Chapter 13#
Haunted House#
Huaicheng, Unnatural Bureau.
After Cheng Ze organized the teratoma matter into a file and sent it to the General Bureau, she sat in the office, waiting anxiously for a reply from her superiors.
In all fairness, this incident was not handled perfectly.
They didn’t get any useful information from Li Jianyang, and the captured A-level heresy was still in a defective state. But to her surprise, the usually strict General Bureau didn’t say much, directly archiving the teratoma and considering the task completed.
At eight o’clock in the evening, Cheng Ze received a call from her mentor.
Cheng Ze was slightly stunned when she saw the caller ID, and quickly answered the phone.
“Hello, Mentor.”
A gentle female voice came from the other end of the phone: “Hello, Xiao Ze. In a few days, one of your senior brothers will go to Huaicheng. I’m notifying you in advance.”
Cheng Ze: “Senior brother?”
The mentor said: “Yes, your senior brother Luo Xingyan.”
Cheng Ze’s pupils suddenly dilated, “Luo Xingyan?!”
Luo Xingyan, codenamed [Shackles], the eleventh S-level executor on the world rankings.
“Why is he coming to Huaicheng?”
Luo Xingyan is an S-level executor. Such ability users are usually impossible to be assigned to guard a single place. They travel around the world all year round to track and solve that mysterious “Monster Empire”. Although traces of an A-level heresy and the Story King appeared in Huaicheng, which can be said to be a major event, because of Ning Weichen’s intervention, the matter was archived as archived. After everything is over, why send an S-level executor over?
Mentor: “This is the arrangement of the superiors.”
Cheng Ze hesitated: “Because of that heir of the Ning family?”
The mentor gave a wry smile: “No, the Unnatural Bureau cannot interfere in any affairs of the Ning family. It was the Prophet who predicted that many dangerous things would happen in Huaicheng in the future, so Luo Xingyan was sent over to take precautions first.”
Cheng Ze raised her eyebrows: “Dangerous things?”
The mentor nodded: “Yes. Your Senior Brother Luo is still in Jerusalem dealing with a religious heresy incident. Communications are closed. I will ask him to contact you after he finishes his work.”
Cheng Ze: “Okay, I’ll wait for Senior Brother Luo’s arrival.”
The mentor exhorted: “Be careful. I feel that the world has not been very peaceful recently. There have been six cases of spontaneous combustion in Jerusalem this month. The fire started from the heart, burning from the inside out, ‘purifying’ people alive. The General Bureau detected a super S-level heresy aura in Jerusalem. If I guessed correctly, it should be the moderator of the sixth section of the Monster Forum.”
Cheng Ze couldn’t help raising her voice: “Moderator of the sixth section?”
Mentor: “Yes, although we don’t know its name yet, we have learned some of its style of action through many encounters. It concerns all folklore, religion, beliefs, and legends. It is now mainly active near the Wailing Wall and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but its migration trajectory is eastward, towards China.”
Cheng Ze stopped talking, pursing her lips tightly.
A Story King has already made the entire China jittery and uneasy. If another moderator comes…
The mentor comforted: “Don’t worry, things haven’t reached the worst point yet.” She paused and asked the doubt in her heart: “Xiao Ze, I read the file you just sent. Did Ning Weichen really say that?”
Cheng Ze hesitated for a moment, then nodded: “Yes, Teacher. He said the Story King took the thing inside the teratoma, and later he sewed the teratoma into the corpse stitcher’s stomach. Teacher, did he lie?”
The mentor laughed out loud: “Not likely. You underestimate him too much. An A-level heresy is simply not worth this heir’s effort. He actually came to Huaicheng for a vacation.”
“Vacation?”
“Yes, Mrs. Qin of Huaicheng is his mother’s younger sister. The head of the Ning family wanted him to familiarize himself with the language environment and humanities of the motherland after returning to the country, so he casually assigned him a task. After the task is over, he is not in a hurry to go back, and will visit relatives on the way.”
“Casually accepting an A-level task?”
“This is not strange. The Ning family has so many special medicines and heresy implant samples. Even if he is an ordinary person, he can become a genius relying on biotechnology. Besides, he is a genius to begin with, a genius in all aspects. Haven’t you met him? How do you feel?”
Cheng Ze choked. How did she feel?
She recalled the teenager she saw in the carriage that day.
She had to say, when that cold and outstanding face turned around, she and everyone else felt an extremely aggressive superior suppression. A danger and ruthlessness completely inappropriate for his age, but appearing incredibly normal because of his identity.
And the moment that teenager casually wiped his hands, looked up and smiled at her. His temperament suddenly became “light”.
Frivolous, slighting, flighty.
A pair of peach blossom eyes smiling, tone polite and gentle. His temperament was too unique, having a different kind of graceful demeanor even standing in a sea of blood and corpses.
It’s just that everyone present understood what kind of deep distance lay behind this understated “lightness”—Ning Weichen did not hide this indifference.
