Twenty minutes later, Xing Yong finally managed to find the remaining two sections of the paper man’s torso.
One had been pressed beneath the ventilation outlet at the bottom of the refrigerator, while the other was near the trash can beside the basement workbench.
Once the torso sections were pieced together, the horrific fate suffered by the original person on whom the paper effigy had been modeled became clear.
Not only had he been strangled, but a vehicle had repeatedly driven over his abdomen until he had been literally torn in half at the waist.
Jagged tears in flesh, shattered internal organs, thick blood, and tire tracks layered one over another all seemed horrifyingly alive beneath Zhang Cong’s meticulous brushwork.
It looked far too real, almost as though he had witnessed the scene with his own eyes.
Xing Yong’s brows knitted tightly together. Sitting astride the edge of the workbench, he carefully glued the severed limbs back together while keeping his phone on speaker. “Qin Shu, help me search whether a traffic case like this actually happened. Social media might not turn anything up. Log into my account and search internally.”
“Okay!” Qin Shu ran upstairs with his phone and switched on the computer he had not touched for two days.
He moved quickly, entered the internal site Xing Yong gave him, and searched several keywords, then paused. “…There are cases all over the country involving victims being killed by repeated vehicular crushing. Spur-of-the-moment rage crimes… There are so many I’ve never even heard of.”
“You’re surprised? Everyone’s got a string inside their head. It gets pulled tighter and tighter until one day it snaps, and then they go insane. Especially people without much money or anything in life to anchor them. The moment their pride takes a hit and humiliation turns into rage, their reason disperses like egg yolk in egg-drop soup… Those people love doing this kind of thing.”
Xing Yong grew somewhat reflective. He was still painstakingly joining the severed limbs when he accidentally got his hand □□ with glue, and the fabric stuck together so badly he almost could not pull it apart.
Elio’s Notes: The □□ appears this way in the original text and has therefore been preserved rather than reconstructed.
He jumped down from the table and paced while taking deep breaths before gritting his teeth and adding, “Search cases from before I was transferred to Jiangcheng. Seriously, my own sanity is about to dissolve too. Fuck. I’ve been terrible at handicrafts since I was a kid.”
“Okay, okay. Brother Yong, walk around a little. Maybe there are more clues. No rush.” Qin Shu suppressed his laughter as he reassured him, then turned back to the computer screen and continued searching backward along the case timeline.
With the lights on, the basement of the paper-effigy shop was not as terrifying as they had imagined, although calling it safe would also have been a stretch. If Qin Shu had to choose one word for it, “eerie” was probably the most accurate.
The workbench was screened off by a bamboo divider, creating a small area in which someone could move freely. Everywhere else, the square basement was crammed full of faceless paper-effigy mannequins.
They looked rather like the display models found in a clothing store.
The paper bodies were extremely vivid, covering men and women, the old and young, the thin and fat, all dressed in elaborate paper garments of every style. Yet every single one lacked hair and facial features, and that absence gave them an unsettling stiffness.
Perhaps that stiffness was precisely what made them safe. If every paper effigy had possessed the same eerily lifelike quality as the one they were piecing together, even Qin Shu would not have dared let Xing Yong casually enter the basement.
Zhang Cong was not the sort of person who liked keeping a diary, so there were not many clues underground. In reality, the only things they could investigate were the account book, the endpoint of the ghost wall, and the square-faced paper man who still had not been fully reconstructed.
Xing Yong carefully went through the account book and discovered that its income was divided into three categories.
Orders placed through dreams, payments through delivery platforms, and purchases made directly at the physical store.
Business at the shop itself was poor. Almost everything sold in person consisted of bulk paper money with a few pieces of paper clothing added on. Online delivery orders were similar. Business was concentrated around the Zhongyuan Festival and Qingming Festival, with only a handful of ordinary orders appearing occasionally at other times.
Elio’s Notes: The Zhongyuan Festival is commonly associated with offerings to wandering spirits and the dead, while Qingming is a traditional occasion for tending graves and making offerings to ancestors.
