I looked at it curiously and thought for a while. It turned out to be a black plastic bag. There’s no way that was possible though, the house had burned down. How could a plastic bag make it out intact? Was it brought here by the police? Why would the police bring a black plastic bag here and hang it up so high? I looked at it closer and noticed it looked like there was something inside.

"Uncle".

I jumped, petrified and caught off guard. I quickly turned around, only to see Xiao Lingdang looking at me bashfully. She knew she had scared the wits out of me. I took a deep breath, and knew I couldn’t blame her for it. I turned my head back to analyze the bag, the moment my flashlight shone on it, the bag disappeared.

I was beginning to freak out again, with my flashlight shaking, I looked around, but never saw the bag again. I whispered to Xiao Lingdang: "Have you seen a black bag?"

She shook her head: "I haven't seen anything."

"Is there another ghost here?"

"No."

Her answer gave me a slight sense of relief. I was sure that the bag was real and not an illusion. However, since Xiao Lingdang did not feel the presence of a ghost, it could have just been an accident, but where did the black bag go?

I checked outside the house again, but still found nothing. Although she said that she couldn’t feel the presence of a ghost, I was still worried. Weird things around here were usually tied in to the ghosts that I somehow seemed to attract. Maybe the ghost couldn’t be detected by Xiao Lingdang for some reason. I wanted to ask Lulu, but I thought of Lulu’s icy face, and I immediately gave up the idea.

With Xiao Lingdang following behind me, we slowly walked to the other bedroom. This bedroom was bigger and completely empty. The bed was in the middle of the room, far away from the furniture that had collapsed on both sides. It didn’t make sense. I thought about it. Every time somebody wanted to get up to find clothes, they’d have to walk nearly 10 meters. wasn’t that inconvenient?

There wasn’t much water in the room. I walked in slowly, anyway. It was a very simple, the basic closet, a bed, and something that looked like it was once a desk, now it was almost entirely burned to ashes.

I looked around and made sure the room was safe. Thinking back to the black plastic bag, I shone the flashlight on the ceiling, but I found nothing, only darkness.

I shone the flashlight on the burnt bed. The couple died on this bed, and upon closer inspection, I noticed it looked a bit strange. After some thought, I realized that this bed was bigger than average.

Since the room I was in was very large had been burnt to ashes, I couldn’t recognize what the bed was at first. This bed was huge. I walked over and took a good look at it. I wasn’t just hallucinating. With the burned part I hadn’t realized was also part of the bed, it was more than twice as wide as the average bed, and nearly half a meter longer than a normal bed.

Was this bed made for two giants? I couldn’t understand it, so I said: “Such a big bed was really enough for the whole family to sleep in."

"Because it is a family."

Xiao Lingdang stood behind me, and her voice was still clear and melodious, with a little childish voice. Her tone made me uncomfortable. Her words were also very strange, they reminded me of the text messages sent by Wu Jian and Huang Xiaolong. They all had a key word in it: family.

I felt my whole body get cold and I turned around suddenly. The flashlight in my hand was shining on the face of Xiao Lingdang. Her face was still the familiar face I usually saw, but it had a smile that was not easy to tell apart from her usual neutral look.

I swallowed: "What did you say?"

She shook her head: "Uncle, I didn't say anything."

Her tone returned to normal, but I could have sworn she just said that. Was it just an illusion? I shook my head and removed the flashlight from her face. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

A gust of wind blew in through the burnt window. I heard the sound of pages being turned, so I shone my flashlight in the direction of the noise. The swaying sound was very conspicuous in darkness.

Even from a distance, I could tell it was a book. I walked slowly towards it. The book could slightly be seen in the half burnt cupboard. There were deformed locks on the cupboard, and the structure had been burned through, forming a big holein the middle of it.

I hesitated, but I reached in and took the book out of the burnt hole. The hard cover of the book had been burned beyond recognition and no words could be seen. Nevertheless, the pages were in perfect condition, all except for some black ashes that I had accidentally agitated when I took it out.

This book was weird, to say the least. Like, why had a book hidden in such an obvious place not been taken away by the police? Also, a fire would definitely have destroyed the book, even it was placed in a cabinet. The temperature was way too high to not make its way to the inside of a cabinet and in turn destroying the book.

I opened it though I felt odd, like it must be related to the disappearance of Wu Jian and Huang Xiaolong.

There was no title on the first page of the book, only a neatly handwritten word in pen reading: “Because it is a family! ! !” With three big exclamation marks, which were very noticeable and large on the page.

“Because it is a family”, those were the exact same words Xiao Ling had said just now. I subconsciously looked at her, with the flashlight still shining on the book. I could only see her in a faintly, but I saw that she barely had an expression. Then I noticed she still wore that nearly unnoticeable smile. Xiao Lingdang looked at me, as if she was excited about something.

Was there something wrong with me? I hurriedly asked her: "What did you find?"

She shook her head slowly in the dark: "No, nothing."

I nodded and continued to focus on the book. There was no table of contents in the book. It was very strange. I turned the pages at random and found they every page had a plethora of words on it. It was clearly a printed book. Why didn’t it have table of contents?

The first page of the book said: “We are very happy that my baby was born, the father shook hands with all the passing doctors, nurses, patients. I could feel the joy of his...”

It read like a novel, which I wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t in the mood to look through the book page by page, so I simply turned to the last page. To my surprise, there was nothing, no information on the last page, no number, title, copyright, nothing. There were only three neat words in the middle of the page, which said the same sentence as before: “Because it is a family?” The difference was this time, there was no longer an exclamation point. Instead, a huge question mark occupied almost half of the paper.