Jiang Luo: “…”
He muttered, “That’s a good question.”
Ge Zhu finally came to his senses and chuckled awkwardly. Right, how would Jiang Luo know why it was him?
“But what I care about most right now,” Jiang Luo said, “is—who paid for it?”
Ge Zhu: “…That’s a very important question.”
But with people watching, they had no choice but to play it cool. Jiang Luo put on the perfect smile of a rich man—”It’s nothing, just a small matter”—and nodded at the captain with his chin raised.
His peripheral vision scanned the crowd. Jiang Luo’s first thought was that this was Chi You’s doing. He tried to find a face with Chi You’s traces on it, but saw no sign of him. Instead, he got several unfriendly glares from people.
Ge Zhu was panicking internally, muttering, “What do we do, what do we do, we’ve got no money. I could sell a kidney, I guess. How much does a kidney go for?”
After the auction, the top ten were required to pay the captain. Jiang Luo was just about to find a smooth way to give up the slot without losing face, when the captain smiled at him and said, “Mr. Zhong, your payment has already been received.”
Jiang Luo was briefly stunned, then smiled, “Oh? I don’t remember that.”
The captain handed over a blank sheet and a bank card. “This price slip you submitted came with a card.”
On the slip, only Jiang Luo’s name and a massive number were written.
Jiang Luo cheerfully folded up the slip. “Captain, this sheet isn’t needed anymore, right? Let me keep it as a souvenir.”
The captain smiled. “Of course.”
After leaving the auction hall and returning to their room, they found a note slipped under the door.
[Meet at the swimming area at 2 a.m. tonight]
At the end was a simple sketch of the emblem of Baihua University.
Ge Zhu looked at the note and asked, “You think something’s happened to them?”
Jiang Luo fetched a white porcelain basin, went to the bathroom, filled it with water, and placed it in the center of the table. “Nothing’s happened. I recognize this handwriting—it’s Ye Xun’s.”
Back when he first got into the occult, Ye Xun had briefly been his teacher.
Jiang Luo moved quickly, taking out a string of ancient coins disguised as a bracelet from his bag, and a box of incense ash kept in a censer.
Ge Zhu suddenly understood. “You’re trying to find out who submitted your bid?”
Jiang Luo nodded. “Exactly.”
He took apart the coins and arranged them at the bottom of the basin in a formation. He then laid the incense ash neatly on the table beside it.
“But…” Ge Zhu hesitated. “This method is really difficult. Even our teacher couldn’t do it successfully in such a simple setup.”
“Trying doesn’t hurt.” Jiang Luo finished preparing everything. He then took a knife, sliced open the middle finger of his left hand, and began drawing a talisman over the basin.
The middle finger has the strongest yang energy in the body. Left hand for males, right for females. The blood works better than cinnabar.
The talisman was drawn effortlessly. Jiang Luo tore off the part of the price slip with the handwriting, folded it into the shape of a paper figure, and dabbed a drop of blood at its center. Then he placed it in the water.
He licked the remaining blood off his finger and stared into the basin.
The paper figure slowly absorbed water. It should have floated, being so light, but it sank to the bottom. Once it stuck to the coins on its back, its arms suddenly twitched—and it stood up from the water.
Ge Zhu suppressed his wild joy. “It worked!”
The paper figure climbed out of the water and stepped onto the incense ash. It kept walking, and with each wet footprint, a blurry human face gradually formed in the ash. But halfway through, the moisture from the paper figure had been completely absorbed, and it suddenly lost its spiritual energy and collapsed.
Jiang Luo picked up the little figure and looked at the half-formed face on the table.
A broad forehead, narrow cheekbones, and a mole on the bridge of the nose.
Ge Zhu stared for a while and said, “This person looks kind of familiar.”
Jiang Luo turned to stare at him.
“When I was in the Buddhist monastery, I think I saw this person once,” Ge Zhu racked his brain. “A mole on the nose, bad facial features, he even scared me once.”
“Who was it?” he rubbed his forehead.
Jiang Luo tested: “Qi family? Chi family?”
Ge Zhu clapped his hands suddenly and sat up, excited. “Yes, yes, it was someone from the Chi family!”
