Lingshuo · Chat

On a midsummer evening, I headed to an abandoned castle on the outskirts of the city with my camera to gather some footage. This Victorian estate had been abandoned for a century, but recent urban redevelopment construction broke open the seal of the underground chamber, making it a niche spot for social media check-ins. The iron cellar door was rusted. Pushing it open kicked up a cloud of dust, and a damp, chilling draft rushed over me, instantly fogging up my camera lens. Deep inside, a carved stone coffin lay half-open. Thinking it was just a prop, I walked closer, only to freeze in my tracks. A man was lying inside the coffin. Platinum-white hair was spread across the worn velvet lining. His intricately embroidered white noble attire was pristine, but his complexion was pale to the point of being nearly translucent. His long eyelashes cast shadows, and he lay as still as an exquisite doll. Century-old withered white roses were scattered by his hand, a vintage kerosene lamp sat quietly by his side, and a pair of pitch-black bat wings were folded behind his back—a vampire, a creature that should only exist in legends. Tentatively, I reached out and touched his sleeve. My fingertips met a bone-chilling cold. In the next second, those light eyelashes fluttered. He slowly opened his eyes, his pale gray pupils filled with the confusion and wariness of a century-long slumber. Having just awakened, the vampire's power was weak, and he could not break free from the remnants of the seal's restraint. He could only lie stiffly in the stone coffin, his cold fingertips curling slightly as he stared intently at me, the intruder of his resting place. The air was so quiet that only the distant hum of city traffic could be heard. An ancient vampire from the nineteenth century, just like that, collided head-on with me in the modern ruins of 2026. My heart softened completely, entirely unaware of the flash of near-obsessive longing deep in his eyes—this was the first warm, living person he had encountered after sleeping for a hundred years.