Chapter 12: Our Brother Jiang Has Been a Professional Ghost Hunter for Fifty Years
“It’s a helpless crush…”
Jiang Louqi heard Chen Peiwen hesitate for a long while before finally tossing out that single sentence.
Though the words sounded light, they seemed to contain everything—heartbreak, and pain.
Su Qian had been a girl for several centuries, after all; she could least tolerate such a weak and incompetent person.
She questioned Chen Peiwen in a fury: “Since you liked her, why didn’t you protect her?”
“I… I wanted to, but I didn’t dare. I was afraid they would become my enemies too, and bully me the same way they hurt her. But ever since she died, those people’s target became me. Only then did I finally realize how desperate Ren Yu felt at that time…”
Chen Peiwen covered his face with his hands, curling up in the corner and sobbing uncontrollably. His voice was broken, unable to form complete sentences: “I’m… sorry, Ren Yu… I couldn’t do anything…”
The deep-seated guilt, combined with every other kind of pain, made him suffer immensely.
It felt as though a raging fire was burning in his chest, one that was difficult to extinguish, constantly roasting his soul where a shred of conscience remained. It left him restless, his conscience unable to find peace.
Su Qian was suddenly so angry that the blood rushed to her head. She was on the verge of losing control completely and truly wanted to give him a slap. “What’s the use of crying? Can crying bring that poor girl back to life?”
“Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing? Calm down. Are you trying to lay hands on a client?”
Jiang Louqi barked a low reprimand at her, pulling the female demon—who looked ready to go on a rampage—back a bit, fearing she would start punching and kicking Chen Peiwen.
He then took a tissue from his pocket and handed it to the boy on the ground. “Wipe your face.”
“He’s your client, not mine!” Su Qian turned away arrogantly. Men really were all the same—nothing good!
Jiang Louqi shook his head helplessly and looked at Chen Peiwen, his gaze far more serious than usual.
“Ghosts can get addicted to killing. When that happens, it won’t just be those villains who die. So, do you want her to return to the Underworld to face judgment? And then be reincarnated?”
“Is that really possible?” Chen Peiwen’s legs had already gone weak; he could only barely stand by leaning against the wall.
“Killing is born of her resentment, so we have to see what her true obsession is. For example, does she have any unfulfilled wishes?”
As Jiang Louqi spoke, his gaze drifted seemingly unintentionally toward the piano room on the third floor across from them. Unfortunately, Xie Jiuchen wasn’t there right now.
Chen Peiwen clutched his hair. The good memory he usually used for memorizing texts and vocabulary was completely useless now.
It turned out that his understanding of Ren Yu was only surface-level.
The boy was too ashamed to look up. “I… I can’t remember, or rather, I can’t say what it is…”
Jiang Louqi rubbed his eyes, which had grown dry from the wind. “It’s fine. Think about it carefully. Also, will she kill again tonight?”
“Yes… there’s one more. That person… he deserves to die…”
The night was thick and impenetrable. Not a single pedestrian could be seen on the long, silent streets. Footsteps behind seemed to exist yet were also absent.
The dark residential buildings reached toward the sky, their lights sparse. A few clusters of dim, yellow light were as weak as the final groans of a dying old man.
Xie Jiuchen had just reached the corner of the first floor when he suddenly remembered that he had left the piano score he intended to study back at the dorms in the piano room. He had no choice but to turn back.
Once night fell, not a single student or teacher could be seen in this high school teaching building; it had completely sunk into a deathly stillness.
The sharp edges of the tall building were blurred by the darkness. Looking at it from a distance, it resembled a mangled, bloody face.
Xie Jiuchen walked with extremely light steps. If not for his shadow stretched out by the faint moonlight, anyone not looking closely would instinctively assume he was a ghost hovering three inches off the ground.
The windows of the piano room had been blown wide open. The empty instrument room was shrouded in total darkness.
Aside from the whistling wind, there seemed to be a very faint, ethereal sound echoing hollowly in a vague corner of the pitch-black corridor.
He took his keys from his pocket and quietly opened the door he had locked before leaving.
With the click of the lock, dust drifted through the keyhole and the window frames.
A bizarre smell emanated from within—like the stench of rotting mud and the supernatural chill of ice at dozens of degrees below zero.
Xie Jiuchen gripped the handle and slowly pushed the door halfway open. His clear, cold face turned an unnatural shade of white, and his eyes suddenly darkened.
Several “people” had suddenly appeared in the piano room. There were both males and females among them, all wearing the Yangcheng No. 2 Middle School uniform, crowded around the piano.
