It was rare to see Mu Yiran dressed casually today, and Ke Xun smiled at him—everyone was wearing casual clothes, one in navy blue and the other in glacier gray, they actually looked quite well-matched.
Mu Yiran remained serious, glancing at the sign for the Spring Bamboo Apartment and then at the advertisement in his hand, seemingly trying to find some clues in the shops near the apartment.
Ke Xun, as if on cue, said, "Don't bother looking, it should be 1997 now, this is an old advertisement from a year ago."
"This location is severely sunken." Mu Yiran looked at the obvious steep slope of Spring Bamboo Street, feeling that there was something wrong with the feng shui here.
"Maybe the people who built the apartment wanted to accumulate wealth?" Ke Xun looked up at the dark sky, which resembled a stage set, and felt an invisible pressure—in fact, the feng shui of this apartment was not good. It occupied the end of Spring Bamboo Street, and on the other two sides, it faced three street intersections, making the building more like some kind of special transportation hub.
Such a residence was said to be called "pierced by a thousand arrows" by experts.
"—This is absolutely deconstructionism!" Finally, someone approached from afar—three men and one woman, one of whom was Qin Ci.
Qin Ci nodded to Ke Xun and the others, folded the advertising flyer in his hand, and walked over to stand with them.
"This is a deconstruction of painting! No, it's a deconstruction of modern architecture!" a middle-aged man wearing glasses exclaimed passionately, his entire body as slender as bamboo.
Another slightly balding, long-haired middle-aged man said thoughtfully, "No, no, I think it belongs to the realm of philosophy."
"Deconstructionism itself originates from philosophy!" The bespectacled man's gaze almost pierced through his lenses.
Ke Xun looked at Qin Ci, somewhat confused as to whether this group belonged to the inside or outside.
He'd never seen anyone so unhurriedly enter the painting before.
"I met them in the exhibition hall; they're supposedly three poets on a field trip," Qin Ci said briefly.
The female poet seemed the most composed, her eyes showing a mixture of panic and curiosity. She wore a light-colored cheongsam with a sheer shawl over it and approached the group in embroidered shoes. "Dr. Qin," she said, "I still don't understand. Entering a painting is too absurd. Could this be… a back door to the art museum?"
"We hope so too," Ke Xun said, glancing at the three poets dressed in antique attire before falling silent.
A large group followed: Sha Liu, looking somewhat resentful; Zhu Haowen, a Japanese-style young man with a small mustache; Li Taiyong, a man in his seventies; and three stunningly beautiful women: Tina, Xinmiao, and Luo Han.
Wei Dong looked at the three beauties: What a coincidence!
After everyone arrived, Qin Ci gave a brief explanation of the basics of "entering the painting" before knocking on the door and entering the apartment.
The newcomers, except for the elderly Li Taiyong, couldn't hide their panic, especially the three long-legged girls. Two of them were practically paralyzed with fear, while the other cried, saying she couldn't believe she had transmigrated.
The elderly Li Taiyong was wearing an outdated short-sleeved shirt, faded work trousers, and a pair of old-fashioned shoes. This attire, surprisingly, seemed quite harmonious in this modern world.
One of his hands trembled incessantly; whether from nervousness or some age-related ailment, he was slightly out of breath as he walked. Qin Ci, who was closest, promptly came to help him.
Ke Xun had an innate compassion for the elderly and children: "Old man, old man, what are you doing wandering around the art museum all day? It must be too hot and you don't want to turn on the air conditioning at home..."
The large iron gate of the apartment building slammed open, revealing a dark, bottomless pit inside. The wind blowing in was very cool, and the air was filled with an indescribable smell, somewhat like the sultry, stuffy air emanating from an underground parking garage.
Once everyone calmed down, they realized that there were actually lights inside. Because it was a circular building, it formed a circular courtyard, or what could be called a patio.
Standing in the patio and looking around, there were densely packed apartments all around.
This type of building is commonly known as a "tube-shaped building," and it was the most common type of residential building in the 1970s.
Sha Liu looked up at the night sky above the patio: "I've been to old-style tube-shaped buildings before, but they all had roofs. Why doesn't this one
have a roof?" "A roof? Doesn't that mean it's never sunny?" A voice came from behind, startling Sha Liu.
It was the man who had opened the door for everyone earlier, a man in his fifties wearing a faded red tank top, holding a large bunch of dozens of keys in his hand. He seemed to be the doorman of the apartment building.
"Are you all here to rent rooms? Come in with me," the doorman said, pushing open the door to the mailroom. "There are only six empty rooms left. You can split into six groups."
The doorman seemed quite nonchalant, even feeding the fish in the tank with fish food from a bag.
Ke Xun recalled the extremely lifelike fragments of scenes he had seen before entering the painting, and then connected them with this very realistic NPC in front of him. He felt that this painting was quite different from the ones he had seen before.
The three long-legged girls quickly hugged each other: "We'll be a group of three!"
Wei Dong and Ke Xun, as if receiving a divine decree, hurriedly joined Mu Yiran, saying, "We'll be a group of three!"
Mu Yiran's expression remained indifferent, but she did not explicitly object. The
doorman looked at the six people who had automatically formed groups: "No more than three people per group. Don't add any more, or there won't be enough to go around."
This NPC was quite easy to talk to.
"Qiu Lu! The three of us!" The long-haired middle-aged man actually showed an excited expression, making it seem like he was about to enter a suicidal mode.
The female poet, Qiu Lu, rolled her eyes at him: "You two should be a group. We have a lady here too."
Sha Liu, who had been holding back, smiled and nodded when Qiu Lu said that.
Qin Ci, who was still helping the elderly Li Taiyong, simply joined the group with him.