That pattern matched the ordinary business cycle of a funeral-goods shop. Only the category labeled “orders placed through dreams” looked wrong.
Judging from the amounts involved, every transaction consisted of enormous sums of dead man’s money, and beneath each payment record was a different small handwritten note:
“Facial Parasitism.” “Three-Day Limited Soul Return.” “New Clothes for Little Ghosts—European Court Style.” “Discount Revenge Package.” … Everything about it was abnormal.
The final payment was an enormous one. It cost even more than the Gui Gong’s machete Qin Shu had brought back from the ghost market, and the note attached to it was particularly thought-provoking.
[Ultimate Resurrection · Deluxe Revenge All-in-One Package]
Xing Yong held the account-book entry up to the camera. Still clumsily battling with the glue, he turned his head and asked, “Well? Find anything?”
“I actually did. Give me a second, Brother Yong. A traffic case from five years ago. There was a huge investment scam. The victim personally drove his car into the swindler and repeatedly ran him over until he died, then jumped into the river and killed himself. His body was recovered the same day, and the case was closed…”
Qin Shu opened the records showing the people involved in the traffic case. A square-jawed face that could not possibly be mistaken for anyone else appeared on his screen. His eyes lit up. “It’s him. The paper man who was run over and torn in half is Wang Ping Xi! The supermarket owner he scammed was named Liu Hao.”
“So, if I understand this correctly, this Liu Hao was cheated out of his money while he was alive. Even after he died, he couldn’t let it go, so he tracked down the owner of the Blackhearted Paper Effigy Shop. The service he ordered was revenge against Wang Ping Xi all over again, followed by some kind of resurrection for himself…”
Xing Yong reasoned through it thoughtfully, then clicked his tongue. “What a joke. They’re already dead. Revenge? Resurrection? Is any of that even possible?”
“Yes. Ah… no. It’s possible.”
A weak, intermittent voice, barely louder than a mosquito, echoed through the basement.
“Who? Who’s talking?” Xing Yong instantly became alert. He looked around sharply but saw nothing.
The corner of Qin Shu’s mouth twitched. Xing Yong really had absolutely no sensitivity whatsoever to the ghosts around him. He hurriedly tapped the screen and reminded him in a low voice, “Brother Yong. Look down.”
Following Qin Shu’s instruction, Xing Yong lowered his head, and his mind went buzz as he suddenly found himself staring directly into a pair of eyes bulging almost to bursting, streaming ghastly tears of blood.
Eyes painted on paper.
Wang Ping Xi was speaking. In a certain sense, this paper man who had been torn in half had genuinely come back to life.
He still lay across the workshop table, his body composed of several thin sheets of painted paper joined together.
The wrinkled legs simply could not be flattened properly and remained curled at grotesque angles, the skin blue-black and both leg bones broken in two, pressing up beneath the drawn flesh in small protrusions. His neck was still covered with swelling and bruises. There was really no better word for him than miserable.
Of course, after learning what kind of swindler Wang Ping Xi had been while alive, Xing Yong had no intention of letting even a shred of sympathy overflow.
He simply raised the large pair of scissors he had prepared. The sharp point came to rest against the miserable paper man’s throat as Xing Yong glared at him ferociously. “You’re the one keeping me trapped in here, aren’t you? Wang Ping Xi, this is unlawful confinement! You think becoming a ghost means you don’t have to obey laws and regulations anymore? Let me tell you something—not a chance!”
For an ordinary person confronting a ghost, the first battle was one of presence. You had to be fiercer than the ghost at all times.
Xing Yong was extremely good at that, and the eerie paper ghost somehow began to look increasingly pathetic beneath his aggression, pinned against the table and unable to move.
The only problem was that this paper ghost’s neck had already been damaged. Its vocal cords could not function normally, so its speech sounded little different from a hoarse mosquito. After Xing Yong threatened and intimidated him on top of that, he became even more tongue-tied and could not manage a complete sentence for quite some time.
