Chapter 704: Red Building

The old Audi crawled forward through the rainy night. I kept my speed low.

To be safe, I didn't want to reveal that I possessed the Judging Eye or that my five senses far surpassed those of an ordinary person.

The exquisitely beautiful, bony woman lay slumped in the passenger seat. She seemed genuinely dead drunk, completely dead to the world. She looked so out of it that if someone were to assault her right now, she wouldn't put up the slightest resistance.

I kept her in my peripheral vision—not out of any creeping intentions, but because I wanted to spot something that might prove her identity.

A dead-drunk woman driving down a muddy suburban road on a rainy night, running over frogs to vent her anger?

It was too bizarre. It defied all logic.

Gripping the steering wheel, I drove north along the road for nearly an hour before the woman suddenly woke up. Her neck jerked, her eyes rolled back, and she slumped against the window to throw up again.

I patted her back. She was incredibly thin—my palm could clearly feel her spine, every single vertebra jutting out.

"You're the only one who suffers when you drink this much. Did something bad happen?" I asked. "Why don't you vent to a passing stranger? We're just ships passing in the night; you don't have to worry about me spilling your secrets." I was trying to coax some useful information out of her, but she wasn't lucid enough yet. Her eyes were vacant, and her damp hair was plastered to her face, stripping away any trace of elegance. What a waste of such a gorgeous face.

"Never mind then. Where do you live? I'll take you home." To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, I didn't press the issue. After all, most people in this world harbored secrets. Even if she was a sadist, as long as she didn't interfere with my livestream, it was none of my business. Besides, I was currently a wanted man—I had to keep a low profile.

Reeking of alcohol, the woman tugged at her seatbelt. She struggled with it for a long time without popping the latch and seemed to get angry, kicking off her high heels and thrashing her legs around the car.

"It's dark out, so don't distract me while I'm driving," I said, frowning. "You can relax, I don't have any designs on you."

The woman thrashed around for a while until the alcohol finally seemed to wear off a bit, and she began rummaging around her seat for something.

"Are you looking for your phone? It's dead." I handed it to her. Without a hint of gratitude, she snatched it away and mashed the power button, trying a few times before finally giving up.

Slumping into the passenger seat as if accepting her fate, she weakly raised a hand and pointed north. "Keep driving. We're almost at my place."

"Further north?" I glanced around, but there wasn't a single building in sight. I could only follow her directions and continue driving north along the road.

The road conditions steadily worsened. With my Judging Eye, I could see clearly that the concrete road had been paved many years ago, but for whatever reason, it had never been maintained. It was riddled with uneven patches and potholes, and in some places, rocks of all sizes were piled up.

"Looks like the northern part of Jinghai has been abandoned for a long time." The uncleared, desolate road naturally piqued my curiosity about why she lived out here. Her body was warm, so she was definitely a living person. But why would a weak, defenseless woman live in such a remote place? Was the rent just that cheap? Or did she have some unspeakable secret?

We rode in silence for another twenty minutes. The highway completely gave way to a dirt road lined with towering trees, the rain drumming a steady, rustling rhythm against their leaves.

"Are we there yet?" When she didn't answer, I glanced over. The woman was clutching her chest and wiping her mouth with a handkerchief she'd found who knows where. Her head was propped against the window glass, looking half-dead.

"Hey, you're making it look like I did something to you. Can you say something?"

"Almost..." Her eyes rolled back. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it felt like she didn't actually want to go home.

The car trundled down the muddy road, entirely shrouded by the dense canopy overhead. As we passed an intersection, a faint glow appeared at the end of the pitch-black path.

Scattered and flickering lights.

"What is that?" My eyes slowly widened. As the car pushed forward, a dense cluster of buildings emerged in my vision!

Dilapidated and crumbling, it looked like a dying giant curled up in the wilderness.

Five- or six-story buildings filled my vision, all maintaining an architectural style from forty or fifty years ago. The entire complex was a dreary dark gray, arranged in a semicircle. Cement walls divided the floors into narrow single rooms, resembling the holes of a pig cage.

"Is this Pig Cage Apartments?" I slowed the car down as true qi surged into my eyes. The heavy rain washed over the crumbling plaster, obscuring whatever words had once been written there. The desolate courtyard was strewn with all sorts of garbage. As I looked up floor by floor, bamboo laundry poles jutted out from the balconies, swaying in the rain like soul-summoning banners.

"You live here?"

The woman didn't answer. She impatiently pointed directly opposite the dilapidated buildings, right where I had seen the flickering lights coming from earlier.

Turning the car around, I drove toward the lights. It wasn't long before a highly ominous Apartment Building loomed into my line of sight.

This building was noticeably taller than the crumbling structures around it. Its architectural style was also entirely different; it had probably been built within the last few years.

"Stop!" the woman yelled, shaking my arm. I hesitated at this point, not daring to approach the apartment building so rashly. "Stop the car! I'm home..."

