Chapter 27
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Late at night, the rain in Liushu Village had not stopped, but had become colder.
After an unknown amount of time, Old Wang returned from outside. There was still a smile on his face, but the smile lacked the friendliness and warmth of the daytime, instead, it was somewhat sinister. He knocked on the door of the room where the interns were staying on the first floor, “Boys, are you asleep?”
After knocking several times, there was no response from inside the room. Old Wang glanced around and leaned against the window to look inside. There was no one in the room.
His expression turned displeased and strange, but he didn’t say anything. With a stern face, he walked upstairs. However, as soon as Old Wang reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw Little Ling sitting on the stairs, wearing an ugly and dirty black coat, holding a rusty and half-broken yellow umbrella, staring straight at Old Wang.
Old Wang looked at her darkly, “What are you doing here? Go back to sleep!”
Little Ling didn’t say a word, still sitting on the stairs motionless.
Old Wang squatted down, the black mole on his nose seemed to have grown another circle, almost resembling a black spot. He stared at Little Ling, then smirked viciously, grabbed Little Ling’s arm, lifted her abruptly, and asked in a feigned gentle tone, “Little Ling, tell daddy, who wrote the ‘True or False Mother’ question in your book?”
Little Ling still didn’t speak.
Old Wang’s smile became even more terrifying, “Even if you don’t say it, I know. It’s your Teacher Lin, right? She put this question in your children’s workbook to suggest something… Little Ling, your Teacher Lin is crazy. Her words can’t be trusted, her stories can’t be trusted. She’s a lunatic, she’s deceiving you!”
Tears suddenly welled up in Little Ling’s eyes.
Old Wang pressed his face against Little Ling’s, swallowing saliva continuously. He slipped off Little Ling’s sleeves, revealing patches of black spots like crawling insects under the clothes.
“Little Ling, my good daughter,” Old Wang’s tone was strange, “tell daddy, why did you show the ‘True or False Mother’ question to the guests at home today? It wasn’t enough to show it to one person, you even let them take turns looking at it. Little Ling, what are you trying to do?”
Little Ling finally began to tremble with fear, “Daddy…”
Saliva dripped from Old Wang’s mouth, but when he heard Little Ling’s teary cry, his face suddenly twisted with malice. With a cold snort, he threw Little Ling down and walked upstairs, warning, “Little Ling, daddy and grandpa are hungry. If you don’t want daddy and grandpa to eat you, don’t do anything unnecessary.”
Little Ling was hurt all over from being thrown, covering her mouth, tears silently streaming from her big black eyes as she watched Old Wang’s back. Suddenly, she got up with all fours and ran into the dark night, leaving the house.
Old Wang didn’t care. After climbing to the second floor eagerly, he knocked on the door of the innermost room and pasted his face against it, but even after peeking into two rooms, there was no one inside. Old Wang’s face became darker and darker, but when he came to the room of the young couple at the end, he smiled happily again.
“Who’s there?”
This was the third time tonight that Liu Cheng was knocked on the door, making him both irritated and frightened, afraid that the lunatics were coming to bother them again.
“It’s me,” Old Wang’s voice came from outside the door, sticky as if coated with saliva, “I’m here to see if you need anything, hehe.”
Liu Cheng impatiently said, “We don’t need anything. We’re ready to go to bed.”
But Old Wang seemed to not understand the eviction order at all. He continued to stick to the door and said, “I have a few pieces of furniture here. I can offer you a buy-one-get-one-free discount. It’s available now. Won’t you come and take a look? Hehe.”
Huang Xin was tempted as soon as she heard this, getting out of bed and ready to go out, “Buy one, get one free? Is it true?”
Liu Cheng was also tempted, but as he got up, he inexplicably thought of the threat from those lunatics earlier and the phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Liu Cheng hesitated, and when he saw Huang Xin putting on her clothes ready to open the door, he suddenly shuddered, not knowing why he felt a jump in his heart, and quickly went up to grab Huang Xin, “Don’t open the door!”
Huang Xin rolled her eyes at Liu Cheng’s hesitancy, “What are you doing?”
Liu Cheng didn’t even know what he was doing. He stammered and couldn’t speak, and finally, he dragged Huang Xin back to the bed, turning off the only small lamp left on the bedside. He whispered to his girlfriend, “The people next door are unknown. They might be thugs. They just warned me not to take advantage. They might want to monopolize these cheap furniture in Liushu Village. We can’t compete with them.”
“Why not?” Huang Xin was so angry she wanted to pinch him, but reluctantly admitted that what Liu Cheng said was true. She muttered a few words of complaint but didn’t say anything more, pretending that the owner outside the door didn’t exist.
Old Wang called out several times, his attitude changing from warm to cold and then strange, but the young couple inside the room seemed as if they hadn’t heard anything, and the door remained tightly locked.
