2 Chapter 2 Cat Face

Officer Wang scanned the crowd, still as statues, but could not see any trace of the young boy.

"These days, strange things,"

Li Ang, who had turned away with a box of chive pockets, rubbed his chin and muttered with narrowed eyes, "seem to be getting more and more frequent...."

Indeed, in recent months, various types of urban strange tales had been emerging incessantly,

like when, during a burial, a diseased elderly from the countryside suddenly sat up in the coffin, to the tearful joy of relatives, creating a scene of dancing on the grave;

or when a top gigolo from a club was chopped into over a hundred pieces at home, with the police preliminarily ruling out homicide;

or when an archaeologist went mad after investigating a large tomb, screaming about ghosts, stripping naked, and rushing into the bathroom to stand on his head against the wall, pretending to be a faucet;

These far-fetched and even somewhat parodic tales, once widely disseminated, were subject to large-scale censorship and deletion,

And the few that survived, unable to be verified or spread further, could only serve as talking points for idle netizens after meals.

"Forget it, if the sky falls, there will be tall ones to hold it up."

Li Ang curled his lip and entered the entrance of block three.

Unfortunately, there was a sign at the elevator entrance that read, "Under maintenance, out of service,"

And unluckily for Li Ang, he lived on the twentieth floor.

"Damn, can my luck get any worse?"

He sighed and reluctantly headed for the stairwell.

Climbing the stairs was a dull and tasteless affair, considering there was no microwave at home and the chive pockets were cooling, Li Ang decisively snapped apart his chopsticks and ate as he walked.

Chives, good for vitality, were a wonder, but for a single dog like him, lonely nights still required the "thousand-year-old traditional artisanal skill that must not be lost" to satisfy oneself.

"Giggle giggle giggle giggle...."

Suddenly, a muffled sobbing sound came from high up in the stairwell, like an elderly person with phlegm in their throat, unable to cough it up or swallow it down.

Li Ang paused in his nibbling of the chive pocket and looked up through the gaps in the stairwell.

It was night, and the only source of light in the stairwell was the dim and old motion-sensor lamps installed at each floor.

Judging by the light from the motion-sensor lamp, the floor from which the coughing noise came should be the seventeenth floor.

This community was a resettlement housing estate, mostly inhabited by elderly people who had moved here because of demolitions. Perhaps it was one of them, putting out trash bags in the hallway....

Chewing, chewing. Li Ang ate his chive pocket unhurriedly and continued to climb.

Counting the steps, one, two, three... twelve. He climbed to the eighth floor.

Counting the steps, one, two, three... twelve. He climbed to the ninth floor.

Counting the steps, one, two, three... twelve. He climbed to the eighth floor.

Li Ang stopped in his tracks.

He stared intently at the red number painted on the wall of the stairwell, 8, the eighth floor.

"Giggle giggle giggle giggle...."

The unclear coughing sound came from the upper levels of the stairwell again, seemingly closer than before.

If this was the eighth floor, then the floor where the motion-sensor lamp lit up should be the fifteenth floor.

Li Ang took a deep breath, slowly covered the chive pocket box, hugged the wall close to the wall's edge, and turning his head, he sprinted downstairs.

Eighth floor, seventh floor, eighth floor, seventh floor, eighth floor, seventh floor....

Li Ang raced down the stairs two at a time while counting each step under his breath. In a matter of minutes, he had descended far beyond the height of eight floors.

"Hiss...."

Li Ang gasped in a breath of cold air as he looked at the red number on the stairwell, 7th floor.

He unclenched his fist and walked out to the balcony of the stairwell, looking down.

Below was a foggy expanse, unable to see the distant high-rises, street passersby, or the roadside street lights, with nothing but the lonely moon hanging high in the sky, leaving the world devoid of any other light.

"Ghost hitting the wall, huh...."

Li Ang lowered his eyelids. In his brief seventeen years of life, he had always been a firm materialist and atheist, trusting not a single deity, Buddha, demon, or monster, mocking all kinds of supernatural beings.

Until now, the hard-as-iron supernatural reality was right before his eyes.

Li Ang forced himself to calm down, he took out chopsticks and casually tossed the chive box with the plastic bag down the stairs.

