As an experienced mercenary, Chen Jing Sheng was extremely skilled at quietly breaking into other people’s homes.
A sprawling mansion like the Jiang family’s, large enough for strangers to get lost in, was practically perfect for murder and arson.
The soundproofing was so good that even if someone shouted from a third-floor bedroom, only a vague muffled noise could be heard on the first floor.
Chen Jing Sheng hardly needed to make any effort to conceal what he was doing. After silently killing the mother and son, the housekeeper in the kitchen remained completely unaware and continued humming as she leisurely cooked.
After all, Guo Jian Chun’s husband, Jiang Chuan, was only an ordinary man in his fifties, and surprisingly soft-skinned at that. Among middle-aged men his age, he had clearly maintained himself quite well and looked as though he had deliberately paid for expensive cosmetic treatments.
But two dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and there was an old-man smell about him. He looked polished on the outside, but underneath he was terribly weak.
Chen Jing Sheng had only thrown one hard testing punch, yet Jiang Chuan had gone rigid and collapsed unconscious, never to wake again.
Even the old madam had not been as frail as he was. At least she had managed to run a few extra steps with her cane before struggling her way into becoming another soul beneath Chen Jing Sheng’s blade.
Chen Jing Sheng wiped his dagger with a rag, then cleaned the blood sliding down his wrist. Moving silently, he reached the second-floor stairs and narrowed his eyes as he studied the kitchen.
He needed to calmly assess whether this live-in housekeeper also deserved to have her throat cut.
On the stove simmered a gold-and-silver old-duck soup, a pot of rich and tender Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, the sour-broth fatty-beef casserole Jiang Chuan had specifically requested, and an elaborate red-and-white dessert meant to replenish blood and vitality… donkey-hide gelatin, snow lotus, and bird’s nest paste?
Who exactly needed their blood replenished?
Chen Jing Sheng kept watching thoughtfully and saw the housekeeper secretly eat two plump abalones, happily drink several spoonfuls of clear, savory duck soup, then use her fingers to scrape up the crumbs from the health dessert.
Her face was rosy and full, her eyes bright with energy, and her body strong enough that she could casually lift a large casserole without any effort.
Apparently, the Jiang family’s health-conscious way of eating really did have some logic behind it, and the first person it had nourished was their cook.
After eating and drinking her fill, the housekeeper arranged the dishes on warming trays, packed several sea cucumbers and abalones into takeaway containers, then hummed as she removed her apron and happily headed back to her room.
Chen Jing Sheng stood where he was and watched her leave with light footsteps. He decided to spare this happy person.
He had spent only half a day working as a police officer in the game world, yet had already encountered all kinds of people.
But the Jiang family’s housekeeper was the only one who was genuinely happy.
Chen Jing Sheng sighed with envy, quietly returned to the third floor, and continued searching for evidence of the Jiang family’s wrongdoing.
He picked open the locked study door and found several decades-old real-estate development contracts in the safe.
The construction project for Happiness Community had been planned and primarily funded by the Jiang family.
The contract terms were clear. Profit sharing heavily favored the partners and design-development teams from back then, while the Jiang family itself had yielded an extraordinary amount… It was practically a charitable business deal made at their own expense.
When presales for the residential development officially began, the real-estate market had been at its hottest. Housing prices nationwide were soaring, and even selling a miserable dump of an apartment could fill someone’s pockets.
This seemingly charitable contract from the Jiang family covered not only Happiness Community but also a chain of developments in several downtown commercial districts. It had directly propelled their partners into the ranks of the province’s wealthiest people and sent them soaring from then on.
By now, Xinjiang City’s economic center had long since shifted toward the new district, and the old industrial area had lost its former glory. But merchants who had already taken off after biting into a chunk of fat would never fall back into the mud. The richer they became, the more money they could make.
Thinking of the living foundation sacrifice Song Zang had told him about that morning, Chen Jing Sheng stared at the contracts and felt a chill creep through his heart.
