IWBL: Chapter 124
It certainly wasn’t human nature. Even if there was, there was no need to talk when it was a ghost. The stainless steel kettle was called ‘heating quickly’ for a reason. The water inside soon became hotter. Fujiang was like a fish that fell into the oil pan, constantly twisting.
“What’s wrong with you? I can’t swim and I don’t like closed environments. Quickly fish me up!”
There was another shake and she accidentally sank into the water. After swallowing a mouthful of hot water, Fujiang compromised. She exhausted all her scream and screamed, “What do you want to know? I’ll say it! I don’t want to be cooked. I don’t look good when cooked!”
After Fujiang said this, she felt someone removing the kettle. She opened the lid and poured the con of the kettle into the sink. A pair of hands caught Fujiang in time, so that she didn’t enter the sewers from the sink.
There was a sound and a pair of bright eyes appeared on the piece of meat. Originally, she was dug out of the soil. Then after being washed by water, the bright red colour was restored. Now she had been boiled in water for a period of time. Her flesh changed from bloody to white and she also exuded the aroma of food…
It smelled like chicken breast. Ri Yan couldn’t hold back and gulped.
Fujiang, “……”
Her face was green and angry. Fujiang was no stranger to this type of sound. It was just that men often gulped for her beauty. Now she obviously knew it wasn’t for her beauty but because of her meat.
Ri Yan trembled at Fujiang’s gaze and the camera shook. It almost touched the head of the meat and the barrage in the live room was refreshed.
[It looks delicious. An unlimited ingredient, food reserve—Fujiang.]
[I never thought Fujiang could be cooked. Originally, I was curious about how beautiful she is. Now I’m thinking about whether she is delicious (funny.gif).]
[Today I am very happy. Thank you big man for letting me be so happy. I want to be happy all the time.]
Fujiang was very angry but she had no time to manage it. She reluctantly coughed and felt the heat in her body billowing outward. She said, “The heat is killing me. Is there no ice?”
Xiao Li looked around in a circle. He picked her up with two fingers and came to the food storage freezer. “There is only the freezer.”
Fujiang habitually sneered and wanted to instruct Xiao Li to get her some. She had just opened her mouth when she saw the other person’s beautiful black eyes glance at her. This made Fujiang think of her experience and she immediately changed her words, sulking. “It is really no wonder that people say others can’t look good. I’ve suffered.”
Xie Zeqing, “……”
Wasn’t this sentence usually used to describe Fujiang?
Xiao Li put her back on the table. Fujiang smelled herself. God knew how she could make such a difficult operation with only one pair of eyes, one mouth and one nostril. Then her dislike was obvious. “I stink.”
Xiao Li stated, “No, in a sense, it is quite fragrant.”
Fujiang sniffed for a moment. She felt that she had been greatly insulted but she couldn’t do anything about Xiao Li.
Xiao Li continued, “If you feel bad, I can spray you with a bit of air freshener.”
This was available in every room of the Cavill Hotel, from peach to green apple flavoured.
Fujiang ordered. “I don’t want this, I want perfume.”
Xiao Li told her, “It depends on your cooperation.”
Fujiang’s voice changed again, from a commanding big lady to a pitiful girl. Her voice was soft and charming, “Can’t you spray me with perfume first?”
At this moment, incomparable charm emanated from Fujiang’s eyes. This meat that was almost white after cooking seemed like a beautiful woman’s head. She had long black hair and her eyes were passionate peach blossoms. She was the strange story, Fujiang…
A wisp of hair protruded from Xiao Li’s pocket, the doll using her hair to block the mouth of the piece of meat again. Xiao Li wondered, “Can you say it now?”
“Wuwuwuwu—”
Xie Zeqing simultaneously translated. “She said yes.”
The doll obediently took back her long hair and Fujiang was freed. Fujiang had to ask in a broken voice, “Okay, what do you want to ask? Go ahead.”
“How did you get buried in the grave?”
Fujiang had obviously made a draft for this question. She spoke without hesitation in a tone that recalled the past. “I had one foot left that day and he picked it up. He took me back, divided my body again and buried me under a dead tree.”