“Help… help me. Hhh… I didn’t… mean… to.”
“Explain yourself! What exactly do you want?!”
“Hhh. I… I…”
…
The painful conversation dragged on for half an hour. Qin Shu was almost falling asleep by the time Wang Ping Xi finally managed to explain what he wanted help with.
The owner of the Blackhearted Paper Effigy Shop was apparently a swindler who cheated both humans and ghosts. Sometimes he cheated them out of money, sometimes he cheated them out of their lives, and sometimes, when he encountered someone genuinely dangerous, he obediently completed every last requirement of the commission exactly as promised.
In short, Zhang Cong had some real ability, absolutely no conscience, and a habit of bullying the weak while fearing the strong.
As for Liu Hao—the supermarket owner who had been cheated into bankruptcy while alive—he had become a ghost after death, only to get cheated by the paper-effigy shop owner all over again.
Liu Hao had given Zhang Cong every piece of dead man’s money his elderly mother had burned for him, using it all to purchase the so-called Revenge and Resurrection All-in-One Package. He had imagined that taking revenge would dissolve his obsession and that, someday, he could be reborn, return to the human world, and begin again.
At first, Zhang Cong did not disappoint him, because Zhang Cong genuinely dragged Wang Ping Xi’s ghost back out of the underworld.
At the time, Wang Ping Xi had been serving a sentence there. As a swindler, his soul had naturally been detained by underworld constables after death and sent below to receive punishment and rehabilitation.
Yet somehow, the underworld was apparently short-staffed and badly equipped. A few paper effigies had inexplicably managed to sneak inside and forcibly drag Wang Ping Xi back to the human world.
Zhang Cong then used a spell to imprison Wang Ping Xi’s soul inside a paper body and handed him over to Liu Hao to torment and abuse. The broken legs, the strangulation marks around his throat, and the shattered torso had nothing to do with the traffic accident five years earlier. They had all happened only a few days ago.
Liu Hao’s revenge package was complete. Next came the resurrection service.
But bringing an ordinary dead person with no cultivation back to life was usually beyond even a Golden Immortal who had ascended to heaven, let alone a vicious bottom-rung charlatan like Zhang Cong who only knew how to dabble in heterodox arts.
Elio’s Notes: Golden Immortal (金仙) is an old Daoist-associated term for an exalted immortal; in cultivation fiction it is often used as a lofty realm or title, though the exact rank varies by setting.
Zhang Cong had lied to Liu Hao and used the so-called revenge package to allow him to commit cruelties that should never have happened.
Tormenting Wang Ping Xi again had not weakened Liu Hao’s resentment. Instead, it intensified it, transforming him into an even more vicious malicious ghost—an existence rejected by heaven and earth.
Something rejected by heaven and earth had nowhere to hide. Only a lifeless paper vessel could contain such a spirit and conceal the traces and aura of its existence. Liu Hao had nowhere else left to go. If he tried to escape, his soul would be destroyed completely.
Step by step, Zhang Cong had manipulated Liu Hao until he finally refined him into a little ghost enslaved to his command, its vessel a paper funeral craft from which it could never escape. Like an ordinary foot soldier created by the old magic of scattering beans into an army, it could only obey its master, forced to fight until the final moment of its existence.
Elio’s Notes: “Scattering beans into soldiers” (撒豆成兵) is a legendary magical technique in which ordinary beans are transformed into supernatural troops.
Of course, Wang Ping Xi did not particularly care about Liu Hao’s tragic fate. He himself had already been forgotten in various corners of the paper-effigy shop for days, unable to move and subjected to endless suffering.
What Wang Ping Xi feared most was that Zhang Cong had not forgotten him at all and still intended to refine him into another enslaved little ghost.
He would continue to be dismembered and stuffed into hidden corners, imprisoned in pieces for months or years until the paper grew damp and moldy, his sanity collapsed, and an ordinary swindler who had already gone to hell was forcibly transformed into a vicious ghost overflowing with resentment.
