Women’s menstrual blood was considered extremely dirty. Not only it could force evil spirits or ghosts to show up, but it could also force them to leave.
As we were in an emergency, I didn’t have time to consider politeness as I was worried that Wang Ping wouldn't want to cooperate with me.
Fortunately, Wang Ping reacted fast. She was stunned for a moment, but soon, she pulled herself together. After taking off her trousers, she threw them at me.
I caught the trousers and lashed them at the ghostly faces near me. The faces shrieked. Then, all the faces in the living room shrilled, and the countless faces surrounding us disappeared. It was as if they had just received an order to retreat.
It seemed those ghostly faces were just illusions. The otherworldly item should be somewhere in this living room. I got a hold of myself then rushed out to chase after them.
At this moment, all the ghostly faces in the living room were gone, but I vaguely saw a black shadow that slithered through the narrow slit between the door and the wall. It fled...
I had done a laborious job tonight to see the real face of the ghost. If I let it flee right now, I would be in great trouble later! I gritted my teeth and chased after the shadow.
As it was after midnight and almost dawn, the entire neighborhood was deadly silent. A few street lights stood against the darkness, which set off the ghostly silhouette of the night. To add to this eerie scene, the rain was even heavier than the evening. As soon as I got out of the door, I was almost drenched under the rain.
I casually wiped the rainwater off my face. The black shadow made a turn into a small alley. I immediately followed it. Most of the roads in this residential area were connected to apartment buildings. After a few steps, the shadow made another turn. It seemed to be heading to another building. I worriedly dashed after it. Suddenly, I stepped into a hole. My body sank immediately.
“Damn it! What’s this freaking pit doing here!” I cursed, as I had stepped and fallen into a manhole that didn’t have a cover. I tried to grab the edge of the manhole in an attempt to get up. However, a sharp pain shot up from my ankle. I guessed I got hurt when I stepped into this hole.
I turned on the flashlight on my phone and shone it around the place. I was surprised to see that it was a sewer. It was strange that I didn’t smell the typical, pungent smell of the sewage.
This sort of fake sewer was the great invention of some cheating contractor. In other words, this construction only had a hole and a chamber. There was no pipe connected to it.
Although I would snort at this sort of construction cheating, at this moment, I was glad that I wasn’t trapped in a real sewer. Otherwise, I would have died!
After confirming that there would be no danger, I heaved a sigh of relief. I sat down to recover my strength. Although I was worried that the ghostly faces could return to the house to affect Wang Ping, I wasn’t able to climb up this two or three-meter tall manhole in my current condition…
After resting for a while, I felt much better and my strength had recovered. I stood up and stretched my limbs. I was still lucky that this manhole was built roughly. There were many blocks of concrete here and there. I stepped on them and slowly got out of the hole.
Then, I ran as fast as I could to Wang Ping’s house while praying that she was safe and sound.
Fortunately, when I pushed the door open and entered the house, Wang Ping was sitting on the sofa with a worried face. I exhaled in relief that she was all right. Then, I slumped onto the ground, gasping for my breath. After I regained my strength, Wang Ping handed me her husbands’ clothes.
I washed and changed into warm clothes. It was almost dawn. Wang Ping cooked me a bowl of noodles. I didn’t mind the hot noodles and immediately dug in. After devouring all the food, I started to feel warmer.
When the sky was completely bright, I walked out to see. The rain had stopped. It should be a sunny day today.
Since that spirit seemed to be afraid of me, I was certain it wouldn’t show up during the day. I explained the situation to Wang Ping and asked her not to worry. I found a guest room to stay in.
Tonight, there should be a fierce battle. I needed to rest well to fully recover my strength!
There was only one bedroom on the first floor. Naturally, I went to the guest room on the second floor. When I walked past Wang Ping’s son’s room, I vaguely caught a clue. However, I couldn’t figure out what it was. After shaking my head, I went to the next room. As soon as my head touched the bed, I fell asleep.
Not after five minutes of laying down, my phone rang. I reached for the phone and accepted the call. I asked grumpily, “Who is it?”
“Mr. Zhang, there’s been another murder!”
I sprang up from the bed when I heard Captain Liu’s calm voice over the phone. I rushed out of the house and didn’t even inform Wang Ping.
When I arrived at the police station, Captain Liu was with Xiaolin and a few more policemen. They were about to leave the station. Captain Liu saw me and helped me get in the police car. On the way, he briefed me about the situation.
The one who had reported the murder case was a twelve-year-old little girl. She found her father dead on the sofa in the living room. However, the kid couldn’t explain the situation well enough. The policeman on duty had to ask her a few times to get her address.
