Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-PerpetualMreow, Proofreader-Ghostie
The officers could not see the cobwebs of Yin Qi everywhere in the room, but their colleague’s hand with black blood pouring out of the small hole was an obvious warning. None of the four dared to be careless, and they all handled the talisman paper carefully.
Bei Quan drew out a palm sized compass and held it flat in his palm.
The pointer in the centre of the compass was spinning like crazy, so fast that the afterimage appeared.
“This place is too heavy with Yin Qi.”
Qingzhu glanced sideways at Bei Quan’s compass, then cut his finger, squeezed out a drop of blood, and wiped it on the unruly pointer.
The moving pointer slowly stopped, trembled and fixed to point in a certain direction.
Qingzhu practised the Nanyang Lihuo technique, so he was filled with boundless Yang energy that could suppress the overwhelming Yin energy in the surroundings. It was similar to recalibrating a device that had lost effectiveness due to a too high or too low threshold, allowing the compass to regain its original sensitivity.
In this way, Bei Quan’s compass became a one-time consumable item, and it would be useless after using it just once.
“What a pity for my compass.”
Bei Quan’s mouth curled painfully, “It’s an antique with a history of more than 200 years!”
Qingzhu did not blink, “I will pay you back.”
His eyes followed the direction of the compass and turned towards North of the house.
There was nothing there, just a grey wall.
Bei Quan walked towards the north of the house. While walking, he turned his body in all directions to observe the changes in the compass in his hands.
Finally, he stood in front of a grey wall, and frowned, “According to the compass instructions, the heaviest Yin Qi is indeed here.”
However, Bei Quan didn’t have anything on him; there really wasn’t anything that could be the source of the Yin energy filling up this house.
Qingzhu walked to his side and reached out to touch the wall.
The police officer who had just suffered a big loss for turning on the lights quickly stopped him, “Be careful!”
“It doesn’t matter, it can’t hurt me at this level.”
Qingzhu explained, and raised his hand to knock on the wall.
“dōng, dōng.”
The sound was dull and did not sound like a hollow one.
The other officer also came over.
He had learned from his colleague and did not dare to knock on the wall. He only recalled the structure of the house that he saw from outside and said to Qingzhu.
“This house is square-shaped, and the walls don’t look like they could hide a secret room.”
Bei Quan nodded.
He also felt that the police officer’s judgement was correct.
“Since it’s not behind this wall ……”
Bei Quan lifted his head and looked toward the roof, “Then maybe it’s upstairs ……”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Then lowered his head again, “Or perhaps, in the ‘downstairs’.”
Qlat atja, tf iloafv tlr obba jcv rijwwfv la vbkc tjgv bc atf oibbg j ofk alwfr.
“vōcu, vōcu, vōcu, vōcu.”
Snfgsbcf’r ojmfr revvfcis mtjcufv.
Ccsbcf ktb tjv fnfc j ilaaif mbwwbc rfcrf mbeiv tfjg atja atfgf kjr rbwfatlcu olrts ecvfg atf oibbg.
Ktf qbilmf boolmfgr lwwfvljafis rabqqfv tfrlajalcu. Ktfs abbx bea atf rmgfkvglnfgr jcv mgbkyjgr, jcv yemxfv eq rfnfgji qlfmfr bo oibbglcu atja Dfl Hejc tjv rabwqfv bc bcf ys bcf, gfnfjilcu j rfmgfa vbbg atja kjr tlvvfc ecvfgcfjat.
“This ……”
Even the well-informed and determined criminal police officers, at the moment when they saw the secret door, spontaneously shivered, touched their necks again, and found a layer of goosebumps on the back of their necks.
No one could pinpoint the source of this uneasiness.
It was clearly just a secret door, but some indescribable intuition, perhaps attributed to the “sixth sense”, told them that there must be “something” behind the door.
Not a suspect, not a body, but something more disturbing and frightening that might overturn their common sense and imagination.
“Gulp.”
Someone swallowed heavily.
“… open it?”
Bei Quan slightly nodded, “Hmm.”
He reached out with his black silk gloved hand, gripped the door handle, and gave it a slight twist.
“Creak.”
The door opened.
Everyone took a few steps back as if they’d rehearsed before.
The deep-cold gloomy air was accompanied by a stench that almost made people dizzy.
The stench was so strong that not only the four police officers but Qingzhu’s and Aliu’s expressions also twisted.
Among the group, only Bei Quan remained calm and did not show an expression of disgust or dislike.
“Huh.”
Bei Quan gave a very light laugh.
This was not the first time he had smelled this smell.
In a lifetime too distant to remember, when he crawled out of the pile of the dead, it was the same stench that surrounded him.
It was a smell of fear, despair, and suffocation– a smell that could not be blown away by the mountain winds, one that belonged only to death.
Bei Quan shook his head to get rid of those untimely memories in his head, then turned on his flashlight and pointed it towards the door.
Behind the door was the basement. There was a retractable engineering ladder by the door. It was not clear how big the interior space was. The crowd perked up their ears and waited for a while, but no one heard any sound coming from inside.
Bei Quan put down the ladder and was the first to climb down.
Qingzhu followed, then the four officers, and finally the A’Liu girl.
Then, everyone saw the scene in the basement.