Wang Ping Xi was terrified out of his mind. He would rather return to the underworld and continue serving his punishment than remain in the human world.
“So what are you saying? You want me to figure out a way to kill you?”
Xing Yong frowned slightly. Even after hearing all of that, he was unwilling to agree immediately. “No. First explain something clearly. Where exactly is Liu Hao now? Who cut off every one of Zhang Cong’s fingers? What happened inside this paper-effigy shop on New Year’s Eve?”
“…Don’t… know.”
“You were inside the shop. How could you not know?” Xing Yong grew increasingly suspicious. He tightened his grip on the scissors and pressed them against the paper figure. “Liu Hao can’t possibly have been the first ghost Zhang Cong abused. Logically, this shop should have other demons, ghosts, or monsters hidden inside it. Where did all of them go?”
The question struck directly at the heart of the matter. The basement fell into a long silence, while the paper man on the table began trembling with fear, overwhelmed and helpless.
Qin Shu quietly interrupted. “Brother Yong, I can see them. There aren’t any other ghosts in the shop. Those paper dolls are just mannequins wearing clothing. There’s no resentment and no energy fluctuation coming from them. Wang Ping Xi is the only ghost here.”
“Then what happened to all the others? Don’t tell me they all died.”
The moment Xing Yong finished speaking, the paper’s trembling grew noticeably worse.
Wang Ping Xi finally forced himself to speak, answering haltingly with great difficulty. “They… all died… Far away. Couldn’t see… but terrifying. Very… very terrifying! Zhang Cong wanted… to hurt… someone! Offended… someone he shouldn’t have… Something… horrifying…”
The intense fear and lingering terror in his voice seemed almost tangible. His emotions became so violent that cold yin winds rose for no apparent reason, and even the windows and doors upstairs began trembling with a loud rattle-rattle-rattle.
“Officer… sir… save me!”
Only now, when things had reached this point, did he remember to ask the police for help.
But every cause had its consequence. If Wang Ping Xi had not harbored malicious intentions in the first place and deliberately swindled Liu Hao out of so much money that the man could no longer survive and became desperate enough to run him down, perhaps both of them would still have been alive.
Qin Shu could not summon much sympathy for him. He ignored Wang Ping Xi’s cries for help and instead thoughtfully analyzed what he had said. “Zhang Cong tried to harm someone but ended up offending something terrifying? Sounds like he ran into some powerhouse with profound spiritual attainment. The powerhouse conveniently carried out justice on behalf of heaven and cleaned up all the remaining ghosts and monsters.”
“Even if they were carrying out justice on behalf of heaven, they still shouldn’t have chopped off every one of Zhang Cong’s fingers, right?”
The lines between Xing Yong’s brows deepened. “Pedestrian Street was packed on New Year’s Eve. Who knows how many people saw Zhang Cong run out of the shop acting strangely and covered in blood? The impact was terrible. Isn’t that frightening? If we can’t produce a clear investigative conclusion, we really won’t have any way to answer to our superiors.”
“Mm-hm. Very frightening. Extremely frightening.”
“You little brat. You’re brushing me off again.”
Qin Shu laughed. He no longer intended to argue with Xing Yong about their differing worldviews. Instead, his expression became slightly more serious. “Once you get out, just report the truth. Brother Yong, Captain Wu talked to me about the relevant rules while you were away on your business trip. Conflicts between cultivators don’t fall under your jurisdiction as long as innocent people weren’t harmed and the incident gets properly reported.”
“They can say it doesn’t fall under my jurisdiction, but how am I supposed to just ignore it?”
“Hmm… there’s another option. Let your wife investigate it.” Qin Shu continued matter-of-factly, “Say you were just helping your wife. Then it should count as a cultivator matter too, and nobody can accuse you of violating the rules.”
“…That actually works?” Xing Yong paused.
