CH 19

Lu Yingjiu finally fell asleep in the car.

And just as Jing Xian expected, he was originally leaning on the back of the chair, but soon he began to reel to his side, and leaned his head on his shoulder.

Jing Xian’s mood was not so relaxed.

Lu Yingjiu probably sensed that he was not human, but there was no proof.

He didn’t intend to hide his identity on purpose, it’s just that this matter……was a bit awkward and hypocritical to say.

——He didn’t want Lu Yingjiu to know that he had helped him.

In the face of a person that had received help from someone for several years, no matter who that someone was, they would be biased to that person. What’s more, Lu Yingjiu valued human feelings very much, if someone helped him, he would definitely return it twice as much.

Jing Xian thought, in case Lu Yingjiu knew the truth, in case Lu Yingjiu really fell in love with him, then how much of that emotion wrapped in gratitude was real? Could it be that the love wouldn’t be pure?

What he wanted Lu Yingjiu to like was not the “ghost marriage partner”, but “Jing Xian”.

In fact, Jing Xian had no idea whether he should spend on this kind of thought, or whether he should have such concerns. He did not think about these things on ordinary days, there was no need for careful thinking and careful speculation, and it was always only the other person who tried to figure out his portion.

But it’s different now.

He had faced thousands of ghosts, he had also faced the abyss, but he had never met someone he liked. The ferocity and tyranny of ghosts, the capriciousness of the abyss, they all succumbed to his feet, but none of them could compare to the expression of Lu Yingjiu’s eyes. He still remembered the day when they first met, how his hand trembled slightly as he held the other’s hand, with tension, joy and excitement.

In short, the Ghost King was terrified for the first time.

Jing Xian was so pretentious and awkward, perhaps because he was a little bit confident in his masculine charm, covered his own identity and was unwilling to say the truth.

But right now, things seemed to be going nowhere.

Jing Xian had a bit of a headache, but on the side of his head, he saw Lu Yingjiu leaning on his shoulder—he always looked extremely relaxed when he was sleeping, his beautiful eyebrows were stretched out, and he was quiet like a painting.

Jing Xian’s mood immediately improved again.

Forget it, the boat will be straight once it reaches the bridge, and there will always be a way.

(TL: Comes from–”When the boat gets under the bridge and wants to pass through the bridge hole, the hull will naturally come straight”. It is a metaphor that when a certain time comes, the problem will naturally be solved, so there is no need to be impatient or worried now)

After getting off the expressway, they slowly followed along a deserted path, went to multiple bends until they got to the entrance of the slaughterhouse. The car was stopped by a rusty crossbar in the parking lot, surrounded by tall walls.

Xiao Li muttered, “What should we do? How about we just park the car here and walk in?”

Jing Xian said, “Just break through the railing and go in.”

Xiao Li laughed dryly a few times, thinking that the joke was not funny, but then saw Jing Xian’s serious expression in the rearview mirror. He was stunned for a few seconds, and then had a big question in his mind: Is this guy serious?!

Jing Xian urged again, “Why not simply knock it open?”

He had a full sense of oppression, and Xiao Li simply heard a simple sentence out of thin air, “If you do it again, I will kill you”. Xiao Li looked at the brand-new dashboard in the car, swallowed, and finally struggled, “Your, your car is worth millions……”

“You don’t need to pay for it.” Jing Xian said, suddenly his shoulder lightened-Lu Yingjiu woke up, sat up straight, looked at the two of them in a daze, then threw out a piece of talisman paper.

The talisman seemed to have a soul, as it rode the wind, and gently wrapped half a circle around the end of the crossbar, and twisted it tightly!

The rusty railing made a screeching sound, and the fragile end gradually deformed, and then with a crisp sound, the crossbar snapped off.

Lu Yingjiu raised a talisman in his hand, glanced at the two of them, and said in a sleepy voice, “One of the simplest talisman–”

Xiao Li, who was not good at learning: “……..”

Jing Xian who had no knowledge and skills: “………”

The car drove in, turned a corner, and saw a huge gray building.

The building was not tall, maybe one or two floors, but it was very wide. The outer wall was dead gray, perhaps knowing that there were ghosts here, it felt very cold. The corners were overgrown with weeds and vines, and the windows were either broken or so dirty that one couldn’t see inside. Farther away was the low, blue and white staff dormitory, which had not been visited for many years.

