Things that defy the laws of the world cannot exist—just as a flame without fuel cannot keep burning.

  My “fireflies” may be products that break common sense, but they are not rootless wanderers.

  They persist because of the mental link between us—my own mental energy constantly feeds them like firewood along that connection.

  But this hole was as if covered by an invisible, intangible barrier. When the “firefly” passed through, the barrier didn’t block it outright; it simply severed our mental link without mercy. It was as though the message was clear: the boundary between “real space” and “space that should not exist in reality” is as absolute as yin and yang. Mortals of the living world cannot violate natural order, cannot arrogantly bridge the divide and freely communicate with the realm beyond.

  “So what are you planning to do?” Chang'an hadn’t noticed anything unusual on my end.

  He asked for my opinion first, then added uneasily, “I think we should just close the hatch quickly. What if something filthy is hiding down there…”

  “No rush.” After thinking it over, I asked, “Do you have any Bluetooth cameras or anything like that at home?”

  “You want to drop a Bluetooth camera down there to act as your eyes?” He caught on immediately, then shook his head regretfully. “But I don’t have one.”

  “That’s fine. Give me your phone.”

  He handed it over obediently. I took out my own phone, opened WeChat, and sent him a video call request.

  Once connected, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a broom, and used one of the rubber bands that came with his takeout barbecue to secure both my phone and his flashlight to the end of the handle—turning it into a makeshift glowing selfie stick. Then I crouched by the hole and lowered it in.

  “There’s actually a way to do it like this!”

  Chang'an’s eyes lit up. He leaned in to look at his own phone screen, eager to see the footage coming back from below.

  Then he made a sound of confusion and disappointment: “…Huh?”

  Unfortunately, no video was transmitting at all.

  The moment my phone crossed into the space below, the network signal cut out completely.

  I pulled my phone back up, switched it to share Chang'an’s mobile data hotspot instead, and tried lowering it again.

  Still nothing. It seemed some unseen barrier was blocking electronic signals too.

  So it wasn’t just mental connections—wireless electronic signals were also severed.

  I retrieved my phone once more, took a deep breath, and steeled myself.

  This time, I simply extended my own arm down into the hole!

  Chang'an couldn’t stop me in time. He only cried out in alarm: “What are you doing!”

  I ignored him, focusing entirely on the sensation in my arm.

  Human perception and control of our own bodies ultimately rely on electrical signals too. If this hole blocked even those, I should have lost all feeling and control over my arm by now.

  But the signal wasn’t interrupted. I could clearly sense my arm and move my hand freely.

  Both “mental connection” and “electronic signal connection” are forms of wireless transmission. Given the current situation—if the physiological wired connection from brain to arm still worked—did that mean other forms of “wired” connection would also function?

  Or was living flesh itself imbued with some mysterious quality? Just as many fantasy stories describe spatial storage items that can hold anything except living beings, perhaps this hole could sever all other links but not those of life itself?

  If the latter was true, then the only way forward was to go down personally.

  Wait—I realized I’d let the “firefly” disappearing derail my thinking.

  If I just wanted to learn what was inside the hole, I didn’t need to worry about wired versus wireless at all. Why not simply set my phone to record video mode and repeat the earlier method?

  I knew exactly why I hadn’t thought of such a simple solution right away: I was too obsessed with understanding the phenomenon of severed connections itself. Encountering something this unbelievable for the first time, my mind had fixated on unraveling its exact mechanism.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Seeing I was unharmed, Chang'an let out a breath of relief and hurriedly pulled me back from the hole.

  “You’re way too reckless! Didn’t you think you might get hurt?!” He still sounded shaken.

  “Chang'an, let’s try one more thing.” I turned to him and explained my plan.

  After hearing it, his first reaction was: “You really just want to record with the phone and see what’s down there—you’re not planning to go down yourself, right? Once you see it, you’ll be satisfied and that’s it?”

  “…”

  “Why are you looking away?” He glared at me.

  His instinct was spot-on. There was no way I’d be satisfied with just one glance inside—no matter what “filthy thing” might be waiting below, I would eventually insist on going down.

  I started thinking about how to convince him—or how to get him out of the way.

  Storming down alone wasn’t impossible, but he might follow me in. What if there really was danger inside? Even if his encounter with the anomaly was indirectly because of me, I had no intention of dragging him into harm.

  The safest approach might be to pretend to agree for now, then come back alone later to investigate. After all, he wasn’t living here anymore.

  It looked like I wouldn’t be able to probe any further today.

  “Chang'an, I—”

  I barely got the words out before an unexpected interruption cut me off.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  A knock came from the front door—someone uninvited.

  I could only close my mouth helplessly. Why did it feel like today was nonstop door-knocking? This was already the third time—though this time it wasn’t my door.

  “Who is it?” Chang'an called out.

