Chapter 112: The Sea of Wandering 5
Yi Ke’s car was too high-profile. So when leaving the headquarters building, he specifically called a nearby friend first. The two switched cars on the roadside before continuing towards the Yuanbao Building.
Yesterday’s incident had fermented on the internet into “Zombie Siege,” even triggering a minor panic-buying spree at supermarkets. Although relevant departments had dispelled the rumors immediately, various short videos were still spreading like wildfire in different chat groups. Affected by the incident, the usually lively Starlight Night Market on the pedestrian street was temporarily closed, and the surrounding residential buildings had locked their windows early. Jincheng had quietly entered the rainy season. The road surface was always wet at night. Fine threads of rain washed over the Yuanbao Building’s old blue glass exterior. The world was blurry and indistinct, but not completely dead silent. In that massive, dilapidated building, quite a few windows were still lit—at different positions, with different colors, looking chaotic and bizarre.
Yi Ke drove straight into the underground garage. The downward ramp had no lighting facilities, and the one-way road was narrow and steep. After spiraling through an unknown number of turns, an arrow pointing to the Basement 3 parking lot finally appeared ahead. Before the car even came to a complete stop, pungent smells rushed in through the window cracks—garbage, mold, gasoline, and a foul stench that almost shot straight to the top of the skull. Yi Ke stuck his head out of the driver’s window for a look and saw a “WC” with only half a door right behind the parking spot. Without a word, he restarted the car and circled twice more before finally finding a relatively clean spot.
Although Zhuang Ningyu was accustomed to bloody scenes, he was still choked by the smell. Before getting out of the car, he grabbed Yi Ke’s jacket and buried his face in the chest to take a few deep breaths. Yi Ke circled him with one arm and reached into the glove box in front of the passenger seat with the other to fish out two black masks: “Go?”
Go. Zhuang Ningyu opened the car door. The air here was slightly better, but not fresh-better. Pungent was still pungent, just replaced by the pungency of mold removal spray. At least it was better than a garbage dump, allowing one to somewhat feel the property management’s efforts.
There were puddles everywhere on the ground, and the ceiling was dripping drip-drip. This millennium-style building was veritably dilapidated inside and out. The ventilation system had long become a yellowed decoration that only buzzed. A hollow, dull echo rang in their ears; perhaps the wind was passing through some unknown pipe.
Strange smells and a huge sense of emptiness were Zhuang Ningyu’s first impressions of this parking lot. He scanned the surroundings. The paint on the load-bearing columns and walls had long peeled off in patches, leaving almost no clean spots. This formed a stark contrast between old and new with the white buckets neatly stacked in the corner.
Yi Ke walked up to take a look. The white buckets contained “Good Life” brand mold removal spray, which was also the source of the pungent disinfectant smell in the garage. “Good Life” was a very famous daily chemical factory in Jincheng. Their product quality was excellent, so the price naturally wouldn’t be too cheap. Zhuang Ningyu searched on his phone; a bucket of spray of this volume sold for around 150 yuan on the market.
And within sight at the scene, there were at least a hundred buckets.
“You think it’s expensive?” Yi Ke asked.
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. He was a bit anxious about his speaking problem; trying to explain things was always troublesome. Just as he took out his phone to type, Yi Ke had already continued with the rest: “The garage’s exhaust system has problems, making it hard for smells to dissipate. So the Yuanbao Building property management can only choose this biological mold remover which is relatively safe and has a lighter scent. They can’t switch to other cheaper ‘strong medicines.’ Mold spots are everywhere on the walls, so the usage of mold remover must be significant. Long-term use wouldn’t be cheap. So now we need to figure out when this mold removal method started.”
Not a single word different from what Zhuang Ningyu was thinking. His anxiety swept away, he pressed Yi Ke’s shoulder and exhaled comfortably.
Yi Ke held the person in his arms with one hand, using his jacket to shield his wife from the smell of disinfectant products. With the other hand, he dialed the number saved earlier that day. Beep—the receiver only rang extremely briefly before being picked up. Teacher Kevin’s voice radiated a joy that came from the inside out: “Brother Yi.”
