The third day.
Early morning.
Jiang Qiao sat in the dining hall, drinking black tea and reading the newspaper. A report on the murders spiraling out of control occupied the front page.
The other guests in the hall were discussing it too.
Many looked worried.
Until recently, people had only been dying at night, but starting yesterday, even daytime was no longer safe.
Just yesterday afternoon.
The owner of a rice shop in the eastern part of the city.
Had been found dead in his shop's storeroom.
Only an hour before his death, the owner had still been bustling around the storefront, directing the young workers as they moved goods.
But that afternoon.
The shop workers had smelled blood coming from the storeroom.
They hurried inside to check.
And discovered that he had died a horrific death.
A gaping hole had been torn through his chest, his internal organs were missing, and blood covered the entire room.
The sight was as horrifying as it was gruesome.
The workers went deathly pale on the spot.
At the same time the rice shop owner died, a rickshaw puller in the western part of the city also met a gruesome end by the roadside.
His death was even stranger.
It happened on a busy street bustling with pedestrians.
The rickshaw puller had stepped into a roadside alley to relieve himself.
Less than three minutes later, someone who followed him inside found him dead in a corner.
He had been skinned.
His exposed flesh was still steaming.
If the rickshaw puller belonged to the bottom rung of society, the rice shop owner was, at most, a reasonably prosperous man. Both were ordinary people, so it was understandable that they had been unable to resist an evil spirit.
But then.
The murders in the northern