Second Dead Person

Chapter 12: Second Dead Person

Three AM.

Thump, thump-thump!

Heavy footsteps sounded from outside the door, gradually approaching.

Fang Zhi gripped the crowbar tightly. The plastic bag on his face obscured his expression, but his trembling hands exposed his true state of mind.

"This patient is different from the previous one. He has mutated due to the virus and is highly aggressive. He should be subdued before treatment."

BANG!

The door was kicked open by a large foot.

BANG!

A massive palm grabbed Fang Zhi's head and easily pressed him to the ground. Fang Zhi's movements couldn't budge the Greater Wraith at all, but he still tried to hit the Greater Wraith's head with the crowbar.

He quickly pulled open the cabinet door, only to see his parents' bodies twisted and crammed into the narrow cabinet, leaving no space at all.

He wiped away the palm print on Yue Mei's door, then smeared some on the wet cement on the ground. He pressed his hand onto the door of Qi Zhiyong's room, 402, and with a few simple touches of a pen, it looked nine-tenths similar to Yu Yinghua's palm print!

A terrifying figure appeared before Fang Zhi. According to Qi Zhiyong, such a thing should not be a weak Wandering Wraith, but a Greater Wraith that mortals cannot shake!

Fang Zhi trembled like a sieve.

Wu Xian pondered for a moment and began his plan to stir things up.

Aged Cypress Incense: Calms the spirit, reduces swelling, and disperses blood stasis. Sold in sets of three, it can be used for offerings to the gods.

This meant that from this moment until dawn, the corridor was safe and hidden!

The accuracy of this guess wasn't one hundred percent, but for a greater benefit, Wu Xian had to take the risk.

Wu Xian first surveyed all the rooms.

His mind even flashed with a slideshow of his life's most memorable scenes.

"Pfft..."

Wu Xian spread his hands sarcastically, "I remembered something happy."

"Otherwise, wouldn't that make it my fault?"

And that day...

His kinship, his love, the honors he had received.

"Why me? I was already careful enough. Wasn't I marked because that woman found me? Did I make a mistake somewhere?"

The Greater Wraith raised its hand, shook it, and seemed slightly confused.

When this scene flashed in Fang Zhi's mind, he stopped trembling. He let out a furious roar, like a maddened beast, and swung the steel crowbar towards the Greater Wraith's head.

Fang Zhi's door was broken open, with more than a dozen palm prints pressed all over it. It seemed Yu Yinghua harbored deep resentment towards him.

"Go back and get some sleep. Rest up, and later you can have some fun with Qi Zhiyong."

This time, Wu Xian didn't find a god statue. However, under the mattress, he discovered three brown incense sticks emitting a fragrant aroma. Upon obtaining the incense sticks, new content appeared on the item page.

It was profit!

This period was the best time to exclusively occupy Fang Zhi's room for profit!

Entering Room 407, Wu Xian saw Fang Zhi's corpse with a shattered head. His hand was tightly gripping the crowbar, clearly attempting to fight back until the very last moment.

This was the natural fear of a creature at the bottom of the food chain towards its predator.

If he was destined to die, Wu Xian would rather die like Fang Zhi than suffer torture like Lu Yuzhu.

"Tch..."

The corridor was gloomy, the ground covered in still-wet mud prints. The dim yellow lights flickered incessantly, creating a suffocating and terrifying atmosphere. Just opening the door, Wu Xian felt a chill rush into his heart, his pores seemingly opening up.

Wu Xian pouted in disappointment. He had thought the three incense sticks could be used three times.

After doing all this, Wu Xian did not return to his room.

Two distorted faces, pressed and deformed, wore eerie smiles.

He had three objectives in doing this.

His expression was unpredictable, his anger suppressed, like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Wu Xian was the last to leave. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he saw Qi Zhiyong's ugly face and burst out laughing.

Fang Zhi was dead. The real test was yet to come.

Wu Xian searched the room quickly.

Qi Zhiyong cursed and turned away, no longer looking at Wu Xian. He didn't have the mood or time to argue with Wu Xian.

Upon hearing Fang Zhi's roar, he shook his head.

Where did this guy get the nerve to charge at him?

Qi Zhiyong asking Wu Xian to investigate Lu Yuzhu's room was meant to make Wu Xian take the risk, while he obtained the information. Wu Xian had been cursed because of it, yet afterward, he received no compensation and even deliberately treated Wu Xian differently.

It was creepy.

"I know, I've always known this is all real... but I have to believe ghosts don't exist, otherwise..."

And on the door of Room 408, there was a palm print that hadn't dried yet.

Beneath the large hand.

His attitude made Wu Xian certain that if a situation arose where one person had to be sacrificed, Qi Zhiyong would not hesitate to sacrifice him.

Therefore, Wu Xian felt it was only right for Qi Zhiyong to take some risks to gather information for him.

This was Yue Mei's room. This timid nurse had been targeted by the evil spirit early on.

Merely testing the evil spirit's movement patterns was not enough for Wu Xian to take such a big risk. What truly drove him to go out before dawn was...

But Wu Xian didn't care about Fang Zhi's family background. He casually tossed the photo aside and quickly searched the room thoroughly.

Wu Xian straightened his back. As early as yesterday morning, he had deduced from the drying time of the cement imprint that Yu Yinghua had left half an hour before dawn. Yesterday's dawn was at six o'clock, so he set his alarm for 5:30.

But food was just food.

Instead, he arrived at Fang Zhi's Room 407.

Splat!

Fang Zhi's head was crushed.

Fang Zhi's face contorted, tears mixed with blood streaming down.

After waiting for a while, Lu Yuzhu's phone vibrated. Wu Xian had set his alarm on this phone beforehand. Without this phone, Wu Xian would have had a hard time keeping track of time.

While searching, Wu Xian saw a photo. It was a family photo of Fang Zhi's family of three. The faces of the father and mother in the photo had been rubbed to the point of being blurry.

Qi Zhiyong turned and glared, "What are you laughing at?"

His parents did not come out to greet him as usual. He searched around in confusion and finally found that a small cabinet in the house was oozing blood.

Even mustering courage only added a bit more chewiness.

That night, he returned home as usual and pushed open the door to the newly purchased house.

"Son, you're back. This house was a great buy..."

Before, Wu Xian had always thought Fang Zhi was just a tough-talking coward. He hadn't expected him to cause such a commotion before dying.

Wu Xian sat by the wall, taking in all the sounds from outside the door.

First, Yue Mei was a decent girl, and he wanted to try and save her.

Qi Zhiyong was particularly angry.

But there was no one in the corridor, nor any evil spirit!

"Just as I thought!"

"Died cleanly, that's good, quite fortunate."

Wu Xian got up from the ground and carefully opened the door. Because it had been greased with pig intestines, the sound of opening the door was negligible.

Secondly, he wanted to try and decipher the Greater Wraith's killing logic. To know how it chose its targets, did it rely on handprints? Or the doors with handprints? Or marked rooms, or simply marked people?

Finally, Wu Xian was very unhappy with Qi Zhiyong and wanted to cause him some trouble.

Wu Xian's mockery was intentional.

Having been treated that way by Qi Zhiyong, if he didn't feel happy seeing Qi Zhiyong in trouble, it would make him seem too calculating and might arouse suspicion from others.