Feng Xiuyun’s boyfriend was actually Zhang Feng.
Jiang Luo recalled what he had read earlier—Zhang Feng was only 24 this year, a full six years younger than Feng Xiuyun.
Even someone outside the entertainment industry like Jiang Luo knew what kind of consequences would come if a trainee who hadn’t even debuted yet was exposed for dating an older backstage staff member by six years.
But that’s exactly what was strange.
Zhang Feng was already 24—not that young. He was desperate to debut. Why would he choose to fall in love at a time like this? Jiang Luo didn’t mean to look down on Feng Xiuyun, but he understood the darker side of men. If the woman was young, beautiful, rich, maybe it’d make sense. But Feng Xiuyun was already thirty, plain-looking, just a minor staff member behind the scenes—she couldn’t offer Zhang Feng any help.
If Zhang Feng dated her, there was a high chance he had an ulterior motive.
But what kind of motive would make someone willing to risk everything—his debut, his future—just to get close to Feng Xiuyun?
Jiang Luo reread the diary and noticed that all the entries were written within three days. That meant Zhang Feng got close to her, wooed her, and started dating her all within three days.
And three days later, Feng Xiuyun was dead.
Before that, the three trainees including Li Zhen had already died.
To put it bluntly, no matter how you looked at it, Zhang Feng was definitely connected to the deaths of those three, yet he somehow wasn’t dead himself.
A word flashed through Jiang Luo’s mind: scapegoat.
Was Feng Xiuyun Zhang Feng’s scapegoat?
“Did Feng Xiuyun leave anything else behind?” Jiang Luo asked.
Lu Youyi brought over a large cardboard box. “This box was hidden under her bed. We haven’t gone through it yet.”
The three of them bowed toward the box, then opened it. Inside were neatly arranged storage bags.
The contents were all over the place: a half-eaten cookie, a used cup, and even a moldy apple.
Each bag had a sticky note on top.
“This is the hair tie he gave me.”
“The cup he used.”
“The words he said to me.”
At the bottom of the box was a folded navy-blue bedsheet.
Lu Youyi and Ye Xun unfolded it. In the center of the sheet were several bloodstains.
There was also a note pinned to the sheet.
Jiang Luo glanced at it and frowned. “They slept together.”
This was proof that it was Feng Xiuyun’s first time.
The two holding the sheet blushed, quickly folded it up, and awkwardly stepped back.
The note on the sheet read:
“I didn’t think we’d go this far so soon… But it’s okay. He really likes me. Every time we meet, he hugs and kisses me. I asked him why he likes doing that, and he said it’s so he can leave his scent on me… I don’t really understand why he seemed so relieved afterward, but I was still really happy, even if his attitude toward me became impatient when he left.”
Dead Ghost who had been quietly watching suddenly spoke up: “She was the scapegoat.”
It matched Jiang Luo’s own thoughts. He looked at Dead Ghost. “Why do you say that?”
Dead Ghost replied, “Zhang Feng left his scent on Feng Xiuyun so he could fool the ghost that wanted to kill him.”
Something—or someone—intended to kill Zhang Feng. He realized it and deliberately got close to Feng Xiuyun, becoming intimate and dating her, so that the ghost would mistake her for him. That’s why Feng Xiuyun died—while Zhang Feng survived.
But how did Zhang Feng know he was going to die?
Where did he learn how to use a scapegoat?
Zhang Feng, Li Zhen, Chen Lezhi, and Lin Xiao must have done something—something serious—that brought death upon them.
Jiang Luo pointed at Feng Xiuyun’s box. “So for her to be a scapegoat, all he needed was some hugging, kissing, and sex?”
Dead Ghost nodded.
He didn’t remember anything else, but this kind of knowledge seemed instinctive, surfacing naturally. “A hug can leave your scent on someone for a short time. Fluids are better—like through kissing—but no need to go all the way.”
“That’s enough to trick ghosts who don’t rely on sight to identify people.”
Lu Youyi suddenly understood. He looked at the box with sympathy. “So Zhang Feng killed her on purpose.”
