As I thought over the whole thing, an answer gradually surfaced in my mind.
The moment it came to me, I froze.
Could it really be that predictable?
But if that thing really was a demon, really was a spirit, then having a predictable pattern would be the most normal thing in the world, wouldn't it?
Even a moody shared-bike spirit would mess with shared bikes to scare and kill people.
If it was a spirit that took the form of a demon, then acting in accordance with people's impressions of demons would only make sense.
Thinking of this, I couldn't help feeling conflicted.
I hadn't thought about saving Zhu Yun. For one thing, my current situation wouldn't allow me to save her. I couldn't move at all, so there was no way I could help her. For another, if everything had really happened as I'd just guessed, then Zhu Yun was lucky to have made it this long before being killed. She'd gotten to live on for decades, at the cost of her parents dying young and her own constant anxiety. It was hard to say who had come out ahead and who had lost.
All I could think about now was how to use that demon against the shared-bike spirit.
Wu Ling's plan had been incredibly crude. Arranging for two spirits to face off and fight each other would be no easy task.
But if the spirit was like that demon, perhaps all it would take was the price of a soul to get the job done.
Zhu Yun's parents hadn't died in the car accident when she was in elementary school, or even shortly afterward. They'd lived for more than ten years. How much of that was thanks to Master Chao, and how much had been part