The sun was shining as the three of them left the library and walked along the street. Xiang Cheng held Chi Xiaoduo's hand in one hand and stuck his other hand in the pocket of his shorts. He had soaked up so much sun that it was starting to feel unbearable.
When entering the Sanlitun Starbucks, Chi Xiaoduo felt his whole body come to life again. There weren’t many people in the Starbucks, having all been drawn away by the Maan Coffee across the street.
Zhou Wanyuan plopped down, took out the papers from her handbag, and said, "Take a look ba." Saying that, she took off her sunglasses and looked at Chi Xiaoduo enigmatically.
"Should we drink...some coffee?" Chi Xiaoduo asked, "I'll buy you a drink? Xiang Cheng, what do you want to drink?"
"Don't waste money," Xiang Cheng replied.
"Chi Xiaoduo, you’re very handsome." Zhou Wanyuan said, "But why do you look scared, am I that terrifying?"
"Thank you." Chi Xiaoduo said, trembling with fear, "You're also very pretty. You're not terrifying, that’s just how I am, I don’t have much courage." He thought, if I say it like that, will that offend her?
Zhou Wanyuan replied, "A latte."
Xiang Cheng read the papers without looking up. Zhou Wanyuan said, "Chen Zhen told me to go find you; he said you’d have a way."
Xiang Cheng finished reading the papers and put them on the table. He took over Chi Xiaoduo's coffee, and remained silent.
Chi Xiaoduo asked, “Can I read it?”
Zhou Wanyuan and Xiang Cheng made a gesture at the same time--take a look ba.
Chi Xiaoduo flipped through the papers. At the top were the personal details of four students, all stamped in red with the word “DEAD.” Two of them were college students, and two of them were high school seniors.
One cause of death was suicide. The reason for the suicide was listed as for love, and the other three were "accidents."
"There were four homicides in a quarter," Zhou Wanyuan said. "They were all students and fairly young."
Xiang Cheng didn't speak, merely looking at Zhou Wanyuan.
Zhou Wanyuan took out a cellphone from her purse and put it on the table.
Xiang Cheng picked up his cellphone and carelessly scrolled through it. Inside were the selfies that girls often took on their phones. Xiang Cheng flicked through them one by one, looking through them very slowly. Chi Xiaoduo looked from beside him, and started to get a little scared.
"Was this the deceased’s?" asked Chi Xiaoduo.
"En." Zhou Wanyuan didn't say anything else, waiting for Xiang Cheng to speak, but Xiang Cheng kept up his habit of disdaining strangers and didn't even bother to talk to her.
He flipped to the last three entries, a video and two very dark photos.
There was a girl's voice in the video.
"Take a picture, take a picture!" the girl said fearfully.
It was completely dark, with no light at all.
"Did you see it?" a boy's voice asked.
"Don't take pictures, don’t take any more pictures!" another girl cried out in fear. "Let’s hurry up and go ah——I'm so scared! Leave it alone!"
The video ended.
The other two pictures were pitch black.
Goosebumps broke out over Chi Xiaoduo’s body as he listened to this. It was obviously noon and they were sitting under the sun, but there was a dark wind blowing behind him.
"The four deceased all knew each other." Zhou Wanyuan said, "Haidian District’s Public Security Bureau gave the information, but they were unwilling to give me many details or their real names. Let's use ABCD instead ba.
"Female A, an interior design major; Male B, a civil engineering major, and both of them were college freshmen. The other two, Male C and Female D, were high school students who had flunked a grade and had to redo a year. Female D had mild depression. They were all originally from the same school.
"The first person who talked in the video, wanting them to take a picture was Female A, and the one who said, ‘don’t take pictures’ was Female D. The boy who spoke was C, and B held the cellphone and didn’t speak from beginning to end. This cellphone was provided to me by his mother. She suspected that the children saw something they shouldn't have seen."
"When was this?" Xiang Cheng finally said something.
"The video was shot on April 1, April Fool's day," Zhou Wanyuan said. "I asked professionals to enlarge and clean the photos. Look ba, there’s only so many pixels on a cellphone camera."
Zhou Wanyuan took out the big picture in her purse and showed them. It was all black, and Chi Xiaoduo's scalp felt numb. He squeezed closer to Xiang Cheng, and Xiang Cheng drew a hand out to hug Chi Xiaoduo. Chi Xiaoduo was a little comforted, and they looked at the picture together.
"No flash." Xiang Cheng looked at the three enlarged photos one after another.
"No." Zhou Wanyuan said, "I suspect there are other photos, but they have already been deleted. This boy’s cellphone is very old, and the camera isn’t very good. His family is poor, and his mother has already collapsed. I tried to visit their school several times, but everyone’s reaction was about the same: their grades were good, they were hardworking, and their family members hadn’t noticed anything wrong either."
Xiang Cheng frowned and glanced at Chi Xiaoduo.
Chi Xiaoduo shook his head, his eyes going unfocused from staring at it for so long. He didn't feel anything, but was there a spirit in the picture? It shouldn't be possible to take a picture of a spirit, right? But after looking at it for a long time, there seemed to be a very, very, very faint, small bright spot in the picture.
Xiang Cheng also noticed. He turned over the photo and motioned for Zhou Wanyuan to look at the bright spot. Zhou Wanyuan shook her head and said, "I don't know what that is."
"Location," Xiang Cheng said again.
"At an inn at the back of Yandaixie Street." Zhou Wanyuan said, "Chen Zhen said that you might be familiar with this place, so he told me to find you."
"I'm not familiar with it," Xiang Cheng said. "Let’s split up. You go investigate the deceased's eight characters of birth."
Zhou Wanyuan asked, "What about you guys?"
Xiang Cheng didn't answer her again.
Zhou Wanyuan took out a pile of money and began to count it out in front of the two of them.
Chi Xiaoduo: "???"
Xiang Cheng: "........”
"This is the reward money, and I’m paying forty percent of it in advance." Zhou Wanyuan said, "After the investigation, we’ll settle it again." She glanced at them as she said this and handed 4000 yuan over to Chi Xiaoduo.
Xiang Cheng said, "You insult me."
Zhou Wanyuan: ".......”
Chi Xiaoduo didn't dare to take over the money. Xiang Cheng said, "People die the way lamps go out, and yet you accepted the money from the deceased's family?"
Zhou Wanyuan's expression turned very ugly, and she replied, "It was given to me by the headmaster of the affiliated high school, to let me investigate this matter closely, so that there would be no follow-up investigation. That was my alma mater, and with the headmaster asking me, I couldn’t not do it. What can you do now with a 10,000 yuan reward? After buying two cellphones, you wouldn’t even have any change left over. If I didn’t take that money, how could the headmaster be at ease?"
Xiang Cheng motioned to Chi Xiaoduo to take the money. Zhou Wanyuan put on her sunglasses and said, "You only need the eight characters of their birth? What about their parents’?"
"I don’t need their parents’," Xiang Cheng replied. "Wait for my message."
"How can I contact you? Hey!" Zhou Wanyuan called out.
Xiang Cheng got up, and Chi Xiaoduo put away the money. The two of them strolled around in the mall opposite from Sanlitun for a while, and Chi Xiaoduo took this opportunity to go pick up the cellphone that had been repaired at the manufacturer’s store.
