The third time Ah Jie looked back, there was nothing behind him.
Just the winding mountain path, covered in yellowed leaves, glowing under the sixteenth-night moon with the cold white of bone china. The bamboo groves on both sides stood dense and impenetrable, their tips rubbing together in the night wind, producing a rhythmic "creek-creek" like someone slowly sawing wood in the darkness.
He exhaled a plume of white breath and turned forward, continuing his climb.
His backpack straps dug painfully into his shoulders. Inside: a Nikon D850 camera, two lenses, a carbon fiber tripod, a minus-five-degree down sleeping bag, two bottles of spring water, and a pack of compressed biscuits. He was a freelance photographer, twenty-seven years old, five years in the business, with two minor domestic landscape photography awards to his name. He'd come to Cloud Mist Mountain behind Liujia Village to capture a sunrise shot that might get him published in Chinese National Geography.
Online forums claimed Cloud Mist Mountain's sea of clouds and sunrise were the last秘境—uncharted paradise—in eastern China. He'd spent three days researching routes, asked seven locals, and finally decided to spend the night on the mountain, summit at 4 AM, and press the shutter when the sun rose at 5:30.
Coming down the mountain, he'd met an old shepherd wearing a faded military coat, clutching a bamboo switch. When he heard Ah Jie planned to go up at night, the old man lifted his eyelids and looked at him. Something flickered in those murky eyes.
"Young man, the mountain's not peaceful at night." The old man's voice scraped out like it came from deep in his throat. "If you hear someone call your name—don't look back. One look back, and the flame on your shoulder goes out. Flame out, and unclean things can get on you."
Ah Jie smiled, pulled a pack of China brand cigarettes from his pocket, and offered one. "Uncle, that's superstition. It's the twenty-first century—we've got satellites in space."
The old man didn't take the cigarette. He didn't say another word. He drove his sheep down the mountain, then stopped after a dozen paces and looked back at Ah Jie. That look reminded Ah Jie of the way pigs looked when they were held down on the butcher block during New Year's slaughter in his childhood village.
He didn't think much of it then. Now, standing halfway up the mountain, alone in the wilderness under that ghastly moonlight, he suddenly remembered that look, and a chill ran up his spine.
The path grew steeper, the last section nearly requiring hands and feet. He panted heavily, white breath misting before his eyes, sweat running from his forehead into his eyes, stinging. His watch showed 12:17 AM—he was two hours behind schedule.
Twenty more minutes of climbing, and he found a small flat spot. It was backed by a three-meter-tall bluish-gray boulder, with an open view to the east. He dropped his pack, sat on the rock, twisted open a water bottle, and drank half of it.
The moon hung at its zenith, round as an eyeless pupil. Moonlight filtered through the bamboo leaves, casting countless mottled shadows on the ground. When the wind blew, those shadows swayed, like countless hands clawing at the earth.
He finished drinking and was about to stand—
"Ah Jie——"
A voice came from higher up the mountain.
Very soft, very faint, like wind whistling through bamboo leaves, like a woman singing in the distance.
Ah Jie's hand froze mid-motion.
"Ah Jie——wait for me——"
The voice came again, closer this time.
He shot to his feet, looking uphill.
The mountain path lay empty in the moonlight, only fallen leaves tumbling in the wind.
"Who's there?" he called out. His voice echoed through the valley, fading into silence.
No answer.
Only the wind. Only the rustle of bamboo leaves. Only his own heartbeat, thump-thump-thump-thump, like someone knocking on the inside of his chest.
He stood there, listening to that heartbeat, and suddenly remembered his grandmother.
Grandma was Miao, from deep in the mountains of western Hunan. She knew ancient songs and told countless stories of the mountains. The summer when he was five, they'd sent him back to her village for three months. Every night, Grandma would hold him on the doorstep, point at the pitch-black mountains outside, and say:
"Child, remember this. Walking at night, if someone calls your name—don't look back. One look back, your shoulder lantern goes out. Lantern out, and the things in the mountain can climb onto you."
He asked what things.
Grandma was silent for a long time, then said: "Things that want to be reborn."
Later he grew up, went to school in the city, worked, and never went back to that village. Grandma died three years ago. When his family called to tell him, he was photographing stars in Tibet's Ali region, signal was bad, the call kept cutting out—he only caught the last sentence: "Grandma kept calling your name before she went..."
Ah Jie took a deep breath and shook his head violently, forcing those images away.
Superstition. All superstition.
He shouldered his pack and kept climbing.
But he didn't dare look back again.
