Chapter 6#
Red Talisman#
He really was a kind person.
Ye Sheng had once read a sentence in a book: “The world kisses me with pain, but I return it with a song.” When he was young, he couldn’t understand it and didn’t want to understand it.
In his childhood, Ye Sheng had an emotional disorder and was bullied everywhere. He looked dull and stupid on the outside, but in his bones, there was countless radical irritability and hostility rushing towards this world.
And these dangerous thorns were pulled out one by one by his grandmother.
Later, he began to let go of this world. He forgave Huang Yiyue’s abandonment and forgave those sufferings. He warned himself all the time not to speculate about anyone with malice.
Seventeen years, the long and stagnant years in Yinshan, in a sense, also healed him.
Whimpering cries echoed in the toilet.
For a corpse stitcher, what she sought from life to death might be “completeness”. Hearing Ye Sheng say she was incomplete and remembering the lost child, Xiao Fang’s bloody tears flowed out scrambling.
Her face was swollen and bruised, and the way she grinned and cried was terrifying and horrifying. But covering her stomach, her shoulders shrugging, her eyes were full of confusion and sorrow.
Ye Sheng glanced at the time, 23:54.
Before the old man left, he left him two talismans: a yellow talisman and a red talisman.
The red talisman was the last life-saving talisman.
He used a yellow talisman to deal with the corpse monster before, and now he had to use a red talisman to deal with the fetus girl. This was just an incomplete A-level monster, and the red talisman could probably hold her for a while.
Ye Sheng didn’t feel sorry for these things; he was very open-minded. If his fate was tough, he could survive without talisman paper; if his fate was thin, what could two pieces of talisman paper do?
Before arriving in Huaicheng, he just wanted to get rid of everything in the past and start his life as an ordinary college student.
The old man was a mysterious and strange person who suddenly appeared in Ye Sheng’s life in the second month after his grandmother died.
Ye Sheng’s deepest impression of him was probably that he valued money as much as his life.
The old man’s desire for money seemed to be engraved into his soul and bones. Shallow, vulgar, greedy, treacherous, revealing the aura of a charlatan from inside out and top to bottom, but he was very good to him.
A liar who couldn’t see ghosts, didn’t believe in divine power, and would be shocked by his ability, but could always take out a pile of messy things for him.
Came mysteriously, left mysteriously.
23:57. The train traveled through the mountains and passed a city. The scattered lights were like falling stars.
Giving Xiao Fang enough time to relieve her emotions, the time was almost up.
Ye Sheng withdrew from his memories and stuffed the eyeball back into Xiao Fang’s hand.
“Don’t cry.” Ye Sheng said: “I’ll help you become complete.”
Logically speaking, Ye Sheng should smile at this time to add some affinity, but he couldn’t smile. After speaking, he pursed his lips tightly and remained silent.
The thin young man stood under the incandescent light, his shadow elongated.
Ye Sheng’s facial features were very good-looking, with deep cold almond eyes and pale red lips. It was the kind of good looks that could be called exquisite, but it was always cut apart by the overly distinct sharp temperament, making him extremely cold and withdrawn.
At this time, he admired Ning Weichen very much.
Ning Weichen was the complete opposite of him.
The smile he couldn’t fake, Ning Weichen could easily hook the corner of his lips and smile with ten thousand meanings. Moreover, his peach blossom eyes were affectionate. When gazing at people, it seemed that only you were in his eyes in the whole world.
Although Ye Sheng always felt that this look was disgusting and mushy, he had to admit that this infectious power gave Ning Weichen a fatal brilliance and mystery.
In just three days, he didn’t know how many of Ning Weichen’s personalities he had experienced. This young man with a prominent family background was far less simple and harmless than he appeared.
Passionate and considerate, acting coquettishly and obediently, aggrieved and low-spirited, silent and sad along the way. The emotions progressed perfectly, but none of them were true.
The real Ning Weichen might be in that understated conversation that night.
Frivolous, dangerous, unscrupulous.
“…”
This Carriage 44 was really unlucky; there wasn’t a single normal person.
Ye Sheng regretted for the umpteenth time why he got on this train.
“Later, when I trade with the baby girl, I will let her come out of the mirror. I can temporarily subdue her. You seize the time and sew her into your belly.”
Ye Sheng took out the red talisman. He didn’t look closely when the old man gave it to him before. Now Ye Sheng discovered that there was a circle of pale gold words in the upper right corner of the talisman. The flamboyant calligraphy looked like a scrawled signature, reading, “Missionary”.
Missionary? What a strange name.