"Do you have a clue?" asked Chi Xiaoduo.
Xiang Cheng shook his head.
"This sun is really strong," Xiang Cheng said.
Chi Xiaoduo bought Xiang Cheng a pair of sunglasses, while he himself wore a sports hat. They checked their route on the placard at the bus stop.
"Let’s go to the school and take a look," Xiang Cheng said.
Chi Xiaoduo let out an “en” and followed him onto the bus.
Xiang Cheng was wearing short sleeves, sunglasses, and capri pants. He was tall like a male model, which attracted the gaze of many students. They entered a famous university, and Chi Xiaoduo said, "This school was my first choice application."
"What is a first choice application?" Xiang Cheng asked.
“It’s the school you most want to get into,” Chi Xiaoduo said, “But I couldn’t test into it.”
The trees planted around the roads of the campus were lush and green. Xiang Cheng entered the campus, took off his sunglasses, and checked with the security guard. The guard had obviously been notified and warned in advance, and didn’t say anything, simply allowing them to pass.
Chi Xiaoduo used his cellphone to log onto the school’s forum. The post had already been deleted, but the Baidu snapshot was still there. He learned that the girl who had committed suicide had fallen down from the academic building.
"See, take a look," Chi Xiaoduo said, "There is a glass ceiling between the third and fourth floors of the academic building. She fell down from that ceiling."
Xiang Cheng glanced at it, and there were several photos there. The forum post said that the girl's things had fallen out of a window and landed on the glass ceiling. The girl had climbed onto it to pick it up, but the ceiling couldn't bear her weight. A glass pane collapsed, and she fell from a height of ten meters and died on the spot.
"Let’s go to this academic building," Xiang Cheng said.
When they arrived outside the classroom, there were some students studying by themselves inside, but the whole row by the window was empty. Xiang Cheng went in through the back door, picked a desk with Chi Xiaoduo to sit down at, took out his notes from his bag, and spread them out.
"See anything?" Xiang Cheng asked in a very low voice.
Chi Xiaoduo covered his right eye with one hand, looked around with his left eye, and shook his head.
"There’s nothing here," Chi Xiaoduo said.
“I’ll take a look.”
“Don’t!”
“It’ll be fine,” Xiang Cheng replied, “I won’t go out.”
The windows in front were equipped with a security mesh, but it had yet to be installed on several of the ones in the back. Xiang Cheng sat on the windowsill while ignoring the studying students in the classroom staring at him. He stretched out a foot, and tentatively stepped outside.
Chi Xiaoduo immediately pulled Xiang Cheng's hand tightly.
"Will it collapse?" Xiang Cheng asked.
"Yes." Chi Xiaoduo nodded. "This wasn’t built well. I mean it, don't mess around."
Xiang Cheng turned around and came in. Chi Xiaoduo knew that he couldn’t really fall down; he definitely had the ability to protect himself, but Chi Xiaoduo still didn’t want them to reenact the case.
Xiang Cheng sat down and began to study, while Chi Xiaoduo held his cellphone and wore headphones to watch a movie. Xiang Cheng was absent-minded, looking at Chi Xiaoduo for a bit before looking at his books again. They did this until dusk, and then had dinner in a canteen at the school that accepted money. The sun set, and on the summer evening, students were playing on the basketball court. Xiang Cheng and Chi Xiaoduo slowly walked out of the school.
"Ah!" Chi Xiaoduo exclaimed in surprise.
"What?"
"I-I-I... see a lot of lights." Chi Xiaoduo said in surprise.
"Where?" Xiang Cheng asked.
"Just on the horizon." Chi Xiaoduo murmured, "Under the dark clouds."
Chi Xiaoduo covered his right eye and focused on it with his left eye. Splendid colored lights floated between the heavens and earth. The trees, the earth, the people, everyone here was covered by motes of light, a huge torrent flowing to the zenith of the sky.
Chi Xiaoduo described the scene, and Xiang Cheng said, "That’s where the heavenly veins and earth veins intersect; to describe it in another way, it's the 'qi field' of the world. When morning changes to dusk and vice versa, the heavenly veins and the earth veins will briefly connect. Dawn and dusk are both good moments to cultivate."
The earth spun in a vast shadow, half bright and half dark.
It was a magnificent scene. As the boundary between day and night gradually shifted east, the sky was like a roaring giant, wrapped in the energy of all things, rolling slowly, sucking all the "spirit" over where it passed up into the sky, and transporting it back to the earth at the other boundary between dawn and dusk, forming a vast and infinite circuit.
"Ah, strange." Chi Xiaoduo took out his small notebook, noted down “heavenly veins” and “spirit”, and replied, "I didn't see this a few days ago."
"Because you’ve started to consciously use the dragon pupil."
"What is the dragon pupil?" Chi Xiaoduo turned to Xiang Cheng and saw that Xiang Cheng also emitted a faint light, which was absorbed upward like a ribbon.
“The chiwen gave it to you." Xiang Cheng shook his head, not knowing if this was a good or bad thing.
"I think he knew that I wanted to follow you," Chi Xiaoduo said, "so he gave me this. This way, I won’t be so useless."
Saying that, Chi Xiaoduo took out his notebook and updated the entry "Dragon Pupil."
Xiang Cheng: “.....”
"Why are you noting these things down? I would rather you be unable to do anything." Xiang Cheng said, "If you want to follow me, then I'll just take you with me. With the dragon pupil on you, you can’t get rid of it, and it might be part of you for your entire life. It can easily bring trouble with it."
Chi Xiaoduo said, "You always say that, but you still don’t want to take me with you." Then he laughed and remembered that Xiang Cheng had said before that in one of his lost memories, he wanted to go exorcise things with him. He thought it’s good I didn’t tell you, otherwise you definitely wouldn’t have let me sign up.
Xiang Cheng patted Chi Xiaoduo on the shoulder and took him by putting his arm over his shoulders. He said, "It’s my fault."
Outside the school gate, there was a black SUV. The horn sounded twice, and a buff man wearing sunglasses stuck his elbow out of the window of the driver’s seat. He leaned out slightly and whistled at them.
The buff man took off his sunglasses. Chi Xiaoduo smiled and said, "Keda!"
"Get in!" Gegentorura Keda patted the door and said, "Chen Zhen sent me to help you guys!"
Xiang Cheng stood there for a moment, then nodded, pulled open the door, and got in the car.
"The second school." Xiang Cheng gave the name, and Keda put the cellphone squarely on the car phone holder and turned on the GPS. Xiang Cheng looked back at Chi Xiaoduo in the back seat, his eyes deep, as if he had something to say. Chi Xiaoduo suddenly came to a tacit understanding——he knew what Xiang Cheng meant: Don't mention the dragon pupil.
Chi Xiaoduo nodded, indicating for him to not worry.
"How did Miss Zhou explain things?" Keda asked, "Have you guys eaten yet? It's my treat."
"First, let’s visit the four schools," Xiang Cheng said. "We ate, we’ll wait for you, no worries."
Keda nodded, got out of the car to buy a packaged sandwich, and ate while driving. He said, "She can't handle cases and also doesn't want to have an assistant, it’s really enough to kill you with anxiety."
Xiang Cheng didn't answer; he sat in the front passenger seat and thought. A moment later, he looked at Chi Xiaoduo in the rear mirror and said, "What do you think she went on the ceiling to pick up?"
