FROM ZHIHU: soup base-horror-1 Cow Eating Grass

A married couple was quarreling at home. The wife, in a fit of anger, started throwing things. The husband, enraged and furious, cut off her tongue with a knife. As his wife fled, he chopped off her arms and legs with an axe. After committing the act, the husband was stunned in place by his own abnormal brutality and the bloody scene. The wife, having escaped through the door but having lost her arms and legs, crawled across the grass toward the neighbor’s doorstep, biting grass with her teeth to drag herself forward bit by bit. After banging on the door and getting no help, she eventually bled to death. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-horror-2 The Lover

The lover was a man. Because the old man refused to divorce on the grounds that he couldn’t have children, the lover, in despair, went to the old man’s house, killed the old man’s son, and stuffed him into his own belly, using this method to prove that he was carrying the old man’s son. The words written on the wall were “I’m pregnant with your child.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-horror-3 Eyes

The station was a stronghold where a murder gang transferred important corpses. On that day, due to negligence during the transfer, a man accidentally wandered in. They removed the underground pipes of the toilet and converted it into a corpse storage room, with the exit being the floor tile directly in front of the man’s squatting pit. When the man was squatting, they happened to push a corpse out from the exit. The sound the man heard was the tile being knocked open, and then from under the door crack he saw the corpse rising slowly from the eyes. After pushing the corpse out, the criminals discovered the man and killed him to silence him. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-horror-4 Dog

The little girl was blind. At night a thief snuck into the house, killed the dog and hung it from the ceiling. The dripping sound was the dog bleeding, and what licked her hand was not her dog, but that person. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-horror-5 Toilet

Right after the murderer had just killed someone, he heard movement outside the toilet and knew someone had come to use it. To keep the body from being exposed, he pretended to be a cleaner on the night shift and used the corpse as a mop, turning his back and mopping the floor. At the time the toilet lighting was very dim, so the protagonist rushing in to relieve himself noticed nothing unusual—only a cleaner mopping the floor—and left after finishing. In reality, the murderer had stood the corpse upside down and, with his back to the man, was mopping the floor with the corpse’s hair. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-horror-6 Knocking Sound

Not long after the husband got out of the car, he was killed by a murderer. Out of extreme malice, the murderer hung the body on a tree above the car. Every two knocks on the car door were the sound of the wind swinging the husband’s corpse, whose feet bumped against the car door. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-horror-7 Thump Thump Thump

A thief snuck into a murderer’s house. At the time, the murderer was dragging a corpse up the stairs, and the thumping sounds were the corpse’s head being dragged upside down and hitting each step. When the murderer came in carrying the corpse upside down, the thief hiding under the bed met eyes with the upside-down head of the corpse and was scared out of his wits.

Note: Adapted from an internet-circulated horror soup of the same name. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-8 Don’t Look Back

One day the heroine was on the street when, right above her, people were arguing on a high-rise rooftop. Someone was accidentally pushed off the roof. The person who fell was torn into pieces by high-voltage wires and wire mesh, splattering blood and organs across the street. The friend behind the heroine saw it and frantically shouted to her. When the heroine turned around at the shout, she was drenched in the scattered limbs, organs, and blood—and a half-open head that had landed before her feet, its eyes wide open in death. Note: Original work by Mu Yu, active in many lateral thinking puzzle online groups, the “queen of heavy gore” in the groups (laughs). Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 souo base-horror-9 Love

The boy was already dead; what he was clutching was a severed hand, and the body was his mother’s. The boy and his mother had long suffered domestic violence from his father. The boy had been frail and sickly since childhood, and combined with the abuse, he had a deep psychological shadow—every night he had to hold his mother’s hand to fall asleep. One day, the mother finally couldn’t take it anymore and put sleeping pills in the teapot at home. Before going to bed, both the boy and his father drank the water from the teapot. That night, the boy again fell asleep holding his mother’s hand. The frail boy was the first to die from the overdose. When the mother got up at midnight to kill the father, she found the boy had already gone into rigor mortis and couldn’t be pried loose from her hand. In overwhelming grief, she first chopped off her own hand that the boy was holding, then turned and furiously hacked at the boy’s father. The room was covered in blood. The father, dismembered into pieces by the despairing mother, lay scattered everywhere. The one-handed mother leaned against the foot of the bed, gazing tenderly at the boy, waiting for the eyes that would never open again to open—and finally bled to death.

Note: This soup is one of the adaptations I’m more satisfied with. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-10 Twins

I have a split personality—a shy sister personality and a lively, cheerful younger sister personality. When dating him, sometimes I was the elder sister, sometimes the younger. To hide this, I told him we were twins. But what he liked was the younger sister. At the wedding, my mother said, “This is my only daughter, take good care of her.” The groom then learned the truth and went insane.

Note: Collected from the Douyin “是不是” team. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-11 Found You

Two families went to the mountains for a picnic. The little boy and little girl ran deep into the woods to play hide-and-seek. Their agreement was that whoever was found had to secretly pat the other on the back, and that person was not allowed to move. The little girl hid under a low tree that slanted down from the middle of the hillside. The boy spotted her from the slope, secretly climbed from his side of the branches to the treetop, and prepared to jump behind her to scare her. But climbing up, he slipped and fell, his neck getting stuck between branches. After suffocating to death, rigor mortis set in slowly, and his softening toes happened to rest on the girl’s back. The girl kept crouching with her ears covered, not noticing the faint struggling sounds above her head. When her back was touched, she thought she’d been found, so she stayed perfectly still.

Note: Original work by Shan Fazhang, inspired by sp-h-6 Knocking Sound. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-12 Triplets

The triplets looked exactly alike and had a close bond; the three brothers had always shared a bed. The death of the eldest triggered the mentally ill youngest brother. After several sleepless nights, the unbearable youngest brother split the middle brother down the middle, placing the left half of the corpse on the right side of the bed and the right half on the left side. He lay down to sleep in the middle; no matter which way he looked, he saw his brother’s intact profile.

Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-13 Love (II)

I am a doll, made from the skin of the daughter of the man’s corpse beside me. There was a family of three. Both the father and the daughter had hereditary mental illness. Because she was too young, the daughter couldn’t endure the torment and was in agony every day. The father, who had always loved his daughter deeply, couldn’t bear to watch her suffer daily, so he killed her and made a doll out of her skin to keep him company. When the mother found out, out of extreme terror she killed the father, saying, “Now you can be together forever.”

