Early that morning, Dean had the Impala's engine roaring loud enough to shake the heavens. Bai Haorui sat crammed into the back seat, clutching the Expelling Evil notebook. Watching Sam bent over his research in the passenger seat, he couldn't resist poking Dean's seat. "Hey, Dean, racing god of Mount Akina, can you keep this old wreck steady? What's wrong? Did your Natsuki run off with some middle-aged guy too?"
Dean glanced at him in the rearview mirror, tapping a rhythm on the steering wheel. "Kid, this is a '67 Chevrolet Impala. Too bumpy for you? Get out and run, or shut up." As he spoke, he jerked the wheel to avoid a deer darting out from the roadside. Bai Haorui hurriedly grabbed the front seat, and the notebook fell onto the floor mat with a smack, exposing a yellowed photograph tucked inside-a man in Daoist robes holding an ink-line reel, with a bluestone alley in Wuzhen behind him.
"Your grandfather?" Sam finally looked up, his gaze settling on the photograph. Bai Haorui picked up the notebook and slipped the picture back inside, twisting his mouth. "Yeah, the guy who wrote this notebook. Back when he dealt with demons and monsters, he was a lot more reliable than you, Dean-at least he didn't drive around in a wreck playing bumper cars with deer."
"Hey!" Dean was about to argue when his stomach suddenly growled. Bai Haorui immediately jumped in. "Well, looks like our 'reliable' driver needs feeding first. There's a gas station ahead. I bet their burgers use synthetic meat and their fries have been fried seven or eight times."
Sure enough, the gas station convenience store's burgers tasted of nothing but sauce, and the fries were hard enough to hurt their teeth. Chewing his burger, Dean mumbled, "Still better than that 'Chinese breakfast' of yours. That century egg and pork congee you made last time was horrifying. I couldn't even enjoy drinking it." Bai Haorui rolled his eyes. "You don't know shit about food!" He pulled an oilpaper package from his backpack and opened it to reveal two pieces of osmanthus cake. "Want some? Got these at a Chinese supermarket in the last town. Much better than his lousy burger."
Sam took a piece and had a small bite, his brow relaxing a little. "It's good." Dean leaned over to snatch some, but Bai Haorui slapped his hand away. "None for you. That's what you get for calling my congee awful." While the two bickered, Sam had already opened his laptop and pointed to the information on the screen. "There have been three disappearances in Black Pine Town, all young or middle-aged men. No traces left at the scenes, just some black slime-very similar to the liquid left behind when a Shapeshifter melts."
The car immediately fell silent. Bai Haorui dropped his joking expression. "Let's go take a look."
Toward evening, they passed through a small place called Cedar Town. Dean's eyes lit up at the sight of an illuminated roadside bar. "After driving this long, I need a beer to unwind. Sam, keep researching. Haorui, come with me-I'll show you what real pickup skills look like."
Bai Haorui had meant to refuse, but Dean dragged him into the bar. It was warm inside, the air carrying the scents of beer and roast beef. Dean immediately set his sights on the bartender behind the counter. She wore a plaid shirt, her ponytail swinging behind her, and her curvy figure stretched both the shirt and her skirt taut without a single wrinkle as she smiled and poured drinks for customers. He straightened his jacket and was about to approach when Bai Haorui grabbed him. "Wait. Let me scout ahead."
He walked up to the counter and pointed at the menu. "Excuse me, do you have hot cocoa? Not too sweet." The bartender paused, then smiled and nodded. "Not many young people order that. Just a moment." Bai Haorui took the opportunity to lower his voice. "My friend, the one in the leather jacket, wants to get to know you. I bet you he'll only come up with something stale like 'This beer's as sweet as you are.'"
The bartender burst out laughing and glanced toward Dean. Dean happened to walk over just then. Hearing that left him rather pained, but he stiffened his neck and said, "Still better than your hot-cocoa pickup routine." Bai Haorui raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Then give us a line that isn't stale."
