CH 94.2

“Nothing like that,” Hu Shu casually explained, “How could it be a corpse… it’s not that serious.”

Hearing this, Lu Qingjiu didn’t give it further thought. He sat down on some chairs with Bai Yuehu and Yin Xun to wait for the other two to finish their work.

Since it was just 6pm, there was still another two hours till Hu Shu would finish work. While he had the chance to, Lu Qingjiu started chatting with Hu Shu, asking for news of supernatural beings.

It turned out that their superiors had long known about non-human beings, and even had been in contact with the non-human being world. However, even if they knew about this world, they didn’t have any way to deal with it. After all, the spiritual energies in the human world were quite scarce, and the huge families that used to carry out the ancient rituals had fallen to the wayside, even the simplest rituals were also gone… 

“Would using weapons like guns work?” Lu Qingjiu asked.

“I’m not sure,” Hu Shu replied with a distressed expression, “It probably depends on the type. If it’s just some smaller spirits, it will probably work against them, but if it were some more powerful ghost or god…”

As he trailed off, a loud bang was heard from inside the house. The loud bang cut through the air, shaking the dust and cobwebs from the ceiling, even nearly shattering the windows.

“WTF!” Hu Shu jumped up in shock, “What could this noise be about!”

Pang Ziqi had originally been playing solitaire on his computer, but was also shocked by this turn of events, “Is it stormy outside?”

“It can’t be,” Hu Shu answered, “since it seems to be coming from inside the house.”

The two looked into each other’s eyes, seeing the confusion in each other’s gaze.

To tell the truth, it sounded like thunder, with its rumbling tone and echoing reverberations. The only thing was the noise seemed not to come from outside, but from another room inside. 

“What is in that room?” Hu Shu wondered.

Pang Ziqi gave it a thought before his expression darkened, “Shit, didn’t we put the item we brought back yesterday in the room next door?”

“…”

As if they thought of something, they turned at the same time to look at that room. 

Ca atf rjwf alwf, atf ibev yjcu rbecvfv jujlc. Ktf cblrf kjr atecvfgber, jr lo fzqibvlcu cfza ab atflg fjgr. Tlc Wec ofia ubbrfyewqr bc tlr rxlc vef ab atf rbecv, jcv jrxfv, “Prc’a atlr atecvfg? Qtja fzjmais lr atja atlcu?”

Ujcu Ildl ilmxfv tlr ilqr, “Ofa wf ajxf j ibbx.”

He headed towards that room. Lu Qingjiu flicked a look to Bai Yuehu, Bai Yuehu immediately understood, “Go, it’ll be fine since I’m around.”

Lu Qingjiu was kind of curious and since Bai Yuehu was not that bothered, it should not be anything too bad. With these thoughts in mind, he followed Yin Xun to join in on the fun. 

Pang Ziqi and Hu Shu walked to the door, and carefully took out the key to the door. Lu Qingjiu looked at the sign on the door, realising that it was supposed to store evidence, but since there were not many cases happening in town, the room was empty. After opening the door, Hu Shu switched on the overhead lights and Lu Qingjiu immediately saw the thing that was placed on the table.

There were two beautiful jars on the table. A big and a small jar was placed on the table. In the empty room, they were especially eye-catching. The jars had a wider body and narrow neck, casually looking at them, they just seemed like normal art works. There were some strange patterns on the body of the jars which looked like words, but didn’t look like Chinese characters.

Pang Ziqi walked in first, carefully approaching the jars.

“Is this it?” Lu Qingjiu curiously asked, “Why did you bring these back?” Since these had to be brought back to the police station, there had to be a reason for it. 

“Oh, the person who reported it said that someone had climbed out of the jar.” Hu Shu seemed aware that his words sounded ridiculous, and so his tone was a little helpless, “They said that the jars were his family heirlooms. Even when they went bankrupt, they couldn’t stand selling off the jars. However, for a period of time, they noticed some strange happenings in their house. Some items seemed to have been moved around, some small animal corpses were laid around the house. So they installed CCTV in their house…”

“What did they see?” Lu Qingjiu asked with interest.

“Nothing.” Pang Ziqi continued the story, “There was nothing on the CCTV footage, so they didn’t think there were any problems. However, one night they suddenly woke up to see a long haired person squatting on the sofa in their room, staring straight at them…”

Lu Qingjiu: “…” This was way too scary. 

“They swiftly called the police,” Hu Shu said, “We went out to take a look of the situation and check the CCTV footage.”

In reality, there was nothing on the CCTV footage, but against the insistence of the reporter, Hu Shu and Pang Ziqi could only bring the two jars back to the police station and find a space to store them. After all, their jurisdiction was small, there were not many serious cases on a day-to-day basis. A majority of them were trifling matters between villagers, such as quarrels between married couples, neighbour disputes over which neighbour had intruded 2 inches into the other neighbour’s land.