The car was stuck in traffic, and Keda held the sandwich without interrupting Xiang Cheng.
"What could fall onto the ceiling?" Chi Xiaoduo asked. "The windowsill is above shoulder-height."
"En, yes," Xiang Cheng replied, "I can't figure it out."
Chi Xiaoduo said, "Even if you were twirling a pen, it couldn’t twirl all the way there."
Keda put all his attention on the road, and the car started moving. The other school was also in the Haidian District. When they arrived, a middle school was holding a self-study session inside.
Keda gave the door guard his work ID and asked him to open the gate. Chi Xiaoduo glanced at it curiously; his title listed there was: Field Director of the National Science and Technology Information Service Department. The three of them went up to the roof of the school, and the headmaster personally opened the door for them with the key.
In the breeze of the summer night, three people stood on the roof. Xiang Cheng stood on the edge of the roof and looked down below his feet.
"Why is there no wire fence?" Keda asked.
"Usually, the door to the roof isn’t open." the headmaster sighed and replied, "It was just that that day, she climbed up using the fire escape."
"More so than just that day." Xiang Cheng went to the fire escape, looked down, and said, "The rungs of the fire escape are smooth; she often went up to the roof using this ladder."
The headmaster nodded.
Keda walked to the edge of the roof, sat down, and looked out into the distance.
"What can you see?" Chi Xiaoduo asked.
"I can't see anything." Keda shaded his eyes and looked around.
Xiang Cheng climbed up the shed on the roof, and there was a row of flower pots set there. He looked down and picked up a flower pot at the edge of the corner on the roof of the shed. Soil fell from the flower pot down to the roof.
Keda stood up and looked down at the potted flowers with Xiang Cheng. They then both looked out at the distance with their backs to the roof. The bright moon hung in the sky and shone for tens of thousands of li.
“Let’s go,” Xiang Cheng said.
They went downstairs and went to the homeroom teacher’s office to learn about how the girl behaved before she died. She was a girl who was often bullied by her classmates, and though she studied hard, she only had average talent.
The other boy had died in the fast car lane just outside the university due to a car accident. It had been just after the evening self-study class, and he had crossed the fast lane downstairs to buy some midnight snacks. When he came back, he was hit by a Maserati and killed on the spot.
Keda said, "I'll go take a look across the street."
Keda also crossed the outer lane to buy some barbecue, looking around from time to time, walking the path that the deceased had walked before his death.
"Did you find anything?" Xiang Cheng asked.
It was nine p.m., and Chi Xiaoduo vaguely saw something, but not in front; it was behind instead.
"There," Chi Xiaoduo said, "The flower bed is shining."
It was just at the flower bed by the road. Xiang Cheng motioned for him to stand there and wait, and crouched down himself to squeeze through the flower bed.
"What color is it shining?" Xiang Cheng asked.
"Red," Chi Xiaoduo replied.
Xiang Cheng looked down at the soil, knelt on the flower bed, with half his body stuck in the flower bed.
"Is it this?" Xiang Cheng came out with a small stone. Chi Xiaoduo covered his right eye to take it over, but Xiang Cheng didn't hand it to him.
"Yes," said Chi Xiaoduo, "What is this?"
"A drop of blood," Xiang Cheng said.
Chi Xiaoduo dug out a pencil box from his bag, and Xiang Cheng put the little stone stained with blood in the pencil box. Chi Xiaoduo took out his notebook and recorded an entry, "a drop of blood."
"Where’s Keda?"
"Keda!" Chi Xiaoduo shouted.
Keda stood in the middle of the overpass in the distance. He looked down with his hands behind his back, then waved at them like a friendly inspecting manager.
"We’re leaving now!" Chi Xiaoduo didn't dare say that they had found something. Keda walked down quickly without asking any questions and drove them away.
Their last destination was Boy B’s house. When Xiang Cheng rang the doorbell, Zhou Wanyuan was a guest at B's house. B's mother’s eyes were red and full of tears.
The house was covered with dust, and Mother B basically sat there in a spiritless way every day.
This was a single parent family, and the mother was now alone in this world. Xiang Cheng greeted her and went directly into B's bedroom. Keda motioned to Chi Xiaoduo and whispered, "Xiao Di, let’s mop the floor for her ba, you wipe the table."
"Okay." Chi Xiaoduo and Keda hit it off immediately, so Keda took off his suit, rolled up his shirt sleeves, went to the bathroom to wash the mop, and mopped the floor. Chi Xiaoduo washed the dishcloth and helped Mother B clean up. Xiang Cheng did a circle and came out, glancing at Zhou Wanyuan. Zhou Wanyuan pulled at Mother B's hand and motioned towards the balcony with her eyes.
Xiang Cheng went to the balcony to look around again. Chi Xiaoduo was wiping the floor-to-ceiling window, and Xiang Cheng knocked on the window, questioning Chi Xiaoduo with his eyes. Chi Xiaoduo doubtfully closed his right eye, tilted his head to look around, and shook his head.
Xiang Cheng held the railing and looked down. They were on the sixth floor, but he didn’t find any clues.
"In the three days before his death," Xiang Cheng asked, "did he say anything?"
B's mother wiped her tears and said, "He wrote a note saying, 'Mom, I'm unfilial, I'm leaving now', I don't know why, he was perfectly fine..."
"The note is at the police station," said Zhou Wanyuan. "There was nothing unusual about it."
Chi Xiaoduo finished wiping the windows, washed the rags, and went into the room to have a look. B was an otaku before his death; he had a bookcase full of manga. Most of them were ghost stories, with Junji Ito’s Uzumaki included.
He took out some books and flipped through them. Keda also came in, and the two of them looked around. Keda looked up at the Evangelion and Tokyo Ghoul posters on the wall and said, "I used to really like these and Kuiba ."
"I also like them." Chi Xiaoduo said, "But the merch is too expensive, and I couldn’t afford it back when I was studying. I also like mechanical models and things."
"Come to my house tomorrow," Keda said. "I bought a new drone, the kind with Apple as the console."
Excellent! Chi Xiaoduo liked this kind of stuff the most , so the two of them threw the case aside and began to jubilantly discuss anime episodes, before going from anime to games. Unexpectedly, Keda was also an otaku addicted to the two-dimensional world. The two of them talked for a bit and found out, with astonishment, that they liked the same things, and very much regretted that they didn’t meet earlier.
"Let's have a meeting ba." Zhou Wanyuan left B’s house.
The four of them sat down at a small table of the roadside barbecue stand and ordered a few bottles of beer and some barbecue.
"Let’s synthesize all the content we have so far," Zhou Wanyuan said. "Let's sort out the papers first."
"...Do you go on Bilibili?" Chi Xiaoduo said to Keda.
"I do ah!" Keda said, "In the past, I used to answer the registration questions one by one!"
Zhou Wanyuan: "......”
"Let's start with the college," Xiang Cheng said. "The cause of death excludes suicide. It was a homicide."
Zhou Wanyuan asked, “What evidence do you have?”
“You watch Fate ba,” Keda said, “They even say I look like…”
“Hahaha——” Chi Xiaoduo immediately realized something and said, “You can go cosplay ah!”
“I have!” Keda slapped his thigh and said, "In the past, our club often went out to cosplay. They dyed my hair red and had me cosplay as Gilgamesh."