This was her first impression of Ning Weichen. Cheng Ze considered her words and said: “Not a very easy-going personality.”
The mentor laughed: “Then do you know what most of the evaluations he received in the United States are?”
“What?”
“Kind, perfect, approachable.”
Cheng Ze: “…”
The mentor even made a joke: “The information I have here shows that he had countless pursuers in his student days, who unanimously believed that if they could date him, Ning Weichen would definitely be a ‘Perfect lover’.”
Cheng Ze frowned: “Mentor, I think he is very dangerous.”
“We all know.” The mentor sighed: “He won’t stay in Huaicheng for too long. Try to avoid contact with him.”
Cheng Ze: “Okay.”
The mentor said: “I’m just curious why he was so cooperative.”
Cheng Ze was actually puzzled herself. Butler Li’s attitude was so strong at that time that she didn’t have much confidence, but Ning Weichen took the initiative to stay.
The mentor worried: “The missing part of the teratoma is the grotesquerie written by the Story King. The creation of the moderator of the seventh section, the best result is to return it to the original owner. Otherwise, letting it wander outside may be more dangerous than the A-level heresy itself.”
Cheng Ze pursed her lips and remained silent for a long time. The more she dealt with heresies, the heavier the sense of powerlessness in her heart became.
For so many years, with the ‘Forum’ as the source of the Monster Empire, they still didn’t know the full picture. The moderator of the seventh section is the Story King, the moderator of the fourth section is ENIAC, but above ENIAC there are even more mysterious restricted areas.
Zone One, Zone Two, Zone Three. These three moderators whose aura the Unnatural Bureau has never captured in history. The Forbidden Zone of Gods.
Cheng Ze said softly: “Mentor, many times I feel that the essence of human beings is really weak, powerless in the face of heresies.”
However, her mentor was silent for a moment, then actually laughed out loud.
“Xiao Ze, you are wrong, you are completely wrong.”
The elder’s gentle yet powerful voice came slowly through the phone.
“Do you believe that the strongest executor in the world has no supernatural powers at all?”
Cheng Ze widened her pupils in surprise: “What?!”
The mentor said with a complex tone: “Executors with innate awakening abilities cannot do without biological agents; executors with acquired implanted abilities completely steal the power of heresies. But in the top-secret files of Butterfly Island, the executor who I know was once the undisputed number one. The human characteristics on him are very clear.”
“He can’t control space, can’t control plants, and can’t control water, fire, wind, or thunder elements. All he has is a pair of hands and a brain.”
“We learned in junior high school history books that the fundamental sign distinguishing humans from other animals is the making and use of tools. We evolved from ancient apes to modern humans, unfolding thousands of years of long civilization. All wisdom is actually contained in the hands and brain. Their meaning is creation and learning.”
“If you really want to talk about supernatural power.”
“Xiao Ze, his supernatural power is learning. Learning everything. As a ‘human’, learning ’everything’.”
The mentor was lost in thought for a moment, then laughed.
“From him, you can see the limit of humanity, a limit that can rival gods.”
*
Ye Sheng left the Xie family that day without saying a word to Huang Yiyue’s plea. He neither agreed nor refused. But Huang Yiyue still smiled through tears as if he agreed, happily kept him for dinner, and after being coldly rejected, eagerly asked the driver to take him back to school.
Ye Sheng sat in the back seat, looking down at the box in his hand, frowning and studying the shell-style lock.
Huang Yiyue said he had the key, but in his memory, he had never received a key to open it.
He even doubted if this lock could really be opened with a key.
He turned it over and over but didn’t see a keyhole.
The box was tightly sealed, like a solid piece of iron. From the chisel marks on it, one could also know the strangeness of this box.
A strange box that cannot be opened by any external force—something Grandma insisted on leaving to him before she died.
After arriving at school, Ye Sheng couldn’t figure out the result, so he put the box in the cabinet first.
Everyone was on summer vacation at the end of June. There were not many people left on campus, and only a few lights were on in this building. Ye Sheng was busy cleaning during the day and forgot to check the water and electricity. When he turned on the switch, he found that the light in the dormitory was broken. After reporting this to the dorm manager, the manager gave him a phone number. Ye Sheng made an appointment with the repairman to come at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon, then groped into the bathroom in the dark and rinsed casually with cold water.
He changed into pajamas, dried his hair, returned to the desk, turned on the desk lamp, took out a piece of paper and a pen, and began to calculate future living arrangements.
Ye Sheng counted the money on him and found that only one hundred was left.
Fortunately, the salary Xia Wenshi gave him was settled daily.
Ye Sheng’s desire to change jobs silently settled down because of poverty. Forget it, if the boss loves to do supernatural live broadcasts, let him do it. Anyway, the live broadcast won’t involve him, and he won’t accompany Xia Wenshi to seek death.
