The so-called "finding a substitute", in our industry, usually refers to a ghost that arises under certain conditions, because it is so strongly bound that it cannot leave. So most of the ways to leave are only one way, which is to find someone else to replace them.

For example, Long Jiyou works in the shelter, but one day he needs to go back to his hometown, but the unit refuses to let him go because there are no extra manpower. In order for him to leave smoothly and let the unit let him go, he needs to find someone to replace him;

For example, Master and I each have a toy, and if I want to play with Master's toy, but if I take his toy, he won't have to play, so I need to give him my toy in exchange for his toy.

The same is true for some ghosts, who need to find a substitute, most of them die violently, or are gathered or bound by resentment in the death environment, resulting in the inability to leave. The most common are waters where people are often drowned, and sections of the road where there are long-term fatal and injured car accidents. Because if a person dies in such a place, it is very likely that they themselves have become a substitute for someone else.

So when Master assumed that this was looking for a stand-in, I couldn't help but feel a little worried, because if we wanted to solve this problem, we would either cut it off at the root, and it would be very difficult to investigate, and no one would know who the first person to die here was, and it would have already found a stand-in and left. Either you start with the last person, but because of environmental constraints, it is usually not easy, imagine if I forcibly break into your house and snatch something, won't you resist?

In either case, it doesn't seem like an easy task.

Master said that if what he expected was right, if we don't stop this matter, tomorrow after the death of the fifth person, at least two more people will die, and the matter will be over. The number seven days is a regular cyclical process at this moment. Master said that human lives are at stake, even for these wanderers. This means that we don't have much time left until Long Jiyou and his colleagues take over the shift tomorrow morning.

Without further ado, Master and I began to look through the records I had stolen from the house. It's 1967, and in this booklet, I found records of four people who had died in the previous month. Most of the dead people, like those now in detention, had mental illnesses and so almost all of them were numbered by the numbers they used when they moved in, as most of them were unable to name themselves. The stationmaster's record of these deaths was very brief, and the previous four people, almost all of whom had one under the cause of death: heart disease, death from suffocation.

So I asked Long Jiyou, after these people died, did you see the corpses? Long Jiyou said that he had seen it, and they basically had uncomfortable expressions, some covered their chests, some covered their necks, but their mouths were open, and most of their eyes were not closed.

I reached out and touched the part of my Adam's apple with my mouth, then opened my mouth. Then switch to covering your chest with your hands, and then open your mouth, and it is not difficult to find that these movements are combined to be the action of a person opening his mouth wide due to poor breathing. Usually the only thing that can make us do this is suffocation or heart disease. This shows that the webmaster's record, although brief, is indeed a statement of facts.

At the moment, I judged in my heart that the possibility of ghosts directly harming people was not high, because after all, they were not substances in the same state of existence. Most of them use fright, visual influences to give living people an illusion. Ghosts looking for a stand-in will often burst out their accumulated abilities at the same time at a time in order to achieve one-time success, which will cause tactile sensations to people. For example, a person who dies in a car accident may be pushed into the lane by a force when the car passes by, or a person who drowns may be familiar with water, but is pulled by a force that pulls his legs and feet, resulting in drowning.

But in this way, 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 will die will be killed by the last person who died, so why does everyone die in the same way? Or does even the ghost who is looking for a stand-in keep carrying on his own death to the next deceased?

When I was about to ask Master, Master suddenly said that he had found it, and in his hand, holding the 1966 record book. At the beginning of the year, the stationmaster recorded the death of a person in the isolation room, but the stationmaster recorded this person in more detail, in addition to the cause of death is still heart problems and suffocation, and specifically mentioned that the person was sent from the city hospital after receiving treatment, but the treatment item was due to trauma.

Master pointed to the date on this page and showed it to me, that day happened to be the day when the first person died during Long Jiyou's tenure, but it was just a year apart.

