Chapter 87

Chapter 87

Qin Ying was never the sort to sit around and wait for death. Once she was certain someone was spying from nearby, and certain that the Dragon Scale in her courtyard could stop certain things, she decided to take the initiative.

Shopping and wandering the streets had only been a way to draw out the Mastermind-to gamble on whether the Mastermind would get curious enough to find some way to investigate Qin Ying’s home.

The narrow streets of the Old City were full of cramped lanes and shadowy alleys. With the old Caishikou as its center, eighteen streets radiated outward from it, and outsiders could get lost with ease.

When Zhang Lang ran, his back was hunched deeply, making him look as timid and useless as ever, but he was extremely fast.

Chasing after the stumbling figure, he vanished around the street corner in the blink of an eye.

Zong Li was a little slower and followed after them.

In the small courtyard in front of Qin Ying’s house, the driver delivering the refrigerator and the other mover, after their initial shock, both moved to check on Lao Yu.

After all, it was broad daylight. No one would think of anything sinister. They all assumed he had suddenly fallen ill.

In his panic, the driver rambled, “Lao Yu, I told you, no matter how badly you need money, you can’t work yourself to death.”

For nearly a month now, the weather in Yunlan City had been bizarrely hot, and air conditioners had sold out everywhere. Delivery workers like them had been forced to work round the clock for several days straight too.

The driver tugged at the hem of his shirt, wanting to wipe Lao Yu’s mouth.

Qin Ying, who was calling an ambulance, caught the movement from the corner of her eye and hurriedly freed one hand to yank him away.

As Qin Ying approached, Lao Yu, who was sprawled on the ground, thrashed again and choked out a mouthful of blood from his nose and mouth.

“L-Lao Yu?”

A few drops splattered onto the wrist of the delivery driver standing closest, and he jerked his hand back as if he had been burned.

The mover beside him pointed at Lao Yu and stammered, “In his n-nose and ears-there’s something in there!”

At that, Qin Ying turned her head and looked more closely.

She saw a red mass blocking Lao Yu’s nostril. At first glance, it looked like a clot of blood.

But that clot was clearly writhing.

By now, people out on the street had heard the commotion and were about to come over to watch.

Qin Ying did not want the neighbors to see these things and get dragged into trouble.

She took two quick steps over and shut the courtyard gate first.

Then she casually lied to the driver and mover, “It should be roundworms. When someone’s digestive system is out of order, parasites can crawl out through the nostrils.”

Qin Ying’s tone was so certain as she spoke that the panicked driver and mover both hesitated at once.

Was it… really roundworms?

Before they could decide whether that explanation made any sense, Qin Ying pointed toward the courtyard gate. “Go stand over there. Don’t get in the way.”

Under the first stepping stone before the courtyard gate, she had buried a Dragon Scale.

Lao Yu had fallen ill the moment he crossed that stone. Qin Ying had reason to believe that the Dragon Scale could suppress these wormlike things.

The driver and mover had never seen anything like this and were terrified, but when Qin Ying’s gaze swept over them, the two of them obeyed in perfect unison.

They stood obediently side by side in front of the courtyard gate with their hands at their sides, like students waiting to be scolded.

Qin Ying quickly went back into the house and grabbed a pair of thick dishwashing gloves.

After thinking about the shape of that thing, she took a charred snake corpse from the Preservation Box that held the Fei Yi Snake Corpse.

The snake corpse was as small as a nematode, and after being burned, its original monstrous appearance could no longer be made out. Qin Ying tore off a vegetable leaf and wrapped it up.

The moment she came back out, she heard the driver ask shakily, “Is Lao Yu… not breathing?”

Qin Ying hurried over in a few strides and saw that Lao Yu’s teeth were clenched tight, his face turning purple.

He hadn’t stopped breathing; something was blocking his airway and keeping him from getting air.

Qin Ying gritted her teeth and put on the dishwashing gloves. This was a matter of life and death; no matter how disgusting it was, she had to do it.

After a brief moment of mental preparation, she clamped one hand around Lao Yu’s face, then used her thumb and forefinger to dig at the thing blocking his nostril.

The driver and mover both turned their heads away at the sight.