After listening to him, I felt a big, heavy rock press on my chest. Yesterday, when I saw Wang Ping, I had thought that those ghostly crying faces were the evil spirits that had killed the seven people. I hadn’t expected that after one night of staying up and fighting against that evil spirit, there would be another victim found the next day…
Chief Liu saw that I had kept silent. He patted my shoulder and comforted me. “Mr. Zhang, don’t feel rushed or worried. Let’s discuss this when we get to the murder scene.”
I nodded, but my mind was chaotic.
After around one hour, the car stopped in front of a villa residential area. Captain Liu showed his police ID card to the security guard, who then let us in.
The murder took place in a village at the edge of this villa neighborhood. As soon as they arrived at the scene, the group of policemen and technicians began to work. Some hurried to pull the cordons. Some talked and comforted the little girl. A group of technicians and policemen started to check the victim’s remains.
I put on disposable gloves and shoe covers before entering the crime scene. I checked around to assess the arrangement of the villa and then went to see the body.
I shook my head in disgust when I saw the blood streak on the ground and the pieces of chopped flesh.
Although I had often made contact with dead things, and I’d seen dead people before, it was the first time I had ever seen this kind of mutilated corpse. It was chopped into pieces like KFC fried chicken. Inexplicably, I felt a little pressure.
Then, I went to a forensic doctor who was packing up his tools. I asked, “Before the victim died, was he frightened?”
The forensic didn’t know my identity and assumed that I was a young criminal policeman. Perhaps he had been working as a forensic doctor for quite a long time that he was immune to seeing corpses. He faintly told me, “It’s true that the deceased was frightened terribly. I suspect he was scared to death before he was minced like this.”
Then, he picked up his toolbox and left. The chopped body was put into a plastic bag and carried away. They needed to hurry to find the clues from the victim’s remains, which would help conclude the case early.
After checking the entire scene, Captain Liu decided to leave two policemen here to take records. He wanted me to leave with him, but I shook my head and expressed my wish to stay and join the oral confession recording with the policemen.
I didn’t understand criminal investigations, nor was I interested in this field. I just wanted to stay to see if I could capture some clues from their conversation.
It was because I found that the cut marks on the deceased’s remains were similar to the wounds the crying faces had left on Wang Ping’s face. They weren’t big wounds. They were small but there were so many of them. That was why they could gnaw the entire body into pieces as big as fingernails.
Chief Liu agreed as I had insisted on staying. Since there were so many corpse-chopping murder cases, he was so busy that he wished he could fly to move faster. He asked me to take care then left with the others.
After that, the two policemen started to take the oral confessions from the four maids in this villa. They weren’t really suspicious. Except for an aunty who was the chef here, the others didn’t stay during the nights in the villa.
Before the aunty woke up this morning, she was startled by the little girl’s scream. There was nothing in the crime scene that was related to her or showed that she committed the crime.
The deceased’s daughter was called Yuan Yuan. She was a twelve-year-old girl. She still had a pale face. It seemed her father’s death was a great shock to her.
As the policemen were afraid of scaring her, they talked softly to her. The girl was still frightened, but her words were clear and orderly. She described how she went downstairs and the moment she saw her father dead. Then, she asked the police when they could find the murderer.
After listening to her, I couldn’t help but study the little girl. Her reaction was really strange! Apart from looking scared, there was no other emotion on her face. The victim was her father. Shouldn’t she be mournful for him?
Right when I was about to ask her about her relationship with her father, I saw a small shadow on the second floor through the corner of my eye. It looked the same as the shadow I had chased last night. I didn’t say anything, but brought the Yin and Yang Umbrella with me and rushed upstairs.
As the black shadow had nakedly appeared during the day like this, I didn’t dare to be careless. I borrowed a police badge from a policeman. The police represented justice. Their aura could scare evil spirits. This badge should do the work!
That dark shadow moved very fast. In the blink of an eye, it had crossed the corridor on the second floor and moved into the dark depths. I was worried that it could lurk somewhere to ambush me. I opened the Yin and Yang Umbrella and carefully followed it.
After passing a room, the shadow halted for a while. Then, I heard the laughter of children playing. “Haha!”
The black shadow turned and threw me a look. Since the distance was far and the corridor on the second floor was poorly lit, I couldn’t see its face. However, I could vaguely capture the shape of a chubby boy wearing coarse hemp garments. He looked around seven or eight years old.
The black shadow grinned at me, then turned into wisps of smoke before entering the room through the slit at the door. I was so worried that he would hurt the kid inside the room. I immediately rushed to the room. The door was locked. I knocked on the door, but no one answered.