Ye Sheng raised his eyebrows.
When the old man gave it to him, he looked pained and kept shouting how precious and hard-won this red talisman was, asking him to cherish it.
…Being able to save the lives of people in this carriage could be considered putting it to good use.
“You hide first.”
Ye Sheng lowered his head and said to Xiao Fang.
There were still bloody tear stains on Xiao Fang’s face. Her fingers grasped her clothes uneasily, and she nodded gently to Ye Sheng. She took out a silver embroidery needle from the pocket of her shirt, and then pulled out a ball of black thread.
Seeing this, Ye Sheng turned around and turned off the toilet light.
00:00.
Vision plunged into darkness.
Ye Sheng stood in front of the mirror in the toilet.
His own face was reflected in the mirror. From top to bottom, eyebrows, bridge of the nose, lips, every part was extremely familiar.
The skin on Ye Sheng’s neck was very white. Under the illumination of the cold gloomy light, it was like a section of snow sinking into the clothes. The black T-shirt made the collarbone particularly eye-catching. The young man’s shoulders were thin, and a few strands of black hair hung down, covering his sharp and beautiful side face. Everywhere was the youthful uprightness that had grown at the age of seventeen.
Ye Sheng met the eyes of himself in the mirror.
Glass-like eyes泛着 inorganic cold light.
After a while, he saw two small bloody handprints appear on the mirror, like animal paws. This time the fetus girl was obviously particularly anxious. She lay on the mirror like a gecko, her body red and wrinkled, the stitches on her stomach twisted like a centipede.
“Give it to me! Give it to me!”
The fetus girl seemed to also sense the aura of “sister”. The resentment and hatred in her eyes were about to turn into black water and flow out.
Ye Sheng said: “I’ll give it to you when you come out of the mirror.”
The fetus girl’s tone was sharp: “Give it to me!”
Ye Sheng’s tone was cold: “Come out.”
Creak——
The fetus girl made a strange and ear-piercing sound on the mirror, and finally gave Ye Sheng a hateful look. Seeming to be certain that this ant couldn’t do anything to her, she slowly crawled out. Her umbilical cord hadn’t been cut off yet, dragging on the ground, leaving a line of black blood.
The fetus girl opened her mouth, revealing three rows of fine and dense teeth, and said greedily and hungrily: “Give me my sister quickly!”
Ye Sheng took out the dead infant, which was a quarter the size of a palm, from his pocket.
The fetus girl screamed suddenly and pounced impatiently.
While her heart was burning with anxiety, Ye Sheng quickly took out the red talisman, dotted it with his own blood, and quickly pasted it on the fetus girl.
The fetus girl was stunned, then hooked her lips strangely and sneered: “Do you think I’m the same as those idiots? Want to use this to deal with me?”
She stretched out her arm and was about to tear off the talisman.
The red talisman started to burn from the edge, but the fetus girl didn’t care about the flames at all, her eyes full of contempt.
She tore the red talisman off her face and showed an extremely distorted and vicious smile to Ye Sheng.
“You deserve to die!”
Ye Sheng didn’t speak.
The flame burned all the way, and finally burned to the three words “Missionary” on the red talisman.
The moment the handwriting of “Missionary” burned, a cyan light suddenly illuminated the entire toilet!
The fetus girl’s smile froze and distorted in the light, looking up in disbelief.
Boom.
Ye Sheng smelled a scent belonging to a Buddhist temple in the cyan light.
In the sandalwood smoke, various floral fragrances were rich. Lotus, water lily, lily, orchid mixed and merged, making people feel relaxed and happy. These were obviously flowers used for offering to Buddha, holy and clean, but Ye Sheng instinctively sensed something wrong in it. Too fragrant, fragrantly too weird. Even the three words “Missionary” revealed a crazy and twisted power in the panicked firelight.
The fetus girl was also suppressed by this power. Her limbs curled up in a ball of cyan light, unable to move, furious.
But Ye Sheng noticed that this fragrance was gradually fading and couldn’t trap the fetus girl for long.
Ye Sheng turned his head: “Xiao Fang.”
Xiao Fang had already torn open her stomach while crying. Looking at her empty stomach, thinking of the lost child and her incompleteness all along, she couldn’t help feeling sad, tears flowing endlessly, almost unable to hold the embroidery needle steadily.
Hearing Ye Sheng call her, Xiao Fang stepped forward. Looking at the fetus girl trapped by the cyan light, she opened her mouth, but her ignorant and sad eyes revealed sweet tenderness.
Child. She lost a child, and God made up for her with another child.
She would sew it back into the womb.