At 1:23 AM, Ah Jie reached his planned campsite.
A three-square-meter flat spot on the ridge, backed by the three-meter-tall bluish-gray boulder, open view to the east. He spread out his sleeping bag, crawled in, set his alarm for 4 AM, and closed his eyes.
The mountain night was a hundred times quieter than the city. No traffic, no human voices, no AC compressors humming. Just the wind through the bamboo—not a gusting sound, but a thin, drawn-out "shhhhh—shhhhh—," like countless silkworms chewing mulberry leaves at the same time.
He fell asleep quickly.
He didn't know how long he'd slept when he woke.
Not naturally—something woke him.
Something was breathing in his ear.
Cold. Damp. Carrying a smell like rotting leaves mixed with decaying flesh.
Ah Jie's eyes snapped open.
Moonlight seeped through the gap in his sleeping bag, drawing a ghastly white line across the darkness. He listened—nothing. The wind had stopped, the bamboo was silent, even the insects had gone quiet.
The whole world felt muted.
He held his breath and slowly turned his head, looking outside.
Nothing.
Only the bluish-gray boulder, and the motionless bamboo under the moon.
He slowly exhaled and was about to turn back—
The voice came again.
This time, right next to his ear.
"Ah Jie——"
So close he could almost feel the speaker's lips brushing his earlobe.
In that instant, all of Ah Jie's blood rushed to his head, then instantly retreated to his heart. His limbs stiffened like a corpse, every hair on his body standing up.
"Ah Jie——why won't you look back at me——"
The voice was a woman's, with a thick western Hunan accent—"why" pronounced in that distinctive way—exactly like his grandmother's.
Ah Jie's teeth began to chatter, emitting tiny clicking sounds.
Grandma's words flashed through his mind. Don't look back. One look back, the lantern goes out.
But his neck began to turn, uncontrollably. A millimeter, a centimeter, an inch—
Halfway through, through the gap in the sleeping bag, he saw something.
A hand.
Gray-white, skin and bones, nails three inches long, black and gleaming like ten burnt bamboo skewers. That hand was reaching through the opening in his sleeping bag, inching toward his face.
Ah Jie let out an inhuman scream, like a cat with its tail stomped on. He rolled out of the sleeping bag, grabbed his pack, and charged downhill.
He ran stumbling, tripped, rolled down the slope, slammed into a bamboo trunk—his ribs screamed with pain, probably broken. But he didn't dare stop. He got up and kept running.
He didn't know how long he ran. Eventually he reached the foot of the mountain.
When he looked back, the mountain was peaceful under the moonlight, as if nothing had happened. Wind blew, bamboo rustled, like countless people whispering.
Ah Jie's knees gave way. He collapsed on the ground, gasping. His clothes were shredded by thorns; his face, hands, and legs were covered in bloody cuts, blood and sweat mixing as they dripped down.
He pulled out his phone to call the police, to call for help.
The moment the screen lit up, he saw his face.
In the dark reflection—on his shoulder—a gray-white thing was crouching.
It had a head, limbs, the size of a baby, pressed against his ear. Its face was buried in the hollow of his neck; he couldn't see its features, only a mass of dry black hair.
Ah Jie's phone clattered to the ground.
He whipped his head around.
Nothing behind him.
But when he looked back at the phone screen, the thing was still there.
Still on his shoulder.
Breathing softly against his ear.
At 2:17 PM the next day, Mike got a call in the Bureau 749 office.
Three words on the screen: Luo Laosan.
"Brother Mike, got another one." Luo San's voice was extremely low, like he was hiding from someone. "A photographer. Went up Cloud Mist Mountain last night for sunrise shots, ran into something nasty. He's in South City Third Hospital now, psychiatric ward, out of his mind, keeps muttering 'don't look back, don't look back.' That western Hunan accent."
Mike tapped his fingers on the desk twice. "Details?"
"Don't know much. Just that this kid's left shoulder's three degrees colder than his right—the nurses measured it. And he keeps saying there's something on his shoulder, but nobody else can see it."
"Name?"
"Ah Jie. Don't know his full name. Everyone calls him that."
Mike hung up and looked at Lin Mo.
Lin Mo was already standing, taking her jacket from the rack.
"Cloud Mist Mountain. Photographer. Don't look back." She pulled on her jacket as she spoke. "Western Hunan accent—might be from one of the Miao villages. Let's go. Bring Zhao Tiezhu and the detector."
South City Third Hospital, Psychiatric Ward, Bed 317.