“Hiss!”
Someone drew a breath of cold air.
The basement was not large, and there was enough light from several flashlights to illuminate it completely.
There was a folding bed placed next to the north wall. On the bed, there was a bundle of a bulky item, but it was difficult to identify what it was.
In the corner of the wall was a person, more precisely a dead person.
The reason why they all knew that it was a dead person without checking was due to the strong rotten stench that made it so obvious.
After confirming with Bei Quan that they could approach, the four police officers rushed to the body.
The man must have been dead for at least three days, the pale skin had begun to emerge with black dendritic lines, but the face was still clearly recognizable.
The police immediately recognized that this person was the missing long-distance bus company ticket clerk He Qiang.
But Bei Quan, Qingzhu, and A’Liu were more concerned about the object on the folding bed.
“…It turns out that ‘they’ are all here.”
Bei Quan gently tugged on the unidentified bundle on the bed with gloved fingers and sighed in a low voice.
“Truly …… it’s such a pity.”
———————–
“Pēng!”
“Fuck!”
At the time the spotlight exploded and the shards of glass fell, Jiang Nan’an’s reaction was very quick.
In his current posture– sprawled out on his back; with a large living person still pressing on top of him, he would, without a doubt, be too slow to avoid the broken glass by jumping away.
So he simply ripped the corner of the curtain and rolled over to shield Su Lan.
Although there were numerous glass shards, each one was not particularly large. As long as it did not fall on the head or face, at most there would only be some small cuts on the hands and feet.
These glass fragments, which were not very lethal, were just a cover.
Just a second after the broken glass fell, the tea table beside them moved.
The glass-topped coffee table weighing 20 kilograms was lifted high by a pair of invisible hands and smashed towards Jiang Nan’an and Su Lan.
If this table hit anyone, it would not be surprising that people would get killed.
Jiang Nan’an didn’t have time to think about it, not to mention the ground was full of glass shards, completely on instinct, holding Su Lan, he laid on the ground and rolled.
“Wuuuu!”
The coffee table smashed to the ground and shattered into pieces.
And Jiang Nan’an also let out a wail.
Although he had reacted hastily, he couldn’t completely avoid it.
The corner of the tea table had hit Jiang Nan’an’s right arm. Even though he had practised the Golden Bell Shield Iron Cloth Shirt, he still broke out a cold sweat at this moment.
“Get up!”
Jiang Nan’an grabbed Su Lan, who was still wrapped in the curtain, with his uninjured hand, and lifted her up, “Be careful, it’s not over yet.”
Su Lan cried while struggling to tear the curtain away from her body and looked around in panic.
She saw Cai Mingjian, who had fallen unconscious on the sofa.
“A’Jian!”
Su Lan cried out and raised her arms to go check her husband’s situation.
“Be careful!”
Jiang Nan’an grabbed Su Rang’s arm and very ungently pulled her backward.
The next second, the winding curtains suddenly flew up, gathered into a ball, and rolled towards the two of them.
“Hey!”
Jiang Nan’an was furious.
“What are you so excited for?!”
He pulled out a stick from the inside of his jacket as if by magic, and with a pull and a flip, the stick was split in two, connected by a chain in the middle– just like a set of nunchaku.
Su Lan: “!!!”
Even though the situation was a severe crisis, the girl opened her eyes wide and stared at Jiang Nan’an.
This man used to be her classmate for four years, and he also became her boyfriend for a month. But at this moment, Su Lan had a strong feeling that she never really knew Jiang Nan’an.
She watched as Jiang Nan’an handled the nunchakus in a very skillful manner and beat them on the curtains.
The stick seemed to have hit someone unseen behind the curtain and made a heavy “thud” sound.
Immediately after that, the curtain lost the invisible support, and softly fell to the ground.
Su Lan let out a sigh of relief.
However, she was relieved too early.
“Don’t move!”
Jiang Nan’an suddenly shouted.
“That ‘thing’ is still here!”
Yes, now he was 100% sure that what had just attacked Su Lang and the short black shadow that he and Wei Fuyuan had seen earlier were two very different “things”.
The previous black shadow was a cloud of Yin Qi, which had a concrete outline in his celestial eyes, while now, the thing that was hovering in the room, trying to take Su Lan’s life, was just a very strong “will”.
If he has to describe it, this “will” is very much like the one they just encountered last week, Xu Lei’s “Spirit of words”.
It didn’t have a specific form nor could it materialise into anything it wished.
It had no sorrow, no joy, not even the ability to think, all actions were for the sole purpose of achieving a single goal.
And now, Jiang Nan’an felt that things have been made more than clear.
Obviously, it’s “only” goal was to kill Su Lan.
——But, how did this thing get entangled with Su Lan!?
At that moment, there was a loud “bang” at the entrance, and two seconds later, Wei Fuyuan rushed into the living room.
“It’s the bracelet!”
Wei Fuyuan shouted as he ran.
“Su Lan, it’s the gold bracelet that you wore at your wedding!”
Wow, this chapter was intense!
Thank you for the update!
This is such an intense and awesome chapter 😱
Thanks for the chapter ☺️☺️
How the hell did I picture the whole basement scene in my mind?
Anyways tysm for chapter