Chapter 707: Figure Model

"The other walls are perfectly fine. Only this wall connected to the Painter's apartment is unusually damp, as if soaked in water all year round." If this were a bathroom or kitchen, I wouldn't pay it much mind, but this was a woman's bedroom. How could she stand sleeping in such a damp, foul-smelling place every single day?

The paint on this wall was a newer coat, noticeably different from the original color of the surrounding walls.

Wanting to figure out the cause of the dampness, I picked an inconspicuous corner and chipped away the paint with my fingernail.

"What is this?" As the outer layer of paint flaked off, a hole about the thickness of a finger caught my attention.

It wasn't large, and it pointed directly at the woman's bed.

"It's neither high nor low. It doesn't look like it was left by a nail for hanging things..." I crouched and used the Judging Eye to peer into the hole. It was pitch-black inside. The wall on the Painter's side seemed smeared with red pigment, but it was too blurry to see clearly.

"Was the new layer of paint brushed on just to hide this little hole?" I ran my fingers over the wall, tracing the surface, and soon found several similar holes in other corners. "There's more than one. Just what are these things for?"

The holes faced the bed perfectly. I imagined myself as the drunken woman, sitting on the bed and staring at the holes hidden behind the paint.

"Is there some kind of pattern to how these holes are arranged?" No matter who it was, staring at holes in the wall in the dead of night would definitely make it hard to sleep. It was no wonder the woman had repainted the wall.

"Something feels wrong. The red pigment I just saw through the hole had a strange color, a bit like..." My hand accidentally pressed down on the pillow, and the sensation against my fingertips gave me pause. The stuffing inside wasn't silk or bean husks; it was something completely inflexible that felt almost like animal hair.

Driven by curiosity, I unzipped the pillowcase and gave it a gentle shake. A massive, thick clump of pitch-black hair tumbled out!

"There's hair hidden in the pillow? Does she actually sleep on this every night?" I grabbed a strand and lifted it up, and the sight that followed sent a violent tremor through my mind. It was a braided black pigtail!

It was as long as an adult's arm, tied off with a black string with its ends splayed out.

Seeing the long black braid, the first thing I thought of was the urban legend the shop owner had told me. The Black Umbrella Woman wore her hair in two braids exactly like this one.

"Is it pretty? I braided it myself." The voice came from behind me, sudden and entirely without warning.

I stiffly turned my neck and saw that the drunken woman had stood up at some point. She leaned against the bedroom doorframe, her body seeming as weightless as a feather, but her gaze felt incredibly heavy. The emotions hidden in her eyes were terribly complex, completely impossible to explain in just a few words.

There was wariness, confusion, disgust, and a trace of unspeakable pain.

"You're... awake?" I gave an awkward smile, quickly changing the subject. "Looks like that hangover medicine worked pretty well."

"My head is killing me." The woman held onto the door, swaying as she walked. "Did you bring me back?"

"Who else would it be?" I picked up the long black braid. "Why did you weave this? It actually looks pretty creepy."

"What? Are you scared?" The woman bit her lower lip and walked toward me. Just as she neared the bed, her legs gave out—whether by accident or on purpose, I couldn't tell—and she collapsed right toward my chest.

Propping one hand against the bed, I pushed off with one leg and dodged out of the way the moment she fell.

She dropped to her knees, her upper body sprawling across the mattress.

A lone man and woman in a room together, with the other party seemingly creating deliberate opportunities to seduce me. If it were anyone else, they probably would have put up a token resistance before devouring the tender meat delivered right to their mouths. After all, any man would feel the impulse and be briefly dominated by hormones.

Frankly speaking, this bony woman possessed a unique allure. She was exceptionally exquisite, like a rose growing over a grave.

Beautiful and fragrant on the surface, with every petal looking like a work of art. But if you dug deep enough, you would find that its roots had long since pierced the coffin and were absorbing nutrients from the corpse inside.

A woman like this was untouchable. The sickness in her heart would eventually destroy everything.

I had absolutely no intention of helping her up. She knelt there for a good while before twisting her upper body to look at me sideways. A trace of resentment flashed in her eyes. "Could you give me a hand?"

"If I don't, are you planning to kneel there forever?" I kept my distance from her, maintaining a polite smile.

"You don't know how to treat a woman at all." She rubbed her reddened knees and climbed onto the mattress. Like a sparrow returning to its nest, she folded her wings and curled up on one side of the bed.

"Since you've sobered up, stop pretending to be asleep. I have a few questions for you." I sat on the edge of the bed, refusing to make any physical contact with her.

"I don't know."

Before I even asked, the woman threw the pillow over her head, covering her face entirely.

It was clearly an unintentional gesture on her part, but to me, it carried a chilling undertone of horror.

