Chapter 67: Asking For Help
Zhang Xiaoxiao was like a lone boat sailing in the vast black ocean, the unknown dark other shore ahead—was it a bottomless abyss or a desperate secluded island? She didn’t know, nor could she see the light of hope.
Hugging her schoolbag, she walked trembling through the surging crowd on the street, yet she felt no sense of safety or warmth.
She thought about going to find her university friend, but her friend was also a local of Cuizhu City—who could know if her friend hid an unknown side? What if her ancestors were from that fishing village back then, and she was one of them?
At this thought, Zhang Xiaoxiao stopped her overly malicious speculation. If her friends were just honest ordinary people, she shouldn’t tell them about this dangerous discovery—the more they knew about those things, the easier it was to step into death.
“Who else can I ask for help?” Zhang Xiaoxiao couldn’t help but think. She didn’t dare go to the Law Enforcement Officers, because like her, they were just ordinary people in front of those things.
Those Men in Black?
Zhang Xiaoxiao remembered being brought into the Law Enforcement Security Bureau that day, when those Men in Black suddenly took over the Law Enforcement Officers’ interrogation work—those people seemed not unfamiliar with anomalies, perhaps they could provide her some protection.
In the pitch-black cold desperate situation, even a spark about to go out was as warm as the sun.
“Yes, I should go find them, but first I need to find the Law Enforcement Captain who interrogated me back then—he should know how to contact those people.” Desire for survival ignited in Zhang Xiaoxiao’s heart. She chased that faint spark that could be snuffed out by the darkness at any moment and started running.
……
Today was a sumptuous dinner: white-boiled fresh shrimp, spicy crab, sauced seafood… everything was Xin Junmao’s favorite food. Xin Mother specially prepared this table of encouraging feast to help the child regain his spirits.
After being busy outside all day, Xin Father returned home and took out his treasured volcano tonic wine from the depths of the home wine cabinet, along with three small cups of baijiu—that posture seemed like he wanted the family of three to drink together tonight.
Xin Junmao’s pale face was topped with dark circles under his eyes, his lips shriveled, as if his body had been hollowed out. He looked at the table of food; he could clearly smell the aroma of the dishes, but his eyes saw only rotten rotten food and biological internal organs—his stomach churned.
The kindly smiling mother peeled a whole large shrimp and handed it to him, but in his eyes, it was a purple-black segment of biological intestine still twitching, with black foul water dripping continuously from the cross-sections at both ends.
Xin Junmao’s lips twitched, he held back the dry heaving, took his mother’s gesture of care, then closed his teary eyes and stuffed that unbearable thing into his mouth, chewing fiercely.
It was clearly so delicious, but his brain made him imagine the lively biological intestine writhing and being chewed in his mouth—suddenly, even the most delicious things became tasteless, even a bit nauseating.
Just as he had said before, his “eyes” now were not his eyes—the thing in the comb had replaced his eyes, letting him see things that did not exist in this dimension.
If there existed an alternative dimension where everything was opposite to the current world environment—like fresh and delicious corresponding to rotten and foul smell, richness to poverty—then everything beautiful he now possessed appeared as desperately ugly in his eyes.
Xin Junmao felt he was going crazy. He thought, if every wish fulfilled meant one sense being replaced, then when all five senses were replaced, which side would he be considered living on?
He felt a trace of regret for his rash behavior, but reason quickly told him he actually hadn’t done anything wrong.
If the being in the comb could protect his family’s safety, then sacrificing his eyes wasn’t a particularly big price.
Xin Junmao had recalled everything that happened at that night’s concert. He was attracted by the special charm emanating from the qipao woman and followed her underground to a majestic yet darkness and eerie underground kingdom.
He saw humanoids living underground, wearing uniform gray clothes, with pale lifeless faces like walking dead. Only when they saw the qipao woman arrive did they suddenly glow with vitality, their faces flushed as they knelt to her, coldly staring at him following behind the qipao woman.
In Xin Junmao’s memory, the qipao woman’s face was blurry, but even so, he still felt she was a stunningly beautiful beauty.
