Midnight Hair Washing

On a quiet, deserted street on a summer night, a duty vehicle drove by.

Not long after, the duty vehicle stopped at the entrance of an alley.

A middle-aged public security officer, who looked to be in his thirties, got out of the vehicle, followed by three mysterious figures in black combat suits.

The middle-aged public security officer was Zheng Hai, the same veteran criminal investigator who had previously arrested Lu Siye and brought him back to the station.

Ever since Zheng Hai's indirect involvement in the Takeout Ghost incident, he had been assigned as an external member of the Town Demon Suppression Division.

The main responsibility of an external member of the Town Demon Suppression Division was to conduct on-site investigations after Town Demon Suppression Division members had dealt with supernatural events.

As soon as he entered the alley, Zheng Hai felt a chilling aura wash over him.

However, the Public Security Bureau badge on his person immediately emitted a golden, faint light, dispersing the surrounding yin energy.

The group of four walked to a small, mobile pushcart selling discs not far from the alley entrance.

The first thing they saw were the messy scratch marks on the cement ground. Judging by the marks, they appeared to have been made by human fingers.

Between the scratch marks on either side was a pit the size of a human face.

The marks looked as if someone's head had been pressed into the ground, subjected to some unknown torture.

In their death throes, their fingers had managed to carve so many marks into the hard ground.

These ghosts truly deserved to die! To torture a person to such an extent.

Fortunately, this ghost had already been dealt with by comrades from the Town Demon Suppression Division.

After a few moments of silence, Zheng Hai and the others looked at the frozen-looking kidney placed on the pushcart.

Zheng Hai was not surprised; he had been informed when he became an external member of the Town Demon Suppression Division.

Generally, after ghosts died, they would leave behind something. Some left blood, some left eyes, hair, or a specific organ.

These remaining items would facilitate the post-mortem assessment of the ghost's strength, and based on that strength, rewards would be allocated to the person who killed the ghost.

Zheng Hai took out a palm-sized Bagua Mirror from his pocket. The Bagua Mirror emitted a faint green light.

Zheng Hai held the Bagua Mirror and walked towards the pushcart.

As he got closer to the pushcart, the green light on the Bagua Mirror grew brighter.

Zheng Hai, remembering the investigation mnemonic he had memorized before setting out, placed the Bagua Mirror in his hand onto the frozen kidney.

The green light on the Bagua Mirror began to extinguish, starting from the Qian trigram and proceeding counter-clockwise, until finally, only three trigrams remained faintly glowing green.

Then, the faint light floated up from the Bagua Mirror and formed the numbers 32 in the air.

"The strength of a low-level Evil Ghost, with a point value of 32!"

Zheng Hai relayed the assessment result to the people behind him, then put away the Bagua Mirror, which had returned to its ordinary appearance.

The three mysterious figures nodded to each other and skillfully took out an evidence bag.

After placing the kidney inside, they collected all the items from the pushcart and put them into the vehicle.

Once they were back in the vehicle, the duty vehicle made a U-turn and drove off into the distance.

They still had to go to the next investigation site.

For the external members of the Town Demon Suppression Division, a busy night had just begun.

Under the dark night sky of Tianhai City, the edges of the towering buildings were blurred and softened by the darkness.

There was no moonlight tonight. After the lights in every household were turned off, Tongjiang Residential Complex fell into darkness.

Shi Yimin collapsed onto his bed, his right arm pressing against his forehead.

The events he had recently experienced had shattered the worldview he had built since childhood.

First, he had witnessed his normally cheerful and outgoing neighbor, a college student, acting like a murderer, wielding a knife and cutting out the kidney of a delivery driver.

Then, the public security officers arrived, and the murderer was taken away. His neighbors and he were also taken away.

It wasn't until the afternoon that the public security officer who had taken him away said that the delivery driver was actually a ghost, and the college student living next door was a ghost exorcist.

He didn't know if people like him were called ghost exorcists.

Whatever, he'd just consider himself a ghost exorcist!

After telling him the truth, the public security officer handed him a non-disclosure agreement and a considerable amount of compensation for emotional distress before letting him go.

