Resurgence of the Unknown

Chapter 2: A Sudden Lecture

8:00 PM, evening study session.

Because Yang Jian stayed up too late reading that forum story, he spent the entire next day at school yawning, feeling drained. Every time he tried to doze off in class, that eerie image of the old man from the photo would flash in his mind, and he'd feel those hollow, dead eyes staring at him, jolting him awake.

"Ugh, can't sleep. That photo really messed me up."

"Hey, hey, Yang Jian, got a moment?" A tall, lanky classmate leaned over, his head close to Yang Jian's.

Yang Jian was puzzled. "What? 'Got a moment'? What do you need?"

This was Zhang Wei, nicknamed "Yang Wei" (which sounds like "impotence" in Chinese). Back when they first started school, the teacher mistakenly called his name as "Yang Wei" instead of Zhang Wei, and the nickname stuck with him for three years. It was an unfortunate story.

"Don't play dumb. I've seen you yawning all day. Bet you were up late last night doing something...interesting, huh?" Zhang Wei patted Yang Jian on the shoulder, lowering his voice. "Come on, share the good stuff with your buddy!"

Yang Jian replied, "You've got it all wrong. I stayed up late reading a ghost story on my phone."

"Ghost story? Speaking of ghost stories, Yang Wei, Yang Jian, have you heard about the recent paranormal incident in one of the neighborhoods in the city?" A nearby classmate joined the conversation.

"What paranormal incident?" Yang Jian asked. "How come I haven't heard anything about it?"

Zhang Wei chimed in, "Oh, I've heard about that. They say over twenty people in one neighborhood all hanged themselves in a single night. Their bodies were found hanging from the security bars on the windows, like they were drying meat or something. It's really creepy. I've got a picture of it, though I'm not sure if it's real."

He pulled out his phone, opened the photo album, and showed a picture.

The photo was taken at dusk, and the poor lighting in the neighborhood made it a bit blurry. But you could still make out the silhouettes of human figures hanging from the window bars on the balconies, densely packed in a row. The faces of the corpses were twisted in terrifying expressions, especially their wide-open eyes, filled with fear, as if they had seen something horrifying before they died.

From a distance, the dozens of corpses did indeed resemble dried meat. What was even stranger was that the heads were inside the security bars, but the bodies hung below, and the gaps between the bars were too small for an adult's head to fit through.

Plus, their heads were bent back at a grotesque angle, as if their necks had been broken.

The more you looked at the photo, the more unsettling it became. It had the same disturbing effect as the photo of the old man in the long robe on Yang Jian's phone, stirring up an uneasy, fearful feeling.

"Whoa, Yang Wei, where did you get this photo? I couldn't find it anywhere," the classmate asked.

Zhang Wei grinned smugly. "A friend of mine took it while passing by. The area's sealed off now, so you can't take pictures anymore. If you want it, just call me 'boss,' and it's yours. Oh, and stop calling me 'Yang Wei.' I've got a new English name now."

"What's your new English name?"

"Walter G. Strongarm."

"Then I've got an English name too: Wossabroad. Make sure to call me by my English name from now on."

Yang Jian sighed, "We all had the same nine years of compulsory education, but why are you guys so...unique?"

"We took extra classes, Yang Jian. You just wouldn't get it," Zhang Wei replied proudly.