Throwing off the woman's hand, I patiently observed the area, only daring to drive closer after a long moment.

Under the pouring rain, I pulled up to the base of the building and finally confirmed my eyes hadn't been playing tricks on me.

The entire building was blood-red, its exterior coated in a thick layer of red paint that looked exactly like smeared blood!

"Red Building?!" My voice cracked slightly; it was my first time seeing an Apartment Building like this. "Bright red can ward off evil spirits, but painting an entire building red is way too rare."

In the dark of night, the blood-red Apartment Building stood out starkly. Whenever a stray bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, it gave off an exceptionally terrifying feeling.

"There are still lights on in a few units, which means there's more than one resident here." I drove the car up to the apartment entrance. Nailed to the unguarded iron gate were a few characters—Longchang Community.

The moment I saw those characters, my heart unconsciously began to race, though my expression didn't change at all.

"No guard?" Without anyone to stop me, I drove the battered Audi straight to the foot of the Apartment Building. The entire courtyard seemed incredibly empty and overgrown with weeds, with a few electric scooters haphazardly discarded near the stairwell.

"Which floor do you live on? I'll walk you home." After parking the car, I opened my black umbrella and hauled the woman out of the passenger seat, supporting her step by step toward that red Apartment Building.

The building had eleven floors in total and was divided into four units. Elevators were installed for the sixth floor and above.

Holding the umbrella in one hand and gripping the woman's shoulder with the other, I walked toward the first entrance.

"Say something, do you live in this one?" I pointed to the first stairwell entrance. The woman kept nodding—though I couldn't tell if she actually understood me—and held up four fingers, gesturing the number four.

"Unit one, fourth floor?" I was incredibly frustrated with this woman reeking of alcohol. Since she wouldn't say a word when asked, I had no choice but to drag her into the first stairwell.

This apartment building was even more rundown than I had imagined. It had cement stairs and peeling plaster. I couldn't tell how long it had been since the stairwell was last cleaned; cobwebs hung in the corners, and the windowsills were littered with the carcasses of dead bugs.

I scanned the area with my Judging Eye. An exposed wire ran straight down the middle of the stairwell, and every floor was fitted with a sound-activated light.

I stomped my foot, and the dust-caked bulb cast a dim yellow glow.

I closed my umbrella. In the quiet stairwell, aside from the woman's and my footsteps, the only sound left was the dripping of water.

"Everyone says the north is dangerous. I can't believe actual living people still reside here." The cracked, peeling walls looked like a disfigured face, deeply unsettling to look at for too long. As I dragged the woman upstairs, I paid special attention to the residents' doors on the first floor. Each entrance had two doors: a dilapidated iron gate on the outside and a wooden door coated in red paint on the inside.

There were three doors on each floor. I ran my finger along the edge of an iron gate; the dust was thick. The door hadn't been opened in a long time, meaning no one lived on this floor.

"Makes sense. Any halfway normal person wouldn't choose to live in this godforsaken place. An old house and a Red Building—it sounds like a bad omen just hearing it." I quickened my pace, planning to start my livestream the moment I got the woman home so I could thank Daoist master Wan in the chat.

Lost in thought, I reached the second floor before I knew it. Right at that moment, the sound-activated light on the first floor suddenly snapped off.

The stairwell plunged into pitch black. A chill ran down my neck, and I hastily stomped my foot.

The bulb on the second floor seemed to be broken; the dim yellow light still came from the first floor.

It was a bit dim. Standing by the handrail, I glanced up the stairwell. Other than the first floor, the lights on the upper floors of this building all seemed to be dead.

"Doesn't anyone fix the lights when they break? Does this woman really just walk up and down the stairs in the dark by herself every day?" I turned and shook the drunk woman, intending to ask her a few things. But just as I shifted my gaze, I caught sight of the apartment right next to us out of the corner of my eye.

The bright red wooden door inside that apartment was open! An old person was standing silently in the doorway, staring right at me!

My scalp went numb, and my legs went weak. I whipped around and gripped the Ghost Ring tightly.

In the dead silence of the stairwell, the only sounds left were my suppressed breathing and the water sliding off my umbrella.

Behind the iron gate stood an Old Granny. She had to be at least seventy years old, hunched over and her face covered in wrinkles. But the most striking thing was her wide-open eyes—they were completely white!

A few seconds later, I finally recovered my wits and forced a stiff smile. "Granny, it's already eleven at night. What are you doing standing by the door? It's getting cold out, so get some rest early and take care of your health."

After a good while, the old woman finally seemed to understand my words. A hoarse, grating voice rasped from her mouth: "I'm waiting for someone."

"Waiting for someone?" I looked at the dilapidated, eerie stairwell. Just as I was about to press her for more, the sound-activated light on the first floor abruptly snapped off again.