NOVEL NEXT Ch. 4
Chapter 4: Encountering Evil
At night, Lu Feng returned home to find, as expected, no one there.
On the table lay a few banknotes, with a note placed on top—settle dinner yourself, eat something decent.
Sigh…
Lu Feng let out a breath.
As expected of his biological mother.
Although his mother could be considered a strong woman in her career, in terms of relationships, she was without a doubt a complete failure.
According to what she once confided to him when drunk, she had once experienced a beautiful love.
The two of them had been deeply affectionate, and had even reached the stage of preparing for their wedding.
However, just one week before the marriage, her boyfriend suddenly vanished into thin air and could never be contacted again.
His mother thought she had been abandoned, and for a time was so heartbroken that she refused to eat for three days straight.
It wasn’t until three months later that she finally learned the truth—that her lover was actually the leader of a fraud organization.
He had always hidden himself well and never let her discover it.
A week before their marriage, his identity was finally exposed.
He was arrested and thrown into prison by the police, and in the end, because the amount of fraud was too large, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Her second relationship was with Lu Feng’s father.
The reason for their divorce was something Lu Feng had never known.
But from the very first of his memories, the time they spent arguing had far outweighed the time they had normal conversations.
When they finally ended up divorcing, to be honest, Lu Feng didn’t feel regret.
Instead, he thought it was for the better—at least the house became quiet.
But ever since then, his mother seemed to have lost all interest in relationships.
She came home later and later, often drinking herself into a stupor late at night.
Occasionally, when Lu Feng ran into her, she reeked of alcohol and mumbled all kinds of unbearable nonsense.
Yet, he never said a word—only watched silently.
After all, to Lu Feng, this was only a house where people lived, not a home.
Muttering a few complaints in his heart, Lu Feng stuffed the banknotes into his pocket and headed downstairs.
As he walked toward the elevator, he pondered what to eat for dinner.
But the elevator seemed broken.
No matter how many times he pressed the button, it didn’t respond.
Sigh…
Lu Feng sighed again.
The irresponsible property managers never took care of the broken elevators.
Truly, when misfortune struck, even drinking water could get one stuck in the teeth.
Although he lived on the 12th floor, for the sake of food, Lu Feng had no choice but to take the stairs.
At the stairwell, the dim light flickered beside the emergency exit sign.
No matter how one looked at it, it resembled a scene straight out of a horror movie where the protagonist was about to encounter a ghost.
But Lu Feng had long been used to this.
A childhood of constant encounters with ghosts had trained him with a courage ordinary people lacked.
So, he walked down the stairs while glancing at his phone.
At the moment, Lu Feng was searching for information about Liuli on his phone, wanting to see if there was anything online about her.
He typed into the search bar: Xinli High School, Liuli.
After clicking search, the results showed nothing about Liuli—only endless praise for Xinli High School’s high graduation and college admission rates.
So Lu Feng deleted Liuli’s name from the search bar and replaced it with: Xinli High School, incident.
Click search.
This time, the page did mention that there had been deaths at Xinli High School.
But they were basically the same version of the story Yu Mo had told that morning.
No matter how much he searched, he couldn’t find any other information.
Lu Feng shut off his phone in disappointment, his mind replaying Liuli’s words again and again—
“If you come to school tomorrow, something bad will happen.”
So, what exactly was going to happen? Why would something bad happen just because he went to school?
As Lu Feng continued down the stairs, he thought and thought, but no matter how he turned it over in his head, he couldn’t figure it out.
Liuli’s words were like a riddle without a beginning or end, impossible to untangle.
But recalling the string of unlucky events that had happened today, Lu Feng suddenly felt that perhaps he really shouldn’t go to school tomorrow—
If tomorrow turned out even unluckier than today, how was he supposed to keep living?
Compared to that, skipping just one day of school didn’t seem like a big deal at all.
As these thoughts filled his mind, Lu Feng went down another flight of stairs—when suddenly he froze.
A faint realization struck him—something wasn’t right.
How long had he been walking down this staircase? Why hadn’t he reached the first floor yet?
He turned toward the floor number painted on the wall.
Written in red paint was the number “2.”
He was only on the second floor?
Lu Feng was surprised.
He had taken the stairs before when the elevator broke, but why did it feel like this time it was taking especially long? Was it just his imagination?
Just as he prepared to keep heading down in confusion, he suddenly realized something.
Hurriedly, he looked back at the floor number again—
And saw that before the scarlet “2,” there was a small, easily overlooked minus sign.
It wasn’t the second floor.
It was the negative second floor!
In an instant, Lu Feng’s hair stood on end as if it exploded, icy fear spreading from his feet and flooding his whole body in seconds!
This building only had one basement level.
There was no such thing as a negative second floor!
Lu Feng bolted upstairs, not daring to pause, while fumbling for his phone to call Yu Mo.
But the phone, which had been showing full bars just a moment ago, now displayed “No Service”!
He had encountered evil!
Cold sweat poured down as Lu Feng ran up the stairs without stopping.
Yet, the familiar floor marking never changed.
-2, -2, -2, -2, -2…
Lu Feng had long since lost count of how many flights he had climbed.
His legs felt like they were about to break, yet the crimson sign still showed negative two.
Exhausted, he finally collapsed onto the stairs, wiping sweat and gasping desperately for breath.
Instinctively, he pulled out his phone to glance at it—
There was signal!
Hurriedly, Lu Feng opened his contacts and dialed Yu Mo, terrified the signal would cut out at any second.
After what felt like an eternity, the call finally connected!
“Hello! Yu Mo? Where are you right now?”
Lu Feng asked urgently.
But before Yu Mo could reply, he continued,
“I’m in trouble! You need to hurry and—”
Halfway through his words, Lu Feng abruptly stopped.
Because from the other end of the phone, instead of Yu Mo’s voice, came a strange sound.
That strange, eerie sound grew louder, as if right beside his ear.
“Ge-ge-ge-ge-ge-ge… ge-ge-ge-ge-ge-ge…”
The sound was sharp and piercing, like fingernails scraping against a blackboard, making every hair on his body stand on end.
Realizing something was wrong, Lu Feng immediately hung up.
But the sound didn’t vanish—instead, it grew even more horrifying!
“Hee… hee-hee…”
In that instant, Lu Feng’s cold sweat soaked through his clothes.
Goosebumps exploded across his entire body.
Because that eerie voice wasn’t coming from the phone at all.
It was coming from the staircase below!