Chapter 71: The Shadow Ghost (3)
“Wu-wu—” The more anxious Shi Danxing became, the less he knew how to warn him. His entire mind was focused on the scene before him, completely unaware that the reason he couldn’t make a sound was that inside his wide-open mouth, only half a tongue remained, flapping in the wind.
His eyes widened further, his eyeballs nearly popping out.
The moment the dark shadow lunged, Jiang Si, who was half-squatting on the floor, suddenly turned and thrust his knife with fierce speed.
The blade pierced through the air as if it were stabbing nothingness. However, it caused the dark shadow to freeze for a split second. Seizing this opening, Jiang Si threw the knife in his right hand behind him. The metal hit the floor with a crisp clang.
His adrenaline was fully triggered by the brush with death. He grabbed the dark shadow’s long, curved neck with one palm and slammed it with force against the wall—
His body, without his jacket, was only wearing a thin t-shirt. His exposed skin was almost the same color as white porcelain—thin and bloodless. It was easy for someone to instinctively look down on him.
Shi Danxing couldn’t help but judge by appearances. He felt that since Jiang Si was so young and thin, he would definitely lose to this evil ghost.
Look at those arms—they looked like they would snap with just a little force.
Especially after seeing the fruit knife fail to hit the evil ghost, fear made him uncontrollably close his eyes, despairingly waiting for death to arrive.
Thud—
A few seconds felt like an eternity right now. Shi Danxing felt that even a lifetime of hardship wasn’t this agonizing. Then he heard a scream echoing through the house, and he instinctively thought it was over. His blood turned as cold as could be.
But after a few breaths, he suddenly realized the voice didn’t sound quite right.
It wasn’t Jiang Si’s.
He peeked with one eye, looking up in the direction where Jiang Si stood. From his perspective, the other man’s figure was stretched infinitely tall and powerful. The bloodstains on his body looked more like war paint, adding a sense of ferocity to the thin youth.
Shi Danxing’s shock was beyond words. What was even more unbelievable was that Jiang Si was holding a black arm by his side.
He had actually torn the arm off the dark shadow with his bare hands!
His posture was like someone carrying a large chicken leg.
Jiang Si tried his best to calm his rapid breathing. His nose was filled with the pungent scent of blood that clung to him, making the veins in his temples throb incessantly.
“What kind of thing are you?” he asked coldly.
The dark shadow was pinned to the wall, staring at him weirdly with its featureless head.
Jiang Si sensed something was wrong. He wanted to pull it upright to interrogate it further, but the moment he applied force, the hard, cold body beneath his palm melted like ice into a pool of liquid.
A large black puddle spilled from the shadow’s feet, spreading upward rapidly. Before Jiang Si could do anything more, it clung to the wall and turned entirely into black water. The water was absorbed by the wall, leaving no trace behind.
It vanished before Jiang Si’s eyes just like that.
The stunned Jiang Si turned back and met Shi Danxing’s gaze. He could clearly see from the man’s eyes that a weird thing had indeed appeared just now.
The ambulance and Hai Di’s car arrived at the villa area almost simultaneously.
Hardly had the car come to a stop before Hai Di, regardless of his image, bolted out of the car door. The assistant who had driven him was seeing his boss so flustered for the first time and couldn’t help but gape in place.
What on earth happened? Why was there even an ambulance here?
Hai Di didn’t care to straighten his disheveled clothes. His mind held only one thought: Jiang Si must not have anything happen to him.
Over the phone, Jiang Si’s heart-wrenching cry for help echoed in his ears. His foot, which had just stepped inside, paused instinctively as he saw the scene within. Even his breathing trembled.
The house, with its bright lights, was covered in blood. From the floor to the walls, a string of deep brown bloodstains was incredibly eye-catching. Just looking at it, one could imagine what kind of intense fight had taken place here.
A crowd had gathered around a spot in the center of the floor, where doctors were performing emergency resuscitation.