The black hair spilling from the pillowcase mixed with her own, obscuring her features until it looked as if she had no face at all.

Seeing this, I once again thought of the urban legend about the Black Umbrella Woman. It was too similar. It was simply far too similar.

I hesitated for a moment and decided not to ask about it directly. Instead, I started with a few trivial questions. "What's your name? Weren't you afraid of driving into a reservoir while completely wasted in the dead of night? If you think about it, I basically saved your life."

"So what do you want? How should I repay you?" The woman tossed the pillow aside and smoothed her hair, revealing her exquisite face. She lay sideways on the bed, her clothes slipping down—whether intentionally or not—exposing a pale shoulder.

"Forget about repaying me. I just want to know why you live in a dump like this." I pointed at the damp, foul-smelling wall.

"Because I want to. What's it to you? Asking all these questions... did you run into a ghost when you brought me up here?" The woman sprawled out across the bed, single-handedly taking up most of the mattress.

"I didn't see any ghosts, but I did meet a few neighbors who were scarier than ghosts."

"Neighbors? Who did you see?!" Before I even finished speaking, the woman jerked her head up. Her expression was tense, a faint look of worry flashing in her eyes.

"The blind old woman on the second floor, and some weirdo living next to you with completely bloodshot eyes."

I told her exactly what I had encountered since entering the Red Building. After hearing my story, she let out a sigh of relief and patted her rather flat chest. "You have great luck. Nine out of ten people living in this building aren't normal, but you somehow managed to run into the few who actually are."

"Those two count as normal?" I didn't know how to respond to that. From my perspective, both the Painter and the blind Granny were definitely hiding secrets.

"Does it have anything to do with you? Are you planning to move into this building too?" The woman scrutinized me, reaching out to grab my clothes.

I stood up from the bed. Talking to this woman felt exhausting. She kept dodging my questions, seemingly intent on hiding something.

My time was limited, and the livestream was about to start. I wasn't going to waste any more time dealing with her, so I laid my cards on the table. "Can you give me the specific details on every tenant in this building? Let's start with you."

I stared intently at her, hoping to glean something from her expression, but unfortunately, I found very little.

"You're not a Jinghai local, are you?" A trace of suspicion flashed across the woman's face, though she quickly covered it up. "Locals turn pale at the mere mention of this hellhole and would never come near it. It looks like you're just like me—an outsider who came to Jinghai for work."

"You're not from Jinghai either?" I asked, a little surprised.

"To be precise, I just arrived in Jinghai three months ago." The woman held up three fingers, her words slurring slightly with lingering intoxication.

"Then what do you do? Why do you live here?"

"You really have a lot of questions." The woman massaged her temples. "My name is Bai Ya'er. I'm a figure model."

"A figure model?" My gaze swept unscrupulously over her body. Graceful curves, bony and slender—she was indeed very suited to be a model. "I saw that the things in your apartment are kept perfectly organized. Your phone and handbag were definitely expensive. No matter how you look at it, you shouldn't be living in a dump like this."

The Red Building was filthy and chaotic. There was no need for her to subject herself to this just for cheap rent.

"Don't worry about why I live here. Besides, why should I tell you? I'll live wherever I want. What does it have to do with you?" Her attitude changed at the drop of a hat, but from the second half of her sentence, I managed to hear something different.

The moment the reason for living in the Red Building was brought up, the woman immediately turned hostile. It seemed she had some sort of entanglement with the building that left her no choice but to live here.

Thoughts collided in my mind as I went over all the information. I glanced at the holes in the wall, and a sudden realization struck me.

The woman worked as a figure model, and her neighbor was the Painter. There was an obvious intersection between their professions.

"The neighbor, the wall, the holes..."

I vaguely felt like I had grasped something. Just as I was about to follow that train of thought, Bai Ya'er's words interrupted me. "When you came upstairs, did you make a lot of noise?"

"Not really. I just triggered the voice-activated light on the first floor." Having my thoughts interrupted left me feeling a bit annoyed.

"You turned the light on?" Bai Ya'er propped her hands against the mattress, sitting halfway up in bed. "Then after you went upstairs—I mean after you left the first floor—did the voice-activated light on the first floor suddenly turn on by itself without you making any noise?"

Bai Ya'er's words were a bit convoluted, but I immediately understood what she meant. I clearly remembered that when I reached the landing between the second and third floors, the voice-activated light on the first floor had inexplicably turned on, almost as if an invisible person had just walked past.

"After I left the first floor, the voice-activated light down there really did turn on one more time. I thought it was just faulty wiring at the time, so I didn't pay it much mind."

I told her the truth. But right after I spoke, I noticed the woman's face turn horribly pale. Her teeth chattered, and it took a long moment before she forced out three words. "It's here..."