Note: Rewritten from the internet-circulated soup “Doll.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-14 Grandmother

Because of the rural preference for sons over daughters, the grandfather always treated his granddaughter coldly. When the granddaughter arrived at the house, that night he picked up a sickle to kill her. But the grandmother discovered this and hurried to stop him. The grandmother snatched the sickle and accidentally killed the grandfather. The girl was woken by the noise and asked her grandmother, who came in, what the sound was. The grandmother said she was harvesting wheat. Afterwards, the grandmother made the grandfather into a scarecrow and placed it in the field. A few days later, while helping her grandmother work in the field, the girl saw birds pecking at the scarecrow’s face. The disguise on the scarecrow’s face was pecked open, revealing the eyeballs of the grandfather’s corpse. The girl asked her grandmother, “Why do that scarecrow’s eyes look like Grandpa’s eyes?” Provoked by her granddaughter’s words, and driven by tremendous fear and guilt, the grandmother committed suicide in the dead of night. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-15 Someone by the Bed

I am a girl, and I killed my mother. The girl had suffered from severe mental confusion and autism since childhood. When she was little, due to the mental confusion she accidentally killed her older brother. Fearing her autism would worsen, the mother glossed over the incident, but the girl always harbored deep suspicion, believing her mother had killed her brother. The girl’s mental confusion was usually triggered by her deepening autism in the dead of night, so every night her mother secretly came over to watch whether the girl had fallen asleep peacefully. That day, the girl, waking in the middle of the night, finally discovered her mother. Believing her mother had come to kill her, terrified and unsettled, her mental confusion started again. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-16 Red

On the wall opposite her bed hung a poster with a pair of red eyes staring directly at her, but the wall behind the eyes was actually hollowed out. Living across the wall from her was a patient with red eyes; the eyes staring at her belonged to this patient. Every time she spaced out, she would keep staring at the eyes in the poster, while simultaneously being stared at fiercely by those eyes. At night she was also affected, constantly dreaming nightmares of red eyes, so she felt she was about to be driven mad. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-28 soup base-horror-17 The Actress

The TV was broadcasting news. It reported that a crazy fan, in order to chase the star, had peeled off his own skin and made it into a human-skin sofa to give to her—and that star was her. The actress lowered her head and looked at the soft human-skin sofa she was sitting on. In a scream of terror, she died of a sudden heart attack.

Note: From the friendly contribution of an overseas friend.

soup base-weird-1 Birthday

This person had been blind since birth. Once they went on an expedition and got stranded on a deserted island with no food. His friends lied, saying everyone had chopped off one of their own arms as food. He then offered his own arm willingly. On his birthday, when countless applause rang in his ears, he suddenly understood he had been deceived. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-2 Neighbor

The neighbor heard strange noises from the heroine’s house and called to tell her a thief might have broken in. The heroine returned home, searched, found nothing missing, and went to sleep at ease. In reality, the thief had stolen the spare key to her house. Entering at midnight, he came to her bedside and whispered softly in her ear, “What you actually lost is this key.” The woman died of a heart attack brought on by terror. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-3 Waterweed

A couple fell into the water by accident while playing by the river, but neither could swim. Struggling in the water, the man’s foot got tangled in waterweed. He only survived by desperately breaking free. The woman never came back up. Later, chatting with a fisherman, he was told the river had never had any waterweed. The man then realized that what had entangled him was not waterweed but the woman’s hair—she had been kicked down by him and died in the river. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-4 The Actress

The actress had once had her face disfigured. She raised a daughter in order to transplant the daughter’s facial skin onto her own face. The hat was her own; she put it on her daughter from time to time to measure the size of the daughter’s head. Once it fit just right, she could take her to the hospital for the facial transplant surgery. After the surgery, the daughter, grief-stricken and enraged, committed suicide. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-5 The Bride

The story takes place in the Tang Dynasty. The groom and bride grew up together as childhood sweethearts. After their engagement, the groom went to the capital to pursue fame and rank. He succeeded in becoming the top scholar and became an official, then returned joyfully—only to learn that the bride had been repeatedly violated by a gang of thugs who broke into her home. Unable to bear the humiliation, the bride hanged herself. The groom went from great joy to great sorrow. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-6 Snow Mountain

Of the two, one had been shot seven times, and the other had died by suicide. The one who committed suicide had somnambulism. On the first night, during a sleepwalking episode he killed his companion. Waking to find he had killed someone, he was terrified and dug a pit to bury the companion. On the second night, while sleepwalking again, he dug the companion out of the pit, fired a shot into the corpse, and went back to sleep. This repeated for seven full days. On the eighth day, unable to endure the horror any longer, he committed suicide without waiting for the rescue team. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-7 Worship

The child’s father was a magician who often performed cutting a person’s body apart with a knife and then reattaching it as if nothing had happened. Thus the child believed the magic was real. One day, while his father’s colleague was asleep, the child tried this trick. The child really chopped the person into pieces. When the father came back, Xiao Ming said to him, “How do I turn him back?” The father, in despair and guilt, committed suicide.

Note: Adapted from the internet-circulated soup “Magic.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-8 Note

The daughter had a mental illness; she was the one who killed her mother. The note was written by the mother. But it had been torn up and the order scrambled. The correct arrangement should be: “Dad, run fast, your daughter has gone mad.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-9 Spoon

This was a family that often received specialty items sent by relatives abroad. One day the grandmother died overseas, and the foreign relatives sent back her ashes in a jar. Since it was packed in a box together with health supplements, the family mistook it for a jar of supplements and ate it spoonful by spoonful on the table. When they finally realized they had been eating their own grandmother, everyone was horrified and began to vomit.

Note: From the WeChat public account “BlackStory黑故事.” Also, ashes are inorganic matter and strictly speaking harmful, but within the story’s setting they can be said to be non-toxic. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-10 Lost in the Woods

A family of three. The child was disabled from birth—born with only one leg. To keep their child from feeling inferior, the parents moved deep into the mountains. To create the illusion that people are born with one leg, the couple each chopped off one of their own legs. After the protagonist came to stay with them, to keep the child from finding out, the couple cut off one of the protagonist’s legs too while he was asleep. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-11 Green Teeth

The man was a mortician with somnambulism and pica. One night, during an episode, he dragged a corpse out of the morgue and ate it. After being scolded by his superior, to find out the cause of the disappearance, he marked another corpse with green paint. The next day, finding green paint in his own mouth, he realized he had eaten two corpses. In terror, he committed suicide. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-12 Morgue

There were three people in the story; one lay on a body cart. The three were medical students. That day was Man B’s birthday, and Men A and C agreed to celebrate it in a special way. So C pretended to be a corpse, and A asked B to help carry the “corpse.” When they reached the morgue, C suddenly jumped up, took out a hidden birthday cake, and shouted “SURPRISE.” B was so frightened he died of a heart attack. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-13 Blood

The man stayed on the top floor of a hotel. Some murderer had thrown a corpse into the hotel’s rooftop water tank, but due to improper handling, a large amount of blood flowed into the tank during the sinking process, mixing into the water.

