New Times, New Hell

Chapter 41 - Cause of Obsession

Qin Yuejian’s expression was that of someone who had just met a scammer. Yu Zhengdu was used to it. He very professionally pulled out their company’s product descriptions and explained them to him. Then, he seriously promised, “Our company’s principle is to do business with sincerity. If we aren’t successful, we won’t charge you. This way, you won’t have to worry about being tricked.”

Qin Yuejian: “……”

The other’s attitude was extremely genuine, but the business he was talking about was so……random was the way to describe it.

While he was in the middle of debating with himself, Shang Que suddenly said, “The person who gifted the bracelet to you must have liked you a lot, right?”

Qin Yuejian’s eyes instantly widened. An almost undetectable hint of excitement filled his voice. “What makes you say that?”

“It means no harm to you, but will definitely harm those who seek to hurt you.” Shang Que stared at the bracelet, expression unchanging. However, indescribable emotions flitted through his eyes. “If you don’t deal with it now, sooner or later it will kill those around you……for example, the person who tied your safety harness on today.”

Qin Yuejian froze. He asked, “……Wasn’t that guy’s fall an accident?”

Shang Que glanced at him and didn’t answer. His gaze was filled with a message that didn’t need to be spoken aloud.

Instead, it was Yu Zhengdu who managed to infer something. After pondering a bit, he asked, “I’m guessing that today wasn’t the first time situations like that have occurred?”

With this mention, Qin Yuejian couldn’t help but start recalling everything that had happened in the past. Upon thinking about them in more detail, he discovered that things were exactly as Yu Zhengdu implied. Every time an accident had occurred to him previously, as long as the accident was caused by a human, that person would suffer some sort of harm. Only, in the past, all the incidents had been small. At most, the other would trip and scrape a knee or something, making it hard to decipher if they were truly accidents or caused by something else.

Except now that similar occurrences had happened more than once, he was forced to start feeling suspicious.

Qin Yuejian’s heart felt like it was getting squeezed. He reflexively answered, “Impossible. He was a really good person. He would never hurt others.”

Shang Que explained, “This is only his obsession, not his person. No matter who the one you’re talking about it is, or what he was like when alive, those have no relation to this situation.”

His tone got slightly frostier. “Obsession is mindless. It can’t decipher anything; it can only stubbornly take care of the people or things it thinks will harm you.”

Qin Yuejian instinctively looked at his own wrist. His gaze was filled with confusion. “But why would things become like this……”

If it wasn’t his person, why would his obsession be trapped on this bracelet?

Yu Zhengdu looked at Shang Que curiously too. Shang Que only shook his head. “We would have to know who that person was.”

The truth was laid out in front of him. Qin Yuejian disregarded whether or not he truly believed in superstitions and decided he wanted to try. Of course, in his heart, maybe he had other thoughts that remained hidden to others.

Qin Yuejian became silent for a moment. Then, he finally spat out the name that his fans and the media had searched for extensively but never uncovered: “His name was Zhan Keji. He was my high school classmate.”

Yu Zhengdu immediately formulated a message and sent it back to Luofeng’s headquarters. He asked Kang Jin to help him find this person’s information. Kang Jin replied fairly quickly, but the response only perplexed him more.

According to the records in the Life and Death Account, Zhan Keji really had already died. But because his obsession couldn’t be removed, he couldn’t be scheduled for reincarnation.

Yu Zhengdu furrowed his brows. “I can’t find his current location either.”

Qin Yuejian had originally been tense with anticipation. Upon hearing this, he couldn’t help but reveal a doubtful expression. However, Shang Que didn’t seem surprised at all. He lightly said, “His obsession and his spirit have been separated, so hasn’t been able to dissipate&#k2026;&#k2026;the most probable thing that occurred was his obsession was exorcised forcefully. This wasn’t what he wanted, so he trapped his spirit in the place his obsession started.”

Qin Yuejian could only understand half of what he was saying, but his heart still felt like it was being squeezed. He subconsciously shifted forward a bit. “What does that mean?”