It was a bloody love story.
Xiao Li thought about it. “Explain in more detail.”
Fujiang repeated her words exactly, her tone impatient. “I had one foot left that day and he picked it up. He took me back and divided my body again.
Xiao Li pursed his lips and changed the direction of his question. The person who picked you up… who was it?”
Fujiang was indifferent. “It is him. It doesn’t matter who.”
Xiao Li questioned, “How did he dismember you?”
Fujiang said, “Limb by limb. Do you want me to give you a detailed description of the process?”
Xiao Li didn’t answer and looked at the meat on the table.
Fujiang sniffed herself again. This time, instead of looking for Xiao Li, she called out loudly to Ri Yan. “That young man with pink hair over there, get me a bottle of perfume. I prefer Chanel.”
Ri Yan, “……”
He scratched his head and looked at the reincarnators, but they just ignored it. He thought about it for a moment before simply standing behind Xiao Li, as if not seeing her. Xiao Li sprayed Fujiang with peach-flavoured air freshener in a perfunctory manner. Then he opened the closet, placed her on the top shelf of the closet and closed it.
Fujiang let out disgruntled complaints. “How can you do this to me? It’s too hard and dark. I want to be put on a soft pillow and smell a sweet fragrance when sleeping.”
However, no one paid attention to her. The reincarnators gathered together and closed the live broadcast. Xie Zeqing first asked, “Do we really want to keep Fujiang around?”
Maybach added, “It is dangerous. She… she is one of the strange stories after all. If she grows hands and feet while we are asleep, we will be vulnerable.”
Xiao Li was thinking of something. He heard up to here and said, “I will look after her. Find a bag to carry her. I’ll put her in my pocket first.”
Maybach glanced at Xiao Li and made an OK gesture.
“What are you thinking?” Xie Zeqing was relatively familiar with Xiao Li and saw his abnormality first.
Xiao Li replied, “I’m thinking about Fujiang’s words.”
Xie Zeqing recalled it. “Is it because she repeated her experience?”
Xiao Li nodded hesitantly.
Xie Zeqing told him, “I think perhaps Fujiang was just lazy to remember and told us in a perfunctory manner. After all, her character is the proud witch type…”
“It is also possible that someone is behind her.” Hull interjected suddenly. “I know that there is a method to refine the soul. It will forcibly clear the memory of the ghosts and hypnotize them so they can be used.”
Taotie speculated, “Maybe… that is the mastermind behind the strange stories. ‘It’ made the six strange stories and our task is to end everything before the big boss ‘it’ comes?”
“Then how do we end it? The ghosts can’t be murdered again. Apart from waiting for seven days, how can we find out who is behind the scenes?”
“We need more clues,” Reiko stated.
“We will explore the hotel to gather clues. Don’t force yourself and come back if there is danger.” Hull said. “The security guard who died in the elevator early in the morning… there must be clues. Maybe he offended something strange, breaking the taboo so he was killed.”
“I’ll go ask the other guests if there was any progress in the investigation.”
“Give the hotel side to me. I’m good at dealing with this.”
They made a simple plan. Then Xiao Li took Fujiang out of the closet, found a plastic bag to cover her and placed her in his pocket like he was carrying a bag of grain. The doll looked down at the meat in the plastic bag. Then she unceremoniously sat again and once again stuffer her hair into the other side’s mouth before Fujiang could speak.
Fujiang, “……”
She vowed that if she had a pair of arms, she would send the other person the middle finger.
************
The Cavill Hotel’s duty room.
The hotel manager was sitting at the monitoring desk, lighting a cigarette with a sad face.
The black and white surveillance video showing the dead security guard entering the elevator gave off the feeling of an old-fashioned horror movie, especially when combined with the narrow screen.
However, the hotel manager wasn’t afraid. He sat in a chair and blew out a circle of smoke. He stared at the incandescent lamp above his head and worried about how to tell his boss about this matter.