Note: Adapted from the Los Angeles Cecil Hotel water tank body-sinking case. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-14 Decay

I am a police officer. Someone reported that the building had a strong odor for several days, so I came to check. In reality, a solitary old man lived alone at home and kept many stray cats. The neighbors often complained about the stench. One day, someone poisoned some fish and threw it at the old man’s door, intending to kill the cats. The old man saw the fish, thought it looked fresh, and ate it himself. He died of poisoning, and his body was eaten clean by the cats. Because they couldn’t get out, the cats died one by one inside the house, slowly rotting. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-15 Back to the Light of Day

Mr. So-and-so’s wife had been buried for years after her death. He prepared to open the coffin to hold the bone-collecting ceremony, but upon opening it, he found the coffin lid covered with scratches from his wife’s fingernails—meaning his wife had still been alive after burial and had suffocated to death in the coffin. Realizing this, the man committed suicide in despair and guilt. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-16 Neighbor (II)

I am a woman. My neighbor has synesthesia, specifically for sounds and images—he feels my voice is like a lemon, so when he looks at me, he sees me as a lemon.

Note: This soup originates from a Douban group.

Also, synesthesia is a neurological condition. When stimulated by the outside world, a normal person usually has only one sensory organ responding, whereas a synesthete has two or more. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-17 Punishment

She is my wife, and the punishment is eating human flesh. I am a psychotic serial killer who likes cooking meals with the rotting flesh of corpses. This is my deepest secret, and my wife knows nothing about it. That day, while eating, she said she had seen through my secret, so the punishment for lying was to keep eating the human-flesh dishes covering the table. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-weird-18 Sickness

The old man in the family favored sons over daughters. He had learned a folk remedy from somewhere—using the heart of a blood relative as a medicinal ingredient. So he killed his granddaughter and took her heart, making a medicinal soup for the grandson to drink. When the grandson couldn’t find his sister and pressed for answers, the old man confessed the truth. In despair and pain, the grandson chose to commit suicide. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-13 soup base-weird-19 Human Silhouette

I am a wanted murderer. I bought this haunted house cheaply and used the basement to hide corpses. Before killing, I burn out their eyes and tongues. That day, a man I hadn’t managed to kill ran out, but fortunately, they can’t get far. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-weird-20 The Prodigal Returns

I hated this man to death. Every day he was out chasing women. One day at home, when he was absorbed in a ball game and ignored all my shouting, rage made me lose my senses. I chopped off his head and turned it around on his neck to face me. I gazed infatuatedly at his gentleness, as if he still loved me as in the old days. Overjoyed.

Note: Adapted soup; the original story comes from a ghost story collection.

soup base-ratiocinate-1 Clue

The killer was the wife. Because the man had been a long-term drug addict, the wife could no longer endure it and wanted a divorce. So, while the man was dazed after taking drugs, she gave him another injection, knocking him unconscious. Then she pressed his thumb in red ink and stamped it on the divorce agreement. But the dosage was too large, and the man died on the spot. After realizing this, the wife had no choice but to stage a suicide scene. However, the forensic doctor found a clue on the feet proving the man did not commit suicide: if he had hanged himself, his feet would have hung limply with no force applied, and after rigor mortis the toes would point downward. But if he was killed, the feet would also be normal when rigor mortis set in. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-13 soup base-ratiocinate-2 The Tycoon

The tycoon was advanced in years, but his wife was still in her prime. She had an affair with the tycoon’s private physician, and they plotted the tycoon’s death to seize his property. The tycoon had long suffered from cardiovascular disease and had been taking aspirin for a long time. But because aspirin gradually impedes the transport of vitamin C in the body, he began to suffer from vitamin C deficiency. The tycoon asked the private physician to prescribe vitamin C, but by then the physician had already colluded with the wife, so all the “vitamin C” pills he prescribed were actually sleeping pills. The tycoon, old and frail, and further worsened by improper medication, eventually died from consuming a large amount of sleeping pills.

Note: Original author: 霹雳火. A precious deductive work; please respect the author’s copyright when using it.

Also, cardiovascular disease belongs to neurology, but the affected areas are very widespread—blood vessels, brain nerves, heart and lungs, etc.—and the symptoms also cover the whole body. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-14 soup base-ratiocinate-3 Pumpkin Lantern

What I hung were human heads—one belonging to my wife, and one to my psychiatrist. At the scene there were four pumpkin lanterns; two real pumpkins served as lamp holders for the corpses. My dear wife, in order to kick me out and embrace her true love—my psychiatrist—plotted together with him to send me to a psychiatric hospital under the diagnosis of cognitive disorder syndrome. But on Halloween, since all my tests showed I was normal, I was allowed home for the holiday. Returning home, I perfectly stumbled upon the love scene of these two bastards. I raised my axe, chopped off their heads, carved them into pumpkin lanterns, and hung them at my door as Halloween decorations, then placed the real pumpkin lanterns on their corpses. After all, in everyone’s eyes, I’m just a pitiful psychiatric patient with cognitive disorder; mistaking heads for pumpkin lanterns isn’t my fault, is it? But the question is—who knows whether I was really sick or not? After all, it was my psychiatrist himself who said so.

Note: Original author: 木鱼. An extremely precious original work; please respect the author’s copyright when using it.

Also: The detail of making heads into pumpkin lanterns can be imagined by yourself at the bottom. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-14 soup base-ratiocinate-4 White

I was walking my cat and came to a forest. Thick fog filled the air, and white powder was scattered all over the ground. I felt something was off and wanted to leave, but my cat suddenly broke free and ran off. I followed its direction deeper into the forest, but when I finally found it, I saw it being brutally tortured to death by a man with his back to me. Rage ignited my reason in an instant. Losing control, I picked up a stone at my feet and slammed it hard into the back of that man’s head. Blood splattered, and he fell to the ground with a thud. I wiped the blood off my face and silently buried the cat under a tree root nearby.

