It was ten by the time we left. We limped out of the bar, clinging on to each other. Chongxi was looking as if he was suffering from a stroke. At least Lin Feng was still able to walk on his own. I was feeling tipsy myself with the dizziness that had me walking in circles and figure-eight round and round. Lu Shengnan was worst; she would have collapsed if not for me still struggling to keep her on her feet.

I was the undisputed best in drinking out of all four of us. But cocktails, which were nowhere near the beers we normally gulp down like water, were really way out of our league and we were now paying the price for our ignorance and brashness. In a slurry voice, a half-drunk Lin Feng yelled, “W-wait up! Ah (I) will get the cut (car)!” I grabbed at the scruff of his shirt and shook him, “Look… at yourself… You can’t even… speak… Quit driving… I want to live… a… long life…” Lin Feng stowed his keys back into the pocket and crouched on the pavement.

“We have good weather today! Look at the Sun!” Chongxi remarked suddenly amidst his drunken hiccups. “That’s a street lamp, you git!” I planted a foot into his hind parts only for the inebriated Chongxi to continue mumbling to himself, “I must make some calculations! One times one equals one… two times two I’d get two…”

Lu Shengnan was practically leaning her entire weight on me by now like a piece of dead log then her face hit the side of my face with a smack. “I’m so regretful now, Shiyan!” She gasped suddenly into my ears, the traces of cigarettes and liquor now wafting over my nose. She burped suddenly and the stench of flatulence assaulted my nose that I almost puked. Carefully, I shifted her face away from mine, asking, “What are you regretful about?” Another rush of drunken odor slammed into me as I heard her melancholic voice saying, “I have nothing but regret now for not telling you when we graduated! I should have confessed to you about my feelings! *burp* If only I had told you earlier, you won’t be snatched away but that foxy little outlaw!”

I shifted Lu Shengnan’s head again, “E-enough! What bullshit! As if I’d believe that!” But Lu Shengnan snuggled closer to me and wrapped her arms around my neck, gasping, “It’s true! Honest!” Feeling the rush of alcohol kicking in, I croaked desperately, “All right, all right! We’ll talk about this later!”

We grew so drunk that we could not remember what we said that time aside from the stuttered and garbled gibberish that hardly meant anything…

Somehow, we found ourselves in the Nanhu Villa Precinct later. Fighting off the hangover still haunting us, we made our way into my home which was now already fully furnished and I was relieved to find tea leaves ready for consumption.

One of the many things about Father that had never stopped bugging me was Father’s collection of tea leaves. He never drinks tea. But he loved collecting rare tea leaves and even producing some of them himself. A tea collector who drinks not even a drop of tea? Now that must be one of the greatest mysteries of Wu Zhong, I brooded quietly.

I took out a can of tea leaves casually from the cabinet and made a pot of hot tea for everyone to dispel the effects of alcohol.

The water in the kettle was beginning to bubble when I suddenly felt it! A palpable aura, evil and hateful, emanating like the rapids of a rushing river from Unit 104 just down the street! The sensation that almost made my hair stand was enough to dispel much of my hangover and I sprang to my feet. I looked out the window and I could see Unit 104’s third-story window! Someone was there and the strong, evil aura could only be coming from that person! Whoever it was, he or she must have seen me!

My head spun because of me getting up too quickly and I felt light-headed. With a loud thud, I fell to the floor. My head had been throbbing with a strong headache ever since we left the bar and got a bit of cool air. I willed myself to clamber up and I looked again at the third-story window. The person was missing. But I would never be able to forget that pair of eyes in the dark, so filled with hate and anger.

Lin Feng struggled to his feet. He, too, had noticed what happened. And the martial artist in him would never allow him to lie down flat anymore. He got up and we looked at each other, still dizzy with drunken weariness, and we nodded. Lin Feng yanked Chongxi to his feet and nudged with a chin gesture at Unit 104, signaling to me that it was time.