Ah Jie lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, his lips constantly moving. His face was pale as paper, eyes sunken, pupils dilated—he looked like a plant drained of all moisture.
"Don't look back... don't look back... don't look back..."
The nurse said he'd been like this since they brought him in last night—wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't close his eyes, just that one phrase, repeating for over twelve hours.
Mike walked to the bed, leaned down, looked into his eyes.
"Ah Jie?"
Ah Jie's eyes slowly turned, slowly focused on Mike's face.
"Can you hear me?"
Ah Jie's lips stopped moving. He stared at Mike for three seconds, then suddenly reached out with his right hand and grabbed Mike's arm. That hand was ice-cold, like it had just come out of a freezer.
"It's still on my shoulder." His voice was raspy, like sandpaper on iron. "Can't you see it? Right here. On my shoulder. Breathing in my ear."
Mike followed his gaze. Ah Jie's left shoulder—empty.
But Ah Jie's expression wasn't lying. His eyes held genuine terror—not the vague stare of a mental patient, but the desperation of a normal person pushed to the breaking point.
Lin Mo came over and pressed her hand on Ah Jie's left shoulder. Not just pressing—she carefully felt along his shoulder blade with her index and middle fingers, then frowned.
"Left shoulder surface temperature 23.6 degrees." She pulled a small electronic thermometer from her pocket, showing the reading. "Right shoulder 26.8. A 3.2-degree difference."
She straightened up and looked at Mike. "His yang fire is out. The left one."
Zhao Tiezhu raised his detector, scanning Ah Jie's entire body. The numbers on the screen spiked from fifty: sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety—finally stabilizing at ninety-seven.
"Five points higher than that wedding gown," he said, his expression grim.
Mike looked at Ah Jie, then at Lin Mo. "Can he be saved?"
Lin Mo was silent for three seconds, then nodded.
"Yes. But we have to move fast. Before midnight tonight, we need to take him back up that mountain, find the exact spot where he first looked back. There, we drive the thing off him."
"And if we can't find it?"
Lin Mo didn't answer.
She just glanced at the sun, already sinking in the west.
Seven PM exactly, foot of Cloud Mist Mountain.
Full dark had fallen, the moon not yet risen, the forest pitch-black. Flashlight beams cut through the darkness, illuminating only three or five meters ahead—beyond that, nothing visible, as if swallowed by the dark.
Ah Jie walked in the middle, wrapped in a military greatcoat from the hospital, his face paper-white in the light. He looked back every three steps, and each time he did, his body shook.
"Don't look back." Lin Mo walked behind him, her voice cold as a knife. "Your yang fire is already out. Looking back will only encourage it. It's waiting for you to turn—turning means you agree to let it possess you."
Ah Jie bit his lower lip until it bled, forcing himself to look forward.
Zhao Tiezhu led the way, flashlight in one hand, peachwood rod in the other. The detector hung from his belt, numbers jumping every few seconds: sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five—the higher they climbed, the faster they jumped.
"It's nearby," he said without turning. "Readings keep rising. We've entered its territory."
Mike brought up the rear, occasionally sweeping his light back down the path. The trail was still the same trail, the bamboo still the same bamboo, but he felt something following them. Invisible, inaudible, but palpable—like being watched in the dark, stared at from behind, at the back of the head, the spine, every inch of uncovered skin.
After forty-seven minutes, Ah Jie suddenly stopped.
"This is it." His voice shook, teeth chattering. "This is where I camped last night. That big rock—I remember it."
The flashlight beam found a three-meter-tall bluish-gray boulder by the path, its surface covered in dark green moss. Beside it, a small flat area held a blue down sleeping bag and a black camera backpack—everything Ah Jie had left behind when he fled.
Lin Mo walked over and crouched to examine the sleeping bag.
A forty-centimeter gash ran down the left side, edges clean as if cut by an extremely sharp blade. She shone her light inside and saw several gray-white hairs—not human hair, too fine, too soft, like fetal hair, but the wrong color.
She picked one out with tweezers and bagged it.
Then she stood and looked at the boulder.
"It was inside your sleeping bag." She turned to Ah Jie. "Last night, when you felt someone breathing in your ear—that was it. It wanted to take you right there, but you ran fast."
Ah Jie's face had lost all color.
"Then... what do we do now?"
Lin Mo didn't answer. She scanned their surroundings. At that moment, the moon emerged from behind clouds, flooding the bamboo grove with ghastly white light. The bamboos cast countless long, thin shadows, each like a standing gravestone.
"Wait," she said.
