"Are you a ghost?" Chen Xiao wrote these words on the paper.
Soon, the old handwriting appeared crooked and disjointed, stroke by stroke, beneath those words.
"No"
Chen Xiao stared at the slowly emerging handwriting and touched the path of the strokes, finding no pen marks.
"Letters are showing up, but the paper hasn't touched anything..."
No one knew what was really going on in his mind, but he began trying to understand these phenomena.
First, whatever this thing was, one thing was certain, "it" could communicate! And "it" understood the meaning of "words."
"Another form of human or other intelligent life? Could it really be what they call a soul? Or is it some higher-dimensional existence?"
Secondly, "it" could affect the things around here, like footsteps, moving objects, and even writing.
But "it" had no physical form.
This phenomenon was hard to explain with current science, perhaps because the field of technology wasn't advanced enough, or maybe humanity's technological development was just on the wrong track.
However, for now, let's set that aside and assume that people's understanding of science was correct. Then, a possibility was that "it" had a physical form, but its body wasn't here.
"Could it be an overlap of spaces? Like this room being at the intersection of two spaces, as often described in science fiction, where non-physical things can interact?" Chen Xiao thought.
This meant that sounds could be heard, but the objects making the sounds weren't here. The handwriting could appear on paper, but it wasn't written in the usual sense. Therefore, the "No" that appeared before him was not simply ink but represented a transmission of information. The movements of the door or the desk were also occurring without any physical contact, to describe it in mystical terms, "it" was both here and not here.
Chen Xiao mused wildly, but his hands didn't stop. Right after the word "No" appeared, he immediately wrote another sentence below it.
"You effing idiot!"
...
In the next five seconds, Chen Xiao held his breath and was extremely serious.
However, nothing happened.
"Hmm... it seems it truly can't physically touch objects?" he thought.
Then, the handwriting began to appear again on the paper.
"Come here"
About a second later...
"?"
A "question mark" appeared after "Come here," turning the words into a question.
Chen Xiao paused for a moment, his brow furrowed as he stared at the newly appeared handwriting.
In that moment, he thought a lot, including what those two words meant. Where to go? How to get there? Why did "it" want him to come there? The question mark seemed to be added afterward. Why ask himself? Did "it" really understand what he meant, and so on and so forth.
But just as everyone would expect, no matter how bizarre or messy Chen Xiao's thoughts were, he eventually wrote down on the paper,
"Okay."
...
...
Chen Xiao's pen tip left the page.
Or rather, the page left the pen tip, vanishing right before Chen Xiao's eyes without him even seeing how it disappeared.
Chen Xiao remained sitting, his pen hovering in mid-air, his gaze passing between his legs, but what he saw was not his apartment's floor but rather old wooden boards, surrounded by dim light, slightly cold temperature, and the smell of aged wooden furniture.
The sensation was strange as if he had been sitting there all along and all the scenes from the apartment just now were his own imagination.
Chen Xiao raised his head to look around. It was an old, small bedroom. If he stretched out his foot, he could kick the wooden wall on the opposite side. The door was tightly shut. Beside it was a wooden table with several books and a collection of bottles and jars, the jars filled with murky liquid, probably soaking something, but it was unclear.
At this moment, he was sitting on a simple wooden bed. He habitually felt the bed sheet beneath him.
The fabric was somewhat stiff, and the area under his buttocks had no warmth at all, suggesting he had just sat down here.
"Hmm...so this is what 'come over' means?" Chen Xiao muttered to himself.
Right after that, he raised his hand and slapped himself.
The slap was merciless, and it made a crisp "snap" sound!
"Ah!!!!" Chen Xiao shamelessly screamed, his cheek slightly swollen.
After howling, Chen Xiao seriously thought, "Hmm...although I don't know if this is some strange space or a ghost world or something. But at least gravity, sound, and other basic rules are the same, and there's nothing unusual about the feeling, strength, and coordination of the body."
Chen Xiao muttered quietly and took out his mobile phone, which, as expected, had no signal. He nodded with an "I thought so" expression and continued to sit still.
Two minutes later.
"Hmm...no one has shown up yet?" he muttered, then grinned and laughed, "...playing hide and seek?"