He only remembered that when the qipao woman’s believers glared at him viciously, he felt such pride and smugness. Thus, he followed the qipao woman through a white stone door over ten meters high, pushed open by several underground believers, and finally arrived at the qipao woman’s palace.
In that glorious palace carved with eerie runes and evil patterns, Xin Junmao saw several shriveled “corpses” crawling out from various corners of the palace—some stumbling as they ran, some crawling on their knees, some dragging their half-paralyzed bodies laboriously toward them.
Only when they approached did Xin Junmao realize these corpses were actually living people, but their bodies were tattered and incomplete, covered in countless bite marks and missing chunks of flesh; the organs and limbs that should have been there were unevenly missing.
They were like food ruined by picky children, who only gnawed and hollowed out the parts they liked and were interested in, ignoring and discarding the rest.
Even though his mind was bewitched by the qipao woman’s magic power, Xin Junmao at the time still realized that the stunningly beautiful woman now surrounded by these disabled freaks was that picky “child.”
Xin Junmao at the time thought of his own pitiful fate—he realized that upon arriving at this palace, he might become the qipao woman’s meal. After she picked and chose, eating part of his body, he too would become one of these freaks, a fanatic dumb dog longing for the master to eat him.
His heart was then filled with panic and excitement; the conflicting psychology of escape and expectation nearly broke his reason.
Fortunately, the qipao woman seemed to have no immediate intention of devouring him. She just led Xin Junmao past those “beasts” exposing snow-white flesh, through a strangely looping folded corridor, to her proud canteen restaurant.
At the qipao woman’s order, eyeless humanoid creatures with bloody flesh and exposed teeth pushed in food carts. They made eerie incomprehensible whispers from their mouths, their limbs moving stiffly and strangely. When they pushed the carts before the qipao woman, their slender claw-like hands uncovered every delicious dish hidden under the pot lids.
Seeing those carefully trimmed fresh corpses come into view, Xin Junmao didn’t understand why he had been insanely excited back then. Clearly, now just recalling a bit of that memory pushed him to the edge of collapse from fear, yet back then he perversely felt appetite…
Thinking of the qipao woman elegantly enjoying dinner while talking and laughing with him, her mouth full of blood, now made him unable to face any fresh meat or bright red colors.
Xin Junmao still had some blurry and fragmented memories of that time, so he couldn’t even recall what the qipao woman had said to him. He only remembered her last words: “She would come find him again.” Then she had those blood people send him away from the palace. In the blink of an eye, he was back on the surface human world, then returned home in a soul-lost state.
In his dazed today, that pair of impostor Law Enforcement Officers, a man and a woman, came to his home and asked the then soul-lost him many questions about the qipao woman. Unfortunately, his brain was too chaotic at the time, so the pair didn’t get much useful information from “foolish him” and left in a hurry.
Though Xin Junmao didn’t know the identities of those two, he vaguely remembered them seriously discussing topics about the “Gluttonous Daughter,” matters concerning the “Mysterious Group,” and that he had been marked and lured by the “Gluttonous Daughter,” inevitably fated to become the “Gluttonous Daughter’s” food. Only then did he know what kind of weird being that woman was, who treated corpses like fine meals like an elegant noble.
The Gluttonous Daughter was too dangerous; Xin Junmao didn’t think an ordinary person like him had the ability to resist. All he could think of was relying on the comb’s power to protect himself and his family.
But this was far from enough—the comb’s power was limited. If the Gluttonous Daughter refused to let him go, he would still die eventually, and might even implicate his family.
Xin Junmao didn’t want to die, and even less wanted his family hurt. He wanted to find that pair who came to see him during the day—perhaps they were the Mysterious Group from urban legends in the Shenzhou Region, specializing in solving such cases, with methods to save his life.
After eating the hardest dinner of his life, Xin Junmao recovered a bit of energy, changed clothes, and went out again. He was going to find that pair now, even though he didn’t know their temporary residence, but he knew where they would definitely go.