Zhang Feng was rotten to the core.
If what Dead Ghost said was true—that there was no need to go that far—then Zhang Feng had no reason to sleep with Feng Xiuyun. But he still did. Probably because he didn’t want to take any chances. He coaxed and deceived her into making sure she could fully take his place as the scapegoat.
He used a woman’s love for him in the most selfish, terrifying way.
And the reason Zhang Feng chose Feng Xiuyun was obvious.
She was quiet, introverted, nearly invisible among the staff. No background, no friends. Even if something happened to her, no one would pursue it.
Feng Xiuyun was thirty and had never dated before. Zhang Feng could easily win her heart. Even if their affair was eventually exposed, who would believe the words of an old, ugly behind-the-scenes staff?
The public would only think that Feng Xiuyun was talking nonsense, that she couldn’t distinguish between reality and dreams, fantasizing that she was in a relationship with a young, handsome trainee.
Zhang Feng really had thought of everything.
Jiang Luo let out a cold laugh. “How clever of him.”
But now, although Feng Xiuyun had died in Zhang Feng’s place, it was clear that Zhang Feng still hadn’t rid himself of whatever was behind him.
Jiang Luo closed the notebook. “Let’s go check out that warehouse.”
***
Zhang Feng had been dancing all morning. The more he practiced, the more irritable he became. Scowling, he went to the bathroom alone.
There was no one in the bathroom. Zhang Feng splashed cold water on his face and looked up at his reflection in the mirror.
He had solved the thing that had been weighing on his mind—he should be feeling relaxed. But after seeing the other trainees’ performances in the practice room, fear and jealousy started to rise again.
He had thrown that thing away. Without its protection, could he still debut successfully?
There were only eight debut spots. So many people were still ahead of him.
Zhang Feng thought viciously: let them die too, just like he had once wished.
He dried his face with a paper towel and looked back at the mirror—something felt wrong.
Why hadn’t his expression changed at all?
Perplexed, Zhang Feng tried making a different expression, but the reflection in the mirror just kept smiling—still and unchanged.
What’s going on? Zhang Feng started to panic.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the bathroom door.
Distracted and uneasy, Zhang Feng walked over to the door, more irritated than afraid. Why knock on a bathroom door? Wasn’t it just a push to open?
Yeah, that’s right—the bathroom door opens with just a push.
Zhang Feng froze in place. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, and a chill shot up his spine.
“Who is it?” he called out.
The person outside didn’t respond—just kept knocking.
Zhang Feng’s heart leapt into his throat. Every hair on his body stood on end, a creepy sensation crawling up the back of his neck. With trembling hands, he locked the door and took two steps back.
“Who are you? Who?!” he shouted in terror. “Say something!”
The knocking continued in a steady rhythm.
Zhang Feng was scared out of his wits. He covered his ears like a madman, but the knocking still pierced straight through to his ears. He suddenly roared, “Stop knocking!”
The knocking outside abruptly stopped.
Zhang Feng let out a breath of relief—only to tense up again.
He crept toward the door, trying to see if the person had left. But there was no peephole on the door, and no windows nearby.
His breathing grew heavy. He didn’t dare open the door. But the silence now was even more nerve-wracking than the knocking had been.
After hesitating for a long time, he crouched on the ground and tried to peek through the gap beneath the door.
The gap was about two fingers wide—just enough for an eye.
Zhang Feng pressed his face to the ground, forehead nearly glued to the door, peering through the crack.
His eyes moved from left to right. There were no shadows of feet outside the door.
Whoever—or whatever—had been knocking was gone.
Zhang Feng felt like he could breathe again, gasping for air as he collapsed limply onto the floor.
Stop overthinking… It was probably just some trainee playing a prank on him, trying to scare him on purpose.
Everything had already been dealt with. Nothing would come for him again.
Heart pounding, Zhang Feng tried to calm himself down. Just as he was about to stand up, he subconsciously glanced back at the door crack—
And met another wide-open eye staring back at him.
