Chapter Thirty-Three

At that moment, the music from the speakers beside the stage changed into the sound of a clock striking the hour.

The bell rang eight times. It was exactly eight o'clock at night.

Zhuo Ran raised the cards in her hand toward Xue Lan. Her gaze shifted to Xu Anze, who was standing behind Xue Lan and about to step forward, and warning showed in her eyes.

Xu Anze met her gaze for several seconds. In the end, he withdrew the hand he had extended and quietly left the crowd.

Zhuo Ran turned her attention back and smiled at Xue Lan. "It's your turn to draw."

Xue Lan reached out. Just as her fingers were about to touch the card, Liu Mumu, who had been standing beside her, suddenly placed a hand on her shoulder.

During the moment Xue Lan froze, Liu Mumu had already drawn the card she had chosen for her.

It was a joker, but the figure on it was different from the joker they had seen earlier. This one wore a princess dress and held an umbrella. Its index finger was raised to its lips in a gesture calling for silence.

Liu Mumu looked at the card in her hand. "How strange. There's actually an extra joker. Why do I feel like the ghost on this card looks a little like you?"

She turned the card toward Zhuo Ran.

On the hotel's second floor, directly opposite the card table below, was a small conference hall. All the tables and chairs had been cleared out. Zhuo Ran's uncle, who had welcomed the guests with her earlier, was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room in a strange white ritual robe patterned with red.

The floor of the reception hall was covered in bizarre, twisting symbols resembling snakes, drawn in blood of unknown origin.

Directly in front of him stood an altar table. A straw doll sat at either end, each dressed in the same style of clothing Zhuo Ran and Xue Lan were wearing that day.

Beside the dolls, the two girls' hair, fingernails, and birth information had been separately wrapped in red cloth.

Apart from an incense burner, there was also a bowl in the center of the altar. It held a viscous black-red liquid.

The man stood and drew a white thread from the sleeve pocket of his ritual robe. The thread was translucent and highly elastic.

He soaked it in the bowl on the altar.

After a moment, the white thread became a deep red. The man fished it out.

Then he tied its ends to the hands of the two straw dolls.

At that moment, a steady knocking sounded at the door. The man raised his head and looked coldly toward it. His hoarse voice sounded like a snake issuing a warning. "Who is it?"

"Mr. Xu, it's me."

"Come in." The man who entered wore a hotel employee's uniform. He held a wooden box and carefully presented it with both hands to the man addressed as Mr. Xu.

Mr. Xu casually raised a hand and opened the box. Inside were three cards made of exactly the same material as the new card Zhuo Ran had just exchanged for.

The difference was that all three cards were different jokers.

One figure wore a mask, one held an umbrella, and the last had removed its mask, revealing a face identical to Zhuo Ran's.

"I asked her to prepare something to exchange for another person's fate, and she prepared three cards?" Mr. Xu's voice held a trace of displeasure.

The man smiled ingratiatingly and cautiously. "You know how girls are. They all have strange ceremonial habits. Don't worry. Miss will definitely find a way to make that replacement person take one of the cards willingly."

The most crucial step of the fate-exchanging ritual was to make the replacement person agree of their own accord.

Taking something from another person was equivalent to agreeing to exchange away one's own life.

Mr. Xu had originally planned to prepare some gold and silver objects. Such things had been used to buy people's lives since ancient times and had never failed.

Who would have thought that the Zhuo family's girl would come up with all this nonsense?

But the Zhuo family had paid him a great deal to help them. Though he was dissatisfied, he said nothing more.

After delivering the cards, the man hurried out of the conference hall and closed the door behind him.

Mr. Xu stepped forward and locked the door from inside, then returned to the altar.

He placed the three cards on the altar one by one, winding the red thread connecting the two dolls around each card once.

Once everything was ready, when eight bells rang downstairs, he lit three sticks of incense and placed them in the burner.

As he muttered incantations, the bowl on the altar began to tremble slightly. The black-red liquid inside churned, and the red thread tied to the two straw dolls pulled taut.

