What’s the scariest horror story you’ve ever experienced?

A man disappeared on a train to Xi’an on a business trip.

The police found that there was no information about the man on any trains leaving Beijing on the day of the incident, and the police also did not find any information about his accommodation in Xi’an…

It was not until 5:00 a.m. three days later that someone found an unconscious man beside the railway tracks 5 kilometers away from Beijing West Railway Station…

This man’s name is Zhao Ganxiang. This is his true experience. I recorded it and tell it to you.

My name is Zhao Ganxiang, male, 33 years old, from Tancheng County, Linyi, Shandong Province. I went to university in Beijing, majoring in journalism. After graduating in 2011, I was hired by a newspaper group. I resigned in 2016 and now work as a freelance writer, transforming from a financial reporter to a financial author.

I got married in 2015. My wife teaches Japanese. She is from the same hometown as me and also works in Beijing. My son is 5 years old and attends kindergarten in Tongzhou.

I am not a talkative person, even a little dull, but I am a hard-working person. In the second year after my marriage, I bought a house by the canal. It is 180 square meters, which is considered a good house in Beijing where every inch of land is valuable. Tongzhou also became a sub-center, so the house also appreciated in value.

After I quit my job, I have been writing at home, mainly about finance. If I were to use a metaphor, I would say I am more like a mole, busy with my head down every day, never caring about things that are beyond my control. Moreover, a person who pursues material life with all his strength rarely has a sick brain. People who are prone to go astray are often those who are noble, dissatisfied with the secular world, and live in their inner world. I say this mainly to emphasize that I am not a superstitious person at all.

I am a pragmatic person, but I experienced a bizarre thing two years ago. If you think about it carefully, the core of this incident exceeds all horror stories and movies.

I need to explain that I have written about this incident on my own media. I only gave a brief account of it at the time, and people didn’t seem to have any strong reactions. Some people even hinted in a sarcastic tone that I was making up rumors to attract attention and fans. I haven’t decided which school my son will go to, and my parents are in poor health. I have to bring them to Beijing to live with me, and the pressure is huge… I really don’t have the energy to make up stories for everyone.

I will try to be more detailed this time.

On July 18, 2019, I went on a business trip to Xi’an to attend the “Green Finance Silk Road Forum” held in the Chanba Ecological Zone.

Thinking back, I felt something was wrong after I left Beijing West Railway Station on G665. How should I put it? I suddenly became depressed and in a very bad mood. I felt that I would never come back. I called my wife and told her not to forget to pick up my son in the afternoon (he was in a summer after-school program, and I usually picked him up). She seemed to sense something and asked me what was wrong. I said it was okay, but I was worried. Later, she called me again and asked me what was wrong. I lied to her and said that I fell asleep after getting on the bus and had a very bad dream… She laughed at me.

But I was really a little sleepy at that time. I stayed up late to write the previous night and went to bed at around 2 a.m. I thought my bad mood was caused by lack of sleep, so I leaned on the second-class seat and planned to take a nap. But I felt the urge to pee again, so I went to the toilet before I fell asleep. Remember, I walked forward after leaving my seat, and the toilet was on the left side of the connection between the carriages. After I finished, I walked out and walked to the right to return to my seat. I was in the 6F of the 4th carriage, but I saw a man in his 50s sitting in my seat. He stuck his reading glasses on the tip of his nose and was watching a short video with a frown on his face. The sound of the external speaker was very loud. I asked him, “Is this your seat?” He looked up at me and said, “Yes.” I thought I had encountered the legendary seat-hogging person, so I asked him again, “Which carriage are you in?” He said, “Car 3.” I said, “Uncle, this is Car 4.” He was a little unhappy and said loudly, “Look again!”

I turned around and looked at the electronic screen in the carriage, and it really showed carriage 3.

I said “sorry” and quickly turned around and walked away, but I was very puzzled. I clearly walked forward when I went to the toilet, and walked backward after coming out. How did I end up in carriage 3?

After I walked into the next carriage, I saw a girl in a blue T-shirt. I remembered that she was sitting diagonally opposite me, next to the aisle. Then I was sure that I had walked into the wrong place. But how could this happen? Unless when I went to the toilet, the toilet moved from the left to the right, but from the direction of the train, it was still on the left. In addition, if it moved to the right, then when I returned, I should not see the faces of the passengers, but the backs of rows of chairs. After thinking about it, there was only one possibility left, that the toilet moved forward or backward, from the 4th carriage to the 3rd carriage…

After I found my seat, I planned to try the restroom again, but unexpectedly there was someone inside. I waited for a long time before a fat woman came out. I stepped in, locked the door, and counted quietly for dozens of seconds before coming out. I walked back in the same direction as before, and this time I was in the right direction.