At this point, not a single one of those prosperous business partners or senior project executives had a complete, happy family. One had lost a wife, another a child…
When people gossiped about them, they assumed it was simply the viciousness of wealthy families fighting for power.
No one would ever imagine that before they had become business elites, they had willingly sold one family member’s life in exchange for the Jiang family’s powerful backing, riding the winds of the era to enormous profit.
Chen Jing Sheng put away the contracts, then silently shoved the entire safe into his storage space. Besides the development contracts, it contained plenty of other incriminating evidence he could use.
Even without the requirements of the main mission, he wanted to kill this whole family of freaks.
Chen Jing Sheng did not stop there. He turned the Jiang mansion upside down from top to bottom. On a workday, the estate was practically empty. The older children were at work and the younger ones at school, which made his search much easier.
Eventually, inside Guo Jian Chun’s vanity, he found a medical examination report from twenty years ago.
Jiang Chuan apparently suffered from abnormal sperm. Not only was conception extremely difficult, the most serious issue involved his chromosomes.
The number of sperm carrying X chromosomes in his body vastly exceeded those carrying Y chromosomes. Under ordinary conception, he was almost guaranteed to father only daughters.
Even with IVF, there would probably be very few viable sperm cells to work with. Jiang Chuan was simply fated never to have a son.
The report had been hidden very deeply. The paper had yellowed with age, but remained unusually smooth and clean, clearly handled by very few people.
Guo Jian Chun had probably never told Jiang Chuan about it, but she herself must have understood perfectly well just how cruel reality was.
The Jiang family of Xinjiang City really did behave as though they had a throne to inherit. In a family ruled by such brutally feudal values, if she wanted to secure her position as the daughter-in-law and ensure her husband inherited the Jiang family’s businesses, the two of them had to produce sons.
And one would never be enough. The more, the better.
Guo Jian Chun was the director of obstetrics and gynecology. Her position was secure, her authority considerable, and her background powerful.
She had more than enough motive to steal newborns, and more than enough ability to carry out such a vicious plan, destroying countless families while remaining hidden behind the scenes and escaping untouched.
Even more outrageous, Chen Jing Sheng gradually realized that there were no traces of young women living anywhere in the Jiang household.
In family snapshots and artistic portrait albums, there were never any little girls. Only a growing number of boys appeared, held in Guo Jian Chun’s or Jiang Chuan’s arms and raised with meticulous care.
People outside the family claimed the Jiang family’s two eldest daughters had long since gone abroad to study, but Chen Jing Sheng doubted matters were that simple.
Guo Jian Chun came from an ordinary background and had originally been nothing more than a powerless university student. The reason she dared act so ruthlessly was that someone behind her was supporting her.
And whoever stood silently behind her in the shadows, pursuing their own interests, could only be smarter and more ruthless than she was. Even if the truth had never been laid out openly, Jiang Chuan absolutely knew what she was doing. There was no possibility that he was innocent.
Chen Jing Sheng’s mood grew heavier and heavier as he searched, reaching its lowest point in the basement.
The Jiang mansion had two basement levels. The first was a beautiful, spotless wine cellar. The second had not been maintained for years and was so dark he could not see his hand in front of his face.
Unlike the pleasant dryness of autumn aboveground, the second basement level felt unnaturally cold and gloomy, with a faint smell of dust and mildew.
Chen Jing Sheng tensed his muscles, drew his service weapon, and involuntarily remembered Song Zang’s warning.
If it suddenly feels cold for no reason, that means a ghost has been here, or the ghost is right beside you.
Fortunately, there were no ghosts in the basement for the moment. There was only a crudely made little altar table.
Two memorial tablets stood on the moldy wooden table. Perhaps because no one had cared for them in so long, insect eggs had begun forming in the old ash inside the incense burner, while the melted red candles had dried into twisted scars, ugly and grotesque against the cracked wood grain.