Returning to this place again, Chen Yanyan was obviously very nervous, she clenched her hands and looked out the window.

Xiao Li stopped the car casually in an unoccupied parking lot, and the four of them got out.

Chen Yanyan pointed to the gray building with her pale fingers, and said, “That’s where we played the game. Are we, are we really going in?”

“Yeah.” Lu Yingjiu nodded, “The ghost on your body is very special, and you must take it seriously to ensure that it is completely eliminated. If necessary, we will even repeat the ceremony of bringing it in, that is to say, repeat the game you played.”

Chen Yanyan’s face turned pale again, but she still said, “As long as it can be solved, I’m willing to do anything.”

When several people arrived in front of the building, the iron door was closed tightly, and there were words written in red paint on it. It was no longer clear what was written. At first glance, it looked a bit like dried blood.

Xiao Li pushed the door hard a few times, but the iron door remained motionless and locked.

There was a window next to it, and the inside of the glass should have been pasted with paper, as one couldn’t see anything clearly. Lu Yingjiu tried to pull it, and the window made a scalp-numbing “squeak–” sound, and every inch of the rusty parts whined before it opened.

He glanced at Chen Yanyan and said, “Wait until I go over and open the door.” Then he leaned on the window sill with one hand and flipped over lightly.

The room was very dark, only a beam of light came from the window behind him, and the dust dancing in the air could be clearly seen. He quickly looked around–there were more than a dozen vertical iron cabinets, a wooden bench in the middle, a few blue overalls hanging on the wall, and shoe covers on the ground, all covered with dust a few centimeters thick.

It’s a dressing room, no wonder the glass was covered with paper.

Lu Yingjiu was about to open the door and go to the corridor when suddenly the light dimmed.

Behind him, Jing Xian also came in through the window.

He said, “Why are you here?”

“It’s so boring to stay outside.” Jing Xian smiled, “Let’s go walk around.”

He opened the door of the dressing room, and there was no light outside. He turned around and stretched out his hand to Lu Yingjiu.

Lu Yingjiu: “?”

Jing Xian said, “I have good night vision, and I can see clearly in the dark. You won’t be afraid of bumping into anything if you hold me.”

Lu Yingjiu: “……”

He took out his mobile phone and turned on the flashlight, the bright light instantly illuminated the dark corridor, and then he looked at Jing Xian with subtle eyes, “Thank you, but there’s no need, I have a mobile phone.” He also showed the symbol of a flashlight to Jing Xian and taught him, “You just click here and it’s ready to use.”

Jing Xian: “………”

He completely forgot about this matter, coughed, he also took out his mobile phone and turned on the flashlight.

As they went to the corridor, Lu Yingjiu was walking ahead, while Jing Xian followed behind.

This corridor was more winding than they imagined, and neither of them knew how this was engineered. It took a long circle just to return to the main entrance.

Lu Yingjiu looked around and illuminated the signs along the way with light. They passed the disinfection pool, toilet, quarantine room and slaughter hall. All the doors were locked, revealing cold rejection.

Jing Xian said while walking, “The Chen family’s ‘Cloud Weaving Art’ you mentioned earlier, why is it called this name? Is there any meaning?”

“Oh.” Lu Yingjiu said, “It is rumored that the Chen family has an ancestor named ‘Chen Zhiyun’. She is good at weaving and embroidery, but her family is poor, and she lives in a small thatched cottage next to the mass grave. From time to time, there are corpses exposed, which have not been buried properly.”

“One day Chen Zhiyun passed by and saw a woman with a good face thrown into the open. She saw that the woman was born beautiful, and suddenly thought: ‘If I have such a face, how good would it be?’”

He continued, “Therefore, Chen Zhiyun took the body home and cut off her face with a knife. With her skillful hands, she sewed and mended a circle then covered her face with the human skin. When she looked in the mirror, to her surprise, it was very beautiful.”

“After that, Chen Zhiyun became popular. Everyone thought she was a newcomer, and treated her like never before. However, the preservation time of human skin is very short, and soon her face rotted. Chen Zhiyun Yun turned into an ordinary Chen Zhiyun again, and no one would take a second look at her when she walked on the street.”

They turned a corner, and the tool disinfection room was on their way.

Jing Xian asked, “Therefore, Chen Zhiyun wanted to bring back another good pair of skin?”

