My Roommate is a Non-Human | Chapter 35 | The Prophet's Warning | Novela.app

I watched as people were carried out one by one, my heart growing heavier with every stretcher. The first few were still able to walk. I spotted Lu Daoshi among the crowd. His glasses must have shattered; several bloody gashes traced the skin around his eye sockets. His complexion was ghastly, and his body was covered in bruises. I called his name, but he didn't react. His left hand remained pressed against his temple, his expression one of intense agony. After that, the vast majority were carried out on stretchers. The most severe cases were screaming incessantly with their eyes clamped shut. The color around their eyes looked unnatural, and blood seeped from the corners. My roommate nudged me. "So boring. Let’s go to class." I ignored him and walked straight to the ambulance where Lu Daoshi was being held. He had finished his initial examination and was holding a wet towel to his forehead. Seeing me, he made a gesture, and I sat down beside him. "What happened?" "I don't know." He seemed dazed. "The research lab is on the third floor. After I hung up your call, I started heading back. When I reached the second-floor landing, everything suddenly turned white. It was blindingly bright, coming from all directions. At the same time, there was this high-frequency sound—it vibrated so hard my ears hurt." He tilted his head to show me his ear canal. I took a cotton swab and wiped away the seeping blood. "I crouched there for a long time, not daring to open my eyes. It took about three minutes for the ringing to subside. By then, the floor above sounded like hell. The screaming was horrific." Then we overheard the nurses inside the ambulance whispering, "They're blind. It looks like their eyes were burned by something—completely melted." Lu Daoshi began to tremble. My dashingly wild, "shixiong" grave-digger, who usually looked like he could handle anything, was suddenly as fragile as a newborn chick. "What the hell was that thing?" he repeated over and over. I reached into my pocket and crumpled the oil painting in my hand. It wasn't a joke, nor was it some surrealist artistic expression. If Lu Daoshi hadn't stepped in to stop them yesterday, if those migrant workers had opened the coffin then, this painting would have become a reality. Because of various variables, the opening of the coffin had been delayed by a day and the location moved to the Humanities Building. Consequently, the ones whose eyes were scorched weren't the workers. I suddenly realized that the artist hadn't sent me these paintings to threaten me, but to warn me. The artist knew far more than I did. He wasn't a realist painter. He was a prophet. "How did you know there was something wrong with the coffin?" Lu Daoshi asked, scrutinizing me. I handed him the oil painting. Lu Daoshi looked at it in disbelief, yet he had no choice but to believe. "Who sent this to you?" "I don't know. I've received three of these paintings in a row. Some depicted things that had already happened, others things that hadn't yet, but they've all come true. He’s watching me from the shadows, and he seems to be able to... see the future." "Prophets have existed in every civilization," Lu Daoshi said after a long silence, his comment seemingly coming out of nowhere. "What?" "A Seer." "You've lost it..." He repeated himself. "Two-thirds of ancient sorcery and Daoist arts are correct, while eight or nine out of ten modern scientific theories are wrong." Lu Daoshi spoke with a firm, almost arrogant conviction. Normally, I would have thought he was drunk, but his eyes held a terrifyingly sober rationality. I swallowed my rebuttal. In a way, the person sending me those letters did indeed possess the gift of a prophet. "If he knew this would happen, then he must know who did it. I want to find the sender and get to the bottom of this." Lu Daoshi stared coldly at the doctor who had just stepped off an ambulance to announce a death. "I can't let those old professors die for nothing." By that afternoon, the university confirmed that everyone present at the coffin opening had died suddenly. The city authorities made a futile attempt to suppress the news, but netizens pushed it to the top of the trending charts, causing a massive uproar. Someone even posted a long article on Weibo linking this to the incidents involving Old Chu and Jin Mu. Our school became an overnight sensation for all the wrong reasons. Lu Daoshi and I had no time for that. He spent a full day and night rushing around without rest, trying to gather as much data and information as possible. All I could do was stay by his side. By the time dawn approached, we had a rough understanding of the sequence of events. The lethal element during the "explosion" was high-energy particle radiation. When the firefighters entered the archaeology lab, they found only completely carbonized paper and a crystal human skull inside the coffin. The crystal skull was a 1:1 scale replica of a human head, exquisitely crafted and perfectly recreating the cranial structure. The specialized government personnel measured the radiation levels on the skull; the readings were off the charts. Even more bizarrely, traces of radiation-shielding material were found inside the cypress coffin. Although most of it had been destroyed and the samples were few, it certainly didn't look like something from a hundred years ago. Did all that light and radiation come from the crystal skull? Was this a "pseudo-antique" premeditated murder? I voiced my doubts, but Lu Daoshi said, "Not necessarily." He downed a cup of coffee and