chun jie di xiao long
Chapter 349 The Story of the Pen
I am the good man,
I am—Midnight Terror Broadcast.”
The woman hadn't come out yet.
Inside the prison, at least outwardly, everything seemed normal.
Outside the car window, the annoying cicadas kept chirping.
Unable to sleep, Mr. Zhou had smoked all his cigarettes.
He was so bored that he turned on the car radio.
"Okay, just a little joke for everyone. The movie version of *iPartment* is coming out soon. We'd like to remind all our viewers who enjoy this show to go to the theater to watch it when it comes out.
Also, tonight we bring you a story written by the famous contemporary young writer Xia Xie, *A Day Trip to My Hell*.
In this story, Xia Xie meticulously presents readers with a picture of hell as he imagines it, which is truly captivating.
At the book launch, Xia Xie said that he had been in a car accident as a child and had been in a coma for several days. During those days, he had a very long dream. He said he might have gone to hell and then came back. So, when he grew up, he decided to use his pen to write down the customs and conditions of the hell that he 'saw' for everyone to read.
Next,
we will tell this story to our listeners:
'The Huangquan Road (Road to the Yellow Springs) stretches endlessly. On both sides of the road, beautiful and delicate *bianhua* (red spider lilies) bloom, swaying their figures.
All kinds of wandering souls walk on the Huangquan Road,
some singing,
some dancing,
some crying,
some looking back,
People of all skin colors, all races, and all cultures are here, stripped of all their external appearances, revealing their most essential states.
Only at this time,
arrogance and prejudice cease to exist,
and wealth and poverty no longer create barriers...'”
Hearing this,
Mr. Zhou rolled his eyes
and sighed,
“What a moron.”
Singing and dancing?
Why don't you just have the ghost messengers throw a Sanya yacht party with them?
Zhou Ze turned off the radio and reached down to rummage around. He actually found a pack of cigarettes. It must have belonged to that unlucky driver.
That guy was probably still sleeping by the side of the road, completely intoxicated.
I wonder if he'll catch a cold.
He opened the pack, but before he could light one,
Zhou Ze suddenly froze.
A feeling of palpitation suddenly came over him.
In the prison,
what had happened?
…………
Library.
Prisoner and woman.
The prisoner was still sitting in the chair.
The woman, on the other hand, retreated in fright,
repeatedly asking in terror:
"Why, how could this be, how could this be…………"
A smile appeared on the prisoner's lips.
In his eyes,
there was a deep look of recollection:
………
That day,
the rain was heavy,
with thunder roaring.
Lightning flashed from time to time, followed by thunder.
He hadn't been home for three days because he was too busy to go home.
It was the Mid-Autumn Festival,
and the food factory had a lot of tasks and orders, but they couldn't afford to lose these orders, because the Mid-Autumn Festival orders could account for more than one-third of the factory's total orders for the whole year.
His mother-in-law had entrusted the factory to him, her son-in-law, to manage, and this was his responsibility.
In his mother-in-law's words,
his father-in-law and brother-in-law were both very rigid. Besides being policemen, they couldn't do anything else. She didn't expect them to be flexible enough to secretly benefit the family, so she could only earn money herself to subsidize the family.
This factory could only be entrusted to her son-in-law to manage.
He was very dedicated, really dedicated, and did his best.
His in-laws, including his brother-in-law, were very good to him. They didn't look down on his background at all. Even when he and his wife were discussing marriage, they didn't set any thresholds or make any demands.
So he could only work as much as possible and try his best, even if it meant that he didn't have time to write novels or the energy to pursue his dreams anymore. Moreover, he and his wife had met because of their shared interest in writing novels.
But he didn't regret it, not at all. A man had to know what to bear and what to give up.
Dragging his tired body,
he drove back home.
It was his own villa.
He never thought that he would live in a villa one day, not the kind of house built by his family in the countryside, but in a high-end villa community.
A good life was not only in front of him, it was already in his hands.
A beautiful wife,
children,
a house,
a career,
he had everything.
He parked the car and remembered that his room card was in the car when he reached the door. He rang the doorbell and waited for a long time, but no one came to open the door.
At this hour,
the children might be asleep, and if his wife was writing, she might have locked herself in the study and couldn't hear the doorbell, because the study was designed to isolate noise.
But the nanny should have come to open the door.
He rang the doorbell several more times, but still no one came to open the door.
