CH 143

Translated by Crooked

Edited by Dust Bunny 

Immediately afterward, the low voice continued, “Demonic cultivator, this is my decision. From the beginning, I had already decided.”

Gu Xizhou called bullshit, but he still suppressed his anger. No matter how irritable he was in his heart, Ji Ji was right. This was Ji Ji’s decision. Even if Gu Xizhou was currently using his body, he didn’t have the right to make the choice for him.

The body refused to listen to him, rigidly following five or six meters behind the girl with sweating palms.

Gu Xizhou’s line of sight followed Gu Ji Ji’s. 

Tong Jia walked sadly, her steps slow, but it still didn’t take long to arrive home. Gu Xizhou recognized this as Tong Jia’s neighborhood. Tong Jia’s incident case file had a picture of this neighborhood.

Tong Jia lived in a commercial resident district. In 2004, there was an apartment building with an elevator that had about 18 floors. Gu Xizhou remembered from the file that Tong Jia lived in Unit 3, room 1205, on the twelfth floor.

Tong Jia stood downstairs, looking up for a long time. Her thoughts were inscrutable, but she suddenly turned, putting Gu Ji Ji in her line of sight. Tong Jia was shocked when she saw him and called, “Uncle, do you live in our neighborhood?”

During the day at school, Tong Jia saw him as ‘junior high student Gu Ji Ji’. After going back, Tong Jia didn’t treat Gu Ji Ji as a villain and took the initiative to speak to him.

“En.” Gu Xizhou heard Gu Ji Ji agree. He moved toward Tong Jia and asked, “You live upstairs? Why aren’t you going up?”

Tong Jia shook her head, and her face paled. She completely lacked the joyful expression she had at school. “I don’t want to go home.”

Gu Ji Ji squatted down and held Tong Jia. He suddenly discovered that her body was just skin and bones. His voice dropped, and he asked, “Why not?”

“It’s nothing.” Tong Jia’s pearly teeth gnawed at her bottom lip, drawing some blood, and her eyes turned red. 

Then, a woman in a white skirt came downstairs. She seemed exhausted. She came downstairs and saw Gu Ji Ji talking to Tong Jia and scowled. Her eyebrows looked like an upside down ‘八’, and she looked very fierce.

“Tong Jia, you didn’t come home after school was dismissed. What are you doing down here?” The woman scolded, her voice rising an octave in her fury. She stomped over, glaring at Tong Jia.

“You stupid girl, you’re a debt collector!” The woman came over and tried to grab Tong Jia’s arm and pinch it.

He recognized this woman from Gu Ji Ji’s memory, but she didn’t treat Tong Jia like this before…! 

The woman lectured Tong Jia in a low voice, like she didn’t want anyone else to overhear their conversation. Gu Ji Ji interrupted loudly, “I’m sorry, this child hadn’t gone upstairs because I was lost and asking her for directions.”

Gu Ji Ji’s voice was very loud. After being interrupted by Gu Ji Ji, the woman’s expression soured, and she was embarrassed. She berated Tong Jia again, telling her not to talk to strangers and told her to go inside.

Gu Ji Ji immediately followed them up. He pushed the button for the 13th floor before them without a word. The woman pressed the 12th floor button and glanced at Gu Ji Ji, but she didn’t say anything.

After the elevator doors opened, Tong Jia followed her mother out, and Gu Ji Ji continued up. After he got to the 13th floor, Gu Ji Ji went down the stairs to the 12th floor and stood there for a while, waiting. 

The hallway was completely silent.

Gu Xizhou calmly possessed the body and watched everything. Tong Jia didn’t cry or make noise. Maybe this little girl wouldn’t die today. He’d already changed this world’s rules. After waiting a while, Gu Xizhou relaxed.

As soon as Gu Xizhou relaxed, he suddenly heard a wail from inside the room, but that wasn’t Tong Jia’s voice, it was the woman’s!

Almost simultaneously, the woman’s voice cut off abruptly, but Gu Xizhou didn’t hear the sound of anything falling to the ground. Tong Jia still hadn’t jumped yet, so why was she crying? 

While Gu Xizhou was thinking, Gu Ji Ji knocked on the neighbor’s door. A man around fifty years old answered it.

The man had a large belly and a bald head, and the tip of his nose was a rosy red. When he saw Gu Ji Ji, he automatically frowned and asked, “What? Is something wrong?”

Gu Ji Ji hastily pulled out his badge and opened the cover for him to see. “I’m a police officer. Someone called the police and reported they heard a woman’s cry from the house next door. Did you report it?”

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“No… I didn’t hear anything. Her husband is a teacher, so it should be like that, right?”

The middle-aged man scratched his head, at a total loss

. By now, Gu Ji Ji had already made it to the balcony. After estimating the distance, Gu Ji Ji prepared to jump across when he suddenly saw Tong Jia appear, eyes swollen like peaches from crying! 

Gu Ji Ji’s mind went blank, and there was no time to think. He suddenly leaped from the next door balcony and landed heavily on top of Tong Jia, both of them falling to the ground.