Kevin had run his shop in this building for seven years and rented a fixed parking spot on Basement 3. According to his recollection, the mold problem became serious about five years ago. Initially, no one cared. Later, tenants went to the property management to cause a scene, so they sent a worker to scrape the walls and patch the waterproofing, barely muddling through that year’s rainy season. They promised a major renovation in the spring, but it was delayed again and again. The mold problem dragged on until it became so severe that scraping walls could no longer solve it, forcing them to switch to mold removal spray.
“The spray has been used for at least three years,” Kevin said categorically. “The brand has always been Good Life, never changed. Because the property management specifically held a meeting to explain to tenants that it’s a high-grade biological agent. Since we only spend a few minutes parking and driving daily, it won’t harm the respiratory system.”
“Is the mold remover sprayed only during the rainy season?”
“Heavily sprayed during the rainy season, lightly sprayed at other times. Non-stop all four seasons. Yuanbao Building is very close to Jincheng Lake; it’s very damp underground.”
Three years, four seasons. After thanking him, Yi Ke hung up. Zhuang Ningyu had also found some clues on a review app that could corroborate Kevin’s words from the side—when handsome men and beautiful women consuming here complained about the parking lot, they often included a few photos. And the large buckets of Good Life indeed appeared frequently, with the earliest photo taken three years ago.
Then this mold removal cost was truly not low. After all, besides purchasing the mold remover, the workers spraying it also needed wages. Between constantly patching a broken thing and solving the problem from the root once and for all, the latter was obviously more cost-effective. Zhuang Ningyu had a colleague calculate the project cost for redoing the waterproofing of the Yuanbao Building parking lot. If adopting a mid-range configuration, it was estimated to be completed within 2 million yuan.
Considering the booming rental market of Yuanbao Building, this price was peanuts. The reason for not repairing wasn’t a lack of money, nor could it be blamed on wrangling between property management and owners, because the property management of this building was also the owner.
Or was it that once the parking lot was renovated, secrets would be uncovered?
Yi Ke suggested, “How about going up to take a look first? The elevator is right there.”
Two elevators were adjacent, looking as dilapidated as the garage. The old-fashioned LCD screens displayed the current floors of the elevators: 31 and 28 respectively. Just as Kevin said at noon, the wait for the elevator was excruciatingly long. Zhuang Ningyu leaned back into Yi Ke’s arms. First, he watched the numbers on both sides get stuck, remaining motionless on high floors. Then he watched both light up with the “Full” sign and descend sequentially. At this time point, the first wave of guests eating at private kitchens in the building was finishing their meals and going home, making elevator spots “hard to come by.”
Full elevators wouldn’t stop midway, descending at a uniform speed, floor numbers gradually decreasing. Zhuang Ningyu didn’t pay attention at first, still playing with Yi Ke’s fingers resting on his lower abdomen. But soon he noticed an anomaly—the descending speeds of these two elevators were unsynchronized.
Two elevators of the same brand and model, yet with different descending speeds. estimating based on the changes in floor numbers, the elevator on the right stopping at even floors descended at a speed of about 8 seconds per two floors, while the elevator on the left stopping at odd floors had its speed stretched to 10 seconds per two floors.
Yi Ke also discovered this problem. He started the stopwatch to time it. At this moment, the odd-floor elevator was at floor 17, and the even-floor elevator was at floor 18. About 68 seconds later, the even-floor elevator arrived at the first floor and began loading and unloading passengers, while the odd-floor elevator had just changed to the number 3.
Zhuang Ningyu glanced at the stopwatch. At the 78th second, the odd-floor elevator arrived at the 1st floor but didn’t stop. It continued descending, arriving at B1 at the 83rd second, B2 at the 88th second, and finally arriving at B3 at the 93rd second. With a ding, the elevator doors finally opened slowly.
Various horrific urban legends of Yuanbao Building weren’t groundless. At least, even the bold and skilled Zhuang Ningyu felt a layer of fine, sweaty hairs rise on his back looking at the empty elevator and the prominent orange-red “Full” characters on the LCD screen. A moment later, the unoccupied elevator doors closed again and began ascending empty according to the set program.
Four seconds per floor.
Its ascending speed became miraculously consistent with the neighboring even-floor elevator again!
The “Full” text had disappeared. The elevator stopped at the first floor for about half a minute, then began ascending floor by floor—8 seconds per two floors, still synchronized with the even-floor elevator.
Did its malfunction only occur just now? Or was that actually not a malfunction?