"Keda!" Zhou Wanyuan said.
Keda quickly waved his hand and said, "Let’s talk business ba."
Xiang Cheng: "I don't know what happened that night, but we can be certain that at least one yao lured the deceased to the glass ceiling before it broke, and then she died.
"Similarly, the deceased D on the roof of the middle school didn't intend to commit suicide, but was sitting on the edge and thinking. Behind her, there was a flying yaoguai that glided in from the top of the roof, sank its claws on D's back, and pushed her off the roof. She cried out and fell to death under the eyes of the entire evening self-study class."
Chi Xiaoduo: ".....”
"You guys keep talking," Xiang Cheng said. "Don't worry about us."
"How did you discover this?" Zhou Wanyuan asked.
"The flower pots." Xiang Cheng said, "In the small shed on the roof, that yao had already been waiting for a long time. According to the traces left on the scene, it has four claws and two wings."
"After D died, the yao ran over to the side of the road where the self-study session was going on and chased after C. Its claws left blood on D's shoulder. C realized that something was chasing him, and he began to panic. He crossed the road to ask for help, but as a result, he was hit by a car and died."
Xiang Cheng casually drew a sketch that looked like a dog with wings, and said, "The yaoguai probably looks like this. This is the enemy we are about to meet, but I still have one thing I haven’t thought through. I still need proof... Xiaoduo, you don’t need to note this down."
"I'm making an illustrated handbook of yaoguai." Chi Xiaoduo said, absorbed in his task. Everyone watched Chi Xiaoduo register Xiang Cheng's monster in his notebook. Chi Xiaoduo had learned how to sketch a bit, so he could sketch the yaoguai with some shadow and soft lighting, and once he gave it a bit of a gradient effect, everyone fell over at once.
"But," Chi Xiaoduo finished drawing, raised his hand, and asked, "if the dog's goal was to kill him, wouldn't it have been enough to just bite him directly? And how did the yaoguai know that C would run into the car when crossing the road? Unless it was all arranged."
Xiang Cheng nodded and said, "That’s the part that I can’t figure out. Eat first ba."
After their midnight snack, the four of them got in the car. Xiang Cheng and Chi Xiaoduo sat in the back seat while Keda drove. Zhou Wanyuan kept looking out at the road, lost in thought; a moment later, she took out a mirror to touch up her makeup. Keda took a look at her makeup mirror, and Zhou Wanyuan snapped the mirror shut with a pa sound.
"What are you looking at?"
Keda didn't answer and just paid attention to driving.
"Chen Zhen didn’t let you take any family heirlooms along?" Zhou Wanyuan asked.
"I’m not in charge of anything," Keda replied. "I'm just responsible for driving Xiang-xiong." He grinned as he said that.
The SUV turned into a long and narrow back alley. There were five or six garbage cans on both sides of the alley, with a door in the middle of them. Only one vehicle could enter the lane at a time, and Keda was very good at reversing, forcing the huge off-road vehicle into the small alley.
Zhou Wanyuan opened the door, which opened up against the wall.
Keda: “......”
Zhou Wanyuan: ".......”
"You did this on purpose ba," Zhou Wanyuan said.
Keda pushed a button, the sunroof opened, and he pointed up. Xiang Cheng said, "Xiaoduo, you two wait in the car."
Saying that, he climbed out of the sunroof first. Zhou Wanyuan hesitated for a moment then also climbed up.
Keda: "Beauty, don’t expose too much."
"You pervert ah——" Zhou Wanyuan yelled.
Chi Xiaoduo: “.....”
Keda waved at Chi Xiaoduo, motioning him to the front passenger seat as he played a song, and they listened to the song in the car.
Xiang Cheng and Zhou Wanyuan jumped down in front of the car. They came to the back door of the hospital, and Keda turned off the headlights. Chi Xiaoduo sat in the car, his eyes dazzled, and he saw a beautiful light glowing from behind the door. However, as soon as he blinked, the light disappeared again.
"What is this place?" Chi Xiaoduo asked.
Keda shook his head and said, "I don't know. I'm only responsible for driving."
Chi Xiaoduo said, "You must know."
"Don't ask," Keda said. "It's not good to know, trust me."
In Chi Xiaoduo's dragon pupil, he saw that the light emitted from the door was like colored moving light, gently spreading towards the sky. He stretched his head forward a bit and looked up.
At the same time, a shadow crouching on top of a tall building beside the alley quickly shrank back.
"Did you see something?" Keda asked.
Chi Xiaoduo shook his head.
Xiang Cheng and Zhou Wanyuan stood in front of the locked back door and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. Xiang Cheng bent down, climbed up to the second floor along the air-conditioning pipe, and entered an office. He was both strong and vigorous.
Zhou Wanyuan waited outside the door. A moment later, the door to the back alley was opened. Zhou Wanyuan followed in, took out a small flashlight from her bag, and moved it around to illuminate their path. At the end of the dark passageway, a fluorescent light was shining behind another door; someone was on duty.
There was a faint cry in the distance. Xiang Cheng stopped halfway and motioned Zhou Wanyuan to go up the stairs.
The two of them went to the second floor. At the end of the corridor on the second floor, there was a door. At the top of the door, a fluorescent lamp lit up a big word: MORGUE.
In the back alley, Chi Xiaoduo felt that there was something creepy nearby, but inside the car was very normal. It seemed that with just Keda sitting in the driver's seat, nothing could invade the car.
"I added a camera to the drone," Keda said. "Now I can take aerial photos with it."
"For work?" Chi Xiaoduo asked.
"No, just to play around in my spare time." Keda replied, "I saw your resume. Was it hard back when you were working in architecture?"
"It was okay," Chi Xiaoduo said. "I often worked overtime and didn’t know what the point of it was. Now that I’m not doing that anymore, I'm free."
Keda asked, "Are you two planning on finding a job in Beijing?"
Chi Xiaoduo replied, "We’ll talk about it after Xiang Cheng completes the exam ba."
Keda stretched out and said, “To tell you the truth, I really want to go to Guangzhou, the food in Guangzhou is delicious. Have you ever been to Yulan Alley in Guangzhou? I heard that there is a girl named Yilan there who can use drawings to transform spiritual realms into reality. The study material has already been sent to you, have you reviewed it?"
"No, I haven’t had time yet." Chi Xiaoduo's memory was a little vague, and he said, "Can you guys do internal transfers?"
"En," Keda replied. "If you don’t want to stay in Beijing, the other offices are also good. The interpersonal struggles at the headquarters are too complicated."
"Are there?" Chi Xiaoduo didn't expect that there were even such matters in an exorcist organization.
"Where there are places of authority, there are power struggles." Keda replied, "It's the same everywhere. Small offices like Guangzhou are better than those in Shanghai and Shenzhen. And you have a lot of free time."
Chi Xiaoduo felt that “Yulan Alley” sounded very familiar. According to Xiang Cheng's account, he had been there before he had smelt the Lihun pollen, but he already couldn’t remember what it was like inside. He asked, "How did you get into this office?"
"Family relationships." Keda said, "My dad died on duty, and the organization arranged a job for me. It's worse off than some, but better off than many, but it’s not a great position. Sometimes I envy you idle people, it’s much more interesting to visit mountains and rivers."