Ye Sheng simply calculated the living expenses, counted the things to buy tomorrow, then turned off the light and went to bed. At seven o’clock the next morning, Ye Sheng got up according to his biological clock. The first thing was to go to the toilet to get the clothes to wash.
However, he underestimated the “delicacy” of this set of clothes. Anyway, when he took it out of the washing machine, the original appearance could no longer be seen at all.
—So the young master’s clothes are only worn once?
Ye Sheng twitched the corner of his lips, threw it away, and went to rummage through his suitcase. He didn’t bring many sets of clothes at all. The one he wore on the train was considered relatively presentable. Fortunately, he specifically told Butler Li before taking a shower not to throw away his clothes. When he left the Yuecheng Hotel, the manager sent the cleaned clothes back in a very high-end box.
Ye Sheng sincerely felt that the box should be more expensive than his clothes.
He threw away everything in his mind, changed his clothes, and went straight to the haunted house with his phone navigation.
The cool summer breeze blew gently through the shadows of the trees.
No. 444 Huaian Middle Road.
Ye Sheng stopped, turned off his phone, looked at the exaggerated, bleeding, and deliberately horrifying “Scare You Jump” store name above, was silent for a long time, and then took his long legs and walked in.
After walking in, he finally knew why Xia Wenshi went to do supernatural live broadcasts to pay their wages.
Because this haunted house was really desolate and bleak.
Xia Wenshi was a backbone rich second generation. After spending a lot of money to buy this store in the university town where land is expensive, he gritted his teeth and told his family that he wanted to start his own business and work alone, resolutely not asking for a penny more.
—Then reduced to doing supernatural live broadcasts to work for employees.
“Hello, welcome.”
Finally, a person came. Huang Qiqi tried hard to cheer up and stood up from the front desk at once.
Then she heard a handsome guy with outstanding looks say coldly: “Senior sister, I’m here to work.”
Huang Qiqi’s eyes, which had just been crying red, suddenly widened, incredulous: “Junior??!!”
“Okay, that’s it. Actually, there’s nothing to clean. We only opened a spirit doll scene for the time being. Then in these three days, only two guests came this morning, a couple. They came in to play while dating, but broke up as soon as they went out. The woman scolded the man for being sick and having an attitude problem. Choosing a Garden Baby amusement park for her, watching Makka Pakka dance at home is more exciting than this.”
“…”
After Huang Qiqi finished speaking, she immediately realized that she was chatting with a future colleague, froze, and awkwardly laughed to patch it up: “Ah hahahahahaha, it seems that girl is quite brave.”
Ye Sheng nodded expressionlessly. He was just here to work and didn’t want to worry about the business situation here.
Huang Qiqi had been tortured by her best friend’s boyfriend’s affairs these two days. Although she wanted to chat more with Ye Sheng, she still had things to do, so she said:
“I was bored just now and roughly swept it. Junior, you can do as you see fit. Clean up wherever it’s dirty. Oh, the innermost room on the left is the utility room, used to store props. Some props are broken too. If you can repair them, repair them. It doesn’t matter if you can’t repair them.”
Ye Sheng thanked politely: “Okay, thank you, Senior Sister.”
He grew up in Yin Mountain. Cleaning and doing housework alone had become a habit.
He worked cleanly and neatly, quickly prepared the cleaning tools, washed his hands and started cleaning.
Ye Sheng walked into the spirit doll haunted house, looked at the exaggerated artificial plasma and messy plastic organs, and calmly analyzed that it really looked like Garden Baby.
A haunted house with the theme of dolls killing people, the dolls were arranged like on supermarket shelves.
Ye Sheng cleaned up the dirty blood on the ground and mopped it several times with a mop.
Finally, he went to the utility room to pack things.
Because of his living environment since childhood, Ye Sheng could be said to be “ingenious”, good at assembling, splicing, and organizing everything. Unknowingly, he was busy until 4:30 in the afternoon. The time he agreed with the master to change the lamp was five o’clock. Ye Sheng was just about to leave when his eyes suddenly fell on a damaged doll in the corner, probably from the spirit doll scene. A little girl doll, her arm was torn open, revealing a ball of white cotton.
Ye Sheng wanted to sew it up when he saw it. He walked around the room but only found thread.
“Senior sister, where is the needle?”
Ye Sheng asked.
But Huang Qiqi didn’t hear it.
Ye Sheng planned to go out to find her. At this time, the repairman called. Ye Sheng hurriedly went to get his phone. He moved too anxiously and only felt his finger pricked by something. But he was not sensitive to pain and didn’t care.
“Hello, is it you who booked the repair at 5:30? At Huaian University, right.”
“Yes, it’s me.” Ye Sheng clarified the address. After hanging up the phone, his eyes quietly looked at the wound on his fingertip.
Silent for a long time, he reached into his trouser pocket again, and then… found a needle.
That corpse stitching needle that he used to pierce the throat of the fetus girl and then returned to the corpse stitcher.