  No answer from outside—just more knocking.

  I stood up and walked to the entrance. Chang'an quickly grabbed the black shag carpet from nearby and hurriedly covered the hole again. It wasn’t exactly top-secret, but exposing something this dangerous and unknown to a random passerby probably wasn’t wise.

  This time, though, the person outside the door—at least—wasn’t a total stranger.

  When I opened it, the visitor saw me too.

  “Hm?” He looked confused and surprised for a second before finally recognizing my face. “…You live here? Wait, that can’t be right.”

  It was the same police officer who had knocked on my door not long ago while canvassing for leads on the serial killer case.

  He’d come all the way here on his rounds?

  “No, this is my friend’s place.” I suppressed my surprise, turned back into the apartment, and called, “Chang'an!”

  Chang'an hurried over and introduced himself to the officer.

  The policeman glanced between us, then spoke first to Chang'an: “It was you, right? The one who called in a false report the night before last.”

  “I didn’t make a false report,” Chang'an said stubbornly.

  “We went back and checked afterward. This apartment was the scene of an extremely brutal murder eight months ago. The perpetrator still hasn’t been caught.” The officer’s tone was grave. “You said there were ghosts here. Was it really just ghosts? Tell me again exactly what you found.”

  So this officer was here to follow up on the eight-month-old murder case.

  I’d heard that authorities took homicide cases extremely seriously—there was even the slogan “every murder must be solved.” But that was eight months ago. Did they really pursue old cases this doggedly?

  I recalled online stories of wanted fugitives who thought the heat had died down, only to get nabbed at a Jay Chou concert amid a massive crowd. Compared to that, the police staying this vigilant about an unsolved major homicide didn’t seem so strange.

  Still—I remembered this same officer had been investigating the recent serial killings. Now he was making time to ask about a completely different case. Was this kind of multitasking normal for them? Or…

  “There really is a ghost!”

  Desperate to prove himself, Chang'an invited the officer inside, walked over to the black shag carpet, and yanked it aside in one motion.

  “Look!” He pointed at the floor. “See? There really is… there really was…”

  His voice trailed off.

  The floor was completely bare. No hole. No wooden hatch. Only the black-painted magic circle remained—nothing else.

  Not just Chang'an—I was stunned too. The hole had disappeared?

  What was going on? The night before last, when Chang'an called the police and they arrived, the hole vanished. Today, the moment the police showed up again, it disappeared once more.

  Could it be that police officers carried some kind of righteous yang energy, and the hole was a yin-evil entity—so the instant an officer appeared, it panicked and hid itself? Ridiculous!

  The facts were right in front of me. I told myself not to panic yet. The hole had appeared and vanished before; maybe this was just another part of the phenomenon—one I needed to investigate further.

  “Where’s the ghost?” the officer asked flatly. “Call it out.”

  “Gh-ghost…” Chang'an stammered, at a loss for words.

  The officer sighed, then seemed to notice something. He crouched beside the magic circle and rubbed the edge of one line with his finger.

  He stared at his fingertip thoughtfully, his expression growing more serious by the second. After a moment, he muttered to himself:

  “…Blood?”

  —

  Even though he hadn’t seen the supernatural hole with his own eyes, the moment the officer touched the magic circle, his demeanor changed noticeably. The already stern, mature face grew even more grave.

  He led us downstairs, then asked Chang'an: “Do you have another place to stay?”

  “What?” Chang'an hadn’t caught up yet.

  “The apartment you’re renting is now officially a protected crime scene again. At minimum, you can’t go back there today or tomorrow.” The officer’s tone left no room for argument.

  “Ah? But…” Chang'an started to protest.

  Then he suddenly shut his mouth, glanced at me, and said firmly to the officer: “No problem. I wasn’t planning to go back to that place anyway. Please make sure the scene is properly secured—don’t even let a rat slip in!”

  Calling me a rat was a bit much.

  He was probably saying it to stop me from sneaking back in to explore the hole. He really was worrying over nothing. If I was dead set on going down there, no amount of ordinary people or tight security would stop me.

  “By the way—why protect the apartment now?” Chang'an finally asked. “Is it because of the murder eight months ago? But that was eight months ago. The killer might have already fled the city.”

  “You can’t say that. This is a homicide case—a particularly brutal one with aggravating circumstances. The department has always treated this major case with the highest priority. And…” The officer hesitated, as if debating whether to say more.

  After a long pause, he looked at Chang'an, then at me, and finally continued:

  “And the killer is still at large in Saltwater City right now—even continuing to cause trouble.”

  “What?” Chang'an paled.

  Through the officer’s gaze, I made the connection and combined it with my earlier suspicions.

  “The serial killer who’s been active in the city these past two months… is the same person who murdered the previous tenant in that apartment eight months ago?”

  Alice’s face rose unbidden in my mind.