"Wait?" Ah Jie's voice pitched higher. "Wait here? For that thing to come?"
"It's already here."
The moment Lin Mo finished speaking, a rustling sound rose from the bamboo grove—something moving rapidly through the leaves. The sound circled them, once, twice, three times—faster and faster, closer and closer.
Zhao looked at his detector. The numbers were dancing wildly: ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine—
"It's coming out!" he growled. He yanked a coil of red thread from his pack and quickly strung it around the four of them, tying the ends to a nearby bamboo.
Then he opened the bag of sticky rice and sprinkled a line inside the red thread.
Finally, he bit his own middle finger, smeared the blood on his peachwood rod, and held it across his chest.
All of it took less than thirty seconds.
"The red thread is a boundary; the rice is a barrier," he panted. "Couldn't bring the black dog blood, so I'm using my own. Hope it holds."
The rustling stopped.
The silence was deafening. No wind, no insects, even their own breaths seemed absorbed.
Then, from directly in front of Ah Jie, a voice:
"Ah Jie——"
A woman's voice, western Hunan accent, exactly like what they'd heard in the hospital room that afternoon.
Ah Jie's body convulsed violently. His eyes locked on something ahead, his lips began trembling uncontrollably:
"Grand... Grandma?"
Mike's heart sank.
That thing was using Ah Jie's grandmother's voice.
"Ah Jie——Grandma's been waiting for you so long——" The voice grew closer, clearer. "Why haven't you come to see Grandma——Grandma missed you so much——"
Tears suddenly streamed down Ah Jie's face.
"Grandma... I... I couldn't come back for your funeral... I'm so sorry..."
He stepped forward.
"Don't move!" Lin Mo grabbed his arm. "That's not your grandmother! It's a mountain spirit, tricking you!"
Ah Jie struggled, his strength astonishing, dragging Lin Mo half a step forward.
"Grandma's calling me... she doesn't blame me... she's come to take me..."
The voice was nearly at the red thread:
"Ah Jie——come——let Grandma look at you——let Grandma hold you——"
In the bamboo grove, a gray-white shape began to materialize.
First a blurry outline, then slowly coalescing into a woman's form—wearing an old-style blue buttoned jacket, hair in a bun, face wrinkled, exactly like the grandmother in Ah Jie's memory.
She stood three meters outside the red thread, reaching out to Ah Jie.
"Ah Jie——come——come with Grandma——"
Ah Jie's struggles intensified. Lin Mo could barely hold him.
"Zhao Tiezhu!" she shouted.
Zhao lunged forward and grabbed Ah Jie from behind, pulling him back. But Ah Jie's strength was inhuman—he dragged both adults step by step toward that figure.
Mike rushed forward and slapped a talisman on Ah Jie's forehead.
Smack.
Ah Jie's body jerked rigid, like he'd been hit by a stun gun. But his eyes still moved, fixed on that figure.
That figure looked at them and suddenly smiled.
That smile transformed its entire face—wrinkles vanished, features blurred, leaving only a mouth that split wider and wider, all the way to its ears, revealing row upon row of densely packed sharp teeth.
"He's mine now." The thing's voice became a piercing shriek. "He looked back. He agreed."
"Bullshit!" Zhao cursed, swinging his peachwood rod at the thing.
The rod passed through the red thread and struck—thump, a dull sound like hitting a pile of mud. The thing shrieked, retreated a few steps, but immediately pressed forward again.
"Just a piece of wood?" It laughed more fiercely. "The yang energy of you three together isn't enough to fill my teeth."
Lin Mo didn't speak. She pulled the copper bell from her pocket and rang it hard.
Ding——
The thing's shriek pitched higher, like nails on glass, painfully piercing.
"What is that?" It retreated a step.
Lin Mo didn't stop, ringing steadily.
Ding——ding——ding——
Each ring drove the thing back a step. Its body began to warp and twist, like a lump of kneaded dough, stretching, compressing.
"You think this can drive me away?" Its voice switched between shrieks and snarls. "The moment he looked back, he was mine! All you're taking back is an empty shell!"
Ah Jie suddenly screamed. His body convulsed, foam bubbling from his mouth, eyes rolling up until only whites showed.
"It's burrowing into him!" Lin Mo shouted. "Zhao Tiezhu, rice!"
Zhao grabbed a handful of sticky rice and threw it at Ah Jie.
The moment the rice touched Ah Jie's body, it exploded in a shower of blue sparks, like fireworks. Ah Jie's scream became a strange chorus—his voice and the woman's voice overlapping, two people screaming at once.