When I walked out of the foggy forest, I found myself surrounded by police with guns pointed at me. During the long wait that followed, their investigation results came back. They told me the white powder in the forest was a very potent hallucinogenic drug, so they concluded that I had accidentally inhaled a large amount of it, experienced intense hallucinations, and then killed the man and the cat. Thus I was transferred from the holding room to the medical ward, where I was observed and tested for subsequent drug reactions.

How long did those days last? I’ve started to lose track. Every time I wake up, white fills my vision. White ceilings, white walls, white sheets, and the white uniforms coming and going around me. It seemed my body was forever covered in tubes connected to huge, cold instruments. The initial confusion, the pain during the tests, and the despair of never being promised release, along with the endless white cage, drove me into madness.

I opened my eyes and stared blankly at the room before me. No instruments, no test tubes, nothing at all—as if I had just dreamed a very long dream, though even the dream’s shape I could no longer recall. Slowly trying to remember, I only vaguely saw myself running madly in the darkness, with no light. “Subject 0213, diagnosed with severe delusional disorder. Proceeding with this week’s fourth rehabilitation test, cumulative 381st.” “Subject 0213, basic tests complete. Beginning the customary questions. Do you remember what happened in the forest?” “I—I killed someone… and a cat.” “Was there white powder?” ”…What powder?” ”…” “Alright, questions complete. Your mental recovery is satisfactory; the estimated discharge date is near. Subject 0213, please return.” I slowly stood up. My turbid eyes swept across the room and finally landed on the iron window in the wall, where there was a faint light.

“Any other questions, Subject 0213?” “No… no.”

I stared at the doctor’s face in disbelief. The eyes hidden behind the mask glinted with a strange light. “You’re saying you toyed with me for so long, I spent so much time on this bed, and the final conclusion is that I actually have a mental illness?” “Unfortunately, but according to the monitoring data…” “You’re committing murder! I know very well whether I’m sick or not!” “What about the white powder? We found no such white powder in the forest at all.” “Impossible—I brought some back before… I have it on me, I remember clearly!” “That was just your hallucination. In reality, they were only some gravel.” “You—” “Please go pack up the clothes you left with us; the vehicle to transfer you is about to arrive.” In the room, I took off the hospital gown and changed into the clothes I had hastily thrown into the locker when I arrived. The car arrived.

I watched the gates of the psychiatric hospital. They threw me out there and hurried away. Out of habit, I reached into my pocket and felt a subtle touch. I opened my hand and saw some faint white powder unevenly distributed on my fingers, glinting faintly in the sunlight. I had been deceived.

I raised my hand high like a madman and rushed toward the gate. But the gate began to slowly close. “I have proof! I’m not mentally ill! Let me out! Listen to me—”

The hard gate shut, the gap closing, severing the last sliver of light.

Officer Hou, do you understand? Yes, sir. Remember, what you are doing now is right. It’s all for the highest interests. These are necessary sacrifices. Yes, sir. Complete the mission no matter what, at any cost. Yes, sir. At any cost, complete the mission!

In order to secretly research drugs that violate international conventions, Officer Hou was dispatched to ensure the mission went smoothly. This drug research had to be tested on people with a special blood type, and across the entire country, I was the only ordinary person detected with that blood type. So I was orchestrated into this performance. The white powder was the already-developed half-finished product. It only works on people with that special blood type, but it needs to contact the skin. So while I was away from home, they broke in, killed the cat, and sprinkled the powder on the cat. When I came back and found the cat dead, I went to the nearby forest in grief to bury it. But the drug’s effects began to take hold: the white mist I saw when entering the forest, the white powder on the ground, the cat that ran away, and the man torturing the cat—all of it was produced by the drug’s influence on me. Thus I was naturally put under research and observation. After the tests ended, I was thrown into a psychiatric hospital. Tormented by the drug, when the gate closed, my heart also fell into deathly silence. I don’t know whether I was really sick or not, and they don’t know either, nor do they need to.

In the psychiatric hospital, I lived each day as if it were a year. If numbness counts as a disease, then I am terminally ill.

END

Note: Original author: 小垂. An extremely precious original soup; please respect the author’s copyright when using it.

Also: I was never sick from start to finish. The aftereffects of the drug didn’t drive me mad either, but after enduring the painful process of the experiments and then being forcibly locked in a psychiatric hospital, I was repeatedly tortured into a half-mad, numb state. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-ratiocinate-5 Flush Sound

The family of three were drug dealers, and the male neighbor was their lookout. They used the mother’s body to smuggle drugs. Specifically, the mother swallowed capsule-shaped drugs in protective coating, then, back home, induced diarrhea to expel them. After expelling, she retrieved the drugs and flushed the rest of the waste down the toilet, repeating until all the drugs were expelled. But on the night of the incident, the mother discovered she was pregnant and no longer wanted to induce the purge. The father forced her to expel the drugs anyway. The son, hearing the mother’s resisting cries, argued with the father and then got into a fight with him. In despair, the mother induced the purge in the bathroom, causing a miscarriage. Weakened by prolonged induced purging, she ultimately bled to death. The son, because of his deep bond with his mother, jumped off the building in despair and died as well. The father, enraged and panicked, first fled to the male neighbor’s place and had the neighbor create a false lead that the son and mother had a bad relationship, to drag out the police investigation. Then he fled with all the drugs.

Note: Original author: 润子小姐. An extremely precious original soup that can rival the classic old soup “Cow Eating Grass”; please respect the author’s copyright when using it.

soup base-tale-1 Lake

My wife and I were both passionate about diving. After an emotional outburst that nearly smashed the whole house to pieces, I decided to get rid of her forever. But I didn’t know my wife had made the same decision as me. I invited my wife to dive in a remote deep lake, and she gladly agreed. We put on all our diving gear, dropped off the boat, and sank beneath the surface. The lake water was deep blue; the bottom, pitch black. My plan to kill my wife was to arrive at the lake bottom ahead of time, tie an iron chain to a rock, and later entangle her with it so she would stay at the bottom forever, where no one could find her. When I reached that spot, I was astonished to find my chain had disappeared—and then another chain silently wrapped around me. I turned around in shock and met my wife’s indifferent eyes behind her diving mask. It turned out my wife’s plan was to secretly follow me, and after I left, go down and hide the chain elsewhere. But my wife’s chain had no anchor; it couldn’t hold me at all. I tried to break free, yet suddenly I couldn’t breathe—my wife had shut off my oxygen tank behind my back while I was looking for the chain. In despair, I watched her swim toward me, only to be astonished to see her wrap the chain around herself too. We were pulled together by the chains. My wife suddenly smiled silently and gently embraced me. What I didn’t know was that my wife’s oxygen tank had been less than half full before we even went down. She never intended to return to the surface. When death is near and your life flashes before your eyes, you see the most profound scene from deep in your memory. And so I saw the scene of our first meeting underwater. My wife returned to the age when she smiled like a flower blooming in the deep water, her eyes brimming with starlight. Equally young, I swam toward her with a grin. The lake water was clear, and the bottom swayed. I suddenly embraced my wife back. We held each other tightly at the pitch-black lake bottom—no sound, no indifference.

