In 2009.

The middle of July is the Midyear Festival.

There isn't any Halloween atmosphere in the city, and most of the people on the street don't know about the festival – maybe she's the only exception? She still looks young, and most people would guess her age wrong. Entering the subway station from Yaxin Life Plaza, she wore a long white dress, revealing her white and slender ankles, stepping on black flat shoes, long black hair draped over her shoulders, with light makeup on her face, her lips smeared with dispensable colors, and a simple women's bag.

Her name is Ouyang Xiaozhi.

Walking from the steps to the platform, on the escalator next to it, there were a pair of eyes looking at her.

Perhaps because of the subway entering the station, there was a sudden gust of cold wind, and the long black hair rose like silk, just grazing the back of the other party's hand holding the escalator.

At first glance, he is a fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy, who looks quite handsome, tall and has clear eyebrows.

The boy followed the escalator up and out of the station, but Xiaozhi went down the steps to enter the station.

Is that him? She searched for this face in her heart, and in an instant, she passed by.

She walked to the subway platform and couldn't help but glance back, but the boy had turned to the walking stairs and almost rushed down the ground.

Ouyang Xiaozhi quickened his pace to avoid him, and through the bustling crowd, just as a group of trains arrived at the station, he quickly hid in the open door.

He was still rushing forward on the platform, although he was thin and flexible, but when he encountered something that he couldn't get around, he could only forcibly push people away, killing a bloody path, and attracting a burst of abuse behind him. The passengers who got out of the car became a roadblock, and a man angrily punched him in the back because he pushed him away, causing him to lose his center of gravity and fall to the ground.

The boy lay on the ground in pain and looked up to see her face.

"Wait!"

As he screamed and got up, a warning sounded before the door closed, and Twig huddled in the corner of the door, looking at him on the platform.

The moment he rushed to the front of the carriage, the inner and outer doors closed at the same time, isolating him and her from the platform and tunnel.

His face could still be seen through the thick glass, and she pointed to the car door to the boy, meaning to be safe.

When the train started, he banged frantically on the glass door outside, chasing her for more than ten meters until he was thrown off far away. He was subdued by the subway staff, crushed under a few large hands, his cheek pressed against the cold ground, and watched as the entire platform tilted until it collapsed......

"Ouyang Xiaozhi."

Finally, his lips touched the ground and calmly called out her name.

She had followed the train into the deep tunnel, and although she hadn't heard the words, she knew in her heart that it was him.

At the most crowded time of summer, the smell of sweat fills the air. Behind all the people in the carriage, there seems to be a ghost hidden, today is their festival, both the midyear festival and the Obon festival, in Sanskrit, "Yulan" means "to save the upside down".

Half an hour later, she got out of the subway station, changed to a bus, and arrived at Nanming Road in the suburbs.

The gray factories and wilderness have long been replaced by various real estate projects, with huge billboards erected on the streets, as well as Carrefour and Paris Spring. The road is no longer running on the five-ton Dongfeng and bicycles, but golf, Mazda, Audi, Mercedes and BMW. The bus stop is still in the old place, but the stop sign has long been replaced, and there is a movie trailer for "Twilight" in the back. Opposite is Nanming Senior High School, which has hardly changed in 14 years, with a bronze signboard erected next to the magnificent school gate, and a few more medals issued by the Education Bureau. Grocery stores are long gone, replaced by high-end residential complexes. Through the rolling traffic, she stood quietly on the side of the road, and from time to time high school students walked out of the school gates, probably returning to school in the summer, and the boys and girls were playing together, perhaps soon separated in tears.

Suddenly, she saw a familiar face, which had changed from youth to vicissitudes, which was awe-inspiring.

Ouyang Xiaozhi observed from a distance, and there was the potential of a perverted murderer in his eyes.

He was carrying a briefcase, looked to be in his forties, his hair was neatly combed, his beard was cleanly shaved, his waist was straight, and his eyes were piercing. As he walked out of the school gates, the students bowed their heads and saluted, and it seemed that he was still the god in the hearts of the students, the most famous math teacher in the district. Back then, many people paid him a high price to be a tutor, but now the market has increased many times. A parking strip was set up on the side of the road at the school gate, and Mr. Zhang got into a black Nissan Bluebird, quickly turned around and drove away.

After walking hundreds of meters, she found that between the two construction sites, there was a hidden path overgrown with weeds, which was vaguely the path of the witch area back then.

She saw the tall chimney, obscured by the building under construction. Although there is a simple wall next to it, the gate is open. The entire factory has long since been closed, and most of the original site has been occupied by developers, except for a part that is crammed between two developments, so it has survived.

The ruins are much more dilapidated, and when you touch the exterior walls of the factory, the rough cement and bare brick particles look like the skin of a dead man rotting. Walking into the factory on tiptoe, the ground is full of abandoned garbage, and the corner smells of feces, thinking that it was left by the homeless people and migrant workers nearby. She moved to the tunnel, the deep staircase to hell, hidden in the shadows.

As soon as I stepped down the steps, there was a certain cold sensation that seeped from the sole of the shoe to the top of my head. Shrinking back like an electric shock, leaning against the wall and gasping for breath. As soon as you enter that space, the place called the Witch Zone in legend, there will be a sharp knife that will pierce the vest.

Her heart ached inexplicably, forcing her to her knees in a cold sweat.

In 1988, when she was just an eleven-year-old girl, she came to this place and faced the round hatch......

