Having just been trampled to the floor, Lao Sao felt upset, but he did not dare show any resentment.
He stayed flat on the floor, not daring to get up, and secretly studied the stairwell. He had heard plenty of "rumors" about the Investigation Bureau online. After actually encountering them, he realized those online accounts had been restrained.
The man's attitude toward him made it clear that the Investigation Bureau's people did not regard ordinary citizens as their equals at all. They were arrogant, conceited, and repulsive.
"No wonder nobody likes them."
Lao Sao did not know that the man had mistaken them for Ghost Story Players, nor that the people before him belonged to the Investigation Bureau's most unusual division, the Security Department. He thought all Investigators behaved this way.
Just wait until the day I get back on my feet. I'll make you pay.
Lying on the floor and making fierce threats in his head, Lao Sao began planning how to fight back.
In the dim stairwell, the Ghost Markings on the long-haired man's neck rippled like water. Ten deathly pale fingers spread like a blooming lotus, and the Ghost Eye cradled between them pulsed faintly, its twin pupils locked on the child patient wearing a gaming helmet.
Without drawing his blade, the man advanced with absolute confidence. The child, whose hands had mutated into sickles, was trembling instead, as though something was fighting him for control of his body and preventing him from moving.
With his thumb pressed against the hilt, the man released a faint black mist behind him. The Ghost Markings re-formed at his back, vaguely shaping an enormous phantom of a ghost deity.
It bore some resemblance to the clay statues in the Spirit Medium's room at Sishui Apartments, except that all of them