Song Zang tapped at the keyboard and, like someone missing a few brain cells, replied to Guo Jian Chun with a 【Mwah~】 before immediately picking up his phone and dialing a speed-dial number.
He could not reach any other police personnel, so he could only ask Chen Jing Sheng about the situation first.
“Brother Song?” Chen Jing Sheng answered quickly, his breathing sounding strangely heavy.
Song Zang’s heart skipped. His voice sharpened slightly. “Where are you? Did you go out on assignment? There’s a major problem at the Jiang villa. Don’t let the police move any evidence around. Wait until I get there to take a look.”
Chen Jing Sheng’s breathing grew heavier. “N-No, Brother Song… I’m at the hospital.”
“The Third People’s Hospital suicide case? What’s going on with you? Who got hurt?”
Chen Jing Sheng lowered his voice, yet it still trembled with barely contained ecstasy. “No one’s hurt. It’s Xiao Xi. My Xiao Xi is pregnant!”
Song Zang: ???
He became even more confused. “Didn’t you two just start dating? When did you even have time to get pregnant? When?”
“A-Around three or four in the morning. I couldn’t help myself. I really couldn’t hold back.” Chen Jing Sheng could not stop himself from chuckling.
“Chen Jing Sheng, no wonder you said you’re a beast. Turns out you really are one.” Song Zang’s voice turned eerie. He was genuinely speechless.
He and Yin Chen had flirted around each other for so long, and they had even managed to sleep in the same bed for months while remaining perfectly respectful. They had saved so much as a kiss until after getting married. Who would have thought… these thoroughly human little couples would dare go have fun on the very first day they confirmed their relationship!
Chen Jing Sheng grew even more excited, nearly unable to keep his volume down. “Xiao Xi and I don’t have stable lives in reality. Enjoying ourselves while we can matters most. I was lucky enough not to die in an instance, but I could go home and get shot dead by my employer immediately. If I can make Xiao Xi happy for one day, then that’s one happy day! Ha! I’m going to be a dad!”
Song Zang rubbed between his brows. “Fine, congratulations, but don’t get so excited that you stop thinking. You did it only a few hours ago and they can already detect a pregnancy. Does that sound normal to you? There’s something very wrong with this fetus.”
“I know, Brother Song. I won’t let Xiao Xi run around. Even if there’s something wrong with the baby, if anything really happens, I’d rather die together with Xiao Xi.” Chen Jing Sheng sounded resolute and seemed to sniff. “Brother Song, neither of us ever imagined in this lifetime that we’d have a chance to become parents…”
“This isn’t the time for reflections on life. I’m going to tell you two things. Listen.”
“Okay!”
“What you two did was completely deranged, but you accidentally stumbled into the right answer. The child Ye Xiao Xi is carrying is very likely an unhappy dead spirit that longs for a new life.
“It crawled into Ye Xiao Xi’s belly and gained another chance to be reincarnated as a human. That fits the main mission requirement perfectly.
“Chen Jing Sheng, think about it yourself. How many dead spirits in Happiness Community fit that description? Who exactly is it?”
As Song Zang spoke, he carefully climbed out of bed and checked the Golden Child containing the little ghost.
It was perfectly intact, its young, innocent face serene and its ghostly aura mild and peaceful. The child’s obsession with avenging its mother had already disappeared. It lay comfortably inside its little golden house, happy as could be.
That gave Song Zang even more reason to strongly suspect that Guo Jian Chun’s second daughter was currently inside Ye Xiao Xi’s belly.
Chen Jing Sheng obviously was not stupid either. His mind turned the corner and he immediately understood what Song Zang meant.
Even after being judged 【Happy】 by the system, an infant spirit, one of the most malicious kinds of entities in existence, could still become an unstable factor.
“…Mm. I’ll pay attention.” Chen Jing Sheng answered seriously.
“Don’t forget. Hurry up and tell your colleagues at the villa not to move any evidence, especially electronic devices. Also, what exactly happened at my place last night? Find somewhere no one can hear you and tell me.”