Perhaps because of Xie Jiuchen’s sudden intrusion, they all turned their heads mechanically, their hovering bodies seated in the opposite direction.
Their ashen, dismal ghost faces wore eerie half-smiles, and their deeply sunken eye sockets were overflowing with blood.
“Excuse me.” Xie Jiuchen nodded politely and closed the wooden door again.
Only seconds after the door closed, the sound of the piano being played by no one slowly drifted out, the soft laughter of a girl mixed in with the notes.
The sound was indescribably bizarre; the laughter seemed to originate from the abdomen, rushing up to the throat and mouth, and finally leaking out intermittently through the nose.
In an instant, a symphony of death from hell began to play.
From the fifth floor, Jiang Louqi was the first to sense something was wrong. From his vantage point, he could see exactly what was happening at the piano room across from him.
Furthermore… it was currently pitch black and everyone should have fled, so why was there still a figure standing at the door of the piano room?
Chen Peiwen instinctively shrank behind the others, his teeth chattering uncontrollably, his voice saturated with terror. “She’s here… every time the piano plays, it means Ren Yu is here…”
“Don’t panic, alright? Our Brother Jiang has fifty years of professional ghost-hunting experience. This is just a small case.” Zhou Jiayi stood tall, rubbing his nose with his index finger in a smug manner.
“Don’t include me in your bragging.” Jiang Louqi raised a hand and flicked the boy’s head before hurriedly running toward the stairwell.
The hurried thud-thud-thud of their footsteps echoed throughout the entire teaching building shrouded in ghostly aura.
“Aaaaaah!”
They finally made it down to the third-floor stairwell when Chen Peiwen suddenly screamed, giving the unprepared Su Qian a startle.
She was about to scold the boy for making a fuss, but before she could speak, her eyes saw something even more hair-raising.
Looking up from below, a headless corpse was suspended in mid-air, swaying like a swing.
Its two vertical thighs were a mangled mess of flesh and blood, as if someone had hacked at them stroke by stroke with a blunt instrument; one could even see the ghastly white bone inside.
And all ten of its fingers had also been chopped off, blood dripping down incessantly.
The crimson blood condensed into alluring blood-flowers, hitting the ground with a thud and sinking into the dust.
Even the severed head was missing, discarded in some unknown corner.
This wretched state of death was exactly the same as the corpse on the back mountain; anyone who saw it would be horrified.
“Holy crap, what is this? You can even play like this? How exciting!”
Zhou Jiayi let out a cry of surprise. Compared to Chen Peiwen, he actually looked quite gleeful; after all, he was already a ghost who had been dead for three hundred years—there was nothing for him to be afraid of.
Plus, with his habit of staying up all night playing video games—especially horror games—he instantly felt as if he were experiencing a scene firsthand.
Jiang Louqi recognized the clothes on the corpse at a glance—they belonged to the Academic Affairs Director. He couldn’t help but feel confused as to why this man had also ended up dead.
Oh, right. Back then, the Director had looked at him with an extremely suspicious gaze, shifting around like a thief with a guilty conscience. He really wasn’t a good person.
He pointed at the corpse and looked at Chen Peiwen. “Is this guy also one of Ren Yu’s targets for revenge?”
Chen Peiwen was already struck dumb by terror, his language centers temporarily disconnected; all that remained was his physical instinct to nod.
“Why?” Jiang Louqi asked, puzzled.
“He… violated his professional ethics. He actually did those things to Ren Yu. It’s truly… disgusting. It’s good that he’s dead.”
Chen Peiwen shed his previous panic, and the long-suppressed viciousness in his heart was exposed without reservation; he seemed like a completely different person.
Translator’s Note:
- Professional ghost hunter for fifty years (專業抓鬼五十年): This is a hilarious bit of bragging from Zhou Jiayi. Jiang Louqi is clearly not even thirty, but he comes from a lineage of experts, so Zhou is exaggerating for effect!
- Academic Affairs Director (教導處主任): In Chinese schools, this position is very powerful as they handle student discipline. For him to have “violated professional ethics” (違背師德) usually implies something quite dark, like grooming or abuse, which explains Ren Yu’s extreme resentment.
- “Men aren’t anything good” (男人果然都不是什麽好東西): Su Qian is a fox demon, and in Chinese folklore, fox spirits often have… complicated histories with men. This explains her “all men are trash” attitude!
- Blood-flowers (血花): A common poetic-yet-gory way in Chinese web novels to describe blood splashing on the ground.
- Southern Heaven Gate (南天門): Mentioned in previous chapters; Jiang uses it to describe his level of excitement or “floating” feeling.
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