The last one left alone was the Japanese-style youth, Zhu Haowen.
Being alone is rarely a good thing, especially in this strange painting.
"Once you're here, you're part of the Spring Bamboo Dormitory, under our jurisdiction," the gatekeeper said, handing out keys. "There's only one key per room, don't lose it."
Ke Xun reached out and took the key. It was a simple brass key typical of the 90s, and what made it even more haphazard was that the room number was simply a white adhesive sticker with a string of numbers written in ballpoint pen: 411.
Sha Liu peeked at the key in Ke Xun's hand: "We live in 410, we're neighbors, so please look out for us."
"Sure," Ke Xun replied with a chuckle.
Soon, everyone received their keys.
When the gatekeeper handed out the last key, he suddenly said, "Single occupancy on the sixth floor isn't allowed; it's too high and feels oppressive." His gaze sharpened as he looked at Wei Dong. "You come here and share room 616 with him."
"Huh? Me?" Wei Dong always felt like the unluckiest one.
The gatekeeper's eyes suddenly turned fierce: "You want to go against the Spring Bamboo Shoot Dormitory's decision?"
Wei Dong nearly wet himself in fear and quickly obediently walked over to Zhu Haowen.
The doorman stopped looking at everyone and, while tidying up the remaining keys in his hand, said, "Get familiar with the surroundings and then go back inside. After the lights are turned off, don't wander up or down the stairs or visit other people's rooms."
The six groups of people, holding their keys, were confused and somewhat clueless. Just as they stepped out of the mailroom, which reeked of smoke and mildew, the doorman's head suddenly popped out of the mailroom window: "Meet at Wu Mei Restaurant at 8 a.m. tomorrow!"
Everyone was startled again.
Wei Dong, with a long face, tugged at Ke Xun: "Ke'er..."
Ke Xun had no choice: "Remember what the doorman said, don't go up or down the stairs after lights out, and it's best not to go out at all."
Sha Liu interjected: "I find it strange, does this restriction on going up and down stairs mean we can go out at night? Can we walk around in the corridor on the same floor?"
Before she could finish speaking, a loud shout was heard: "Public toilet!"
It was Tina from the long-legged girls, pointing to the toilet not far ahead: "There are no toilets in this apartment! We can only go to the public toilet!"
The other two long-legged girls also exclaimed in surprise.
Everyone then understood why they weren't forbidden from going out; if they needed to use the toilet at night, they had to go outside to the public toilet.
Everyone had mixed feelings. Those who had experienced the painting were very serious about familiarizing themselves with the environment before them, trying to imprint the locations of the rooms in their minds—familiarizing themselves with the environment, this must also be one of the doorman's instructions.
The group had mostly gotten to know each other. The two middle-aged male poets introduced themselves: the thin one with glasses was called Shouzhu (瘦竹), and the long-haired, slightly balding one was called Zhishao (稚苕), presumably pen names.
Zhishao even handed out business cards, antique-style cards printed with the characters "Zhishao."
Everyone knew that "tiao" meant sweet potato, so Zhishao was just a small sweet potato...
In the current situation, no one was in the mood to analyze sweet potatoes. They took a quick stroll around the courtyard on the first floor. Besides the strong sense of daily life, the initial gloom was gone.
There were no residents on the first floor, only shops. They quickly found "Fifth Sister's Restaurant," which was quite full of diners.
In addition to the restaurant, there were also many small shops in the shops.
The three long-legged girls, who had been the most uncomfortable when they first arrived, were now huddled in a shop, taking out their wallets to buy things. Sure enough, each of them bought a bottle of orange soda and stood in front of the shop drinking it with a straw.
It seemed the money in their wallets could be used here, which put everyone at ease.
"Don't you find it strange? These shops on the ground floor should be facing outwards, so why are all the storefronts facing inwards?" Ke Xun couldn't help but ask Mu Yiran beside him, inadvertently catching a whiff of the man's cologne: cedar and oakmoss, quite pleasant.
"Before entering, there was a demolition notice posted on the exterior wall of the apartment building, dated May 1996." Mu Yiran assumed these shops were probably no longer allowed to open to the public.
"Heh, you saw the demolition notice? I only saw those big red characters: There's a ghost." Ke Xun smiled at Mu Yiran.
Everyone felt uneasy about Ke Xun's mention of "ghosts," but in fact, they had all seen it: those blood-red spray-painted characters were written all over the exterior wall of the apartment building in a grotesque font: There's a ghost.
Suddenly, a loud, unrestrained laugh came from one of the shops in front, followed by a woman in red walking out of the door.
A short, cylindrical, fiery red skirt, and a hairstyle that was probably quite fashionable for the time—an Ω-shaped hairstyle, commonly known as an outward curl.
The woman in red used hairspray to curl her hair into a beautiful arc, her thin, high-arched eyebrows were also drawn in a graceful arc, and her bright red lipstick shone with a glossy sheen. Her pouting lips were endearing.
In comparison, the three long-legged girls with small eyebrows and bright red lips looked rather rough.
The shop the woman came out of was a hair salon, and judging from her appearance, she was probably the owner.
"New here?" the woman greeted the group casually, with a heavy Zhejiang accent.
Another vivid NPC appeared.
Seeing the beauty, the skinny bamboo seemed to perk up immediately: "All day long, no one watches the light rain, mandarin ducks bathe in red robes, facing each other."
Everyone: "..."
The childish girl also smiled broadly: "Sister, actually we're from the art museum..."
"Art museum? You were sent by the Hong Kong developers?" The woman in red suddenly cut him off coldly.
Qiu Lu hurriedly said from the side, "We're just tourists!"
The woman in red darted around, staring at everyone, "Then you'd better close the door properly, this place is haunted at night."