The sun was shining as the three of them left the library and walked along the street. Xiang Cheng held Chi Xiaoduo's hand in one hand and stuck his other hand in the pocket of his shorts. He had soaked up so much sun that it was starting to feel unbearable.
When entering the Sanlitun Starbucks, Chi Xiaoduo felt his whole body come to life again. There weren’t many people in the Starbucks, having all been drawn away by the Maan Coffee across the street.
Zhou Wanyuan plopped down, took out the papers from her handbag, and said, "Take a look ba." Saying that, she took off her sunglasses and looked at Chi Xiaoduo enigmatically.
"Should we drink...some coffee?" Chi Xiaoduo asked, "I'll buy you a drink? Xiang Cheng, what do you want to drink?"
"Don't waste money," Xiang Cheng replied.
"Chi Xiaoduo, you’re very handsome." Zhou Wanyuan said, "But why do you look scared, am I that terrifying?"
"Thank you." Chi Xiaoduo said, trembling with fear, "You're also very pretty. You're not terrifying, that’s just how I am, I don’t have much courage." He thought, if I say it like that, will that offend her?
Zhou Wanyuan replied, "A latte."
Xiang Cheng read the papers without looking up. Zhou Wanyuan said, "Chen Zhen told me to go find you; he said you’d have a way."
Xiang Cheng finished reading the papers and put them on the table. He took over Chi Xiaoduo's coffee, and remained silent.
Chi Xiaoduo asked, “Can I read it?”
Zhou Wanyuan and Xiang Cheng made a gesture at the same time--take a look ba.
Chi Xiaoduo flipped through the papers. At the top were the personal details of four students, all stamped in red with the word “DEAD.” Two of them were college students, and two of them were high school seniors.
One cause of death was suicide. The reason for the suicide was listed as for love, and the other three were "accidents."
"There were four homicides in a quarter," Zhou Wanyuan said. "They were all students and fairly young."
Xiang Cheng didn't speak, merely looking at Zhou Wanyuan.
Zhou Wanyuan took out a cellphone from her purse and put it on the table.
Xiang Cheng picked up his cellphone and carelessly scrolled through it. Inside were the selfies that girls often took on their phones. Xiang Cheng flicked through them one by one, looking through them very slowly. Chi Xiaoduo looked from beside him, and started to get a little scared.
"Was this the deceased’s?" asked Chi Xiaoduo.
"En." Zhou Wanyuan didn't say anything else, waiting for Xiang Cheng to speak, but Xiang Cheng kept up his habit of disdaining strangers and didn't even bother to talk to her.
He flipped to the last three entries, a video and two very dark photos.
There was a girl's voice in the video.
"Take a picture, take a picture!" the girl said fearfully.
It was completely dark, with no light at all.
"Did you see it?" a boy's voice asked.
"Don't take pictures, don’t take any more pictures!" another girl cried out in fear. "Let’s hurry up and go ah——I'm so scared! Leave it alone!"
The video ended.
The other two pictures were pitch black.
Goosebumps broke out over Chi Xiaoduo’s body as he listened to this. It was obviously noon and they were sitting under the sun, but there was a dark wind blowing behind him.
"The four deceased all knew each other." Zhou Wanyuan said, "Haidian District’s Public Security Bureau gave the information, but they were unwilling to give me many details or their real names. Let's use ABCD instead ba.
"Female A, an interior design major; Male B, a civil engineering major, and both of them were college freshmen. The other two, Male C and Female D, were high school students who had flunked a grade and had to redo a year. Female D had mild depression. They were all originally from the same school.
"The first person who talked in the video, wanting them to take a picture was Female A, and the one who said, ‘don’t take pictures’ was Female D. The boy who spoke was C, and B held the cellphone and didn’t speak from beginning to end. This cellphone was provided to me by his mother. She suspected that the children saw something they shouldn't have seen."
"When was this?" Xiang Cheng finally said something.
"The video was shot on April 1, April Fool's day," Zhou Wanyuan said. "I asked professionals to enlarge and clean the photos. Look ba, there’s only so many pixels on a cellphone camera."
Zhou Wanyuan took out the big picture in her purse and showed them. It was all black, and Chi Xiaoduo's scalp felt numb. He squeezed closer to Xiang Cheng, and Xiang Cheng drew a hand out to hug Chi Xiaoduo. Chi Xiaoduo was a little comforted, and they looked at the picture together.
"No flash." Xiang Cheng looked at the three enlarged photos one after another.
"No." Zhou Wanyuan said, "I suspect there are other photos, but they have already been deleted. This boy’s cellphone is very old, and the camera isn’t very good. His family is poor, and his mother has already collapsed. I tried to visit their school several times, but everyone’s reaction was about the same: their grades were good, they were hardworking, and their family members hadn’t noticed anything wrong either."
Xiang Cheng frowned and glanced at Chi Xiaoduo.
Chi Xiaoduo shook his head, his eyes going unfocused from staring at it for so long. He didn't feel anything, but was there a spirit in the picture? It shouldn't be possible to take a picture of a spirit, right? But after looking at it for a long time, there seemed to be a very, very, very faint, small bright spot in the picture.
Xiang Cheng also noticed. He turned over the photo and motioned for Zhou Wanyuan to look at the bright spot. Zhou Wanyuan shook her head and said, "I don't know what that is."
"Location," Xiang Cheng said again.
"At an inn at the back of Yandaixie Street." Zhou Wanyuan said, "Chen Zhen said that you might be familiar with this place, so he told me to find you."
"I'm not familiar with it," Xiang Cheng said. "Let’s split up. You go investigate the deceased's eight characters of birth."
Zhou Wanyuan asked, "What about you guys?"
Xiang Cheng didn't answer her again.
Zhou Wanyuan took out a pile of money and began to count it out in front of the two of them.
Chi Xiaoduo: "???"
Xiang Cheng: "........”
"This is the reward money, and I’m paying forty percent of it in advance." Zhou Wanyuan said, "After the investigation, we’ll settle it again." She glanced at them as she said this and handed 4000 yuan over to Chi Xiaoduo.
Xiang Cheng said, "You insult me."
Zhou Wanyuan: ".......”
Chi Xiaoduo didn't dare to take over the money. Xiang Cheng said, "People die the way lamps go out, and yet you accepted the money from the deceased's family?"
Zhou Wanyuan's expression turned very ugly, and she replied, "It was given to me by the headmaster of the affiliated high school, to let me investigate this matter closely, so that there would be no follow-up investigation. That was my alma mater, and with the headmaster asking me, I couldn’t not do it. What can you do now with a 10,000 yuan reward? After buying two cellphones, you wouldn’t even have any change left over. If I didn’t take that money, how could the headmaster be at ease?"
Xiang Cheng motioned to Chi Xiaoduo to take the money. Zhou Wanyuan put on her sunglasses and said, "You only need the eight characters of their birth? What about their parents’?"
"I don’t need their parents’," Xiang Cheng replied. "Wait for my message."
"How can I contact you? Hey!" Zhou Wanyuan called out.
Xiang Cheng got up, and Chi Xiaoduo put away the money. The two of them strolled around in the mall opposite from Sanlitun for a while, and Chi Xiaoduo took this opportunity to go pick up the cellphone that had been repaired at the manufacturer’s store.
