Ghost Hound Demon Child (Part 2)

The beating never stopped, and the pain was so intense it defied belief. It felt as though the agony would burn through his nerves, reaching even into the depths of his brain. Chu Hengkong clenched his teeth, curled his hand into a fist, and spun, trying to shake off the giant wolf's entanglement—but this time, he failed. The scene before his eyes gradually muddied, the landscape blurring like a thick black soup. He was clearly in midair, yet somehow "standing" on the ground. A powerful stench made him want to vomit, and ugly laughter filled his ears...

Late at night, in an alley, a woman with a smashed, bloodied head lay buried beneath piled garbage bags while men wielding clubs savagely kicked her head. Barking shattered the night's silence. Tears blurred the view, and the world jolted as though struck by an earthquake.

"Mom! Mom!!!"

Barking. Shouted curses. Running into the garbage heap. Clutching a pitiful corpse beaten beyond recognition. Heart-rending wails, yet no one answered. By the time she realized it, the men were standing around her, their clubs still stained red and white.

"What luck!" the whitebrowed man sneered. "Saves us the trouble of finding them one by one."

The clubs came down. Pain. The sound of bones breaking. It hurt. It hurt so much.

"Brother Whitebrow, we're really killing her?" one of his companions laughed.

"Bullshit! If we said we'd kill her whole family, then of course we kill her whole family!" Whitebrow roared, vicious as a wild wolf. "Otherwise, what if that bitch doesn't want to get in bed later? You gonna sleep with the customers for her?! Huh?!"

"I can sleep in her place, but keeping the customers company is another matter..."

"Fuck, this dog bit me!"

"One swing and it's dead. Do I have to teach you that too?"

"Move it along. The little brat's still screaming."

They were even laughing and joking. Taking lives was as easy to them as tossing out a bag of garbage, without guilt or weariness. All they cared about was finishing quickly and getting back to drink. The girl being beaten could no longer make out their words. She only felt pain all over her body, while hatred scorched her heart.

It hurts. It hurts so much. No one is coming to save me. Hawu is dead too. Why aren't you dead? Go die. Go die...!

"—Get lost!"

A furious roar scattered the curse. The phantoms in the alley collapsed, and reality emerged. A spirit talisman in Chu Hengkong's coat gave off a faint light. Its power dispelled the illusion and allowed him to see the truth.

Chu Hengkong had not been injured at all. Mere clubs could never harm his body. That illusion had been the little female ghost synchronizing her own "experience" with him, forcing her enemy to endure the suffering she had felt before death. If the City Lord's talisman had not revealed its power, he would have been killed by the evil spirit within the illusion... But even now that his mind was clear again, the situation was no better.

Dark night. Rooftop. A massive wolf's head. Howling wind. In the few seconds he had been trapped in the illusion, the giant wolf had rammed him all the way to the roof. One more second, and he would have been knocked off the six-story building. Wooden fangs tore through his sleeve and carved a long gash across his arm. The only reason Chu Hengkong's arm had not been bitten off was the instinct honed through a thousand battles—at the final moment, he had raised his iron spear to brace the wolf's gaping maw, surviving the most dangerous instant. But now the spear shaft was badly warped. Before he fell from the rooftop, he and the spear would both be crushed in a single bite.

"You die too! All of you, go die!!"

The little female ghost's venomous curse echoed beside his ears. Retreating meant falling from the roof; advancing meant the giant wolf's bloody jaws. For a moment, Chu Hengkong had nowhere to run. As the roof's edge loomed before him, he released the spear shaft with his right hand. Twisting at the waist, he dropped into a bow stance and stepped to the right, while the tentacle holding the spear in his left arm stretched with the giant wolf's charge. That extra reach allowed him to keep the wolf's bite at bay, while also letting him swing around to the wolf's flank from an impossible angle.

From this position, the collar around the giant wolf's waist was within reach. Chu Hengkong unclenched his fist into a palm and chopped downward. The little female ghost saw it clearly and hurriedly cried, "Hawu, dodge!"