I find that some weird things are always like this. They usually happen when you are not alert. When you find something is wrong, the more you think about it, the more confused you become, and you can only think that you remembered it wrong.

I returned to my seat and sat down, but still felt that I was probably too sleepy, which led to this misunderstanding, so I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again.

After a long time, a man’s voice appeared in the noise of the high-speed train, a little hoarse, he seemed to be calling someone, the other party should be a woman, he said he planned to take her to Sanya or something, from the tone of voice, you can tell that the two are not husband and wife. Being alone on the train is the best time to chat with your lover – you can’t do anything else, you need to kill time, your spouse is not around, there is no acquaintance around to eavesdrop, and you can catch up on what you owe in the past…

But I couldn’t understand what was going on.

This person told the other person a vicious incident, it seems that a man was cheated of tens of thousands of yuan by a marriage consultant, and he happened to meet the woman on the fourth floor of the mall. The woman was buying lipstick, and the man ran over and grabbed her. The two of them had an argument and a fight, and then many people gathered around, but no one stopped them. In the end, the man dragged the woman out of the store. At this time, the mall security guard ran over, and he pushed the woman off the glass fence in anger, and she fell to death on the spot…

There are always some tragedies in this society, nothing to be surprised about, but what surprised me was that he was talking about the day after tomorrow! He started like this: “The day after tomorrow, the man went to the mall next to his home to eat. He was going to the seventh floor for food and beverage, but when he got to the fourth floor, he saw the woman at first sight. She was trying on lipstick in a store…”

The hoarse voice came from behind me, at least one row of seats away. I needed to stand up to see him. In order not to drive away the sleepiness, I did not move and continued to listen.

Then he talked about the victim. She didn’t intend to buy lipstick. She went to the coffee shop on the first floor of the mall to meet someone. Her boss told her that the person who came to the blind date this time was a professor who had lived alone for many years and had a lot of savings. She must trap him. Since it was still early, she went to the fourth floor and planned to buy a lipstick…

If it weren’t for the time bug mentioned above, I would have thought that these two people were discussing a script on the phone. But I’m sure it wasn’t. The man was talking about something that hadn’t happened yet. For example, when he talked about the victim, he said, “Tomorrow her brother went to her house, and her little niece secretly took her favorite lipstick and scribbled on the wall, completely destroying the lipstick…”

In fact, my sleepiness had long passed and I became more and more alert as I listened.

Then the man talked about the victim’s little niece, and the content became more and more outrageous – she knew more or less from the adults’ conversation that her aunt’s death was related to lipstick, and she was very scared and depressed for a long time. When she grew up, she never wore lipstick, and expanded to not wearing makeup, and her personality became weird. She divorced three times, and her fourth marriage lasted just over two years before her husband died of illness…

Then the man talked about her husband. In fact, the niece had met her husband on the way to her aunt’s house with her father. He was also a little boy at the time. He raised a plastic gun and aimed at the niece: “Da da da da…”

That is to say, this is what will happen tomorrow.

Later, the man talked about the child of his niece and her second husband…

I finally stood up and looked diagonally behind me, but I didn’t see anyone talking on the phone. How strange. I sat down again and put on my headphones to block out the sound.

After passing Baoding East, I finally fell asleep listening to old Cantonese songs. I had a nightmare. It seemed that there was a very long wall made of red bricks, and I couldn’t see the end on either side. There were some random patterns carved on it. It was not high, just blocking my sight. I weighed my physical strength and I was sure I could climb over it, but I tried several times and couldn’t climb up. It seemed like a nightmare in itself…

Finally I arrived in Xi’an. This was my first time in the northwest. I felt it was a green city with loud voices everywhere. One of the sentences that impressed me the most was: “What’s wrong?”

I lived near the bell tower, and after going to the venue the next day, I was basically fine. In the evening, I went out for a walk alone, walked less than one stop away, ate a bowl of hot steamed bun, and then prepared to go back to the hotel. However, as I walked, I found that the street scenery was becoming more and more unfamiliar, and I was actually lost.

