Volume 5: Days of Applying Makeup to Corpses
Yaya
Escape the Instance!
The Yaksha brought its axe down with a chop. Wutong, crying and wailing, hugged Gong Lian and dodged to the side, rushing directly towards Shen Maomao and the other two: “What are you guys doing?! I’m going to get angry!!!”
Shen Maomao wore an innocent expression: “Why are you looking at me? It wasn’t me who tore down your house.”
Another axe chop came down, forcing the three people and two ghosts to scatter, getting splattered full in the face by the kicked-up mud.
Shen Maomao spat twice, “Ptooey, ptooey,” and roared back: “Do you know how we can leave?”
Wutong: “Leave?? Go where??!”
Shen Maomao: “…” Forget it, as expected, one couldn’t count on Wutong.
Lou Jingmo stared intently at the Yaksha’s wide-open mouth, watching the white light emerging from within, and suddenly said: “Don’t dodge! Let it grab you!”
Shen Maomao: “Huh??”
Lou Jingmo: “The exit is in its stomach!”
“But won’t we be chewed to pieces?!”
“Let’s gamble on it.” Lou Jingmo narrowed her eyes, “There isn’t much time left.”
With less than an hour until twelve o’clock, they no longer had extra time to hesitate.
Shen Maomao thought for a moment, then said: “Then you guys don’t move, I’ll go first. If I’m okay, you guys come up.”
After all, she still had a spare life; if something really went wrong, at most it would just hurt a bit, it wouldn’t cause any real impact.
Lou Jingmo was silent for two seconds, then nodded: “Go.”
Shen Maomao took a deep breath, turned, and ran to the Yaksha’s feet, spreading her arms wide and waving at it: “Hey—!”
The Yaksha grabbed her with one hand, yet its giant hand didn’t use much strength—at the very least, she wasn’t squeezed painfully.
Just as Shen Maomao’s uneasy heart calmed down a bit, she was lifted by its hand towards its mouth, her heart rate jumping from forty mph straight to one-twenty.
The enormous, blood-stained teeth grew larger and larger in her vision. Shen Maomao shut her eyes in fear, her mind replaying the “crunch” sound of the Feitouman being bitten to pieces, one crunch after another, linking together into a bizarre music that made one’s skull ache.
A foul, hot wind filled her nostrils. The Yaksha’s giant mouth closed, light instantly vanished, and Shen Maomao was swallowed in one gulp. Then came a dizzying spin until she completely lost consciousness.
Lou Jingmo clenched her fists and watched for a long time. After Shen Maomao was thrown into the Yaksha’s mouth, she almost couldn’t restrain her feet from stepping forward.
Guan Qiwen pulled her back from behind: “It’s too late!”
Lou Jingmo unclenched her fists and glanced at him coldly.
Guan Qiwen quickly let go, muttering: “Now that the person’s gone, you can’t be bothered to pretend anymore?”
Lou Jingmo couldn’t be bothered with him.
Time passed minute by minute, second by second. The Yaksha chased Wutong all over the place. The pattern on the back of its neck never lit up, which allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief.
It seemed Shen Maomao had successfully escaped.
She walked a few steps to the Yaksha’s feet. Guan Qiwen hurriedly followed, mimicking Shen Maomao’s actions, waving his hands and shouting loudly to attract the Yaksha’s attention.
The Yaksha, which had been chasing Wutong, paused its steps and extended two large hands towards the pair.
The two tilted their heads up and were grabbed, one in each hand by the Yaksha, and thrown together into its mouth.
“Splat—”
An ancient book fell from mid-air onto the ground.
The Yaksha continued chasing Wutong, carrying an air of not stopping until it killed it.
Wutong shrieked as it passed by the book, then simply hugged Gong Lian and took a dive straight into it. The Yaksha couldn’t stop its feet in time, stepped onto the book’s page, and the entire ghost transformed into a stream of light, drilling into the book.
A wind blew slowly over the ruins of the funeral parlor, kicking up a cloud of sand and dust. The ancient book flipped through several pages, revealing fleeting images of bizarrely shaped ghosts and monsters.
The wind gradually died down, and the speed at which the pages turned slowed with the lessening wind, finally stopping on one page—a monster resembling an ape faced forward, a silly-looking smile on its face. Sitting on its shoulder was a beautiful woman in a red dress. The woman wore no shoes, her exquisite face held little expression, and her snow-white feet seemed to be dangling back and forth, appearing to be in a good mood.
Shen Maomao opened her eyes.
The current time was 8:25 PM. Below the transparent floor-to-ceiling windows, traffic flowed, the car headlights and streetlights converging into an ocean of light.
She covered her mouth, rushed directly out of the conference room, asked the secretary waiting by the door for the location of the restroom, then ran into the restroom and vomited profusely.
The Yaksha’s mouth really stank!
After vomiting for a while, she felt much better. So she went to the sink, washed her face, and tidied her clothes and hair in front of the mirror.
As soon as she stepped out, she saw Lou Jingmo leaning against the wall, waiting for her.
“Is it over?” she asked.
Lou Jingmo nodded, waving a bank card in front of her: “Let’s go, back to Nancheng.”
Guan Qiwen didn’t come out to see them off, merely sending a secretary to take them to the high-speed rail station.
The secretary’s car sped away, leaving dust in its wake. Shen Maomao looked at the car’s rear end disappearing and spat: “Too much! We took a plane when we came, now that they’re done using us, they just send us to the high-speed rail station!”
However, Lou Jingmo didn’t respond as usual. Instead, her gaze was fixed heavily on a point in the void, as if deep in thought.
