00.

The old house stood on both sides of the stone alley, and the last rays of light blurred on the window lattices on the second floor. The cramped alley began to fall asleep from the bottom, and the sound of dense rain falling on the stone road was like a vague dream of an old house.

The woman walked into the old town, and began to look suspiciously back at the darker corners of the alley, and on several occasions she seemed to hear whispers, and the darkness at the heels of the old house always seemed to be surging with living shadows. She felt that someone was watching her, and maybe the old stone houses were alive and staring at her with sleepy eyes.

She didn't have an umbrella, the rain wet her clothes, and she walked faster and faster in the rainy alley, losing her soul, and gradually feeling like she was running for her life.

The alley suddenly came to an end, and a swarthy river ran across the alley. There is no bridge over the river, but there is a road along the riverbank. She looked at the left and right roads in horror, unsure of where to go, and subconsciously hugged her cold arm. After a moment's hesitation, she took a step to the right, then shrunk back to her feet, her neck stiffly turning in the direction of the river. There was no light in the river, and she knew she shouldn't look inside, the darkness in the river was thicker than the starless and moonless sky, as if a misshapen abyss crossed the edge of the ancient town. But the abyss beckoned to her, and she looked in.

Overhead, a wooden window on the second floor creaked open, as if blown open by the wind, or pushed open by an invisible hand. On a locust tree by the river, a crow screamed and kicked the treetops, flew straight up to the roof, skimmed over the gray tiles of 600 years ago, and flew over the riverbank.

The woman shuddered, her back pressed against the stone wall of the old house.

01.

Two thousand kilometers away, a city covered in a thick layer of snow, a two-story red-brick building from the middle of the last century lazily half-collapsed in the center of a modern city, has little aesthetic value and no historical significance, as if the city demolition team had forgotten about the work after half of it, and it was left in the center of the city with such a big grin.

People are busy passing by it, and their attention is always drawn to the imposing modern office buildings around it, no one cares about the half-collapsed red brick building, and no one thinks to ask why it is still there, and over time its existence becomes a matter of course.

A black domestic car stopped at the door of the red brick building. A balding sixty-year-old man stepped out of the car, wearing a tweed jacket on his upper body, slightly fat corduroy pants underneath, and a briefcase. He paused at the door, looked up impatiently at the glassless broken window on the second floor, and a blue plastic bag hung swaggeringly from the window frame, trembling triumphantly in the north wind.

He seemed even more annoyed, and snorted heavily through his nose.

Downstairs is a half-dead auto repair shop, and the owner seems to have the audacity to believe that the dilapidated building will not continue to collapse. The scribbled car logo outside the repair shop shows the scope of its repairs, from BMW to Baojun, from smart to QQ, it is simply all-encompassing, and the notice of the municipal government to get out of the house is pasted on the wall along with the notice of renting the hook machine.

The man caught a glimpse of the dazzling wall and frowned as he pushed open the faded green wooden door. A young man with long hair was squatting on the ground facing the door and picking up the tires, looking up at him in confusion, as if he didn't know him, but grinning in a blink of an eye, "Boss, you are so handsome dressed like this today, and you look like a leader." ”

The man glared at him, and without saying a word, walked through the oil-stained repair room to the glass door at the end of the workshop. Behind the door is a simple washroom on the left, and on the right-hand side is a stairwell that extends downward. The staircase of cement plastering has fallen into disrepair and has begun to fall slag, the dirty walls on both sides, the lower half is footprints, the upper half is the mildew that grows after the resurgence, and there are several notices pasted crookedly in the middle, roughly writing "No open defecation" and "Perennial recruitment***, QQ number: 112358".

The man glared at the signs in disgust, and stepped into the stairwell with clean leather shoes, all the way down. The cement of the staircase peels off in large chunks from the second basement floor, revealing the bottom of the red bricks inside, but the staircase rotates endlessly downward. As he walked on, the staircase beneath his feet turned into smooth marble, and at last the light of the electric lamp gave way to a real firelight, and a huge gatehouse was embedded in the underground fortress, and two stone-carved evil spirits looked at him in the doorway.

Before he could utter the secret words, the door opened silently, and a middle-aged woman with a stern expression stood in it, wearing a long dress that was tightly wrapped. She said unceremoniously, "Hurry up, Pei Shu, you're late." ”

The man sighed, "Liu Li, how are you doing?" ”

"It's going to be bad." The woman said anxiously.