Following his instructions, Chen Jing Sheng hurriedly settled Ye Xiao Xi, invoked Xu Qing’s name to notify the special investigation team, then quickly climbed to the hospital rooftop and forced the lock open.
He found the quietest place in the entire hospital and made sure no one could disturb him before finally lowering his voice and beginning his account.
Too many chaotic things had happened last night. Everyone was still confused even now, waiting for Song Zang to wake up and sort it all out.
Song Zang was still passionately fighting it out in bed.
Meanwhile, the nun protagonist from the horror movie walked out.
Yes. Her figure tore straight through the projection screen, stepping from illusion into reality, her bloodstained bare feet landing on the living room’s white ceramic tiles. The scene was terrifying.
A church nun who had fallen into madness and was undergoing an exorcism simply appeared alive before everyone.
Her black robes were torn, her hair hung loose, and a faint ghostly glow shimmered around her. More importantly, her mind clearly did not resemble that of an ordinary adult.
If one had to describe it, beneath the nun’s beautiful skin seemed to live a very young child being played by a demon.
She let out soft giggle-giggle laughs. Her chaotic, twisted gaze was mischievous, vicious, and savage, carrying a completely unprovoked malice as she indiscriminately attacked everyone.
Xiao Xiao Xiao, sitting in the very front, bore the brunt of it.
Xiao Xiao Xiao nearly choked to death on a cookie, but she still sprang up to fight without hesitation and even dumped the piping-hot Buddha Jumps Over the Wall over the monster’s head.
She had already tried hard enough, but the ghost-possessed nun was not so easy to deal with. Every one of the nun’s movements was impossible to predict, and she possessed monstrous strength. Even the thick leather restraints in the movie had been unable to hold her, much less novice players who had not yet been tempered by experience.
In a pure physical fight, none of them was the nun’s match.
Xiao Xiao Xiao was in even greater danger. Her current physical condition was already poor, leaving her especially vulnerable to invasion by resentful spirits. She did not last long against the nun. After accidentally touching that strange, icy ghost-light, she quickly lost consciousness for no apparent reason.
Her brain simply stopped functioning and entered a state of self-protection.
Chen Jing Sheng went straight into the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife, but the blade could only knock the nun back and slash her clothes. It could not break through her defenses at all.
Just when everyone was at a loss, the freezer compartment at the bottom of the refrigerator popped open by itself, and an eerie wind began to whoosh through the room.
Before everyone’s eyes, the bowl of potato-braised ribs frozen solid inside transformed into a… demonic beast.
According to Chen Jing Sheng’s recollection, it was a bizarre hairless “cat” about the size of a Maine Coon, but it had no head. Only a ruined, flesh-colored body remained, wriggling rapidly across the floor.
The closer one looked, the stranger the details became.
Its skin was made of mashed potato.
Yellow-white, soft, mushy, and uneven, it carried the fragrant yet foul smell of frozen sauce. Several patches of potato peel that had clearly not been removed cleanly still clung around its joints, sprouting crooked green shoots.
Even one extra glance inspired fear and nausea. Its mental attack was honestly even more terrifying than the nun.
Yet this grotesque headless giant cat did not attack any of the players. Instead, it voluntarily stood in front of everyone, sprang forward, and began savagely fighting the deranged nun.
During the violent struggle, the dried cat skeleton Song Zang had hidden away also rolled out from the television cabinet.
“Wait. What does that mean? This cat can combine and transform too?”
Song Zang was stunned. He had never imagined the situation would develop this way.
“Mm. It looked more like a cat after that…” Chen Jing Sheng was so disgusted by the thing that he almost did not want to remember the writhing, gamey-smelling mush with its stale-refrigerator odor.
The potato-skinned ball of flesh abruptly crawled inside the dried, headless corpse, and the two fused into one.
It still had no head, but its body was more complete. It could now control its own claws and bones, and every strike became far fiercer. Its combat strength instantly doubled.
