The Restless Spirit's Father

Minutes earlier that evening…

The plastic cutlery could only produce an ugly symphony against the plastic plates while everyone was eating in the prison canteen. Eyes were still on that very prominent back of a young man whom everyone was openly or secretly scared of. Liu Xiaodan was only dining alone in his very own table, the inmates unaware of two more figures that were seated next to him.

Ever since the fall of the Black Boss, the prison had a change in regimen. Most henchmen vied for the supreme position while Qin Rong decided to follow Liu Xiaodan like a dog that would only come when called. These henchmen ended up trying to one-up this scary man, and yet they would all cower under his gaze. Everyone in the prison knew that he could slaughter people without touching them, be it from his adventures against the Black Boss or from the recounting of his crimes.

They all said that he was insane enough to act sane. He was normally on his own and would murmur as if talking to someone else. Sometimes, he would be drawing fantastic pieces of art for the library; often, he would be reading a book at night.

Liu Xiaodan, now called Boss Liu because of Qin Rong, had grown a reputation he didn't want.

"Hm? This feels weird…" Liu Xiaodan finished his food, but he felt like his tummy was still not full. He was always satisfied by the standard size here in the prison, but why was he hungry tonight? Moreover, it wasn't like the normal hungry…

"Maybe we should see that girl tonight? You might want to eat her…" Tang Mingming hummed as he watched Liu Xiaodan. "Your hunger is not for that kind of food…"

"Oh… probably. I'll just go to sleep then." Liu Xiaodan didn't want to consume ghosts; neither did he want to do something dangerous without Liu Guangru with him. "Hm, I haven't seen Guangru for days now. Where did he go?"

"Don't know. He didn't say anything." Tang Mingming followed Liu Xiaodan surrender his empty plates and cutlery. "Maybe he went to find someone else already?"

Liu Xiaodan didn't think Guangru would just leave him alone without saying goodbye at least. Besides, he wasn't even dead yet. However, he remembered that he wanted things to be settled for Li Feng's case… "Is he taking care of those?"

He had gone to his cell afterward. Sitting on his bed, he prepared to sleep. However, he felt a strange power channel through his body. "What is this?"

"Hm? Xiaodan, Xiaodan, do you have a servant?"

"Ah, a what?"

"Servant." Tang Mingming giggled. "Guangru isn't like me or Jun. He's even more powerful than anything I've ever seen in this prison. You are also more powerful than anything I've ever seen in the prison. I just figured… you can't grow so strong without anyone else feeding you, right?"

"Perhaps Guangru is feeding me…" Liu Xiaodan hummed as he stroked at his chin. Then again, it should be him feeding the child, right? "I really have no idea what this means—this voice…"

"What voice?" Tang Mingming was intrigued.

Liu Xiaodan suddenly shifted his position and crossed his legs on the bed. His palms were on his knees, and he closed his eyes. This was supposed to be a meditative pose taught to him by his mother, but he never wanted to be caught doing such. Now that no one was supposed to catch him, he freely did so.

There was a voice that he could hear in the back of his mind. It was familiar, and yet he couldn't tell at first notice. Soon, the rumblings turned into more audible whispers of a man he knew…

'F.u.c.k, gunshots…'

It was Li Feng's voice.

Liu Xiaodan twisted his lips in a bitter smile. When he gave him his blood, Liu Xiaodan knew that something might happen soon. However, he had to save a life that was ruined because of him. Besides, Li Feng was a blood relative whether he liked it or not.

It was as if he could dive into someone else's consciousness and peer into that person's sight. There, he saw it vaguely. The dark room and the emergency lights… it seemed to be in a ward. Liu Xiaodan's heart ached when he saw his mother cowering in fear while Liu Li was by the door… holding a gun.

These parents of his were good citizens. Never had they even deserve to be in a situation where one should arm oneself with a gun.

"Mother…!" Liu Xiaodan acted on his emotions again.

Before he knew it, he broke out of Li Feng's body as a black miasma mist and caught the bullet for her. As if rules of his possession, those the black miasma would intercept would be taken elsewhere. As he thought of catching it himself, he felt his stomach burn and jolt as he was shot. The bullet didn't travel through, but the injury was carried unto his physical body.