“Patient’s breathing is weak—”
“Excessive blood loss—”
“Losing consciousness now—”
A stream of words hit Hai Di, leaving him completely unable to think. He stepped forward and pulled away the nurse standing nearby, looking through the gap in the crowd.
The person on the floor was covered in blood and was being given CPR by a doctor.
Hai Di couldn’t tell if the man was alive or dead, but he instinctively breathed a sigh of relief. Releasing the annoyed nurse, he steadied his mind and apologized, stepping back to give them space for the resuscitation.
The nurse grumbled a bit and returned to the scene to assist the doctor.
Scanning the room, he still didn’t see the person he was looking for. Hai Di’s heart, which hadn’t fully returned to its place, rose again. He was about to grab someone to ask about the situation.
As if they shared a telepathic connection, he instinctively turned back to look at the staircase winding up the wall.
Jiang Si was squatting on a step, holding several tissues and constantly wiping his face. He was using so much force it looked as if he was trying to rub his skin off.
The chaos here seemed to have nothing to do with him. He was hiding in an inconspicuous corner, carefully tidying his appearance.
Hai Di let out a long breath and walked over quickly. His body shielded Jiang Si, casting a large shadow that completely enveloped the curled-up figure.
“…” Jiang Si noticed the light in front of him dim. He didn’t need to look up to know who it was. He said in a muffled voice, “I’m fine.”
“The blood on you?”
Jiang Si was still wearing that t-shirt. The off-white fabric was almost entirely soaked with blood. After the blood dried, it turned into an even more conspicuous dark brown on his clothes.
“It’s all Shi Danxing’s.” Jiang Si wiped himself hard once more. Feeling that he still couldn’t get it clean, he simply gave up. He crumpled the tissue in his palm and felt a bit dejected. “His family situation is really not simple. I clearly looked around, but I still found nothing.”
“It’s not your fault.” Hai Di gently patted his head and comforted him in a warm voice. “The methods of the wicked have no limit. Even with all your knowledge and experience, it’s impossible to know everything.”
“That’s true, but he’s essentially finished.” Jiang Si looked toward Shi Danxing. “Even if he can be saved today, if this matter isn’t resolved, he won’t live much longer.”
“That thing was clearly an Infant Head Gu. The Gu insect usually remains peaceful in a human body unless the mastermind triggers it. How could a backlash happen so quickly? Who else knew I was coming to Shi Danxing’s house today?”
Jiang Si couldn’t figure it out. In just less than ten minutes, the Gu insect had suddenly turned on its host and taken control of Shi Danxing’s body.
“What about his wife?” Hai Di asked. “Didn’t he say his wife was suffering from the same illness and resting at home?”
“Mrs. Shi? She’s not even conscious anymore, and her own body—” Jiang Si met his gaze with a look of realization. “No, there’s another person.”
“Shi Danxing had an affair. This Gu was refined using her child. But this person has disappeared. I originally wanted to find something she left behind in this house, but I just hadn’t found it before Shi Danxing suddenly mutated.”
Thinking of the place they had just been, Jiang Si stood up and headed upstairs. Hai Di followed him to the study to search.
“It was right here just now—” Jiang Si muttered to himself, pacing back and forth on the floor. He tried his best to mobilize his memory, recalling any details he might have overlooked.
As he focused on thinking, Hai Di stood quietly by the wall, slowly examining the room.
Having grown up in a wealthy environment himself, Hai Di was used to various precious antiques. He could tell at a glance which ones were authentic and which were fakes.
He didn’t know if Shi Danxing had done it to prevent accidental damage, but almost all the antiques displayed for show were imitations. Hai Di, feeling bored, scanned the ornaments one by one. Suddenly, he saw a dusty Tang Sancai piece with some mud on it.
The light reflected off it, coating it in a soft glow. The glaze fragments shimmered like ripples on water. It was incredibly exquisite; that kind of detail was absolutely impossible to fake with modern craftsmanship. Hai Di became a bit interested and was about to take a closer look.