"Light the fire!" Lin Mo shouted again. "His left shoulder, the yang fire's out—we need to relight it!"
Mike pulled out his lighter, flicking it several times before it caught. He held the flame near Ah Jie's left shoulder—nothing.
"Too small," Zhao said. "Yang fire needs yang fire to kindle. Anyone got fire on them?"
Lin Mo hesitated, then suddenly reached into her own clothing and pulled out a small red cloth bundle. She opened it, revealing a pinch of gray-white powder—cremains.
"This is my grandmother's." Her voice was very soft. "I kept some when she passed. Her fire should kindle his."
She sprinkled the ashes on Ah Jie's left shoulder, then said to Mike: "Light it."
The lighter's flame touched again.
This time, Ah Jie's shoulder burst into light—not actual flames, but a visible white glow, like cold fire, dancing in the night air.
The thing let out a bloodcurdling shriek, like a rat doused in boiling oil. It was flung from Ah Jie's body, hit the ground, bounced up, and dove into the bamboo grove, vanishing.
Ah Jie's body went limp; Zhao caught him.
The detector numbers plummeted: ninety-nine, eighty, sixty, forty—finally stopping at thirty-seven.
"It ran," Zhao panted.
Lin Mo stood still, staring into the bamboo grove. In the moonlight, two eyes stared back from within the bamboo—gray-white, pupil-less, fixed directly on them.
"It didn't run," she said. "It's waiting."
Mike followed her gaze.
The eyes flickered and vanished.
The bamboo returned to silence.
But everyone knew—that thing was still there.
Right there, in the darkness, behind the bamboo.
Waiting for Ah Jie to look back again.
Three days later, Ah Jie was discharged.
His left shoulder was still two degrees colder than his right, and Lin Mo said that lantern might never relight. But as long as he never looked back again in this lifetime, that thing couldn't take him.
He quit his job and bought a train ticket back to western Hunan. His mother cried on the phone, saying her son was finally coming home.
He didn't tell her why.
Before leaving, he sent Mike a WeChat message:
"I want to go kneel at Grandma's grave. Three years, never been. Whatever's on that mountain this time, I have to go."
Mike didn't reply.
He didn't know what to say.
That same afternoon, Mike sat in Bureau 749's archives, flipping through case files on "Mountain Xiao" and the "looking back" taboo.
Lin Mo pushed open the door, holding a new report.
"We've cleared up the Cloud Mist Mountain case." She placed the report on his desk. "1975, a woman hanged herself on that mountain. Her man ran off with another woman; she couldn't take it and hung herself in the bamboo grove. No one claimed her body—it rotted there for over two months before herb gatherers found her."
Mike opened the report. Inside was a black-and-white photo: a young woman in a blue buttoned jacket, standing in a bamboo grove, expression wooden, eyes staring directly at the camera.
"She's the voice?"
Lin Mo nodded. "Local elders say her soul never left after death. She often calls people's names at night. Men's names especially. Anyone who looks back gets haunted—eventually goes mad, or dies, or..."
"Or what?"
"Or takes her place there. Waiting for the next person to look back."
Mike was silent for a long time.
"What about Ah Jie? What will happen to him?"
Lin Mo didn't answer.
She pulled another photo from the file and placed it before Mike.
It was a still from the Cloud Mist Mountain forest surveillance system. In the image, Ah Jie was being helped down the mountain by them, pale, staggering.
But in the upper left corner, deep in the bamboo grove, a blurry figure.
Gray-white, translucent, standing there, watching them go.
Most terrifying of all—it was smiling.
Blurry, but unmistakably smiling.
Mike stared at the photo, his fingers slowly tightening.
His phone rang.
Luo San.
"Brother Mike, something came up." Luo San's voice was extremely low, like he was hiding from someone. "A woman came looking for me just now. Asking about you."
"Who?"
"Early thirties, pretty, but her eyes were off. Wearing a qipao, hair in a bun. Said her name's Su, runs an antique shop. She told me to pass along a message—"
Luo San paused. Mike heard him swallow.
"She said: 'Someone who looks back will always look back again.'"
Mike's fingers tightened further.
"She also said—"
Luo San's voice dropped even lower, barely audible:
"She said that thing on Cloud Mist Mountain isn't the only one. She asked if you want to know—how many more there are."
Outside, the sun was sinking.
In the distance, toward Cloud Mist Mountain, clouds roiled, covering half the sky.
Like rain was coming.
Or like something was walking out of that mountain.
Heading toward the city.
Heading toward them.