Chapter 6 Full-Process Recording

Hearing this, Ning Shuyi hurriedly followed Huo Yan behind the crowd of onlookers. At the corner of the intersection, upon a large roadside boulder, she saw a woman sitting there, looking thoroughly terrified and trembling all over.

The woman appeared to be in her early thirties with fair skin, giving the impression of someone who took very good care of herself. While her features were not breathtakingly stunning, her large eyes were currently filled with fear, making her look quite pitiful.

She was dressed in a sports tracksuit and sneakers, making her look like someone who had come to the park for her daily brisk walking routine.

However, at the moment, she sat weakly on the rock with a mobile phone lying on the ground before her. She was staring fixedly at that phone, her face twisted in a deeply conflicted expression.

Sensing someone approaching, the woman jumped with a start and shuddered violently. When she raised her eyes and saw Huo Yan, she shivered again. It was only when she saw Ning Shuyi accompanying Huo Yan that the expression on her face relaxed just a fraction.

Huo Yan did not seem displeased by this reaction, appearing quite accustomed to it.

Ning Shuyi bent down to pick up the phone from the ground. It was the absolute newest model on the market, with advertisements plastered all over streets, alleys, buses, and subways—even someone like her, who was largely insensitive to technological upgrades, could recognize it.

"Is this your phone?" Ning Shuyi smiled at the woman, flashed her identification first, and then handed the phone over.

The woman bit her lip, her hand twitching as if she wanted to reach out and take the device, but then she recoiled slightly as if out of fear.

"The phone is mine," she said, her voice carrying a heavy, trembling quaver. "But... I don't dare touch it... My phone just recorded a dead person on video... I'm terrified!"

"Would you mind letting me have a look at the video you just recorded?" Ning Shuyi asked.

The woman nodded. "Okay, but... could you please turn the volume down a bit? Every time I hear that music from just now, it feels as though I'm seeing that scene all over again... Please don't laugh at me, I'm just so scared! I came out happily to exercise, came across a fun event, and took a video with my phone to show my husband. Who could have expected that out of nowhere, amid all that excitement, once the crowd dispersed... something like that would actually happen!"

She was evidently frightened out of her wits. As she spoke, her eyes reddened, and she looked as though she might burst into tears at any moment.

Realizing perhaps that she was being a bit unseemly, the woman hastily waved a hand at Ning Shuyi to signal that they should go ahead and watch it themselves. Then she wrapped her arms around herself, lowering her head as if trying to draw a greater sense of security from that posture.

Ning Shuyi and Huo Yan swiped open the woman's phone. To their surprise, the device had no fingerprint or passcode lock set, which saved them a good deal of trouble; otherwise, trying to get this badly frightened woman to help unlock it would have required yet another troublesome effort.

The phone had likely been dropped in fright right after capturing the dead person, leaving a crack across the screen, though it did not affect its functionality.

Upon opening, the interface was right on the photo album, and the latest video was right there—quite a lengthy one, lasting around twenty minutes.

Ning Shuyi tapped to play the video. It began with a lively atmosphere, showing people converging from all four directions of the crossroad, gathering together to the sound of booming music and upbeat rhythms.

The people gathering were clearly the performers of that flash mob. Though their appearance seemed casual at first, once they began to dance, their rhythm and movements were thoroughly professional. Matched with the joyful expressions on everyone's faces, it was all the more infectious.

Before long, a large crowd had gathered at the intersection. Initially, a few bewildered passersby who happened to be caught in the middle quickly realized an event was underway, prompting some to hastily move aside to the periphery to watch.

Others, filled with high spirits and choosing not to leave, simply wedged themselves right into the formation, learning on the fly and swaying their bodies along with the routine.

It was evident that the woman recording the video had been in high spirits at the time. Ning Shuyi turned the video volume down very low, but she could still hear the woman letting out cheers as she filmed.

More and more people gathered at the intersection, and the music grew increasingly bold and resonant. The dancers transitioned from initial uniform synchronization to an influx of outsiders joining in, twisting and turning in every conceivable dance style—it was simply bustling with life.

Soon, someone began tossing colored powder into the air, pushing the atmosphere both inside and outside the arena to an entirely new peak, with the music and joyful screams of the crowd echoing one after another.

In this manner, the flash mob continued in a joyous and lively atmosphere. After seventeen or eighteen minutes, near the end of the video, the music began to wind down. With an abrupt cessation of the music, the flash mob dancers quickly dispersed, and the people who had been sandwiched among them dancing also began to scatter in all directions.

At that moment, on the pavement of the intersection, a woman dressed in black was lying on the ground, becoming clearly visible as the surrounding crowd thinned out.

Someone ahead let out an "Ah," and people nearby began to notice the woman on the ground.

"What is going on here... Could someone have been crushed in the crush...?" The woman filming seemed equally baffled, muttering in a low, questioning voice, and even subconsciously taking a few steps forward to get a clearer look at what was happening.

Soon, someone nearby discovered the unusual state of the woman lying on the ground. Someone in the crowd called out, "It looks like someone's died," and the surrounding people rapidly scattered outward, terrified of getting too close to the woman on the ground.

The woman shooting the video was also startled. Accompanied by a sharp gasp of breath, the camera view suddenly spun dizzyingly before going completely black.

Most likely, at that exact moment, her phone had slipped from her hands out of sheer terror, hitting the ground and halting the recording.

Ning Shuyi rewound the video, watching the busiest segment of the crowd all over again. Unfortunately, the phone screen was rather small, and with dusk setting in and the light fading, watching it twice yielded no clues to anything abnormal.

"Can you send me this video you recorded?" Ning Shuyi asked the still-shivering woman.

The woman raised her head and looked at Ning Shuyi. "If I send it to you, can I delete and remove the original copy from my phone?"

"Yes," Ning Shuyi nodded at her.

"Great! No problem! Do whatever you need to do with it! Please go right ahead!" The woman nodded repeatedly in a flurry. "After you send it, could you kindly help me delete that video clip from my phone? Or better yet, just format my phone and restore it to factory settings—I don't even know what I should call it! My brain is completely numb from fright right now!"