The nun’s face was clawed open. Blood poured down in an instant as she screamed miserably.
With such a powerful and horrifying ally fighting in front of him, Chen Jing Sheng naturally did not dare waste the opportunity. Holding two knives, he joined forces with the cat demon.
Together, they beat the nun to death.
At least physically speaking, that was a fair conclusion. The nun’s body trembled and collapsed on its own, turning into a puddle of foul, muddy black water that smelled like a corpse left rotting for years.
The cat demon did not care in the slightest. It stuck its rear in the air, lowered its body, and under Chen Jing Sheng and Ye Xiao Xi’s stunned gazes, happily lapped up every drop of corpse-water… then sprang lightly to its feet, leaped through the window, and fled the scene of the crime.
Chen Jing Sheng had been completely dumbfounded at the time and still sounded confused now. “Brother Song, none of us understand what that cat was. Why did it help us?”
Song Zang looked thoughtful. “That was Auntie Li’s cat. The one who wanted to help us… was Auntie Li.”
Could it be that Auntie Li had never intended to hurt him from the beginning?
No. Thinking back carefully, it was Song Zang’s own choices that had determined the final outcome.
If he had lacked experience with strange smells and eaten that bowl of ribs without hesitation, the cat-demon spirit would never have appeared in the first place, much less helped the inexperienced players fight. The ending might have been exceptionally gruesome. The cat demon might even have awakened inside Song Zang’s abdomen and ripped him open from within.
But Song Zang had not only left the bowl of ribs untouched, he had also carefully preserved the headless cat corpse inside the beanbag chair. That was why the cat demon possessed enough strength to overwhelmingly crush the physically formidable, bizarre nun.
Song Zang did not rush to a conclusion.
Auntie Li had long since become a starving ghost. Even if some kindness remained in her heart, she herself had been controlled by some invisible, terrifying power and could barely protect herself. In the end, her own apartment had cruelly devoured her, leaving not even the slightest fragment of her soul behind.
That ending was enough. Whatever motive had driven her earlier actions, it would probably be impossible to uncover now.
Song Zang ended the call, pinched the little snake that was still asleep, and got up to change clothes.
He had to go examine the villa. He could not delay any longer.
There were quite a few people outside Happiness Community. Self-media bloggers and tabloid reporters kept appearing, joined by elderly onlookers who loved excitement, all ignoring the security guards as they wandered around taking pictures.
People online were calling the place a haunted residence, saying the miserable dead of both humans and animals lingered there, their resentment refusing to disperse.
Their suspicions were not baseless. The earlier death from a falling object, the child who accidentally ingested paraquat, the fatal fall in the elevator shaft, and the explosion in the surveillance room… So many tragedies had happened one after another in such a short time that the place was far too suspicious, and conspiracy theories were everywhere.
Watching Happiness Community rapidly turn into a viral check-in destination, Song Zang quickened his pace and looked for a taxi.
Even wearing a mask and baseball cap, he was nearly cornered into an interview. Reporters desperate for information followed the taxi like bloodsucking mosquitoes, filming nonstop.
So annoying.
Was gawking at dead people’s tragedies really that entertaining?
Apparently not.
The instant after Song Zang told the driver to speed up and shake off the vehicles following them… disaster suddenly struck.
A tanker truck that had inexplicably lost control came hurtling in from the side. Its massive, terrifying tires shrieked against the asphalt with a teeth-grating screech as it plowed through more than a dozen people like a meat grinder.
Several vans and electric scooters following Song Zang were crushed along with them into mangled masses of flesh and metal, then erupted into towering flames amid an enormous explosion.
Everyone who had tried to follow Song Zang and dig into his background died horribly one after another in the blink of an eye, leaving no intact remains.
The surviving vehicles blared alarms in succession. Bystanders screamed in terror and shoved past one another as they fled in every direction.
