The so-called "finding a substitute", in our industry, usually refers to a ghost that is generated under certain specific conditions, because it is so strongly bound that it cannot leave. Therefore, there is mostly only one way to leave, which is to find someone else to replace you.
For example, Long Jiyou worked at a shelter, but one day he needed to return to his hometown, but his unit refused to let him go because there was no spare manpower. In order for him to leave smoothly and at the same time for his unit to let him go, he needs to find someone to take his place;
For another example, Master and I each have a toy. If I want to play with the toy in Master’s hand, but if I take away his toy, he won’t have to play with it, so I need to give him my toy. In exchange for his toys.
The same is true for some ghosts. Most of these ghosts who need to find a substitute died violently, or were gathered or restrained by the resentment in the death environment, making them unable to leave. The most common ones are waters where people often drown, and road sections where fatalities and injuries occur in car accidents for a long time. Because if a person dies in such a place, it is very likely that they themselves have become someone else's stand-in.
So when Master assumed that he was looking for a substitute, I couldn't help but feel a little worried, because if you want to solve this problem, you have to cut it off from the source. This investigation is very difficult. No one knows where the first person died. Who is the person here, and it has already found a substitute and left. Either start with the last person, but due to environmental constraints, it is usually quite difficult. Just imagine if I forcefully break into your house and steal things, wouldn't you resist?
Either way, it doesn't look like it's going to be easy.
The master said that if his prediction is correct, if we don't stop this matter, after the fifth person dies tomorrow, at least two more people will die before the matter can come to an end. The number seven days is a regular cycle at this moment. Master said that human lives matter, even these homeless people. This means we don’t have much time left before Long Jiyou and his colleagues take over tomorrow morning.
Without delay, Master and I began to look through the records I had stolen from the house. It is now 1967. In this book, I found the records of four people who died in the previous month. Most of these dead people, like those currently imprisoned, had mental illnesses, so they were almost all named according to the numbers they had when they were admitted, because most of them could not say their names. The webmaster's records of these deaths were very brief. Almost every one of the previous four people had a cause of death marked: heart disease, suffocation.
So I asked Long Jiyou, have you ever seen the corpses of these people after they died? Long Jiyou said that he had seen them. Basically, they all had uncomfortable expressions. Some were covering their chests and some were covering their necks, but their mouths were open and most of their eyes were not closed.
I reached out and touched my Adam's apple with my mouth, and then opened my mouth. Then switch to covering your chest with your hands, and then open your mouth. It is not difficult to find that the combination of these actions is the action of a person opening his mouth wide due to poor breathing. Usually the only thing that can cause us to do this is suffocation or heart disease. This shows that although the webmaster's record is brief, it does state the facts.
At the moment, I judged in my heart that the possibility of ghosts directly causing harm to people is not high, because after all, they are not substances in the same state of existence. Most of them use fright and visual effects to create an illusion in living people. Ghosts looking for substitutes will often use their accumulated abilities to burst out at one point in time in order to succeed at one time, which will cause a tactile sensation to people. For example, a person who died in a car accident may have been pushed into the lane by a force when the car passed by. Another example is a person who drowned. He may be familiar with water, but was pulled by a force. His legs and feet were broken, resulting in drowning.
But then, I don’t understand it even more. It stands to reason that if this is looking for a substitute, it means that the next person who is going to die was killed by the previous person who died, so why does everyone die in the same way? Or is it that even ghosts looking for substitutes will continue to extend their own death to the next deceased?
When I was about to ask Master, Master suddenly said that he had found it. In his hand, he was holding the record book of 1966. At the beginning of the year, the stationmaster recorded the death of a prisoner in that isolation room. However, the stationmaster recorded this person in more detail. In addition to the fact that the cause of death was still heart problems and suffocation, he also specifically mentioned this person. The personnel were sent here after receiving treatment from the city hospital, but the treatment was due to trauma.
Master pointed to the date recorded on this page and showed it to me. That date happened to be the day when the first person died during Long Jiyou's tenure, but it was exactly one year apart.