I went to a nearby optical shop to ask. There were three female employees inside, two in their thirties and one in her early twenties. They had never heard of the hotel I was staying in. After I came out, I saw a traffic policeman standing at a crossroads not far ahead. I walked over to ask him. The traffic policeman was young and handsome, and he said he didn’t know either. I took out the hotel access card and handed it to him. He looked at the address on it and said, “This place is far away. You can take a taxi there.”

I was a little confused and immediately remembered the experience of going to the toilet on the high-speed train. Could it be that I have Alzheimer’s disease at such a young age?

I asked the traffic police: “How far is it?”

He said, “This is the western suburbs, at least 15 kilometers away from your place.”

I said, “That’s not right… I didn’t walk far from the hotel.”

The traffic policeman showed a strange expression: “Then why did you come here?”

I thanked him, left the intersection, opened the navigation software on my phone, entered my hotel, and it was exactly as the traffic police said. Just then a taxi stopped next to me, and the driver asked loudly in a local accent: “Master, where are you going?”

I looked at him and suddenly shuddered – this person looked so familiar, I must have met him before, and not long ago, but I couldn’t remember who he was.

Seeing that I didn’t say anything, he showed a mocking expression that showed he was wary of locals and outsiders: “Tell me more.”

I asked him directly: “Have you seen me?”

He studied me for a moment, then said, “I was soliciting customers every day, I can’t remember.”

I looked at him and tried hard to recall the past: hotel…Green Finance Silk Road Forum…Big Wild Goose Pagoda…Tang Paradise…Pao Mo restaurant…I just couldn’t remember anything.

I said, “Think about it again. We must have met before.”

He said, “Are you going to leave or not?”

At that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that the driver in the dark blue uniform was the person on the 6F floor of carriage 3 on the high-speed train!

I said, “You really don’t remember me?”

He put the car in gear and was about to leave: “You are not sincere.”

Before he released the clutch, I opened the door and got in swiftly. Why is this person so similar to the one on the high-speed train? If I don’t figure this out, I will have an unsolvable knot in my heart.

He checked his watch and asked me, “Where is it?”

I said, “The Grand View Hotel near the clock tower.”

He started the car.

I then asked him, “Master, have you been out recently?”

He said casually, “I went to Beijing two months ago. What happened?”

I said, “When did you come back?”

He said, “I just came back after playing for three days. There’s nothing fun to do without a ball, and there are queues for everything.” Judging from his expression and tone, he really is a taxi driver.

I wanted to test him, so I suddenly said, “I’ll take the same high-speed train with you when you come back.”

He looked back at me in surprise and said, “Really?”

I said, “Have you forgotten? I took the wrong seat and thought your seat was mine.”

He looked back at me and said, “You got the wrong person, didn’t you?”

I asked him, “Are you in car 3?”

He said, “I can’t remember that.”

I looked at him in the rearview mirror and felt that he was indeed younger, about 40 years old. I asked him again: “Do you have a brother?”

He shook his head and said, “I only have two sisters.”

It seems that I just met two people who are quite similar.

After walking for a while, I asked, “How far is it?”

He said, “If there is no traffic jam at this time, we can arrive in minutes.”

I stopped talking. The neon lights outside flashed by in all colors, and I started to wonder in my heart again – I had only walked one stop from the hotel, so why did I get in a taxi?

Finally he slowed down the car and said, “We’re here.”

I looked up and felt a little dizzy – not an adjective, but really dizzy – I did see the sign of Hongjing Hotel, but this building and the surrounding environment were definitely not the hotel I stayed in. Could it be that there are two Hongjing Hotels in Xi’an? At that moment, I suddenly didn’t know where I was.

I said, “Master, this is not the place!”

He said, “That’s it.”

I said, “I told you before I got in the car, my hotel is near the clock tower!”

He drove the car forward, then crouched down slightly, pointed in the distance and said, “Isn’t that the clock tower?”

As expected, I saw the magnificent golden roof, which was less than 500 meters away from us. At that moment, I suddenly came to my senses and said, “Okay, I’ll go down and take a look.” Then I paid the fare and got off the bus.

The taxi drove away immediately.

I was left alone, and I looked around the hotel again. I was very sure that I had never seen it before, so I didn’t plan to continue looking. Anyway, I only had a briefcase in my hand, so I just found another hotel to stay in. It was already quite late, and there was a hotel in front of me… I simply walked in.