“So you haven’t seen what’s inside the jars?” Lu Qingjiu asked.

“Nope, if we’ve seen anything inside, how would we leave them in the station?” Hu Shu said helplessly, “Even I was an atheist before this, but now…” 

“Now?”

“Now I am a scientific theist.”

“…Huh?”

Hu Shu further explained to Lu Qingjiu, saying that most supernatural phenomena could actually be explained using a scientific angle. The Rain Master’s Concubine could be said to be someone from another race, even if it wasn’t human, at least that could exist objectively. Hearing his theory Lu Qingjiu was stunned, squeezing a sentence after a while, “Then how do you explain this jar?” 

Hu Shu glanced at the jar, obviously wanting to stay far away from this object. However, since he was bound by duty, he gritted his teeth and walked next to the jar, carefully taking a look inside the jar. After confirming that there was truly nothing inside, he picked up the jar and turned it around and shook it, “As I said… there’s nothing inside.”

The jar was indeed empty, and nothing fell out from within. However Pang Ziqi who was standing to one side said with a trembling voice, “Hey, put down that jar now.”

“Ah? Hu Shu asked blankly, “What’s going on…”

“Put that jar down now, shit!” Pang Ziqi snapped, “There’s something inside!” His words tumbled out, and Hu Shu reflexively looked inside the jar, but unexpectedly met a pair of glittering green eyes. 

“Ah!” Seeing the pair of eyes, Hu Shu jumped in fright and loosened his grip causing the jar to fall towards the ground. At the moment it was about to hit the ground, a pair of pale palms emerged from within the jar and braced itself on the ground, then headed with top speed towards the direction of the open door.

Everyone was shocked by this scene into silence until Bai Yuehu who was standing by the door stuck out a foot and directly tripped the jar.

The jar fell to the ground and rolled around in a circle before its hands retreated back into the jar. The jar itself coincidentally rolled to Lu Qingjiu’s feet. Lu Qingjiu looked down into the jar but only saw the inky black inside. There was no sign of the arms that had reached out from within, it had returned to its previous emptiness.

Everyone’s gazes gathered on said jar. 

“What… is this?” Yin Xun asked, trembling with fear.

Lu Qingjiu was just about to say something, when the jar that had been obediently lying on the floor suddenly let out another thunderous bang. Since it had exploded right next to them, the loud bang made them dizzy.

Lu Qingjiu covered his buzzing ears, “What exactly is it?”

Bai Yuehu: “This is also the first time I’ve seen it.” 

Lu Qingjiu: “Ah?”

Bai Yuehu bent down to pick up the jar. As his hand entered the jar, it started shivering uncontrollably, as if it was frightened. Bai Yuehu observed it momentarily before declaring, “Should be some kind of small monster.”

“Monster? Then could the thunderous noise be a way of attack?”

Everyone in the room wrinkled their brows. Following what Hu Shu had said, the jar had not displayed any strange happenings until it had been brought to the police station, then it started letting out thunderous noises. 

Bai Yuehu reached into the jar. Hu Shu wanted to stop Bai Yuehu in fear of something happening, but was stopped by Pang Ziqi who gave him a look, indicating that Bai Yuehu was not a regular person, so he shouldn’t meddle. Seeing this, Hu Shu pulled back patiently and didn’t stop Bai Yuehu.

Bai Yuehu reached around in the jar and when he pulled his hand back out there was some transparent liquid which was not that different from normal water. Bai Yuehu brought that water up to his nose for a sniff, then wrinkled his brows.

Lu Qingjiu assumed it was something wrong with the water, and quickly used some tissue to clean the water off his fingers, “What is this water?”

“It seems to be…” 

“Yes?”

Bai Yuehu continued, “It seems to be the monster’s tears.”

“…”

The silence spread among the people in the room for a while, before Hu Shu stuttered, “Te.. tears, meaning it’s crying inside the jar?” 

“Seems so.”

Yin Xun’s eyes were filled with disbelief, “Does that mean the thunder just now was due to its crying?”

As if agreeing with Yin Xun’s words, the jar once again let out an ear-shattering thunderous noise. Perhaps due to the change in mentality, Lu Qingjiu could almost hear sobbing within the loud thunderous noise. The noise which had originally seemed threatening, had now broken down into tears, making those who heard it take on a bemused expression.

“Why is it crying?” Hu Shu asked with a tremble. 

Yin Xun answered, “Didn’t you say it hadn’t made a peep before, and this was the first time it had cried?”

Full of suspicion, Hu Shu asked, “Yeah, what about it?”

Yin Xun exclaimed, “You brought it out of its home, and locked it up at the police station, who wouldn’t cry about this situation.”

Hu Shu: … 

Pang Ziqi: …

Yin Xun’s words were too logical, no one could refute him at that moment.

Author’s note:

Bai Yuehu: I want you to completely differentiate us.

Lu Qingjiu: Wuwuwu… I can really…really tell you apart now… wuwu!