If this is also a coincidence, I obviously don't believe it. However, everything requires evidence. Although the discovery before us gives us a clearer direction to move forward, it is still not evidence. So Master went on to flip through the 1965 volume that I had found. After flipping through the entire volume, he shook his head and said that there were no dead people in the 1965 records. If the webmaster hadn't deliberately concealed it, then the person who died in early 1966 was probably the cause of all this. And the webmaster must have no reason to deliberately conceal it. Otherwise, he would not have to register the people who died later. It's not his responsibility for this person's death, so why should he hide it?
Long Jiyou nodded and said that the stationmaster is not a bad person. He has worked here for such a long time. He has always been very kind and caring and friendly to us asylum seekers. The master did not speak, but lowered his head and thought for a while. Long Jiyou and I both looked at Master, waiting for him to analyze a reasonable result. Since no one spoke at that moment, the only sounds that came to our ears were the depressing, yet miserable mix of sounds coming from various vagrants and lunatics in those isolation rooms. sounds together.
Isolation room number two, this is what I saw in the record books. The five people who died in this shelter in the past year or so were all in that isolation room. So while Master was thinking, I walked to the iron railing and based on the number on the iron door of each isolation room, I quickly found No. 2.
If the entire layout here is the word "口", then the iron railing I am standing on right now is the horizontal position at the bottom of the word "口". The No. 2 isolation room is in the middle of the vertical column to the right of the word "口". The blank part in the middle of the spoken word is a small dam for these people to move around. From my position, I can clearly see the doorway of each isolation room, but since there are no lights inside the isolation room, I can only see about two or three steps inward from the door against the light. area, all that was left was darkness. I think the figure I saw standing behind the door when Tianlong Jiyou was smoking should be what I can see from my position at the moment.
It's just that there are people standing there wandering around. I know that they are the inmates being held in isolation room No. 2. I can't see exactly how many people are there, but I know that if Master and I get nothing tonight , then one of the people in this isolation room will die tomorrow.
At this moment, all the detainees have been sent back to their isolation cells, and there is no one in the dam. So I asked Long Jiyou, can you help me temporarily move the people in isolation room No. 2 to other rooms? Leave it vacant, I want to go in and have a look. Long Jiyou said yes and asked me to wait.
He used the key to open the small door on the iron railing, and then walked to the No. 2 isolation room. After opening the door, he brought out three crazy interns, all male. Long Jiyou led them to stand in a row and walked through the small dam. Then he opened the door of isolation room No. 7 and locked them all in. Then he locked the door and returned to me. He said to me, okay, you go and have a look, you must be careful.
I looked back at Master, who nodded slightly to me, meaning you might as well check it out. So I took out three sticks of incense and some paper money from my bag. I walked to the door of isolation room No. 2, lit incense and burned paper, which was a way of expressing my intention to come. If there was an innocent soul in this room who was looking for a substitute, this light incense and money paper was a way to show his goodwill. After the money and papers were burned, I walked into the house.
After entering the house, I turned on the flashlight and began to observe the surroundings. Since I had been detained before, until the moment I walked in, I stubbornly imagined the environment in this isolation cell to be like the classroom full of people when I was detained. But this is not actually the case. At least in this isolation room, there are three bed boards put together on the floor. In the small space, the only air outlet is this hollow iron door.
Maybe it was my misunderstanding, but since I walked into isolation room No. 2, my whole body has been filled with a chill. There was feces and urine everywhere on the ground, and the smell was extremely unpleasant. When I looked around with a flashlight, I found that almost every corner and wall was covered with water stains of varying depths, as well as various diseases caused by moisture. of mold. I think the smell of feces and urine was so pungent that I actually felt dizzy. The emergence of ghosts is due to the accumulation of resentment and Yin energy. I would not be surprised at all if there is a haunted phenomenon in such a humid isolation room.
So I walked towards the door. Just as my feet had just stepped across the small ditch at the door of the isolation room, a soft voice suddenly came from the isolation room behind me:
"hey-hey!"