He listened intently, but there was not the slightest sound of insect chirps or bird calls, only that extremely regular "cluck cluck cluck...."

The deathly whimpering sound grew louder and closer. Li Ang turned around and watched as the voice-activated light on the fourteenth floor came on, followed by the thirteenth, the twelfth....

As the distance closed, the whimpering became increasingly shrill, like a wild beast trapped and roaring in its cage, like fingernails scraping across a blackboard, like keys scratching glass,

Like... a malevolent spirit claiming a life....

"Cluck cluck cluck cough cough cough hehehehe whimper whimper wah wah wah aaaaaah...."

Until at last, the whimper morphed completely, loud and piercing, echoing back and forth in the stairwell.

Li Ang clenched his teeth in the dark, walked straight to the stairway's end, to the door of Apartment 801, and pulled out a bunch of keys from his pocket, twisting the keyring into a piece of wire with a flick of his fingers before poking the wire into the dark red security door lock of Apartment 801.

His hobbies were numerous, his skills varied, and lock-picking happened to be one of them. To be fair, Li Ang could unlock any door in a neighborhood with just half a stick of ramen.

The fine wire entered the keyhole, and after a slow twist, it caused the inner plug to shift slightly, forming a support in the plug gap, while manipulating the wire to push the pins up, using the torque of the wire to let the driver pins drop into their spots.

Li Ang's body pressed against the door, his steady hands manipulating the wire, moving it to align all the driver pins, leaving the key pins in the inner plug until the inner and outer plugs were separated,

Click, the lock opened.

Li Ang gripped the doorknob firmly, turning it downward without any resistance, but when he tried to pull the door open, he found that no matter how hard he pushed, the whole security door wouldn't budge, as if it had been glued in place.

Li Ang silently retracted the wire and gave the security door a fierce kick.

Thud!

The steel security door emitted a dull sound, its dark red color, blood-like in the dim light, looked even more sinister.

The brief outburst was meaningless. As the voice-activated light turned on at the tenth floor, Li Ang was only two stories away from the whimpering sound.

"Sudhana visited good knowledge, reaching the country of Magadha in Jambudvipa, to the city of Kapilavastu, and saw the god of the night named Vasana...."

In his desperation, Li Ang recited a passage from the Avatamsaka Sutra, his left hand ferociously tracing a cross over his chest, his right hand forming the seven-star hand gesture, while his feet stepped out the Eight Trigrams sequence.

Unfortunately, these actions, nearly akin to a shamanic dance, could do nothing to stop the approaching roar. With the help of the weak light from the voice-activated light, Li Ang saw a huge shadow slowly emerge from the top of the stairwell.

"Fuck!"

Li Ang cursed, slapped his chest, and shouted at the shadow, "Drop the bullshit, my home is at Fandou Street, Fandou Garden, Building 2, Apartment 1001, my dad is called Hu Yingjun, my mom is Zhang Xiaoli, my name is Hu Tutu, come on down if you've got the guts to face me and we'll settle this, bro!!!!"

In an instant, the roar stopped abruptly, and total silence fell upon the world.

The voice-activated light slowly extinguished, Li Ang held his breath.

Step, step, step.

The faint sound of footsteps approached slowly, and by the moonlight, Li Ang could clearly see the "thing" that was descending the stairs.

It was a completely black cat with a graceful figure, shiny fur, and wearing a hand-knitted yellow vest.

But these were not the focal points.

The crucial detail was that the black cat had no face, or rather, its face was covered with a human face skin.

Wrinkled, pale, the face skin of Elderly Zhang.

The black cat's tender pink tongue stuck out from the mouth of Elderly Zhang's face skin, gently licking its claw, but the position of the face skin didn't shift, not even a wrinkle moved.

It was as if that face skin was originally grown on the cat's face.

"Hehehe...."

The human-faced cat emitted an unclear whimper, and Li Ang watched as it shook its body, ejecting a clump of murky mucus from its throat.

Splat, the mucus hit the ground, containing a finger still attached to flesh.

Li Ang remained silent, his hand at his back tightly clutching the wooden chopstick.