That day was clear, and I said to this girl: I will love you forever, forever.

Note: The original story comes from a ghost story collection (exact source unknown). Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-tale-2 Christmas Eve

I’m an insurance salesman. As the year drew to a close, I nearly drove myself mad chasing my sales target. The appearance of a little girl gave me a bold idea: kill the little girl so that her parents would be filled with fear, which would help me sell insurance door to door. To make it look like a homicide, I took off the girl’s clothes (homicide is covered by insurance, but suicide is not). This also meant the key would fall into the killer’s hands. Before the girl’s parents could change their locks or flee the city, I began going door to door selling insurance. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-12 soup base-tale-3 One Million

The woman had suffered domestic violence for a long time. She took the family’s one million yuan and went to see her lover, but the lover happened to want to break up with her. On the train, the woman hid the box of money and kept the key herself. After getting off the train, she called her lover and learned the situation. She told him about the money and where it was hidden, then said, “If you want the key, come find me.” But she accidentally fell into the water and died. The lover found the box on the train, and a few days later found the woman’s body. However, because the body had swollen in the water, and the key was a necklace that had gotten stuck around her neck, the lover never found it in the end. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-13 soup base-tale-4 Regret

The first “he” was a police officer; the second “he” was the arsonist. Years ago, the man was separated from his daughter. Later he learned she had been abducted by a family. The man found this family, and to cover it up, they lied to him that his daughter had long been sold away. Enraged, the man set the entire village on fire that night, then surrendered himself. Later, the police identified that his daughter was in that village. What the police produced was a death list. The man saw his daughter’s name on it and, consumed by regret, committed suicide. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-14 soup base-tale-5 Lake (II)

I said, “The weather is so nice today, let’s go boating.” My boyfriend, as usual, drawled, “Why go boating? Isn’t strolling in the park good enough? It’s so troublesome, really.” Ah, so annoying. Why did I end up with such a lazy, troublesome boyfriend!

I turned my head away and sulked. My boyfriend helplessly tried to soothe me from the side. “Alright, alright—we’re already on the boat now, don’t be mad, honey. I’ll row and you watch the scenery, okay?” “It’s not purely because I’m lazy. I checked the weather forecast today—there might be a storm—” I whipped my head around and glared at my boyfriend. “How dare you make excuses! You’re just lazy, you big lazy pig!” Seeing my boyfriend’s helpless look, I suddenly felt it wasn’t interesting anymore. “I don’t want to row anymore. I want to go back.”

Okay, let’s go back.

A sudden rainstorm nearly capsized our little boat. In a short while, black clouds filled the sky. In a panic, I suddenly remembered that because we had rushed here, I had ignored my boyfriend’s protests and casually pointed at the smallest boat. So now, the little boat is about to capsize. “What are we going to do?” I found my voice already trembling with tears. “Don’t be afraid, I’m here.” My boyfriend’s voice had never made me feel this safe. I looked at my calm-faced boyfriend, and my tightly clenched heart suddenly loosened a little. But the very next moment, a fierce wave lifted our little boat! In the air, my mind went blank. I… was I going to just… But the next moment, I was back in a warm embrace. My boyfriend had jumped over and grabbed me the instant I was flung up—but he was supposed to be holding the oars! In despair, I watched the two oars slip into the water and vanish in an instant. In the storm, my boyfriend seemed to be talking, but in my despair I couldn’t understand a word. Yet those words seemed alive, each one drilling into my mind. “It’s okay, honey. You will definitely survive. Luckily you chose this fishing boat—I noticed an axe hanging on its side before we boarded. You’ll have to row yourself across later. My darling, be strong, okay?” Dazedly, I watched my boyfriend raise the axe. Suddenly I understood, and I rushed over like a madwoman, wailing. “Don’t—” “Don’t move, or I’ll cut wrong. Didn’t we agree? We’re going back.” “No, you can’t—Qing, don’t—” I was flung back against the boat frame by another fierce wave. “Don’t move.” My boyfriend looked at me sternly. Suddenly I couldn’t read his gaze anymore. I had thought I knew him well. His laziness, his easygoing nature, and the memories of never having been scolded by him—all vanished in that stern look. “Promise me, go back alive with them.” Blood splattered out, mixing with tears and blurring my eyes.

Okay, we’re going back.

I rowed numbly and lifelessly. The storm still roared in my ears. The raindrops seemed to lighten a little, yet also seemed to keep falling madly. Lines of red trailed behind the sides of the little boat, soon swallowed by the surging lake.

Why are you slacking off again, you big lazy pig? Get up! Alright, honey, stop messing around and let me sleep a little longer. Just a little. Sleep, sleep, sleep—that’s all you know! What will you do if one day you never wake up! It’s fine. Just call me when you wake up. I don’t mind.

Honey. What is it now? I won’t call you. I’m leaving, hmph. I love you.

END

Note: Original work by the star 小垂, her debut piece. The answerer did a trivial bit of story polishing on top of it; its prototype is her own dream. A precious original soup.

Also: In the end, the boyfriend cut off his own two legs to let the heroine use them as oars, and to lighten the boat, he voluntarily fell into the lake.

soup base-taste-1 Lateral Thinking Soup

The boy went out to sea with his father. Midway, they hit a storm. In his dying moments, the father cooked a bowl of soup from his own flesh and lied to his son that it was turtle soup. The father sacrificed himself to save the child. After reaching shore safely, the boy went to a restaurant and ordered a real bowl of turtle soup. Finding it wasn’t the same taste, he suddenly understood and committed suicide.