Who knew how long that eye had been watching him.
“…”
“AHHHHHHHHHH!”
***
Jiang Luo and the others were on their way to the warehouse.
On the way, Lu Youyi sighed gloomily, “I really want to go back to school. Aside from the food here, everything else is worse than at our school. It’s so boring—all we do is eat and train.”
Jiang Luo replied in the same tone, “Isn’t good food enough for you?”
Lu Youyi fell silent.
Dead Ghost asked curiously, “Back to school?”
“We’re still in school,” Lu Youyi explained. “Have you ever gone to school, Dead Ghost?”
Dead Ghost looked confused for a moment, then hesitantly shook his head.
“He’s a living corpse. Even if he did go to school, it was probably some ancient one from centuries ago,” Ye Xun said calmly. “Dead Ghost, where’s your blade?”
Dead Ghost replied, “I hid it in the dorm.”
Most people had a hard time hiding even a phone, but he had managed to stash a giant blade. Lu Youyi gave him a thumbs-up in admiration.
Dead Ghost thought for a moment and added, “I also hid more than twenty camera lenses.”
“What are you hiding lenses for?” Jiang Luo didn’t understand the mind of the undead. “By the way, how did you even get into this show?”
Dead Ghost told them about being scouted and even mentioned the 20-year contract he had signed with the agent.
“Twenty years?!” Lu Youyi gasped. “Isn’t that basically a scam?!”
“What are you so worried about?” Ye Xun said dryly. “It’s not like he’s human.”
“Oh, right,” Lu Youyi scratched his head.
As they spoke, they arrived at the warehouse. Just as the director had said, it was located in a very remote area, and the warehouse itself was shabby and worn-down. Several windows were broken, and weeds grew thick in the corners.
The iron door was rusted. Jiang Luo pushed it, but it was locked—they couldn’t get in from the front.
Ye Xun found a window they could climb through. “Here.”
They jumped in through the window. The moment they landed, dust billowed up everywhere. Jiang Luo waved the dust away from his face and saw several muddy footprints on the ground.
Ye Xun compared the prints to Zhang Feng’s shoes and confirmed, “Zhang Feng’s been here.”
The prints led to a window in the back wall of the warehouse. Jiang Luo followed them, scanning the rest of the warehouse with his peripheral vision.
Inside were some old desks, chairs, and electrical equipment. A few long screws were scattered on the floor. Against the left wall was a small table that looked slightly cleaner than everything else.
There were four cardboard boxes serving as chairs next to the table.
Jiang Luo said, “There’s something strange about this table.”
Ye Xun followed his gaze. “Want to go check it out?”
As they walked over, they saw a broken bowl sitting on the table. At one corner of the table, a lump of black ash had accumulated. Jiang Luo rubbed some between his fingers and chuckled, “It’s incense ash.”
“Were they playing Bei Xian?” Lu Youyi asked in fascination.
Bei Xian is a game like Bi Xian or Die Xian, used to divine answers. It’s a spiritual summoning game that involves ghosts, and if the summoned spirit isn’t respectfully sent off, disaster can follow.
But Jiang Luo hadn’t seen any signs of those types of ghosts in this incident.
Could it really be that these people were killed by Bei Xian?
Then what about that faceless monster in the dark?
That creature had left Jiang Luo so terrified that even now, he didn’t dare to stand in a dark place. He feared that as soon as it went dark, the monster would appear silently beside him and kill him before he could react.
Jiang Luo clicked his tongue and said, “Let’s follow his footprints first.”
They climbed out the window on the warehouse’s back wall, landing in the mud. The rain had only just stopped this morning, and the ground hadn’t dried.
Garbage was everywhere, half-buried in the mud like huge radishes sticking out, with nowhere clean to step.
In the middle of the muddy ground, a line of footprints led toward the woods. Jiang Luo felt a bit lucky—thank goodness it had rained yesterday, or it wouldn’t have been so easy to track Zhang Feng.
The forest wasn’t very dense, but the muddy ground made walking hard. After about twenty minutes, they followed the trail to a massive pile of garbage.