"Do you have a clue?" asked Chi Xiaoduo.
Xiang Cheng shook his head.
"This sun is really strong," Xiang Cheng said.
Chi Xiaoduo bought Xiang Cheng a pair of sunglasses, while he himself wore a sports hat. They checked their route on the placard at the bus stop.
"Let’s go to the school and take a look," Xiang Cheng said.
Chi Xiaoduo let out an “en” and followed him onto the bus.
Xiang Cheng was wearing short sleeves, sunglasses, and capri pants. He was tall like a male model, which attracted the gaze of many students. They entered a famous university, and Chi Xiaoduo said, "This school was my first choice application."
"What is a first choice application?" Xiang Cheng asked.
“It’s the school you most want to get into,” Chi Xiaoduo said, “But I couldn’t test into it.”
The trees planted around the roads of the campus were lush and green. Xiang Cheng entered the campus, took off his sunglasses, and checked with the security guard. The guard had obviously been notified and warned in advance, and didn’t say anything, simply allowing them to pass.
Chi Xiaoduo used his cellphone to log onto the school’s forum. The post had already been deleted, but the Baidu snapshot was still there. He learned that the girl who had committed suicide had fallen down from the academic building.
"See, take a look," Chi Xiaoduo said, "There is a glass ceiling between the third and fourth floors of the academic building. She fell down from that ceiling."
Xiang Cheng glanced at it, and there were several photos there. The forum post said that the girl's things had fallen out of a window and landed on the glass ceiling. The girl had climbed onto it to pick it up, but the ceiling couldn't bear her weight. A glass pane collapsed, and she fell from a height of ten meters and died on the spot.
"Let’s go to this academic building," Xiang Cheng said.
When they arrived outside the classroom, there were some students studying by themselves inside, but the whole row by the window was empty. Xiang Cheng went in through the back door, picked a desk with Chi Xiaoduo to sit down at, took out his notes from his bag, and spread them out.
"See anything?" Xiang Cheng asked in a very low voice.
Chi Xiaoduo covered his right eye with one hand, looked around with his left eye, and shook his head.
"There’s nothing here," Chi Xiaoduo said.
“I’ll take a look.”
“Don’t!”
“It’ll be fine,” Xiang Cheng replied, “I won’t go out.”
The windows in front were equipped with a security mesh, but it had yet to be installed on several of the ones in the back. Xiang Cheng sat on the windowsill while ignoring the studying students in the classroom staring at him. He stretched out a foot, and tentatively stepped outside.
Chi Xiaoduo immediately pulled Xiang Cheng's hand tightly.
"Will it collapse?" Xiang Cheng asked.
"Yes." Chi Xiaoduo nodded. "This wasn’t built well. I mean it, don't mess around."
Xiang Cheng turned around and came in. Chi Xiaoduo knew that he couldn’t really fall down; he definitely had the ability to protect himself, but Chi Xiaoduo still didn’t want them to reenact the case.
Xiang Cheng sat down and began to study, while Chi Xiaoduo held his cellphone and wore headphones to watch a movie. Xiang Cheng was absent-minded, looking at Chi Xiaoduo for a bit before looking at his books again. They did this until dusk, and then had dinner in a canteen at the school that accepted money. The sun set, and on the summer evening, students were playing on the basketball court. Xiang Cheng and Chi Xiaoduo slowly walked out of the school.
"Ah!" Chi Xiaoduo exclaimed in surprise.
"What?"
"I-I-I... see a lot of lights." Chi Xiaoduo said in surprise.
"Where?" Xiang Cheng asked.
"Just on the horizon." Chi Xiaoduo murmured, "Under the dark clouds."
Chi Xiaoduo covered his right eye and focused on it with his left eye. Splendid colored lights floated between the heavens and earth. The trees, the earth, the people, everyone here was covered by motes of light, a huge torrent flowing to the zenith of the sky.
Chi Xiaoduo described the scene, and Xiang Cheng said, "That’s where the heavenly veins and earth veins intersect; to describe it in another way, it's the 'qi field' of the world. When morning changes to dusk and vice versa, the heavenly veins and the earth veins will briefly connect. Dawn and dusk are both good moments to cultivate."
The earth spun in a vast shadow, half bright and half dark.
It was a magnificent scene. As the boundary between day and night gradually shifted east, the sky was like a roaring giant, wrapped in the energy of all things, rolling slowly, sucking all the "spirit" over where it passed up into the sky, and transporting it back to the earth at the other boundary between dawn and dusk, forming a vast and infinite circuit.
"Ah, strange." Chi Xiaoduo took out his small notebook, noted down “heavenly veins” and “spirit”, and replied, "I didn't see this a few days ago."
"Because you’ve started to consciously use the dragon pupil."
"What is the dragon pupil?" Chi Xiaoduo turned to Xiang Cheng and saw that Xiang Cheng also emitted a faint light, which was absorbed upward like a ribbon.
“The chiwen gave it to you." Xiang Cheng shook his head, not knowing if this was a good or bad thing.
"I think he knew that I wanted to follow you," Chi Xiaoduo said, "so he gave me this. This way, I won’t be so useless."
Saying that, Chi Xiaoduo took out his notebook and updated the entry "Dragon Pupil."
Xiang Cheng: “.....”
"Why are you noting these things down? I would rather you be unable to do anything." Xiang Cheng said, "If you want to follow me, then I'll just take you with me. With the dragon pupil on you, you can’t get rid of it, and it might be part of you for your entire life. It can easily bring trouble with it."
Chi Xiaoduo said, "You always say that, but you still don’t want to take me with you." Then he laughed and remembered that Xiang Cheng had said before that in one of his lost memories, he wanted to go exorcise things with him. He thought it’s good I didn’t tell you, otherwise you definitely wouldn’t have let me sign up.
Xiang Cheng patted Chi Xiaoduo on the shoulder and took him by putting his arm over his shoulders. He said, "It’s my fault."
Outside the school gate, there was a black SUV. The horn sounded twice, and a buff man wearing sunglasses stuck his elbow out of the window of the driver’s seat. He leaned out slightly and whistled at them.
The buff man took off his sunglasses. Chi Xiaoduo smiled and said, "Keda!"
"Get in!" Gegentorura Keda patted the door and said, "Chen Zhen sent me to help you guys!"
Xiang Cheng stood there for a moment, then nodded, pulled open the door, and got in the car.
"The second school." Xiang Cheng gave the name, and Keda put the cellphone squarely on the car phone holder and turned on the GPS. Xiang Cheng looked back at Chi Xiaoduo in the back seat, his eyes deep, as if he had something to say. Chi Xiaoduo suddenly came to a tacit understanding——he knew what Xiang Cheng meant: Don't mention the dragon pupil.
Chi Xiaoduo nodded, indicating for him to not worry.
"How did Miss Zhou explain things?" Keda asked, "Have you guys eaten yet? It's my treat."
"First, let’s visit the four schools," Xiang Cheng said. "We ate, we’ll wait for you, no worries."
Keda nodded, got out of the car to buy a packaged sandwich, and ate while driving. He said, "She can't handle cases and also doesn't want to have an assistant, it’s really enough to kill you with anxiety."
Xiang Cheng didn't answer; he sat in the front passenger seat and thought. A moment later, he looked at Chi Xiaoduo in the rear mirror and said, "What do you think she went on the ceiling to pick up?"