He had given a copy of the video and other evidence to the police. Before the exact killer was found, the guests of the hotel were frightened and the check-out rate skyrocketed, causing the manager’s heart to be very heavy.
Besides… this surveillance video was really strange. Even the staff felt a sense of powerlessness and didn’t know where to start.
The manager took another breath of smoke. He grabbed a napkin and put the soot in it before pressing the button to once again play the surveillance video.
The surveillance footage showed the security guard walking into the elevator. Then he took out his phone and sent a message to Xiao Xi, the front desk employee who asked for leave.
It was normal at first but soon, the security guard seemed to see something on the mobile phone. He kept turning back like there was somebody behind him.
The security guard in the elevator was becoming more and more tense. He raised his phone like he was watching something on it. The manager had looked at this several times before a guess emerged. The security guard seemed to be using the phone to look at something behind him that wasn’t visible to the naked eye.
Later, a figure appeared behind him and reached out to the security guard sitting on the ground…
The monitoring paused here. The phone placed beside the manager lit up and he glanced at it. It was a message from the boss. [What the hell is going on?
What could this sudden appearance be? Either the surveillance had been switched or… it was haunted. Were there really ghosts in this world? The manager pressed the cigarette down and played the monitor again. He was prepared to watch it again.
The monitoring played again. From the security guard entering to his strange movements and the appearance of the human shadow…
However, this time it seemed a bit different. The manager rewound the surveillance video a bit and watched the footage carefully. Finally, after another replay, he noticed the small difference. The last figure that appeared had slightly raised its head in the direction of the monitoring.
In previous surveillance, the figure was just facing the dead security guard. This damn thing… was it really a ghost?
The hotel manager couldn’t believe it. He licked his lips uneasily and somehow thought that the air conditioner in the room was a bit low. In order to hide his uneasiness, he searched the contents of the table and found a book. It was the novel about strange stories that the security guard hadn’t finished reading.
The manager flipped through it before throwing the book back. His eyes once again shifted to the monitor screen as he rewound the tape, replaying the surveillance video again. This time, in the manager’s inattentive gaze, the figure killed the security guard and seemed to sense the manager’s eyes through monitoring and time. It raised its head strangely.
The action of the silhouette was greater than before and it almost directly looked at the surveillance video. The manager could clearly see the face of the figure. Its face was cut with a sharp instrument and covered in bloody marks. It was miserable to see. The nose was cut off and bloody tears fell down the face as it looked at the camera with resentment.
“F*k!”
The manager was so frightened that he fell straight out of the chair, buttocks to the ground. He jumped up immediately with a shout and covered his wound. He crawled away from the screen, not daring to look anymore. He just wanted to immediately leave the monitoring room.
At this time, there were a few clear knocks on the door of the monitoring room. “Hello, is anyone here?”
The speaker was Taotie. He had been mixed in with the hotel’s employees these days and also gave them a lot of money. It was an employee who told him the manager was watching the monitoring and also revealed the manager’s preferences.
Taotie had a large cigarette in his hand, which he had specifically prepared to give the manager. It was just that when he knocked on the door, he accidentally bumped into the fleeing manager. The manager gasped and asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Old Luo.” Taotie was a veteran reincarnator and quickly saw the panic on the manager’s face. He put the cigarette on the table and asked the manager, “What’s wrong?”
The manager was asked such a question and immediately remembered. He couldn’t care about the identity of this person and turned back to the monitoring screen. “Over there, it is haunted—”
However, the face on the original surveillance video had disappeared. There were only the elevator and the fallen guard on the screen. The manager wondered, “Strange, is it an illusion?”
Humans who hadn’t experienced a supernatural event might think it was an illusion, but the reincarnators definitely didn’t think so.
Taotie turned to leave the room but as he turned, he saw a shadow on the stainless steel doorknob. It was a figure in red, head bowed and standing behind him. Taotie quickly pulled out a small sword. This mahogany sword was his life-saving item. It was just that when he boldly looked behind him, there was no one there. Only the manager staring at him doubtfully.