More than 20 years have passed, but it seems that the color has never faded, at noon when the sun is strong. She still remembered the boys from Nanming High School, one of whom had a cyan birthmark on his face. They walked across the road in front of the school and sat in the shade of a tree to eat lunch. There was a little girl who was hungry and ghostly lurking behind her. She hadn't eaten meat in days, and her saliva was almost dry, and she quietly stole a piece of chicken leg from a boy's lunch box.

She ran as fast as she could into the wilderness by the side of the road, nibbling on chicken legs as she ran, and the boys had spotted it and chased after her. Finally, she was caught in the abandoned factory, and the eleven-year-old girl, who had no money on her, could only hand over a leftover chicken leg bone.

So, they decided to punish this "thief".

She was imprisoned in the witch quarter.

Legend has it that it is often haunted in the middle of the night, especially this basement. They threw the little girl in and closed the hatch tightly—even the gods inside couldn't open the door if they tightened the round handle.

In the boundless darkness, she banged on the hatch in despair, hoping that someone would hear her cry, or that the boy with the cyan birthmark would be moved to let her out.

However, there was no movement outside the door.

She was locked up in a grave.

At that time, she didn't know how to write the word "cold-blooded".

Until he shouted hoarsely and collapsed behind the door in a groggy voice, and the time became so long, deathly silence, I don't know how long it was outside? Dark or dawn? Has anyone noticed that she has disappeared? Will anyone come looking for her? In a trance, my stomach was hungry again, and my throat was so thirsty that it was about to burn.

Suddenly, a small sound was heard, first with hurried footsteps, then with the turn of the hatch.

A blinding flash of lightning shot into the dark underground, and she instinctively raised her hand to block her eyes.

The man walked up to her and gently touched her hair, which was filthy and knotted and smelly. He broke her resisting hands and shook her face with a flashlight.

At first glance, there was only a vague shadow, and the electric light was on her eyes, and she could barely open them. When he put down the flashlight, she vaguely saw his eyes, like two faint candles, unable to grasp what he was thinking? His face was so pale, and the well-defined contours were unforgettable.

"There's a little girl!"

It was the first thing she heard from him, and she hadn't drunk water for a long time, but she couldn't make a sound.

"Are you alright? Is it dumb? ”

She quickly shook her head, and then he realized, "You must be tired and hungry, right?" I've been locked up underground for two days, it's pitiful, come with me! ”

He took her hand and wanted to walk out, but she didn't have the strength at all, she couldn't even walk up the steps of the witch's quarter.

So, he squatted down and picked up the little girl and led her out of the dark factory.

It was midnight outside, with stars overhead, cool winds blowing on all sides, and the steel mill behind it was still smoking, as if it was burning the bones of countless people.

"Don't be afraid, I'm a student in the third (2nd) class of Nanming Middle School."

She lay on the shoulders of the eighteen-year-old boy and wrapped her arms around him with the last bit of strength she had left. The boy's back was cold, but his heart was beating fast. His neck is clean, he doesn't smell any foul smells, and there is lush fuzz under his ears. She hung her head feebly, pressed against his cheek, the only warm place, and I really wanted to go on like this forever, even if I would soon starve to death.

He talked to himself as he walked, anyway, no one eavesdropped in the wilderness at night: "Lu Zhongyue said that he put a little girl in the witch area because he stole the chicken legs in his lunch box, I said did you let her out?" As a result, everyone said that they had forgotten, and they had never thought that they would die like this? What did you do? If I hadn't come out of the wall in the middle of the night, they would have been murderers! ”

Walking out of the wilderness on the side of Nanming Road to the shantytown of illegal construction opposite, he knocked on the door of the homeless man's house. Finally, water and food came to save the little girl. And he hurriedly disappeared into the night, afraid that he would climb over the wall and go back to school.

Until the end of the world, she will not forget this face.

In 2009, she returned to the devastated Witch Quarter, where time had long since frozen, and it seemed that she heard a cry.

Is it the cry of being locked up underground in 1988, or the ghost that persists after he was killed in 1995?

Also, a strange smell.

He's hiding in the corner of the Witch Quarter?

Ouyang Xiaozhi rushed down frantically, stepping on the damp and gloomy staircase until it reached the sturdy hatch with the rotating handle.

The door didn't close.

As she pushed the door open and returned to the place where she was buried, a shadow bullet emerged.

"Ahh

Subconsciously screamed, the black shadow had hit her, it was a collision of bones, and she was knocked to the ground with a bang, and the back of her head smashed against the cold, hard wall.

But she still tried to grab the other party and grab him by the arm, but he immediately broke free.

A quarter of a second, on the dim stairs of the tunnel, the back of a man flashed by, and disappeared in a blink of an eye.

The pain in the shoulder and back of the head was unbearable, and I don't know if there was a concussion. She struggled for a long time to get up, staggered a step out, but almost fell to the edge of the iron gate, and it was impossible to catch up with the other party.

Just as she was scared of the thrilling few seconds just now, she smelled a strong smell of cigarette smoke.

Remembering that there is still a flashlight in his pocket, it immediately illuminates this hellish space, which is only more than twenty square meters in size, and there is some dirty stagnant water underground, is it the same water that was buried fourteen years ago? There are some strange words on the wall, which are carved with hard objects, and there seem to be the words "field wheat".

One last glance at the witch area, a heart-piercing pain came out of his back. Before stepping out of the hatch, she swore she would come back.

Back in the sunset, take a big breath, and feel like you're coming back from the dead. Looking at the monstrous dilapidated factories, the chimneys are crumbling, and then the high-rise buildings under construction, it is like looking back at the past and the present.

Who is the person hiding in the witch quarter?