Shang Que lifted his gaze to look at him. “How did he die?”

Qin Yuejian paused, then became silent. A while later, he finally answered with difficulty, “I don’t know……”

“When I found out, he had already died. I found his parents to try and ask about it, but they refused to tell me anything. And……after he passed, his family immediately moved away. I didn’t even manage to see him one last time……I didn’t even get to see his body……”

It seemed that Qin Yuejian hadn’t mentioned these events in a while. As he spoke, he occasionally needed to take breaks to refresh his memory. His voice trembled slightly. Though he didn’t say much, it seemed like he had used a lot of energy. In the end, he looked at Shang Que. “Could it be……could it be that there are secrets about his death?”

Shang Que shook his head. “Don’t know.”

Qin Yuejian suddenly became agitated. “You guys are lying to me, right? You made up the bit about obsessions, right? He found peace a long time ago, how could it be……”

Yu Zhengdu sat off to the side silently. While listening to Qin Yuejian speak, he also pondered. At this time, he finally found a key point in the unclear information provided and randomly piped up. “Wait. Zhan Keji was male, right?”

Qin Yuejian didn’t know why he was suddenly bringing this up, so reflexively nodded.

Yu Zhengdu’s face was filled with a hint of realization. “He was male, he liked you……he was gay?”

Qin Yuejian’s face immediately flushed red. A moment later, he asked, voice tight, “What’s wrong with being gay?”

“Nothing,” Yu Zhengdu responded. His tone was natural, like he was discussing an average topic of conversation. But just this simple word allowed for Qin Yuejian’s tense nerves to instantly relax.

Shang Que couldn’t help turning his head to look at Yu Zhengdu. It was unclear what he had suddenly thought of.

Qin Yuejian almost subconsciously stroked the chain on his wrist. He muttered, “He was gay, but what does that have to do with anything?”

Yu Zhengdu: “Of course it doesn’t have anything to do with anything. But what did the people around him, especially his family, think about his sexuality?”

Qin Yuejian shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He really didn’t know. When Zhan Keji had been alive, he had never introduced him to his parents. After Zhan Keji had passed, his parents also weren’t willing to communicate with Qin Yuejian.

From beginning to end, Qin Yuejian didn’t know what had happened with Zhan Keji.

And now, if the two people before him weren’t lying and Zhan Keji’s spirit really was lost somewhere, then……wouldn’t he never be able to learn the truth?

Uncontrollably, Qin Yuejian’s eyes turned slightly red. His lips trembled. “If the dead really have spirits, can you help me find him?”

Shang Que said, “If we can find where his cause of obsession is, then yes.”

Qin Yuejian was dazed. “Cause of obsession?” He had just barely figured out what obsession was. How was he supposed to know what the cause of obsession was?

Only to see Yu Zhengdu glance at his wrist knowingly, “His obsession is with you.”

A thought flashed through Qin Yuejian’s mind. In a moment of realization, he asked, “Is it that place?”

***

The place Qin Yuejian spoke of was the high school that he and Zhan Keji had both attended. That was where the two of them had met, and was also the place where they had spent the most time together.

Qin Yuejian and Zhan Keji had sat next to each other for three years. They had once promised to go to the same university together, but right before the gaokao, the news that Zhan Keji had died was suddenly announced by his family.

After hearing this, Qin Yuejian had run over to the Zhan home. He wanted to see Zhan Keji’s body one last time, but was coldly rejected by Mother and Father Zhan. The next time he visited, they had already moved away.

High school campuses had curfew. Qin Yuejian was also a popular idol, so he didn’t dare to appear at school in the day. Thus, at night, Qin Yuejian brought Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que over to the wall by the field and familiarly flipped inside.

“Back then, Keji and I were both boarders. We were right at the age where we were growing and got hungry easily. At night, when we were so hungry we couldn’t take it, we would secretly sneak over the walls to get a midnight snack.” As Qin Yuejian spoke to them, his tone was light, but Yu Zhengdu could tell that there was a hint of reminiscence hidden in there. “In the beginning, I wasn’t very good at flipping the fence. He would squat and help me over by letting me step on his back.”