The fruit plate before the tablets looked even worse. The apples had shriveled into dry black-yellow lumps, the orange peels had rotted completely, and even the visually horrifying blue-green mold had dried and cracked over the passing years.
Chen Jing Sheng wrapped his hand in a rag and pulled open the two drawers beneath the altar.
The left drawer held a baby’s swaddle, pacifiers that somehow looked both old and new, and unopened diapers.
The right drawer contained only a youthful Golden Child statue, pure gold from head to toe except for its round, grape-like eyes, which looked disturbingly lifelike.
Its pitch-black pupils met Chen Jing Sheng’s gaze like the eyes of something alive.
Clang!
The next instant, a loud crash echoed through the basement and startled Chen Jing Sheng so badly he nearly raised his gun and opened fire.
The rotten altar table finally failed when he shifted it. One leg snapped, and the bottom of the drawer broke apart completely.
The incense burner toppled, dust billowed into the air, and the little golden child crashed heavily to the floor, rolling several meters away with a rumble-rumble.
Chen Jing Sheng gripped his slightly trembling wrist and stood still, forcing himself to breathe deeply and suppress the fear in his heart.
He made himself ignore it and stop worrying. Picking up the memorial tablets from the table, he examined them carefully and, sure enough… both belonged to Guo Jian Chun’s biological daughters.
Guo Jian Chun had probably loved them once. Not very much, perhaps, but at least there had been love.
Yet a life of extravagant luxury in a wealthy family could completely change a person. The taste of power was simply too wonderful and too addictive.
The altar and memorial tablets, once carefully arranged, had rotted away through years of neglect. In the end, even their own biological mother had gradually forgotten the injustice and suffering her daughters had endured.
Chen Jing Sheng deliberately let himself sink emotionally into that sadness. The bone-deep unease and fear actually faded little by little.
He flexed his stiff, icy fingers and focused again on the clues before him.
Judging by the dates engraved on the memorial tablets, both girls had actually died long ago, and neither had likely died peacefully. The infant spirit and little ghost Song Zang had mentioned could now almost certainly be identified as the two of them.
The elder daughter had been born naturally, then “accidentally” died before she was two years old.
If their earlier theory was correct, then the elder daughter’s remains were currently inside the Golden Child statue. A master had carefully processed her corpse, fed and nourished it day and night with blood, and refined her into a little ghost that could be controlled through its master’s intent.
The younger daughter’s death was even stranger and carried a deeper implication.
According to the records Chen Jing Sheng had uncovered, when Guo Jian Chun was seven months pregnant with her second child, she and the Jiang family had finally entered the preliminary stage of discussing marriage.
Before the engagement, she and Jiang Chuan, who was still her boyfriend at the time, traveled together to Hong Kong.
Comparing that trip with the younger daughter’s exact date of death, Chen Jing Sheng narrowed his eyes.
So that was it. In fact, only three days after Guo Jian Chun arrived in Hong Kong, the fetus had already died in the womb. The girl’s heartbeat had stopped completely before she was ever born.
What kind of bullshit vacation was that? The two of them had gone to Hong Kong specifically to find out the baby’s sex.
Most likely, the moment they learned it was a girl, they decided not to keep her and simply had medication injected to stop the fetal heartbeat. Insane. Guo Jian Chun was irresponsible not only toward the child, but toward her own body as well.
A fetus that died violently inside its mother’s womb was little different from one lost through miscarriage. By any definition, it had never become a person, not even qualifying to be refined into a little ghost.
But she had already been seven months along. She was close to becoming a fully viable life. Even if she had been delivered by cesarean section, she could have survived, yet she had been killed alive inside the womb.
Dying unjustly with resentment and unwillingness, then turning into a malicious infant spirit… made perfect sense.
The heir had played around so wildly that two children were dead before he was even married. A scandal that large could affect stock prices, so of course it could not be allowed to come to light.