The giant wolf jolted in alarm, immediately releasing its bite and rolling away. Chu Hengkong's palm strike could no longer reach it, so he instantly changed his palm into a hook and snapped it forward. The paper talisman pasted to the back of his hand activated, and two transparent Water Bullets appeared between his fingers. Two sharp whistles rang out in succession as the Water Bullets leaped forth one after another, smashing the collar inside the giant wolf into powder!

The little female ghost froze blankly. The giant wolf stopped moving on the spot, and humanlike despair showed in its blood-red eyes. Chu Hengkong flicked his long spear and clicked his tongue.

Just that simple.

If he had not deliberately held back earlier, this dog would have died long ago. But dead children were unreasonable—they had to get beaten before they learned to listen. He glared at the little female ghost and spoke without the slightest patience. "Settled down? Hurry up and come out with me. Once I finish educating you, I can call it a night..."

Chu Hengkong stopped halfway through, his expression turning grave for the first time. The evil spirits indeed were no longer moving, but their bodies had not weakened. Instead, they seemed to be growing larger.

As the little female ghost's form expanded, it became ever more illusory and blurred, like a low-resolution image on an old television. The giant wolf was being dragged into the phantom image, as though the female ghost were devouring it alive. Her face was nearly gone, and a pitch-black tornado rose around the phantom. In an instant, sand and stones flew everywhere, the wind fierce enough to uproot trees. Chu Hengkong drove his spearhead into the ground. Otherwise, even he would have been blown away!

"Kill! Die! Go die! You! All of you, go die!!!"

The sound of that wind was countless childish curses layered atop one another, and at its core was a wronged soul that continued to grow stronger. Chu Hengkong had misjudged the situation. He had thought shattering the Relic would strip the evil spirit of its fighting power, never expecting that Relic to have also restrained it. If that stone collar had not continually served as an attachment, this evil spirit would have left the abandoned apartment long ago and gone into the city to wreak havoc.

"Fuck...!"

Chu Hengkong rarely cursed aloud. The little female ghost now felt illusory and indistinct to him, exactly like the phantom images of demons. This was probably an Imaginary Demon on the verge of taking form! What a fucking waste of time. It was already a demon larva—what was the point of lecturing it? He should have stabbed it to death with a talisman from the start and sent it to the Western Heaven, even bagging himself an advanced Relic for free!

But then he remembered the little girl's eyes. So stubborn, so filled with hatred, as though they had soaked in vengeance for ten years—utterly unlike her weak father's. Her father's eyes had been vacant, two hollow holes containing nothing but sorrow. One was taking revenge alone. The other was waiting alone.

—Chu Hengkong, let me remind you: spirit bodies have all sorts of tricks. Make sure you clean things up afterward. Don't leave any loose ends.

Jie An's warning before his departure echoed in his heart. The slick middle-aged man had been unusually serious then. Chu Hengkong could barely keep his feet. The black monstrous wind lifted bricks and tiles, and even the rooftop's concrete seemed about to be torn away. He looked at the female ghost one last time. The stubbornness had long vanished from those illusory eyes, leaving only black venom.

Assassins who worked long enough always ran into difficult situations. Even in another world, it was the same as before. Hain's plea. Jie An's warning. The little girl's sobs. The female ghost's venom. Images kept changing in his mind, until they settled on one sentence from the beginning.

Clean things up. Don't leave any loose ends.

Chu Hengkong put on the Charge Bracelet, pulled out his long spear, and hung that talisman gleaming with faint light from the spearhead. His last foothold was blown away as well. He leaped across large fragments suspended in the air, charging alone into the black wind toward the female ghost and the giant wolf within it.

The man roared as he thrust his spear. The power within the Relic erupted alongside his surging emotions. With the talisman raised upon the iron spearhead, he pierced both man and hound through in one strike!

The hands pointed to eleven thirty. Yin wind rattled the window violently, making sleep impossible amid the din. Hain stared at the moldy ceiling, utterly without drowsiness.