“Right.” Lu Yingjiu nodded and said, “After that, she went to the mass grave every day, not only picking up the corpses outside, but also digging up the corpses that had just been buried by others. She almost cut off the faces of all the female corpses she could find, and brought them back home to paint carefully.”

“Most of the dead had pale faces, so she used her own blood as paint to put rouge and red lips on them.”

After saying this, he looked back, and it was still the empty corridor behind him.

“What’s wrong?” Jing Xian asked.

“Something is following us, not a human.” When Lu Yingjiu  said this, his tone was very relaxed, as if he was merely saying, “The weather is fine today.” He then glanced at Jing Xian, and said teasingly, “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it.”

Jing Xian said straightforwardly, “No, I didn’t notice it.”

Lu Yingjiu laughed, not knowing whether to believe it or not.

The light of the mobile phone shone down the corridor, and they walked through the tool disinfection room.

Lu Yingjiu continued to tell the story, “The thing that bothered Chen Zhiyun the most was that she couldn’t keep a face for a long time. She was always changing masks and identities, but what she longed for was a stable and rich life. “

“So, she tried to cut off the skin of other parts of the corpse, and painted on it by herself—just like the ‘painted skin’ in “Strange Tales from the Liao Zhai Studio”, slowly drawing out delicate eyebrows and eyes.”

“She succeeded in the end, relying on a good face, she married a high official in that dynasty, and from then on, it was smooth sailing. Unlike traditional supernatural stories, no Taoist priests emerged from anywhere to expose her lies, and her skill in making human skin masks was passed down, and then was known as the ‘Weaving Cloud Technique’.”

“Sounds very interesting.” Jing Xian said, “If there is a chance, I would like to see it with my own eyes.”

“Maybe there is a chance today.” Lu Yingjiu turned the light on the phone upwards.

He saw the sign “tool disinfection room” still hanging above their heads.

They walked for so long and came back again.

Ghost hitting the wall.

(t/n Ghost hitting the wall, also known as ghost building the wall, refers to the phenomenon that people walk in a dark environment and think they are going forward, but they circle back to the original place)

At this time, the door of the disinfection room opened silently. Lu Yingjiu didn’t have any scruples and directly walked in.

Most of the equipment had been removed, leaving only a few solitary UV tool disinfection cabinets and a few tables in the corner. The disinfection cabinet was about half the height of a person, and the Yin energy was coming from the inside. Lu Yingjiu opened the disinfection cabinet, and saw a cattle head inside.

It was not quite accurate to say that it was a cattle’s head.

There was no hair on this head, and the texture was completely that of a human skin. Under the illumination of the flashlight, the texture of the skin and the fine hairs could be clearly seen, and its color was indeed the same as that of a human skin. Even the eyes were not that of a huge cattle’s eyes, but long and narrow human eyes, with black pupils that were disintegrated…It’s like a living person turned into a cattle!

“……” Lu Yingjiu’s expression froze slightly.

He wanted to take out a talisman paper, wrap it around his hands, and touch that human skin cattle head. But as a result, Jing Xian stretched out his hand and said, “Give me the talisman paper, don’t touch it, it’s dirty.”

He took the talisman paper from Lu Yingjiu’s hand, wrapped it around his hand twice, then took out the cattle’s head. When he held it out, the air became a little bit colder, and they exhaled white fog from their mouths.

Lu Yingjiu looked at the cattle’s head carefully, and suddenly heard a loud “bang” from the corridor!

In a completely quiet situation, this sound could be comparable to a thunder, loud enough to scare people to jump. However, the two of them were quite calm, and just looked at each other. Immediately afterwards, they heard the harsh sound of a metal object rubbing against the ground.

Zi——Z——Zi——

It sounded extremely weird, reminding people of the kind of perverted killers dragging knives or sticks on the ground in movies. The Yin energy around was tumbling, and the visitor spoke strange tones in a breathy voice.

“n……de………[email protected]#!”

“z…nal…@! ! $#”

Lu Yingjiu listened for a while but couldn’t understand, and said, “What is this thing talking about?”

Jing Xian replied, “It seems to be saying, ‘Where is your face?’”

“Oh—” Lu Yingjiu said in a drawn out tone, “It turns out that you can even understand this kind of nonsense, you are very talented. ” He patted Jing Xian’s shoulder meaningfully.

Jing Xian smiled. “I’ve been told nonsense ever since I was a child, maybe that’s how I developed my skills.”