Taotie asked, “You didn’t see it?”
“See what?” The manager wondered. “I only saw you pull out a strange sword.”
The manager stood behind him yet didn’t see it. Perhaps it was like the weeping woman. The new, red-clothed ghost couldn’t be seen with the naked eye!
His sword had to chop the opponent to be effective. Therefore, Taotie pulled out his phone without thinking and turned on the camera function. He put it in front of him and started to scan the entire room.
“Who the hell are you? What are you doing?” The manager was distracted by Taotie’s strange movements.
Taotie ordered sternly, “What did you just see here? If you want to live then tell me?”
The manager remembered the previous scene and his legs were soft. He wasn’t stubborn about this point and immediately told the other person what happened. It meant the ghost… perhaps the fifth strange story had come.
Taotie paid attention to everything with his camera. He stepped back toward the door while paying attention. He wanted to return to the ninth floor to find the other reincarnators. However, just as he was about to walk out the door of the room, a female ghost in a big red dress appeared in front of Taotie’s naked eyes.
The manager screamed, “You, behind you—ah! How can this follow—”
He had a very important sentence but he couldn’t speak again. On the other side, the female ghost’s hand held Taotie’s wrist that was holding the sword, making him completely unable to move. He could only stare as the other side approached him bit by bit, just like the security guard.
The air conditioning in the duty room was still blowing. It blew over the eyes of the two bodies and blew the pages of the book on the table, completely closing the book.
………………
Two more people died at the Cavill Hotel, one was a guest and one was a hotel manager. The news spread across the hotel like a hurricane and to the ears of the reincarnators.
Xie Zeqing had a good relationship with several guests. One of them was a very well-information guest. He was the first one to find the manager to check out and discovered the two bodies in the duty room. Thus, Xie Zeqing discovered it early. He quickly found the rest of the reincarnators and they headed to the duty room to check.
Xie Zeqing and the others met Xiao Li halfway. He had just returned from lunch with Shen Chenzhi. Xiao Li was thinking of lazily calling Xie Zeqing for a meal but Shen Chenzhi had a very regular schedule and called him for a meal when it was meal time, so Xiao Li went with him.
On the stairs, Shen Chenzhi asked him, “How is the task?”
“Okay.”
There were only two strange stories left. Once six were gathered, the dragon would be summoned.
Shen Chenzhi wondered, “Do you need my help?”
The tone of his voice when he asked this sentence was indifferent, like it was a meaningless polite exchange. However, there was a glimmer of less obvious anticipation in his eyes.
Xiao Li shook his head. “No, you can attend to your work first.”
He instinctively thought that Shen Chenzhi’s use of a special item to intervene in this world was purposeful and there was no need to delay others. Shen Chenzhi was originally walking ahead of Xiao Li. Thanks to being deep in thought, he slowed down and was now beside Xiao Li. After a while, he said, “My matter has been resolved. If you don’t mind, since we ran into each other, we can form a team together in the next world.”
Xiao Li nodded. “Okay.”
They didn’t choose to take the elevator. Xiao Li had eaten a bit more at lunch and agreed to Shen Chenzhi’s proposal to take the stairs. They walked from the first floor to the ninth floor and this wasn’t simple. Xiao Li’s legs were sore after reaching the fifth floor and had to hold the railing to walk up.
Once they were close to the sixth floor, Xiao Li’s steps weren’t steady. He almost fell and was supported in a timely manner by Shen Chenzhi.
“Are you okay?” The young man’s hot breath sprayed on Xiao Li’s ear. His hand held the other side tightly and his strength made it seem like Xiao Li was going to walk over a cliff rather than an insignificant step.
Xiao Li shook his head. Shen Chenzhi’s colour changed. He once again gripped the young man’s hand. Then he was afraid of the other person feeling pain and let go. Xiao Li didn’t have time to catch the meaning in the other person’s eyes when Shen Chenzhi took back his hand.
The young man said, “You have to exercise more. Go to the gym. It’s good for you.”