Register, standard room, show ID card… the magic happened again – I took the access card, it said 307, and my previous room at Hongjing Hotel was also 307! I took out the original access card and compared them, the two were exactly the same, including the address and phone number on them, I was a little annoyed at the time – is this a double charge?

I didn’t say anything, took the elevator to the third floor, tried the access card I had used before, no response, I tried the access card I just got, it opened, I pushed the door open, fortunately, the layout inside was different, the space here was smaller. I put my purse on the bed, picked up the phone and wanted to tell my wife about this strange thing, but I was afraid that she would worry, so I gave up, thought for a while, and went downstairs again.

I went to the front desk and asked the girl who had just registered me, “Is your hotel a chain?”

The girl shook her head and said, “No.”

I asked again, “Is there another Grandview Hotel nearby?”

The girl said, “Impossible?”

I took out the access card from my last stay at Grand View Hotel and handed it to her: “Take a look at this card.”

She took it, looked at it, and said, “This is the one in our hotel.”

I said, “No, this is from another Grandview Hotel.”

She swiped it in front of the computer and found something wrong. She probably thought it was a card I copied and she looked at me with a wary look.

I took the card, threw it directly into the trash can next to me, said, “Thank you,” and walked out.

Although I was extremely reluctant, I had to admit that something was wrong with this world. I didn’t dare to sleep. I wanted to go to the bell tower because the bell was used to ward off evil spirits. But after I left the hotel, I didn’t believe it anymore. Since the toilets on the high-speed train could be moved and the hotel could be replaced, was the bell tower still the same?

There was a barbecue stand opposite the hotel. There was no customer, but the owner was still busy there. I didn’t see the owner’s face clearly at first glance, but he looked up at me. I was stunned at that moment – wasn’t he the taxi driver who offered to take me? He was just wearing a white T-shirt and looked dirty.

Could it be that after buying his car, he came back to sell kebabs?

I suddenly understood why he drove away immediately after I got off the car. He must have been in a hurry to change his clothes.

When our eyes met, he couldn’t help laughing, then quickly avoided my gaze and lowered his head. He didn’t want me to notice that he was laughing. I relaxed for a moment. His smile had a hint of mischief, which was good. No matter what his purpose was, as long as I was sure he was a “human”, I wouldn’t be so scared. I walked straight towards him.

When I stood in front of him, he said casually, “Sit down.”

I looked at him carefully. No, although he looked very similar to the taxi driver, he was younger, probably around thirty years old. Could he be the driver’s younger brother?

I asked him directly: “Do you have a brother who drives a taxi?”

He said, “No.”

I asked again, “Do you have two sisters?”

He was stunned for a moment and asked, “How do you know?”

I suddenly had a terrifying guess – the three people I met were actually the same person! It was just that he was in different time periods. When he was about 30 years old, he set up a stall to sell mutton skewers. When he was about 40 years old, he changed his career to drive a taxi. When he was about 50 years old, he stopped working and traveled around…

The more I thought about it, the more scared I became. But the more I thought about it, the smoother it became. I had stayed at the Grand View Hotel many years later. It had been renovated, and the surrounding environment had completely changed. Of course, the access card from that time couldn’t open the door now…

So where am I? Not in space, but in time?

The stall owner stopped flipping the skewers and asked, “How do you know I have two sisters?”

I forced a smile and said, “Just a wild guess.”

He then lowered his head and continued to work, but muttered, “Ha hammer.”

I am a person who instinctively wants to run when I am scared. No, I have to go, I have to go back to Beijing, I have to go back to see my son. But how can I leave?

I left the barbecue stand and walked along the street while calling my wife. The phone rang for a long time but no one answered. It was only ten o’clock, and she shouldn’t be asleep. I checked my phone and called her again and again, but there was still no response. Suddenly, I thought – are she and I no longer in the same world?

I was confused for a while, and then I looked up Xi’an Railway Station on my phone. It was only 5 kilometers away, so I scanned an electric bicycle and rode there following the navigation.

I rode past Beida Street, West Fifth Road, Shangde Road… I was observing my surroundings along the way, trying to find any loopholes. The shops nearby were all brightly lit, the vehicles on the road were rushing forward, there were couples strolling on the sidewalk, and there were lonely people hurrying on their way… No one noticed my attention to them.

