Translator: CinderTL
Half an hour earlier, after seeing Luo He and his group off, Boss Sang had returned to the darkroom. But as he stared at the wall covered in photographs, he immediately regretted it.
"I should have kept them here, even if it was just to keep me company for a little longer, to talk to me," Boss Sang muttered, tightening his collar.
Even now, he still felt a sense of unreality about what had happened. Every few minutes, he would check the mirror, staring at the handprint on his back.
It felt as if the handprint might vanish at any moment.
He had even naively hoped that if the handprint disappeared, it would mean everything that had happened was just a dream.
Now that the dream had ended, everything would return to normal.
His mind was in turmoil. He decided to stop thinking about it and focus on the task at hand. He recalled Luo He, finding the man incredibly reliable, giving him an indescribable sense of security.
"If... it really is what they said, he'll help me," Boss Sang believed without reason. "But only if I do as they say."
"I'll do as you say. I'll follow your instructions," Boss Sang resolved, abandoning the idea of destroying the photographs. He stared at them, flipping through them one by one, searching for the Japanese man.
He had a premonition that he had seen the Japanese man before, and that he was in the photo, but why couldn't he find him?
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, a photo landed on his right side—the one he had taken for the Feng Family.
Master Feng had hired him to take it for his birthday celebration.
He had shown it to the previous group of people.
And he remembered that they had also shown him some photos of the Feng family.
He recalled those photos, repeatedly comparing them to the one in his hand, feeling a vague sense of familiarity but unable to pinpoint it.
His gaze slowly swept across the photo, settling on a stain that covered about a fifth of its surface. Staring at the stain, Boss Sang's expression gradually changed.
Suddenly, an idea flashed through his mind.
"Could something be hidden beneath this stain?" Without hesitation, he turned to the shelf and grabbed a bottle of corrosive solution, then dripped a few drops onto the stain.
The solution was highly corrosive—not a wise move—but it was the fastest way to verify his suspicion. Boss Sang was driven to the brink of madness by the strange dream; he just wanted to be free of it.
Slowly, the solution began to work. He used his fingernail to scrape away at the stain bit by bit, heedless of the solution eating away at his finger.
"Hurry, hurry," he muttered, as if possessed. His movements and expression grew increasingly frantic. If Luo He and the others were present, they would have stopped him immediately.
His current state was clearly wrong. His eyes were bloodshot, his back hunched, as if he had poured all his strength into his fingers.
Under immense pressure, his fingernails shattered, but he didn't even notice.
After completely scraping away the stain, his fingers bled profusely. Boss Sang trembled as he held up the photograph. "It's out! It's out!"
He rubbed his blurry eyes, squinting to focus. In the next instant, goosebumps erupted on his back, and a chilling dread enveloped him.
"How... how could this be?!" he exclaimed, staring at the photograph in disbelief.
Beneath the stain was a figure, hunched over with an old-fashioned camera set up in front of him. His right hand was slightly raised, as if directing.
This person... was him!
He remembered everything. This was him taking photos for the Feng family at Feng Manor. But what terrified him even more was a sudden realization:
Who took this photo?
He had been the only photographer hired that day, and there was only one camera. Who took this photo, and why would they photograph him?
But reality wouldn't allow him to dwell on these questions. Without his noticing, the temperature around him had plummeted.
An icy coldness crept up from his feet, as if his veins were filled with shards of ice.
Clack-clack.
A chilling, indescribable laughter exploded in Boss Sang's ears.
"Who?!" Startled, Boss Sang leaped to his feet, spun around, and scanned the room. "Who's here?"
He could sense someone else in the room besides himself—not just the laughter, but also a malevolent gaze filled with resentment.
But where?
Where was this person hiding?
His eyes swept across the room inch by inch. The darkroom was already small, and there were only a few fixed places where someone could hide.
Nothing. There was nothing there.
Until Boss Sang's peripheral vision caught the photograph. His pupils widened slightly, then narrowed into slits.
The Feng family members in the photo, who had originally been looking askance, were now staring straight out of the picture, as if they could see him through the image.
Their necks were twisted at impossible angles—a movement no living person could make.
They were dead. All of them were dead!
He watched helplessly as the faces of the Feng family members in the photo gradually contorted, turning a ghastly blue-green, and slowly revealing eerie grins.
"Giggle."
"Ah! Ahhh!!" Boss Sang screamed and bolted for the door. Already weakened by Fu Fu's earlier damage, the darkroom door shattered under his impact.
After breaking through the door, Boss Sang didn't run far before stopping, staring at the scene before him. His entire body trembled uncontrollably.
He had returned to the darkroom.
Darkrooms surrounded him on all sides, connected by a single, eerie gate. It felt as though he had stumbled into a mirror.
Helplessly collapsing to the ground, the photo that had been haunting him fluttered to his feet in a gust of wind.
"No, don't come any closer!" Boss Sang sobbed, kicking out in helpless desperation. "Please, I beg you, spare me!"
Under his gaze, on the verge of collapse, the figure in the photo slowly turned, a bizarre, stiff smile plastered on its face. It raised the camera and pointed it at him, pressing the shutter.
A blinding flash of white light erupted, and then silence.
"What?!" Huai Yi exclaimed. "Boss Sang is dead?"
The lead officer, a burly man with a thick beard, sneered. "Stop pretending you don't know. You already knew he was dead, didn't you?"
"What do you mean by that?" Chen Qiang asked.
"I'm asking you where you were just now," the officer demanded.
"The photography studio, Boss Sang's place," Luo He replied calmly, without hesitation. "We just left there."
"There you have it," the officer said, brandishing his baton threateningly. "You left, and Boss Sang died right after. What do you think that means?"
"But we only went to ask him some questions," Chen Qiang said, regaining his composure. "We didn't argue, and we had no reason to kill him."
"And when we left, Boss Sang was perfectly fine," Huai Yi added immediately. "There must be some misunderstanding here. Why don't you investigate first? We'll stay right here. We're not going anywhere."
(End of the Chapter)
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