The car was stuck in traffic, and Keda held the sandwich without interrupting Xiang Cheng.
"What could fall onto the ceiling?" Chi Xiaoduo asked. "The windowsill is above shoulder-height."
"En, yes," Xiang Cheng replied, "I can't figure it out."
Chi Xiaoduo said, "Even if you were twirling a pen, it couldn’t twirl all the way there."
Keda put all his attention on the road, and the car started moving. The other school was also in the Haidian District. When they arrived, a middle school was holding a self-study session inside.
Keda gave the door guard his work ID and asked him to open the gate. Chi Xiaoduo glanced at it curiously; his title listed there was: Field Director of the National Science and Technology Information Service Department. The three of them went up to the roof of the school, and the headmaster personally opened the door for them with the key.
In the breeze of the summer night, three people stood on the roof. Xiang Cheng stood on the edge of the roof and looked down below his feet.
"Why is there no wire fence?" Keda asked.
"Usually, the door to the roof isn’t open." the headmaster sighed and replied, "It was just that that day, she climbed up using the fire escape."
"More so than just that day." Xiang Cheng went to the fire escape, looked down, and said, "The rungs of the fire escape are smooth; she often went up to the roof using this ladder."
The headmaster nodded.
Keda walked to the edge of the roof, sat down, and looked out into the distance.
"What can you see?" Chi Xiaoduo asked.
"I can't see anything." Keda shaded his eyes and looked around.
Xiang Cheng climbed up the shed on the roof, and there was a row of flower pots set there. He looked down and picked up a flower pot at the edge of the corner on the roof of the shed. Soil fell from the flower pot down to the roof.
Keda stood up and looked down at the potted flowers with Xiang Cheng. They then both looked out at the distance with their backs to the roof. The bright moon hung in the sky and shone for tens of thousands of li.
“Let’s go,” Xiang Cheng said.
They went downstairs and went to the homeroom teacher’s office to learn about how the girl behaved before she died. She was a girl who was often bullied by her classmates, and though she studied hard, she only had average talent.
The other boy had died in the fast car lane just outside the university due to a car accident. It had been just after the evening self-study class, and he had crossed the fast lane downstairs to buy some midnight snacks. When he came back, he was hit by a Maserati and killed on the spot.
Keda said, "I'll go take a look across the street."
Keda also crossed the outer lane to buy some barbecue, looking around from time to time, walking the path that the deceased had walked before his death.
"Did you find anything?" Xiang Cheng asked.
It was nine p.m., and Chi Xiaoduo vaguely saw something, but not in front; it was behind instead.
"There," Chi Xiaoduo said, "The flower bed is shining."
It was just at the flower bed by the road. Xiang Cheng motioned for him to stand there and wait, and crouched down himself to squeeze through the flower bed.
"What color is it shining?" Xiang Cheng asked.
"Red," Chi Xiaoduo replied.
Xiang Cheng looked down at the soil, knelt on the flower bed, with half his body stuck in the flower bed.
"Is it this?" Xiang Cheng came out with a small stone. Chi Xiaoduo covered his right eye to take it over, but Xiang Cheng didn't hand it to him.
"Yes," said Chi Xiaoduo, "What is this?"
"A drop of blood," Xiang Cheng said.
Chi Xiaoduo dug out a pencil box from his bag, and Xiang Cheng put the little stone stained with blood in the pencil box. Chi Xiaoduo took out his notebook and recorded an entry, "a drop of blood."
"Where’s Keda?"
"Keda!" Chi Xiaoduo shouted.
Keda stood in the middle of the overpass in the distance. He looked down with his hands behind his back, then waved at them like a friendly inspecting manager.
"We’re leaving now!" Chi Xiaoduo didn't dare say that they had found something. Keda walked down quickly without asking any questions and drove them away.
Their last destination was Boy B’s house. When Xiang Cheng rang the doorbell, Zhou Wanyuan was a guest at B's house. B's mother’s eyes were red and full of tears.
The house was covered with dust, and Mother B basically sat there in a spiritless way every day.
This was a single parent family, and the mother was now alone in this world. Xiang Cheng greeted her and went directly into B's bedroom. Keda motioned to Chi Xiaoduo and whispered, "Xiao Di, let’s mop the floor for her ba, you wipe the table."
"Okay." Chi Xiaoduo and Keda hit it off immediately, so Keda took off his suit, rolled up his shirt sleeves, went to the bathroom to wash the mop, and mopped the floor. Chi Xiaoduo washed the dishcloth and helped Mother B clean up. Xiang Cheng did a circle and came out, glancing at Zhou Wanyuan. Zhou Wanyuan pulled at Mother B's hand and motioned towards the balcony with her eyes.
Xiang Cheng went to the balcony to look around again. Chi Xiaoduo was wiping the floor-to-ceiling window, and Xiang Cheng knocked on the window, questioning Chi Xiaoduo with his eyes. Chi Xiaoduo doubtfully closed his right eye, tilted his head to look around, and shook his head.
Xiang Cheng held the railing and looked down. They were on the sixth floor, but he didn’t find any clues.
"In the three days before his death," Xiang Cheng asked, "did he say anything?"
B's mother wiped her tears and said, "He wrote a note saying, 'Mom, I'm unfilial, I'm leaving now', I don't know why, he was perfectly fine..."
"The note is at the police station," said Zhou Wanyuan. "There was nothing unusual about it."
Chi Xiaoduo finished wiping the windows, washed the rags, and went into the room to have a look. B was an otaku before his death; he had a bookcase full of manga. Most of them were ghost stories, with Junji Ito’s Uzumaki included.
He took out some books and flipped through them. Keda also came in, and the two of them looked around. Keda looked up at the Evangelion and Tokyo Ghoul posters on the wall and said, "I used to really like these and Kuiba ."
"I also like them." Chi Xiaoduo said, "But the merch is too expensive, and I couldn’t afford it back when I was studying. I also like mechanical models and things."
"Come to my house tomorrow," Keda said. "I bought a new drone, the kind with Apple as the console."
Excellent! Chi Xiaoduo liked this kind of stuff the most , so the two of them threw the case aside and began to jubilantly discuss anime episodes, before going from anime to games. Unexpectedly, Keda was also an otaku addicted to the two-dimensional world. The two of them talked for a bit and found out, with astonishment, that they liked the same things, and very much regretted that they didn’t meet earlier.
"Let's have a meeting ba." Zhou Wanyuan left B’s house.
The four of them sat down at a small table of the roadside barbecue stand and ordered a few bottles of beer and some barbecue.
"Let’s synthesize all the content we have so far," Zhou Wanyuan said. "Let's sort out the papers first."
"...Do you go on Bilibili?" Chi Xiaoduo said to Keda.
"I do ah!" Keda said, "In the past, I used to answer the registration questions one by one!"
Zhou Wanyuan: "......”
"Let's start with the college," Xiang Cheng said. "The cause of death excludes suicide. It was a homicide."
Zhou Wanyuan asked, “What evidence do you have?”
“You watch Fate ba,” Keda said, “They even say I look like…”
“Hahaha——” Chi Xiaoduo immediately realized something and said, “You can go cosplay ah!”
“I have!” Keda slapped his thigh and said, "In the past, our club often went out to cosplay. They dyed my hair red and had me cosplay as Gilgamesh."