The Jiang family had hidden these “accidents” far too well. They even had insiders within the hospital system helping them alter medical records. If even Chen Jing Sheng, a police officer, had to resort to violent breaking and entering to uncover the truth, what chance did anyone else have?
Jiang Chuan’s eldest son, stolen from who knew whose family, had even been named one of the country’s outstanding young entrepreneurs that year. He appeared on television and in magazines, gave media interviews, and was polished into the fantasy image of a princeling while generating enormous profits for the Jiang family…
What an absurd world.
Chen Jing Sheng returned his service weapon to his waist, took out his phone, carefully photographed the evidence, and sent the pictures to Song Zang.
【Officer Chen: Brother Song, I’ve got a problem. Can the Golden Child statue be destroyed directly? Are the ghosts still haunting you? I’ll buy groceries before I come back tonight. How is Xiao Xi doing?】
【Song Zang: The little-ghost statue has yin energy. Don’t touch it directly. Bring it back, preferably wrapped in Guo Jian Chun’s pajamas.】
【Song Zang: …Your wife isn’t going to die. Buy some ice cream.】
【Officer Chen: Received!】
Once he learned that Ye Xiao Xi was not in mortal danger, the tension that had held Chen Jing Sheng rigid for half the day finally released. Humming, he knocked the housekeeper unconscious, buried Jiang Chuan and his mother’s bodies in the back garden, replaced the turf, and restored everything until there was no visible flaw.
After eliminating traces of shoeprints and fingerprints, Chen Jing Sheng avoided the mansion’s surveillance cameras, shouldered the unusually heavy little-ghost statue and the old baby supplies… and happily went grocery shopping on his way home.
＊
“Don’t you think people who are head-over-heels in love all look a little deranged?”
Song Zang sat cross-legged on one side of the sofa, chin propped on one hand as he lazily chatted with Xiao Xiao Xiao.
Surrounded by the sour stink of romance, Song Zang could not help making that observation.
Ye Xiao Xi was badly injured now and had only one usable arm left. In such a miserable physical state, hooked up to an IV, she still sat there smiling sweetly while typing one-handed just so she could send Chen Jing Sheng a few more pointless messages.
Of course, Xu Qing was even more dramatic. The burn on his right hand would not heal on its own, and the hem of his windbreaker had gradually become wet and heavy with blood. From the blood loss, even his naturally vivid red lips had faded into a sickly pallor.
But… Song Zang did not believe what he said, did not believe his sincerity, and had even accused him of having a severe case of middle-school syndrome.
So to prove his sincerity to Song Zang, Xu Qing decided to end his serial-killer cultivation plan ahead of schedule.
He would personally capture Wang Tie Zhu, bring him back to Happiness Community, and hand him over for Song Zang to deal with however he pleased.
Song Zang did not stop him. He simply waved and took the opportunity to drive him out.
Because for one instant, Xu Qing had become very strange and very unfamiliar.
An unimaginably terrifying, powerful aura had spread from his apparently frail body. His long phoenix eyes had also suddenly distorted, splitting into twisted double pupils like a character-model loading bug, filled with warped light that could scarcely be looked at directly.
He resembled some nameless, sticky, uncanny abomination. Even though the impression vanished in a flash, it still made Song Zang’s instincts bristle with an almost animal sense of danger.
Whether it was because the fried skewer had been too powerful or because Xu Qing himself had launched some kind of magical attack, Song Zang’s vision abruptly went dark for an instant and his mind flashed back once again to that strange world without light.
He saw himself again… moving like a madman. Fragments of his own flesh trickled from his lips, teeth, and nose. The smell of rust clogged his breathing until he nearly suffocated, while his cool fingertips, soaked in warm liquid, pinched one corner of the skin on his own face and suddenly tore it away.
