Chapter 229

Chapter 229

Song Xiaotian had a quick temper, and I honestly couldn’t tell whether he really meant to start chopping or was just putting on an act.

But when he came out of the kitchen, he didn’t pause at all. The knife was already raised. Meng Yifan and I rushed over and wrapped our arms around him for dear life.

“Holy shit, man, don’t actually chop him!”

“Someone’s going to die!”

Tao Xiaoyu’s younger brother had been acting pretty tough a moment ago, but now he was suddenly frozen stiff with fear, not daring to move a muscle.

Maybe he was a big shot at school, but when had he ever seen a real scene like this?

Song Xiaotian was about to hack at him, and he didn’t even dare run.

“You… you’ve completely lost all respect for the law!”

“Go on, try it! If you dare chop him, I’ll call the police!”

Tao Xiaoyu’s mother had no sense of the situation at all and kept provoking him.

Song Xiaotian’s face twisted viciously. “I’m mentally ill, damn it. If I chop you all to death, it’ll be for nothing. Come here once, and I’ll chop you once. I’ll go to your house and chop your whole family to pieces!”

After saying that, he kicked Tao Xiaoyu’s brother right in the head.

The guy didn’t even know to dodge. He fell on his ass, looking like he’d gone stupid, and still didn’t run.

Only then did Tao Xiaoyu’s mother finally get scared. She grabbed her son and tried to leave.

“Meng Yifan, you’re really something!”

“Just you wait. Even as a ghost, my daughter won’t let you off!”

After throwing out that threat, she dragged her son and bolted like she was running for her life, not looking back once.

Meng Yifan and I were still holding on to Song Xiaotian, afraid he would chase after them.

“Let go. You really think I’m crazy? You think I don’t have to pay with my life if I kill someone?” Song Xiaotian glared at the two of us.

I let him go. “You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were really going to chop him.”

He said, “You can’t spoil people like that. If you don’t scare her, she’ll climb right over your head. I’m not trying to lecture you, Boss Meng, but what kind of boss are you, letting some old woman bully you like that?”

“Next time she dares come looking for you, slap her. Slap her till smoke comes off her face.”

“If she dares call the police, I’ll take a kitchen knife and stand guard outside her house. The moment she steps out, I’ll chop her.”

Meng Yifan looked aggrieved. “Fuck me. I’m the one who got cheated on, and they still came asking me for stuff. What the hell is wrong with that family?”

I comforted him, saying he’d just made so much money, so there was no need to take a family of shameless parasites seriously and ruin his mood over them.

Today was supposed to be a day off, and we should have been resting, but Song Xiaotian and I still had things to do.

In this new round of the Seven Deaths for Life Exchange, there were seven victims. Liu Jing and Feng Gang had already received Exorcism, and Ding Ruoning had been enshrined at home by Seventh Master.

That left four victims’ spirits still waiting for Exorcism.

Song Xiaotian and I were preparing to find a boy named Rat. The boy was only fourteen.

He was also one of the seven victims, but we didn’t know his real name. Back when Wang Guofu confessed, even he didn’t know what the boy was called. He only knew the kid was a scavenger, pretty much like a homeless person.

Precisely because the boy wandered around with no family, Wang Guofu had done it himself. It was the only time he personally got his hands dirty.

Back then, he used a thousand yuan to lure the boy in, asking him to help carry some things by the river. But when the boy reached the riverside, he didn’t see anything there. Realizing something was wrong, he tried to run, but he didn’t get away. Wang Guofu shoved him straight into the river.

The boy couldn’t swim. Before he died, he thrashed desperately toward the bank. Driven by his will to survive, he nearly made it ashore twice, but both times Wang Guofu kicked him back in. In the end, he sank into the river and drowned.

So Wang Guofu’s death wasn’t pitiful in the slightest. Even being hacked to death with a dozen knives would have been too good for him.

Song Xiaotian and I drove to an urban village on the outskirts south of the city.
An urban village was exactly what it sounded like: a village inside the city. It was a rather special sort of place in an urban area-special mainly because it was poor. Places like this had huge transient populations and high crime rates, and most of that crime was caused by outsiders drifting in and out.

Because planning had lagged so far behind, conditions here were bad in every respect. Urban villages were basically synonymous with being dirty, chaotic, and run-down.

The boy nicknamed Rat had spent most of his life around this urban village, surviving by scavenging and stealing.

That was all we knew. We did not even know his real name, so naturally there was no way to track down the whereabouts of his Ghost.

So Song Xiaotian and I had no choice but to ask around, questioning the elderly men and women in the urban village about whether anything strange had happened here recently.

After making the rounds, we actually did manage to learn a few details.

Some people said that lately, households in several nearby villages had been losing things, and everything had been stolen at night.

This might have been an urban village, but who slept at night without locking their doors and windows? Some people lived on the seventh or eighth floor, and their places had still been hit by the thief.

The key point was that this thief was practically supernatural. He slipped into homes and stole things without anyone noticing, leaving no signs that the doors or windows had been forced and making no noise at all. He had been stealing for more than two months and had never been caught even once.

Rumor had already spread through the urban village that some master thief had moved in, and he could rob any home he wanted. Even welding the doors and windows shut would be useless.

And this thief did not just steal cash and valuables. Sometimes he even stole food.

By now, no household dared keep cash at home anymore. Everyone had deposited their money onto bank cards. Even if the cards were stolen, the thief would not be able to use them.

An Old Woman said there was a hotel in the urban village called Jiahao Hotel. That hotel was always getting robbed, hit every few days.

And the thief did not only steal the hotel owner’s money and belongings. He stole from the guests too, which meant the owner of that hotel had to compensate guests for their losses every so often. These days, the place barely had any business left.

Now, if anyone wanted to get a room at that hotel, they first had to sign a contract with the owner stating that if anything was stolen, they could not come to him for compensation.

After Song Xiaotian and I finished asking around, we quickly reached a conclusion.

The master thief entrenched in this urban village probably was not human at all, but a ghost.

Because a person could not be that flawless. No human could steal for two whole months without ever being caught.

And this ghost was most likely the boy nicknamed Rat, because he had stolen things while he was alive too.

Then there was Jiahao Hotel. Even if it was only a hotel in an urban village, surely they would have installed at least a few security cameras, right? That thief went there every few days to steal. Were the cameras just for show?

There was only one explanation: cameras could not capture ghosts. That was why the owner was already on the verge of breaking down.

Who could stand being robbed over and over again?

But then another problem came up.

This ghost-in other words, the boy called Rat-was already dead. Why would he still be stealing money from the living world?

He did not just steal money, either. He stole objects too. What use could those things possibly be to him?

He even stole food. What would a ghost from the underworld want with food?

There had to be more to this Little Ghost than met the eye.

Song Xiaotian and I discussed it. Since it was almost dark anyway, and going back and forth would be a long trip, we decided we might as well not return tonight.

If we were not going back, we naturally needed to stay at a hotel. In that case, we might as well go to Jiahao Hotel and try our luck. Maybe we would run into that Little Ghost coming to steal something.