Now, it was already past the time for evening self-study. The students had already left and the lights in the classrooms were all off. Only a few street lights dimly lit up the night. They swayed with the wind.

Qin Yuejian led Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que over to the building he had had class in before. They walked up the stairs and suddenly heard a girl’s voice. “Let’s go back. I heard there are ghosts here at night.”

A male’s voice responded, “Don’t be scared. I’m here.”

It appeared to be a young couple secretly out on a date.

The girl still seemed a bit frightened. “I heard the student who got held back a year from the class next door say that one time, after self-study time, he came over to grab something and saw someone writing at the desk. But when he walked closer, the person disappeared. He thought that he had seen wrong at first, but there happened to be a notebook open on the desk. Then, he saw that it looked like someone had written on the notebook.……”

The boy scoffed. “Those indentations were probably already there before……”

Girl: “No, he specially double-checked. They didn’t match the handwriting already in the notebook……”

The boy teased, “Well what was written on it?”

Girl: “Apparently it was incomplete. There was only half a sentence. It read, ‘Qin Yuejian, be with’……”

Guy: “Fuck. So at the end of the day, a fangirl wrote it, right. Even mentioning Qin Yuejian……”

Girl: “Ghosts can be fangirls too. Besides, have you forgotten? Qin Yuejian graduated from our school.”

The boy immediately changed the topic. “Don’t worry, just hold onto me. As long as I’m here, there’s no need to be scared even if there really are ghosts.”

The three people forced to eavesdrop: “……” After all this time, this was the real reason the guy was determined to visit this haunted classroom, right.

What a sly boy!

Yu Zhengdu lowly cussed at the male student, then turned to glance at Qin Yuejian, only to see a look of disbelief on the other’s face. His eyes were bright with anticipation. In the face of a potential customer,Yu Zhengdu was rather professional, so immediately said, “You guys hide first. I’ll make those two leave.”

Yu Zhengdu’s method of getting people to leave was simple but effective. He directly took out his phone and played a sound recording.

The evening wind howled. Suddenly, a bout of wailing sounded out, carrying with it an indescribable feeling of cold and eeriness.

The girl had originally been scared already. Upon hearing this, her face immediately paled. The boy had sounded so brave previously; who would’ve thought, then, that after noticing this low grumble that didn’t sound like a noise a human could make, he became so scared that he yelped and ran away even faster than the girl.

Yu Zhengdu had unexpectedly helped the girl realize the unreliable true nature of this male student. It was an extra achievement.

Only to see Qin Yuejian’s expression turn conflicted. He asked, “Your ghost wails are too realistic. Where did you download them from?”

Yu Zhengdu shook his head and sighed. “I recorded my coworker.”

Qin Yuejian: “……???” The employees at their company were that good at mimicking noises?

After scaring away two students and successfully preventing a badly timed premature couple, the three of them finally arrived in the classroom Qin Yuejian had spent most of his time at before.

Their surroundings were pitch dark. Only the sound of the wind could be heard.

Qin Yuejian turned on the lights in the classroom with a “pa”. The room was immediately illuminated, revealing its emptiness.

But in Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que’s eyes, a male with short hair and dressed in a loose blue school uniform was very clearly sprawled against the desk in the second to last row of the classroom, head down as he wrote.

Yu Zhengdu pointed in the direction of the boy and inquired Qin Yuejian, “That must’ve been your seat, right?”

Qin Yuejian asked in shock, “How did you know?”

Yu Zhengdu’s gaze was heavy. “I see him.”

Qin Yuejian instantly became excited. He was just about to ask for more information, only to see Yu Zhengdu pull out a phone, turn on the camera, and stick it in front of his nose. “The product you’re looking at now is the ghost imaging technology developed by our company. It uses an extra large F1.7 brightness setting and has a 30 million pixel resolution. It can effectively eliminate white noise to make the clearest image. Here, experience it.”

Qin Yuejian: “……??”

The author has something to say:

The image of a technological company can’t be ruined!