Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Hidden Layer and the Truth of Death

"Numbers?" Jiang Wan was stunned for a long time, unable to place where the numbers came in. She gazed at Chen Qing, pondering for a moment before asking, "What numbers? Are they related to the number of floors?"

He shook his head, letting out a soft, rueful laugh. "In a sense, this case is indeed connected to the backroom entrance we’re seeking. The people from the Foundation are far too arrogant—so arrogant that they refuse to set foot in the human world. They search for an entrance, yet won’t take even half a step inside. What sort of search is that?"

Chen Qing laughed heartily, the gloom in his heart dispersing more than half.

"What do you mean?" Jiang Wan was puzzled by his words. "What do you mean by... unwilling..."

Chen Qing cut her off, gesturing toward the building’s exterior. "Let me ask you two questions. First: do you think this building is tall?"

Jiang Wan was momentarily taken aback, then nodded.

"How tall?"

She frowned, estimating, "Maybe... seventy or eighty meters?"

Chen Qing shook his head, smiling as he replied, "It’s more than a hundred meters—nearly half again as much as you thought."

Jiang Wan couldn’t help crying out, "How is that possible?! That’s half again the original building’s height! The cost of materials and construction would be enormous! How could that have gone unnoticed at the time?"

Chen Qing shook his head again, this time genuinely at a loss. "How would I know what happened back then? But I suspect it’s connected to the backroom as well."

He fell silent for a while before continuing, "Tell me, at a height of several dozen meters, how could a construction worker smuggle a corpse to the pouring site and dispose of it unnoticed?"

"That’s very difficult, isn’t it?"

Jiang Wan frowned. She had thought about it before—dismembering the corpse, conspiring with others—but no matter the method, the risk was too great. It seemed impossible.

"I don’t know." At last, she had to admit defeat.

But Chen Qing immediately contradicted her. "No, you do know. You already know." He looked at Jiang Wan and pointed to the sky.

What did he mean?

She frowned, following Chen Qing’s gesture upward—to moonlight, stars, and the building that blotted out the sky.

"The extra twenty-some meters in height?"

She looked at Chen Qing, her eyes full of disbelief.

"That’s over twenty meters! The total cost must have been close to a million! And that was a million several years ago!" Her voice was hoarse. "How—"

But Chen Qing’s smile faded at her words. "Hard to believe, isn’t it? It’s almost impossible."

Jiang Wan instinctively wanted to nod, but the look on Chen Qing's face made her hesitate.

"But when every wrong possibility is eliminated, no matter how impossible or unbelievable the remaining answer is, it must be the truth." He looked at Jiang Wan and, after a moment, continued, "Yes, to dispose of a body during construction, to hide it in the poured concrete—it’s almost impossible. Unless, at the moment it was done, there was not a single coworker nearby. And the only plausible explanation for that is that they weren’t on that floor at all."

"I think he first cut an opening in the formwork for pouring, then entered the space between floors, broke open the template, and placed the corpse inside. When the concrete was poured, the missing cement in that layer allowed the upper concrete to flow down. The pressure shifted the body from the compartment to the ‘main floor’ below."

Jiang Wan’s face had turned rigid as she listened. She nodded, her fingers trembling. She was about to call the supervisor upstairs, but hesitated after a moment.

"Should you tell them?" Chen Qing had already guessed her thoughts.

"Yes..." she nodded. "If we inform them, wouldn’t it lead them right into the backroom?"

"Just don’t mention the interlayer. Or wait until we’re finished here?" He spread his hands indifferently. "As long as we know who the suspect is, it’s enough. No need to find the exact site of disposal."

"That’s not proper procedure..." She seemed troubled.

"But at least this way, the result will be better. For me, it’s just the difference between one plus one and one point five plus zero point five."

He waved his hand, guiding Jiang Wan into the building. "The place we’re looking for should be in the interlayer. We’ll probably need to experiment with the elevator for a while. Did you notify property management to start it up?"

