CH 79

Translated by: Crooked

Edited by: Dust Bunny 

Xu Hao was very afraid. As he spoke, he trembled with tears all over his face. “Really, believe me, I promise that everything I say is true…”

Si Yu looked at him and asked bluntly, “You definitely kept something from us before! Tell us now.”

“I-I didn’t… didn’t,” stuttered Xu Hao. He covered his mouth and began to shiver and cry in fear, seeming somewhat pathetic.

“If you don’t speak, then we can’t do anything to help you.” Si Yu raised his chin and said casually, “Be careful, or you’ll be the next one to die. After all, he smiled at you.” 

Si Yu signaled the others with his eyes and said mildly, “Let’s go.”

Xu Hao suddenly grabbed Si Yu’s clothes, half kneeling on the ground. “I-I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Then, Xu Hao entered his ruined home. Inside the house, a strange odor filled the air. It was the smell of garbage and moldy food. After Xu Hao went inside his home, he closed the door and said bluntly, “Actually, when you asked me just now, I lied.”

“Wang Chunjiao was right. I was stealing things from the vegetable stalls on the day Old Lady He disappeared. At that time, I bumped into Old Lady He. I saw her go inside the butcher’s shop, but I didn’t think much of it then. I was pocketing vegetables from the Gao family’s stall when I was nearly discovered, so I immediately jumped in the ditch.

“Ditch?” asked Gu Xizhou, raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t just him. The others were also confused, and they looked at Xu Hao.

Xu Hao explained: “On both sides of the road you came down, you can see that now there’s a meter of bricks covering the top. In fact, there’s a ditch on either side. Later, because of serious pollution, the ditches being ugly, and the water being too black, we applied to the village to cover them with bricks.”

Gu Xizhou thought deeply. They really did hear the sound of gurgling water on the way. Apparently there was still water flowing through the ditch.

Xu Hao saw Gu Xizhou nod and said, “At that time, I jumped into the ditch to hide for about twenty minutes. Grandpa Mo came to look for Old Lady He and they had a chat. I followed the ditch along the road and slipped back home. It was only when I came out again that I learned Old Lady He disappeared.” 

“I saw Old Lady He go into the butcher’s shop with my own eyes when I was hiding in the ditch, but I didn’t see her come out… Actually, this wasn’t a problem, but strangely, the boss of the butcher’s shop said himself that he didn’t see Old Lady He.”

Gu Xizhou raised an eyebrow and asked, “Why didn’t you say anything when the police came to investigate?”

Xu Hao’s body shook. He raised his right hand which was missing the index finger and said, “How could I dare to speak! I’m scared of him, ah! That butcher chopped my finger off! At that time, he chopped off my finger to bits and threw them away, ah!”

“Glvc’a tf mtbq la eq lcab atgff qlfmfr?” gfoeafv Te Tlhtbe. 

“Ccskjs, la kjr mtbqqfv eq ys tlw, jcv tf ibra la. P’w rmjgfv bo tlw. Cirb, joafg P ifoa, P mjc’a yf regf ktfatfg bg cba Yiv Ojvs Lf ifoa atf yeamtfg’r rtbq ktfc cb bcf kjr qjslcu jaafcalbc, rb P vlvc’a rjs jcsatlcu,” We Ljb rjlv tjialcuis. “P’w jirb jogjlv atja tf’ii mbwf olcv wf ab wjxf agbeyif. Ktf yeamtfg lr atja xlcv bo qfgrbc… Po tf xcfk P kjr ubrrlqlcu jybea tlw, tf’v vfolclafis tjmx wf ab vfjat bc atf rqba.”

Gu Xizhou looked at him and indicated for Xu Hao to continue.

“After Old Lady He went missing, I had a guess in my heart, but I was afraid… I thought of the meat he sold, and I was very frightened. I sometimes watch his butcher shop secretly. I was seen by the vegetable peddlers several times, and they told that butcher that I wanted to steal his meat.

“If I hadn’t run away quickly, I definitely would have been treated as a thief and hacked to death. Actually, I only wanted to know if that meat… that meat was human or pork in the end. At that time, I didn’t dare to eat meat, and I felt sick and wanted to vomit at the sight of it.” 

The group was silent for a while. From Xu Hao’s account, Old Lady He’s killer seemed to be this butcher. After the butcher killed her, he sold the human meat. He was originally a butcher. It was easier for him to handle a dead body compared to other people.

And this NPC Xu Hao possibly saw Old Lady He enter the butcher’s shop and knew that Old Lady He’s death was related to the butcher. The things he saw were real, like Lin Hao’s corpse.

“You mean the meat he sold to the villagers is human?” Gu Xizhou asked, “Do you have evidence?”

“This, this is my guess…” Xu Hao shrunk his neck and explained, “Otherwise, how do you explain Old Lady He’s disappearance? It’s definitely like this. Have the police arrest him and interrogate him. He’d definitely confess! He’s a demon!” 

Gu Xizhou scrutinized Xu Hao. His frightened appearance didn’t look fake, and there was some sense to his words. Gu Xizhou asked him about some details. After Xu Hao answered them one by one, Gu Xizhou and the others departed.

