Chapter 250 - Unit 104 (2/2)
The gates were open when we reached the front of Unit 104 as if our presence was expected, so we walked in and headed straight for the door. We tried the doorbell but nothing seemed to be working so Lin Feng rapped on the door. A series of hollow knocks spawned from the door, sounding like echoing thuds that rang off into a dark abyss to a half-drunken me, further intensifying the uneasiness haunting us.
But the rapping hardly accomplished anything; we waited idly outside and nothing was coming from inside the house. Impatiently, Lin Feng raised a fist and pounded the door again bang bang bang with more strength.
The half-minute that we waited restlessly outside seemed more uncomfortably longer than it should until we finally heard the casual patters of footfall ambling towards the door from the other side. Somehow being drunk seemed to make Lin Feng notably more irascible and impatient. He yelled hoarsely at the person inside, “Come on! Open up! Quit dawdling around like a whining b*tch!”
The door opened with a click and we saw in the darkened threshold the figure of a man dressed in a set of garb fully black and dark leather shoes with short, army cut hair. But what was more unsettling was the darkness inside the house. There was not even a speck of light inside as if we were looking into the bellows of a monster. That made me wary until the man suddenly snapped to a salute for Lin Feng, “Good evening, Plat… I mean, former Platoon Leader.”
“You were serving in the army?” Lin Feng looked at the man and asked with hiccups every now and then. The man in black smiled. “I am Cao Xuedong. I was enlisted as a conscript only after you left but I too left the army two years ago.”
I began studying Cao Xuedong. It took me a second to realize that this was the same person whom I met at the military exercise when I just began attending university. The same military instructor who was attached to my class. Only now, he was just as cold and distant as Huang Li! While Huang Li’s abrupt change of her character could be attributed to her dislike of me, but Cao Xuedong was a wholly separate case! Despite our differences, Cao Xuedong’s behavioral change was definitely peculiar and inscrutable!
He now looked completely the same as the Huang Li I met just earlier before. Their eyes emitted nothing but a chilly stare despite the smile they wore on their face. To put it bluntly, their expressions looked no different from those on plastic mannequins: fake and dead. There was not a whiff of warmth or vibrancy that I could detect from them as if I was actually speaking to a cadaver. That was why I failed to recognize him immediately.
“It’s been a long time, Instructor Cao!” I let out a frosty chuckle. He turned to face me and uttered frigidly, “A long time indeed, Murong Shiyan.” And he broke into the same creepy smile again. He offered a hand and I took it, only for another bout of unexpected horror!
As soon as I felt his skin touching mine, the same electrifying sensation from my first meeting with Huang Li shot through me again! My mind was assailed once again by a horrific vision of countless images zipping by me in an instant!
Everything stopped suddenly and I found myself standing before a bizarrely-dressed man whose expression looked cold and hard despite his tightly-shut eyes. Then the eyes blinked open without a warning, startling me! There were two more opened eyelids staring back at me from each of the two eyeballs! I felt a cold rush that made my hair stand and the man disappeared!
Next, I found myself flying through the air at the speed of a bullet and a bolt of golden light was streaking across the sky, heading for me! The golden light struck me and I was blinded by an explosion of light!
“What’s wrong, Murong Shiyan?” Cao Xuedong’s voice came from nowhere as he let go of my hand quickly and the brief Lovecraftian vision immediately dissipated just as quickly and rapidly as they came. I reeled with shock and saw Cao Xuedong throwing at me a satisfied smirk. But his eyes betrayed a shred of fear and he hastily tried to hide the hand that I took behind his back while feigning innocence.