I came to the ticket hall of Xi’an Station, intending to buy the next ticket for T8, which departs at 22:52. However, it was summer vacation and there were no tickets. Just then, a young man came over and whispered, “Do you want a ticket? Do you want a ticket? Do you want a ticket?”

I looked at him warily. He didn’t look like the mysterious man in his 30s, 40s, or 50s that I had seen before. I was relieved. I asked him if he had any tickets for T8. He asked me to wait a moment and then immediately made a phone call. Soon, another scalper in his 20s ran in. Although he was very young, I immediately recognized him as the one selling kebabs! I seemed to have adapted to the logic of this world. I just looked at him curiously and was not very scared. To him, I was just an unlucky guy who couldn’t buy a train ticket. He asked me how many tickets I wanted. I said one. He looked around and took out the ticket to show me. I couldn’t tell whether it was real or fake, so I asked him how much it was. His quote was almost twice as expensive.

I paid him with my phone and whispered, “I didn’t expect you to buy train tickets.”

He didn’t pay attention to what I said. He took the money and walked out of the ticket office quickly.

I also walked out quickly. Passengers were coming and going in the square, and I never saw him again.

Then, I walked from the entrance to the waiting hall, found a chair to sit down, closed my eyes and continued to ponder this series of strange experiences. I believe that I did not travel through time. If this was decades ago, this scalper would not have traded with me through the phone. It seems that I witnessed a person’s future, present and past in a normal world. God knows what is going on.

At this time, I had no other thoughts and just wanted to return to Beijing as soon as possible.

I don’t know when I heard the sound of a game behind me. I looked back and saw a boy about ten years old sitting in the back seat, playing with his phone intently. I stared at him for a while, and my head started to feel dizzy again – if this boy stood with the man in his fifties on the 6F of Carriage 3 on the high-speed train, I would definitely not be able to tell that they were the same person, but after seeing the taxi driver, the stall owner selling kebabs, and the scalper selling train tickets, I immediately matched them up. That’s right, he was the scalper’s childhood!

Speaking of which, I found out that the stall owner selling mutton skewers was actually the taxi driver I had seen, and the older man on the 6F of Carriage 3 on the high-speed train. At that moment, I was really terrified. Later, when I saw the scalper and the boy in front of me, I was less and less afraid. You may not understand, but I am most afraid of becoming weird, and now I just saw a magical person who changed from old to young. At most, I entered a deformed world, but I think I am normal, and there is no problem.

Sitting next to the boy was a middle-aged man who looked quite honest. He should be the boy’s father. There was also a girl, about thirteen or fourteen years old, who was also playing games on her iPad.

I talked to the father and asked, “Brother, are these two children yours?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes, it’s summer vacation, take them to Shandong to have some fun.”

I pointed at the boy and said, “He plays the game very well.”

The boy was having fun and ignored the conversation between the adults. His father smiled and said, “We don’t let them play normally, so we let them go out.”

I said, “You only have these two children, right?”

He said, “There is also an older daughter who went to her grandmother’s home in Luoyang with her mother.”

I was even more certain that the boy had two sisters.

Just then, my train started checking tickets. Before I stood up and left, I took another look at the boy. He was concentrating on the operation and didn’t look at me. He was innocent and knew nothing about the strange things I was experiencing. And I felt a little sad. He must be full of dreams at his age, but I could see that his future was not bright…

The train I was on came from Chengdu. Many passengers were asleep. I found my upper bunk and climbed up.

Soon the train left Xi’an Station, and the noisy voices gradually died down, leaving only the “clang clang” sound of the train running and the snoring coming from an unknown bunk. At this time, I was eager to go home, and I thought that as long as I left Xi’an, everything would return to normal. I didn’t know that something even stranger was waiting for me.

I tossed and turned for more than an hour, still unable to sleep, and took out my cell phone to check. My wife hadn’t called me back, which was out of character for her. Then I had to pee again, so I climbed down carefully and staggered to the toilet at the end of the car.

After finishing the problem, I walked out. This time I was very cautious and looked carefully at the carriage number on the electronic screen. I only walked back to my bunk after making sure that there was no problem.

