The second detail was blood. During the soul-calling ritual, Ma Danlong pricked his middle fingers with a sharp needle, squeezing out droplets of blood and smearing them on the forehead, temples, eyes, and lips of the deceased, Big Brother Peng. Imagine a cold, stiff corpse with pale skin stained with bright red blood—how terrifying that must be.
Peng Gang said he felt chills watching it and asked Ma Danlong what it was about. The man explained it was part of an ancient ritual, supposedly tied to the six realms of reincarnation—something about the forehead representing the animal realm, the eyes the ghost realm, and so on. It was all gibberish, incomprehensible and downright frightening.
Another detail was the strange incantation Ma Danlong used during the ritual. Its pronunciation was simple yet oddly distinctive, with interlocking syllables rising and falling rhythmically, sounding solemn. Paired with the blood, Ma Danlong would chant the incantation each time he smeared a streak of blood on the corpse, creating an eerie atmosphere under the dim light.
Peng Gang said, trembling, "I never want to go through that torment again. If it weren't for what happened to my father, I wouldn't care to dig into this guy's background or even think about it."
I could imagine how secretive, strange, and terrifying such rituals about life and death must be. Ordinary people are scared just seeing a corpse, let alone delving into the process of death itself. It's different from doctors in hospitals who face death on a purely physical level. These bizarre rituals cut deep into the psyche, breaking you mentally.
Holding Ma Danlong's address, I hesitated. Should I follow Li Damin's footsteps and explore this obscure realm? I didn't know what I'd face, but I knew it would involve confronting death directly.
As I parted ways with Peng Gang, he suddenly remembered something and said, "Old Liu, I forgot to mention something about Ma Danlong. I once asked him how he knew our family ran a company. Guess what he said? He claimed he could sense death. If someone was about to die and he was confident he could call their soul back, he'd investigate their background and show up at the death scene to perform the ritual. It's how he makes a living."
I was about to leave but sat back down. "You mean, while your father was still alive, Ma Danlong already knew he was going to die and could predict the exact time?"
"Yes," Peng Gang said with a laugh. "Scary, right? Like the Grim Reaper."
My chest tightened. Looking at my notebook filled with notes, I found it hard to breathe.
After parting with him, I went to a bar and sat for a while. As midnight fell, the bar came alive, and the men and women under the colorful lights gave me a sense of grounding and safety.
In the early hours, I returned home, collapsed onto my bed, my mind a mess, unable to sleep. Suddenly, I remembered something, jumped up, and turned on my computer to search online.
I wanted to find out what music Big Brother Peng was listening to in that basement.
Unfortunately, search engines aren't advanced enough to identify music by melody. I thought for a moment and typed in keywords like "relax" and "breathe deeply with my voice." Surprisingly, results came up.
A list of similar music appeared on Baidu. I listened to each one and finally found it—the melody matched exactly what Peng Gang had hummed. His description was off, though; it wasn't lounge music but a self-hypnosis track.
The creator was a psychologist whose voice guided the listener, using music and words to subtly induce self-hypnosis. I checked some forum posts about the music. Many people had listened to it, sharing varied experiences: some called it nonsense, others said they felt nothing due to being too thick-skinned, some felt light and floaty as if they could fly, and one even claimed to have seen their past life during hypnosis.
I played the music, took a hot shower, and lay in bed listening with my eyes closed. The music was soothing, bringing a warm, relaxing feeling, but as for guiding self-hypnosis, I thought it was a stretch. At most, it made me drowsy, with no signs of hypnosis.
Maybe I'm just too thick-skinned.
As I listened, I pictured Big Brother Peng curled up in the basement playing this music. It was clear he wasn't part of some church or performing a black mass-like ritual; the music wasn't that sinister.
He was practicing self-hypnosis.
I'm no psychologist and don't know much about hypnosis, but I understand it's meant to put someone in a specific mental state to access the subconscious and analyze psychological issues. This state could involve a fragment of memory.
I bolted upright, struck by a wild idea: Big Brother Peng was using self-hypnosis to revisit memories of the underworld!
It wasn't impossible. The only way to enter the underworld is to die, but Peng had been there before. Those memories were stored in his mind, and now he was using self-hypnosis to return to that underworld experience!
The more I thought about it, the creepier it felt.
It reminded me of an American movie where a memory is sealed, and the protagonist keeps entering that sealed moment through some method. Was Peng doing the same? Using self-hypnosis to repeatedly visit the underworld? If so, he must have had a unique experience there—something so compelling he couldn't let it go.
That experience had to be pleasant. No one, not even a fool or a pervert, would want to relive a nightmare of gore, haunted houses, or family tragedy over and over.
So, what exactly did he experience in the underworld that made him so obsessed?
The next day was Sunday. I woke up early, grabbed Ma Danlong's address, and took a taxi to find him. He lived in Building B of Garden Community, an old complex over a decade old, not far from my workplace, though I'd never been there.
The neighborhood was rundown, the buildings gray and faded. A small night market at the entrance turned into a chaotic food street by afternoon, filled with smoke and overflowing sewage. It didn't look like a place for wealthy people.
When I arrived, a crowd was gathered in a large circle, pointing and murmuring. I pushed through and saw yellow police tape. A few plainclothes men with briefcases tucked under their arms were talking to a man in a blue uniform, likely a property manager, in front of the building.
I looked up at the 21-story building. Under drifting white clouds, it seemed to sway, as if it might collapse. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I quickly looked away.
An old man nearby was tsk-tsking, "So young, and she jumped."
I leaned in to listen. A few older women, just arriving, eyes gleaming with curiosity, crowded around him, asking what happened.
This morning, someone had jumped from the building's rooftop. Twenty-one stories—imagine what that would do to a body. Probably needed a shovel to clean it up.
The ground was stained with a large black patch, possibly from the body. The more I looked, the more uneasy I felt, listening as the old man continued his gossip.
Someone asked how old the jumper was. My heart skipped a beat, thinking of Li Damin. Could it be him? This was Ma Danlong's building, after all.
The old man said, "A young woman, not even thirty. They say her boyfriend dumped her, and she was pregnant. Couldn't take it, climbed to the roof, and jumped. A tragedy—one body, two lives."
Someone teased, "How do you know so much? You're not the father, are you?"
"Watch your mouth!" the old man snapped, eyebrows twitching. "You want to know how I know? See Old Wang over there?" He pointed to the man in the blue uniform. "He's my chess buddy. Works the building's front desk every day. He knows everything."
A cold breeze swept through, giving me goosebumps. The old man, reveling in the attention, continued smugly, saying the building was nearly empty—cursed, they said. This year alone, three people had died: one jumped, one hanged, one overdosed. Many residents were planning to sell and move out.
The plainclothes men finished talking and left in their car. Old Wang, the manager, stood at the entrance, waving them off. Frowning like a sage, he walked back to the front desk with his hands behind his back, ignoring the gawking crowd.
The onlookers dispersed after more chatter. A few busybodies followed the old man to the front desk to gossip with Old Wang. With nothing else to do, I tagged along.
Old Wang sighed, slapping his thigh. "What a pity. This morning, I'd just gotten up, made my bed, washed my face, and was heading out to eat. At the entrance, I saw a dark shape fall from the sky. It startled me. Before I could react, there was a loud crash, like a big bag bursting open—red, yellow, white, all splashing everywhere. You know how it is around here, people throwing trash and spitting from above all the time. I thought it was just junk at first, but when I looked closely—my God, I nearly pissed myself. A person, smashed to bits. Blood, flesh, limbs everywhere. The worst part? She was wearing bright red pajamas."