Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The crescent moon hung like a razor-sharp sickle, slicing through the vast night sky.
“Thud, thud…”
Violent pounding came from beneath a manhole cover in the outskirts of City A. The cover shook again and again until something finally knocked it open.
A severed arm, slick with blood and grime, crawled out.
Another severed hand followed close behind.
A lower leg, a thigh, a disemboweled torso, entrails scattered in pieces…
One after another, they leaped out of the filthy sewer.
Finally, a blood-smeared human head shot out. It bounced across the ground, rolled several times, and came to a stop beside the severed arm.
“Where’s my body? Where’s my body?”
The head repeated the same words in a crazed murmur while the severed arm slowly pieced the scattered body parts back together.
It haphazardly stuffed the strewn organs into the abdomen, but the gash was too wide, and the entrails kept spilling out. Left with no choice, it clutched its stomach with both hands to hold everything in.
“Need… to sew my body… back together.”
With its head hanging halfway off its neck and its entire body crooked and misaligned, it shuffled slowly toward the city.
…
Bishui Residential Complex.
The security guard was nodding off in his booth. It took everything he had to force his eyes open and stay awake.
Suddenly, he caught sight of a figure from the corner of his eye. The person’s clothes were in tatters, making her look like a vagrant wandering the streets in the dead of night.
The guard called out irritably, “No entry unless you’re a resident.”
The figure cocked her head stiffly.
With a thump, her head fell to the ground.
The head opened its mouth, revealing large white teeth stained with blood, and spoke in a shrill female voice.
“I’m… looking for my best friend.”
“A dead person… The head talked… A ghost…”
There was far too much to process, and the guard couldn’t decide which part to be shocked by first. In the end, his eyes rolled back, and he fainted.
The female corpse picked up her head, wedged it crookedly back onto her neck, and shuffled into the complex.
“Ding-dong!”
The doorbell sounded especially piercing in the stillness of the night.
After a long while, the slap of slippers against the floor approached from inside.
A moment later, the door opened.
Wearing SpongeBob pajamas, Yun Jianyue stared blearily at the female corpse, who stared right back.
The corpse’s head lolled to one side as blood gushed onto the floor. Both hands clutched her abdomen tightly, but half of one bright red kidney was still hanging out.
“I must’ve gotten up too fast. I’m seeing a zombie.”
Bang!
Yun Jianyue slammed the door shut. She used so much force that the corpse’s head went flying. It smacked against the door with a wet splat before dropping to the floor.
Moving stiffly, the corpse resentfully shoved her head back onto her neck. She opened her mouth and called out in a long, eerie drawl.
“Yun… Jian… Yue…”
The tightly shut door flew open the next instant.
“Lu Changxue?”
After studying her for a long time, Yun Jianyue finally confirmed that the female corpse before her, with matted hair hanging over her face, most of that face covered in blood, and every body part reassembled in the wrong position, was indeed her best friend, Lu Changxue.
“You goddamn died and still came back to scare me? Some best friend you are.” Yun Jianyue irritably reached for Lu Changxue’s hand. “Get inside before you scare the neighbors.”
Splat.
Yun Jianyue stared at the severed arm in her hand and fell silent for a moment. Then she ground her back teeth and forced out through clenched jaws, “Get your own ass inside.”
Corpse Lu Changxue: ?
She was a ghost, wasn’t she? She was supposed to be a ghost, right? So why wasn’t this woman afraid of her? And why was she being so mean?
After a long silence, Lu Changxue finally dragged her feet through the door.
Yun Jianyue sat on the couch with a grave expression. “Talk. What happened?”
Like a grade-schooler being scolded by her teacher, Lu Changxue stood in the middle of the living room, awkward and uneasy. For a long time, she couldn’t squeeze out a single word.
“Did becoming a ghost make you forget how to understand human speech?” Yun Jianyue’s tone sharpened, making her sound exactly like a strict school disciplinarian.