The incense in the burner burned at an impossibly rapid speed. Instead of drifting upward, its pale-gray smoke enveloped the straw doll representing Zhuo Ran.

His eyes remained fixed on the altar, waiting for one of the cards to be chosen.

The next moment, the joker holding the umbrella moved slightly toward the straw doll representing Xue Lan.

The corners of Mr. Xu's mouth had only just begun to lift when the card suddenly seemed to be crushed by something. It shattered into countless pieces, which shot in every direction.

He had never expected such a change. Dozens of joker fragments embedded themselves in his face and body, while the altar he had painstakingly prepared split in two.

Mr. Xu clutched his chest with one hand. His chest felt stifled, and his vision went dark. He spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed headfirst.

Downstairs, after Liu Mumu took the card, Zhuo Ran's expression became extremely ugly.

Her hand holding the remaining three cards trembled slightly with anger, but she forced herself to endure it and said to Liu Mumu, "This is a game between Xue Lan and me. Please don't interfere."

Liu Mumu toyed with the joker, whose material seemed somewhat unusual. A hint of cunning shone in her clear almond-shaped eyes. "I'll answer for Xue Lan. She doesn't agree."

Zhuo Ran's expression stiffened.

The next moment, Liu Mumu continued, "It's only an exchange of fates. If you won't exchange hers, you can exchange mine. I agree."

Everyone around them had no idea what Liu Mumu was talking about. The only one who understood, Zhuo Ran, panicked. She was just about to stand and leave when, immediately after Liu Mumu's words fell, her entire body felt as though it had plunged into an ice cellar.

Her head swelled and throbbed. A harsh buzzing rang in her mind. Blood flowed from her nose, and the corners of her eyes bled as well.

Zhuo Ran's hand went slack. The cards fell to the floor. Of the three cards, two were actually jokers. No one knew when they had been replaced.

She collapsed onto the card table without any awareness, frightening the surrounding people into a chorus of screams.

The card in Liu Mumu's hand cracked and broke into two.

She casually threw the remaining half of the joker onto the floor and dusted off her hand in disgust. "With skills like that, you still want to exchange fates? Keep dreaming."

Xue Lan stiffly turned her head toward Liu Mumu. "Mu, Mumu, what do we do now?"

She seemed to know something, yet also seemed to know nothing at all.

The three girls from their dormitory crowded around Liu Mumu and looked at her in unison.

"At a time like this, we obviously need to call the police." Liu Mumu took out her phone and dialed the emergency number. Since she had done something bad, of course she had to call the police to clean up the mess.

At eight that evening, Fang Chuan, who was enjoying a pleasant weekend without any cases, received a call forwarded from above.

A special case was suspected to have occurred at Moonlight Hotel, and he was required to go to the scene immediately.

By the time all the officers from the Special Case Investigation Section and consultant Yan Xiu arrived at the hotel entrance, officers who had received the call in advance had already sealed off the scene.

An ambulance was parked outside and had not yet left.

Fang Chuan showed his credentials before finally being allowed into the scene.

Dozens of people crowded the hotel lobby, all of them young adults in their early twenties.

After the brief disturbance, they craned their necks curiously toward the card table. Two officers were blocking the way, and no one could approach.

A group of medical workers in protective suits surrounded Zhuo Ran, who had suddenly fainted.

"Where's the injured person?" Fang Chuan quietly asked one of the officers responsible for this district who had arrived first.

"She's still lying on the table. The ambulance has arrived, but the situation is too unusual, so they haven't taken her away."

"What's the injured person's identity?" Fang Chuan asked as he walked.

"Her name is Zhuo Ran, a freshman at Qing City University of Technology. She was holding a birthday party here. According to the witnesses, she suddenly began bleeding from all seven orifices while playing cards and then lost consciousness."

"Zhuo Ran? Why are there suddenly so many people surnamed Zhuo?" he muttered.

After walking over and taking a look, Fang Chuan understood why the medical workers were wearing protective suits.

