424 Searching for Results
The night seemed interminably long.
A pall had fallen over everyone in the Ping’an Hotel because of Lin Shan’s affair.
Even though the incident had been dealt with as quickly as possible, it still resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people. Floors seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen of the hotel were affected by the Ghost Shadow, leaving behind puddles everywhere, along with dozens of floating corpses.
Thankfully, the ghost in question had already been captured and taken away.
If it had remained in the hotel, no one would dare come near, and it’s possible the nearby residents would have had to be evacuated.
It must be said that once Lin Shan’s ghost had revived, the threat it posed was extremely terrifying, far surpassing that of other resurrected specters. Moreover, from Wang Jiang’s account, it was revealed that Lin Shan’s ghost had a certain degree of growth potential.
Dealing with this hidden danger ahead of time was indeed a great achievement.
But as the main character of this incident,
Yang Jian, having obtained what he needed from the event, seemed to lose interest in everything else, playing with his phone while waiting for everything in the hotel to be dealt with.
“This is…”
At that moment, on the eighteenth floor of the hotel,
Wang Jiang arrived at Lin Shan’s former residence. He was shocked the moment he saw the puddled area in the hallway outside the door to the room.
The stench, the smell of decay, hit him as he faced the murky water barely half a meter deep, with pale, bloated corpses floating on it. Some of the bodies were highly decomposed; their skin and flesh had become loose and torn from soaking. The bodies were so swollen they no longer resembled humans. One could only discern the gender from the length of hair on each corpse and their clothing—if barely so.
“Ugh—!”
Even though Wang Jiang was a ghost handler, he had seen relatively few such horrific scenes and suddenly felt nauseous, bending over to vomit on the side.
“Apart from the hotel staff who were previously killed by Lin Shan, there are at least thirty additional bodies with unconfirmed identities. These people are likely the ones Lin Shan killed before,” said Zhang Lei, whose face had gone rigid as he approached. He casually added, “You, as a newcomer, shouldn’t be here. I am in charge of cleaning up for now. You can go downstairs and rest.”
“Yang Jian asked me to come over. I’m looking for someone,” Wang Jiang managed to say as he straightened up after a while, covering his nose.
Although he found the scene unbearable, he didn’t feel much fear.
Perhaps it was because he knew the ghost was no longer there.
After all, for people like them, ghosts were the real threat, not bodies.
“If you want to find someone, you’ll have to wait until these bodies are removed and DNA tests carried out to confirm their identities. They’re in such a state that not even your own mother would recognize them,” said Zhang Lei.
Wang Jiang hesitated and then said, “I’ll just take a look. I want to confirm it myself. I’ve already followed the trail to J city, and I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“Alright, I’ll give you five minutes to check. After all, we can’t delay the work of others,” Zhang Lei replied before turning away.
The other workers were dealing with the seepage on the seventeenth floor.
All the water formed by paranormal activity had to be thoroughly cleaned up because who knew what potential dangers it might bring.
“Thank you,” Wang Jiang said gratefully before continuing forward, nose covered.
He carefully waded into the waterlogged area.
The water wasn’t deep, but it was very murky, seemingly an abyss with no bottom in sight. The nearby walls were stained with water, with paint peeling off continuously and mottled, as if they had been exposed to this damp environment for a long time.
In such a short time, the environment had been afflicted this way.
Wang Jiang took a deep breath with his nose covered, then gently pushed aside the bodies floating on the water’s surface as he slowly moved forward.
In his hand, he held a cell phone with the flashlight on, specifically searching for bodies that wore familiar clothing.
The entire area of water, just about ten meters, was covered with bodies, almost obscuring the water’s surface.
Each body was face down, back up, stiff in posture, motionless, looking particularly eerie—as if any of them might suddenly turn around and look at him from under the water.
Wang Jiang knew that these bodies were actually very dangerous.
But now that the source— the ghost—had been contained, the bodies had lost their strangeness.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t dare approach this perilous place, even if he had ten times the courage.
“Not this one either, or this one…” Wang Jiang pushed aside one body after another, both nervous and scared.
He didn’t want to find the girl he had a secret crush on dead here, becoming one of the many floating corpses. Yet he also didn’t want her fate to remain a mystery, to become a missing person without any resolution. Even in death, there was at least a conclusion. As for the DNA test results expected in a few days, he didn’t want to look at them.
It could just be a cold list of the deceased. If that was the case, he wouldn’t be content.
Wang Jiang was emotionally conflicted, but the time Zhang Lei gave him was limited. Soon all these bodies would be taken away.
With that in mind, he quickened his pace in examining the nearby corpses.
“Is it this one?” Wang Jiang saw a body dressed in a dress. Although the corpse was pale and bloated beyond recognition, he could still make out that it was likely a very young female body.
However, when he turned the body over, the woman’s features had completely deteriorated.
After looking it over, Wang Jiang confirmed that this was not the person he was seeking.
All the bodies with distinctive features had been examined, but he didn’t get the results he wanted; this left him somewhat disappointed and unwilling to accept it.
Where could she have gone?
Could it be possible that she wasn’t killed by Lin Shan?
No, that’s absolutely impossible. She disappeared from the school, and besides Lin Shan, who else could make a living person mysteriously vanish without leaving a single piece of evidence or trace?
Wang Jiang’s complexion changed unpredictably as he walked several laps around the area, but he found nothing about the disappearance.