Thriller Zone: From the Mental Hospital to the Ghostly World

Chen Ji felt a wave of nausea rising in his stomach.

He had seen ghosts, and he had seen living people killed by ghosts, but this scene still stirred up a deep and visceral unease within him.

Wu Jinbao is nothing but a human skin!

This skin was twisted and stretched; it was completely wrapped around the iron chair, with the limbs becoming the chair legs, the chest and abdomen becoming the chair back, and Wu Jinbao's head being glued to the bottom of the chair for more than ten years!

But the most disgusting thing is... Wu Jinbao is still alive.

Chen Ji had been sitting on this leather the whole time.

"call--"

"call--"

The room was completely silent, except for the heavy breathing coming from the back of the chair, like the moo of an old ox before it died.

"Is he a ghost?"

Xu Sandao looked at Chen Yuetan questioningly: "A normal person would have died long ago if tortured like this."

Chen Yuetan shook his head: "No."

"But it's not a person either."

It has human emotions and can even react to its own name, but it has lost its bones and organs.

They also don't have the abilities of ghosts.

“I think…” Chen Yuetan squatted down, looking heavily at the tears in Wu Jinbao’s eyes: “He’s just a pathetic failure.”

"Wu Jinbao, how did you become like this?"

Wu Jinbao didn't utter another word, as if his cries for help had exhausted all his strength.

After a long while, only a few tears flowed from beside those wrinkled eyes.

Xu Sandao sighed.

He went to the wooden bed, rummaged through the dirty, leaky quilt, and found a train ticket under the pillow.

A ticket for a green train, the cheapest seat, the destination is a county town in the north.

Date: December 13, 2011.

“He Gang…”

Xu Sandao asked softly, "Is this your hometown?"

"Ah-ah-"

Wu Jinbao made some muffled sounds.

After a while, the panting stopped. Wu Jinbao stared at the three silent men, seemingly realizing something.

No one can save him.

His eyelids drooped heavily, but they couldn't cover his protruding eyeballs; his eyes were filled with helplessness and confusion.

Chen Ji stared at the leather bulge on the back of the chair and thumped it twice. Then, he heard Wu Jinbao mutter a few words.

In the indistinct babbling, one could vaguely make out that he was saying:

"Ouch..."

"It hurts..."

"Let me die..."

But he was just skin and bones; how could he possibly die?

A chill permeated the entire bodies of the three people in the room.

Chen Yuetan didn't speak, but gestured for the other two to go out with him, leaving only Wusu in the house.

The cool breeze outside made people shiver.

A few seconds later, a short cry was heard from inside the house. Wusu opened the door and said:

"he died."

Chen Ji went into the room and saw that the leather on the chair was slowly peeling off, and soon it rolled up into a grayish-white ball on the ground.

The three men put the scroll into the quilt and silently left the gate.

Driving through the iron gate, the dirt road was overgrown with weeds on both sides, with a few abandoned mining machines, but no one in sight.

Chen Ji said thoughtfully, "Wu Jinbao only became like this after Zeng Guichuan came to the mine in early December."

"In the Chuncheng human skin case, all the victims died, but Wu Jinbao, although not a living person, retained human consciousness but did not have the abilities of a ghost."

"Is he the only one who has become like this? Or is it...?"

There are more than 100 employees at the mine.

"Let's go in and take a look first," Chen Yuetan said simply.

Chen Ji and Xu Sandao exchanged a glance, both understanding each other's thoughts:

There's another possibility...

It is like Wu Jinbao, who has become human skin, but whose consciousness has been alienated into a ghost.

How did Zeng Guichuan, who was not a newcomer to the domain, manage to do all this without the company's help?

Weird creature?

Or...did he learn some secret from the tomb?

After walking for about a kilometer, the view suddenly opened up, revealing a huge crater.

Surrounding the large pit were many sky-blue corrugated iron houses, with only a two-story building at the far west end.

"This is a mining site."

Chen Yuetan said, parking the car in front of the small building: "The small building should be Zeng Guichuan's temporary residence."

After searching the small building for a while, the group found that Zeng Guichuan had left in a hurry, and there was still half a cup of unfinished liquor left on the table.

Even a lot of RMB and gold bars were not taken away; Chen Yuetan put them back in his car.

On the wall on the second floor, there was a cropped map.

It refers to the entire southern Yunnan region.

A red line runs through the lower part of the map.

“The Ailao Mountains,” Chen Yuetan said.

Connecting this mountain range, three locations were marked: Yun County, Mang City, and the vicinity of Gejiu, where they are located.

All of them were circled with a marker, except that Yunxian had an X drawn on it.

What do these three locations represent?

On the table below the map is an unmailed letter.

Sender: Zeng Guichuan.

Recipient: Wang

The very first sentence sent a chill down the spines of Chen Ji and the other two!

Mr. Wang

There are still three strands of hair left from the tomb I retrieved last time; I've already sent Duan Cong to deliver them to you.

“Zeng Guichuan has been inside the tomb!” Chen Ji’s eyes narrowed. No one expected that the hair would be obtained from the tomb!

He immediately calmed down and continued reading:

[The three entrances to the tomb are closed in Yun County; it seems there's been some problem at the tin mine.]

[By the way, those dozen or so people in Chuncheng are nowhere near enough for me, but I have plenty of manpower here, so I've already achieved my goal.]

I can feel changes starting to occur in my body... I look forward to the second phase of my transformation after I arrive in Yanjing.

【It's a pleasure working with you.】

After the letter was placed down, everyone's gaze turned solemn.

Wu Jinbao's tragedy was indeed caused by Zeng Guichuan.

But why is it that Wu Jinbao is still alive when the people of Chuncheng are dead?

Is it because of the tin mine's "exports"?

“There are two possibilities,” Chen Yuetan said, pointing to the sentence “the body began to change.”

"First, he is conducting an experiment."

"Perhaps he knows how to create ghosts."

This speculation had no basis and was unexpected by Chen Ji, but Chen Yuetan spoke with great certainty.

"Second, there was a problem with the tin mine's [gate], which caused people who should have died to become mutated."

This conjecture is quite reasonable.

Chen Ji nodded and looked out at the huge pit, below which was where the miners worked.

"No matter what..." Chen Yuetan concluded, "we have to go down there and take a look."

Xu Sandao whispered from the side, "There might be danger down there."

Chen Yuetan calmly replied, "It's nothing."

Chen Ji knew that Xu Sandao was not only talking about the miner ghosts that might appear in the mine, but also about the door that was "problematic".

but.....

He looked at Wusu, who had been silent ever since entering the tin mine, in Chen Yuetan's arms, and his heart stirred slightly.