Before I get into where my friend is living now, let me first tell you a bit about him.

  We met in college. His full name is Zhu Chang'an, so I just call him “Chang'an.” Like me, he's a second-year student at Saltwater University. He’s the kind of guy who looks effortlessly stylish—sharp features, always dressed in designer labels from head to toe.

  Although his way of speaking still comes across as fairly normal so far, he’s actually a well-known “second-generation rich kid.” His father holds a high-ranking position in the government, and the family is extremely wealthy. I don’t know the exact figures—definitely not something a regular student like me could even guess at—and honestly, I’ve never cared enough to find out. Occasionally I’d overhear someone at school call him “Young Master Zhu” with obvious malice.

  It wouldn’t be fair to say all that hostility comes purely from jealousy of his wealth. If my reputation on campus is just “that eccentric loner,” then Chang'an’s is outright infamous—simple “rich kid hate” doesn’t cover it. The problem lies with him.

  He’s notorious around school as a “spoiled young tyrant.” People say he throws his weight around because of his father’s status, stirs up trouble, and there are even rumors that he and his bad-influence friends frequently visit places no decent student should ever set foot in. Over time, most of the upright, self-respecting students started avoiding him like the plague.

  There’s actually more to his bad reputation than meets the eye, but he has genuinely done some pretty rotten things. Our own friendship started because we “didn’t get along at first.”

  The full story would take too long to tell here, so I’ll focus on his current living situation.

  Maybe it’s true that birds of a feather flock together—Chang'an, like me, has a certain interest in urban legends and strange tales. Since he didn’t really have close friends on campus, he rented a place off-campus. By chance, there was an empty apartment in a regular residential complex near Saltwater University where someone had died. It was on the fifteenth floor—a high-rise unit.

  When I say “someone died there,” I don’t mean an elderly tenant passed away naturally or a depressed renter slit their wrists. This was a full-blown, horrifying murder case.

  Eight months ago, the previous tenant was found in the bathroom, disemboweled by an unknown assailant. The scene was so gruesome that even the neighbors next door moved out from sheer terror. The killer’s identity remains a mystery to this day; they’re still at large. It’s completely understandable why no one wanted to rent the place afterward.

  I’d heard rumors it was haunted at night, so I went to investigate and even stayed there for three full days and nights. Nothing happened. That was less than two weeks ago. Afterward, Chang'an rented it on a dare, basically treating the whole thing like a reckless stunt, and moved in.

  “So now it really is haunted? The old tenant turned into a vengeful ghost and came after you?”

  “No, no, that’s not it…” He shook his head vigorously. “It’s the basement. I found a basement.”

  “Oh, just a basement…” I felt a flicker of disappointment—then immediately caught the anomaly. “…Wait. You said ‘basement’? In that apartment?”

  “Yes. In the unit on the fifteenth floor.”

  He still looked shaken as he explained the whole sequence of events:

  It started the night before last. He’d been watching videos online of people deep-cleaning old carpets. Especially shaggy ones—they trap so much grime, and some creators deliberately pick the filthiest examples to wash on camera. After watching, he thought of the black shag carpet in his own living room.

  It had already been there when he moved in—no telling how many tenants it had seen before him. He’d never paid it any attention until then. But now the thought disgusted him. Black hides dirt well; who knows how much filth (maybe even the previous tenant’s blood) was buried in there? He decided to replace it.

  When he lifted the carpet, something appeared on the floor beneath that had no business existing in an ordinary home.

  A complex pattern drawn in black paint—a “magic circle.”

  His first thought was that some past tenant must have been a hardcore chuunibyou obsessed with dark magic and left this behind.

  Then he noticed something impossible to ignore right in the center of the circle: a square wooden hatch, about one meter by one meter, embedded flush in the floor.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Driven by curiosity, he opened it.

  Underneath was a staircase descending into pitch-black darkness, seemingly bottomless.

  He was stunned.

  A basement? On the fifteenth floor? How could a fifteenth-floor apartment have a basement?

  He quickly came up with what seemed like a rational explanation: maybe the stairs led down to the unit directly below. Just to be safe, he didn’t go down. Instead he went to the neighbor downstairs, got permission to enter, and checked.

  There was no staircase in their apartment. No hole in their ceiling either.

  At that moment, he was overwhelmed by indescribable dread.

  Those dark stairs led to a space that didn’t exist in reality.

  —

  His description hooked me completely. Curiosity flared up.

  “Have you gone down there?”

  Chang'an slammed the table in agitation. “How could I possibly go down?!”

  The waitstaff and other customers in the cha chaan teng all turned to look. He coughed awkwardly and sat back down.

  “Anyway, I haven’t gone down, and right now I’ve temporarily moved to a nearby hotel. I don’t dare stay there anymore.” After calming himself, he continued, “But I haven’t terminated the lease yet. I still have the keys.”