Xiao Li touched his arm. The strength of the opposite person still remained. He had to stay that Shen Chenzhi was very strong. Even so, he spoke indifferently, “I tried but I lay down after 10 minutes. I can’t train.”
Shen Chenzhi told him, “If there is time, I can try to teach you.”
“Yes.”
Shen Chenzhi sent him back to his room. Xiao Li didn’t directly go back and first went to Xie Zeqing’s side to take a look. He just happened to bump into the rest of the reincarnators.
Xie Zeqing talked about the matter. Then he saw Shen Chenzhi sitting behind Xiao Li and inwardly sighed. ‘Xiao Li has such a loyal friend who protects him like a parent. He pays attention to whether Xiao Li can eat well or sleep well, which is a problem of livelihood. However, in the reincarnator’s room, wasn’t it important to survive?
Xiao Li listened before sending back Shen Chenzhi. Then he went down with Xie Zeqing and the others to see.
The office.
The police hadn’t come yet and there weren’t many people at the door. Thus, the reincarnators could go in and check the scene.
Xiao Li crouched down and closed Taotie’s eyes. He looked roughly at the scene and said, “I can’t see the cause of death. It shouldn’t be a strange story we encountered before. It should be the fifth one.”
Hull looked at the monitoring on the desktop and didn’t rush to open the video. He used the mouse and in the paused video state, went through frame by frame to the place he wanted to see, piecing together most of what happened. “The security guard stayed in the elevator and saw the ghost through the mobile phone. This repeated until the ghost finally appeared in reality.”
Reiko pulled out a few bags from the cupboard and covered Taotie’s face. “Taotie is also dead. The fifth strange story has a strong offensive.”
It was the same scene as the weeping woman but the ghost of the fifth strange tory had no obvious characteristics… In fact, it was somewhat similar to Sadako but it was caught by the naked eye rather than crawling out of the videotape. It was just that… did this change go from ‘only visible in the camera’ to ‘visible to the naked eye’ or from ‘in the camera’ to ‘in reality’?
Xiao Li mused for a moment before taking Fujiang out of his pocket. At this time, Fujiang had grown half a head. Her eyes, nose and mouth were fully grown but her brain hadn’t grown out yet. Therefore, she took up a large portion of his pocket but barely fit in it. It was just unknown if it was because the meat had been cooked but Fujiang’s grown face wasn’t as beautiful as people thought. The skin was white like cooked chicken breast.
…It was like a novel dish. Perhaps she saw her newly grown face but Fujiang seemed a bit lifeless. Xiao Li looked around but there was no place to put Fujiang down. He simply asked Fujiang through the plastic bag, “Can you sense other ghosts? Your kind?”
In the past, Fujiang would’ve been noisy if she had received such disrespect but at this moment, she had suffered a lot of bullying and just turned her head. Her mouth was tightly closed. Xiao Li asked, “Or… you’re directly in front of us. Do you have to be caught on camera?”
Fujiang still didn’t speak and just looked up with eyes full of resentment.
“…What’s wrong with you?”
Fujiang remained silent. Xiao Li turned to Xie Zeqing. Xie Zeqing tried to sense Fujiang’s emotions. Then a moment later, he spoke hesitantly. “She said… she has PTSD due to Moriarty and needs rest. She can’t answer your questions until she regains her normal face.
Xiao Li, “……??”
He hadn’t done anything to Fujiang…? Why did she have PTSD?
The author has something to say:
Next, sharing an advertisement:
Two Weibo accounts that have been popular in the ghost world lately: @Say it to Moriarty bot @Say it to Sherlock bot. You are welcome to make contributions and share your story. Next, I’ll publish today’s contribution for you.
Our first submission comes from a Miss Mary, who doesn’t want to be named:
@Say it to Sherlock bot, Sherlock, I hope you don’t call me again. If you must summon me, I want to ask you to use the top-grade magic incense candles with a luxurious blood pool. I hope you don’t use ugly birthday candles and QAQ expressions anymore. In this way, you won’t feel that I’m forced to respond. You need to know that us evil spirits really care about an extravagant show.]