Gu Ji Ji got up and cradled Tong Jia, who was weeping frantically. He looked at her for a while before he grabbed her shoulder and asked darkly, “Tong Jia, why do you want to kill yourself?”

Tong Jia cried until her eyes were red. After Gu Ji Ji landed on her, she sobbed quietly with a lost expression. She turned to look inside the room where a woman stood up from the sofa.

“H-how did you get in?!” Tong Jia’s mother’s tone was unfriendly. She suddenly yelled, “Help! Robber!” 

She suddenly rushed over to open the door and yelled into the hallway, where the other neighbors had already opened their doors. Those who wanted to help grabbed sharp weapons from their homes and came out. “Who!”

Five or six people flooded into the hallway, following Tong Jia’s mother into her house.

They all emanated a vicious air.

After Gu Ji Ji came inside, he supported Tong Jia by her shoulders and said, “Tell me why?” 

“Let go of the girl!” cried a man with a black coat wielding a bat.

Gu Ji Ji glanced at him briefly before moving his gaze back to Tong Jia.

“Call the police! Quick, call the police!”

After someone in the crowd yelled that, they immediately began to look for their phones. The balding man from earlier stretched his head out and came in. He said to Gu Ji Ji: “Officer, you’re really agile! Otherwise that little girl would definitely be dead!” 

The man in the white tank top and black shorts wove through the crowd and looked at Tong Jia. He said, “Little girl, what’s wrong? I saw you almost jump off and kill yourself! If this police officer hadn’t received a phone call, you’d be dead. Why would you want to jump from the building?”

Tong Jia wiped her tears. She spasmed with sobs and didn’t speak.

Gu Ji Ji, however, noticed something. Tong Jia wanted to jump from the balcony, and her mother was on the sofa in the living room. She could’ve easily seen Tong Jia jump, but in the incident file, in the interrogation room, Tong Jia’s mother said that she was drying clothes in the kitchen. Obviously, it shouldn’t be different in the supernatural world.

When the crowd heard that Gu Ji Ji was a police officer, they were all shocked. So this ‘robber’ was actually a police officer, ah! 

“But I already called the police!” said a girl in red, sticking out her tongue.

Gu Ji Ji spoke to the girl in red in a very clear and cold voice: “It doesn’t matter.”

Because of the middle-aged man’s question just now, everyone was looking at Tong Jia. Tong Jia rubbed her eyes. “Didi, didi is sick again. Mama said that it’s my fault.”

“Huh? Didi?” Tong Jia’s next door neighbor was surprised. “You have a little brother?” 

“En.”

The middle-aged man turned to look at Tong Jia’s mother. If he wasn’t remembering wrong, Tong Jia’s father was an elementary school teacher. He would lose his job if he had a second child!

The middle-aged man was only skeptical for a few seconds. Then, they heard Tong Jia continue. “I argued with my mother. I wanted her to bring him back from our hometown, but Mama wouldn’t do it… She just hit me.”

“Where did she hit you?” Gu Ji Ji looked down and grabbed her hands, looking her over. She wasn’t hurt! 

Tong Jia clenched her teeth and whispered shyly in Gu Ji Ji’s ear. “M-my butt!”

Gu Xizhou frowned. Could it be that Tong Jia died because of this? If it really was because of this, wasn’t Tong Jia a little too fragile?

At this time, Gu Xizhou heard a familiar siren from downstairs. Gu Ji Ji hastily looked downstairs and said to everyone, “My coworkers are here; I’ll go get them. Take care of Tong Jia.”

Gu Ji Ji walked out. When he left the elevator, he ran into Li Yaomu. Gu Ji Ji lowered his voice and said, “Tong Jia’s injured on her butt.” 

“Ah?” Li Yaomu stared blankly. Then Gu Ji Ji entered the elevator and let the doors close.

—

Li Yaomu’s head hurt. They just received a call that there was a man robbing one of the units. How come it turned into a frail junior high student trying to kill herself when he arrived?

Once he understood the entire sequence of events, he realized that this guy had actually impersonated a police officer! 

The beaten junior high girl didn’t say a word. Their initial inspection also didn’t uncover any injuries. Finally, he remembered their freeloader in the police station last night and called over a female police officer to take Tong Jia to another room and had her take off her clothes to check for wounds.

When that officer came out, her expression had changed, and she was silent for a long time before telling him what she saw.

Pinpricks, some big and some small, were all over the little girl’s butt. Some of them seemed very recent!

Obviously, they were all recent. 

He gulped and walked through the door. He looked at Tong Jia, sitting on the bench and frowning in pain, and his heart couldn’t help but tremble. He walked in and said softly, “Child, that uncle told me what you said. Can you tell me about what happened now? Why were you going to jump?”

Tong Jia hesitated before she spoke. “My grandma and my dad wanted a little boy. My mom was often scolded by my grandma because I was born. Later, I felt like my mom didn’t like me very much because it was my fault she got yelled at by grandma and hit by dad.”