I went back to the upper bunk and lay down gently. The snoring continued, but there was also the sound of two women talking quietly. Their bunks should be next to each other. I listened for a while. One of them was a pregnant woman. She was 20 weeks pregnant. She already had two daughters, but her husband wanted a son, so she had this baby in her belly. The other one told her that it was best not to go out as much as possible at this time of year. The pregnant woman said that she wanted to vomit no matter what she ate, and she only craved the food cooked by her mother. This time she went back to her parents’ home in Luoyang.

An idea suddenly occurred to me: could the baby in this belly be the boy who played the game?

I don’t know the boy’s name, and the unborn child doesn’t have a name either, so I have no way to verify it, but I feel like my guess is right.

They chatted for a long time and finally stopped talking.

As I listened to the snoring sound, I continued to think wildly. I thought of Newton, Einstein, and Yang Zhenning. They all believed that there was a creator in this world. If there really was a creator, then why did he let me experience this confusion?

I just can’t figure it out.

Thanks to my powerful biological clock, I finally fell asleep in a daze.

I don’t know how long it was, but I suddenly woke up and found that the train had stopped. Which station was this? I woke up for a while and found that the snoring sound had disappeared. Did he get off the train? Then I turned my head and looked at the other upper bunk with the night light. It was empty. I suddenly had a premonition and quickly looked down. The middle bunk and the lower bunk were empty!

I sat up and climbed down the small ladder. The aisle was empty. I looked around. All the berths were empty! Is this the terminal? I looked outside. No, it was pitch black outside. There was no light.

My first thought was that some virus had leaked from the train, and everyone had escaped, except me. I grabbed a blanket to cover my mouth, then picked up my briefcase and ran forward. As expected, there was not a single passenger or staff member on the entire train. I was really panicked. I didn’t know how many carriages I had passed through, and finally came to the driver’s cab. There was a small round window on the light blue metal door, surrounded by sealing rings. I only saw a bunch of complicated operating instruments through it, and there was no driver, but I finally saw an open door and immediately ran out. Outside was the wilderness, with gravel near the rails, weeds a little further away, and darkness beyond.

Where have all the passengers gone?

What is this place?

I threw away the blanket and took out my phone to check. There was no signal. I walked slowly along the train until I found it stopped in front of a brick wall. I immediately remembered the dream I had. I walked quickly and stopped under the brick wall. I looked up and saw that it was about two meters high, a bit like a prison wall. I looked left and right but couldn’t see the end of the wall.

I took out my cell phone and took a picture of the wall. After taking the picture, I clicked it open and took a look. I was scared and broke out in a cold sweat. The wall was like a mirror – I was taking the picture in the photo.

I don’t dare to take pictures anymore. I want to climb over this wall. There is no reason. I believe that no matter who goes through my experience, they will think of climbing over it when faced with it.

I jumped up, grabbed the wall, did pull-ups, and then hooked one leg around the wall… and finally flipped over.

There were no buildings outside either. I took a photo of my feet with my phone and it looked like a desert. I looked into the distance and really didn’t dare to explore further into the darkness. After thinking about it, I climbed up the wall again and planned to come back, but before I jumped down, I was stunned – the train had disappeared, and I saw everyone and everything in this world!

What’s the meaning?

The logic of that space is really hard to describe. Everything I saw seemed to be displayed on some kind of screen, like countless surveillance screens, telling what is happening in every corner of the world, including everyone’s birth and death. The screen is two-dimensional, but the people and objects in it are three-dimensional, so it is difficult to distinguish true from false. Or it is a movie from multiple angles. I finished watching it in an instant, and all the plots are stored in my brain…Some people may ask, does it appear in the sky? Or is it like a movie in the countryside, with a huge screen? I can’t tell. This world is a bit like a pot, and everything happens in a hemispherical arc.

I suddenly realized that this wall was the end of the world, and outside was the universe. The most naive and terrifying thing was that this place was only separated from our world by an ordinary red brick wall!

Perhaps this is not something the human brain can bear. I immediately felt a splitting headache and my consciousness became increasingly blurred. At the last moment, I saw myself in this world. I was lying in a hospital in Beijing, in a vegetative state, and next to me was a man. He was the man sitting in seat 6F, carriage 3, but he looked older. I already knew his name was Hong Limin, and he was 64 years old this year…

I fell off the wall and lost consciousness immediately.

I woke up at noon on July 21. I was lying on the hospital bed and my wife was watching over me.

When I opened my eyes, my wife called me in a trembling voice: “Ganxiang?”

