Jiang Li had no plan to release Gu Mochou from the imprisonment. At least, not this week. After all, in that place, he finally managed to make her reflect. Probably she was even doubting her life now, or deeply regretting. Her mind was probably full of Zhao Bolin since the den of devils amidst that forest was no more to distract her. He didn"t know and didn"t think it was important for him to know.
Two days later, in the body of Lang Lei, he went to work and played a piano piece at the request of a rich sir who had brought his entire family for a holiday celebration.
After that, he went back to the kitchen where the two idle sous chefs were sampling the work of their apprentices. It was a fancy-looking dish and it smelled nice even from the doorway. Jiang Li smiled awkwardly since his stomach rumbled.
"Xiao Jiang!" A junior chef busy mincing onions paused his hands and looked at him with a laugh. "Hungry?"
Jiang Li gave him an annoyed glance.
"Yeah. Hatefully." The ghost wanted to complain because upon possession he would sense whatever the body was sensing. Yet when it comes to eating, if he remained in the takeover, he would always end up vomiting whatever he had swallowed down. How unfair.
"You want some?" Huo Fen, one of the sous chefs, extended his hand that was holding the plate of half-finished food.
Jiang Li"s, or rather, Lang Lei"s face momentarily darkened.
The other sous chef only looked at him, showing no intention of sharing. He even turned his back as if to hide his food from robbers.
A couple of moments later, a weird sound came from him followed by a scary stench. The faces of everyone in the room turned awful. Most of them reached for covers at lightning speed to salvage the prepared ingredients. Their professionalism was impeccable. The others busied themselves with covering their noses.
"d.a.m.n you, Fatty Huo!"
Huo Fen, the one called, stared blankly at his colleague, Wu Chao. Then when he realized why he was cursed, his face warped in anger. "What did you say? b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Hey, everyone knows it"s you!"
The one called Wu Chao blushed in shame when he noticed he was the sole target of the unfriendly stares. The man touched his nose and said. "Well. Accidents happen. That"s why we prepare covers and stuff. By the way, the thought just came to me."
Jiang Li had luckily retreated and given back the authority of the body to its actual owner before the dreadful sound echoed. He looked on with a curious face, waiting for the shameless statements from the sous chef. On the other hand, the boy whose soul had yet to acclimate from the sudden relinquis.h.i.+ng glared at Jiang Li, his palm was on half of his face.
"You"re too cruel!"
The others who heard the boy"s remarks did not know it was not meant for Wu Chao. They felt gooseb.u.mps when Jiang Li turned back into a ghost, but their annoyance at the sous chef was greater, so they immediately dismissed the feeling.
Wu Chao then spoke, raising his plate. "I read this somewhere in Weibo. You see, this is meat. Its source was a dead animal. What if that, you know, "that", is the angry spirits of the animals we ate? That"s why it"s loud and smelly?"
Jiang Li was dumbfounded for some time before he burst into laughter, clapping at the sous chef"s way of diffusing the awkward atmosphere. He laughed louder when one of the ladies threw her spatula to the man out of anger. Needless to say, the others did not standby too, and began to scold Wu Chao. The head chef was outside anyways. The annoyed people did not care if they were ranked lower than Wu Chao.
"Genius." The ghost looked more evil as he laughed madly. Lang Lei, the boy who had eventually learned to overcome his fear of socializing, secretly sprinkle some salt on Jiang Li for being irritated by his actions earlier.
Naturally, the salt did not do any damage to the ghost, apart from feeling like he was bitten by a black ant.
Night time came and Jiang Li left the restaurant after bidding Lang Lei goodbye and thanking him for letting him borrow his body for several months.
Feeling something oppressing appearing north, he climbed to the top of the highest building in the vicinity and looked in the directions of the village.
"They" were late.
There was no telling what delayed them, if it was the queuing system in the underworld. But now the officials from there were here.
The ghosts around that area would not be able to avoid being dragged to h.e.l.l and would probably be forced to reincarnate into individuals with fairly bad luck.
And the head of their army?
Well, they would not easily find the Red Lady. In fact, because she finally changed her mind and approached to join forces with him, the envoys would probably let her off and allow her to stay until he was no longer around.
He could not help but remember their last conversation.
Two days ago, the female ghost king had found the father of the female lead. The man was in the city. For the past six months, this sc.u.mbag was actually leeching off of his daughter after learning that Zhao Ai was close to Fan Zheng and Zhang Jian. When the vengeful female ghost king located him, she had almost ripped him into pieces. Perhaps, the old dude would not have an intact corpse if not for Jiang Li"s intervention. And no, Jiang Li did not talk to that vengeful spirit directly. He sent Xiao Gui, the poltergeist ruling an abandoned school in the northern part of the city.
Done reminding her that she no longer had her license her kill, Xiao Gui maintained a safe distance and nervously read the piece of paper handed to him by his leader. His almost crying face couldn"t look uglier. "H-hey, how about you just curse him and stick to him so he would always be unlucky and followed by misfortune?"