I hesitated for a while. Resolutely, I dashed downstairs and asked a maid for the key. She gave me a chain of keys. I didn’t have time to find the right one, so I directly pulled her upstairs.
When we reached the room, no matter how hard I asked, she didn’t want to open the door. I knew something wasn’t right. I threatened her that if she didn’t open the door, she could be guilty as the accomplice. Feeling helpless, she had to unlock the door…
However, once the door was pushed open, there was no dark shadow inside. Strangely, I had heard kids playing there. But now, there was no one in this room!
I was restlessly worried that the dark shadow had already taken the kid away. I asked the maid to run around to look for the kid. Then, I headed toward the direction of the thickest Yin energy.
Unexpectedly, after taking two steps, the maid pulled me back and held my arm tightly. She looked frightened and gazed at me. Then, she spoke and emphasized each word. “There is no other kid in this house…”
I was bewildered and recognized that her face didn’t look quite right. After asking her for a while, I learned that the deceased had a son and a daughter. The daughter was Yuan Yuan, the girl we had met downstairs. The son had died in this room a few days after his first birthday.
I felt things were even more bizarre. There were four maids in this house. Why didn’t anyone pay attention to the little boy?
“How did the boy named Tian Tian die?” I asked.
The maid shook her head and sighed in regret. “That poor boy choked on his milk. He was alone in this room. No one had realized it. When he was found, there was no chance of saving him…”
“Where were his parents?”
The maid sarcastically answered my question. “That day, his parents were attending a high-class banquet. They didn’t care about their son… Poor little Tian Tian. When they found him, his body had turned purple. It was terrible!”
As I had lingered for quite a long time, I knew I couldn’t chase after the little shadow. I chatted with the maid for a while. In the end, I learned that the owners of this villa didn’t come home more than once a week. Every day, they would keep their business in their heads and neglect their family and their children.
Today, the husband was dead, but the wife hadn’t shown up yet. There was an eighty percent possibility that she was drunk and resting somewhere.
After listening to the story of this family, I felt emotional. After thinking about little Tian Tian, who was just months old and was neglected since his parents were busy with their social party, my heart sank.
It was just as the maid had told me. It’s the children who suffer from their parents’ bad actions!
Women’s menstrual blood was considered extremely dirty. Not only it could force evil spirits or ghosts to show up, but it could also force them to leave.
As we were in an emergency, I didn’t have time to consider politeness as I was worried that Wang Ping wouldn't want to cooperate with me.
Fortunately, Wang Ping reacted fast. She was stunned for a moment, but soon, she pulled herself together. After taking off her trousers, she threw them at me.
I caught the trousers and lashed them at the ghostly faces near me. The faces shrieked. Then, all the faces in the living room shrilled, and the countless faces surrounding us disappeared. It was as if they had just received an order to retreat.
It seemed those ghostly faces were just illusions. The otherworldly item should be somewhere in this living room. I got a hold of myself then rushed out to chase after them.
At this moment, all the ghostly faces in the living room were gone, but I vaguely saw a black shadow that slithered through the narrow slit between the door and the wall. It fled...
I had done a laborious job tonight to see the real face of the ghost. If I let it flee right now, I would be in great trouble later! I gritted my teeth and chased after the shadow.
As it was after midnight and almost dawn, the entire neighborhood was deadly silent. A few street lights stood against the darkness, which set off the ghostly silhouette of the night. To add to this eerie scene, the rain was even heavier than the evening. As soon as I got out of the door, I was almost drenched under the rain.
I casually wiped the rainwater off my face. The black shadow made a turn into a small alley. I immediately followed it. Most of the roads in this residential area were connected to apartment buildings. After a few steps, the shadow made another turn. It seemed to be heading to another building. I worriedly dashed after it. Suddenly, I stepped into a hole. My body sank immediately.
“Damn it! What’s this freaking pit doing here!” I cursed, as I had stepped and fallen into a manhole that didn’t have a cover. I tried to grab the edge of the manhole in an attempt to get up. However, a sharp pain shot up from my ankle. I guessed I got hurt when I stepped into this hole.
I turned on the flashlight on my phone and shone it around the place. I was surprised to see that it was a sewer. It was strange that I didn’t smell the typical, pungent smell of the sewage.
This sort of fake sewer was the great invention of some cheating contractor. In other words, this construction only had a hole and a chamber. There was no pipe connected to it.
Although I would snort at this sort of construction cheating, at this moment, I was glad that I wasn’t trapped in a real sewer. Otherwise, I would have died!
