Chapter 35: A Big Crumpled Paper Ball

Chen Ming stopped digging up corpses because he had dug up a small skull.

When the shovel dug a little deeper, turning over the damp, soft soil again and again, what appeared before his eyes was nothing but a field of pale white, deep beyond sight, as if no matter how far he dug, he could not find the edge.

“Estimated to be more than ten square meters. Truly inhuman…” Chen Ming clicked his tongue, wiped the skull in his arms, and placed it into a transparent bag. “Little President Gu, let’s go inside too. Don’t touch the remaining bones for now. Bad karma.”

Even now, Chen Ming remained very calm, while Gu Jiu’an felt his breathing becoming a little difficult. He followed behind Chen Ming and silently looked up at this luxurious villa.

Like a giant mouth that devoured people. Like a twisted beast lying dormant in the darkness.

This was the home he had lived in for many years.

Chen Ming pushed open the door and leaned the shovel outside the threshold, then turned his head and smiled. “Don’t sleep tonight no matter what. If you sleep, this will become your lifelong nightmare. Day and night, you’ll remember tonight’s events again.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chen. Do you drink coffee? I’ll go brew a pot.” Gu Jiu’an’s thanks were very sincere, because he knew very clearly what kind of long-term harmful effects the wrong way of handling psychological trauma could cause.

He needed to keep himself busy and do something.

“I do. Please make mine stronger. I’m not sleeping tonight either. There’ll be a lot to do in the second half of the night.” After Chen Ming finished speaking, he carried the skull through the entrance and called out, “Boss, I dug up a child!”

“Thanks for the hard work. We’re beside the display shelf.”

“Coming, coming… Aiyo, Boss, why did you directly smash the wall? Come out first. This room doesn’t comply with building regulations and could easily collapse.”

Yu Wangxiao agreed with his judgment. “Tuantuan, listen to Chen Ming. He Chen will arrive soon. I’ll have the laboratory come handle the rest. Just take away the important things.”

“Okay.”

Lin Jiangye was not in a very good mood. He had already pried up a gold brick and found a familiar stone bowl beneath the hollow brick—the rough container that had crushed the ghost infant alive.

Then he wrapped all the little golden children into his suit jacket, carefully bundled them up, and stepped out of the secret room holding the bowl.

“Uncle Chen, let me see the skull.”

“Okay. Young Master Lin, don’t sleep tonight either, and don’t listen to music or watch movies. After you go home, just play some games, understood?” Chen Ming handed him the bag and asked with concern.

“Thank you, Uncle Chen. Take a rest. Yu Wangxiao and I are going to see the body now… Is it in the basement?” Lin Jiangye took the bag and touched the facial outline of the skull. He was silent for a moment, then put it down, before placing the wrapped little golden children on the sofa.

For now, he did not know how to handle them. The golden children were not people, nor were they made from corpses. When Lin Jiangye leaned closer to observe, he could smell an extremely complicated strange medicinal scent and the smell of blood… It was hard to say exactly what Gu Yuan had done without restraint while “raising little ghosts.”

Leaving them alone would probably lead to trouble. The gestation and birth of evil creatures definitely did not happen overnight. And perhaps the only person truly capable of handling them while also having the ability to protect himself was Lin Jiangye.

Lin Jiangye would not allow even more unnatural things to appear. When humans learned that incredible, unimaginable terrifying power existed in this world, there would always be people who tried to seize it for themselves, no matter what price they had to pay.

After all, not everyone was like Yu Wangxiao, whose actions seemed almost devoid of greed. The purpose behind those research projects under him leaned more toward understanding and seeking truth than obtaining power. Even now, he still had a large batch of meteorites stored and unused.

Gu Jiu’an came out from the kitchen carrying a tray and casually answered, “That’s right. Grandma is in the ice coffin in the basement. The wake will last a week, and rituals will be done every day. The smell might be a little strong now. Paper money was just burned this afternoon, and there’s a lot of incense and candles… Who wants coffee? The cups are under the tea table.”

Yu Wangxiao drank one cup. Chen Ming drank half a pot. Lin Jiangye refused, because he actually did not need sleep.

“Gu Jiu’an, if I want to take her away, do the rituals still need to be done for the next six days? Give me the master’s contact information. I’ll learn how to do them.” Lin Jiangye looked thoughtful.

Gu Jiu’an hesitated. His survival instinct told him that it was best not to continue asking Lin Jiangye… what exactly he wanted to do with an old woman’s corpse.