Note: One of the internet-circulated versions; another famous version is “Penguin Meat.” They are mostly adapted from the original “First Bowl of Soup” (collected in the fourth template). Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-2 Fine Meal

I am a lion. Human clothes are inedible garbage to me. Today’s garbage is plentiful because there’s an extra big backpack—it belongs to a skydiver who fell to his death on the grassland because his parachute didn’t open. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-3 Hair Bow

The little girl’s mother was having an affair. She agreed with her lover that whenever the girl’s father was not home, she would put a hair bow on the little girl as a signal, so the lover could sneak over for the affair. Because the little girl couldn’t tie a hair bow herself, the signal always worked. But that day, the little girl’s teacher put a hair bow on her, making the lover mistakenly believe the girl’s father wasn’t home, so he was exposed. The girl’s father killed the lover in a fit of rage. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-4 Half a Match

A group of people traveled by hot air balloon into the desert. On the return trip, fuel ran low and they had to reduce weight. After throwing out all the luggage, they still needed the weight of one more person. So the group decided to draw lots with matches. Whoever drew the half-match would jump out on his own. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-5 Shoes

She was a woman who went out wearing high heels. She was also a blindfolded dart-throwing performer at the circus. That day, because she was late, she hurried onto the stage without changing her shoes. Since her partner had always been used to her previous height, once blindfolded, he didn’t know the girl had changed height by wearing high heels. This led to the girl’s accidental death. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-6 Apple

The girl came from a single-parent family, and the relationship between father and daughter was very strained. To mend the relationship, the girl specially made an apple carving as a gift for her father. But the father had no interest in her artwork; he took it and ate it on a whim. The girl had forgotten to remove the blade she used to support the carving, so the father died with the sharp blade cutting through his throat. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-7 Note

The man lost his way in the desert. He stuck a note on a cactus to use as a trail marker. But after a long time, he unknowingly circled back and found the marked cactus. Knowing he could never get out of the desert, he committed suicide in despair. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-8 At Sea

The little girl was the codename of a typhoon. She died at sea, and everyone on the surrounding land was overjoyed. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-9 Flower Tea

The male host invited his wife and his friend over for tea. The blue cup was his wife’s; the green one was his friend’s. In the story’s background, the wife was having an affair with the male host’s friend. The wife thought the host had noticed, so she poisoned his red flower tea in advance. But the host had long known about the wife’s poisoning. So he added baking soda to his own red flower tea, turning it blue, and added lemon juice to his wife’s blue flower tea, turning it red. Thus the wife died. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-10 Light

The protagonist’s wife had a heart condition. In the middle of the night, she suddenly suffered heart failure. In an emergency, the man rushed her to the nearest small private hospital. After the wife was put on a ventilator, the man waited in the corridor. The light going out instantly meant the hospital had suffered a power outage, and since it was a small hospital without backup power, the life the ventilator sustained also died out. Realizing there was nothing to be done, the man broke down in an instant.

Note: A soup that suddenly made me very sad during adaptation. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-11 bird

He woke up on a plane that had already begun its descent, and the bird was only one dangerous distance away from the plane. The earlier dream can be understood as a psychological hint of what was about to happen.

Note: Adapted from 焦糖小姐’s original soup “A Bird,” collected from the WeChat public account “海龟汤推理大师.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-12 Rescue

The girl wore sandals with a small pebble inside, so she leaned against something on the side to try to shake it out. But she didn’t notice she was leaning against a utility pole. The man behind her saw her shaking constantly and thought she was being electrocuted, so he hurried over and pulled her away from the source of electricity. The girl thought she was about to be raped by a bad man, so she screamed desperately.

Note: Collected and adapted from “少女路边被袭” by 焦糖小姐 of 海龟汤推理大师. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-13 Chicken

The old man was a schizophrenic. By day he was a hardworking farmer; at night he believed he was various animals. One night he thought he was a weasel and ate a chicken raw. The next day, the same—he ate two. On the third day, after eating three chickens, he went to the river to drink. Because he was too stuffed, he toppled headfirst into the river and drowned. His body washed downstream and was found stranded on the riverbank. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-14 Rooftop

Both people were on the rooftop of the psychiatric hospital. The first held a stone; the other believed he was a stone. He thought the stone in the first person’s hand was his girlfriend. To rescue his girlfriend, he also threw himself off the rooftop. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-15 Piercing

The man died by suicide, using a sharp ice pick. After the ice pick melted into water, it vanished without a trace.

Note: Collected and adapted from 焦糖小姐’s “死后一滩水.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-16 Grassland and Gun

The man fired a shot at the foot of a snowy mountain, triggering an avalanche. Buried, he suffocated to death. Only when the snow melted in spring was his body found on the grassland. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-17 Broken

The two corpses were two fish. The killer was a little boy who accidentally knocked over the fish tank. Crying, he stumbled off to find his mother. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-18 Black

When I got home, the house was too dark, so I went to turn on the light. Because there was a gas leak, the moment I turned on the light there was an explosion, and I entered eternal darkness. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-19 Affair

The wife planned to go to her best friend’s house—but her husband was having an affair with that friend. When the wife took her iPad into the friend’s room, she found the Wi-Fi had connected automatically. And her husband had said he had never been to the friend’s house. That was the only flaw on the iPad. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-20 Regret

I am a woman about to give birth, who died of dystocia. According to my dying wish, my eyes and corneas were donated to others. The recipient held the murderer—my child—and, looking through my eyes at my surgical records and death certificate, shed tears. I did not die; I just changed the way I look at the world.

Note: Collected and adapted from “被杀记录” by our original star 木鱼小姐. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-21 The Drunkard

The drunkard was a building-block enthusiast who kept a monkey at home. That day, due to his sleeping posture after getting thoroughly drunk, his mouth was wide open. Influenced by its master’s usual behavior, the monkey interpreted the “hole” in his face as a block base, and crammed a pile of building blocks into it. The drunkard suffocated to death in his sleep.

Note: This one may cause misunderstanding of heaviness; please use with caution. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-22 Inside the Window

I am a diver. I was outside the window of a severely leaking submarine on the seabed, looking inside, where corpses and objects floated in the water. The reason was that this submarine had once suffered a shipwreck. In the end, only two people remained in the cabin, waiting for the water to slowly flood in. There was only one bullet left in the pistol, and neither wanted to drown, so they decided by playing cards who could use the gun to end their own life. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-23 Drowning

This man was practicing diving in a river in the forest. It happened that a nearby forest caught fire. When the dispatched firefighting plane was drawing water from the river, the diver was sucked in by the centrifugal force of the pump and drowned. His body was rolled into the water bucket and sprayed deep into the forest. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-24 Incense

The man was a beekeeper who worked in the mountains. Under the influence of a strongly stimulating perfume scent, and with his familiar scent masked, the bees became aggressive and eventually stung him madly.

