Chapter 115: Underworld Enforcement (Part III)

Swish… The baleful wind roared as he rushed toward the source of the sound. Two minutes, three minutes… after four minutes, he finally stood before the entrance of a room roughly forty square meters in size.

There was light inside.

There was no door, so he could clearly see Li Jiankang inside, pressed desperately against the wall, his face etched with absolute despair.

The room was dark.

Not just due to the lack of light, but because of… the color.

There were countless bloodstains. The walls and floor were layered in shades of purplish-black. It wasn't the blood of one or two people; it was at least twenty!

Bleached bones were scattered everywhere, some still clinging to scraps of uneaten flesh. The jagged bones were piled into a small hill, alongside countless fish carcasses. Under the flickering light, the room resembled a ghastly den.

But none of that was the most striking feature; the most eye-catching things were the two pitch-black coffins beside him.

Offerings were laid out in front. On one coffin sat a black-and-white memorial portrait of a middle-aged woman, flanked by two candles. As for the other coffin… the lid seemed to have just been placed on, yet it wasn't closed properly, leaving a gap.

It looked as if… the person inside had just crawled out.

In front of this coffin were also two candles, a plate of fresh fruit, and… a black-and-white portrait of a young man.

In the photo, he was smiling.

"A very unique arrangement," the ghost-headed blade dragged across the floor with a rasping sound. Qin Ye walked straight toward the coffins. Li Jiankang suddenly charged over like a madman, blocking the path: "What—what are you doing?!"

Before he could finish, Qin Ye kicked him aside. With a muffled groan, Li Jiankang flew like a cannonball, slammed straight into the wall, and slid down in a twisted heap.

"Do you still think you can walk out of here alive?" Qin Ye wiped the ghost-headed blade with his finger, his expression indifferent. "If you went out, the most you'd get is a life sentence, but I… I sentence you to death."

With the impact, Li Jiankang’s hat, sunglasses, and mask had all fallen off, revealing a gaunt, skeletal face—calling it skin draped over a skull would not be an exaggeration.

His skin was pale, his lips were colorless; he looked exactly like a zombie that had crawled out of a grave.

Qin Ye gently stroked the coffin. Li Jiankang slumped to the floor, sapped of all strength, clutching his head and sobbing in a low voice: "Don't open it… please…"

Qin Ye ignored him. The man’s sobbing sounded like mosquitoes in the dead of night. He picked up the photo album from the floor, dusted it off, placed it on the coffin, and then kicked the lid shut.

Click… As the four corners of the coffin aligned, the sound of mechanical locks engaging echoed. Qin Ye gave the coffin an unexpected tap, then crouched before the sobbing Li Jiankang, smiling. "Custom-made? Must have been expensive, right?"

Li Jiankang lifted his bloodless face. The look in his eyes was incredibly complex—despair, relief, and hope all mingled together. His pale lips parted, and he trembled: "What… what exactly are you…"

Before he could finish, a fist slammed into his face, knocking the man to the ground. The final string of terror in his heart snapped, and he clutched his face, wailing.

"Wuwu… aaaaah…"

Qin Ye stood up, smoothing his ghostly official uniform, and let out a breath. "You know, aside from Wang Cheng-hao, you are the second human to see me truly lose my temper."

"If you had surrendered, I might have held you in slightly higher regard. But you didn't… you chose to err time and time again, unleashing that thing." Qin Ye walked over slowly. "I couldn't figure out where your problem lay until I encountered Tenglong Real Estate… Li Cheng had been dead for a long time, hadn't he?"

"After Li Cheng killed his mother… you acted on impulse and killed him, didn't you?"

Li Jiankang closed his eyes in agony, lying on the floor. He felt all his strength draining away. His lips trembled, but he remained silent.

Qin Ye stood beside him, his voice heavy. "Did you kill him? Accidentally? In a fit of rage? Or… was it intentional?"

He turned his head to look at the incense and photos on the coffin and sighed. "It must have been accidental, I suppose…"

Arsace murmured, "Humans are such complex, incomprehensible creatures."

"I loved him." At that moment, Li Jiankang, lying on the floor like a dead dog, suddenly spoke with a choked, raspy voice. "I just… I just wanted him to be well… I wanted him to understand…"

"After all… in this family, it was only the two of us left…"

"I was just too agitated… I grabbed his throat and asked why he did it… why he didn't think about the fact that she was his mother? By the time I realized he wasn't breathing… it was… too late…"

Qin Ye scoffed. "If not for what happened afterward, I would express sympathy. But… can you tell me what you did after that?"

Li Jiankang choked, his sobs mixed with a mournful wail, yet he could not utter a single word.

"Don't want to talk about it? Or are you ashamed to mention it? Or have you finally discovered the existence of a conscience?" Qin Ye mocked. "You… are more terrifying than a ghost."

"Thud!!" At that moment, both coffins trembled violently. Then… they began to bang frantically!

Thud-thud-thud… Thud-thud-thud!!