But thanks to Xu Qing’s stimulation, Song Zang could finally be certain that world could not possibly have been a hallucination caused by mental instability. He had truly lived through it.
His sealed memories were attacking him!
Song Zang became alert, but also delighted. He was not afraid of mental attacks in any sense. So what if he went mad? It was not the same as dying… What he feared was never being able to recover his memories.
Especially the memories connected to Yin Chen.
So after Xu Qing left, Song Zang was still feverish with excitement. His instinctive first reaction was to grab the tense Yin Chen, kiss him fiercely a couple of times, clingingly call him baby, and ask him to transform so Song Zang could take a look.
After all, Yin Chen had said he was not human. Song Zang desperately wanted to know what Yin Chen would look like if he returned to his [true form].
Song Zang would like him no matter what he looked like, but preferably the visual impact would be dramatic enough to scare him badly. That would probably work wonders on his memory.
Yin Chen, however, was stunned senseless by the kisses and did not hear a single word.
He, too, was missing large portions of his memory and was completely unused to Song Zang’s sudden kisses. He had never even experienced… the tingling sensation of cool lips brushing his skin.
His already tense snake tail grew even stiffer, like a flexible metal rod tightly wrapped around Song Zang’s wrist, constricting again and again.
His body temperature quietly rose, and a faint blush spread across his snow-white scales, exceptionally beautiful.
It was rare for Yin Chen to show such a shy side, and Song Zang loved it so much that he deliberately softened his voice and teased him for ages… until the air in the room gradually turned deathly still.
The noise from Song Zang and Yin Chen “communicating their feelings” had been loud enough to wake both injured players who had fallen asleep in the apartment.
Ye Xiao Xi shrank near the entryway with a frightened expression, while Xiao Xiao Xiao sat stiffly on the sofa with a blank face. Both stared at Song Zang with wide eyes, and he stared back.
Perhaps from their perspective, Song Zang looked completely insane, inexplicably kissing his own wrist over and over while smiling strangely and talking nonstop to empty air.
But if Song Zang was being fair… Xiao Xiao Xiao did not look much better. In fact, she looked far scarier than he did.
Half her face had turned black, an eerie blue-black that looked neither human nor ghostly, like a grotesque birthmark or the terrible bruising left across a child that had died in the womb.
A faint, chilling yin energy seeped over the surface of that blue-black bruising, twisting her originally bright and vivid face until her features looked warped.
The corners of her mouth, normally lifted slightly by habit, now drooped bitterly and resentfully. One eye was dull and hollow, and the outer corner hung unnaturally low… as though some god with particularly cruel tastes had deliberately stitched half a female ghost onto an innocent girl.
Xiao Xiao Xiao had no idea anything was wrong with her face. She only thought she was exhausted, lying numbly on the sofa with cold hands and feet and assuming she needed more time to recover.
Seeing Song Zang pretend not to notice, Ye Xiao Xi became even less willing to say anything aloud. Pale-faced, she secretly pulled out her phone and sought comfort from Chen Jing Sheng, soon smiling brightly again after he reassured her.
The cold, frozen tension in the air gradually turned back into the sour stink of romance.
Xiao Xiao Xiao was the first to recover. With half her face smiling beautifully, she lowered her voice. “Brother Song, Xiao Xi is still so young. This is her first love. Of course it’s normal for her to be clingy.”
“Fair point. Actually, before you two woke up, I was talking to my first love too.” Song Zang curled up on the other side of the sofa, holding the warm little snake and subtly curving his lips.
“I never imagined I’d spend all day calling him baby. He’s vicious and awful, nothing about him is remotely baby-like…”
“Wow!” Xiao Xiao Xiao’s eyes lit up instantly. She listened with intense interest. “Brother Song, keep talking if you’ve got more. Even my corpse spots are fading.”
