Chapter 41

Chapter 41 3. panic room-15

“That’s it!”

The vegetable vendor’s little daughter pursed her lips and solemnly handed a piece of paper to Qi Shanyu and Liu Yi.

The paper had been torn from a notebook Qi Shanyu carried. On it was a drawing the little girl made, recreating the scene of the “ghost” she saw the night before last.

Being only six years old, an ordinary girl, she naturally couldn’t draw it very vividly.

So on the paper, with extremely childish strokes, there was a crooked window. In the lower right corner of the window was a slanted trapezoid, and inside it was half a human head. But that half head had the mouth facing up and the nose pointing down.

It was only when they saw this drawing that Liu Yi and Qi Shanyu understood what the little girl meant by “hanging upside down.”

The middle-aged woman and her family had lived in a village behind the factory for nearly twenty years. As the surrounding area developed into factories and logistics companies, more migrant workers settled there. Many old neighbors converted their homes into shared rentals, but this family had no other property and stayed in the old house.

Their home was on the seventh floor, a small three-room layout. The little daughter slept alone in the smallest south-facing room. From her window, she could see the northernmost corner of the Nancheng Dyeing Factory, about fifty meters away.

“That window was dark, only this frame was lit.”

Using her limited expressive ability, the little girl tried her best to explain to the two “police uncles” what she saw late on the night of the 27th.

Qi Shanyu asked uncertainly, “You mean, that room in the factory had its light on?”

“No, no, it wasn’t the kind of bright light from a lamp!”

Hearing Liu Yi’s follow-up, the girl shook her head repeatedly, raising her right hand and making a “C” shape with thumb and forefinger, about one centimeter apart.

“Just a tiny bit of light, really just a little, flickering and wobbly.”

It was impossible for a little girl to describe brightness precisely, so Liu Yi and Qi Shanyu didn’t press further. They nodded, then pointed to the head in the drawing: “Then how do you know this is someone hanging upside down?”

“Not a person, a ghost!”

The little girl insisted firmly. “I saw his side face, just half of it, and it was black and crooked. The nose was at the bottom, and the mouth…”

She twisted her mouth into a distorted face and gestured upwards. “The mouth was on top, he was walking upside down!”

She opened her big eyes, serious, and repeated: “Only ghosts walk upside down!”

Qi Shanyu thought for a moment, then asked, “How long did the light last on the window?”

The girl shook her head blankly. “I don’t know… I was too scared and went to find my mom…”

She instinctively reached for her mother’s clothes for reassurance. The middle-aged woman immediately took over: “I went with her to her room. From the window, the factory window looked as usual, pitch black. We didn’t see the ghost she described.”

Qi Shanyu felt regretful. With only a six- or seven-year-old child as a witness, the reliability and credibility of the description were inevitably reduced.

He thought for a moment and asked another question: “When you went to your daughter’s room, roughly what time was it at night?”

The woman recalled, uncertainly: “Around one or two in the morning, anyway, it was late.”

While Qi Shanyu was talking with the mother and daughter, Liu Yi silently stared at the little girl’s crude drawing.

The keywords “hanging upside down,” “window,” “light spot,” and “crooked” gave him an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if he was touching on something long ignored. Yet, it felt veiled, and every time he reached out to grasp the hidden truth, it eluded him.

He thought a moment, then suddenly asked: “Ma’am, from your daughter’s room, which floors of the factory can you see?”

The middle-aged woman froze at the question.

Honestly, living there for so long, she only knew the rough view from each window, never carefully studying which floors of which buildings could be seen.

She and her daughter exchanged a glance, frowned, and tried to recall: “The factory yard has tall trees, plus some low buildings in the middle, so the view isn’t great… so I guess…”

She hesitated, looking at Liu Yi’s intense gaze: “Maybe… just the top two or three floors…”

Liu Yi recalled the factory layout he had just hurried through.

Although he had a good memory, it was not photographic. And with only dim morning light and phone flashlights, details were unclear, some clues were overlooked.

Biting his lip, he absently traced the little girl’s drawing with his finger, deep in thought.

After about a minute, he suddenly looked at Qi Shanyu, his voice slightly trembling: “Officer Qi, do you remember the structure of the warehouse at the far edge of the fifth floor?”

……

“This is the so-called psychological blind spot!”

Liu Yi almost ran back to the factory, rushing ahead like the wind, followed by Qi Shanyu and the baffled auxiliary officer.

“W-what blind spot?”

The auxiliary officer, recently discharged from military service and a new hire, had little experience beyond minor local disputes. Assigned to temporarily guard the factory, he had no clue what case this involved.

Seeing this director from the research institute suddenly change expression and rush into the factory, he was completely taken aback and followed without thinking.

Liu Yi had no time to explain. Once inside, he bypassed the first-floor hall, turned sharply, and ran up the stairs to the fifth floor with the others. They ran down a long corridor and stopped at the easternmost door.

This floor was mostly warehouses. Each room was large; this one was nearly square, about ten meters on each side, over 100 square meters. Likely for ease of moving goods, the exit was wide. From the doorframe grooves, there had likely been sliding glass doors, now removed, leaving an open doorway into the empty, dark room.

Through dim lighting, they saw leftover items from the factory move: shelves, cardboard boxes, paint cans, benches, scattered messily.

Liu Yi, holding his phone light, ran into the room and looked to the right.

On the east wall was a normal-sized wooden door, half-open, revealing another space inside.

Liu Yi and Qi Shanyu had checked this door before—it led to a narrow side room.

With Qi Shanyu’s explanation, Liu Yi remembered the room contained a bare iron-framed bed and some cabinets and shelves, likely an office and duty room for the warehouse manager.

Liu Yi entered the duty room, looked left, and saw a window on the back wall, glass closed and dusty.

After confirming the window, Liu Yi turned right ninety degrees, walked along the long wall southward, counting steps: “…eight, nine, ten.”

He stopped at the south wall, looking back at Qi Shanyu and the utterly confused auxiliary officer.

“Ten steps.”

He paused. “But when I came in from outside, it was fourteen steps.”

Then he tapped the wall with his hand.

“Knock, knock, knock.”

Hearing Liu Yi’s knocks, Qi Shanyu’s expression changed. The sound wasn’t a muffled cement wall thump, but a crisp knock, like thick wood.

Qi Shanyu immediately realized what it meant. A few steps forward, he knocked on the “wall” and confirmed it: this wasn’t a wall, but a thick wooden board covered in white wallpaper.

The auxiliary officer watched as Liu Yi and Qi Shanyu pushed over a one-person-high shelf against the wall. The shelf hit the floor, and the glass decorations embedded in the back shattered. Qi Shanyu then kicked the “wall,” creating a rectangular opening about half a meter wide and one meter tall.

“Th-this… what the hell…”

The auxiliary officer, like a fish out of water, muttered: “Are we playing an escape room!?”

But Qi Shanyu and Liu Yi had already crawled into the dark opening.

The auxiliary officer, startled, turned on his flashlight to maximum and followed, crouching to enter.

The interior was small. He immediately saw a tiny motionless figure in the corner. The exceptionally handsome director was crouched next to the child, checking the body.

—Cold body, fixed pupils, pulse, breathing, and heartbeat gone.

Liu Yi lowered his eyes, shaking his head: “No saving him.”