Zhuo Ran's condition was frightening. The blood flowing from everyone else was red, but the blood flowing from her body was mixed with black, making it extremely conspicuous.

Apart from bleeding from all seven orifices, her heartbeat, breathing, and blood pressure were all normal.

It was as though she were asleep.

Fang Chuan whispered a few words to the officer maintaining order beside him. The officer went over to speak with the medical workers, and they soon stepped back.

Yan Xiu walked forward and stopped several steps away from Zhuo Ran.

There was a pool of blood on the floor, which had flowed down from the table.

A distinct strand of black ran through the blood. Fang Chuan wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, because he felt that strand moving.

"What's going on?" Fang Chuan asked quietly, in a voice only the two of them could hear.

"She was infected with a Gu worm."

"So someone planted a Gu worm in her here?"

"No. She should have been infected for a long time. Under normal circumstances, the Gu worm would have adapted to her body and wouldn't move randomly. This situation clearly means something unexpected happened, and the Gu worm is scurrying around out of control."

Yan Xiu put on gloves, stepped forward, and grabbed Zhuo Ran's hair, exposing her face. He first pulled down her lower eyelid. Several black lines appeared inside, proving that she had indeed been infected for a long time. It should not have been a harmful Gu worm.

"Where's the manifestation ointment Yan Ling gave you?"

Fang Chuan took out a small bottle, dipped the attached cotton swab into the ointment, and handed it to Yan Xiu.

Yan Xiu pressed the swab to Zhuo Ran's forehead. A patch of black immediately appeared there.

"This was backlash from a failed ritual," Yan Xiu concluded.

At that moment, an officer from the Investigation Section hurried over to Fang Chuan and said quietly, "Captain, we found a conference room on the second floor. It looks like the site of some kind of ritual, but something seems to have gone wrong. There's a middle-aged man unconscious inside."

"Put handcuffs on him first, then ask a doctor to go up and examine him."

The officer nodded in acknowledgment.

After Yan Xiu had finished examining the area, Fang Chuan asked, "Shall we go up and take a look? They found the site of a ritual upstairs."

Yan Xiu and Fang Chuan went upstairs. The unconscious middle-aged man had his hands secured in special handcuffs and had been carried to a corner.

He had only vomited blood and fainted after suffering some kind of impact, but his body was covered in numerous tiny, deep wounds with fragments embedded in them. A doctor was treating him.

Fang Chuan casually pressed the other end of the cotton swab to the man's forehead. It also turned black.

Yan Xiu said nothing. He stood in the center of the conference hall, his feet planted on the bizarre symbols. He surveyed the entire room, then finally turned his eyes toward the pile of objects on the floor.

Although the altar had split in two and the objects on it were scattered messily across the floor, one could still make out most of what had happened at a glance.

Two clothed straw dolls tied together had been soaked in viscous black-red liquid, giving them a somewhat sinister appearance.

"This is the fate-exchanging ritual of the Grass Gu lineage."

Before Fang Chuan could ask, Yan Xiu had already given him the answer.

Fang Chuan knew only about a few ordinary schools of occult practice. He had never even heard of the Grass Gu lineage, but he knew what exchanging fates meant.

"In other words, the girl downstairs who suffered backlash, Zhuo Ran, was undergoing a fate-exchanging ritual, and this man was the one conducting it?" Fang Chuan looked disgusted. The man looked respectable enough, yet he had actually been doing something utterly vile.

He pressed on. "Then who was meant to take her place? How are they?"

Yan Xiu turned his head and said calmly, "You should be more concerned about who was capable of disrupting the fate-exchanging ritual to this extent."

Fang Chuan hesitated. "A kind passerby?"

Yan Xiu did not want to mock his innocence.

If a powerful mystic had not suddenly descended from the heavens to resolve the matter, then there was another possibility.

Among the people they knew, there was only one person capable of casually passing by and doing this.

As luck would have it, they had eaten lunch together that day, and she had especially earnestly said that she had something important to do that evening.

Yan Xiu felt that he already knew what that important matter was.

