A Good-for-Nothing

111. Xu Family Playing Hardball (1)

Translator: DragonRider

It was after six o’clock that they arrived at the Police Station of Eastern District, and policemen in it had changed shifts. He Zheng, following Zu Zhichong, went through all sentry posts without any trouble. Eventually, they saw Liu Lanxue’s corpse in the mortuary, which was still on a dissecting table, covered with white cloth.

Liu Lanxue’s uncovered skin was riddled with scratches and bruises, which seemed quite scary.

A coroner standing on the side, who was wearing a gauze mask, explained, “She did this to herself. She’d been suffering from severe emotional instability and on the verge of a mental breakdown all along, which was why she kept hurting herself, as if trying to find proof through pain that she’s still alive.”

“How did she die?” He Zheng’s eyes had been on Liu Lanxue all along. There was a shroud of faint, almost unnoticeable black gas about her. The gas was not even as thick as what he had previously seen around her diary. ‘But she’s already dead. Why is she still shrouded in black gas?’ He Zheng wondered.

The coroner replied, “She dropped dead after suffering a bout of intense stimulation beyond her tolerance. Both her heart and her nervous centralis were overloaded, which resulted in her sudden death.”

“What was it that stimulated her?”

The coroner shook his head. An auxiliary policeman on the side, who had just walked in, seemed to have something to say but eventually held back the words on the tip of his tongue.

“This madam had been rather mentally unstable since the day she was brought into our station. She’s always talking about some diary and wouldn’t stop slapping her own face. We had no choice but to restrain her, but whenever we were not paying attention, she’d start hurting herself again. We’d been taking turns to guard her for several days.”

The auxiliary policeman seemed to be experiencing a carry-over of fear while talking about what had happened previously. “At that time we were changing shifts and nobody was watching her. And then we heard a sudden yell and ran up to the room only to find that she’d already fallen to the ground. One of my colleagues immediately performed cardiac resuscitation for her, but it didn’t work. She still died.”

“The diary,” Zu Zhichong murmured.

When Qin Huai walked inside, he looked as if something in this room could kill him at any moment. He Zheng, seeing him trembling all over, secretly sneered at him, feeling that he was such a coward. “You may stay outside or just go back home first,” said He Zheng.

Though frightened, Qin Huai didn’t want to leave He Zheng in this place, for He Zheng was here because of him. “I’ll wait for you at the doorway… We’ll go back together when this is over,” said Qin Huai.

“All right.” He Zheng said to the auxiliary policeman, “Maybe you should go outside with him and keep him company.”

It was just a corpse, and there were surveillance cameras everywhere inside the station, so they didn’t have to worry about what He Zheng and Zu Zhichong might do to the corpse. He Zheng scrutinized the corpse. There were two parts of Liu Lanxue’s body where the black gas was the most noticeable: her chest where the heart was, and the top of her skull. In He Zheng’s eyes, these two parts of Liu Lanxue’s body looked as if someone had dug a small hole in each of them, of which black gas was billowing out continuously.

“She’s already dead. Why is there still black gas coming out of her body?” He Zheng briefly knitted his brows, casually walked up to a freezer, pulled it open and found that there was no black gas over any of the other bodies.

Zu Zhichong, on hearing this, was sent into a fleeting trance of astonishment and then said, “Wait. He Zheng, we seem to have misunderstood something.”

Why was there black gas over that button and that diary? Originally they had subjectively believed that it was because of death Qi, but in fact, Liu Lanxue had still been alive when they’d found her diary. It’d been Liu Lanxue’s resentment that she’d expressed in her diary. Why was there black gas over it?

He Zheng and Zu Zhichong at the same time came to realize where the problem was. They exchanged glances and uttered the same word.

“Demon.”

“Just now Tun Shanhai told me that Xu Tianhao’s soul is missing. I think it was not devoured but taken by someone who wanted to make a deal,” said He Zheng.

A layer of fine beads of sweat oozed out of the bridge of Zu Zhichong’s nose.

‘This is yet another case involving demons. Why? Plus that of Liu Lanxue, he could only get two small souls. Is it really necessary to send a demon to make a deal with Liu Lanxue?’ Zu Zhichong wondered.

“Fuck! What the hell do you think you are doing?!” A commotion came from outside the door. Zu Zhichong and He Zheng twisted their heads around at the same time.

Outside, two groups of people were confronting each other.

As mentioned previously, Qin Huai, like He Zheng, had grown up in a rich family, so naturally he was not really sweet-tempered. His eyes were long and narrow, which made him seem to be smiling all the time. Even when he was angry, his eyes were curved as well.

Clearly Qin Huai was in a temper, but there was still a smile on his face. “Mrs. Xu, don’t you think you overstepped the mark?” asked Qin Huai.

Mrs. Xu, who hadn’t expected to see Qin Huai in this place, did a manifest double take. In the presence of Qin Huai, she showed some restraint and, with a wave of her hand, signaled those bodyguards, who were about to force an entry into the mortuary, to step back.

“Childe Qin.” Mrs. Xu, as wife of the patriarch of a rich and powerful family, soon collected herself and veiled her arrogance. “I’m just here to get justice for my poor son. Childe Qin, my son and your niece were seeing each other. That kid is also heart-broken, I suppose? Provided that’s the case, presumably you better than anyone can understand how I feel.”

He Zheng and Zu Zhichong, as soon as they walked through the door, heard Mrs. Xu’s hypocritical words and couldn’t help but chuckle scornfully.

Mrs. Xu’s face marked with grief instantly stiffened.

He Zheng gave a cough. “You may continue your act.”

This remark undoubtedly added fuel to the flames of Mrs. Xu’s anger and she instantly flied into a shameful rage. Worse still, she didn’t know He Zheng and took him to be a common lowly policeman as she saw him walking out of the mortuary.

“Who do you think you are? You’re in no position to speak here.”