“Why wouldn’t it?” Qin Shu looked back at him with complete composure and urged, “All right, Brother Yong. Stop agonizing and hurry out. I still have school tomorrow. I already asked around and got the three-step method for killing a paper effigy: cut it apart, burn it, then scatter the ashes. For the last step, flushing the ashes down the toilet works too. Once something without roots disperses on its own, the ghost wall will disappear.”
“All right. Who taught you that?”
“A guy at a mountain stronghold in Yun City who wholesales wild mushrooms. Want me to bring you a bag when I go to the police station in a couple of days?” Qin Shu remained perfectly innocent. “I bought way too many while I was handling something for him. I can’t finish them all myself, and Zhaozhao doesn’t seem to like mushrooms much either… Brother Yong, help me get rid of some.”
“I don’t accept gifts!”
That was what Xing Yong said, but his refusal was not particularly firm. He looked at the mentally exhausted Wang Ping Xi, then at Qin Shu, who was lowering his head to poke at the centipede. His expression became complicated. With a sigh, he picked up the sticky paper man and began dealing with the problem.
First, he used the iron scissors to cut Wang Ping Xi’s “body” into tiny pieces, then gathered the scraps and placed them into the metal basin the paper-effigy shop kept specifically for burning paper offerings.
Next, Xing Yong pulled a lighter from his trouser pocket and set all the paper scraps on fire without hesitation. He listened with a frown as Wang Ping Xi’s heart-rending screams gradually shifted from agony into a faint sense of relief before finally vanishing into complete silence.
Whoosh—
A small whirlpool spun inside the flushing toilet. Ash and paper fragments drifting throughout the room were dampened by splashes of water, swept into the rotating current, and carried down the drain into silent darkness.
“Wang Ping Xi? Still there?”
No one answered.
Xing Yong exhaled, turned on the faucet, and began washing his hands furiously. While he was scrubbing, he suddenly heard frantic footsteps approaching, followed immediately by the crash of someone bursting through the door.
A panicked production employee rushed inside, took Xing Yong’s hands and looked him over from head to toe. “Officer Xing, are you all right?! A concerned member of the public just messaged us saying you were inside the paper-effigy shop’s bathroom, but we’ve been searching everywhere for forty minutes and couldn’t see you at all! This is a supernatural phenomenon!”
Xing Yong froze. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at his phone and saw Qin Shu secretly wink at him.
Xing Yong calmly looked up again. “Sorry. Something happened and caused everyone trouble. Has the livestream ended?”
“No trouble, no trouble. We stopped it for now. Ms. Liang already smoothed things over, and we can discuss the rest of the program later. Officer Xing, where exactly did you go just now? Are you genuinely all right?”
“…Mm. I’m fine.”
The frantic production employee continued asking questions, and Liang Ming Yue, looking exhausted, followed shortly afterward.
She had already taken off the uniform and slowly walked into the bathroom with an unlit cigarette between her fingers.
Xing Yong did not particularly like her. Perhaps it was because her off-camera personality differed so drastically from how she behaved on television that interacting with her always felt strange. She was not actually rude, and Xing Yong could not identify any specific problem, yet some inexplicable resistance toward her always lingered in his heart.
Liang Ming Yue did not notice Qin Shu’s presence. Expressionless, she stared directly at Xing Yong, studying his face openly in a way that made him uncomfortable.
Without her colored contacts, her eyes carried a subtle, deathly stillness. Only after Xing Yong became thoroughly uncomfortable under her gaze did Liang Ming Yue finally speak in a low, hoarse voice. “Did you find out who hurt Shopkeeper Zhang? Mr. Xing, it seems you uncovered a very important clue. If possible, please tell me…”
“Why do you want to know so badly?” Xing Yong narrowed his eyes and interrupted her. “Don’t you normally hate your job and have no interest in anything that isn’t in the script, Ms. Liang?”
“Mm. Normally, I don’t care.”
Liang Ming Yue did not deny it. She lightly bit the unlit cigarette between her teeth and explained flatly, “But the clothes Shopkeeper Zhang made for my child were all very beautiful. Now he’ll never be able to make them again. I’m very angry.”
“…Where did you get a child?”