I nodded curtly and walked outside. With Lu Shengnan now out for the count, there was no longer any need to involve her. We could certainly do without a cannon-fodder. We carried a still-unconscious Chongxi and walked across the road. The air was slowly becoming warm to welcome the approaching spring equinox, but the night’s air was no less eerie and chilly especially with the foul aura radiating from Unit 104 just not far opposite.

The gates were open when we reached the front of Unit 104 as if our presence was expected, so we walked in and headed straight for the door. We tried the doorbell but nothing seemed to be working so Lin Feng rapped on the door. A series of hollow knocks spawned from the door, sounding like echoing thuds that rang off into a dark abyss to a half-drunken me, further intensifying the uneasiness haunting us.

But the rapping hardly accomplished anything; we waited idly outside and nothing was coming from inside the house. Impatiently, Lin Feng raised a fist and pounded the door again bang bang bang with more strength.

The half-minute that we waited restlessly outside seemed more uncomfortably longer than it should until we finally heard the casual patters of footfall ambling towards the door from the other side. Somehow being drunk seemed to make Lin Feng notably more irascible and impatient. He yelled hoarsely at the person inside, “Come on! Open up! Quit dawdling around like a whining b*tch!”

The door opened with a click and we saw in the darkened threshold the figure of a man dressed in a set of garb fully black and dark leather shoes with short, army cut hair. But what was more unsettling was the darkness inside the house. There was not even a speck of light inside as if we were looking into the bellows of a monster. That made me wary until the man suddenly snapped to a salute for Lin Feng, “Good evening, Plat… I mean, former Platoon Leader.”

“You were serving in the army?” Lin Feng looked at the man and asked with hiccups every now and then. The man in black smiled. “I am Cao Xuedong. I was enlisted as a conscript only after you left but I too left the army two years ago.”

I began studying Cao Xuedong. It took me a second to realize that this was the same person whom I met at the military exercise when I just began attending university. The same military instructor who was attached to my class. Only now, he was just as cold and distant as Huang Li! While Huang Li’s abrupt change of her character could be attributed to her dislike of me, but Cao Xuedong was a wholly separate case! Despite our differences, Cao Xuedong’s behavioral change was definitely peculiar and inscrutable!

He now looked completely the same as the Huang Li I met just earlier before. Their eyes emitted nothing but a chilly stare despite the smile they wore on their face. To put it bluntly, their expressions looked no different from those on plastic mannequins: fake and dead. There was not a whiff of warmth or vibrancy that I could detect from them as if I was actually speaking to a cadaver. That was why I failed to recognize him immediately.

“It’s been a long time, Instructor Cao!” I let out a frosty chuckle. He turned to face me and uttered frigidly, “A long time indeed, Murong Shiyan.” And he broke into the same creepy smile again. He offered a hand and I took it, only for another bout of unexpected horror!

As soon as I felt his skin touching mine, the same electrifying sensation from my first meeting with Huang Li shot through me again! My mind was assailed once again by a horrific vision of countless images zipping by me in an instant!

Everything stopped suddenly and I found myself standing before a bizarrely-dressed man whose expression looked cold and hard despite his tightly-shut eyes. Then the eyes blinked open without a warning, startling me! There were two more opened eyelids staring back at me from each of the two eyeballs! I felt a cold rush that made my hair stand and the man disappeared!

Next, I found myself flying through the air at the speed of a bullet and a bolt of golden light was streaking across the sky, heading for me! The golden light struck me and I was blinded by an explosion of light!

“What’s wrong, Murong Shiyan?” Cao Xuedong’s voice came from nowhere as he let go of my hand quickly and the brief Lovecraftian vision immediately dissipated just as quickly and rapidly as they came. I reeled with shock and saw Cao Xuedong throwing at me a satisfied smirk. But his eyes betrayed a shred of fear and he hastily tried to hide the hand that I took behind his back while feigning innocence.