The sound was getting closer and closer, and the monster was picking up its pace. Lu Yingjiu said again, “Put the cattle’s head back in the cabinet first, and we will hide and observe the situation.”

Jing Xian stuffed the human skin cattle head back, closed the cabinet door, and was dragged by Lu Yingjiu, and hid behind the cabinet in the corner, where the scattered disinfection cabinets and tables firmly blocked their figures.

Lu Yingjiu gently pushed the disinfection cabinet in front of him, so that he could see the door through the gap.

Jing Xian whispered, “Why are we hiding?”

It’s impossible for Lu Yingjiu to beat the ghost that’s coming. What’s more, Jing Xian was with him.

Lu Yingjiu replied in a breathy voice, “One can always be safe if one is careful. No matter how powerful a person is, it is inevitable that he will be put in danger if is careless one day.”

It’s not that he was cowardly, but for exorcists, caution was the eternal trump card.

Jing Xian didn’t say any more, and stayed by Lu Yingjiu’s side obediently.

In fact, he didn’t care at all who came.

He was only worried about when Lu Yingjiu would reveal his identity………How would he make amends and apologize at that time.

One of the two was thinking carefully, while the other was all love brain, two that were simply hiding in the dark with completely different thoughts.

The dragging of metal stopped at the door.

The air was extremely cold, Lu Yingjiu patted a piece of talisman on himself and Jing Xian, minimizing the presence of breathing and heartbeat. But even so, some keen ghosts could still notice it.

One second, two seconds, three seconds……………….

The dragging sound stopped for six or seven seconds, and just when Lu Yingjiu thought it was about to leave, he suddenly heard a “squeak” and the door of the disinfection room was pushed open.

Lu Yingjiu saw a tall figure through the gap. He couldn’t see clearly without light, and he could only barely tell that it was more than two meters tall, which didn’t seem like a normal person’s height.

He thought of Jing Xian saying that he had good night vision, so he waved to him.

Jing Xian came over and the two squeezed together to look out.

After a few seconds, Jing Xian grabbed his hand and wrote a word in his palm with his fingertips.

[Sheep]

His palm was scratched numbly and felt itchy. Lu Yingjiu didn’t understand all of a sudden.

The one that came…is a sheep??

The ghosts in this slaughterhouse are really quite special.

The ghost dragged the metal object all the way to the disinfection cabinet, opened the cabinet door, just in time to see the human skin cattle head they had touched. It put down the metal object, took out the cattle’s head, grasped it in his hand and sniffed it hard, making a scuffling sound.

After smelling it for a few seconds, it seemed to sense that someone had touched the cattle’s head, and suddenly picked up a metal object and smashed it hard on the ground!

Boom!

It was so powerful that the ground on the whole floor shook, and it roared angrily, “Baaaah!!”

Lu Yingjiu: “…….”

It really is a sheep.

He just wanted Jing Xian to continue watching, but when he turned his head, even through the thick darkness, he could vaguely see Jing Xian looking at him. When they looked at each other, Jing Xian even smiled at him.

Lu Yingjiu started, turned Jing Xian’s head towards the sheep ghost, and whispered, “Concentrate on watching.”

Jing Xian: “Hmm.”

In less than ten seconds, his eyes drifted back to Lu Yingjiu again.

Lu Yingjiu pushed him straight again and said, “Jing Xian, what’s the matter with you.”

He thought to himself that the two of them were not on the same channel.

In horror and suspense stories, he’s the one that concentrated on finding clues and working on cases, while Jing Xian seemed to have come from a bubble opera idol drama, where the sun was shining all day long, didn’t care about ghosts and monsters at all, and was only relatively beautiful and sweet.

(t/n a bubble drama is a kind of TV drama often fabricates some life plots, which look very beautiful, but in fact, such plots are like soap bubbles, which look very beautiful, but will soon disappear, broken and gone. Therefore, bubble dramas refer to those youth idol dramas that make up fictional plots and try their best to create some beautiful plots like soap bubbles.)

It was very dangerous to have no vigilance at all.

Lu Yingjiu said in a low voice, “Do you know who dies the fastest in horror movies?”

“Who?” Jing Xian asked.

“A couple who are silly, sweet and in love.”

Jing Xian was a little surprised, “Are you talking about us?”

Lu Yingjiu: “……”

He held his forehead. Jing Xian, this person is really hopeless.