After confirming that there would be no danger, I heaved a sigh of relief. I sat down to recover my strength. Although I was worried that the ghostly faces could return to the house to affect Wang Ping, I wasn’t able to climb up this two or three-meter tall manhole in my current condition…
After resting for a while, I felt much better and my strength had recovered. I stood up and stretched my limbs. I was still lucky that this manhole was built roughly. There were many blocks of concrete here and there. I stepped on them and slowly got out of the hole.
Then, I ran as fast as I could to Wang Ping’s house while praying that she was safe and sound.
Fortunately, when I pushed the door open and entered the house, Wang Ping was sitting on the sofa with a worried face. I exhaled in relief that she was all right. Then, I slumped onto the ground, gasping for my breath. After I regained my strength, Wang Ping handed me her husbands’ clothes.
I washed and changed into warm clothes. It was almost dawn. Wang Ping cooked me a bowl of noodles. I didn’t mind the hot noodles and immediately dug in. After devouring all the food, I started to feel warmer.
When the sky was completely bright, I walked out to see. The rain had stopped. It should be a sunny day today.
Since that spirit seemed to be afraid of me, I was certain it wouldn’t show up during the day. I explained the situation to Wang Ping and asked her not to worry. I found a guest room to stay in.
Tonight, there should be a fierce battle. I needed to rest well to fully recover my strength!
There was only one bedroom on the first floor. Naturally, I went to the guest room on the second floor. When I walked past Wang Ping’s son’s room, I vaguely caught a clue. However, I couldn’t figure out what it was. After shaking my head, I went to the next room. As soon as my head touched the bed, I fell asleep.
Not after five minutes of laying down, my phone rang. I reached for the phone and accepted the call. I asked grumpily, “Who is it?”
“Mr. Zhang, there’s been another murder!”
I sprang up from the bed when I heard Captain Liu’s calm voice over the phone. I rushed out of the house and didn’t even inform Wang Ping.
When I arrived at the police station, Captain Liu was with Xiaolin and a few more policemen. They were about to leave the station. Captain Liu saw me and helped me get in the police car. On the way, he briefed me about the situation.
The one who had reported the murder case was a twelve-year-old little girl. She found her father dead on the sofa in the living room. However, the kid couldn’t explain the situation well enough. The policeman on duty had to ask her a few times to get her address.
After listening to him, I felt a big, heavy rock press on my chest. Yesterday, when I saw Wang Ping, I had thought that those ghostly crying faces were the evil spirits that had killed the seven people. I hadn’t expected that after one night of staying up and fighting against that evil spirit, there would be another victim found the next day…
Chief Liu saw that I had kept silent. He patted my shoulder and comforted me. “Mr. Zhang, don’t feel rushed or worried. Let’s discuss this when we get to the murder scene.”
I nodded, but my mind was chaotic.
After around one hour, the car stopped in front of a villa residential area. Captain Liu showed his police ID card to the security guard, who then let us in.
The murder took place in a village at the edge of this villa neighborhood. As soon as they arrived at the scene, the group of policemen and technicians began to work. Some hurried to pull the cordons. Some talked and comforted the little girl. A group of technicians and policemen started to check the victim’s remains.
I put on disposable gloves and shoe covers before entering the crime scene. I checked around to assess the arrangement of the villa and then went to see the body.
I shook my head in disgust when I saw the blood streak on the ground and the pieces of chopped flesh.
Although I had often made contact with dead things, and I’d seen dead people before, it was the first time I had ever seen this kind of mutilated corpse. It was chopped into pieces like KFC fried chicken. Inexplicably, I felt a little pressure.
Then, I went to a forensic doctor who was packing up his tools. I asked, “Before the victim died, was he frightened?”
The forensic didn’t know my identity and assumed that I was a young criminal policeman. Perhaps he had been working as a forensic doctor for quite a long time that he was immune to seeing corpses. He faintly told me, “It’s true that the deceased was frightened terribly. I suspect he was scared to death before he was minced like this.”
Then, he picked up his toolbox and left. The chopped body was put into a plastic bag and carried away. They needed to hurry to find the clues from the victim’s remains, which would help conclude the case early.
After checking the entire scene, Captain Liu decided to leave two policemen here to take records. He wanted me to leave with him, but I shook my head and expressed my wish to stay and join the oral confession recording with the policemen.
I didn’t understand criminal investigations, nor was I interested in this field. I just wanted to stay to see if I could capture some clues from their conversation.