Just then, two drunken, burly men approached from a corner. One bumped into Dean and swore at him. "Stay away from Lily, punk. She's mine." Dean raised his fist and punched him square in the chin. The man dropped without a sound and went straight to sleep.
"Easy, buddy." Smiling innocently, Bai Haorui held back the other man. "We're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, here on a case. If this turns into a scene and the police come, who do you think will be in trouble?" As he spoke, he signaled Dean with his eyes. Dean immediately flashed his credentials. The sight sobered the man up halfway. Muttering, he helped his companion up and returned to their corner.
Lily looked at them, smiling even more broadly. "I didn't realize you were agents. The beer's on me, and so is the hot cocoa." Dean gave Bai Haorui a smug look that seemed to say, See that, kid? But Bai Haorui leaned toward his ear. "Oh, please. Sam's going to lecture you about being reckless again in a minute."
By his third beer, Dean was getting ready to head to the restroom with Lily for a deeper acquaintance and an openhearted chat when Sam suddenly appeared in the doorway, looking serious. "Time to go. We need to get to Black Pine Town as soon as possible."
Dean reluctantly said goodbye to Lily, promising to "come back for a deeper exchange next time we're on a case." Back in the car, he said, "Lily's got a great body. What a shame." Bai Haorui rolled his eyes. "Give it a rest, you horny loser."
The darkness outside the windows deepened, and light snow began drifting down in the distance. Sam watched it through the window and said quietly, "Minnesota snow is a lot colder than Ohio snow. Shapeshifters might be more active at low temperatures." Dean stepped on the gas, and the Impala tore through the night toward Black Pine Town. Bai Haorui's snark and Dean's retorts occasionally filled the car, while Sam's laptop screen glowed against his focused profile.
Black Pine Town lay buried beneath heavy snow, white as far as the eye could see. Warm yellow light shone from the windows of a few shops on the main street, but there were hardly any people-ever since two murders involving "one person playing two roles" the week before, the townspeople had been afraid to leave their homes. Every household kept its doors locked and thick curtains drawn.
Bai Haorui sat in a restaurant booth, cradling a cup of hot cocoa and sipping it slowly.
The hot cocoa felt smooth and velvety in his mouth. First, rich cocoa and milk aromas spread across his tongue with just the right sweetness, neither cloying nor bland. Savoring it brought out a trace of cocoa's own bitterness, like dark chocolate warmed in the sun, gently bitter. Before he could dwell on it, warmth spread through his throat and enveloped it, leaving a faint roasted fragrance in his mouth.
Unlike the thin, sickly sweetness of those sugary drinks abroad, it was more like a warm "embrace for the taste buds"-one sip on a cold day warmed him from his tongue to his stomach, leaving even his heart feeling soft.
He stared blankly at the snowy view outside-Sam and Dean were investigating leads.
"Shapeshifters." Dean took a sip of coffee and tapped the table. "They can copy anyone's looks, voice, even memories. Silver's how you deal with them-it can kill them, but first you have to figure out who's real and who's fake."
Sam opened his laptop to photographs from the recent murders. The first victim had been the town sheriff. Someone had seen him arguing with himself at a bar before shooting himself. The second had been a doctor. Someone had seen him fighting himself in the hospital before he was stabbed to death with a scalpel. "The witnesses all said they saw 'two identical people' fighting, and then one killed the other-but when the bodies were examined afterward, besides the wounds, they looked as though something had drained their vital essence. Their internal organs didn't look the way they should have at their age."
Bai Haorui put down his cocoa and took out the Expelling Evil notebook, turning to the page on Painted Skin Ghosts. "Grandpa wrote about these shapeshifting creatures. One account went like this: (During plum rain season, the rain in Wuzhen always fell in a sticky, lingering drizzle. A Yun, an embroiderer at the western end of town, was the first to seem wrong.