He learned quickly as the next ones were like curses bestowed unto the enemies. Moreover, he felt Liu Guangru somewhere in the building but not in his immediate surroundings. When the humans fell from the roof, he concluded that Guangru was responsible for it.

In the end, when Qin Rong came by, Liu Xiaodan was bleeding.

"Boss, I'll take you to the infirmary!" Qin Rong was terrified. Who had the audacity to shoot someone in a prison?! Was it a warden? Was it a guard?

"No, no, I'm okay." Liu Xiaodan did bleed and felt feverish, but he didn't say the wound was there. Almost as instantly as he killed the second man, he was healed. It was just that he still bled and the wound still left pain in him. Not to mention that the wound had plunged him into shock.

"You're bleeding!"

"I'm not…" Liu Xiaodan grabbed his shirt and lifted it, showing nothing but his quite flabby stomach. The wound was gone, but it still hurt.

Qin Rong was stupefied. Didn't he say he was shot? If he wasn't really shot, then why was there blood? Since Liu Xiaodan was unhurt, Qin Rong only looked into Liu Xiaodan's things and picked up a towel to clean off the blood in his mouth and on his belly. After doing so, he did realize that Liu Xiaodan wasn't really hurt…

Qin Rong had the man lie down for now and still called the nurse to get him checked. He just said he was rather unresponsive anymore. The guards took him to the sick bay, and he was given medicine for fever and for the hives showing onto his stomach.

In the end, the nurse only concluded that he ate something that triggered his allergy which caused him to faint and be feverish.

…

The office was quiet, and the frustrated typing over the keyboard was the only noise heard. Song Qixi was having a headache with all these digital doc.u.ments he had to submit. He just wanted them all handwritten, and yet those old dogs wanted these to be digitized. A ridiculing snort came from him as he thought of how they struggled to extract files from a compressed folder.

Knocks came to the door, and Song Qixi only let them in after a few minutes. Chu Youlan entered the office and hurriedly closed the door before reporting. "Sir, Liu Xiaodan fainted just now."

Song Qixi lifted his eyes from the laptop and stared at her confusedly. He fainted?

The woman then handed a handwritten report to him. "An unknown allergen had entered his system and caused him to go unconscious."

"You do realize that the nurse's diagnosis is bullshit. Liu Xiaodan is very healthy. His only allergy is… wait, hives on his belly?" Song Qixi raised his eyebrows. "He only gets hives when he gets blood on him. He used to have shots before because he was staying here while awaiting trial.

"Youlan, let's visit him. Are you about to knock off?"

"Not yet. I still have to attend to a lot of papers." Chu Youlan sighed as there were more and more inmates to look after these days. A lot of their inmates were disappearing, which they had to issue reports about. Even if the inmates were dying inside, they had their ways to cover things up. That job fell into Song Qixi's office.

"Okay, I'll see you again in thirty minutes. I just need to finish this…" Song Qixi kept the report about Liu Xiaodan and focused on his laptop again. However, he noticed that Chu Youlan was still standing in front of him. "Is there anything else?"

The woman didn't know how to say it. However, she pulled out her phone from her pocket and showed it to his boss. Even if it was forbidden to have smartphones in their office, Chu Youlan wasn't afraid to show hers to their boss.

Song Qixi didn't know what it was for, but he still took a look. His eyes then bulged in shock as he saw the news report about the shooting in the hospital. It seemed that Li Feng was still targeted, and the pursuers were now more armed than before.

"How bold…" The sergeant only laughed as he watched the brief interview with Li Heilong who spoke for everyone present. A smile was on his lips as he enjoyed watching before it came to him. "Youlan, did it ever occur to you that the occult really existed?"

"Hmm… you made me go to the Mian family. I think it does exist in places only a few can find…" Chu Youlan really didn't believe, but she didn't want to shut down people who did. She's skeptic, but she had no interest in proving herself wrong. "Why, sir?"

"Nothing really… just want to know if you believe in curses…"

Chu Youlan stifled her laughter. Curse? Wasn't it a curse to be working in this office?