Falling In Love Inside An Urban Legend — Chapter 7.1

mtl’d and edited by dogpotato. please leave a comment if there are any questions or errors!

Chapter 7.1, Arc 1: Strange Sounds in the Morgue

“Phew!”

Yao Ye took a sip of hot water. Instantly, he felt as if he had been reborn. His whole body was warm and relaxed like he’d just been soaking in a hot spring.

He whiled away another afternoon in the office, preparing to leave the moment his shift ended. These past few days, he had no plans to work overtime or stay up all night. Even the Ping An talisman could not protect him if he ran into another ghost after going home in the middle of the night again.

Tick tock—

As soon as the clock struck seven, Yao Ye clocked out and walked into the elevator to go home with a bounce in his step.

Upon reaching the first floor, he looked around as if he had sensed something, an inexplicable feeling of anxiety gripping his heart. The Ping An talisman emanated a faint warmth on his chest.

In the basement, a tall man slammed his fists against the locked door, breathing heavily and choking on the dense smoke in the air.

Eventually, the man fell powerlessly to the ground. A crack in the steel door revealed the raging fire outside.

He stared at the door, sparing no thoughts for the useless fire alarm but instead deeply missing the one that he loved and could not forget with all his heart.

Obviously, they were about to be happy together forever… He hates this, he hates it so much… Obviously, he was about to have his own happiness…

The desire to live and the resentment towards his wretched fate made him open his eyes as he breathed his last. In an instant, the inferno outside the door exploded outwards like it had converged with the most vicious flames from hell, wanting nothing more than to burn the whole world to ashes.

—They were, in other words, the deceased’s hatred and unwillingness to leave the world of the living.

“Ah-choo—!” Yao Ye sneezed and rubbed his nose. He scanned the hospital lobby, empty except for a few patients. It couldn’t be more normal. He felt he was just being paranoid.

It’s time to go; let him see if that female ghost still dares to show up today!

Yao Ye gently held the Ping An talisman on his chest and smiled with a renewed sense of security.

Now, he doesn’t have to die. As long as he survived this period, he didn’t believe that the female ghost would stay attached to him.

Tonight was one of the rare occasions that Yao Ye took a taxi back to his apartment building. He was now very afraid of the dark, so he tried his hardest to go back before nightfall.

Driving away in a taxi, Yao Ye did not see that the setting sun had dyed the horizon a red as vivid as blood, almost as if to foreshadow something.

It is said that the innate nature of a ghost can be distinguished by how they appear in their descent upon the earth.

After a short drive, Yao Ye arrived at his apartment building and got off the taxi. He looked at the apartment building not far away, took a deep breath, and mustered up the courage to walk in.

The chill that lingered around him since morning had disappeared and he could no longer see anything strange, so the entire apartment building felt much brighter now.

When he reached the tenth floor in the elevator, Yao Ye took out his apartment key and was about to open the door, but then he looked across the hall at the room from this morning. A strong sense of curiosity within him made him want to find out what was going on.

This morning, he had seen the female ghost come out from there.

So, was his bachelor neighbor inside all right?

Yao Ye remembered that the bachelor once helped him move his things, so he had a good impression of him. He really didn’t want anything to happen to him. Now that he was being protected by the Ping An talisman, maybe he could save him.

If it was possible for him to help, then it wouldn’t be like he cheated to get this Ping An talisman for nothing. At least it would make him feel a little less guilty.

With that in mind, Yao Ye rang the doorbell, but unexpectedly discovered that the door was already ajar.

He couldn’t resist for a moment and peeked inside the crack in the door.

Crimson blood spilled in pools inside the entryway, and the strong smell of blood drifted out from behind the door. Yao Ye looked down and froze in place, staring at the decapitated head of the dead bachelor.

“Ahhhh!!!”

The horrified scream resounded throughout the entire tenth floor hallway.

Creak—

The apartment door was knocked open by Yao Ye’s backpedaling, and the bloody head reappeared. The dead man’s face twisted in an expression of absolute terror was enough to make anyone who saw the scene scream in fright.

Yao Ye slumped against the wall of the hallway. The corners of his eyes twitched and he covered his mouth, voice lost to fear.

If he didn’t have the Ping An talisman, it would’ve been him who ended up like that instead…

Yao Ye’s scream drew other residents. Once they saw Yao Ye’s expression, they all looked inside the door. The sounds of screaming and retching continued one after the other for a long time afterwards.

Di Wu Di Wu—

The sound of the police car’s siren lingered at the apartment building all night.

Yao Ye pulled open the corner of the curtain and observed the ambulance and police cars downstairs numbly. Suddenly, he covered his mouth again as he ran to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet.

The bachelor was dead.

The body had been divided into pieces, many of which contained multiple bite marks. The abdominal cavity was also hollowed out and the whole room was strewn with crushed internal organs. None of the police officers who went in to look didn’t come out and vomit. The scene of the murder was extremely gruesome.

The landlord who rushed to arrive after hearing the news was also shocked. He felt regret all the way down to the pit of his stomach once he realized that this apartment couldn’t be rented out anymore.

As the first witness to the scene of the murder, Yao Ye was questioned for a long time and had to go down to the police station to make a statement before he was released. His entire self had been stunned into a daze throughout it all. He didn’t even know how he got home. The image of the hideous expression on the decapitated head kept surfacing in his mind, bile rising up in his throat every time.

After vomiting, he weakly rinsed his mouth and left the bathroom, falling into a trance on the bed. He touched his forehead only to find that he had a fever. He took the usual fever-reducing medication, lay down in bed and slept until the next day, waking up still muddled at sunrise.

He knew that he couldn’t go to work in this state, so he simply called the director and asked for a leave of absence to rest at home for a few days.

“Take a leave of absence? Okay, okay, rest well…”

It might have been an illusion, but Yao Ye got the feeling that the department director’s voice sounded a little bit off. However, his burned-out brain couldn’t process information clearly anymore so after hanging up, he just took his medicine and fell asleep again.

thoughts of dogpotato: (ﾟｰﾟ;)

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