The taxi driver’s soul nearly left his body. Cold sweat poured over him. He sneaked several looks at Song Zang through the rearview mirror, saw how extraordinarily calm his expression was, and immediately stomped even harder on the accelerator as though his life depended on it.
“Big Brother, handsome guy, Dad, please don’t kill me! I’ll speed up right now! I guarantee we’ll reach the destination in ten minutes. Don’t kill me!”
In truth, Song Zang was rather surprised too, but he had fairly good control over his expression. He merely gave a careless “Mm,” lowered the brim of his cap, and looked extraordinarily mysterious.
Who could have done that?
The crash had happened beyond the boundaries of Happiness Community. There were no ability users nearby, and Song Zang himself had never intended to make such a scene…
The little snake coiled around his wrist lifted its head and gently bit Song Zang once. Its stark crimson slit pupils rolled lazily, gleaming with teasing amusement.
Case solved. Yin Chen did it.
“Baby, your mental state seems a little off. You’ve been strange since last night. Haven’t you noticed?”
After thinking for a while, Song Zang asked him softly as though no one else were present.
The driver’s expression grew even more terrified. Yin Chen merely flicked his cold tail, shot Song Zang a strange glance as though he had not heard a thing, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
What was that supposed to mean… Had he entered a rebellious phase? Developed a split personality? Turned into a psychopath?
Countless thoughts ran through Song Zang’s mind as he worried about Yin Chen’s future.
Casually killing so many people merely to vent anger on Song Zang’s behalf was, after all, a rather unusual way of thinking.
Song Zang held the snake’s tail and silently considered how to deal with it.
Maybe he ought to review his child-psychology textbooks before trying to communicate.
As for now… there were more urgent and serious matters to handle.
Chen Jing Sheng had told him that the police had thoroughly searched the villa from top to bottom without finding the slightest trace of Guo Jian Chun.
Based on that fact alone, Song Zang could reasonably suspect that Guo Jian Chun was already dead.
Guo Jian Chun was, after all, an ordinary bad person. She knew how to scheme and manipulate power, but in the end she was still made of ordinary flesh and blood, and she was not young. There was no chance she could evade a police carpet search.
But if she really was dead, who had replied to him from inside the Jiang villa?
The driver ran red light after red light and, just as promised, reached the villa district at terrifying speed in exactly ten minutes.
He did not even dare accept Song Zang’s money. When Song Zang insisted, the man wailed that he did not want “money for his life” and almost dropped to his knees.
Song Zang did not know whether to laugh or cry. He could only quietly hide the fare in the trunk, take off his cap, and walk toward the Jiang residence.
The luxurious detached villa occupied elevated ground, screened by shrubs and bamboo. The scenery was beautiful, and its driveway wound and crossed around a white-swan fountain, providing excellent privacy.
Precisely because of that privacy, the wealthy neighbors nearby had failed to notice that a horrific serial murder case had taken place inside the Jiang home.
Yellow police tape blocked the main entrance. Two young armed officers stood guard with firearms, their expressions serious.
“Who are you?”
“Special investigation team. Chen Jing Sheng didn’t notify you?”
Song Zang did not even lift his eyes. His tone was lazy, carrying a trace of impatience.
He pulled Xu Qing’s special credentials from his trench-coat pocket, flipped them open, and gave them a brief wave. “Good enough?”
The ID photo was not Xu Qing. It was a high-resolution headshot of Song Zang from the dating show, and even the name had been changed to Song Zang’s own.
Yin Chen had secretly done that too. It looked completely natural and convincing, without the slightest trace of forgery.
“…Mr. Song? Apologies. Please go in!”
Once the young armed officer confirmed the photo, he immediately lowered his weapon and lifted the tape to let Song Zang through. His attitude even became somewhat ingratiating. “I’ll notify the captain and have someone drive over to pick you up.”
“No need. Waste of time.”
Song Zang snatched the credentials back, gave a contemptuous little scoff, and turned toward the villa.
That attitude only made him seem more like an elite sent down from above. None of the armed officers voiced the slightest suspicion.