At first, the neighbors merely said she looked unfamiliar-she still had the same phoenix eyes, but the mole at the corner of her eye had shifted a fraction, and the curve of her mouth was stiff when she smiled, like an actor onstage with badly painted makeup. At night, A Yun's mother rubbed her hands and sighed. 'Why are your palms as cold as if they've been soaking in well water? And the other day, you said you were tired of osmanthus cakes, your favorite?' A Yun only lowered her head and embroidered her handkerchief. The silk threads ran crookedly. The white plum blossoms should have been lovely, but her embroidery looked blackened, and several extremely fine hairs that weren't hers were tangled in the stitches.
Nobody took it seriously, putting it down to the oppressive plum rains. Not until A Yun disappeared did a second girl everyone knew change her disposition-the grain shop owner's daughter, A Xing. Her voice used to ring through three alleys, but now she always kept her head down and spoke as softly as a mosquito. Once, Auntie Wang bumped into her while buying soy sauce and saw a patch of blue-black skin showing at her cuff, like a soaked wood ear mushroom. When she asked, A Xing hastily pulled her sleeve closed. 'An insect bite. It'll heal in a few days.' But as Auntie Wang turned away, she saw dark red debris beneath A Xing's nails. It actually smelled of rotting flesh.
The changes came silently. A Xing stopped visiting the rouge shop at the alley entrance and kept her light on late into the night. Her shadow on the paper window gestured before a mirror, holding something so thin that light passed through it, looking exactly like human skin. Once, a neighbor getting up in the night heard a rustling from her room, like scissors cutting paper, or like... something soft being sewn. When A Xing appeared the following day, wrinkles had formed beneath the downward corners of her eyes despite her youth. The pale moon-white qipao she wore, with white plum blossoms embroidered at the collar, was identical to the one belonging to the peddler's daughter who had disappeared the month before.
The first to recognize something was wrong was the wandering Daoist Qingxuan. He had only just entered town with his blue cloth bundle on his back when he smelled a faint odor of decay mingling with the osmanthus fragrance, cloying enough to unsettle him. Passing the embroidery workshop, he saw A Xing embroidering a handkerchief for a customer. Her needle pierced her finger, but not a drop of blood came out-only a little blue-black fluid that dripped onto the cloth and instantly spread into a black blot. Qingxuan took a copper compass from inside his robes. Its needle spun wildly before pointing straight at A Yun, and its mirrored surface reflected a blurry image: a deathly pale human skin lay over A Yun's back, its eye sockets empty, swaying gently with her movements.
'Miss, which shop sold you the embroidery thread on your cuffs?' Qingxuan deliberately struck up a conversation. A Yun looked up, traces of blood seeping through the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. 'There's only one thread shop in town. Are you from elsewhere, Daoist?' Before her words had faded, Qingxuan suddenly drew his peachwood sword. Made of lightning-struck peachwood, it had the words "Slay evil" carved along its spine. The moment it approached A Yun, the copper coins on its tassel jingled wildly. A Yun's face froze, and her mouth slowly split to her ears, revealing blue-black fangs. 'Someone who knows his stuff.'
The qipao on her body ripped apart. A Xing's skin slipped off like a shed shell, exposing a freshly peeled skin beneath-it was the grain shop owner! But something was wrong with this skin too. The seam around its neck hadn't been properly concealed, revealing blue-black flesh inside, and the stench of decay forced its way into people's noses. 'This skin's too skinny to fill out a qipao. A Yun's was better, so tender you could squeeze water out of it. Meddling damned Daoist, today you die.' The Painted Skin Ghost laughed as three-inch nails grew from its fingertips, and it lunged straight for Qingxuan's heart.
With his left hand, Qingxuan flung out glutinous rice mixed with rooster blood. The grains struck the Painted Skin Ghost and hissed with white smoke, sending it staggering backward in pain. Seizing the opening, he took out a brass bagua mirror inlaid with the Big Dipper pattern and aimed it at the Painted Skin Ghost's face. 'The mysterious source of heaven and earth, the root of all qi!' This was an exorcism incantation from the Scripture of Constant Clarity and Stillness Spoken by Taishang Laojun. As the words fell, the mirror reflected daylight onto the Painted Skin Ghost, making it scream. A Xing's skin began to crack, revealing a third skin beneath-that of the missing peddler's daughter!