This way she would be complete.
Xiao Fang reached out to grab the fetus girl. Looking at the needle and thread in her hand, the fetus girl vaguely sensed what Xiao Fang was going to do, suddenly screamed, retreated step by step, but was bound by the fragrance of the Missionary and couldn’t move.
A wrinkled red face was distorted.
Hum hum hum.
Xiao Fang hummed a song happily and began to thread the needle.
She was very angry with this person who destroyed her collection, but if she let her become her own child, then she would still forgive her.
The fetus girl was in an incomplete state and had similar abilities to Xiao Fang. Once sewn in by this needle, don’t even think about coming out again.
She looked at Ye Sheng with eyes splitting, screaming: “If I die, she will wake up soon! Do you think she is something good! She will kill you too! There are four more fetuses in her belly! She is even more terrible than me!”
Ye Sheng realized that the fetus girl was talking about her “sister”.
He lowered his head and looked at the dead fetus in his hand. Ye Sheng touched the dead fetus’s stomach with his finger immediately. When he took her out of that pickled vegetable jar, he didn’t notice, but now he found out. This dead fetus’s stomach was very hard, as if a small stone was buried inside.
“Hum hum hum.”
Xiao Fang had already stuffed the fetus girl into her belly. Her body swelled, and the torn opening in her abdomen was just enough to hold a newborn thin baby. Xiao Fang held her belly and began to stitch.
The silver embroidery needle passed through the flesh. Every stitch seemed to have the ability to heal wounds, making the flesh and blood recombine.
At the last moment of belly stitching, the fetus girl suddenly let out a scream!
But Xiao Fang patted her stomach seriously, telling her child to be quiet.
She was so happy that she forgot herself. Soon she threw the needle and thread in her hand aside, and like a mother nine months pregnant, happily touched her bulging belly.
Witnessing this absurd yet harmonious scene.
Ye Sheng closed his eyes for a moment, realizing in hindsight that cold sweat had soaked his clothes. His nerves that had been tense finally relaxed.
Ye Sheng walked out without looking back.
The fetus girl said this sister would wake up soon. Hope it can last until the people from the Supernatural Bureau arrive.
He was just an ordinary enthusiastic citizen who didn’t want to be investigated or rewarded. He just wanted no more derailed things in his life after this unlucky adventure. Ye Sheng decided to return the item to its original owner, put the fetus girl’s sister back into the jar, let the Supernatural Bureau find it themselves, and go back to sleep pretending nothing happened.
Ye Sheng didn’t turn on the light. Relying on his excellent night vision, he squatted in front of Li Jianyang’s messy items, pinched his nose and opened a pickled vegetable jar.
Ye Sheng took out the dead infant and wanted to put it into the jar, but found he couldn’t put it in.
Did the jar mouth become smaller?
No.
He was stunned, looking down at the thing in his hand that didn’t look like a human but like a lump of bloody meat. Thinking of the fetus girl’s words, he suddenly felt a chill rising around him.
——It wasn’t that the jar mouth became smaller, but that this “sister” became bigger.
After the sister died, she began to grow up.
“…”
Ye Sheng endured the discomfort and planned to roughly stuff the dead infant into the jar. As a result, the infant’s head was too big and got stuck halfway, unable to go in no matter what. At the same time, Ye Sheng felt his fingertip being licked and bitten by something fine.
At this moment, all was silent.
He froze in the darkness and heard a slight sound of water, which was the swallowing of saliva by a toddler, and his own gentle breathing.
Fetus Girl.
…The ominous A-level heresy Fetus Girl outlined on search, only now showed him the full picture.
A low laugh came from the darkness.
Ye Sheng’s spirit was tense, his whole body on guard, thinking it was the movement of the infant.
Listening carefully, he found it was a lazy chuckle belonging to a young man.
Ye Sheng was stunned.
The next second, his wrist was gently caught by someone. The posture was ambiguous, seemingly effortless but actually inescapable. Someone approached, the breath familiar and lingering.
Ning Weichen leaned close to his ear, his hair tips rubbing against his skin making it itch, his peach blossom eyes curved, his voice affectionate and smiling.
He said.
“Brother, are you looking for something, or stealing something?”
*
Li Jianyang was like having an absurd and crazy nightmare.
Like countless desperate desperadoes in Yinshan, he could risk his life for money and walked on the edge of the law all year round.
The order to steal and sell a baby girl from Yinshan to Huaicheng was taken by him on a strange forum.
No one knew how that forum found him—yes, the forum found him, or rather the people in the forum found him.