He did not shatter Fang Chuan's fantasy and let him deceive himself for the moment.

Zhuo Ran's replacement target was found soon. It was not difficult to investigate. A look at the surveillance footage would reveal whom Zhuo Ran had contacted last.

However, after checking the footage, an officer from the Investigation Section said hesitantly to Fang Chuan, "Captain, I saw Liu Mumu on the surveillance video just now."

Fang Chuan: ??? You must be kidding me. Liu Mumu is a perfectly respectable university student. At this time, she should be sleeping or playing games in her dormitory.

The officer continued with a strange expression, "The person playing cards with Zhuo Ran was named Xue Lan. We checked Xue Lan's identification and discovered that she and Zhuo Ran shared the same birthday. But the last person to come into contact with Zhuo Ran was Liu Mumu. She drew a card from Zhuo Ran's hand, and then Zhuo Ran collapsed."

Fang Chuan: ...

Fang Chuan: ...

Why was Liu Mumu everywhere?

"Bring Liu Mumu and Xue Lan up. Find two vacant conference rooms first, and we'll question them separately." Fang Chuan took several deep breaths, letting his brain absorb enough oxygen to prevent it from becoming oxygen-deprived if he was shocked later.

"What about the university students downstairs? They're all shouting that they want to leave," the officer asked.

"Have a few men take their statements one by one. Don't let them go until we've clarified everything."

"Yes."

Not long after the officer went downstairs, he brought Xue Lan and Liu Mumu up together.

Liu Mumu was still wearing her hair in a bun today. A plump felt rabbit hung from her hair tie, swaying with every movement.

Fang Chuan and Yan Xiu first entered the vacant room where Xue Lan was staying. Xue Lan sat on a chair, her hands clasped nervously.

When she saw the police enter, she hurriedly stood.

"Student Xue Lan, please sit."

Fang Chuan's attitude was gentle. "I have a few questions to ask you. I hope you'll answer truthfully."

Xue Lan nodded.

"What's your relationship with Zhuo Ran?"

"We didn't know each other before. When the break ended on the eleventh, I learned that she and my boyfriend had grown up together. She was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment that day, and I went to see her once at the hospital with my roommates the next day."

Fang Chuan raised his brows. This relationship was rather complicated. "What's your boyfriend's name?"

"Xu Anze."

Fang Chuan wrote down the name and continued. "You and Zhuo Ran share the same birthday. Did you know that?"

"She told me when she invited me to her birthday party at the school cafeteria yesterday. I didn't know before that."

"How do you think Zhuo Ran found out?"

Xue Lan lowered her eyes. "My boyfriend probably told her."

Although she could not understand what had happened, the police questioning and Mumu's unusual behavior both seemed to be hinting at something.

This should all be related to the fact that she and Zhuo Ran shared the same birthday.

Then what role did Xu Anze play in all this?

Xue Lan was truly confused.

"Before the incident, Zhuo Ran was playing a card-drawing game. Why did you agree to participate?" Fang Chuan continued.

"Zhuo Ran told everyone that we shared the same birthday and wanted a showdown between the birthday girls. I happened to be pushed to the front, so I didn't refuse."

"Can you tell me what happened in the end?"

"We were playing Old Maid. Mumu stopped me and drew a card for me. After she took the card, Zhuo Ran collapsed."

Xue Lan answered truthfully.

"What's your relationship with Liu Mumu?"

"She's my roommate."

At that moment, Yan Xiu suddenly spoke. "Has she ever read your fortune?"

Xue Lan stiffened. She glanced quickly at Yan Xiu, then looked away. "N-no."

The two men exchanged a look and sighed at the same time.

The girl did know how to protect Liu Mumu, but she shouldn't have answered no.

The truly strange thing was that she wasn't even curious about Liu Mumu's ability to tell fortunes.

Fang Chuan said, "Xue Lan, this is a very unusual case. I'm a police officer who specializes in investigating cases like this. I hope you'll answer all my questions truthfully. It's essential to finding out the truth."