“He used to scare me until I cried, make me cry from anger, and once nearly chopped my head off with a knife… Later he became the one crying, and now I want to kiss him to death every day. Everyone else thinks he’s a monster, but I think he’s adorable. A tiny soft little thing, a huge hard one… he was obviously born to be swallowed into my stomach so he’ll never leave me again.”
The tips of Song Zang’s ears turned red. His words were scandalously suggestive, his tone intimate and proud.
Yin Chen lay motionless in his palm, burning hot all over and clumsily pretending to be dead. Xiao Xiao Xiao blushed too and shook her head in wonder. “Healthy relationships are wonderful and all, but twisted love stories are just too exciting!”
She became visibly animated, and all of the emotional fluctuations running through her were positive. The icy yin energy covering one side of her face slowly dissipated by a noticeable amount.
The corpse spots fading was not merely an exaggerated figure of speech. In an instance world full of monsters and supernatural nonsense, such things could become literal at any moment.
Song Zang had deliberately been trying to make her happy.
When a resentful ghost clung to someone, self-rescue was the most effective remedy.
Resistance was not a rigid, permanently fixed base stat. The human brain was constantly changing, and the data could temporarily rise or fall slightly along with fluctuations in mental state.
Ghosts in beginner instances were not overwhelmingly powerful. Against someone like Chen Jing Sheng, whose yang energy was vigorous, they were almost nothing to fear. Their main method of attack was to weaken a person’s psychological defenses, catch them off guard, exploit a crack, and finally invade when they were vulnerable.
Frightened, physically weak young women were the easiest targets.
Song Zang knew very well that Xiao Xiao Xiao’s misfortune was entirely the infant spirit’s doing.
Killing Guo Jian Chun’s husband and mother-in-law and avenging the suffering Guo Jian Chun and the child herself had endured could only satisfy the little ghost’s demand.
But the unfortunate infant spirit born from extreme resentment still carried a powerful obsession, and the two sisters’ ideas of happiness… had probably never aligned.
There was no possibility that the two of them would ever truly merge. During Song Zang’s conversation through the spirit board, he had already felt two different forces pulling chaotically against each other.
The infant spirit resented more than just the Jiang family. It also resented her own biological elder sister.
While Song Zang negotiated with the two of them, the infant spirit had secretly tugged the metal pick, trying to tempt him into quickly killing the little ghost who was about to obtain happiness.
The reason she hated her sister was painfully simple.
At least her sister had been successfully born, lucky enough to possess a legitimate human body and glimpse the vast beauty of the human world, however briefly.
At least her sister had drunk her mother’s milk, received some measure of maternal care, and even been fed her mother’s blood.
Yes, even though her elder sister had also been killed by their mother and turned into a powerful weapon to be controlled and used, she had at the same time been enshrined as a little ghost and given a finely crafted Golden Child statue to live in. To the younger sister, that kind of “favoritism” was beyond imagination.
Apart from that ridiculous altar, moldy offerings, and cheap baby clothes… the younger sister had nothing.
In the infant spirit’s eyes, her elder sister was simply far luckier than she was.
To fight her own sister over that pathetic scrap of maternal love and favoritism showed just how distorted the infant spirit’s personality and understanding had already become.
Song Zang could understand it a little.
Perhaps precisely because she had never possessed any of it, she longed for it all the more desperately, almost to the point of madness.
If it did not interfere with the mission, Song Zang would not care even if the infant spirit killed people indiscriminately. But she had latched onto clueless new players. One Zhang Ming dead was not enough, and now she had come to harm Xiao Xiao Xiao too.
Song Zang decided that at the instant the infant spirit felt happiest, he would simply have Yin Chen eat her.
Or he could eat her himself.
Song Zang had never actually tried cooking and eating a ghost before.
“Baby, do you want to eat her?”
The little snake did not move.
Yin Chen’s slightly awkward, hoarse voice came instead from Song Zang’s overheated phone.
“Xu Qing blew up the steelworks. He’s insane. Deal with him, or stop calling me baby.”
So fierce.