'You can't kill me! I can wear the girls in this town one after another!' the Painted Skin Ghost shrieked. It suddenly tore off its skin, revealing a mass of black mist containing half a mutilated body-A Yun's body. A gaping hole filled her chest, all her organs were gone, and only half an arm remained, its fingers still curled as though holding a needle. It had already eaten A Yun, slowly chewing her inside the embroidery workshop's rice jar for who knew how long. Even her bones had been ground to fragments and mixed into the rice, yet nobody had noticed.
Qingxuan's heart sank. He drew a willow nail from his sleeve pouch. Its head had been soaked in dog's blood; it was a Yin-Locking Nail from the Supreme Scripture of Divine Spells of the Abyss. Raising his hand, he drove it toward the black mist. But the Painted Skin Ghost was quick, pulling a nearby door panel in front of itself. Countless hands reached out of the mist, each clutching a human skin: A Xing's, the peddler's daughter's, and two unfamiliar ones, presumably girls who had disappeared earlier. 'I carefully sewed every one of these skins together, stitch by stitch. What makes you think you can fight me?'
'By decree of the Big Dipper, slay evil and erase its traces!' Qingxuan chanted again. His peachwood sword glowed red as its blade thrust straight toward the center of the black mist-the Painted Skin Ghost's vital point. But the mist suddenly burst apart, and countless human skins flew at him and wrapped around his arms. Every skin had a mouth, biting his arms painfully. Gritting his teeth, Qingxuan took out a cinnabar talisman drawn during the hour of the dragon and slapped it onto his sword. 'By the command of Taishang Laojun, swiftly obey the decree!'
The blade pierced the human skins and stabbed straight into the mist's core. With a bang, the black mist exploded, exposing a bloody head with an unfamiliar woman's face. Half its skin was missing, revealing white bone, and maggots crawled throughout its eye sockets. 'I was an embroiderer during the Guangxu era. A corrupt official murdered me and flayed my skin. It hurts! It hurts so much! Hahaha, why? Why do you get to live your lives unharmed...' It screamed as its body slowly turned to drifting ash, leaving only five human skins that fell limply to the ground. Each bore a tiny tooth mark between its brows.
Qingxuan buried the skins beneath a peach tree in the east of town, then drew and burned five Salvation Talismans. But afterward, Wuzhen's plum rain season always carried an odor of decay. One night, someone even saw the embroidery workshop lit up, a shadow on the paper window sewing before a mirror, holding something so thin that light passed through it, looking exactly like human skin. Nobody dared approach the workshop again. Only the peachwood sword Qingxuan had left hung from the old scholar tree at the town entrance, the copper coins on its tassel always jingling on rainy nights.)"
"A brass bagua mirror, willow nails, glutinous rice soaked in rooster blood?" Dean frowned. "Does that really work? We've always used silver to test Shapeshifters before."
"Absolutely." Bai Haorui pulled out his peachwood sword and the willow nails he had made on the road. The words "Anchor soul" were carved on them, and the nails were dark red from soaking in cinnabar and mugwort juice. "And Grandpa made this ink line himself. Whenever a monster gets close, it starts trembling slightly."
Just then, the restaurant door opened, letting in a gust of cold air. A pale-faced man in a police uniform walked in. "Federal Bureau of Investigation? I'm Deputy Wilson. Our new sheriff... has disappeared."
The three immediately stood, and Dean took out his credentials. "Tell us what happened."
"Someone saw the sheriff heading to the abandoned factory west of town this morning. He never came back." Wilson's voice was tight. "We sent people to search. All they found was his hat and some strange claw marks-exactly like the ones at the previous murder scenes."
The three followed Wilson to the abandoned factory. Its gates stood open, and the air inside smelled of rust and mold. Footprints churned the snow on the ground. A sheriff's hat lay in a distant corner, with several bloody claw marks beside it.
