Gou Ya roared: “If you don’t shut up, I’ll kill you!”
The handcuffs were secured to the waste pipe. Though Nie Jiuluo couldn’t leave the pipe, she could still stand and sit. She loosely gripped the pipe and slowly stood up: “Yan Tuo ordered you not to touch me.”
Gou Ya grinned grotesquely: “That was before. Now, even if I kill you, Yan Tuo won’t object.”
Oh? Before, now—what’s the difference?
Nie Jiuluo repeated for the third time: “You aren’t human, are you?”
The concept of “not human” had initially sent chills down her spine, but then she thought—when the pencil pierced his eye socket, he still ran away in pain. No matter how capable, he was still flesh and blood. “Not human” wasn’t scary—chickens, ducks, and geese weren’t human either, and they were slaughtered for food. What was scary was “What exactly is it?”
Murderous intent flared in Gou Ya’s eye. He was already ugly, and with one blind eye, his twisted expression was no less terrifying than an evil spirit. When he moved to act, Nie Jiuluo stopped him: “A woman went missing in Xing Ba Zi Township—are you involved?”
She had figured it out; everything started in that straw field: Sun Zhou driving frantically with a bloody head as if he’d seen a ghost, Yan Tuo throwing a heavy canvas bag into the trunk, dried bloodstains, collapsed straw, a diagonal hole two or three meters deep reeking of blood…
And just the day before, a woman had gone missing. To call it mere coincidence—even a three-year-old wouldn’t believe that.
Gou Ya’s words dripped with venom: “You’re asking for death.”
Before his words faded, he lunged at her.
Nie Jiuluo gauged his approach, suddenly gripped the water pipe tightly with all ten fingers, used it for leverage to lift her body, kicked off the side wall, and viciously wrapped her legs around Gou Ya’s neck. Then with a twist, she released her hands, letting her entire body weight press down on his neck as they crashed heavily to the ground together.
As they fell, Gou Ya still had some consciousness and tried to lift his head. Nie Jiuluo increased pressure with her knee, pressing against the carotid artery on the side of his neck. Gou Ya’s vision darkened, his cranial pressure dropped rapidly, and without even a grunt, he was choked unconscious.
Nie Jiuluo didn’t dare release her legs immediately, waiting several more seconds before sitting up.
The entire process took less than ten seconds.
With her hands cuffed, the sequence of movements inevitably caused self-injury. Just from the lift and twist alone, a layer of skin had been scraped off her wrists.
Nie Jiuluo let out a breath and quickly hooked her finger under the bracelet.
Both ends of the bracelet were set with rice-grain-sized pearls. She rubbed one end’s pearl into her palm, pinched it between two fingers, and twisted quickly. Soon the pearl came off, revealing a sharp tip.
The next second, the tip probed into the handcuff’s keyhole. With her manipulation, extremely subtle clicking sounds of moving latches continued until finally, with a click, the cuff opened.
Nie Jiuluo immediately stood up. After shaking her wrists, she first cuffed Gou Ya to the water pipe, then took the wide tape Yan Tuo had left and thoroughly bound his legs.
Why hadn’t Yan Tuo thought to bind her legs too? Still, she should thank him for underestimating her; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so easy to cause trouble.
Having dealt with Gou Ya, Nie Jiuluo finally completely relaxed her held breath. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and walked to the canvas bag, bending down to unzip it.
Sun Zhou was still unconscious, his pale face lifeless, though he was still breathing.
Sleeping so long couldn’t be natural rest—drugs must be involved. Nie Jiuluo didn’t try to wake him; with the bag open, let him breathe freely and recover for now.
She stood up, about to go search Yan Tuo’s luggage in the outer room, when Sun Zhou suddenly convulsed, made a long gurgling sound, and abruptly opened his eyes.
It would have been better if he hadn’t—when he did, they showed only whites, like dead fish bellies stuffed in his eye sockets, bulging as if about to overflow. Nie Jiuluo was startled. When she tried to look closer, his eyelids drooped, that breath subsided, and he went quiet again.
What was going on?
Since Sun Zhou was tied up, there was no need to fear him attacking. Nie Jiuluo bent down to carefully examine his face—the bandages around his head hadn’t been changed in time, and given the messy situation, had become blood-stained and blackened.