Xue Lan pressed her lips together and said nothing.

Seeing that she wouldn't speak, Fang Chuan didn't press her further. Instead, he stood up and said to Yan Xiu, "Let's go meet our Master Liu."

His familiar tone made Xue Lan sneak another few glances at him.

After leaving Xue Lan, Fang Chuan went into the room where Liu Mumu was waiting.

She was restless in her chair, twisting this way and that, or leaning over the table for a while.

It was clear she wasn't nervous at all.

Fang Chuan sat in the chair across from her and let out a long sigh. "Master Liu, tell poor me why you showed up here?"

Liu Mumu rested her chin on her fair arm atop the conference table, blinking at Fang Chuan. "I came to accompany my roommate to the birthday party of someone who might be her love rival."

"Then why did that potential love rival suddenly pass out after you drew a card from her hand? Can you tell me what happened?"

"Who knows? Maybe she did so many bad things that karma caught up with her."

Fang Chuan figured he probably wasn't going to get an answer out of Liu Mumu voluntarily.

He could only try another approach. "Zhuo Ran and your roommate, Xue Lan, were born on the same day, possibly even at the exact same time. At her birthday party, Zhuo Ran performed a life-swapping ritual, trying to exchange lives with your roommate, and you happened to interrupt it."

"Really? What a coincidence." Liu Mumu continued playing dumb.

Fang Chuan felt a headache coming on. He looked to Yan Xiu for help.

Yan Xiu gave him a slight nod, then took Fang Chuan's seat after he got up.

"When did you find out?" Yan Xiu asked directly.

So annoying. Liu Mumu rolled her eyes at Fang Chuan. He'd actually tried to use his good looks on her.

Yan Xiu sat casually in the chair, his dark eyes meeting hers. His handsome face revealed no emotion.

So handsome, Liu Mumu thought.

So she answered obediently, "After the National Day holiday, we found out that Xue Lan's boyfriend was involved with Zhuo Ran. At first, I was just casually checking their compatibility..."

Who knew what she'd find wouldn't be casual at all? Since she'd already figured it out, it wasn't any trouble to do something about it, too.

"You were talking about Xue Lan when you mentioned your roommate?" Yan Xiu remembered that Liu Mumu had come to see them and said her roommate's boyfriend might be trying to harm her.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell us when you discovered something was wrong?"

"Didn't you say you needed evidence? I didn't have any evidence then." Liu Mumu was perfectly unapologetic.

"You could've called the police after you got to the hotel," Fang Chuan couldn't help interjecting.

"Oh, I did call the police." She smiled sweetly. It was just after everything was over.

Fang Chuan didn't want to say another word.

"Fang Chuan, step outside for a moment," Yan Xiu said suddenly.

Fang Chuan glanced at him, then walked out.

After he left, only the two of them remained in the room. Yan Xiu suddenly said, "You interrupted the life-swapping ritual. According to regulations, I have to report the truth to headquarters. Someone will come down before long to investigate who you are and assess how dangerous you might be. If possible, they'll recruit you. If not, you'll be placed under some degree of surveillance."

Liu Mumu was confused. She hadn't known that. And why was Yan Xiu telling her this?

"They'll ask you repeatedly how you knew how to interrupt the life-swapping ritual. How are you going to answer?"

"I figured it out."

Yan Xiu leaned toward her slightly. "How many fortune-tellers do you think could figure out something like that? Didn't your grandfather ever tell you not to get involved in things like this?"

Liu Mumu shook her head. At the time, her grandfather had only worried that if he died, no one would be there to peel apples for her.

She was unhappy with Yan Xiu's questioning and muttered sulkily, "I was trying to save someone."

"I know." Yan Xiu's gaze softened a little. "But those with power mustn't take the law into their own hands. You should understand that."

"So, are you going to report me?"

Yan Xiu sighed. "Just this once. If there's a next time..."

Liu Mumu had been about to say there wouldn't be a next time, but after a moment's thought, she said, "Next time, I'll tell you beforehand."