That forum appeared on his phone inexplicably, and then he registered and logged in as if possessed. The forum was divided into seven sections, but his permission was only in the seventh section. The posts constantly floating on the homepage, some he could click into, some he couldn’t. It was just that that world had its own exclusive language and text, and he couldn’t understand anything.
Not long after, a person named Hera found him. Hera messaged him in Chinese, asking if he would take a business. One hundred thousand US dollars, a baby girl.
One hundred thousand US dollars!!!
Li Jianyang’s eyes went straight, and he directly said take take take.
Hera gave him an address and time, asking him to go to Chonghe Village, Yinshan County on June 24th, get a baby girl from a man surnamed Huang, and then bring her to Huaicheng on the 27th.
Li Jianyang thought it was a windfall from heaven, but didn’t expect it to be the beginning of a nightmare.
When he went to pick up the baby girl, the man surnamed Huang stood at the village entrance with a gray face, as if he had lost his soul.
Li Jianyang almost vomited when he got close.
The swaddle was full of blood. He saw that the baby girl’s stomach was split open, and he could see the heart, liver, and lungs. A bloody lump of meat was taken out of the stomach and placed in the jar next to it.
Hera said that both things must be sent to Huaicheng. And, these two things must be separated!
Li Jianyang had to take the bus and hesitated to ask: Should I sew up the baby girl’s stomach first.
Hera stopped him sternly. He said, if you don’t want to die, sew it up.
Li Jianyang was cowardly and greedy for money, so he stopped talking and chose to treat this baby girl as a dead object. He carried the baby girl and walked, only to find that her body temperature was still warm.
The feeling at that moment could no longer be described as creepy.
During the time Li Jianyang was with the baby girl, he didn’t have a good sleep.
Obviously the child was held in his arms, but he always felt something on his back, an innocent and vicious gaze following him like a shadow. Just like this, he was mentally tense until he reached Yinshan Station. He was muddled all the way, living like sleepwalking.
Sleepwalking when sleeping, sleepwalking when awake.
When he was woken up by cold water, Li Jianyang was horrified to find himself sitting in a closed room.
He was no longer on the train.
Both hands and feet were handcuffed to the chair.
Opposite were two people wearing silver-black uniforms. Silver pine leaf epaulets, black military uniforms, white gloves.
A baby-faced boy was connecting his phone to a special computer, quickly tracking something; a tall young man was flipping through his information page by page.
The two talked quickly.
The baby face said: “The General Bureau just gave the information. The heresy this time is an A-level heresy.”
“A-level heresy?!”
The sound of turning pages stopped, and the man was full of surprise.
“Yes, A-level heresy, belonging to the seventh section. The headquarters suspects that the moderator of the seventh section might have personally participated in this transaction. The matter is significant, and the General Bureau should send someone to Huaicheng specifically. I tried to trace the forum from the data in Li Jianyang’s phone, but the information was lost quickly and couldn’t be overcome—the barrier set by ENIAC is simply unsolvable.”
The young man frowned and said: “It’s okay, don’t waste your effort. How can that monster empire be entered so easily.”
“Alright.”
The baby-faced boy was a little frustrated, but he quickly adjusted his emotions and comforted himself. Even Turing, the S-level executive officer ranked fourth on the list, probably couldn’t trace useful things with this little information.
The Supernatural Bureau had investigated for so many years, and their understanding of that monster empire was limited to seven sections and seven moderators. Each moderator was a super S-level heresy, and the section was named after the moderator.
They only knew two well.
One was the seventh section where all urban grotesques originated, Story King.
One was the fourth section containing all digital evil spirits in the virtual world, ENIAC.
Knowing ENIAC’s name was purely luck.
“By the way.” The baby-faced boy thought of the train still running, turned his head and asked: “Do we really not need to send someone to Train 1444?”
The man was stunned, then his expression became complicated, and he sneered: “Send someone? Are you looking down on that crown prince?”
Thinking of that mysterious crown prince of the world chaebol.
The baby-faced boy also shut up and stopped talking.
He was a little puzzled: “There are so many ability users in the Ning family. Why choose to let the heir take risks just after returning to China? I remember Andrew is his private doctor—that’s the tenth-ranked executive officer.”
“Who knows.”
At this time, the two found Li Jianyang woke up.
“He’s awake.”
The man holding the information turned serious, walked forward, his eagle eyes sharp, and questioned coldly: “Li Jianyang, I am Cheng Fa from the National Bureau of Supernatural Investigation and Administration. I ask you now, what is the name of the person who traded with you on the forum? And where in Huaicheng is the delivery location you agreed with that person?”