silently cradling a basin of glowing embers in the closed window.

A young woman, her head smashed to pieces like peanuts, clutched a shoe as she wept quietly at the foot of a building.

And a man, with a knife impaled in his abdomen, held out his oozing intestines, walking by in a state of numb despair.

What has happened to this city?

Lu Xin passed these phantasmal figures, whether real or imagined, deep in thought.

He didn’t believe these haunting visions were deliberately engineered.

After all, the stories etched into their beings and the raw emotions they exuded hardly seemed fabricated from nothing…

So, these must be the souls who once lived in this city, long forgotten.

They should have quietly vanished long ago, yet here they were, reliving a scene of utter desolation.

“Phew…”

Lu Xin glanced at his wristwatch, valued at 200,000.

It was 12:58 AM.

With the two-hour mark since the Flame’s warning still half an hour away (aimed for 1:30 AM),

this macabre series of events couldn’t have been orchestrated by the Flame.

Then what could be the cause behind the reappearance of these lost souls?

……

Lost in thought, Lu Xin arrived at a small riverside. There, a row of benches held an unkempt old woman with disheveled hair. She cradled a round, plump bottle as she drank steadily. Lu Xin sat beside her.

He still hadn’t decided where to take shelter, but he was exhausted from walking.

Settling against the bench, he immediately noted the old woman’s ashen face and the overpowering, acrid stench of the liquid.

Lu Xin sighed gently and pulled out a cigarette.

The old woman remained silent, slowly twisting her stiff neck, her eyes, marked with red blotches, fixed intently on him.

Lu Xin lit his cigarette, ran his hand through his hair, and then glanced at the woman.

After a quick look at the bottle, he remarked in surprise, “Paraquat?”

The old woman said nothing, her expression as cold and unyielding as a corpse.

With a note of pity, Lu Xin sighed and ventured, “Aren’t your children unfilial?”

The old woman remained mute, though the chill in her eyes seemed to intensify.

An icy aura seemed to emanate from her, creeping toward Lu Xin.

Lu Xin’s sympathy deepened as he murmured, “I’ve heard that drinking this is excruciatingly painful…”

……

The old woman fell silent. After a moment, her figure gradually faded, disappearing from the bench.

Finally, Lu Xin relaxed. He stretched out both arms, resting them on the bench’s back, and let out a long, weary sigh.

At last, the bench belonged solely to him.

The Flame was truly treacherous.

By luring the entire city into an induced slumber, it had left an outsider like him utterly at a loss.

Besides, going to sleep now wasn’t an option for him either.

He resolved to simply wait here for the Flame to come.

With that thought, Lu Xin found himself strangely anticipating the arrival of 1:30 AM.

He repeatedly checked his watch as he patiently sat on the bench awaiting that moment.

Gradually, he felt the air around him growing colder, as if some mysterious force were draining the temperature.

Yet the atmosphere turned increasingly humid, carrying an unidentified, sticky substance with a slight, sweet tang.

Was it… blood, perhaps?

Alert, Lu Xin looked up to see a faint mist rising from the dark river water in front of him.

“Click, click…”

The second hand crawled steadily, counting down to 1:30, each tick drawing closer.

After five full rotations, as the minute hand trembled and rested at the 12,

“Woo…”

Suddenly, a warning alarm sounded—softer now than before.

At the same moment, Lu Xin jerked his head up and heard the heavy, synchronized thud of boots striking the ground.

Their sound—thudding, relentless—filled the city.

Thud, thud, thud! Thud, thud, thud!

The noise grew louder and heavier, merging with the stifling air as forces from the city’s edge surged closer.