Chapter 11 - Justice always prevails
Translator : KuroShinji
TL/Checker & Editor : SilentDawn
Editor & Proofreader : Mariabel
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After the “Son of Destiny” left, Gu Ye took out his little porcelain bottle and let the ghost sister with heavy ghost qi and her ferocious son out.
“Haih, what a lovely child.” Gu Ye couldn’t stop himself from patting the ghost child’s head.
After staying with Gu Ye for nearly a month, w.a.n.g QianQian and her son lost a lot of their Sha Qi and were able to maintain a rational mind. The little one seemed to have developed a bit of human conscience and now won’t bite at the sight of another human. Held by his mother, the ghost child looked pretty docile. Gu Ye sent the pair into the building through the window, and the ghost child grinned happily, displaying a row of sharp teeth.
Gu Ye once again patted his head. How adorable! What a good child who doesn’t even eat humans!
In order to protect the mother and son pair from Yang Qi, Gu Ye offered to give them an amulet free of charge but was refused by w.a.n.g QianQian. Instructing her son to bow to Gu Ye, she then disappeared with her kid in tow right after.
Gu Ye sighed. “This sister is quite ruthless.”
Gu Yang was curious. After hearing about the tragedy of her life, he had never dared to look at the female ghost. Covering his eyes, he asked, “What do you mean?”
“It means that she wants to have her perfect family of three and doesn’t want to reincarnate.” Gu Ye chuckled and pulled his younger brother up. “Justice might come late, but it’s always there. You should bear this in mind : As long as you’re alive, heaven is always watching.”
Gu Yang listened obediently. At this moment, he felt as if his brother was really an immortal! Especially when Gu Ye said things he couldn’t understand, he sounded super wise!
The concert had been going on for an hour. Li Rui went to the bathroom to change his clothes, and when he was washing his hands, he looked at his face covered with bright makeup in the mirror. Even the heavy makeup couldn’t cover the dark circles under his eyes when viewed closely. Pinching in between his eyebrows, he forced himself to relax and adjust his state as soon as possible.
At this time, a dark shadow suddenly flashed behind him. Li Rui frowned and turned around, wondering which paparazzi dog or sasaeng fan was so obsessed to follow him into the bathroom. Not seeing anybody, Li Rui turned back calmly while cursing in his mind. But what he saw in the mirror caused him to be so horrified that he took a few steps backwards in shock. There was a small black shadow that looked like a child on his shoulder, grinning at him.
Li Rui looked at his shoulder in horror but saw nothing, yet when he turned back to look at the mirror, the baby was still there.
Li Rui’s breath was stuck in his throat and he tried to run out of the bathroom in fear. There’s a ghost, ah! Unfortunately, before he could get out of the bathroom, he tripped and fell to the ground with a loud thud. It was so painful that Li Rui felt as if his face had been deformed and he was falling to his death!
At this moment, Li Rui felt his ear being bitten, and when he shakily touched it, the pain worsened. It was so painful that he wanted to tear off his ears, and his face paled. At the thought of a ghost riding on his shoulder, he got gooseb.u.mps all over. He covered his ears and turned to look at the mirror, and sure enough, the ghost was gnawing at his ears.
Frightened, Li Rui said with a trembling voice, “Little ancestor, we have no grievances in the past and no feuds to talk about currently. Why are you attacking me? Say what you want, I’ll burn it for you!”
“No grievances in the past, no feuds currently?” A ghost with long hair silently appeared in the mirror. With strong irony in her cold voice, she said, “Li Rui, don’t you recognize us mother and son?”
Hearing the familiar voice, Li Rui looked at the ghost’s corroded face with features so deformed that one couldn’t even differentiate between the nose and the mouth. This face had appeared in his dreams many times, waking him up at midnight.
“QianQian, you’re…QianQian?” Li Rui finally reacted and scrambled towards the door, screaming, “Ghosts! There are ghosts, ah!”
The bathroom door slammed shut with a bang right in front of Li Rui’s agent and a.s.sistant, who were following him.“Rui-Ge has diarrhea? Why is he staying so long in the toilet? He still has songs to perform.”
“Li Rui, open the door. Why did you lock the door?”
Li Rui heard the voices outside and frantically tapped on the door. However, the people outside seemed to be unable to hear it. The more he continued to bang on the door, the colder he felt. Turning back, the little ghost had already exposed its true malevolent nature. Baring its teeth at him while giggling, it approached closer and closer before clinging onto his neck. “Daddy, hug.”
Li Rui saw the ghost’s mouth open widely and held his head in fear. “Don’t come over! Don’t come over! QianQian! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to kill you! Forgive me!” Li Rui was so frightened that he almost collapsed, spouting excuses incoherently. “I also regretted it deeply over the years, forgive me! It wasn’t easy for me to get to where I am right now, it really wasn’t easy! I burned paper money and all types of things for you every year, you should have received it, right?! I love you! You love me so much too, you’ll let me go, right?”
w.a.n.g QianQian looked at the man that she once truly loved from the bottom of her heart. He still said the word “love” like it was nothing. She couldn’t help herself from sneering. “What you love is your fame. You can rest a.s.sured that us mother and son will always be with you, even if you fall into the abyss.”
Li Rui’s agent noticed that it had been ten minutes, yet Li Rui still hadn’t got out. When he called and received no answer, he was afraid that something might have happened inside, so he found a security guard to open the door. Once the door opened, they saw Li Rui lying on the ground, motionless. The agent rushed to his side and put his finger under his nose before letting out a sigh of relief. “He just fainted.”
The a.s.sistant quickly carried Li Rui out to the doctor for treatment.