The creepy-looking female ghost king lowered her head, making her eyes that were staring straight at him seem more piercing.
"L-leader is nearby. No need to panic."
Xioa Gui looked pitiful, like a bullied schoolboy, no one would easily guess that he was a powerful poltergeist. There was no whatsoever hint of magnificence in his trembling body, which was reasonable due to the fact that the other party standing was strong enough to pulverize his soul in a few seconds.
It was out of his belief in his boss that he carried on with his task, stuttering out the speech prepared for him.
"L-look, Miss, no, Milady."
"You have waited for almost half a century, haven"t you? T-that"s more or less fifty years. It"s that long. So I"m telling you, you"re being unfair to yourself that way."
"The momentary satisfaction you"ll get from killing him will not be worth your wait. Y-you should curse that man, regularly give him terrible experiences, open his third eye, so you can see him suffer for the rest of his life."
"Yes, let him live. So you"ll see him suffer for a lifetime. That way, you"ll be also spent a long time happily watching him fall and fall again."
"Boss probably trained in MLM before." Xiao Gui swallowed some imaginary saliva then cleared his throat.
Sure enough, the Red Lady seemed to have fallen into the traps of words. She fell silent for a full minute before her red-rimmed eyes settled on the hateful face of the former village head. Her lips trembled for several seconds before words sounding from underground poured out, "I... see..."
Since that day, the nameless powerful ghost lurked around the village head. She knew how to give people nightmares and cause sleep paralysis. But she did not understand how to effectively curse someone. Therefore, she simply destroys important items from time to time, injects malicious aura all over the house, and invites stray ghosts into it.
It successfully made the life of the man successfully harder than ever. Add in this the fact that prior to the ghost king"s unwelcomed latching, Zhao Ming was already in a pinch for being hounded by debt collectors, with no money to pay them up since Zhao Ai was missing.
That middle-aged man had no idea that within the syndicate, while Zhang Jian who was close to his daughter was the heir, there were several factions within their organization.
A few of his cousins were dying to steal away the crown prince t.i.tle from that guy. In fact, Zhang Jian was heavily wounded on his first encounter with Zhao Ai because of them. When these hyenas found out that their crown prince transferred university for a girl, they schemed to attack him using Zhao Ai.
The "traffickers" were from Gu Mochou"s side. The ones who later led Zhao Ming, the father of that village girl, to gambling and drugs were minions of Zhang Jian"s rivals. Two sides that should be enemies unknowingly worked with each other.
Jiang Li"s lips curled into a grin, reminded of what Zhan Rong said on the day they had a talk, when the villainess couldn"t see them because of the disabled mirror screen.
"To be honest, I quite admire her intelligence, dedication, and diligence. It"s hard to set up layered traps and make sure no link will be broken. So she"s amazing in that aspect."
"But at the same time I doubt her IQ," said Zhan Rong calmly, yet with her eyes gleaming with a bit of contempt.
"It"s a cycle," she continued.
"There will be no buyers if there"re no sellers. The traffickers are guilty of making that village like that. They wouldn"t entertain the idea of buying women and children if they had no channel to get them. Even if she"s not kidnapped but trapped, she should know by now that Zhao Bolin is. Since she has so much free time after destroying the village, can"t she direct her hate from that innocent country girl to those syndicate members and traffickers?"
The subject of Zhan Rong"s derision was mindlessly floating around in that small room, thoughts juggling between reflecting, getting angry at her abductor, and wanting to see a certain someone. Gu Mochou was a mess.
"I seemed to be so evil on that last attack," Jiang Li chuckled.
The small burst of light on the horizon that only ghosts like him could see finally vanished. That light should be quite big at the actual place since it was a portal to escort more than a hundred spirits. The envoys definitely used a large portal as they were known for being impatient. The light did not last over ten seconds. It was apparent the envoys did not wait for the ghost army to line up and cross to the other side one by one.
His mind went back to the villainess. About ten envoys took those souls away. Those ten were only for today, the ones who had come for the suicidal group at the hospital several days ago were another matter. The spirits were simple-minded beings, they would definitely be forced to say who organized the ma.s.sacre once the envoys ordered them to talk. Even if most of the blame went to the Red Lady, Gu Mochou"s name would still be mentioned. Moreover, the blame for the fake food poisoning solely fell on her head.
A corner of Jiang Li"s lips twitched.
"If I didn"t confine her soul there, today, she would have been discovered and besieged by more than fifteen death envoys."
"Those people would not care if she is dead, alive, or in a coma. They would drag her down for the crime of using ghosts to wreak havoc on earth."
"Can she fight back?"
His mission would fail once Gu Mochou was dragged back to the world of the dead.
"Forget it. Somebody"s waiting for me." The lights in the rooftop flickered and in but a second, one of the shadows there disappeared.