“My grandma never liked me. She pinches me all the time,” said Tong Jia angrily.

“Dad and mom don’t pay attention or talk to me at home. In fifth grade, during summer vacation, we went back to my hometown. My grandma used my hand as a pincushion for no reason. I told my parents, but they didn’t care. 

“Every day, I hoped that vacation would end sooner. Afterward, I learned that grandma used me as a pincushion because she wanted a grandson.”

Li Yaomu’s heart gave a jerk. He’d heard of this saying. Accurately speaking, it was an old feudal superstition. Some people would stab baby girls with needles so their next child would be a son.

Li Yaomu’s fists were clenched so hard they groaned. “And then?”

“After summer vacation, I went home… In the beginning, it was only if I did something wrong then mom would use me as a pincushion. Later, for some reason, she became like grandma and would stab me for no reason. 

“Later, my mom went back to her hometown to give birth to my little brother.” The little girl slowly recounted her experience. Who knew how her young heart had endured it all, but her voice was still light, and she was smiling.

Li Yaomu suspected that the little girl usually had a smile only so that she wouldn’t cry, so no one noticed her true feelings.

“I was happy when Mom gave birth to Didi,” said Tong Jia. “I thought… now, they probably won’t use me as a pincushion anymore!

“I didn’t know why mom and dad wouldn’t let him come to the city and made him stay back in our hometown. They also didn’t let me tell anyone I had a little brother… but later, Didi got sick, really sick…” 

Li Yaomu listened to Tong Jia’s story. They finally uncovered this mystery. It was the quintessential family that valued males over females.

The older generation believed in feudal superstitions, so when the wife got pregnant, they pricked the little girl with needles. After they gave birth to a son, they hid him in their hometown to save her father’s job.

This child couldn’t go to the house without telling and had to be hidden. If anyone saw something they didn’t like, they could report Tong Jia’s father and get him fired.

Taking the little boy to see a doctor was a problem because of his parents’ issues. Finally, he had a temperature that reached forty degrees. They used home remedies to lower his temperature, but his brain was overheated. Now he was two years old and still couldn’t speak. He had a clear intelligence defect. This caused Tong Jia’s parents to collapse. 

They blamed it all on Tong Jia. If Tong Jia hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have sent their son to their hometown, and he wouldn’t have been boiled into a fool!

They didn’t think they were responsible in the least.

The two beat and scolded Tong Jia, but because of his occupation, her father didn’t let anyone see the marks. So, this cruel couple used the girl as a pincushion again.

When people outside heard about this they were all shocked. Among them was Wang Ao, who stood up and roared, “What the hell is this! Are they worthy of being parents?” 

“Exactly, it’s too disgusting. What can this little girl do?” said the female officer, still wiping her tears. “After the investigation, her father will definitely lose his job. If this little girl goes back to that ruthless couple, she’ll still have to jump off a building!”

“First, gather evidence. I’ll see if we can sue this little girl’s parents. Even if they can’t be sentenced, we cannot let them continue to raise this girl or she’ll be further abused,” scolded Wang Ao with a cold face.

The people all answered: “Okay!”

“Oh, right, I heard in the interrogation that a police officer found the girl trying to commit suicide and saved her. Who was it?” asked Wang Ao. 

Everyone waved their hands and declared: “Speaking of this, it’s really strange!

“The person who called the police said that a male officer saved this pitiful young girl. When we went upstairs, we ran into a handsome man. We thought he lived there, so we tried to block him. Later, we found out that he’s actually in the same profession as us, but he’s not from our department!”

“Right, if it was our station, I would definitely know him!”

After Gu Ji Ji left, Gu Xizhou didn’t see the door. He breathed a sigh of relief. Saving Tong Jia didn’t cause Gu Ji Ji to disappear right away. Was it because that wasn’t Gu Ji Ji’s full wish? Did he want to wait until Tong Jia’s matter had shown results before fading away? 

Several days later——

Gu Xizhou ate breakfast as he looked over Ningqing’s local newspaper. There was a huge headline: Superstitious School Teacher Stabs Girl With Needles to Guarantee Having a Son. What’s Wrong With This World?

Gu Xizhou read the article, and his eyes finally landed on the last section: Public security authorities will prosecute the family!

This event seemed to cause a big stir. 

Gu Xizhou rubbed his forehead. He didn’t understand what Gu Ji Ji was thinking. So what if Tong Jia’s story could have a happy ending in the supernatural world?

When Gu Xizhou complained about this in his heart, his body suddenly lost control again. “It means something, it’s justice.”

After disappearing for a few days, Gu Ji Ji was back.

Gu Xizhou watched as the body stood up and set down money. Gu Ji Ji left the restaurant. The surroundings seemed to change dramatically. They walked by a street corner, and Gu Xizhou was shocked. 

The screen on the street reported the time, shockingly: June 18th, 2010.

June 18th, 2010——It was the day before Gu Ji Ji’s parents’ death.

The author has something to say: You should be able to guess what this world means.

Pat pat Zhi Zhi.