Probably when I was still in elementary school or junior high school, at that time, home-style VCD machines were not yet popular, and the word "Internet" did not even appear in people's minds, so in that era, people's entertainment activities were limited, and my grandmother's generation always liked to sit in the yard in twos and threes to knit wool or chat, and some liked to get together to play mahjong or chess. And my parents' generation because of their busy work, most of the time in the unit, when they get home at most to watch TV, they want to sleep, and finally meet a Sunday, but at that time there is no such thing as a weekend, so they prefer to use this day to sleep comfortably at home, what entertainment activities, it seems that there are no tricks.

At that time, I was young and ignorant, and I had an unusually strong curiosity about the outside world, so there were many entertainment methods that were not allowed by my parents and began to infringe on the body and mind of our generation, such as billiard rooms, video game halls, and video studios. As far as I'm concerned, I can be regarded as a more seriously violated individual.

I remember when I was in the first year of junior high school, I had already started to gamble on billiards with those thugs on the street, a few cents a game, so I won the title of "Jiangbei One Shot", and because at that time, the most people in the video game hall were Street Fighter, and I was often able to clear the level with one coin, during which I could also defeat countless coin provocateurs who were not able to measure themselves, although I was not tall at that time, and I still needed to step on two bricks as stepping stones to play a game. And what I frequented the most was the many video museums of various types that were lined up near Wulidian at that time.

At that time, I still used videotapes instead of discs, so when my classmates bragged to me about the new Panasonic brand VCR they had bought at home, they always won my respect. In those years, I met many people in the video studio, including Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Wu Ma, and Lin Zhengying. Although all of them are no longer alive, they have left a deep memory of my youth. At that time, most of the films shown in the video library were Hong Kong films, as well as tertiary films that were secretly discharged when there were few people, and most of the content of Hong Kong films was mainly action movies and ghost movies, so in fact, when I first came into contact with the concept of "ghost" clearly in my life, it was from that era.

I still remember the episode of one of the ghost films, which is about a dead night, in the office of a company in Hong Kong, where no one was there, suddenly a light appeared in the darkness, the light was the yellow light emitted by a photocopier, and after a while with the creaking sound, the light of the photocopier began to sweep from left to right repeatedly, and then kept spitting out the paper, and then the camera zoomed in and found that the photocopied paper was all a terrible grimace.

This shot caused me to resist the photocopy shop on the street for a long time, because I always felt that there was a ghost in this shop. In fact, in the tenth case that Hu Zongren and I handled, it made me feel that all this seemed to be different, but it was familiar.

At the end of November, Chongqing has gradually begun to have the taste of winter, although some people wear sweaters and long-sleeved T-shirts in this season, there is a saying called February, April and August messy dressing, referring to the lunar calendar these months are not hot and cold, people's dressing style will be more chaotic, but since environmental pollution has become severe, global warming is no longer a secret, Chongqing in November, but we were children in September or October. Hu Zongren had a cold that day, but he didn't tell me when he called me to come out, and it wasn't until I saw him that I found that his nose was already red from blowing his nose, and I was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, but he had already covered his sweater, and the sweater was still red, and I walked on the street like a firecracker, and I really lit him with fire. And when he told me that he had a bad cold, I couldn't help but show a sad and angry look, and I asked him at lunch, why didn't you say it earlier, and what did you work when you had a cold! He said he couldn't help it, he just couldn't be idle. I told him very seriously, next time I have a cold, I must remember to take medicine and injections, at least you have to remind me to wear a mask, what if I am infected by you.

He blew his nose and sobbed and told me that this case may not have been similar to us before, saying that in Jiangbei District, Chongqing, near a supermarket of a French brand, in an old street and alley, there is an advertising company specializing in billboards, printing and packaging production, and their factory has an accident. The boss is a lover of I Ching and likes to predict, so he asked Yi how to resolve it after encountering this incident, but he came up with the hexagram of "there must be noble people to help".

I pointed to Hu Zongren's red nose and said, the noble person he said should be you, right? Hu Zongren rubbed his nose, and said listlessly but proudly, hehe, it seems that it is really me. I said, okay, anyway, you're a nobleman, then you go, I'll go home and sleep, he quickly grabbed me and said, don't, what should I do if you leave? I sarcastically said that you are not a nobleman, I am the oldest. Hu Zongren said, I was wrong, it's the nobles, there are "you", including you! Hu Zongren grabbed my hand and smiled stupidly. At this time, the waiter of the restaurant came over with a surprised look and put down two bowls on the table: You... Your noodles...