It was only halfway through the concert, yet Li Rui had suddenly fainted. The agent had a headache. Looking at the unconscious Li Rui, the agent thought about what to do next, but suddenly, his artist opened his eyes before sitting up straight, scaring the people near him.
“Are you okay? Were you too tired?” The agent was concerned. “Can you still go on? Hold on for another two hours, I’ll give you a day off tomorrow. Go get some rest.”
Li Rui turned to his agent and nodded mechanically.
The agent frowned, not at ease. They can’t let the fans out there wait. He patted Li Rui on the shoulder encouragingly and pushed him to the side to change clothes. “If you can’t do it, just say so. I’ll figure something out.”
After he went up the stage, Li Rui acted as usual and everything was normal. He sang another song which aroused the fans’ enthusiasm, screaming as if they wanted the ceiling to be turned upside down. The agent was relieved and let out a huge sigh, but out of the blue, Li Rui suddenly knelt on the stage.
The agent’s heart thumped loudly and he nervously stood up. The whole stadium was quiet, not knowing why Li Rui was kneeling. Even if he wanted to thank the fans, he didn’t need to kneel down like that.
“I’m a sinner.” Li Rui firmly said with his deep and magnetic voice. “I killed my fiance and son. I will turn myself in.”
Everyone present : “…”
The agent cursed under his breath and directed the still stupefied a.s.sistant to rush onto the stage : “Drag him down! Is he crazy?!”
The audience went silent. After the shock, shouts of “Impossible!” swirled crazily around the room. The fans wished they could rush up to the stage and force Li Rui to stand up and stop making such a distasteful joke. The venue was chaotic for a while with the security personnel unable to do anything.
The reporters hiding within the fans also reacted quickly, clipping the video of the scene that had just happened and excitedly spreading it online : Big news! Li Rui, the singer, admitted to murder at his concert!
Soon, similar stories made headlines, and in just a few minutes, the whole internet was dominated by the explosive news, crashing many servers. In recent years, Li Rui had done a lot of good deeds like donating to welfare inst.i.tutions every year and acting very kind-hearted toward fans like a warm gentleman. How could such a person commit murder?
Many fans didn’t believe it, and even when they saw the video, they still denied it. The fangirls claimed that the video had been faked or it had been some sort of prank. Even if Li Rui did kill someone, that person must’ve been in the wrong and should’ve died. Their Rui-Ge was such a good person, he absolutely couldn’t do anything wrong!
After Gu Ye and Gu Yang returned home, they were reprimanded by Mrs. Gu who pulled on their ears and locked them in the small dining area where they were told to eat while reflecting on their actions.
The brothers ate the four dishes along with a soup that their mother left for them, closed the door, and scrolled through social media gleefully.
For Gu Yang, the behavior of some fans was incomprehensible. “These fans are somewhat crazy. They actually believe that even if Li Rui really killed someone, that person was doomed and Li Rui was right to do so.”
Gu Ye sneered. “The more they act like this, the angrier w.a.n.g QianQian will become and the one who will suffer is Li Rui. What’s more, Li Rui himself confessed, so the police won’t leave this matter alone either.”
Sure enough, the next morning, a variety of news sites reported that Li Rui had been arrested on the grounds of murder. He had actually taken the liberty to confess himself at his concert in front of so many people, and interrogation was in order.
However, things didn’t go as smoothly as Gu Ye had expected. Li Rui suddenly backed away and said that he had been talking nonsense and that he hadn’t killed anybody at all. His agent also helped him white-wash, saying that Li Rui had been too tired lately and was suffering from serious depression. When he has episodes, he would often have hallucinations and would fall in a trance and be completely unaware of his actions. There was evidence of these claims, and coupled with his agency manipulating public opinion, the police that arrested Li Rui in accordance with the law was made into a villain. The public backlash forced the police to let the male singer go. Seeing these remarks online, Gu Ye’s anger burst. He took out a pair of scissors from the drawer, took out a piece of rune paper, and cut the paper into a human shape.
That night, the police received a peculiar phone call. The caller reported that there was a female corpse at Wu Middle School : the corpse of the pregnant woman Li Rui killed five years ago, to be precise. The report was concise, even down to the details on how Li Rui had murdered her.
How can a stranger know these details so clearly? The police immediately traced the call to a phone box but only found a small paperman on the ground with a red dot on its forehead.
“There’s something I want you to see.” Captain Li Dui showed the paperman to a friend of his who was a metaphysician of the Xuanshu Society. “Why do I feel that this item is from your line of work? Can you find out who controlled this object? He’s vital to the case.”
There were always things that couldn’t be solved by normal means, which was why there was a secret inst.i.tution that the government refused to admit existed —— The XuanShu Society. This inst.i.tution had strict regulations : they would help people solve mysterious events, periodically help with case investigations, and provide evidence that couldn’t be found through high-tech means. Because they didn’t do anything malicious, the relevant governmental departments chose to turn a blind eye to their existence. Captain Li’s friend was a member of this inst.i.tution.
The man took a careful look at the paperman and said, “The technique is very similar to a person’s. He’s the only one who can control rune papers to this extent.”
“Who is it?”
The middle-aged friend of Captain Li lamented, “A genius spell master. He’s a young man but too wayward. As long as he thinks it’s right, he will do it regardless of anything else. He would often disregard regulations, and he would even dare use forbidden spells. He became an outlaw at a young age in the circle.”
Li pointed at the paperman. “This is his work?”
The middle-aged man shook his head. “That’s impossible. He’s already dead. He died at a very young age.”
Captain Li wondered, “An outlaw at a young age? Is this a compliment or discrediting him? What did he do?”