As long as he waited there like guarding a tree stump for a rabbit, they would surely appear!
……
“You want to find Captain Huang Cheng?” At the entrance of the Law Enforcement Security Bureau, Zhang Xiaoxiao stopped a big-faced Law Enforcement Officer of decent rank, stated her intention. The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer eyed her suspiciously and asked, “What do you want with him?”
“I want to ask him some very important questions—urgent matters!” Zhang Xiaoxiao said seriously.
The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer frowned at Zhang Xiaoxiao. Due to the big fuss from the female killer jumped onto the tracks incident that day, when Zhang Xiaoxiao was brought in as a suspect to the Law Enforcement Security Bureau not long ago, he still remembered her. He shook his head: “If you’re looking for Captain Huang, he’s not here. He was injured in a mission a few days ago and is still recuperating at home.”
Hearing Huang Cheng was injured and on leave shocked Zhang Xiaoxiao; she pressed: “Then when will he be back, today?”
The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer was somewhat amused: “Girl, even muscle and bone injuries take a hundred days. When have you heard of an injured officer on leave rushing back to work just a few days in?”
After saying that, the big-faced Law Enforcement Officer pondered and replied: “As for exactly when he’ll be back, I don’t know. I heard the higher-ups approved a long paid leave—maybe he’ll just quit his job…”
Before the big-faced Law Enforcement Officer finished, Zhang Xiaoxiao grabbed his arm pleadingly: “Please tell me where he lives? I really have urgent business with him.”
“I can’t tell you his address—that’s the rule.” The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer refused firmly upon hearing this, but just as Zhang Xiaoxiao grew anxious, he changed tone: “However, I can help you contact him.”
“Then please do.” Zhang Xiaoxiao nearly knelt; the big-faced Law Enforcement Officer changed color instantly and quickly helped her up.
The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer frowned tightly; he was now curious what urgent matter Zhang Xiaoxiao had that she must contact Captain Huang Cheng. Before dialing, he quietly turned on his phone’s call recording, then dialed Huang Cheng’s number for her.
Half a minute after dialing, the other end picked up, asking in a drunken tone: “Hello, Old Wei, what’s up? Miss your dad?”
“Target ghost, not afraid I’ll kill you when you get back, no respect.” The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer immediately snapped viciously at the apparently drowning-sorrows Huang Cheng. After hearing Huang Cheng’s burst of laughter, he said, “Remember that little girl you interrogated that day? She says she has something for you. Tsk, you bastard didn’t do anything, did you?”
“Get lost, give the phone to the girl!” Huang Cheng cursed foully, followed by his nervous explanations over the phone, seemingly apologizing to his wife beside him who heard the foul language.
The big-faced Law Enforcement Officer chuckled, then lent his phone to Zhang Xiaoxiao, allowing her to go to an empty corner he specified to talk freely with Huang Cheng.
“Hello, is this Captain Huang?” Zhang Xiaoxiao went to the passageway on the west side of the Security Bureau building, confirmed no one around, then spoke.
“It’s me.” Hearing it was indeed Zhang Xiaoxiao’s voice, Huang Cheng seemed to recall something terrifying, sobering up considerably, “What do you want?”
Zhang Xiaoxiao checked her surroundings again, then asked in a low voice: “Captain Huang, do you have a way to contact those Men in Black?”
Huang Cheng’s voice grew more solemn and serious upon hearing this: “What do you want with them?”
“I suddenly remembered something important I haven’t told them yet!” Zhang Xiaoxiao said.
Huang Cheng’s voice grew heavier: “What important thing?” He kept asking without giving a direct answer.
Zhang Xiaoxiao gritted her teeth: “This matter is too serious— so serious I dare not tell you over the phone. I must see those Men in Black before I dare say.”
Huang Cheng thought for a moment: “If you don’t tell the truth, I can’t judge if I should refer you to those Men in Black.”
At this point, Zhang Xiaoxiao could only steel herself and explain: “I discovered literature on the female killer’s backing force.”
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