After being snapped at yet again, Lu Changxue squeezed a single sound through her lips. “Eep.”
“Eep one more time and I’ll smash your head in!” Yun Jianyue exploded.
“It’s already smashed.” Looking aggrieved, Lu Changxue twisted off her head and held it up for Yun Jianyue to see.
But with both hands occupied holding her head, she had nothing to cover her stomach. Her internal organs promptly spilled all over the floor.
Yun Jianyue: “…”
Lu Changxue: “…”
“I just mopped this floor during the day.” Yun Jianyue ground out every word through clenched teeth.
Lu Changxue said, “Eep. Help me stitch my body up, and my organs won’t fall out anymore.”
Yun Jianyue fetched a needle and thread from her room, pinned Lu Changxue to the floor, and stitched her body up thoroughly with hands as steady as a rock.
To finish the job, Yun Jianyue even applied 502 super glue to every place where Lu Changxue’s body had been reattached.
“Let’s see your head fall off again after this.”
Yun Jianyue admired her handiwork with great satisfaction. Lu Changxue tentatively tried to twist off her head so she could bounce it like a ball, only to discover that it might as well have been welded to her neck.
She was just about to eep again and complain that it was stuck on too tightly for her to scare anyone when Yun Jianyue kicked her straight into the bathroom.
“You’re a filthy, bloody mess! Come out after you’ve washed yourself clean!”
Half an hour later, Lu Changxue emerged clean and dressed in the long-sleeved shirt and pants Yun Jianyue had prepared. The high collar concealed the dense stitches around her neck. Aside from her deathly pale complexion, Lu Changxue could now just barely pass for human.
“Can you tell me what happened now?” Yun Jianyue asked.
Lu Changxue began in a hollow voice as two trails of bloody tears streamed down her face. “That bastard… I caught him cheating, but he beat me. He beat me to death. Then he panicked, so he used a chainsaw to dismember me and dumped the pieces in the sewer.”
The windows were clearly shut, yet chilling gusts swept through the room.
By the time she finished, Lu Changxue’s eyes had turned bloodred, and an almost tangible black aura poured from her entire body.
“Yueyue, it hurts so much… It hurts so much, Yueyue…”
Lu Changxue’s crimson eyes locked on Yun Jianyue. One moment, she was sitting on the couch. The next, she had flashed directly in front of Yun Jianyue.
Her deathly pale hand reached toward Yun Jianyue as her murderous aura intensified.
An instant later, a mop was shoved into Lu Changxue’s hand.
Vengeful Ghost Lu Changxue: ?
Yun Jianyue declared with perfect confidence, “You made the mess, so you mop the floor.”
“I’m a ghost! Show me some respect!” Lu Changxue let out a piercing shriek, but her body obediently began mopping. The black aura around her vanished without a trace.
Yun Jianyue ran the tip of her tongue over her back teeth. “I do respect you, which is why I need to figure out how to help you get revenge. Murder is illegal, so I’ll report him and have the police arrest that bastard. But your body’s here. What if the police can’t find the pieces of your corpse?”
After a moment’s thought, Yun Jianyue pulled the fruit knife from the table.
Its blade gleamed with an icy light beneath the lamp.
Yun Jianyue bared her teeth in a grin. “How about I dismember you again and toss you back into the sewer? Then I’ll call the police and have them find your body parts, and they’ll arrest that piece of scum. What do you think?”
For a moment, Lu Changxue couldn’t tell which of them was supposed to be the ghost. Did Yun Jianyue even hear herself?
Before Lu Changxue could answer, Yun Jianyue set the knife down again and muttered, “No, that won’t do. I went to all that trouble to stitch your body back together. It’d be such a waste to cut it apart again. Maybe I should just dismember that bastard to avenge you instead.”
Lu Changxue: “…”
She was calling the police.
She wasn’t joking. Her best friend was a psychopath!