The stench was overwhelming. Jiang Luo turned green from the smell and covered his nose. “His destination was the garbage dump?”
Ye Xun pinched his nose and mumbled, “Did he throw something here?”
Jiang Luo: “…Don’t tell me we have to dig through trash.”
Ye Xun’s eyes lit up with curiosity. He said firmly, “The truth is right in front of us. Dig.”
Jiang Luo: “…”
He really shouldn’t have come on this mission with Ye Xun. The guy’s curiosity was overwhelming—he could suppress fear and even voluntarily dig through garbage to find the truth.
Ye Xun rolled up his sleeves, found two relatively clean plastic bags to cover his hands, and urged, “Hurry up.”
Lu Youyi was already used to this. He skillfully found three more pairs of plastic bags, gave them to Jiang Luo and Dead Ghost, then shoved Dead Ghost forward and said cheekily, “Hey, you’ve got a good nose. Go ahead—if you smell anything like Zhang Feng, let us know.”
Dead Ghost nodded obediently and started digging through the garbage, shielding the other two with his body.
The awful stench messed with his sense of smell, but soon, he picked up a distinct scent.
He followed it and opened a cardboard box, finding a package tightly wrapped in plastic.
“I found it,” he said, turning around.
The four of them climbed down from the garbage heap. They wanted to open it right there, but the smell was unbearable. They returned to the warehouse instead.
But even after leaving the dump, Jiang Luo could still smell the stench.
He sniffed his clothes and froze, quickly turning his head away.
He reeked of garbage.
Jiang Luo was disgusted by himself, but suddenly remembered: if he’d smelled like this last night, wouldn’t Chi You have been utterly repulsed?
Should he use this as a tactic tonight to gross out Chi You?
…But he quickly gave up that idea.
It was too smelly. Even he couldn’t stand it.
This kind of tactic would harm the enemy by a thousand and himself by eight hundred—a stupid plan.
The warehouse was far from the dump. Once back inside, Dead Ghost placed the plastic bag on the table. “There’s something wrong with this thing’s aura.”
He pulled the item out from the plastic bag. It was wrapped in thick layers of cling film. He unwrapped it layer by layer until it revealed a transparent glass jar, about the size of two palms.
Inside the jar was a shriveled, bald infant.
Its arms and legs were like dried twigs, eyes closed, skin dark and leathery.
A swirling black mist surrounded the baby. Lu Youyi’s face darkened. “It’s a little ghost.”
Little ghosts are similar to Gumantong, but they are not the same. Gumantong are spirits of lost children that compassionate white-clad monks take in and consecrate for good deeds. Little ghosts, however, are created by black-clad monks through cruel means. They die with grievance, full of resentment, and are used for evil.
Little ghosts are more powerful and effective than Gumantong, but the backlash is also far greater.
Jiang Luo hadn’t expected Zhang Feng to dare raise something like this.
He stepped forward, picked up the plastic bag, and rewrapped the jar. “The baby Zhang Cheng saw next to Zhang Feng was probably this little ghost.”
Just then, the director called them, sounding panicked. “Master, something happened to Zhang Feng!”
***
Zhang Feng was found unconscious in the restroom. The production team rushed him to the hospital, but after he woke up, he went completely insane—screaming and thrashing.
He kept covering his face and shouting, “My face! My face!”
When Jiang Luo and the others arrived at the hospital, they overheard a nurse, still shaken, say, “That patient we just brought in went crazy. He gouged his own eyes out—ripped them right out! Several nurses threw up!”
Another nurse, arms folded and hair standing on end, said, “He clawed his face to shreds, and he was still smiling. He’s gone mad, completely mad!”
Jiang Luo and the others exchanged glances and quickly went to the ward.
Zhang Feng had been sedated by the doctors and was now lying weakly on the bed.
His face was covered in bloody scratch marks from his own fingernails. His eye sockets were empty, turned into bloody holes. The director shut the door and said anxiously, “He nearly scratched a doctor earlier—he kept saying the doctor’s nose was his nose. I think he’s possessed or something. Master, please take a look—do you think he’s been possessed by a ghost?”
