Light incense and candles to calm the underworld

Am I still human? “Stream-viewers: enter this forum at your own risk.” The site had no URL you could type, no link any search engine would cough up— and yet, without warning, it blossomed on Shen’s phone. A tar-black background, the words “Ghost-Talk Forum” pulsing in arterial red. Ordinary students—honor-roll types—spend their after-midnight hours scrolling horror serials under the covers. Naturally, Shen wasn’t rattled by cheap theatrics; he tapped CONFIRM LOGIN. What scrolled next looked nothing like fiction. [ID E-98432 – The Cunning-Face Incident] [ID A-28943 – Additional-Person Incident] [ID D-34324 – Clocktower Incident] [ID E-54934 – Weeping-Mountain Incident] … “Mimicking case-file style—nice touch, very documentary.” He opened the first thread. [ID E-98432 – The Cunning-Face Incident] Year: 2025 Location: State of Dongying Threat Level: Class C Status: Unresolved January 2025: a single photograph began to circulate on Dongying forums. Jet-black background, paper-white face. No clear feminine traits—only gouged-out black slits for eyes and mouth. Viewers began to see that same pallid face inside their homes, their daily lives, for the next thirty days. Most were later found inexplicably dead in locked rooms; only a handful of shattered survivors remain, incapable of furnishing investigators with usable leads. All major platforms have scrubbed the image. Copies still fester on dark-web mirrors. Latest assessment: indirect exposure now carries contamination risk. (Per Confidentiality Clause 035, keywords redacted.) Below: the photograph of the White-Faced Woman. (Per Confidentiality Clause 111, source sealed.) … Out of ten, the yarn would score a five—middling. Open with deliberate mystery, end with eternal ellipsis. Shen had seen this trick in a hundred abandoned w*******l cash-grabs: hook the reader, milk the clicks, vanish mid-series, leave the pit howling. He flicked down for the comment thread—and froze. No one was role-playing. Users dissected quantum exorcism arrays, argued over modified psychopomp techniques, accused “the relevant departments” of sacrificing civilians through inaction. Handles like “Corpse-Cremator,” “Soul-Anchor,” “Heavenly Master,” “Yin-Hearer,” “Exorcism-Squad”… titles that belonged in no résumé on earth. Shen skimmed more threads. Each dossier dripped with corroborating detail, photographs, timestamps—yet most ended mid-breath. And beneath every one the same academic tone, citations and all. A glance at the window: late. Class tomorrow. He logged out, killed the screen. Gao Shen—retake senior, Shanghai cram-center. Once, his grades had topped every city-wide list; Aurora University was a done deal. Then, two years ago, the axis of his life snapped. On an ordinary Saturday dawn, his gentle, timid mother—without warning—seized a cleaver and butchered his father and older sister where they slept. When the police arrived, the living-room looked like a slaughterhouse. In the interrogation room she kept repeating the same words: “Those weren’t my husband and daughter—something else was wearing their faces.” The psych evaluation came back swift: not criminally responsible. She disappeared behind the locked gates of a maximum-security asylum, likely forever. The incident shattered Shen. He never went back to school; he never even sat the college-entrance exam. Two years of scorched silence later, he had clawed enough money together for a cram-center retake. One more year—clean slate. Clang-clang… He finished brushing his teeth and was heading to bed when knuckles rapped against the living-room French window. He turned. A woman the color of curdled milk stared in, eyes and mouth nothing more than black razor lines. She wore black—only the vast white face floated in the darkness, larger than any human face had a right to be. She tapped again, as if asking him to flip the latch and let her in. “Who are you? Something wrong?” After the funerals and the trial, relatives had sold the old apartment. Shen had moved into this rental less than a month ago; he didn’t know the block, let alone this stranger. Something about her familiarity chilled him. THUD. Impatient, the woman pressed her entire face against the pane. The glass bowed. Flattened, the features looked less like a face and more like a mask. The eye-slits strained wider, two black wires trying to gash open. “Hey—don’t wreck the furniture. Security deposit’s brutal; if the glass breaks, the landlord skins me.” Even as the joke left his mouth, unease prickled his scalp. A lifelong atheist, Shen hesitated—then stepped closer to see what the hell the neighbor wanted. The instant he reached the window, the White-Faced Woman vanished. Where she had stood: empty air. No balcony, no gutter, only two busted AC units clinging to the brick like rusting cicadas. Shen’s stomach tilted. He remembered suddenly—this rental was on the second floor.