It was because I found that the cut marks on the deceased’s remains were similar to the wounds the crying faces had left on Wang Ping’s face. They weren’t big wounds. They were small but there were so many of them. That was why they could gnaw the entire body into pieces as big as fingernails.
Chief Liu agreed as I had insisted on staying. Since there were so many corpse-chopping murder cases, he was so busy that he wished he could fly to move faster. He asked me to take care then left with the others.
After that, the two policemen started to take the oral confessions from the four maids in this villa. They weren’t really suspicious. Except for an aunty who was the chef here, the others didn’t stay during the nights in the villa.
Before the aunty woke up this morning, she was startled by the little girl’s scream. There was nothing in the crime scene that was related to her or showed that she committed the crime.
The deceased’s daughter was called Yuan Yuan. She was a twelve-year-old girl. She still had a pale face. It seemed her father’s death was a great shock to her.
As the policemen were afraid of scaring her, they talked softly to her. The girl was still frightened, but her words were clear and orderly. She described how she went downstairs and the moment she saw her father dead. Then, she asked the police when they could find the murderer.
After listening to her, I couldn’t help but study the little girl. Her reaction was really strange! Apart from looking scared, there was no other emotion on her face. The victim was her father. Shouldn’t she be mournful for him?
Right when I was about to ask her about her relationship with her father, I saw a small shadow on the second floor through the corner of my eye. It looked the same as the shadow I had chased last night. I didn’t say anything, but brought the Yin and Yang Umbrella with me and rushed upstairs.
As the black shadow had nakedly appeared during the day like this, I didn’t dare to be careless. I borrowed a police badge from a policeman. The police represented justice. Their aura could scare evil spirits. This badge should do the work!
That dark shadow moved very fast. In the blink of an eye, it had crossed the corridor on the second floor and moved into the dark depths. I was worried that it could lurk somewhere to ambush me. I opened the Yin and Yang Umbrella and carefully followed it.
After passing a room, the shadow halted for a while. Then, I heard the laughter of children playing. “Haha!”
The black shadow turned and threw me a look. Since the distance was far and the corridor on the second floor was poorly lit, I couldn’t see its face. However, I could vaguely capture the shape of a chubby boy wearing coarse hemp garments. He looked around seven or eight years old.
The black shadow grinned at me, then turned into wisps of smoke before entering the room through the slit at the door. I was so worried that he would hurt the kid inside the room. I immediately rushed to the room. The door was locked. I knocked on the door, but no one answered.
I hesitated for a while. Resolutely, I dashed downstairs and asked a maid for the key. She gave me a chain of keys. I didn’t have time to find the right one, so I directly pulled her upstairs.
When we reached the room, no matter how hard I asked, she didn’t want to open the door. I knew something wasn’t right. I threatened her that if she didn’t open the door, she could be guilty as the accomplice. Feeling helpless, she had to unlock the door…
However, once the door was pushed open, there was no dark shadow inside. Strangely, I had heard kids playing there. But now, there was no one in this room!
I was restlessly worried that the dark shadow had already taken the kid away. I asked the maid to run around to look for the kid. Then, I headed toward the direction of the thickest Yin energy.
Unexpectedly, after taking two steps, the maid pulled me back and held my arm tightly. She looked frightened and gazed at me. Then, she spoke and emphasized each word. “There is no other kid in this house…”
I was bewildered and recognized that her face didn’t look quite right. After asking her for a while, I learned that the deceased had a son and a daughter. The daughter was Yuan Yuan, the girl we had met downstairs. The son had died in this room a few days after his first birthday.
I felt things were even more bizarre. There were four maids in this house. Why didn’t anyone pay attention to the little boy?
“How did the boy named Tian Tian die?” I asked.
The maid shook her head and sighed in regret. “That poor boy choked on his milk. He was alone in this room. No one had realized it. When he was found, there was no chance of saving him…”
“Where were his parents?”
The maid sarcastically answered my question. “That day, his parents were attending a high-class banquet. They didn’t care about their son… Poor little Tian Tian. When they found him, his body had turned purple. It was terrible!”
As I had lingered for quite a long time, I knew I couldn’t chase after the little shadow. I chatted with the maid for a while. In the end, I learned that the owners of this villa didn’t come home more than once a week. Every day, they would keep their business in their heads and neglect their family and their children.
Today, the husband was dead, but the wife hadn’t shown up yet. There was an eighty percent possibility that she was drunk and resting somewhere.
After listening to the story of this family, I felt emotional. After thinking about little Tian Tian, who was just months old and was neglected since his parents were busy with their social party, my heart sank.
It was just as the maid had told me. It’s the children who suffer from their parents’ bad actions!