Note: Collected and adapted from 焦糖小姐’s “致命香水.” Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-taste-25 Busy Tone

A repair shop had just changed the tires on a woman’s car, but in a hurry they forgot to tighten the lug nuts. When the mechanic remembered, he quickly called the woman, but every call went to a busy tone. It turned out the woman had been talking to her lover on the phone after driving off. On a sharp turn on the road, the wheel lost control, and an accident happened.

Note: Collected and adapted from “BlackStory黑故事.”

soup base-fairy-1 The Red Queen’s Tea Party

Since returning from Wonderland to the real world, it seemed a long time had passed. Alice often wondered whether it had really all been just a dream. She went to the lake as usual to read. One day, while walking in the forest, the ground suddenly gave way beneath her. First came the endless fall, and then the wind so familiar, rushing past her ears.

When she woke again, the Mad Hatter was already standing before her.

He said the Red Queen had flown into a rage upon learning Alice had again trespassed into her domain, and decreed that if she wanted to leave, she must play a card-drawing game at the tea party. Win, and she would be released; otherwise, she would be beheaded. “Don’t be afraid, I’ll help you.” The Mad Hatter gently stroked Alice’s golden hair.

The tea party began. The maids laid out the playing cards in a row. The Red Queen sneered: “Three chances. Draw the ace of hearts, and I’ll let you go.” Alice drew two cards, and neither was it. In despair, she remembered the Mad Hatter’s words—he had said he bribed the maid to place the winning card as the first one.

Alice turned over the first card. A red A appeared before her eyes. Alice threw it to the Red Queen in relief. The Red Queen glanced at it, then tossed the card to the ground. The guards leaned in for a look: the ace of spades.

The executioner’s axe fell, and the golden head rolled to the ground. In Alice’s eyes, dilated with confusion and fear, was reflected the Red Queen’s cruel, wanton smile.

The Mad Hatter admired the scene, took a bite of a butter biscuit, and reveled in the dopamine being secreted.

Alice, you’re still as naive as ever. Even though you’re red-black colorblind, you had no guard against this card. But ever since you abandoned me and returned to your world that time, I have been tormented by longing and resentment. I was really about to go mad. So this time, you can finally never leave again, right?

But I didn’t lie to you—this card really is the winning card.

The gushing blood dyed the blooming roses even more beautiful. The Mad Hatter stood up and looked at Alice. Her empty eyes seemed still to be gazing back at him.

“Alice, why is a raven like a writing desk?” “Why don’t you stay, and keep me company forever?”

Note: Original work by 小垂, inspired by her own dreams. An extremely precious original work; please respect the author’s copyright when using it.

Also: In the original Alice in Wonderland, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” is a confession of love, meaning “I love you for no reason.” So the gist of the Mad Hatter’s words in the riddle is: now you know how much I love you, don’t you?

soup base-event-1 The Hand-Chopper

A shipwreck occurred at sea. The protagonist was on a lifeboat, but it had already reached its capacity. Many drowning people kept swimming over, trying to grab hold of the lifeboat. To keep the lifeboat from capsizing, the man had no choice but to chop off the hands the drowning people reached out, one by one.

Note: Considered the first “news soup” of lateral thinking puzzles. Something like this happened when the Japanese battleship Yamato sank; similar accounts also appear in the Records of the Grand Historian regarding the Jin-Chu conflict during the Spring and Autumn period. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-event-2 Drowning

This area of the desert was planned for a dam. Water was channeled from a ravine and rushed into the desert, and that is how the vagrant was drowned.

Note: Adapted from a famous urban development scandal in American history. In the early 20th century, Los Angeles, located on the desert coast, lacked fresh water and needed a reservoir for water storage. Against this backdrop, developers cooperated with the city government to push through a dam project, diverting water from the distant Owens River Valley. Three points stand out: first, the developers reaped huge profits from contracting the government project. Second, to get the project approved, the developers went so far as to dump the reservoir’s stored water into the sea, worsening the city’s water crisis. Third, the developers bought large tracts of suburban desert cheaply, and the diverted water was used to turn it into land with water, reaping enormous profits. The incident led to the drying up of the Owens River Valley, historically known as the Rape of the Owens Valley. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-event-3 Ice Cream

The story takes place in the United States in the 1960s-70s. Children loved to crawl into old-style refrigerators to play. His little brother was only six. One day, the brother hid in the refrigerator, but the door was accidentally locked. The only ice cream in their family’s fridge was chocolate flavor, but that day he wanted a different flavor, so he went out to buy some. No one answered when the brother was in the fridge, and he died in the cold, airless environment.

Note: Adapted from a news case.

Also: In the US in the 1960s-70s, most households still used old-style refrigerators similar to safes. They used a latch system—once the outer door handle was latched vertically, it could not be opened from the inside. For cooling efficiency, the door sealed airtight, had excellent soundproofing, and also blocked air circulation. Thus anyone hiding inside was doomed to freezing and suffocation. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-event-4 Bridge

I am a Black man. The story takes place in America’s pioneering era. My home and the park are separated by a river. The bridge originally used for passage between the two places was rebuilt to be whites-only, forbidding Blacks and cars carrying Blacks.

Note: Adapted from a real event before the American civil rights movement. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-event-5 Wire

When a patient with a pacemaker underwent an MRI, the pacemaker’s lead was snapped by the powerful magnetic force generated by the resonance, causing death.

Note: From an Xinhua News report in August 2001, a real case in the United States.

Also, a pacemaker contains metal, which is why it can be attracted by the MRI’s magnetic force. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-event-6 Boy

While the boy was undergoing an MRI, an oxygen cylinder in the examination room that had not been secured was sucked into the machine by the powerful magnetic force and crushed the boy to death.

Note: From an Xinhua News report in August 2001, a real case in the United States.

Also, the oxygen cylinder is made of metal and is subject to magnetic attraction. Shan Fazhang Shan Fazhang​ (Author) Reply Shan Fazhang​ (Author) 2020-11-29 soup base-event-7 Quarrel

The story takes place in San Francisco. A is white, B is Black, and A’s whole family of three are vehement racists against Black people. One day, B bumped into A on the street, sparking a quarrel. A subjected B to severe racial insults. B bore a grudge. After stalking A for a few days, he knocked A unconscious from behind when A was alone and off guard, then took him to his own tattoo shop, tattooed his entire body black, and threw him out onto the street. When A woke, he staggered home. But the moment he entered, he scared his wife, who screamed for help. Before A could even try to explain, he was shot in the back and died. It turned out that A’s son, upon hearing his mother’s scream in the bedroom, grabbed the hunting rifle, climbed out the window, circled around outside the door, and slowly aimed the gun at the “Black man’s” back.