Jiang Luo wasn’t surprised at all—instead, he smiled. “Someone from the Chi family bought me a spot to eat the blood eel. Are they hoping I live longer and get younger?”
As if that were possible.
The intention behind giving him that spot was clearly malicious. It showed that this “blood eel” thing was definitely no good.
Jiang Luo couldn’t help thinking further.
Even the government didn’t know what blood eel really was, and specifically entrusted them to investigate. But the Chi family knew—and knew a lot, apparently.
Maybe their mission to investigate blood eel had already been tampered with by the Chi family.
If the blood eel really was dangerous, and was tied to the Chi family, then Jiang Luo could use this chance to bring them down.
No—actually, even if it wasn’t connected to the Chi family, he could make it connected.
Jiang Luo instantly felt excited. He couldn’t wait to figure out what the blood eel really was.
Ge Zhu was startled by his beaming smile. “J-Jiang Luo?”
Jiang Luo gave him a gentle smile. “Let’s get some sleep now. We’ll probably be up all night later.”
Ge Zhu naturally agreed.
They slept until nightfall. The two of them crept quietly to the swimming area and found their companions in a corner. But something felt off—the atmosphere was heavy, cigarette butts were scattered all over the ground.
Wenren Lian and Zhuo Zhongqiu were crouched down smoking, Cyril and Lu Youyi’s eyes were red like rabbits, and Ye Xun stood silently to the side, hugging Little Pink.
Jiang Luo paused. “What happened?”
Cyril looked like he’d found a pillar to lean on, his lips quivered, and he choked up, “Kuang Zheng drank the fish soup for us. He got a fever at midnight and was taken away.”
Ge Zhu took a stunned step forward. “Taken away by who?!”
Wenren Lian put out his cigarette and looked up, bloodshot eyes brimming. “The dinners these last two days had fish soup. About half the people who drank it got a fever at night and were taken away by the crew. At dinner today, a crew member watched over us—he wouldn’t leave until he saw someone at every table drink the soup. Kuang Zheng drank it. Got a fever tonight. Was taken. Cyril was knocked out. We didn’t even know what happened to Kuang Zheng until the crew left.”
His hand holding the cigarette trembled uncontrollably, but he still had the clarity to explain things briefly and clearly. Jiang Luo closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he asked calmly, “Where was he taken?”
“The lower hold,” Ye Xun said hoarsely.
They were all overwhelmed with panic. At that moment, Jiang Luo’s absolute composure made him the backbone of the group. Their hopeful gazes fell on him like a heavy weight on his shoulders. He knew better than ever that now was the time to remain steady.
Jiang Luo exhaled. “Get up. Don’t panic. We’re going to the lower hold to find Kuang Zheng. Cyril, you can call upon spirits, right? Didn’t you once bring Ge Zhu back when he was hanging by a thread? A fever’s nothing. Even if that soup had something in it—”
He stopped himself, thinking of his own unique constitution. “Kuang Zheng will be fine.”
Wenren Lian murmured, “Will he really be okay?”
Jiang Luo looked at him, his face expressionless, voice devoid of any dramatic flair. He simply said, flatly, “I guarantee he’ll be fine.”
Strangely, that plain statement lifted everyone’s spirits, as if giving them strength. They all straightened their backs and steeled themselves.
Jiang Luo thought for a moment and said, “There’s too many of us. It’d be better if half stayed in the rooms and waited.”
No one moved. They all looked at him, silently expressing their resolve.
“…Fine,” Jiang Luo said helplessly. “But be careful. Follow my lead.”
To reach the lower hold, they had to pass by the crew quarters. They carefully avoided the crew on duty and arrived at the lower hold’s entrance.
Two crew members were guarding the door. Jiang Luo’s eyes shifted, and he beckoned to the others.
“Still remember how to draw the Five Ghost Transportation Spell?”
The two crewmen were chatting when they suddenly felt a light breeze pass by. They didn’t think much of it—until the breeze kept coming, again and again. Seven times in total.
One of the crewmen looked around. “Weird…”
Inside the lower hold, Jiang Luo and the others respectfully saw off the Five Ghosts that had transported them in. When they raised their heads again, they were greeted with a shocking sight: Strung up from the ceiling like trees were “people.”
—Or more precisely, grotesquely deformed corpses.