People moved constantly through the villa, yet the atmosphere was solemn. Elites from the special investigation team and criminal detectives stood in a circle holding a small meeting. A temporary whiteboard was covered in notes and several suspect photographs.
The forensic personnel were the busiest. There were too many dead, and they were still identifying bodies one after another, as well as determining which victims the various severed limbs belonged to.
Hands in his pockets, Song Zang strolled toward the back garden without anyone stopping him. Yin Chen remained limply wrapped around his wrist like a beautiful snake-shaped bracelet.
The snow-white scales looked like translucent crystal, refracting rainbow glints in the sunlight. Unfortunately, only Song Zang could see such a beautiful baby.
Song Zang privately regretted this. Sweeping his gaze casually across the crowd, he unexpectedly spotted Officer Sun at the scene.
Sun Ling Yun was following several men in suits and being ordered around like an errand boy. The autumn wind was cool and the murder scene carried an invisible chill, yet Officer Sun alone was drenched in sweat, his jacket tied around his waist.
The moment he saw Song Zang walking casually down the corridor, Officer Sun’s expression froze.
He hurried over, pulled Song Zang beneath the huge parasol on the open-air terrace, and asked in a low voice, “How did you get in? Where exactly did Captain Xu go? He said he was personally pursuing the suspect and wouldn’t let us follow him. I’ve called him all day and can’t reach him!”
If Xu Qing could not be found and something truly serious had happened to him, Sun Ling Yun, who had been assigned as his personal protection, would be held accountable by his superiors. It would be extremely troublesome.
“From now on, listen to me.” Song Zang curled his lips. The cold smile held little emotion but plenty of implication. “Sun Ling Yun, attention. Go bring me Guo Jian Chun’s phone and computer.”
Officer Sun instinctively snapped to attention, though confusion remained in his heart. “B-But who exactly are you?”
“Xu Qing answers only to me. Who do you think I am?”
Song Zang took a step forward. The collar of his trench coat shifted with the movement, casually exposing the black obsidian pin on his white shirt.
It was the insignia of the confidential division within the major-crimes unit, a specially made badge so inconspicuous that only insiders could recognize it.
The suited men from the investigation team had long since noticed the conversation and were watching Song Zang with wary scrutiny. The instant they saw the obsidian pin, however, their expressions relaxed into calm understanding.
Of course, this too was something Xu Qing had left behind. Song Zang borrowed it without the slightest guilty conscience.
Once most people trusted him, Song Zang naturally settled into a lounge chair on the terrace. Still perfectly at ease, he even sent Officer Sun to buy two bottles of iced Coke.
They had to be the glass-bottle kind, with straws.
One for him and one for Officer Sun.
The two raised their chilled, condensation-covered bottles and clinked them together with a clear, crisp sound.
Officer Sun, overheated, drained more than half his bottle in one go. Only then did Song Zang smile in satisfaction, bite down on his straw, draw up his legs, and lazily open the computer.
Only one webpage was open on the computer: the author private-message interface of the novel-reading website Guo Jian Chun loved.
The mouse was unresponsive. The keyboard was dark. It could not be operated by human hands at all.
Yet some invisible person seemed to be using the computer to flood Song Zang’s author account with an endless stream of messages.
【I love you. I am complete now. Thank you.】
【Where are you? Who am I? Thank you. I love you.】
【Messenger 292, no, Messenger 203, no… my son! My son is here.】
【Rest in peace. Thank you.】
【I am a Split Body. I am complete now. Thank you. I love you.】
At a glance, every line was stiff and mechanical like this, and new messages continued pouring in without pause.
There was no logic and no sense, almost like corrupted code. Yet on closer examination… some kind of unusual, important information might still be extracted from it.
Song Zang could not understand it. Perhaps only because he had never encountered anything like it before and therefore could not grasp the key.
“Can you understand what it’s saying?” he asked Officer Sun, tilting his head.