Returning to Tongjiang Residential Complex, Shi Yimin looked at the compensation money on the table, but he felt no joy.

After living for more than twenty years, who would be happy if they were suddenly told by the authorities that ghosts actually existed in this world?

As night fell, Shi Yimin sat on his bed, nervously glancing at the wardrobe, shoe cabinet, under the bed, and drawers in his room...

He always felt that in places he couldn't see, there were ghosts hiding, waiting for him to get close so they could skin him alive, dismember him, and gobble him up.

The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. The light in his bedroom offered no sense of security.

In the silent bedroom, all sounds were amplified by an invisible force.

As soon as there was any subtle sound in the room, Shi Yimin would curl up like a startled bird.

Before long, he was covered in sweat, his face pale.

In a daze, he felt as if he were in a sealed fish tank, with endless fear like slowly rising water, gradually engulfing him.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a door opening next door.

It was that college student ghost hunter, he was back!

The image of Lu Siye pinning down the evil ghost and holding a butcher knife automatically appeared in Shi Yimin's mind.

The fear in his heart instantly vanished, his tense muscles relaxed, and a wave of exhaustion washed over him.

Shi Yimin tilted his head back and fell, pressing his arm against his forehead. In a short while, he fell into a deep sleep.

Itchy...

So itchy...

After an unknown amount of time, Shi Yimin, in his sleep, began to scratch his scalp incessantly.

After a while, Shi Yimin could no longer bear the itchy scalp.

He climbed out of bed, walked barefoot to the sink in the bathroom, turned on the faucet to wet his hair, squeezed out a large amount of shampoo, and began to wash his hair.

Once, twice, three times...

He frantically scratched his scalp, even breaking his skin without stopping.

The water flowing from his hair, stained with blood, gradually turned a light red.

But he acted as if he couldn't see it, still scratching his scalp wildly.

No matter how many times he washed, he always felt his scalp itching.

He reached out again to squeeze the shampoo next to him, but after several attempts, nothing came out.

It was only then that he realized that, without even noticing, the entire bottle of shampoo beside him had been used up.

"Honey, are you looking for shampoo?"

Suddenly, a woman's sweet voice sounded from behind him.

"Yes, hurry and give me the shampoo!"

Shi Yimin, with his head under the running water and one hand scratching his scalp, reached behind him with the other, shouting urgently.

"Honey, here's the shampoo!"

Two to three seconds later, the sweet voice sounded again, and a cool blob landed in his palm.

Shi Yimin didn't think much of it, directly retracted his palm, smeared it onto his hair, and scrubbed frantically.

Suddenly, he seemed to notice that the water flowing down in front of him had turned completely blood-red, like bloody water.

Large clumps of hair fell onto the washbasin, and on those hairs, there were even pieces of pale flesh.

His hands paused, and he looked at the hair in front of him, seemingly stunned.

"Honey! What's wrong? Is the shampoo not working?" The sweet voice came from beside him.

"Oh, it's nothing, it's just a bit..."

Shi Yimin's eyes suddenly widened, his whole body trembled violently, his lips involuntarily quivered, and the words he was halfway through speaking stopped abruptly.

He suddenly remembered that he was not married, so where would he have a wife?

Moreover, he had been living alone in this room from beginning to end.

Shi Yimin's hair stood on end. He stiffly raised his head and looked into the mirror in front of him.

In the mirror, his hair had fallen out completely at some point, and even more than half of his scalp had come off, revealing his white skull.

And behind him stood a woman in white, with no flesh or blood on her head.

Countless maggots crawled on her head, wriggling in the sockets of her eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

In her hand, she held an eyeball that had already burst open.

"Honey, what's wrong with you?" Five cold finger bones crawled up his face from behind him, and the sweet voice whispered in his ear.

"Ah!!!"

Shi Yimin woke up instantly. He looked around in a panic, and before him was a bright bedroom.

"So it was just a dream! You scared me to death!" Shi Yimin said, still shaken.

He lay down again with relief, not noticing the foam clinging to the soles of his feet.