Even through the plastic gloves, Qin Ying could still feel the slick warmth of blood, as well as the brittle yet pliant texture of the thing lodged inside Lao Yu’s nostril.
Qin Ying had one particular trait: the more blood or danger there was, the better she could shut out negative emotions like fear and disgust.

Biting the corner of her lip, she struggled to grab hold of whatever was blocking Lao Yu’s right nostril and pull it out.

The thing was covered in blood. It took Qin Ying some effort just to tug out a small section.

It was flat and long. If it hadn’t been bright red from end to end, it would have looked like a noodle.

When Qin Ying had pulled out a finger-length piece, the thing suddenly moved. Clearly, it had no desire to come out. It writhed and tried to burrow back into Lao Yu’s nostril.

“It’s alive! It’s alive!”

The driver, squinting because he was both disgusted and unable to stop looking, shrieked in a high-pitched voice.

Qin Ying hated being interrupted while she was working. She shot him a glance and snapped, “So what if it’s a live roundworm?”

The driver thought to himself that, sure, he’d only graduated from middle school, but roundworms didn’t look like that, did they?

Still, he didn’t dare argue. This girl, yanking worms out bare-handed with blood all over her gloves, was terrifying in her own right.

Meanwhile, Qin Ying wrapped the struggling thing once around her finger to get a better grip.

As she gradually applied more force, she forcibly dragged out most of the thing from Lao Yu’s nostril-nearly a meter in length.

At last, Qin Ying pulled out the end, which was as large as a broad bean, and all three people present clearly heard a soft pop.

Each time she tugged out another section, she wound it around her palm. By the end, she was holding a fistful of something that looked like yarn.

She lifted it slightly for a closer look and saw that the thing she’d pulled out had two tiny sesame-seed eyes and, on its head, a pair of miniature human ears.

The ears were identical to human ears in both shape and structure, slowly flapping back and forth.

The thing’s head drooped, impossible to tell if it was dead or alive. Lao Yu, his right nostril now clear, began rasping for breath again.

Qin Ying glanced around, then stuffed the tangled thing into an empty flowerpot.

Then she went to pull out whatever was in Lao Yu’s other nostril.

Qin Ying was a quick learner. After doing it once, she immediately summed up the trick, and this time she moved much faster.

As before, she tossed the strange thing she’d pulled out into the flowerpot. Only then did she turn Lao Yu’s head to one side and look at the thing hanging from his earlobe.

This thing was obviously much thinner than the ones blocking Lao Yu’s nostrils, but it was far more troublesome.

The moment Qin Ying tugged at it, Lao Yu rolled across the floor in agony. From between his clenched teeth leaked a groan of unbearable pain.

The red thread also behaved like a mimosa, silently shrinking back into Lao Yu’s ear canal.

Qin Ying took a look. Blackened blood pooled inside the ear canal; digging it out with her fingers was out of the question.

She paused, then looked at the driver beside her. “Go move the vehicles. Don’t block the entrance and delay the ambulance.”

After what they had just witnessed, the driver and the mover were already sick to their stomachs. At Qin Ying’s words, the two of them fled through the door as if granted amnesty.

In the brief moment when the door opened, Qin Ying forced Lao Yu’s clenched jaw apart and shoved the Fei Yi Snake Corpse into his blood-filled mouth.

Having pulled out two of them with her own hands, Qin Ying was certain these were some kind of parasite.

Eating Fei Yi snake flesh could expel parasites and treat leprosy. It should be the right cure for this condition.

The situation was urgent, and Qin Ying had no proper tools for administering medicine. She pried open Lao Yu’s jaw and, with fingers still inside her dishwashing gloves, forced the Fei Yi down his bloodied throat.

She moved extremely fast while doing all this. Neither the driver nor the mover noticed.

Before Qin Ying could breathe a sigh of relief, Lao Yu suddenly curled in on himself, then rolled facedown and vomited mouthful after mouthful of blood.

A closer look revealed countless pale pink eggs and worms of various sizes in the blood.

There were not only the same red worms Qin Ying had pulled out, but also thrashing roundworms and other things whose species she couldn’t identify.

If they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, no one could have imagined that a living human body could contain so many of these things.

Qin Ying took two steps back, pulled off the gloves, and tossed them onto the floor.

Just then, the wail of an ambulance siren sounded in the distance, drawing closer and closer.