As she looked, she suddenly noticed black short hairs growing at the edge of the bandage on Sun Zhou’s neck.
Sun Zhou had a crew cut, and that area shouldn’t have had hair growing there. Nie Jiuluo reached out with her right index finger and lightly touched it—it was stiff, like stubble.
After a few seconds of shock, a terrifying thought flashed through her mind like electricity.
It couldn’t be.
Nie Jiuluo’s heart pounded wildly. No longer caring about being gentle, she started pulling at Sun Zhou’s bandages. When they wouldn’t come off, she went to the outer room for scissors, and with several snips, cut all the bandages away.
What met her eyes sent chills to her heart, leaving her chest cavity ice-cold.
On Sun Zhou’s head and face were at least a dozen bite and scratch marks, all showing blood and flesh. Of course, they weren’t bleeding now, just flesh curled back—but between the curled flesh grew black hair—varying in the shade, some jet black and coarse, others grayish-brown like soft, curling down.
Nie Jiuluo stared for several seconds, then suddenly reached out and grabbed several coarse hairs, forcefully pulling them out.
Strangely, Sun Zhou, who had been convulsing and rolling his eyes moments ago, now lay as if dead, showing no bodily response—it seemed that even if you took a knife and cut his flesh, he wouldn’t move.
The hair wasn’t just hair—at the follicle, roots were long, sticky filaments, like lotus root threads, giving off a dim earthen yellow glow.
Nie Jiuluo mumbled: “Holy shit.”
Being forcibly choked unconscious is a peculiar experience: different people have different experiences—some blackout instantly, while others see colorful visions and find the scenes beautiful.
Gou Ya was the latter type. He felt extremely comfortable, the light was soft, the whole world was fluffy, like a huge piece of kneadable meat, and he was an elastic bubble, bouncing up and down on this meat, then bouncing up again.
Suddenly, the meat rolled back, became a thousand-foot cliff, transformed into cascading ice water—he shuddered and abruptly woke up.
There was water—Nie Jiuluo had just dumped a basin of it over his head.
Through water droplets hanging on his eyelashes, Gou Ya vaguely saw her holding an already-empty, garishly red basin. She threw it aside with a clang, wrapped her hand in toilet paper, picked up a plastic slipper, and strode over to him, bending down.
The feeling of oxygen deprivation lingered, making people appear with afterimages. Gou Ya shook his head, then shook it again.
Nie Jiuluo said: “I’m asking you, who hurt Sun Zhou—you or Yan Tuo?”
A surge of resentment rose in his heart. Gou Ya craned his neck, about to spit at her, when Nie Jiuluo’s hand rose and the slipper fell, slapping his cheek so hard his face twisted: “I’m asking you a question. Who did it? Won’t talk? I’ll keep slapping until you do.”
As she spoke, another slap came down.
Just moments ago, she had spoken to him gently, asking “Your wound, should we bandage it?” Now she was so cold it was like dealing with a completely different person.
After several slaps, rage rushed to Gou Ya’s head and he shouted: “It was me! I’ll kill you!”
Good, the first question had an answer.
“Yan Tuo cleaned up after you, right? You made a mess outside, and he helped you deal with it?”
Gou Ya’s whole body shook. He didn’t answer immediately, and in that hesitation, the slipper came down again—though Gou Ya’s face was rough and tough, after these hits, his lip had split and was bleeding.
He shook his head frantically, trying to dodge: “Who are you? What kind of person are you?”
“Third question…” Nie Jiuluo’s free hand pressed toward his stomach, “That woman from Xing Ba Zi Township, is she in here?”
Gou Ya’s mind exploded, all his hair standing on end. He heard Nie Jiuluo’s voice: “It’s fine if you don’t talk. It’s only been two days, not fully digested yet—we can cut open and see.”
Soon, she brought over the scissors, the sharp blades scraping against each other: snip, snip.
Gou Ya had a terrifying premonition: this woman would do exactly what she said.
He screamed: “Yes, yes, yes!”
The snipping stopped.
The room became frighteningly quiet. Gou Ya felt his heart almost stop beating: why hadn’t Yan Tuo returned yet? It had been so long, he should be back by now.