tossed a thick stack of manuscripts onto the bar counter. I flipped through them randomly and found they were all related to a prominent local family from the late Qing and early Republican era—the Hong clan. "My mentor previously assigned me to do some archival research, so I have some understanding of the owner of that family cemetery. The Hong family produced a *juren* scholar in the late 1840s named Hong Xing. That’s when they began to prosper. However, that gentleman was unfortunately dispatched to the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area to serve as an official. A few years later, he was killed when his city fell during the Taiping Rebellion. The Hong family relied entirely on him, so they fell into ruin immediately." "So they didn't rise to power through officialdom?" "There are other accounts. Hong Xing left behind three sons. The only one with any records is the eldest, who later went to the coastal regions to trade. He became a comprador for the Portuguese and amassed a vast fortune. This eldest branch later had a son, who was the owner of that family cemetery: Hong Xincai. In his early years, Hong Xincai inherited his father's business and connections, continuing to work as a comprador in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area. But when he was around thirty, he went abroad." "Abroad? Back then? To Southeast Asia?" "No, further. No one knows exactly where he went. But I learned from a family letter that when he set sail from Zhoushan Port, he was aboard the *Princess Maria Theresa*. That wasn't a merchant vessel; it was an official Spanish warship. That same ship later participated in the Spanish-American War in Cuba." "Holy shit. He went to the Americas?" "Only three crystal skulls have ever been unearthed in the world, all of them in the Yucatan Peninsula. So, I’m wondering if this crystal skull was something Hong Xincai brought back from the Americas." "Damn." I remembered the gold coin Jin Mu had shown me in the dream; it also belonged to the Mesoamerican Olmec style. Was there a connection? "Supposedly, Hong Xincai traveled abroad for seven years. He never revealed his whereabouts during those seven years, not even to his family. When he returned, he brought tens of thousands in wealth to the Hong family. That is the real reason they remained prosperous until the end of the Qing Dynasty. After that, Hong Xincai never stepped foot outside the Hong estate again. He only personally oversaw one thing—the construction of the family cemetery. The county annals record various rumors about him from the people of that time; some are quite bizarre, claiming he didn't age for twenty years, but there's no way to verify that. However, the coffin was indeed empty." "Where is the crystal skull now?" "It was taken to the city museum's warehouse for further research and testing. It shouldn't appear in the public eye or any public spaces for the foreseeable future to avoid causing a panic." We both breathed a sigh of relief. Honestly, as the situation escalated, it was bound to alert the government eventually. Once the state machinery intervened, small-time citizens like us could step aside, right? At times like this, I felt an extraordinary amount of faith in the authorities. "So, how do we find the sender next?" Lu Daoshi asked me for the envelope of the last oil painting. There was a postmark on it—the stamp of the Rose Community post office. He waved at me. "We stake it out." Ever since the day I returned from the hospital, I had received one oil painting every day with perfect consistency. Considering the time it takes for local delivery, the sender must have mailed the letters the day before. We rushed to the Rose Community post office. They hadn't collected the mail yet. The staff said they usually emptied the mailboxes at 3:00 PM every day. However, when we asked to accompany them, they refused us quite sternly. I showed the clerk the envelope. "I receive one of these every day, but I don't know who’s sending them. This mail is starting to affect my life. I want to know the sender's true identity and address." The mailman took the envelope from my fingers and turned it over. "I've seen him a few times. He came to the post office to mail letters every day for the past few days. I asked him why he didn't write a name or address, and he said the recipient would know, and he promised it wasn't anything illegal, so I..." "Do you know who he is or where he lives?" The mailman shook his head. "He probably lives nearby." "What does he look like?" Lu Daoshi asked. A look of recollection crossed the mailman's face. "He’s a young man, tall and thin. He bundles up very tightly, though—wears a hat and covers his face with a scarf. I couldn't see his face." "What about his voice? Was it hissing, or hard to hear?" The mailman shook his head. "He was very articulate. His voice sounded quite young." "Is it someone you know?" Lu Daoshi asked me. I shook my head. When I heard "bundled up tightly with a hidden face," I thought of the monster that stole the letters from the dormitory mailboxes. But since he was tall, thin, and articulate, it probably wasn't that thing. Still, I couldn't deduce who it was from those few clues; the person was clearly trying to avoid being recognized. And he had succeeded. The mailman said, "Except for yesterday, he’s come every afternoon around three. Do you want to wait? If he uses the mailbox today like he did yesterday, I can help you keep an eye on which residential area he comes from. It’ll make it easier for you to corner him." We sat in the post office until 5:00 PM. The person never showed up. ***