Lin Taole · chat.title

Lately, paranormal exploration content had been in a slump. Lin Taole had already hit every local spot whispered about in urban legends. He was curled up in his messy corner of the attic, scrolling through ghost hunt threads from nearby cities, when a direct message popped up in his inbox. <message>"Do you dare spend a night at the abandoned manor on the outskirts of town?"</message> Lin Taole skimmed the text and scoffed. <message>"Who are you looking down on? Forget one night, I could stay for a month. But that place of yours—never heard a single rumor about it."</message> After a long pause, the other person sent over a money transfer. Nothing else. Lin Taole clicked his tongue and muttered a quiet curse. <message>"What kind of person do you take me for?"</message> Curse though he did, his fingers were completely honest. He accepted the payment with practiced ease and fired back a reply. <message>"Don't forget to note that it's a voluntary gift."</message> He couldn't help it—he really couldn't! They just offered way too much money! That very afternoon, he packed his gear, raised his selfie stick, and arrived at the manor. He had tried looking it up online beforehand, but turned up absolutely nothing. He had assumed it was just a bored rich person's prank. But the moment his feet crossed the threshold, the casual smirk on his lips began to fade. It was too quiet. It was only four or five in the afternoon, with the sun blazing outside, yet the moment he stepped past the rusted, peeling iron gates, the chirping of birds and the hum of insects vanished completely. Weeds in the courtyard grew knee-high. A few crooked old scholar trees stood twisted, their massive canopies blotting out the sky and thoroughly shutting out the sunlight overhead. The air carried a clammy chill that even midsummer heat couldn't warm. Right in the center of the estate stood an old manor blending Chinese and Western styles. Most of the gray brick plaster had peeled away, exposing the dark red beneath. Eerily enough, though the place looked deserted for decades, approaching it revealed not the faintest musty stench of dust or cobwebs. Instead, a faint, cool fragrance hung in the air—like sandalwood kept long in an antique wardrobe, mixed with a vintage hint of cosmetic powder. It snuck up his nostrils and down into his lungs, icy and subtle. Lin Taole wandered around the second floor with his selfie stick before finally stopping in front of the master bedroom at the end of the hallway. The entire house was barren, yet this single room was packed with old relics. Thick, dark-red velvet drapes were pinned tightly over the windows, barring every trace of light. In the dead center stood an antique carved wooden bed. Glued to the headboard was half of a faded red "Double Happiness" wedding decal, its curled edges stark and jarring under the white beam of his flashlight. <message>"Why draw the curtains in broad daylight? Looks like a photo darkroom in here."</message> Lin Taole muttered a casual joke to steel his nerves. For the sake of the cash, he wasn't about to be picky. He mounted his streaming phone straight onto the vanity at the foot of the bed, shook out the fifty-yuan second-hand tent from his pack, and rolled his sleeping bag out onto the floor in front of the bed. After shooting the breeze with the handful of viewers in his stream until eleven at night, drowsiness finally hit. Lin Taole yawned, crawled into his sleeping bag, and shut his eyes. Half-asleep, he had no idea how much time had passed. He only felt the room's temperature plummeting, so cold that he instinctively pulled his neck deeper into the sleeping bag. His streaming phone, which had been running smoothly, had gone black at some unknown point. The room had fallen into pitch-black, suffocating stillness. Then, an inexplicable heaviness seized his limbs. Lin Taole frowned and tried to turn over, only to find he couldn't twitch a single finger. It wasn't a stiff neck from sleeping wrong—his entire body felt poured with lead, nailed heavily to the floor. Worse still was his chest. It felt as if an immensely icy weight had materialized out of thin air, pressing down, sinking inch by inch until his ribcage felt crushed and every breath became an ordeal. Sleep paralysis? Lin Taole's heart skipped a beat, and his eyes snapped open. He could see nothing in the dark, but his hearing stretched to an acute sharpness. He heard it clearly: another breath beside his ear. Soft, slow, carrying a bone-deep chill, brushing right against his neck. In, out. A cool, silky strand cascaded down, lightly brushing across his exposed chin—the unmistakable texture of falling hair. Lin Taole cursed fiercely in his head. <message>"Damn it, I didn't actually run into the real deal, did I... Whatever. It's just a life. Take it."</message> With that curse, his eyelids drooped, surrendering entirely to fate. Yet in the few seconds after he completely went limp, that icy breath beside his neck drew even closer. That cold fragrance of sandalwood and vintage powder slipped beneath his collar, chilling him to the bone, yet lingering with an indescribable, delicate softness. In the darkness, Lin Taole—who had closed his eyes waiting for death—suddenly twitched his Adam's apple with a very noticeable swallow. He opened his eyes once more. In those bright, dark eyes, the previous defeatist gloom had vanished without a trace, replaced by an intensely bizarre, daring curiosity. He sniffed, the tip of his tongue lightly grazing his sharp canine, the rhythm of his rising and falling chest shifting entirely. Dead either way—it'd be a real loss not to collect some interest first. Whether it was the sudden reckless spark in him driving away the cold, the binding paralysis on his limbs unexpectedly slackened for a fraction of a second. Lin Taole's eyes darkened. The hand hidden inside the sleeping bag shot out. And grabbed an icy wrist. In the dead quiet of the night, Lin Taole let out a low chuckle. <message>"Gotcha."</message>