"The layout of this house is wrong."
Meng Yifan finally caught on, his voice tight with dread. We filed out of the master bedroom together, our eyes fixed on the wall separating it from the study next door.
Most load-bearing walls in residential buildings are between 160 and 240 millimeters thick. But this one? It had to be close to a meter thick—1,000 millimeters, easy. No architect in their right mind would build a wall that thick for no reason. It was wasting at least three or four square meters of space in the master bedroom. Why would any developer throw away that much usable area?
And the worst part? The entire wall was hidden behind a massive, built-in wardrobe in the master bedroom. Like whoever put it there had wanted it to stay hidden.
We rushed back into the room, yanking open the wardrobe doors one by one. The inside was empty—no clothes, no boxes, nothing. The couple who'd bought the house must've cleared it out the second they'd decided to bail, never intending to set foot in this room again.
This wasn't some cheap, pre-fab wardrobe you could assemble and disassemble in an afternoon. It was custom-made, solid wood, built right into the wall with industrial-strength glue. To move it, you'd have to tear it apart piece by piece.
I ran my hand over the wood, marveling at how thick and sturdy it felt. It looked expensive—top-tier solid wood, though I didn't know enough about furniture to say what kind. I rapped my knuckles against the back panel, expecting a dull, solid thud. But when I pressed my palm against it, something felt off. My brow furrowed.
"Second Boss? What's wrong?" Meng Yifan asked, noticing my expression. The others leaned in, their curiosity mixing with fear.
I didn't answer. I just pressed harder, my fingers digging into the wood. And then—crack.
The back panel gave way under my hand, caving inward like wet cardboard. A chunk of rotting wood crumbled away, leaving a jagged hole, and the sickly sweet, cloying stench of decay hit me square in the face. My stomach turned.
"Holy shit, Second Boss! You broke it!" Xie Peng yelped, his voice shrill with panic. "We're gonna have to pay for that!"
Li Xingyang nodded vigorously, his face pale. "Yeah, that's custom wood! It'll cost a fortune to replace!"
They still didn't get it. They still thought this was just a broken wardrobe, just a costly mistake. But Meng Yifan and I? We'd both gone ice-cold, our blood turning to slush in our veins. Cold sweat dripped down my neck, soaking my shirt.
"Something seeped through the wall," I said, my voice barely a whisper, my eyes locked on the rotting hole I'd made. "Something that ate through solid wood like it was paper. Something that reeks."
I didn't need to say what it was. We both knew. And the thought of it made my skin crawl so bad I wanted to scratch it off my bones. This was bigger than a refund. Bigger than a lawsuit. This was the kind of thing that got the cops involved. Big, bad, homicide cops.
Meng Yifan didn't waste any time. He pulled out his phone, his hands shaking so bad he could barely tap the screen, and called Mr. Hu—the guy who'd bought the house. He didn't mince words, didn't mention the smell or the rotting wood or the wall that was way too thick. He just told him to get over here right away. Said we needed to talk about the refund.
Mr. Hu practically tripped over himself to agree. He showed up forty minutes later, alone—thank God his wife, the firecracker who'd screamed at us in the store, had stayed home. He was in his late forties, balding, with a nervous habit of twisting his wedding ring. He took one look at the hammer and crowbar we'd propped against the wall and paled.
"What the hell are you guys doing?" he asked, his voice cracking. "You gonna tear the place down?"
I ignored him, leading him straight to the master bedroom, straight to the wardrobe with the rotting hole in its back. "Mr. Hu, I need you to confirm something," I said, keeping my voice steady, though my hands were shaking. "This wardrobe was here when you bought the house, right? I showed it to you myself."
Mr. Hu nodded, his eyes darting from the wardrobe to the hole I'd made. "Yeah, it was here. Me and the wife thought it was a steal—solid wood, custom-built. We were short on cash after the down payment, so we kept it instead of replacing it. Why?"
I exchanged a glance with Meng Yifan. He nodded, his jaw tight. I took a deep breath, the stench of decay filling my lungs, and said the words that would change everything.
"I'm gonna tear this wardrobe apart," I said, my voice ringing out in the silent room. "And I need you to know—you can't sue us for the damage. Because behind this wardrobe… behind that wall… I think there's a body."
The words hung in the air, thick and heavy. Mr. Hu's eyes went wide as saucers. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. He looked like he'd been poleaxed. Like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. But he didn't try to stop us. He just stood there, frozen, as we grabbed the hammer and crowbar.
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang didn't need any more encouragement. They swung the crowbar into the rotting back panel, prying it loose piece by piece. It didn't take much—whatever had seeped through the wall had turned the solid wood to mush. Chunks of it crumbled to the floor, the stench growing stronger with every crack, every splinter, every creak.
And then—the wall was exposed.
A collective gasp went up from the room. Mr. Hu let out a strangled scream, jumping back so fast he tripped over his own feet and landed on his ass. Xie Peng and Li Xingyang dropped their tools, staring at the wall like they'd seen a ghost. Meng Yifan grabbed my shoulder, his fingers digging into my skin so hard it hurt, his face as white as a sheet.
The wall was covered in white latex paint. But the paint was bubbling. Swollen. Warped. And underneath it, underneath the cracked plaster and the rotting drywall, the shape of a human body was etched into the wall, clear as day. A woman's body, by the looks of it—curved, slender, her arms folded across her chest, her legs bent at the knees. Like she'd been stuffed into the wall alive.
Whoever had killed her had bricked her up inside the wall, covering her with cement and plaster and paint, then building the wardrobe right in front of it to hide the evidence. But over the years, her body had decomposed, and the fluids from her rotting flesh had seeped through the bricks, through the plaster, through the paint—through the solid wood wardrobe—leaving a perfect, ghastly outline of her final resting place.
The couple hadn't been crazy. They hadn't been imagining things. They'd felt eyes on them in the master bedroom because someone had been watching them. Someone who'd been trapped behind that wall, in the dark, for years.
"Chen Mo," Meng Yifan whispered, his voice shaking so bad I could barely understand him. He squeezed my shoulder, hard enough to bruise. "Call… call the cops. Now."
I didn't hesitate. I pulled out my phone, my hands shaking so violently I could barely dial the number, and pressed it to my ear. The sound of the dial tone echoed through the silent room, through the stench of decay, through the ghostly outline of the woman on the wall.
And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I heard it—the soft click-clack of high heels on hardwood floors, and the faint, scraping sound of someone plastering a wall.