He sighed again, followed the woman into the door, ignored the young clerk in the hall who had risen to greet him, and walked worriedly into a conference room. The seven chairs at the round table were already occupied, and the remaining two chairs placed near the door were reserved for them. The light in the room was dim, but he didn't mind, the darkness helped him think, and besides, he was familiar with the place and didn't need much light. He was also familiar with them, and knew that what he saw was not necessarily believing.

Liu Li began to speak, she seemed to be the host of today's meeting, "There is no need to introduce the previous situation again, because Pei Shu is the first person to propose." ”

"Murders happen every year." A man across the round table said abruptly.

"Deviant individuals are born in every generation, and people are like that." The other chimed in, saying slowly, "What's so strange? What evidence is there that something is wrong now? ”

"The data already says something about the anomaly." Liu Li interrupted him impatiently, "Chu Jin is the best arithmetic, and her observation report is between pages 113 and 149 of Pei Shu's report, and I believe you have already read it." ”

The last muttering was pressed back, and someone was busy turning the page.

After a moment, a hesitant voice whispered, "If the problem is with our people, we don't know who is involved, and we don't know who to trust. ”

Pei Shu said in a low voice, "So I recommend using students who have not yet graduated, and their resumes are more innocent." ”

No one answered at the round table, he looked around and realized that even Liu Li was pretending to be deaf and dumb.

The silence created pressure, and finally one of them coughed and said as if moaning under pressure, "We haven't had a decent archmage in sixty years, and the students can't be relied on at all." ”

These words lit the fuse.

"Today's children can't rub a fireball without burning their hands at the age of fifteen!"

"The magic is fading."

"The best apprentice in the last class, determined to cook, is now a successful three-Michelin chef!"

"Oh my God, he didn't use the forbidden ingredients, did he?"

"None of the last semester were able to complete a reasonable spatial complexity analysis experiment."

"The ability to control the atmosphere is the lowest in history, and it takes 11 people to disperse 400 square kilometers of smog, and they also argue that this is a new atmospheric situation, completely indescribable, and the old textbooks are not practical - it's all, in fact, they can't even make a decent storm."

"Actually, they can manipulate the climate, they just can't calculate the butterfly effect after a local storm, so they don't cast a spell."

Pei Shu listened to it for a while, a trace of ridicule twisted out of his gloomy face, and he made the best summary with a deep voice that overpowered everyone - "Weasel cubs, a litter is not as good as a litter." ”

The whining came to an abrupt end, and clouds rolled in the low pressure of the conference room.

Liu Li looked at him in surprise and said accusatory, "Pei Shu! ”

But she was speechless, and even though she glared at him sternly for a long time, she could not say any substantive reproach.

"If you think there's a good candidate, you can put it up now." Pei Shu raised his head and glanced at the seven people sitting in the shadows, "I'm listening. ”

Silence weighed down under the dark ceiling.

10.

A middle-aged criminal policeman squatting along the river in the ancient town was smoking a cigarette. The month-long rain suddenly stopped, the clouds cracked a crack above his head, the white sun shone on the damp earth, the ground rose with a layer of moisture, and his shirt stuck uncomfortably to his body.

He raised his head and looked at the gloomy and dilapidated old town across the river again, it was not a tourist attraction, almost all the people in the town had moved away, and there were no more than ten families left in the whole town, and they were all some old people left behind. But a young woman in the city died in a place like this after dark.

He patted his head, feeling annoyed.

"Team Lee, Team Lee." The most excited cub in the busy crowd across the river was calling out to him.

It was Xiao Zhang, who had just graduated from the police academy, who had just joined the work, and everything was fresh, although he vomited when he first appeared on the scene, it didn't affect his enthusiasm too much.

He pretended to be deaf and dumb.

The kid didn't care either, waving the things in his hand, "Team Li, I found my wallet and phone!" There's still money in the wallet, one, two, three, four, five, five hundred and thirty-nine yuan! ”

Unlucky, he scratched his hair, not robbery and murder.

He looked at the woman the medical examiner was loading into the body bag, the bottom half of her hair was pink, she must be very young.

The river is not wide or deep, and Xiao Zhang came over with water.

"What about the cause of death?" He asked.

"Oh, the medical examiner said it was probably drowned."

He was stunned for a moment, "The fatal injury is drowning, what about the other injuries?" ”

Xiao Zhang was asked, "There are no obvious scars visible to the naked eye." ”

He stood up "suddenly" and stared at the shallow water in the small ditch, "Don't say that the dead drowned in this washbasin!" ”

Xiao Zhang swallowed nervously, and said in his heart, "After the forensic doctor further autopsies, what will he say......?"