There was no other way. He had to go back to the car, take the room card, and walk back again to open the door.
He pushed open the door and entered the living room. He was stunned. His wife and two children were tied up on the living room floor.
He rushed over like a madman, trying to wake up his wife and children.
But they didn't react at all.
His wife and children had bruises on their bodies, as if they had been whipped and tortured. And most importantly, the three of them had completely stopped breathing.
The nanny was not at home, and he didn't know where she had gone.
This was a dream.
This must be a dream.
It must be a dream.
How could this happen?
Impossible.
Absolutely impossible.
He didn't call the police, but silently untied the ropes on his wife and children and placed them on the sofa.
When people are hit hard, they often react very neurotically.
Call the police?
What's the use?
His wife and two children were already dead.
He didn't cry or shout.
He just silently looked at his wife and two children lying on the sofa.
He looked for a long time,
until his head turned white,
until he was completely confused.
He went upstairs to the bedroom. He lay down, covered himself with the quilt, and put his head on the pillow.
This was a dream, right?
He was so tired.
When he woke up,
everything should be gone.
He fell asleep.
In this situation,
he really fell asleep.
And he slept until dawn.
When he woke up,
he found that his wife was not lying beside him. He went to the children's room. It was summer vacation now, and the children didn't have to go to school. He also disliked letting the children go to tutoring classes too early. He just wanted them to play at home to their heart's content. They were at the age to play.
There was no one in the children's bedroom either.
He suddenly thought of the scene when he came home last night.
He covered his mouth with one hand,
his eyes wide open.
He didn't dare to go downstairs.
He remembered that he had put the bodies of his wife and children on the sofa in the living room last night. He didn't dare to go down. He was afraid of seeing that scene again.
Call the police?
Sorry,
he really didn't think of it, and never thought of it.
Why call the police?
Was it to catch the murderer?
There was no murderer.
His wife and children were still alive.
Yes,
they were clearly still alive. Why would he call the police?
…………
More than ten years ago, in Osaka, Japan, a university professor lived with his wife's body for three years after his wife suddenly died of heart disease in her sleep.
During this time, he always felt that his wife was just asleep and had not died. He also bought a freezer to store his wife's body. At first, he claimed to the outside world that his wife had broken her leg and it was inconvenient for her to go out. Later, he said that his wife had gone abroad for further studies.
In this way, the news of his wife's death was concealed by him for three years with various excuses, until his wife's father was hospitalized and her family strongly demanded that his wife return to see the old man. Finally, the professor's lies were exposed.
The police and people rushed into the professor's house and found the body in the freezer. At first, everyone suspected that the professor had killed his wife, hidden the body, and intended to destroy the evidence.
But the professor insisted that his wife was not dead and would have breakfast and dinner with him every day and sleep with him.
When the people around him kept telling him that his wife had died and had been dead for three years, it was as if a dream in his heart had been shattered.
The professor knelt beside his wife's body and cried loudly.
At this moment,
he realized
that his wife was dead.
Later, after investigation by the police, the cause of death was confirmed due to the good preservation of the body, and the professor was ruled out as a suspect in the murder.
…………
He didn't dare to go downstairs.
Why didn't he dare?
He didn't understand,
but he just didn't want to go down.
He silently walked to the study.
His wife usually created here. His wife's notebook was still on the desk.
His wife always laughed at him, saying that when he used to create, he didn't like to use a computer, but liked to use a fountain pen. He even sent manuscripts to publishing houses and magazines with a fountain pen, and was eventually rejected and told that he needed to submit them by email and that they didn't accept handwritten manuscripts.
But he still insisted on writing stories with a fountain pen, even if he had to type them into the computer after writing them, because he felt that the words and stories written with a fountain pen had emotion, warmth, were not cold, and were more vivid.
His fountain pen was bought at a stall when he was a child. It was his first fountain pen, and it had never broken. It had no brand or trademark, but it always worked well.
However,
since he got married and took over his mother-in-law's food factory, he had rarely used this fountain pen to write his own stories.
But he would use a fountain pen to copy his wife's published books, and then slowly look at them in detail. He enjoyed this feeling and liked this feeling.
He picked up the fountain pen,
opened his blank notebook,
and picked up a copy of his wife's recently published *My Beloved Family* from the desk.
This horror story was based on their own family.
The scarlet cover font indicated that this was a horror novel.
He opened the first page,
and began to copy it sentence by sentence, starting with the title…