“…Do them. Just invite the master over. There’s no need to do it personally. It’s only going through the motions. Grandma believed in these things, so I’ll pay the cost.” Holding the rich black coffee, he pointed toward the end of the corridor and said helplessly, “The basement is over there. Go down the stairs. It’s a little cold.”

***

The basement was indeed very cold. The ice coffin emitted a faint cold glow, carrying bone-piercing chill.

The extremely thin old woman lay inside, surrounded by bright red and purple flowers. Her hair had been arranged into an elegant, meticulous bun, and she wore gold and jade.

The embalmer had arranged her appearance. She looked neat, with red lips and white teeth, but she was still far too thin, so thin she barely looked human. Looking closely, it was especially shocking, with an inhuman kind of horror.

Yu Wangxiao found a lighter on a shelf, lit three sticks of incense, and burned a few pieces of paper money for Old Madam Gu.

“Go well. I hope you obtain true peace soon,” he lowered his eyes and said softly.

This was a very sincere blessing from a friend.

Lin Jiangye sighed and tapped the glass of the ice coffin. He turned the flashlight Yu Wangxiao had brought to maximum power and pressed it against the glass, gently shaking it. “Old Madam, excuse me. Can you still move? Can you hear me?”

The living dead had phototaxis. They would be activated into aggression by strong light, and when they heard sounds made by living things, they would instinctively rush over to bite.

To be honest, he hoped Old Madam Gu would not give any reaction, just like Yu Wangxiao.

After all, she had already become this neither-human-nor-ghost state, even unreasonably producing so many copies. Her dignity for an entire lifetime was gone, and she might even have been used by her son to commit murder… To inexplicably die, lose all vitality and ability to move, and be buried directly in peace might be the true blessing for Old Madam Gu.

“Uh… Ugh… Uh, uh…”

The instant the flashlight shone into her eyes, the old woman in the ice coffin moved.

She abruptly opened her hollow eyes and stared straight at Lin Jiangye, as though she could see through his true appearance with one glance.

Lin Jiangye tensed his body and pressed his hand against the ice coffin glass, ready at any moment for her to violently attack. But she did not. She still lay amid the brilliant clusters of flowers. Her red lips opened slightly, revealing the round jade pendant the embalmer had placed in her mouth.

Placing burial objects in a corpse’s mouth was not rare. It could briefly support the fullness of the corpse’s face and maintain beauty. It also carried the meaning of blessing the deceased so their “mouth would not remain empty.”

But a burial object crazily jumping inside a corpse’s mouth, as if it would shoot out along with the retching in the next instant… this scene was a little rare.

“Can I open it now and check?” Lin Jiangye turned back hesitantly, asking Yu Wangxiao’s opinion.

“Be careful.”

“Then stand farther away.”

Yu Wangxiao nodded and took a few steps back.

Creak—

“Cough, ugh… Urgh…”

The ice coffin was opened, and high-frequency coughing and vomiting sounds instantly filled the basement, echoing all around. Lin Jiangye was quick-eyed and fast-handed, grabbing out the jade pendant, but the sound still did not stop.

She still did not move. Her eyes were wide open, the corners torn until they split, like two round full moons.

“What’s going on? Is there something else in her mouth?” Lin Jiangye carefully moved the flashlight and aimed it at her wide-open mouth.

The base of her tongue was trembling. Her abdomen beneath the golden-threaded shroud trembled for a moment, and then her throat and neck began to twitch violently and uncontrollably. Lin Jiangye saw an unknown object surging upward… and finally, she desperately coughed it out.

A big crumpled paper ball.

Lin Jiangye narrowed his eyes, picked up the paper ball, and cautiously, slowly unfolded and smoothed it out. His gaze quickly scanned downward and landed on the signature. His breathing paused for a moment.

This was the blood-written final note left by Old Madam Gu. The bloodstains had long since dried, turning into a faintly blackened dark red, and there were also traces blurred by a small amount of saliva.

Her name was Xu Lifang. She lived to eighty-six years old, and her death was suicide by poison. Even this ball of paper had been forcibly swallowed before the poison killed her so that no one else would discover it.

But the year of death carved on her memorial tablet recorded her age as eighty-nine. It had been delayed for a full three years before she finally had her own coffin.

“Huu…”

At this moment, Xu Lifang looked deeply at Lin Jiangye, and a long exhale came from her chest, as if she had released all the sighs she had been unable to let out over the past three years in one breath.