"It's nearby." Bai Haorui took out his ink-line reel, drew out the cord, and held it. The moment the cord left the spool, it began trembling faintly-a sign that a supernatural creature was close.
"All right, let's split up and see if we can find the sheriff," Dean said.
"Sure, but watch out for the Shapeshifter turning into one of us and attacking," Bai Haorui said as he headed into another room.
A short while later, footsteps suddenly came from the factory's second floor, followed by a familiar voice. "Sam! Haorui! Over here!"
It was Dean's voice!
The three immediately regrouped and rushed upstairs. In the second-floor workshop, Dean was tied to an iron pillar, his mouth sealed with tape. His eyes filled with urgency when he saw them. Bai Haorui was about to rush over and untie him, but Sam stopped him. "Wait! It might be the Shapeshifter in disguise!"
Just then, another door to the workshop swung open, and a second "Dean" walked in, holding a knife. "Don't let him fool you. He's the Shapeshifter!"
Two identical Deans stood in the workshop, right down to the scars on their faces and the creases in their clothes.
"Damn it, this thing really knows how to disguise itself." Dean-the tied-up one-struggled, trying to speak, but couldn't make a sound.
Gripping his ink-line reel, Bai Haorui slowly approached the two Deans. "Don't worry. I have a way to tell who's real." He quietly drew out the cord and first approached the bound Dean, holding it in front of him. It remained perfectly still-this one was real.
Then he walked casually toward the other "Dean." "It's you!" Bai Haorui shouted, raising his peachwood sword and charging at the fake Dean.
The fake Dean's expression changed, and it suddenly revealed its true form. Its skin twisted and turned gray, its fingers and toes became long, sharp claws, its eyes were blood-red, and its mouth filled with pointed teeth. "How did you know?"
The fake Dean lunged at Bai Haorui, its claws whistling through the air. Bai Haorui dodged sideways and flung out the ink line. The cord wrapped around the fake Dean's legs, and red cinnabar light instantly flared. The fake Dean screamed as the skin on its legs began smoking.
"Sam! Untie Dean!" Bai Haorui shouted, raising his peachwood sword and thrusting toward the Shapeshifter's chest. The fake Dean tried to dodge, but the ink line held it immobile.
Once freed, Dean immediately pulled out the willow nail Bai Haorui had given him and charged at the Shapeshifter. "You little bitch, how dare you copy me!" The willow nail plunged into the fake Dean's chest. It let out a piercing scream, its body beginning to melt until it became a puddle of black liquid that seeped into the ground and vanished.
The yin energy in the workshop gradually dispersed, and the ink line stopped trembling. The three leaned against the iron pillar, panting, all coated in a fair amount of dust.
"That ink line and those willow nails really work." Dean patted Bai Haorui's shoulder, his eyes full of approval. "Next time we run into a Shapeshifter, we're counting on your stuff. By the way, when are you making me a few of those glutinous rice rounds you mentioned?"
Bai Haorui smiled. "No problem. Next time we restock, I'll hold off eating and make you ten rounds first-adding cinnabar to the glutinous rice rounds makes them more effective against yin and evil creatures." A system notification suddenly sounded in his mind:
[Host successfully eliminated a Shapeshifter. Advanced "Teamwork" buff unlocked-item effects +15% when working with Sam and Dean.] [Notice: Dean's trust in you has increased to "comrade-in-arms." Western monster-hunting resources can be shared in the future, such as silver bullets and Molotov cocktail recipes.]
Sam walked over, looking gravely at the black liquid on the ground. "This Shapeshifter was probably being controlled by someone-its targets were people with a certain standing in town. It looked like it was eliminating particular people."
Dean nodded. "It's definitely connected to the Yellow-Eyed Demon. It wants to use the Shapeshifter to control this town and hide the anchor point's secret."
Bai Haorui took out his phone and photographed the black liquid on the ground. "We need to find the anchor point and the Yellow-Eyed Demon's whereabouts as soon as possible-it's already making its move. We can't keep dragging our feet like this."