  I nodded and asked, “Did you at least try shining a light down the stairs?”

  “I did. The drop is maybe three meters or so. At the bottom is a gray concrete floor.” He sounded defeated. “That’s all I know. I didn’t dare go any further to explore.”

  “Have you told anyone else besides me?”

  “I told my little sister yesterday, but she didn’t believe me.”

  “You mean Zhu Shi? You saw me during the day yesterday—why tell your sister but not me?” I felt a little slighted.

  Zhu Shi—Chang'an’s younger sister—is one year below us. I’ve met her a few times before.

  She just started her first year at Saltwater University this year. Unlike her notorious older brother, her first impression is like a gentle stream, a clear spring, a misty lake—quiet, refined, almost like she stepped out of an ink painting.

  It’s normal she wouldn’t believe him. Most normal people wouldn’t believe a story like that.

  Chang'an gave an awkward laugh and hurried to explain further: “Also… the night it happened, I called the police right away.”

  “You called the police?” I frowned instinctively.

  Given my current situation, I really didn’t feel safe around the police.

  “And? You told them there was something weird in your house, and they actually came?”

  “Of course I didn’t say it like that. I made up some random excuse to get them over. Then, once they arrived, I lifted the carpet again right in front of them… and…” His face grew even paler. “It was gone. The wooden hatch had vanished without a trace. The entrance to the basement was completely gone. All that was left was that suspicious magic circle on the floor. They treated it as a false report—I almost got detained.”

  At that moment he noticed my expression and rushed to clarify: “Wait, I’m not lying to you! I really saw the basement!”

  “Personally, I really want to believe you…”

  In the past, many people I’ve visited who claimed to have encountered the supernatural shared one common trait: they swore something paranormal happened in a specific place, but whenever I went with them—or investigated on my own based on their clues—the phenomena would mysteriously disappear.

  Chang'an’s situation felt eerily similar. He insisted he’d encountered something bizarre, yet the phenomenon only appeared when he was alone. The moment anyone else was present, it conveniently vanished.

  How could I fully trust him under those circumstances?

  Still—he was my friend. I wanted to give him at least the basic level of trust.

  “Believe me! I know you’ve been tricked by a lot of people before, so yesterday during the day I didn’t approach you at school—I was afraid you’d think I was just another liar!” He looked frantic. “But… but last night I couldn’t let it go. No matter how I thought about it, I felt I had to talk to you. Right now you’re probably the only person who might actually believe me…”

  “Last night—suddenly?” I caught the key detail. “Around what time?”

  “Huh? Uh… probably around ten o’clock?” he said uncertainly.

  That was right when I first encountered Alice.

  If both Chang'an and Alice were telling the truth, then originally I should have completely missed out on this bizarre incident involving my friend. Yet because of Alice’s supposed “jinx constitution” drawing calamity toward her, Chang'an—who was nowhere near us—suddenly changed his mind and came knocking at my door with this story?

  There were plenty of suspicious elements in Chang'an’s account, but at the same time, it aligned eerily well with what Alice had claimed…

  As I mentally pieced together the possible connection between the two events, I said to him, “Talk is cheap. Take me to your place and let me see for myself.”

  “Okay, but…” He hesitated.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t the whole reason you came to me so I’d go with you and check out that apartment again?”

  “…Yeah. I’m convinced it wasn’t just a hallucination or nightmare from being alone. It was real. I was hoping you could help me prove it…” He admitted it first, then grew uncertain again. “But if it doesn’t show up this time either…”

  “Just take me there.” I spoke firmly. “I promise—even if there’s nothing under the carpet, I won’t blame you.”

  With me putting it that way, he had no room left to argue. After a quick meal at the cha chaan teng, we headed straight for the apartment.

  We passed through the complex entrance, went through the building’s security door, took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor. Chang'an unlocked the target unit and led me inside.

  For a place where someone had been brutally murdered, it looked surprisingly ordinary—almost lived-in now, thanks to Chang'an’s recent occupancy. In plain terms: there was more clutter. Wrinkled clothes and pants were tossed on the sofa; the trash can overflowed with takeout boxes still smeared with sauce and rice grains.

  Right between the sofa and the TV lay the black shag carpet he’d mentioned. It looked like any old, worn rug, with a few large brown English letters printed across it that spelled out “CARPET.”

  “So… I’m going to lift it now.” Chang'an swallowed hard.

  I wasn’t about to touch anything without permission in his home, so I just urged him verbally: “Go ahead.”

  It took him a good ten or fifteen seconds to steel himself. Then he crouched down, grabbed the edges of the carpet with both hands, and yanked it back in one swift motion.

  Beneath the carpet, on the floor, was a complex pattern drawn in thick black paint—a magic circle.

  And right in the center of that circle sat a light brown wooden hatch.