Immediately after, her desperately widened eyes slowly closed, and her arched chest and abdomen quickly collapsed. Her face shriveled until almost only a layer of skin remained. Just like that, she lay in the sea of flowers inside the ice coffin and no longer made any other movement.

Lin Jiangye was stunned for a moment. He carefully folded the will and placed it into the shirt pocket close to his chest, then turned to look at Yu Wangxiao again. “Um, she seems to have really died. Come take a look? I don’t have judgment experience.”

The living dead could be killed. Before Lin Jiangye came to this world, Yu Wangxiao had already practiced various methods, even without needing the power of special meteorites. But no matter how many methods there were, they had never directly self-destructed in such a strange and harmless form.

Xu Lifang before their eyes looked only like an elderly person whose final wish had been fulfilled, who had peacefully reached the end of life.

Yu Wangxiao’s constantly carried gun came in handy. He pressed the muzzle to the old woman’s heart and lightly pulled the trigger.

Click…

After waiting several seconds, still nothing happened.

“Mm. She has passed away. Very peacefully.” Yu Wangxiao smiled and gave a certain answer. His low-pressure expression that had lasted for most of the night finally softened slightly at this moment.

Raising his hand to close the coffin lid, Yu Wangxiao continued, “To be safe, we should still bring her back and continue the wake. Placing her in my family’s old residence may be more suitable than this place full of corpses. It can let her feel more at ease.

“Yu Lin’s mother had a pretty good relationship with her before too. These next few days, they can just keep each other company. After all, they won’t see each other again in the future. It would spare them regret.”

“…Ah, ah? Keep each other company?” Lin Jiangye froze.

“Mm. What’s wrong?” Yu Wangxiao poured some water over the burned paper money, his tone extremely natural. “He Chen has already arrived, and the police should be coming soon too. Leave the rest to them.”

Lin Jiangye hesitated, holding Yu Wangxiao’s hand as they stepped up the stairs. “Is Yu Lin’s mother not afraid of ghosts? Will having a wake at home scare her?”

“Most of the time, ghosts would only be more afraid of her.” Yu Wangxiao squeezed his hand, speaking with deep meaning. “If you want to care about her, when her state stabilizes a little, you can actually meet her and get to know her, have a meal. In the end, she can also be considered family.”

Lin Jiangye fell into thought. “Family… Wu, you humans’ family relationships are especially complicated. Let me think. She is your sister-in-law, so she is also my sister-in-law?”

“Yes.” Yu Wangxiao was concise. Just from his expression, not the slightest joy or anger could be seen, but the favorability above his head made a plain and simple sudden leap forward.

Lin Jiangye put thousands of complaints back into his heart. Sometimes he could not help suspecting that he might be more like a normal human than Yu Wangxiao. As for Yu Wangxiao’s preferences and biases, occasionally, he really found them difficult to understand. Really strange.

No more needed to be said. Poor, hardworking He Chen was not wearing glasses today, and his work efficiency was extremely high.

He led the fully armed laboratory team to pry out all the privately melted gold bricks from the secret room. The lotus embroidery was taken down and carried away, the gold leaf wallpaper was entirely scraped off and collected, and even the Buddha statue whose head Lin Jiangye had broken off was carried away by two or three people, all placed into a truck for initial disinfection and sterilization.

Aside from the laboratory staff, there was also a construction team. Holding the double-strength black coffee Gu Jiu’an had brewed, He Chen expressionlessly directed the professional masons to repair the secret room wall Lin Jiangye had smashed through at the fastest speed. In the blink of an eye, it was restored to its original state.

After pasting wallpaper over it and cleaning away the dust everywhere, now no one could tell… that not long ago, there had been a person-high hole in this wall.

“Triple bonus?” Yu Wangxiao walked to his side and asked quietly.

“Five times. Can we? I’m short on money lately.” He Chen braced himself and negotiated.

“How is the island?”

“The lost items have already been counted. It’s not serious. The police found two explosives, so it can be confirmed it wasn’t our people who did it. Lin Jingyao was taken away by Lin Yu and went overnight to Siquan Club. They said it’s to recuperate for a while.”

“Where is Yu Lin?”

“In the detention center. I personally reported him. Bail him out?”

“Let him squat there overnight. Tomorrow morning, someone else will come bail him out. Watch personally. Don’t let anyone else be responsible.”

“…Okay, Boss.”

“Good. Five times bonus.”