Note: Adapted from Guy Nattiv’s short film “Skin” (winner of the 91st Academy Awards).

FROM BILIBILI:

1. The Medical School Massacre

Riddle: In a medical school, A, B, and C were roommates. A had excellent grades and was the class monitor. B was physically frail. One day, someone discovered A and B’s bodies, and C went mad. Please deduce the full story.

Solution: The school recently had an anatomy exam. A had somnambulism and could learn knowledge while sleepwalking, which is why his grades were excellent. As class monitor, he had the key to the anatomy lab. B, worried about failing the exam, stole A’s key after everyone fell asleep and went to the anatomy lab to practice alone. The frail B, after practicing, simply slept on the dissection table without even closing the door. That night, A sleepwalked to the anatomy lab, intending to take his “anatomy exam.” While sleepwalking, A treated B as an experimental corpse, tied his limbs to the dissection table, and dissected him bit by bit. When A woke and found he had dissected B beyond recognition, unable to accept the fact, he killed himself with a knife. When roommate C got up the next morning and found A and B missing, he was very worried and went to look for them. In the open-door anatomy lab, he found the bloody mess of B and the suicide of A—and was scared out of his wits.

2. The Toilet You Can’t Leave

Riddle: Zhang San went to the toilet, but found he couldn’t leave.

Clue: Zhang San’s four inner monologues …Can I get out now? …Can I really get out? …No! I absolutely must not get out! …I think I can’t get out anymore…

Solution: Zhang San discovered someone outside the toilet was killing people. Being timid, he didn’t dare to intervene, so he couldn’t leave. After the killer finished, he seemed to leave, so it became possible to get out. But it turned out the killer had gone to get tools and returned to dismember the body and stuff it into a sack, so he couldn’t leave again. At this point, the corpse’s resentment gathered into a ghost, which killed the killer and then came for Zhang San in the toilet—because Zhang San hadn’t intervened when the killer was killing.

3. The Strange Cries in the Village

Riddle: In a certain village, every household had to turn off their lights after midnight. At the same time, strange cries would come in the dead of night. Even though the whole village was woken up, no one went out to look. What is the truth?

Solution: In the village lived a notoriously known psychotic murderer who was elusive and had night blindness, so the whole village had to turn off the lights at night. Since the murderer couldn’t find people in places without light, he used the strange cries to lure villagers into turning on their lights at night and then killed them.

4. The Sweet Soup Murder

Riddle: At dinner, Mary’s father complained that the soup her mother made was too sweet. That night, the mother died.

Solution: Mary was an extremist who could not tolerate anyone in the family being disloyal. Recently, Mary noticed her parents’ relationship was not as good as before, and she also found poison in the kitchen. Mary concluded that one of her parents must be trying to poison their partner. To find out who was disloyal to the family, Mary replaced the poison with sugar. As a result, that night the father was the one who got the sweet soup. So Mary poisoned the mother to death. Later, Mary learned that it was the father who had wanted to kill the mother, and he had already known Mary had discovered the poison. So he went along with it and let Mary personally kill her mother.

5. A Glass of Ice Water

Riddle: Xiao Cai walked into a restaurant and ordered a glass of ice water.

The waiter pulled out a gun and pointed it at him. He said thank you.

Why?

Solution: Xiao Cai had an unbearable hiccup and wanted to order a glass of ice water to stop it. So the waiter took out a fake gun to scare him. The hiccup was successfully scared away. Knowing the truth, Xiao Cai was extremely grateful.

(What weird thing got mixed in here!)

6. Knocking Sound

Riddle: Xiaomei and her husband Xiao Wang were traveling by car. Late at night, on a mountain road, the car broke down. Xiao Wang said he would walk ahead to the town to find a mechanic, and Xiaomei would stay in the car first. With no visibility outside the car, the couple agreed that Xiao Wang would knock on the car door three times when he returned, and Xiaomei would open it. After a while, Xiaomei heard many knocks, but never three at a time. Please deduce the full story.

Solution: Shortly after Xiao Wang left, he was killed by a psychotic murderer who had been waiting in ambush. Dragging his body back to the car, the killer hung him on a nearby tree. The wind was strong that day, so Xiao Wang’s head often hit the car door and bounced back to hit it many times.

7. The Abandoned Castle

Riddle: My friends and I agreed to go to the abandoned castle for a Halloween costume party, but in the end, only I was left… Please deduce the full story.

Solution: My friends and I agreed to play hide-and-seek. I searched for a long time and couldn’t find a good hiding place in the castle, so I decided to hide in a fake coffin to scare them. But I waited and waited, and no one came. When I tried to push open the coffin lid, I found it was locked. Only then did I realize something was wrong—my friends had sent me into a real coffin…

8. The Water You Dare Not Drink

Riddle: A man had been staying long-term at a hotel. One day, he no longer dared to drink the water at the hotel. Why?

Solution: One day, a woman went missing at this hotel. The police searched for a long time but couldn’t find her. It turned out the man had killed her and hidden her in the water tank on the hotel’s rooftop.

Adapted from the “Elisa Lam incident”

9. Gym

Riddle: Recently, fewer and fewer people came to the gym, but the owner’s mood kept getting better. Qian Zheng hurt himself a few days ago and went to the boss to ask for leave, where he discovered the boss’s secret… Please deduce the full story.

Solution: Qian Zheng fell while running on the treadmill and found that the treadmill belt was oozing oil. Smelling it carefully, it seemed to be human oil. Without thinking more, Qian Zheng went to the boss’s office to ask for leave, but found the person who had been there moments ago was gone. Unexpectedly, when flipping through the bookshelf, Qian Zheng accidentally opened the boss’s secret room. The scene before his eyes terrified him…

10. Three Brothers (A Classic That Lives On)

Riddle: A and B are twins. They are very close to C, and the three sleep in the same bed every day. One day, A dies of illness, and that night C kills B. Please deduce the full story.

Solution: After A died of illness, C, who slept between A and B every night, could not endure sleeping with no one on one side due to a psychological quirk. So he split B vertically in half. When sleeping, C placed B’s right half on his left side and B’s left half on his right side, to ensure the “sense of security” when sleeping. Author: 九十九克游码 https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv9200136/ Source: bilibili