There was half an hour until work. He should have hurried out already, but Hain felt exhausted today—so exhausted he could not even lift an arm. Normally, he had lived by clinging to the hope in his heart, telling himself again and again that he would find them eventually. But the detective's words before leaving had shattered that flimsy false hope.

He had actually known it long ago. More than half a year had passed; there was no hope left. Continuing the search was only a way to keep himself alive. He laboriously got out of bed and prepared for work. There was no meaning to it, like a walking corpse carrying out actions that had hardened into habit.

The door suddenly thundered beneath a violent pounding, each blow so vicious it sounded ready to smash through the iron door. Hain opened it instinctively. A gun-wielding man strode in, Sha Qi so thick around his brow that it struck terror into the heart.

"Detective Chu...?" Hain almost failed to recognize him.

"Open your safe." Chu Hengkong's voice was hoarse. "Now!"

Hain felt the world spinning. Was this a robbery? The detective from the newspaper was a robber? The city seemed so absurd that he did not even realize he was laughing as he opened the safe. The small iron door swung open, revealing the family's most precious possessions. The Flow Pearls they had painstakingly saved, the property deed, the marriage certificate, the birth certificate... Those little treasures were all swept out by a large hand. After emptying the safe, Chu Hengkong slapped a sheet of paper inside. Hain vaguely saw that it was a talisman.

Chu Hengkong shut the safe door, sat down on the floor, and let out a long breath. Hain looked at the certificates scattered across the ground, his fingers trembling without stop. The sudden upheaval had utterly broken this honest man. "What are you doing?! What did our family do wrong?! I—"

"...Dad?"

Hain's scream stopped abruptly. The little girl before the safe looked up at him. Bright black eyes, black hair, a soft pale little face—and that well-behaved little dog at her side. She had not changed at all. Everything was just as it had been in his final memory.

He dropped to his knees at once, his trembling palm touching his daughter's hair. It was a little cold, but solid and real. He could touch it.

"Tina?" Hain smiled. "Where have you been? Dad's been looking for you."

"I got lost..." the girl said softly.

"Why didn't you come home? Dad was so worried about you! So worried..."

The father clutched his daughter tightly, tears streaming down his face. The little black dog Hawu lay obediently beside them, wagging its tail with all its strength.

Tina's father searched for people outside during the day and worked far away at night. Though the two were separated by only one block, they never saw each other again. Of course Tina had been desperate. Before she died, the last thing she heard had been the thugs' threats, and then she never saw her father again. She believed both her parents had been killed and wanted to destroy this heartless city along with them.

But now she had been sealed inside the safe. This was no collar that could be easily removed, but merely a heavy iron box. She could not go very far—at most, she could move around the building and wait for her father to come home.

What level of Relic was this talisman-covered safe now?

Chu Hengkong rolled his shoulders and looked at the little girl. "Your dad is still here. If you make trouble again, you'll only cause trouble for him."

"I won't make trouble anymore!" Tina cried. "Dad, I'm sorry. I won't make trouble anymore..."

Now she was apologizing again. What was there to apologize for? This was why children were troublesome. Chu Hengkong stood and patted Hain's shoulder. "Put your money and documents somewhere else. From now on, this is the most precious treasure in your home. Keep watch over it yourself."

Hain came to his senses as though waking from a dream. So lost that he did not know what to do, he hurriedly gathered up the Flow Pearls scattered everywhere. "Detective Chu! Please, you must accept—"

Chu Hengkong glanced at them, then suddenly put on the rough expression of a thug.

"Don't you know the rules of the trade?"

Hain recoiled in fright. "I didn't mean anything by it. Please give me more time—"

"You're building virtue for a child in the underworld. Why give so much?" Chu Hengkong returned to his usual calm expression. "Just reimburse my travel expenses."

He picked up the smallest Flow Pearl, slung his spear over his shoulder, and walked out the door into the night.