Accompanied by a hair-raising screech, a broken, hoarse voice cried out: "Blood… flesh…"

"Dad… I'm hungry again…"

Scritch… After the violent pounding, it sounded like claws dragging across glass. A scratchy, rasping sound—the sound of fingernails gouging into the coffin wood.

The candlelight flickered, the dim light pulsing in and out. Qin Ye said coldly, "You don't dare mention it, do you? Very well, I'll help you remember."

"Raising a corpse." He looked at the coffins with disgust. "You found some method of corpse-raising somewhere, and you kept your wife… and your son… all of them sustained."

"When I first saw you, I wondered why your skin was so pale. Was it severe anemia? Now I understand… at the beginning, you were using your own blood to feed the zombies."

He grabbed the sleeve of Li Jiankang’s wrist and pulled it back. The man struggled half-heartedly before giving up completely.

His wrists were covered in a dense web of deep and shallow knife wounds.

Qin Ye shook his head. "No… that wasn't it. At first, this must have been your main storage room. You started by feeding them fish, right? Looking at all these fish on the floor tells me that… but then you realized they wouldn't eat them; they only had an appetite for human blood and flesh?"

"Gradually, you couldn't keep up. You needed more blood and flesh. What did you do? You came up with a brilliant plan."

Qin Ye stared straight into his eyes. Li Jiankang, a man in his forties, desperately tried to avoid his gaze, as if the other man's eyes could see into the darkest corners of his soul. But Qin Ye grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look.

He closed his eyes, trembling.

He dared not, would not, could not.

The sins he had committed were too deep, his hands stained with too much blood, and he could no longer stop.

"You told your own story… you began to lure people in under the guise of 'slaying demons and exorcising ghosts.' Perhaps at first, you didn't know that zombies only eat human flesh, but the first person… you definitely stood there and watched as he was torn to shreds by your wife and son! Right here in this place!"

"This isn't a storage room. It’s your slaughterhouse. A ghost story written by a living man."

Li Jiankang’s eyelids fluttered violently; he said nothing.

Qin Ye tossed him aside like a rag and said coldly, "Do you know how I guessed it?"

"After I left your place, I kept wondering why you were doing this."

"Until I met Tenglong Real Estate, I realized you were consciously attracting people into this hunting ground. And everyone was reported missing. I kept asking myself: do you need people, or do you need… blood and flesh?"

A calm voice echoed from Qin Ye’s shoulder: "You really have a sharp tongue."

"You’ve laid his heart completely bare. Even if you don't kill him, suicide is his only path now," Arsace said indifferently. "He loved his family. You can tell from how he went out to work for his son and returned to run the fish market—his son was his entire world. Living like this is just too exhausting."

Qin Ye scoffed. "So, when he realized his own blood wasn't enough, he started tricking others into this hunting ground. Men, women, children… over thirty lives… how long did you feed your family of three with them? Hmm? Six months? Eight months?"

"What really made me sure was that he refused the Special Investigation Bureau. They are the only ones capable of uncovering the truth, but he refused. Why?"

"Because he was afraid. He knew his wife and son too well. Even though they had become zombies, I suspect that when the Special Investigation Bureau came, the pair of zombies below didn't dare to breathe, or perhaps there were other anomalies that made him feel they were a threat. So he refused them?"

Dead silence.

He didn't speak again. Li Jiankang slumped on the floor, head buried. After a few dozen seconds, a faint, choked sob rose in the darkness.

Then, the choking turned into weeping, and finally into a wailing, tear-streaked howl.

"Aaaaaah…" His cry was almost a lament. He clutched his pale head with both hands, mourning like a madman: "Wuwuwu…"

After crying for a full three minutes, he suddenly slammed his head against the floor, facing the mountain of bleached bones: "I… I am sorry to you all… I am so sorry!!!"

"I am sorry… I am sorry, I am sorry! I am sorry… wuwuwu!"

Heart-wrenching.

For him, hadn't this past year been a form of torture?

The torture of reason, the torture of madness. In this moment, he actually felt a sense of release.

"Who said you could be released?" Qin Ye watched Li Jiankang, who was still banging his head against the bone pile, and gritted his teeth. "I said that if the mortal world cannot judge you, I, as an official of the Underworld, will!"

"Over thirty lives… you lured them into this room to unleash the two monsters in these coffins. These thirty-plus vengeful spirits are staring right at you. Good and evil have their rewards, the cycle of heaven is absolute. Ask your own heart, by what right do you deserve release?"

Qin Ye could see them.

And he saw them very clearly.

Hovering above the pile of bones were over thirty phantom figures—monks and Taoists, frauds and charlatans, even four practitioners at the level of ghost-catchers from the Special Investigation Bureau. They all stared at the kowtowing Li Jiankang with cold, vengeful satisfaction.

Not a shred of pity was shown.

Seeing Qin Ye look at them, they all turned and bowed ninety degrees.

……………………………………………………………………

These are the 4 chapters from 12:00 to 3:00.

The new book is out; I hope for your favor. I hope everyone can subscribe and enjoy it. Please do not take the fruits of others' labor for granted. Thank you!

(End of Chapter)