Nie Jiuluo slowly crouched in front of him, her gaze level with his: “Last question.”
Gou Ya’s lips trembled slightly. In an extreme panic, his mind suddenly wandered: in Xing Ba Zi Township’s cornfield, there was an abandoned temple he had entered before. Inside was a broken statue, very beautiful, but upon careful examination, somehow terrifying.
Nie Jiuluo’s features were as vivid as that statue, and she was equally frightening—no, she was far more terrifying.
“Are you a Di Xiao?”
When Yan Tuo returned to the hotel, it was past midnight.
Except for the red and white hotel name light box, the courtyard was pitch black, and even the dog didn’t bark—hearing the car, it merely lifted its head slightly, then slowly, boredly dropped it back down.
Yan Tuo parked the car and walked straight to the room.
Before leaving, he remembered leaving the bathroom light on, but now it was completely dark. This was normal though—Gou Ya always disliked lights, saying bulbs hanging there wobbling like suns made him sick.
He opened the door.
The moment it opened, he suddenly became alert: something wasn’t right in this room.
Indeed something wasn’t right—soon he spotted the anomaly: though the room was dark, in its center was an even darker human-shaped silhouette, swaying slightly.
He barked: “Who’s there?”
Simultaneously, he quickly reached for the light switch, conveniently located just inside the door on the right for guests.
The lights came on.
Under the light stood someone—it was Nie Jiuluo.
She was in terrible condition: her face pale, her spirit dazed, her clothes disheveled, and more terrifyingly, her face and body were covered in blood, even her hair was matted with it.
Yan Tuo’s mind buzzed: Gou Ya had caused trouble.
Seeing Yan Tuo, Nie Jiuluo’s lips moved slightly, and she stumbled toward him, but she couldn’t walk steadily—after just two steps, she pitched forward stiffly.
Yan Tuo reflexively stepped forward to catch her: “Miss Nie, are you alright—”
Before he could finish speaking, he felt a slight sting in his upper abdomen, as if something had pricked him.
Warning bells rang in his mind as he instantly recalled the syringe the lame old man had stuck in his neck: it wasn’t filled with ordinary anesthetic. Generally, anesthetics were administered intravenously, rarely intramuscularly, because intramuscular injections took too long to work. But that syringe’s drug, even with just a small amount injected intramuscularly, had knocked him out for almost ten hours.
He had carefully wrapped that syringe, still containing most of its contents, and put it in his luggage, planning to have it professionally analyzed when he returned…
He tried to push Nie Jiuluo away, but it was too late—the drug had been fully injected. Instead, Nie Jiuluo shoved him away, using the force to steady herself.
Yan Tuo staggered back two steps, no longer concerned with Nie Jiuluo, quickly pulled out and threw away the syringe, then pressed the injection site: this drug was truly potent—in just moments, that area was already numb and stiff. Moreover, he could feel the numbness spreading like dispersing ants in all directions…
Nie Jiuluo tossed aside what she was holding—a wet towel. She looked at Yan Tuo while pulling out a strand of her hair, casually wiping off the filth as if nothing had happened: “I’m fine. It’s Gou Ya’s blood, not mine. Don’t worry.”
Damn it!
Yan Tuo was so furious he could almost spit blood. He quickly reached back to draw his gun from his waist, but while his arm had strength for the draw, by the time he tried to aim, his entire forearm was numb. His fingers spasmed, and the gun slipped from his hand, clanging as it slid about ten feet away—closer to Nie Jiuluo.
He stepped to retrieve the gun, but his leg joints were paralyzed—the step turned into a face-first fall. Nie Jiuluo ignored him, picked up a nearby chair, planted it firmly on the ground, and sat down.
Yan Tuo used all his strength to reach for the gun. His trembling fingers had just touched the grip when Nie Jiuluo’s foot came down, pinning both his hand and the gun beneath it.
She wore short boots with hard soles and shiny leather, exposing a slice of delicate white ankle at the shaft.
Yan Tuo looked up.
Nie Jiuluo sat in the chair, leaning down toward him, some strands of her long hair falling onto his shoulders.
She said: “You really shouldn’t have invited me here.”