Old Wang had the keys to the room, but for some reason, he didn’t forcibly enter. Instead, he just stared at the door maliciously for a while before leaving the second floor disappointedly.
***
Lou Yan blended completely into the darkness.
He suspected that among the cultists, there were those whose senses had been altered by the anomaly, so he didn’t dare to be careless, staying far behind them, about four or five hundred meters away.
The night obscured his vision, and the lush and sturdy willow trees became the best cover. Lou Yan could hardly see the figures of the people ahead. Even though his senses had been enhanced by the anomaly powers, there was still a limit. But Lou Yan had not only his senses but also the life-and-death experiences from his past lives.
He utilized his eyesight and hearing to the fullest, with the map of Liushu Village firmly engraved in his mind, carefully detecting every subtle fluctuation in the air, moving silently like a leopard in the darkness.
The sound of wind and rain masked his last trace of sound.
The group of people ahead suddenly stopped.
Lou Yan also stopped in his tracks. He looked ahead, holding his breath and concentrating, his hand lightly resting on the weapon at his waist.
What happened?
Just as he finished thinking this, a scream rang out ahead, “Ah—!”
Lou Yan’s face changed, and he was about to move forward when he noticed two people fleeing rapidly in his direction.
The leader was Cai Mo, carrying a seven or eight-year-old girl, accompanied by another middle-aged fat man who was as bulky as two grown men. Their speed was incredibly fast, almost disappearing in the blink of an eye. Lou Yan could even see the expressions of disbelief on their faces.
What’s going on?
Lou Yan remained motionless, hiding behind a willow tree.
What about those interns? Did they encounter danger?
The fat man, covered in fat, looked heavy but ran very agilely. Mud and raindrops splattered on his body and face as he ran. He had a ferocious expression and shouted at Cai Mo, “Who is that person? How could he kill Zhou Tian so easily!”
Cai Mo’s face was also ugly. At this moment, there was no elegant and refined facade left. He tightly held the little girl in his arms, angry and afraid, “You’re asking me? I’ll have the people from the cult investigate him when we go back! It’s annoying that Zhou Tian had just merged with the anomaly. That anomaly was finally obtained by the cult with great difficulty, and a perfectly good anomaly was killed like this, what a waste!”
Lou Yan heard clearly these two sentences, and his expression stiffened for a moment.
Reason told him in an instant who this “him” was.
It was—
A cold wind blew from behind, and before anyone could react, a figure had quietly appeared in front of Cai Mo and the fat man.
No one saw his speed, not even his figure. The falling rain was slightly disturbed, and when the figure stopped, his silver hair fluttered gently in the wind behind him.
Cai Mo and the fat man stopped their frantic footsteps. Mud splattered on them due to their rapid movement. In the drizzle, the two of them widened their eyes in disbelief, looking at the man who had suddenly appeared in front of them, taking a few steps back cautiously.
The fat man’s face was dripping wet, unsure if it was from the rain or from the oil that had been scared out of him. He trembled and pointed at the silver-haired man, “How did you get here? How can you be faster than us…”
Fu Xuezhou was dressed in a plain manner, wearing a black hoodie and faded jeans. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his silver hair cascaded down his back, shrouded in a layer of misty raindrops.
On his back, he carried a long and narrow Tang sword wrapped in tattered cloth.
Fu Xuezhou drew the Tang sword from his back, and his silver hair swayed slightly. “Your speed is too slow.”
The Tang sword was held diagonally, gleaming with a cold light, and fine blood threads dripped to the ground with the raindrops. Facing him, Cai Mo and the fat man also noticed the blood on Fu Xuezhou’s face, the blood splatter he received when he killed Zhou Tian just now.
Cai Mo forced a smile. “Brother, let’s talk things out. If you want something, just tell us directly. There’s no need for violence. Whether it’s money or anything else, we can negotiate… You may not know, but our identities are not simple. The person you just killed, Zhou Tian, also has a remarkable background. If you kill us, you’ll offend even more formidable people. How about this, let’s each take a step back. We won’t blame you for killing Zhou Tian, and we can give you whatever you want. As long as you spare us tonight, what do you think?”
As he spoke, the fat man subtly took a step back. The fat on his body began to tremble violently, dripping off him like melting ice cream, and the oil seeped into the ground, coagulating together, then surged towards Fu Xuezhou from underground.
Just as it was about to reach Fu Xuezhou, he casually plunged the Tang sword into the muddy ground. A scream rang out as he lifted out something like a humanoid ghost made entirely of human oil from the mud.
This ghostly figure was pierced in the chest by the Tang sword. The fat man also screamed as if he had been stabbed in the chest, then collapsed weakly to the ground.
Fu Xuezhou took a step forward, his boots sinking into the mud. “But I only want your lives.”
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