1 Chapter 1: Welcome to Changhong Zoo

"Your writing used to be quite evocative, but that's a thing of the past."

"So this book..."

"I'm not sure what happened to you, and why you've changed. You write mysteries and horror, not coming-of-age drama. I need twisted storylines, not sentimentality... I'm sorry if this offends you."

"Even if I publish it under my original pen-name… Is there really no commercial value?"

"Have some respect for yourself, Mr. Yu Liang."

"..."

——

"502... this is it."

Yu Liang opens the rusty iron gate, a cloud of dust chokes him as it falls.

The room looks as if it hasn't been lived in for a long time, dust and cobwebs sealing off the entire living room, it doesn't make a great first impression on newcomers.

Yet, he is quite satisfied, because this studio apartment is spacious and cheap.

Although this is a remote suburb, far from the bustling city, and the bus passes by only twice a day, morning and evening, for Yu Liang, who is on the verge of being kicked out of Haicheng, having a place to stay at all is not bad.

Perhaps...

Being ruthlessly evicted by one's landlord is a rite of passage for every writer.

No, that's wrong, he is not a writer, just a typist.

Yu Liang mocked himself as he walked into the room, carrying numerous bags. The door creaked slowly shut behind him.

"Not bad at all, the monthly rent is only seven hundred." He looked around the apartment, a simple one-bedroom studio with not only a full set of furniture but also piped gas and subsidized water supply. All because someone died in this apartment.

It doesn't matter.

Cleaning till dusk, Yu Liang finally managed to make the place habitable. He grew more satisfied with the studio apartment as he cleaned, feeling accomplished by the bargain he had found.

As darkness fell, Yu Liang ate a simple meal, then sat at his writing desk, ready to work.

[It is said that before you go to bed, you should place your shoes facing opposite directions so that ghosts can't find your bed.

But his wife never believed in superstitions.

One night, she was woken by her husband getting up to use the bathroom. Watching her husband disappear into the darkness, she remembered a urban legend, and impulsively, she turned one of the shoes around.

A moment later, her husband returned from the toilet, but he just paced slowly in front of the bed, scratching his head in confusion.

Where's my bed?]

Yu Liang scrutinized the draft he'd written, then read it again. He didn't think it was scary at all, on the contrary, he felt he'd just written a joke, but it wasn't humorous either.

The conversation from the publisher's office during the day echoed in his mind. At the time, Yu Liang hadn't thought much of it; the main thing he had felt was a blow to his income. Now, however, he had a stark realization: at the moment, he was only capable of producing garbage.

"Inspiration, oh inspiration...." Yu Liang sighed as he stood up from his seat, looking around the bedroom. After surveying it, his gaze rested on the bed.

This room didn't look like a murder had taken place here, let alone such a heinous one.

A young, crazed husband had skinned his wife alive, then slept with the skin under the bed for three days and three nights; when he came to, he'd had a breakdown and eventually committed suicide.

Plate

This murder's summary seemed even more implausible than the ghost story he'd just outlined; and some details of the case were even more bizarre.

Rumor had it that the skin had been peeled off almost perfectly. After the crime, it had disappeared; even the police couldn't find it.

"What was that guy thinking?" This question came to Yu Liang's mind. As a writer, he preferred to explain anything unusual with conspiracy theories, rather than simply attribute it to "insanity".

However, this was a special case, and he couldn't find any relevant clues online; at most, he found fragments of urban legends.

Yu Liang bent down and turned on the flashlight on his phone to look under the bed. He'd cleaned it in the afternoon, so it was spotless underneath.

After a moment of considering, he crawled under the bed, lying flat in the same position where the crazed husband had been.

Despite the lights being on in the bedroom, the area under the bed was still immersed in darkness. Yu Liang turned his head to look at the light from below the bed. Despite the light being within arm's reach, he felt it to be distant, as if he were constantly falling into a dark abyss.

If there were others in the room, from this perspective, he would see only their feet. First a pair of feet moving back and forth, as if they hadn't noticed "me", but then suddenly they would bend down and look under the bed, followed by the classic faces of horror filling up the screen in a scary movie.

But there won't be anyone else in this room.

Because on the bed lay my wife's body, her skin completely peeled off, revealing only the raw, bloody flesh underneath.

The incisions were neat, the technique skilled. It seemed obvious that I was a doctor well-versed in human anatomy, or perhaps a butcher.

Wait, doctors and butchers both earned decent wages – they wouldn't need to share such a small apartment with their wives.

Had I specifically trained in skinning?

Would a sane person practice such a thing?

Anyways, that skin was just lying there beside me now. I looked at her face with its black, hollow eye sockets and couldn't help but joke. Hadn't she always complained that her chubby cheeks made her look fat?

Well, her face was as light as a feather now; she wouldn't be embarrassed when we went home for the holidays.

Blood pooled in the indentations on the bed, seeping through the slats of the bamboo mat, gathering under the bed, dripping slowly onto my face. I hurriedly shielded the skin beside me, trying to keep it free from any specks of blood.

Wait a minute...

There seemed to be something written on the inside of the wooden slats under the bed.

Mr. Yu Liang became aware of something as his eyes moved. He switched on the flashlight on his phone to more closely examine the indecipherable markings.

Perhaps the angle was wrong, the scribbling scratchy, sometimes big, sometimes small. Yu Liang added punctuation marks in his head, allowing it to be read.

[I'm trapped here...]

[The door... windows are all locked. They won't budge.]

[They can't be broken through. They're securely sealed.]

[Unlocking... a key? I need a key! But how can I get a key made from metal when the moon is in the sky?]

[The moon is up in the sky]

[Depart, walk, strip, escape, open]

[So many words, there must be a way. Be calm, be calm...]

[Break... stone, skin?]

[Stone, got it.]

[Skin... skin?]

Mr. Yu Liang stroked his chin, the words seemed to follow an internal logic rather than being a jumbled mess.

The mad husband was "trapped" in the apartment, and he wanted to get out. He tried many methods, many words.

But why does the word "key" require metal and moon?

Does it only mean that because the character "key" is composed of "metal" and "moon"?

"Stone" and "skin" made up the word "Break", which then helped him "break" free and escape from the apartment.

It seemed far-fetched, but to a certain extent, it made sense. It was similar to what you'd find in novels about interviews with mental patients, where their words were not chaotic but instead formed their own logic, which could easily draw normal people in.

But…

The human skin, that's really gone, right?

Mr. Yu Liang suddenly felt a chill, and then he felt that something was not right.

If the words on the bed were left by the mad husband, wouldn't the police get rid of the bed?

Even if the police didn't, the landlord should have replaced the bed, or at least wiped off these strange words, right?

Or were these words written by the landlord?

"That's a bit far-fetched." Mr. Yu Liang shook his head and dismissed some unrealistic thoughts. "Hold on, there's something else."

He noticed that in between the bed slats, there was a folded piece of black paper, so he instinctively reached out and pulled it down.

It was a leaflet, pitch black in color, featuring the words "Welcome to Changhong Zoo" stylized in artistic fonts. The background was blurred images of animals, like lions, giraffes, and elephants.

"Changhong Zoo?" Mr. Yu Liang was taken aback. He'd lived in Haicheng for a few years. "Is there a zoo called Changhong?"