Although they didn’t have plane tickets, Guan Qiwen had given them enough travel money. Lou Jingmo bought two first-class tickets for the next train back to Nancheng. After buying the tickets, they could directly have them checked and board the train.
As soon as they boarded, Lou Jingmo closed her eyes and went to sleep, leaving Shen Maomao, who still wanted to discuss the plot with her, to suppress her curiosity and thirst for knowledge. She mentally reviewed the plot herself and, before she knew it, fell asleep.
After she fell asleep, Lou Jingmo beside her opened her eyes, clearly without a trace of sleepiness in them.
She looked at Shen Maomao with a complex expression, her lips pressed tightly together. As her thoughts churned, a few rare traces of annoyance appeared on her perpetually expressionless face.
She was paying too much attention to Shen Maomao.
This was not a good sign.
She could blame everything in this instance on Wutong, but ultimately, Wutong was merely the trigger. It was because she herself had first developed other thoughts that Wutong was able to exploit the opening.
It shouldn’t be like this.
From the moment the contract took effect, Shen Maomao’s and her fates were already sealed. She shouldn’t invest too much emotion, because their ending was bound to be a tragedy.
Lou Jingmo closed her eyes again, gently resting her head against the window, remaining motionless for a long time, as if the cool glass could draw away all her excess emotions.
After a night’s tedious journey, the train stopped at Nancheng Railway Station.
Shen Maomao was woken up by Lou Jingmo patting her. The two tidied themselves up, got off the train, and then bought a bus ticket to Gong Lian’s old home.
Gong Lian lived in a very remote small village in Nancheng. There was no train station, so they could only take a long-distance bus.
Early in the morning, the sun had not fully risen. The few people on the bus were all weary-faced, in a drowsy state.
Shen Maomao again had no chance to whisper secrets with Lou Jingmo, and her mood couldn’t help but feel somewhat stifled.
The bus drove for several hours and finally arrived at the stop for Gong Lian’s village. The two were dropped off by the roadside. The first thing that rushed into their view were vast expanses of vibrant paddy fields. The rice seedlings in the fields were lush green, nodding slowly with the gentle breeze.
The GPS signal and network were relatively weak in this place. The two stood by the roadside for quite a while before finally getting a signal.
They walked inward along the village’s main road. Most of the villagers they encountered along the way wore worn-out clothes and gave the two brightly dressed women scrutinizing looks.
Walking and asking for directions along the way, they finally found Li Yaya’s home.
The two stood before the dilapidated brick house, taking in the condition of the entire house and yard. Shen Maomao’s heart was full of doubt, unclear how such a run-down home could raise a beauty like Gong Lian.
The outside of the yard was fenced with man-high wooden planks. The main gate was wide open, and the door to the house inside was half-closed, half-open; the owner of the house seemed to still be at home, not having left. Shen Maomao stepped into the yard first, walking forward along the red brick path until she reached Gong Lian’s front door.
A faint, almost imperceptible smell of blood drifted out from the house. Shen Maomao, already accustomed to this smell, her expression changed, and she immediately reached out and pushed open the door.
Behind the door was a corridor, with a door on the left and right. The smell of blood was coming from the door on the right.
Just as Shen Maomao was about to push the door open, Lou Jingmo grabbed her arm and said in a low voice: “Call the police.”
Shen Maomao used her phone to dial 1101.
Lou Jingmo, meanwhile, pushed open the door to the other room and stepped inside.
After finishing the call, Shen Maomao came back to see a little girl lying on the bed, sleeping soundly.
The girl’s face was flushed from sleep, showing no reaction to the arrival of the two outsiders. Shen Maomao reached out and touched her face; her temperature was normal, not seeming like she was sick.
Lou Jingmo held a box of Children’s Aminophenol Huangnamin Granules2 in her hand, and also found what looked like a bowl used for mixing medicine on a nearby cabinet, which seemed to have been fed to the little girl.
Shen Maomao asked: “Lou-jie, should we send her to the hospital to check?”
Lou Jingmo glanced at the instructions: “It’s fine, a side effect of this medicine is drowsiness.”
The little girl should be Gong Lian’s daughter—Li Yaya. She perfectly inherited her mother’s beauty; not a trace of her father could be found in her appearance.
While waiting for the police to arrive, Shen Maomao stood by the bed and scanned the room. In a cabinet, she discovered many men’s clothes, along with a small portion of women’s clothes, all in outdated styles.
This home had a male owner.
But Gong Lian had asked them to send her daughter to an orphanage.
Shen Maomao’s mind flew to the closed door. What could the situation inside be like? What exactly had Gong Lian experienced?
Police sirens echoed throughout the village.
A crowd of people noisily headed towards the village entrance, talking about the police, not understanding why the police would come to their small, broken-down place.
Li Yaya turned over and suddenly sat up from the bed. Rubbing her eyes, she looked at the two strangers in the room and asked softly: “Who are you? Where’s my mommy?”
Once she sat up, the two noticed that her exposed arms and lower legs were covered in bluish-purple bruises, looking like… she had just been beaten.
Shen Maomao bit her lower lip tightly, speaking softly as if afraid of scaring her: “Yaya, we are friends of your mommy, don’t be afraid.”
Li Yaya sat cross-legged on the bed: “I’m not afraid, you don’t look like bad people.”
Shen Maomao wanted to ask about her injuries, but suddenly there was a knock on the door outside. She could only suppress her words in her heart and turn to open the door.
Several police officers in uniform stood at the entrance. The one in the lead said: “Who reported to the police?”
Shen Maomao: “It was me.”
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