If this is a coincidence, I obviously don't believe it. However, everything needs to be evidenced, and although the discovery in front of us gives us a clear direction to move forward, it is still not evidence. So Master went back to the 1965 volume that I had found, and when he finished reading it, he shook his head and said, "There are no dead people in the 1965 record." If this stationmaster didn't deliberately hide it, the person who died in early 1966 is likely to be the cause of all this today. And this stationmaster must have no reason to deliberately hide it, otherwise, he would not have to register these people who died in the back. It was not his responsibility to die this man, so why should he hide it?

Long Jiyou nodded and said, the stationmaster is not bad, he has worked here for so long, and the stationmaster has always been very kind, and he is also very caring and friendly to our containment personnel. The master did not speak, but lowered his head and thought for a moment. Long Jiyou and I both looked at the Master, waiting for him to analyze a reasonable result. Since no one spoke at that moment, the only voices in our ears were the oppressive and miserable mixed sounds from all kinds of homeless people and madmen in those isolation rooms.

Compartment 2, that's what I saw in the record books. The five people who have died in the last year or so at this shelter have all been in that isolation cell. So, while Master was thinking, I walked to the edge of the iron railing, and according to the number on the iron door of each isolation cell, I quickly found No. 2.

If the whole layout here is a "mouth" character, then outside the iron railing where I am standing at the moment is the bottom horizontal position of the word mouth. And the No. 2 isolation room is in the middle of the vertical on the right side of the mouth. The blank part in the middle of the words is the small dam left for these people to move. From my position, I could clearly see the situation at the door of each isolation room, but since there was no light in the isolation room, I could only see the area about two or three steps inside the door by reflecting the light, and the rest was only pitch black. I think that when Long Jiyou was smoking, he saw the figure standing behind the door, which should be what I could see from my position at the moment.

It's just that there are people standing there dangling, and I know that they are the inmates in isolation room No. 2 at the moment, and I can't tell how many people are in it, but I know that if Master and I don't find anything tonight, then one of them in this isolation room will die tomorrow.

At this moment, all the detainees have been put back in their isolation cells, and the dam is empty. So I said to Long Jiyou, can you help me temporarily transfer the people in the No. 2 isolation room to another room first? Vacate it, I'd like 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, then walked to the second isolation room, and after opening the door, he brought out three crazy containment personnel, all male. Long Jiyou led them to stand in a row, passed through the small dam, and then opened the door of the No. 7 isolation room, closed them all, and then locked the door and returned to me. He said to me, "All right, go and see, you must be careful."

I looked back at Master, who nodded slightly to me, meaning you should go and check it out. So I took out three sticks of incense from my bag, and a little paper money. I walked to the door of the No. 2 isolation room, lit incense and burned paper, which was a sign of intention, if there was a soul in this room who wanted to find a substitute, this little incense money paper could be regarded as a way to show favor to it. When the money paper burned out, I went into the house.

Once inside, I turned on my flashlight and began to look around. Since I had been detained before, until the moment I walked in, I stubbornly imagined the environment in this isolation cell as the crowded classroom I had been held. But in reality, this is not the case, at least in this isolation room, there are three patchwork bed boards on the floor. In the small space, the only air outlet is this hollowed-out iron door.

Maybe it's my delusion, but since I walked into Isolation Room 2, I've been filled with a chill all over my body. The floor was full of feces and urine, and the smell was extremely unpleasant, and when I looked around with my flashlight, I noticed that almost every corner and wall was covered with water stains of different shades, as well as various molds that had grown due to dampness. I think it was probably because the smell of feces and urine was so pungent that I felt dizzy. Ghosts are originally created because of the gathering of resentment and yin, and I don't find it strange that there is a haunting phenomenon in such a humid isolation room.

So I walked towards the door, and just as my feet had just crossed the small ditch at the door of the isolation room, a soft voice suddenly came from the isolation room behind me:

"Hey, hey!"