Yi Ke had been holding Zhuang Ningyu’s hand, so he clearly sensed his fingertips turn cold for an instant. He asked, “Found something?”
Zhuang Ningyu gave a silent mm-hm. He continued leaning in Yi Ke’s arms, watching the LCD screen intently. 8 seconds per two floors, 4 seconds per single floor. The two elevators ran orderly up and down for the next ten-plus minutes without any further errors. The extra 1 second just now seemed never to have existed, leaving traces only in the lap timer of the stopwatch in Yi Ke’s hand.
A certain guess was on the verge of emerging in his heart. Zhuang Ningyu squeezed Yi Ke’s hand tightly. Go! He pulled him up, not getting on the elevator, but running back to the car like the wind to return to the unit.
Yi Ke floored the gas pedal, driving the car into the storm. Bean-sized raindrops pattered against the car windows, exploding in a series of dense sounds. The evening rush hour hadn’t completely receded. By the time the two fought through traffic back to the unit, it was almost ten o’clock.
Zhuang Ningyu sat at Yi Ke’s workstation, pulled out a sheet of paper, compared it with the stopwatch record, and scribbled rapidly—
Assuming the operating speed of the [Odd-Floor Elevator] never malfunctioned from beginning to end and always maintained consistent with the even-floor elevator at 4 seconds per floor, and only the LCD screen displayed erroneously as 5 seconds per floor, then—
At the 1st second, the elevator displayed 31F, actually at 31F;
At the 133rd second, the elevator displayed 5F, actually at B3;
At the 166th second, the elevator displayed B3, actually at?
Huo Ting, who had just finished a video conference, walked through the office hall. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed two people huddled together in a corner and thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Subordinates being too proactive wasn’t good either. He stood by the desk and asked with a headache, “Who told you to run back?”
Zhuang Ningyu had no time to explain this for now. He just hooked his finger, signaling him to come over and look.
Huo Ting caught the key point with just one glance: “Yuanbao Building’s elevators?”
Zhuang Ningyu gave him a thumbs-up. Wise leader, as expected of you!
Then he drew a red circle around the question mark at the 166th second.
If the elevator had truly arrived at B3 by the 133rd second, then during the period from the 133rd second to the 166th second, where was it? Was it parked at B3 quietly waiting to open its doors, or was it still continuing to descend?
If it was the latter, then beneath Basement 3 of the Yuanbao Building, a Basement 4 unknown to the outside world would appear.
33 seconds. Calculated at an ascending/descending speed of 4 seconds per floor, it was enough for the elevator to make a round trip between B3 and B4, and furthermore, leave a stopping time of about 25 seconds at B4.
His thoughts gradually cleared, and Zhuang Ningyu’s heartbeat gradually accelerated. Yesterday, after leaving the Assessment Center, Zhao Kai, who had undergone drug “forced maturation,” was heading to Yuanbao Building. Then was it possible that the drug in his body also came from Yuanbao Building? If a “forced maturation factory” truly existed on B4, then the disinfectant at B3 and the frequently “broken” elevators could both find a reasonable explanation—the elevators weren’t actually broken, just busy secretly transporting another wave of people to depths deeper than B3. The mold remover and disinfectant could serve to cover the smells of various drugs potentially drifting up from B4 along air ducts.
Even the crying sounds and nightclubs mentioned by Kevin could establish a reasonable connection. More and more nightclubs could use loud music to perfectly mask suspicious noises hidden underground.
The conference room in the headquarters building filled up again, lights bright as day.
Of course, currently, everything was just Zhuang Ningyu’s unilateral speculation and needed further proof. He didn’t go home that night. Since his neuralgia had been inexplicably cured by that electrocuted half-arm, working overtime was acceptable. He worked energetically all the way until 5 AM. Only when the sky was just turning light was he taken by Yi Ke to the hotel next door for a brief rest—although there were actually rest rooms everywhere in the headquarters building, the peerless good husband absolutely couldn’t let his fragrant wife sleep on a wrinkled communal bed with just a blanket.
After showering, Zhuang Ningyu opened his mouth wide in front of the mirror, carefully observing his throat. No redness, no inflammation, pale pink, very healthy.
So he cleared his throat and opened his mouth confidently: Ah!
Not a single bit of sound.
Yi Ke: “Good boy, stop exhaling.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “…”