Jiang Luo looked Zhang Feng over and sneered. “No. He’s realized he no longer has a face.”
The director didn’t understand what he meant, but Jiang Luo walked straight to the bedside and looked down at Zhang Feng from above.
Zhang Feng saw him and grew agitated again. “Where’s my face? Where’s my face?!”
Jiang Luo curled his lip. “Your face is gone. Shouldn’t we be asking you that?”
Zhang Feng froze.
Jiang Luo placed the glass jar containing the little ghost on the table in front of the bed, his voice cold. “You recognize this, don’t you? After raising a little ghost and then discarding it, you were bitten back—it’s your own doing. Right now you’ve only lost your face, but if you don’t want to lose your life too, then tell us the truth about the deaths of Li Zhen and the other two.”
Zhang Feng trembled all over. “I—I don’t know…”
“The four of you played Bei Xian and summoned something. One by one, the others died, but you got a way to escape death—by finding a scapegoat,” Jiang Luo said coldly, half-guessing, half-inferring. “Feng Xiuyun died, so you didn’t have to. You thought you’d cheated death, but then strange things kept happening around you… Every time you saw a new trainee, you were reminded of the three dead—reminded of how they died. You panicked, you were afraid, you worried you’d still die. But you comforted yourself, telling yourself someone else had died in your place, and you were safe. Isn’t that right?”
Zhang Feng’s face went deathly pale. Jiang Luo sneered, “Since you don’t want to talk, there’s nothing stopping you from going off to die.”
He made a show of turning to leave. Zhang Feng suddenly shouted, “Don’t go!”
He reached out to grab Jiang Luo but tumbled awkwardly off the bed, collapsing to the floor in tears and snot. “Help me! Please, I’m begging you, help me!”
The group paused and looked back at him.
“Most of what you said is right,” Zhang Feng sobbed. “We—we played Bei Xian, and summoned a faceless monster! It said it could grant our wishes. Li Zhen and the other two wished to debut, but I was blinded by greed. I wished for everyone ahead of me to die, so I could debut in the center… And the faceless monster agreed.”
“But before anyone else died, Li Zhen and the other two died first. That’s when I realized—to get your wish, someone has to die first.”
“If everyone’s dead, what’s the point of debuting?” Zhang Feng cried, emotionally shaken. “I nearly lost my mind those days, and then Fu Wei came and mocked me. What did he know? Just because he has that face, he thinks he has everything? Even if I died, I’d make sure he died too! I found a way to make the faceless monster target him. I even turned to the little ghost I raised and begged it to protect me. But even the little ghost couldn’t stop the faceless monster. In a rage, I threw the ghost and cursed it for being useless…”
“The next day, I snuck off to an internet café and searched for information—and found out about the scapegoat method.”
Zhang Feng realized Feng Xiuyun would be the easiest to manipulate, so he didn’t hesitate. He tricked the faceless monster into thinking Feng Xiuyun was him. Sure enough, Feng Xiuyun died.
But the strange happenings around him didn’t stop. If Zhang Cheng hadn’t seen the baby ghost haunting him, Zhang Feng wouldn’t even have realized the little ghost had already turned on him—and now wanted him dead.
Zhang Feng crawled forward trembling, trying to clutch Jiang Luo’s leg. “Please… please save me…”
Jiang Luo took a few steps back and asked, “Have you called the police?”
Ye Xun nodded. “They’ll be here soon.”
Zhang Feng collapsed on the floor, limp.
They left the hospital. Lu Youyi exhaled deeply. “Because of Zhang Feng’s wish, the faceless monster is forcing the production team to keep filming. And it’s already set its sights on Fu Wei. If we don’t get rid of the faceless monster, this isn’t over.”
Jiang Luo lit a cigarette and suddenly said, “The faceless monster has targeted me too.”
But…
A strange idea popped into Jiang Luo’s mind.
What if he could pit Chi You and the faceless monster against each other?