Officer Sun’s face had gone pale. His hand trembled around the Coke bottle, and his voice nearly broke. “I-Is this… a haunting?”
“Don’t be afraid. I kill ghosts. Give me an outsider’s perspective and tell me how you understand it.”
Song Zang was perfectly calm and took a large sip of his cold drink. While speaking, he also unlocked Guo Jian Chun’s phone in a few quick motions and casually began searching through it.
Seeing him behave this way, Officer Sun could only force himself to calm down. With a faint sob in his voice, he whispered, “I think Yang Mei became a resentful ghost. E-Even after dying, she’s still looking for her son…
“Then her ghost drifted over to us and found her son here in the villa, so she’s thanking us? But why hasn’t she left yet? She isn’t going to take revenge on all of us, is she?!”
Song Zang raised a brow slightly. His gaze rested on 【my son】 as he thought. “Yang Mei? That’s certainly possible, but I’m afraid it isn’t only her.”
Officer Sun became even more frightened, trembling all over. “What? She’s really here?! Brother Song, can you really kill ghosts? I’m not afraid of anything except ghosts. I’ve already been terrified coming to work these past few days. If this keeps up, I seriously don’t want to live anymore…”
“Drink your Coke. Oh, and bring me a pair of gloves.”
“Right away!”
Officer Sun’s survival instinct was extremely strong. He moved like a gust of wind and returned in the blink of an eye with an entire box of medical gloves.
Song Zang put the gloves on and, under Officer Sun’s expectant gaze… took several yellowed teeth from his pocket, spread them on the table, and broke one open for a careful look.
There was nothing inside the yellow tooth. It was a perfectly pure calcium-phosphate structure.
When Yin Chen had burned Zhang Da Qiang’s body, he had deliberately preserved the teeth, and Song Zang had kept them untouched ever since.
Any “trash” Song Zang chose to keep always had something unique about it.
These teeth, for example, were pure enough to carry small amounts of energy and insubstantial soul matter.
Song Zang had no idea what Zhang Da Qiang had gone through for his teeth to be tempered to such unusually high quality, but now it worked perfectly in his favor.
With some simple modification, they could become entirely new objects, such as sinister containers capable of actively drawing in souls.
The refinement method was actually rather similar to alchemy. Unfortunately, Song Zang had not regained his memories while in the asylum. Otherwise, with his identity as an Archmage, he could have crushed the entire universe beneath him.
This world did not have magic as part of its setting, but if little ghosts existed, then sinister arts did too.
Song Zang could simply take the most yin and malevolent route possible.
After thinking for a moment, Song Zang lifted a hand and undid two buttons of his shirt.
The hideous wound on his chest had not yet completely healed and peeked from beneath his pale collarbone, frightening Officer Sun badly enough that the man’s gaze toward him became even more reverent.
“…Turn around. Block the view for me.” Song Zang paused before speaking darkly.
“Got it!”
After confirming Officer Sun was not looking, Song Zang pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and disinfected it quickly.
With a click, the silver-white blade sprang out, still carrying the hot, damp sting of the alcohol pad. Song Zang passed it by the injury on the right side and drove it deep into the left side of his chest.
He expertly avoided his ribs and made a cut beside the artery of his living, beating heart. This was heart’s blood, a key ingredient in refining a sinister artifact.
His method of stopping the bleeding after withdrawing the knife was equally simple and brutal.
Song Zang lifted the cold little snake sleeping around his wrist, rubbed his fingers several times along the smooth scales, then curled his lips with a touch of wicked amusement and shoved Yin Chen straight into the narrow cut.
The size was a perfect fit, just enough to plug the ruptured artery pouring blood inside him.
The short length of tail left outside abruptly went rigid and began twisting and struggling, openly betraying its astonishment.
Song Zang gave a cold laugh and deliberately pushed the tail farther toward his heart, pressing it tightly into place.
Didn’t Yin Chen like piercing straight through his chest whenever the mood struck him?
Fine. Then he could stay in there.
Bad thing. Always bullying him.