She nodded. "I did, but it’s late, the security guard is probably asleep, and the elevator’s self-check takes some time. It should..."

She hadn’t finished speaking when the elevator’s arrival chime sounded.

"See? How convenient." Chen Qing smiled and pressed the door open button, and the elevator music began to play.

The two of them entered, pressed all the floor buttons, and started the timer on their phones.

As soon as the elevator began to ascend, Chen Qing timed each stop at every floor. After all twenty-five floors, he noted more than twenty timings, each with only slight discrepancies.

Examining his notes, he singled out the floors where the stop took noticeably longer: the third, ninth, twelfth, fourteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-second floors.

There weren’t many anomalous floors. Roughly estimating, he guessed some were due to timing errors.

Listening to his thoughts, Jiang Wan was puzzled—why was his estimated number of interlayers so much lower? The building’s floors were each 3.5 meters high; with an extra twenty meters, there should be at least five extra floors’ worth.

When she asked, Chen Qing chuckled and explained, "If someone wanted to create an interlayer, they’d make it just large enough. They wouldn’t follow the standard dimensions—that would be pointless, and more layers would mean a greater risk of discovery."

"But an unusually tall single interlayer wouldn’t."

He looked at the elevator panel, curious. "If someone looked down the elevator shaft, wouldn’t it be easy to spot?"

He laughed at his own naivety after a moment. People aren’t fools.

He chuckled and contacted the property manager in charge of the elevators. After discussing, they decided on a simple but effective method for controlling the elevator.

They pressed the down button, and as the elevator began its descent, Chen Qing repeatedly pressed the open button when passing the twenty-second floor. After a second or two, he had already pressed it over a dozen times.

The result was as expected—the elevator stopped at a dark, deserted, debris-filled space between floors.

The elevator’s light barely illuminated two or three square meters ahead.

The floor was uneven—uneven to the point that ‘rugged’ was the only word for it. Protrusions of hardened concrete were more common than flat surfaces, and there were no interior walls, the darkness concealing everything.

Within that darkness, one always felt watched.

Every inch of that darkness was inscribed with a single word: "Unknown."

At any moment, a blood-drenched creature might charge from the shadows—or a severed head might roll to their feet.

That darkness held everything: torn limbs, gushing blood, perhaps even the walking corpses of the rotten.

Jiang Wan was frightened. She hunched slightly, palms slick with sweat. It was too dark, and far too quiet outside.

Though it was normal, the place itself was anything but normal.

She was afraid, and so was Chen Qing.

But as he put it, fear always stems from the unknown and from lack of firepower.

He took a deep breath, eyes gradually steeling with resolve.

But turning to Jiang Wan, he saw her nerves were fraying.

"There’s something wrong with this place," he said in a low voice, as though afraid to startle some creature in the dark.

"No... no kidding..." Her voice trembled, sweat soaking the bottom of her pistol’s magazine.

"Don’t you feel your fear is excessive?"

"It’s... too dark." She clenched her teeth, jaw quivering.

"Let’s try another floor." He nodded, equally uneasy.

It was so dark that even the elevator’s light was swallowed up.

As if something was lurking, waiting for them to step into its trap.

Everything here felt wrong.

They pressed the close button. As the elevator descended, the instant they left that floor, an inexplicable relief washed over both.

That ancient, hardwired survival instinct never ceased urging them to escape.

But as they descended, only the ninth floor remained from their earlier list.

However, the ninth floor was completely different—already constructed, corridors partially decorated, simply abandoned.

Arriving there, Jiang Wan and Chen Qing’s expressions turned grave once more.

They wondered if it might be wiser to end their investigation here.

"So the stories are true."

Standing in the elevator, Chen Qing felt an oppressive weight in his chest.

He turned to Jiang Wan and muttered, "Maybe we should leave behind a spark?"

"Are you kidding? My duty is to keep an eye on you!"

He smiled, a little bitterly. "Let’s go back, then. Let’s see, damn it, if it’s man or ghost!"