After leaving, Xiao Nan’s spirit was invigorated. “Now, we only have to talk about the investigation situation, and we can leave, right?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Gu Xizhou pinched his brows and said, “Isn’t it too simple like this?”

Xiao Nan waved his hand and said, “Where is this simple? We already had a death! Is it bad to end like this? Moreover, this is one of the first few words, right? I don’t think it should be too difficult.” 

“Maybe, ba.” Gu Xizhou pondered and said, “First, let’s go tell that old man what Xu San’er told us.”

“Like this…” Yu Yizhou unexpectedly felt disappointed. “I still haven’t properly experienced the feeling of being able to walk and jump like this yet…”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Si Yu casually replied to Yu Yizhou. “As long as you can pass the first and subsequent mission worlds, your cause of death can also change. I’ve met a few people like you who were sent to the hospital after falling ill. They all experienced a spontaneous recovery. Then, like most of us, their cause of death becomes a fatal accident.”

Yu Yizhou’s attention was seized by Si Yu, and he immediately asked with agitation, “Really? It’s like this? Then after I go out, I can eat something? I could eat something?” 

“I don’t know. I can only tell you exactly that your illness can recover,” Si Yu said mildly.

The group walked the whole way back to Old Man Mo’s door. Gu Xizhou swept his eyes over the forbiddingly closed door and knocked on it.

After waiting for the old man to come out, Si Yu directly got to the point and told the old man the outcome of their investigation. The old man smiled strangely, the corners of his mouth splitting open in a bizarre arc. It looked very frightening. He said darkly, “Thank you.”

Xiao Nan instantly became excited when he heard the old man. He thought the old man would transform into the door, but instead the man just slammed the door. 

“W-why didn’t he take the door out?” Xiao Nan asked, feeling unwell.

Gu Xizhou swept a look at him. “I said it wasn’t that simple.”

Xiao Nan was like a dejected rooster.

The night was uneventful. 

They had yet to go downstairs when they heard a ruckus outside. All of Citrine Village’s residents came out.

The group all heard the noisy racket outside and got out of bed. After washing up simply, Gu Xizhou left the room with the others. Before leaving, he intended to check the number of people. Good, all five were here without lacking an arm nor a leg.

Wang Chunjiao stood in the middle of the crowd and blocked her eyes, peeking out from a crack between her fingers at the dead body on the ground.

“Heavens, ah. Who is that, ah? Isn’t it too dreadful, ba?” 

“Who could be so deranged, ah?”

Gu Xizhou and the rest parted the crowd and eventually clearly saw the state of the corpse on the ground. A human head was placed on the floor and beside it was a dead pig without a head.

Blood covered the floor completely. Gu Xizhou found Xu Hao standing in the center of the onlookers. Xu Hao was trembling with fear as he looked at the head on the ground. Suddenly, he turned around and ran away with a shriek!

Gu Xizhou and the others wanted to give chase when they unexpectedly heard the sound of a stomach growling, gulu gulu.  

Gu Xizhou subconsciously turned his head and saw that the head on the ground had suddenly opened its eyes, rigidly staring in the direction of Xu Hao’s departure with malevolence and a strange smile on its bloody face.

“Ahhh——” This was Yu Yizhou’s first time coming in contact with the supernatural. His complexion was painted white, and his hand tightly grabbed Gu Xizhou’s clothes beside him. He trembled as he said, “H-he’s smiling.”

“I’m not blind. I see it.”

Yu Yizhou avoided the head’s line of sight. He asked Gu Xizhou in a low voice, “A-aren’t you scared?” 

“Still okay, ba. Seen it several times,” said Gu Xizhou casually, raising his eyebrows.

Si Yu’s expression was also very flat. The only people who could have a common topic with Yu Yizhou were Xiao Nan and Fang Zhi.

“The butcher died. Apparently he really did have something to do with Old Lady He’s disappearance.” Gu Xizhou frowned and said, “but the door didn’t show up.”

“What do we do now?” 

Gu Xizhou watched Si Yu. The two people made eye contact. Si Yu’s lips curled and he said, “Don’t know. Let’s go find that old man first.”

“Okay, I’ll listen to you,” said Gu Xizhou.

The group went straight to the old man’s house. When they knocked on the door, it opened with a creak.

The old man didn’t seem to be at home. Gu Xizhou and Si Yu looked at each other and made a plan. “Let’s go in and take a look!” 

“Would… would there be an accident, ah?” Xiao Nan said hesitantly.

“If you can’t part with the child, you can’t catch the wolf. The door still hasn’t appeared, so there’s definitely a problem we didn’t expect,” said Gu Xizhou, raising an eyebrow. “Go in and have a look. Maybe there are some clues.”

Xiao Nan was still hesitant when Yu Yizhou raised his hand and said weakly, “I think Gu Ge is right…”

Xiao Nan looked silently at the big foolish husky in front of him. It was obvious Gu Ran’s group of three were together at first sight. Isn’t this guy quite obedient? 

Xiao Nan helplessly followed Gu Xizhou and the others into the room.

As soon as they entered the courtyard, everyone automatically furrowed their brows. Somewhere in the house, something with a foul odor assailed their noses from a distance.

Gu Xizhou and Fang Zhi exchanged glances. They were very familiar with this smell——This was the smell of a corpse’s stench.