Chen Xiao stood up and smoothly pushed open the door; the friction between the wood sounded exceptionally harsh. Outside was a dark horizontal corridor; his line of sight could only reach about 5 meters ahead, so he had no idea how long the corridor was. Chen Xiao didn't rush out but turned around, picked up a jar on the table, and looked inside carefully using the light from his cellphone.
Inside was an undeveloped fetus, probably only about four or five months old, looking particularly eerie under the pale blue light.
"Hmm...unexpectedly intact, the umbilical cord is very full and even attached to a small piece of placenta. It looks like it was taken out while the mother was alive," Chen Xiao muttered to himself and chuckled with a "heh heh heh."
Next, he flipped open a book on the table, but it was filled with text he couldn't understand. Chen Xiao quickly browsed through it and found a few hand-drawn illustrations. They were all images of human tissue, notably, one of the illustrations depicted an eye directly connected to two arms; size-wise, this eye was as big as a manhole cover...
Chen Xiao habitually licked his lips and remarked, "A rather unique approach to medical understanding."
Afterward, he stood still, looking very interested, and went through the other books on the table as well.
...
Since he couldn't understand the text and was just looking for illustrations, it didn't take very long. About three minutes later, Chen Xiao could no longer hold back and criticized, "This seems more than just a unique medical insight. It's like the whole science tree has gone awry."
In these books, it started with some diagrams of brain cutting or human dissection, but later on, the person seemed to be devoting themselves to combining various human organs, like the eyeball with two arms he had just seen. Eventually, Chen Xiao even saw a drawing in these books of a circular pattern resembling an Array, surrounded by dense text.
"Uh...anyway, this person should be categorized as a genius," Chen Xiao said as he put down the book.
Just then, a slow footsteps sound came from the corridor behind him.
Chen Xiao frowned because he could easily differentiate a person's height, weight, and even gender from the sound of their footsteps, but these footsteps were decidedly abnormal.
"Height around 1 meter, weight only about 20 kilograms...and the center of gravity is very high."
Without thinking, he swiftly moved to a corner of the room and peered through a narrow line of sight into the dark corridor.
...
"No way, could someone really make that kind of thing?" Chen Xiao thought incredulously.
Indeed, the footsteps grew closer, and in the darkness, a huge eyeball slowly appeared with crimson blood vessels connected to two arms broken from the shoulders. Bones protruded and inserted into the base of the eyeball, and with each step, the sound of bones stirring inside the eyeball could be heard with a "gurgling" noise.
Chen Xiao twitched the corner of his eye: "The power of science is truly infinite," he muttered to himself while hiding in a blind spot.
After a while, the footsteps...no, the handsteps gradually receded, and Chen Xiao quietly peeked out.
"Hmm...apart from the arms, there are no points of support; I guess this thing doesn't have much fighting power. Plus, it has no ears, so it definitely can't hear sounds. Otherwise, it should have heard me shouting just now..." After seeing such an abnormal creature, Chen Xiao wasn't frightened at all but was instead hesitating whether to kill it on the spot.
As mentioned before, when faced with a decision, Chen Xiao's actions are unpredictable, not even he knows what he might do. Thankfully, this time the chaotic roulette in his mind stopped on the option "stay quiet." Otherwise, he might really have staged a scene where a mentally ill patient mistreats a defenseless grotesque creature.
Chen Xiao stepped out of the small bedroom and discovered that the corridor wasn't very long; the direction "Eyeball-kun" came from led to a hall, and the other way led to a wooden staircase going up. At this moment, "Eyeball-kun" had clearly gone upstairs. Chen Xiao stomped his foot and knocked a few times on the wall next to him, sending out solid, dull "thud" sounds.
"Oh...a basement." Chen Xiao thought, with his hands in his pockets, casually strolling toward the hall ahead.
There was almost no light here, but Chen Xiao's eyes had gradually adapted to the darkness. He saw countless strange symbols densely painted on the hall's walls with some unknown paint. On the floor, there was a huge circular Array, surrounded by several burnt-out candles.
"Huh~ could this be the story of a geek who delved into black technology solely for summoning a succubus?" Chen Xiao casually commented and took a step forward.
Suddenly, he stopped.
There was nothing in front of Chen Xiao.
But he clearly bumped into something...
"Hmm...so that's what it is!" Chen Xiao chuckled heh heh.