"Keda!" Zhou Wanyuan said.
Keda quickly waved his hand and said, "Let’s talk business ba."
Xiang Cheng: "I don't know what happened that night, but we can be certain that at least one yao lured the deceased to the glass ceiling before it broke, and then she died.
"Similarly, the deceased D on the roof of the middle school didn't intend to commit suicide, but was sitting on the edge and thinking. Behind her, there was a flying yaoguai that glided in from the top of the roof, sank its claws on D's back, and pushed her off the roof. She cried out and fell to death under the eyes of the entire evening self-study class."
Chi Xiaoduo: ".....”
"You guys keep talking," Xiang Cheng said. "Don't worry about us."
"How did you discover this?" Zhou Wanyuan asked.
"The flower pots." Xiang Cheng said, "In the small shed on the roof, that yao had already been waiting for a long time. According to the traces left on the scene, it has four claws and two wings."
"After D died, the yao ran over to the side of the road where the self-study session was going on and chased after C. Its claws left blood on D's shoulder. C realized that something was chasing him, and he began to panic. He crossed the road to ask for help, but as a result, he was hit by a car and died."
Xiang Cheng casually drew a sketch that looked like a dog with wings, and said, "The yaoguai probably looks like this. This is the enemy we are about to meet, but I still have one thing I haven’t thought through. I still need proof... Xiaoduo, you don’t need to note this down."
"I'm making an illustrated handbook of yaoguai." Chi Xiaoduo said, absorbed in his task. Everyone watched Chi Xiaoduo register Xiang Cheng's monster in his notebook. Chi Xiaoduo had learned how to sketch a bit, so he could sketch the yaoguai with some shadow and soft lighting, and once he gave it a bit of a gradient effect, everyone fell over at once.
"But," Chi Xiaoduo finished drawing, raised his hand, and asked, "if the dog's goal was to kill him, wouldn't it have been enough to just bite him directly? And how did the yaoguai know that C would run into the car when crossing the road? Unless it was all arranged."
Xiang Cheng nodded and said, "That’s the part that I can’t figure out. Eat first ba."
After their midnight snack, the four of them got in the car. Xiang Cheng and Chi Xiaoduo sat in the back seat while Keda drove. Zhou Wanyuan kept looking out at the road, lost in thought; a moment later, she took out a mirror to touch up her makeup. Keda took a look at her makeup mirror, and Zhou Wanyuan snapped the mirror shut with a pa sound.
"What are you looking at?"
Keda didn't answer and just paid attention to driving.
"Chen Zhen didn’t let you take any family heirlooms along?" Zhou Wanyuan asked.
"I’m not in charge of anything," Keda replied. "I'm just responsible for driving Xiang-xiong." He grinned as he said that.
The SUV turned into a long and narrow back alley. There were five or six garbage cans on both sides of the alley, with a door in the middle of them. Only one vehicle could enter the lane at a time, and Keda was very good at reversing, forcing the huge off-road vehicle into the small alley.
Zhou Wanyuan opened the door, which opened up against the wall.
Keda: “......”
Zhou Wanyuan: ".......”
"You did this on purpose ba," Zhou Wanyuan said.
Keda pushed a button, the sunroof opened, and he pointed up. Xiang Cheng said, "Xiaoduo, you two wait in the car."
Saying that, he climbed out of the sunroof first. Zhou Wanyuan hesitated for a moment then also climbed up.
Keda: "Beauty, don’t expose too much."
"You pervert ah——" Zhou Wanyuan yelled.
Chi Xiaoduo: “.....”
Keda waved at Chi Xiaoduo, motioning him to the front passenger seat as he played a song, and they listened to the song in the car.
Xiang Cheng and Zhou Wanyuan jumped down in front of the car. They came to the back door of the hospital, and Keda turned off the headlights. Chi Xiaoduo sat in the car, his eyes dazzled, and he saw a beautiful light glowing from behind the door. However, as soon as he blinked, the light disappeared again.
"What is this place?" Chi Xiaoduo asked.
Keda shook his head and said, "I don't know. I'm only responsible for driving."
Chi Xiaoduo said, "You must know."
"Don't ask," Keda said. "It's not good to know, trust me."
In Chi Xiaoduo's dragon pupil, he saw that the light emitted from the door was like colored moving light, gently spreading towards the sky. He stretched his head forward a bit and looked up.
At the same time, a shadow crouching on top of a tall building beside the alley quickly shrank back.
"Did you see something?" Keda asked.
Chi Xiaoduo shook his head.
Xiang Cheng and Zhou Wanyuan stood in front of the locked back door and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. Xiang Cheng bent down, climbed up to the second floor along the air-conditioning pipe, and entered an office. He was both strong and vigorous.
Zhou Wanyuan waited outside the door. A moment later, the door to the back alley was opened. Zhou Wanyuan followed in, took out a small flashlight from her bag, and moved it around to illuminate their path. At the end of the dark passageway, a fluorescent light was shining behind another door; someone was on duty.
There was a faint cry in the distance. Xiang Cheng stopped halfway and motioned Zhou Wanyuan to go up the stairs.
The two of them went to the second floor. At the end of the corridor on the second floor, there was a door. At the top of the door, a fluorescent lamp lit up a big word: MORGUE.
In the back alley, Chi Xiaoduo felt that there was something creepy nearby, but inside the car was very normal. It seemed that with just Keda sitting in the driver's seat, nothing could invade the car.
"I added a camera to the drone," Keda said. "Now I can take aerial photos with it."
"For work?" Chi Xiaoduo asked.
"No, just to play around in my spare time." Keda replied, "I saw your resume. Was it hard back when you were working in architecture?"
"It was okay," Chi Xiaoduo said. "I often worked overtime and didn’t know what the point of it was. Now that I’m not doing that anymore, I'm free."
Keda asked, "Are you two planning on finding a job in Beijing?"
Chi Xiaoduo replied, "We’ll talk about it after Xiang Cheng completes the exam ba."
Keda stretched out and said, “To tell you the truth, I really want to go to Guangzhou, the food in Guangzhou is delicious. Have you ever been to Yulan Alley in Guangzhou? I heard that there is a girl named Yilan there who can use drawings to transform spiritual realms into reality. The study material has already been sent to you, have you reviewed it?"
"No, I haven’t had time yet." Chi Xiaoduo's memory was a little vague, and he said, "Can you guys do internal transfers?"
"En," Keda replied. "If you don’t want to stay in Beijing, the other offices are also good. The interpersonal struggles at the headquarters are too complicated."
"Are there?" Chi Xiaoduo didn't expect that there were even such matters in an exorcist organization.
"Where there are places of authority, there are power struggles." Keda replied, "It's the same everywhere. Small offices like Guangzhou are better than those in Shanghai and Shenzhen. And you have a lot of free time."
Chi Xiaoduo felt that “Yulan Alley” sounded very familiar. According to Xiang Cheng's account, he had been there before he had smelt the Lihun pollen, but he already couldn’t remember what it was like inside. He asked, "How did you get into this office?"
"Family relationships." Keda said, "My dad died on duty, and the organization arranged a job for me. It's worse off than some, but better off than many, but it’s not a great position. Sometimes I envy you idle people, it’s much more interesting to visit mountains and rivers."