I had an oxygen mask on my face and was receiving an IV drip. I wanted to nod to her, but my neck wouldn’t work. Then I saw her running out and shouting loudly. She was calling for a doctor…

After I left Beijing, my wife couldn’t contact me, so she called the police. However, there was no information about me on the G665 train that day, nor on any other trains bound for Xi’an. Moreover, the police could not find any information about my accommodation in Xi’an, my registration at the “Green Finance Silk Road Forum”, or my return trip on T8.

It was not until around 5 a.m. on July 21 that someone found me unconscious next to the railway tracks 5 kilometers away from Beijing West Railway Station, on the inner side of the West Fourth Ring Road, probably near the first district of Beijing Railway Home. The person immediately called the police. I was then sent to Beijing Railway General Hospital. The police immediately contacted my wife. After she came over, I was in a vegetative state. She was terrified and thought I would never wake up…

So, what was the G665 train I took on July 18? What was the Xi’an I went to? What was the Hongjing Hotel I stayed at? What was the forum I attended? And what was the T8 train I took on July 20?

No matter what others say, I firmly believe that I have been to Xi’an, and that I have been to the outside world. That place is not without ups and downs, left and right, it is just like the outside of the wall of my community.

Pictures speak louder than words. As soon as I was able to move again, I asked my wife to get me my mobile phone. However, I searched through it and couldn’t find the “selfie” of me under the red brick wall!

At this point I was finally no longer so confident. It seemed that everything was just an illusion of my brain in some idling state. But why did I faint beside a railway track in downtown Beijing?

I was still not convinced, so I said to my wife, “So there are two people in this ward, right?”

The wife said, “Yes.”

I said, “He didn’t survive and died this morning, right?”

The wife was surprised: “Did you hear that?”

I said, “I didn’t hear it, I saw it.”

The wife said, “That means you have been awake for a long time!”

I said, “Go and see if his family members have left, and help me verify this – this person is from Xi’an, his name is Hong Limin, he is 64 years old this year, he is the third child in the family, he has two older sisters, his grandmother’s home is in Luoyang, when he was about ten years old, his father took him and one of his sisters to travel to Shandong, when he was about twenty years old, he sold train tickets at Xi’an Station, when he was about thirty years old, he sold kebabs near the bell tower, when he was about forty years old, he drove a taxi in Xi’an, and when he was about fifty years old, he came to Beijing at least once to visit his eldest sister, who married in Beijing. He has always had cerebrovascular disease, which caused impaired consciousness this year, and he came to Beijing for treatment again, but he didn’t expect to die here…”

The wife became increasingly confused: “Do you know this person?”

I said, “Go ask, quickly.”

She said, “Say it again, I can’t remember it.”

So I repeated it to her as if I were reciting it, and she ran out.

She came back more than half an hour later and told me that she had searched for a long time and found that the man’s family had already sent the body to the funeral home and had all left.

It’s over, there will be no evidence anymore.

I stayed in the hospital for two weeks and finally returned home. My father-in-law and mother-in-law helped take care of the children at my home, and they returned to Shandong after I was discharged from the hospital. As time passed, our family of three gradually returned to normal, and my consciousness was like a beginning of chaos. The illusions I had once had turned into the sky, and the reality before me turned into the earth. My brain became clearer and clearer.

There was only one small problem – when I was with my wife, I couldn’t help but talk about the strange things that happened after I fell into a coma. I found that every time my wife avoided my gaze. I asked her why, and she always said no.

About two months later, one night I was sleeping and she suddenly woke me up. I asked her, “Are you suffering from insomnia?”

She said, “Yeah.”

I said, “Then I’ll give you a great SPA.”

Every time she couldn’t sleep, I would give her a massage, and she would fall asleep while I was massaging her. It was very effective. I was about to get up, but she grabbed me and I said, “Don’t you want to?”

She hesitated for a long time before speaking: “Actually, when I was in the hospital, I found the family of the old man who was in the same ward with you.”

I immediately looked at her face and asked, “What did they say?”

The wife hesitated for a long time before saying, “The old man’s situation is exactly the same as what you said…”

I don’t know why, but at that moment my heart suddenly became desolate, just like the endless dark Gobi Desert outside the red brick wall I had been to.

Seeing that I didn’t say anything, my wife asked me in a low voice, “Do you know… anything else?”

I hugged her tightly and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

Yes, we know nothing.