And then until we finished eating and left, the waiter looked at us strangely.

According to the address sent to him by the victim, Hu Zongren soon found this old street, but because the street was too narrow and I was not familiar with the road conditions, I chose to park the car in the parking lot of the hypermarket, and then Hu Zongren and I walked across the road. After walking for about ten minutes, I went down a trail on the right side of this old road and saw the signboard of this advertising agency. I laughed and said, this advertising company is really hidden, and if you open the company here, how can anyone come to them to do business. Hu Zongren said, the company shouldn't be here, this is their factory, didn't I tell you?

Since it's a factory, it makes a little more sense. Walking outside the factory gate, there was a roaring sound of machines inside, although it was not very big, but it could still be heard relatively clearly in this small alley. Hu Zongren took out the phone and called the victim, saying that we have arrived, at the door of your unit, how to get to your office, there is only a factory here. A few minutes after hanging up the phone, from a small corridor on the side of the factory gate, a man in a beige casual suit walked down, he looked not tall, in his 30s, the standard body shape of a man after marriage, he saw me and Hu Zongren, he greeted me warmly and shook hands and said hello, claiming that his surname was Xia, and he was the person in charge of this advertising company.

After taking us upstairs, he closed the office door, and then began to introduce himself, saying that he opened this company with a friend, a friend is doing art design, mainly responsible for the work, and he is mainly responsible for the production of supporting products, mainly making some albums, building books, gift boxes or something, and making moon cake boxes and dumpling boxes in seasons, in addition to making metal words and crystal words or something, the main business is printing, anyway, it is the set of advertising companies you can think of.

Mr. Xia said that he came to us this time because for two weeks in a row, there have been some strange things in his factory with or without signs. The first thing I noticed was that they were working on the night shift, and when they were working in the factory, suddenly a strange phenomenon appeared on the machine.

Hu Zongren said with a smile, I still work at night, and it is really hard to work here with you. Mr. Xia smiled and said, you two don't know, printing factories are like this, almost 24 hours are working, sometimes the production business accumulated during the day can not be completed, so you can only print overnight, anyway, the current machines are integrated, and a simple operation can produce a finished product. He went on to say that the printing machine in their factory is a relatively high-end equipment on the market at the moment, and I don't understand what it is said to be overprinted in four colors. However, on the night of the strange incident, the workers only turned on one of the machines, and while the machine was printing, the individual passed the time while watching the factory and watching movies on the computer by himself. But at about two o'clock in the morning, another slightly older machine suddenly started on its own, and began to rotate the axis of the roll.

Mr. Xia said that the workers felt very strange at that time, because the factory was in an old residential area, and the circuit would inevitably appear aging, in order to avoid fire caused by short circuit, generally as long as the machine stopped a little, they would manually cut off the power manually. When the worker heard the noise, he wondered if the colleague who had been on duty during the day forgot to unplug the power supply when he got off work, and then caused the problem. As a result, he went around to the back of the machine and found that the power supply was only half connected, and the rest was generally stuck outside.

Hu Zongren asked, is it as if the plug is not plugged in steadily, but it is placed in the jack and caused by poor contact. Mr. Xia said that the worker thought so at first, so he unplugged the power and continued to return to the computer to pass the time, when it suddenly started to rain. Originally, it was not uncommon for it to rain, it was already raining more this season, but the rain was getting heavier and heavier, and the worker said that the sound of the rain outside had already drowned out the sound of the machines in the house. At this time, there was a sudden power outage.

Mr. Xia said that because it is a manufacturer, it often uses a lot of design software, so in order to prevent a sudden power failure and it is too late to save, their company is even equipped with a high-end product called UPS, in order to rely on this device to power the computer for a few minutes after the power is off, so that you can save it in time. So when the worker saved the file, he turned off the computer and started playing with his phone.

Mr. Xia went on to say that the factory was very old, there was no emergency lighting, and it was a closed environment, so at this time, from the position where our worker was sitting, the outdoors was brighter than the house, and when he stood up to see when the rain was falling, he suddenly saw a figure standing in the center of the door of the factory.

It didn't rain in that position, but the figure looked wet.