Chapter 7

Just a few photos, but they brought a nameless, crushing dread.
She knew this wasn’t her view—it was the couple’s, the ones holding the camera. So why had Xiao Chen been pointing at them with that twisted, terrified look?
She kept going. Second to last.
The tightening focus showed every trace of fear on his face… and in his eyes: shock, disbelief, raw horror.
When she finally reached the last photo.
The frame didn’t zoom in further. From any angle, the last shot looked almost identical to the one before. As if two identical photos had been taken in a row.
But something felt off. She switched back to the previous one and flicked between the last few shots of Xiao Chen. At speed she could see it clearly: the shift from him turning his head to the series of micro-expressions—like a film, vivid, flickering, then twisting.
…
She stopped.
She fixed on the last photo.
Xiao Chen’s raised right hand—below his palm there was something. A faint dark patch.
It could easily be dust on the lens or a shadow when the photo was taken. So it looked the same as the one before.
But after flipping back and forth, her eyes caught something: in the brief gap between photos, those “dark patches” flickered into view.
Not only in the last photo. In almost every shot after Xiao Chen turned around, the same “patches” were there.
So small they could be a speck of dust or a spot of shadow from the trees.
Only in the last photo were they denser, more obvious.
She looked for a long time. She didn’t know what those spots in the photos were. She only felt something wrong, something eerie, creeping up her spine.
The more she looked, the more she sensed a fraction of the fear in Xiao Chen’s face—that indefinable, inexplicable wrongness…
Then the camera screen went black.
The battery indicator that had been blinking went out. The battery was dead.
She sat in the dark, her back soaked with sweat.
…
Flight RC3571, chartered by Hand-in-Hand Tours: 17 passengers in total. Scheduled to return on March 4th. All missing. Whereabouts unknown.
Photos of the passengers circulated online—their last images, taken at airport security. Frame after frame: many still smiling, excited; a young couple making faces at the camera.
Jiang Shan’s photo flashed past: delicate, pale, clearly young, with a life that should have been ahead of her.
The airport and airline were the first to notice. Flight HC3571, due to return on the 14th, had lost contact. The tower couldn’t reach the crew. They called the cave hotel. No answer.
With something this serious, the police were called at once. They tried to reach the hotel; when no one answered, they alerted local police to send someone to the cave hotel.
What happened next no one had expected. Local police reported that the cave hotel was empty—no guests, no staff.
And one of their officers had gone missing.
An officer had seen the footprints leading up the mountain and volunteered to search. He never came back.
…