Jiang Si seemed to have noticed his intention and suddenly warned: “Don’t touch it!”
Hai Di was startled. Jiang Si walked over and examined the Tang Sancai piece before saying, “This is a Tri-color figurine. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the production of Tang Sancai reached its peak. A large number of human and animal figurines were produced, as it became common for everyone from the nobility to the commoners to use these figurines for burial.”
“This is a burial object?” Hai Di had heard of this. Nowadays, most Tang Sancai in museums were indeed funerary objects from ancient times.
“Yes.” Compared to it being a funerary object, what Jiang Si couldn’t figure out was: “As a cultural relic, how did this end up in a private collection? Since Shi Danxing dared to display it, does he even know where it came from?”
Hai Di coughed lightly. “Even with the current crackdown on tomb raiders, many still take the risk to raid tombs. The items dug up are either smuggled overseas or sold to merchants who want to hoard them. As for whether Mr. Shi knew… I don’t think he did.”
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have placed a real item among a pile of fakes.
Jiang Si was non-committal. He stared into the lifeless eyes of the figurine for a long time. He asked Hai Di for a handkerchief and touched the Tang Sancai through the layer of cloth.
The moment he touched it, he felt something was wrong. It felt incredibly cold, as if he were holding a block of ice through the cloth, making his palm go numb.
After only a few seconds of contact, Jiang Si let go.
In response to Hai Di’s questioning gaze, he shook his head. “No discoveries.”
Hai Di wanted to say a few words of comfort, but he was pulled out of the room by Jiang Si under the pretext of looking elsewhere. Once the study door was closed, Jiang Si hung his sandalwood bracelet on the doorknob. He walked a few steps away before saying, “That’s the item.”
“The Infant Head Gu can only stay close to the Shi couple by hiding on it. This figurine was intentionally sent to Shi Danxing’s home. The Gu insect will instinctively find a living person to parasitize. Once the Gu insect enters a person’s body, every time the host touches the figurine, it will cause the Gu insect inside them to flare up. Shi Danxing was at the end of his tether; only today did the Gu insect suddenly take over his body and launch a sneak attack on me.”
Jiang Si felt an unspeakable disgust for this method of using insects. Knitting his brows, he muttered a low curse.
“Truly disgusting. The way Mrs. Shi looks, I expect her brain has been eaten clean by the Gu insects. She’s completely been taken over by them.”
The study door let out a few subtle noises. It was so fast it felt like a hallucination. Had they not been standing so close, the two of them wouldn’t have taken it to heart.
After the noise, Jiang Si and Hai Di looked at each other.
Thinking of what happened just now, and smelling the foul, pungent scent of blood on him, Jiang Si crossed his arms and gave a grim smile. “I’ll tear it apart with my own hands sooner or later.”
Hai Di whispered, “How about we smash it to vent our anger? I’ll handle the compensation and negotiations.”
“…”
“No need for that.” Jiang Si looked downstairs. At this moment, Shi Danxing had already been placed on a stretcher and taken to the hospital. The crowd had cleared out, leaving only the dark brown, oxidized bloodstains on the first-floor floor.
“I’ll go back and call for help. No money needed.”
Hai Di didn’t know who this “master” was yet. He was about to ask more when Jiang Si put his bracelet back on and dragged him back home.
As soon as they reached the door, Jiang Si didn’t even bother greeting a joyful Bai Qiniang. He dived straight into the room used for placing the deceased’s photos and the offering table.
Still wearing the blood-soaked clothes, Jiang Si honestly offered incense and then began to complain to the black-and-white photo of a white-haired old man.
Translator’s Note:
The “Shadow Ghost” (影子鬼) introduced here is quite a creepy concept. Also, the “Tang Sancai” (唐三彩) refers to Tang Dynasty tri-color glazed pottery, which is historically very significant but, as Jiang Si notes, often comes from tombs. Jiang Si’s relationship with his deceased family is quite touching, though he uses it to “tattle” on the ghosts he encounters!
Stay safe out there!
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