"This child...looks like a demon."
When he was thirteen years old, Que Bai followed his parents back to their ancestral home deep in Xi Mountain after a long absence.
At that time, he was already well-known in his parents' circle for his excessive precocity and genius. Even though he had a somewhat eccentric temper, it was attributed to a common problem unique to geniuses.
However, when he saw his grandmother for the first time in the ancestral home, the elderly woman, who was as old as a rotten tree, looked at him and whispered in fear.
How did the couple react at that time? Que Bai could no longer remember, after all, he had never cared about them.
What he cared about more were the shadowy figures behind his grandmother.
According to my grandmother, those shadows are ghosts that ordinary people cannot even see.
And Que Bai learned how to enslave and drive them almost without any instruction.
According to his parents, that ancestor worship was the beginning of Que Bai's mental disorder, but Que Bai knew better than anyone that he had never been "abnormal". In fact, for someone like him, it was normal to be obsessed with all kinds of illusory, even bloody and bizarre metaphysical theories.
Perhaps, just as my grandmother had said, I was originally an evil ghost, but due to some strange combination of circumstances, I was accidentally reincarnated into the human world.
For a long time, Que Bai felt his life was utterly boring. The world's hustle and bustle, chasing fame and fortune, seemed to him no different from ants chasing after food scraps that people accidentally dropped.
Wealth, power, including family and friendship... all of these were indifferent to him.
The Que couple had taken Que Bai to see a psychologist countless times, but the results were not satisfactory. The better diagnosis was that he was born with emotional deficiency, while more professionals believed that he had a typical antisocial personality.
As for his various behaviors of driving away ghosts and using talismans, they are concrete manifestations of his schizophrenia.
Que Bai once thought that his life, which was caged by the world and was so boring that it was almost like torture, would continue like this forever.
"…But then I met you."
In room 1401, Que Bai carefully walked to Gu Hezhi's frozen head and gently held the head in his arms with blood still flowing between the lips and teeth.
He turned around and put his head on top of the freezer... No, it wasn't a freezer.
That was clearly a bright red altar.
As the illusion gradually faded, the true appearance of 1401 gradually appeared before Gu Hezhi's eyes.
The cheap furniture remained in place, as did the partitions that made the room so cramped. However, every area within sight was covered in fine, twisted maroon runes.
Countless red threads tangled on the ceiling, and a copper bell, its purpose unknown, moved silently without a sound. A shimmering red light enveloped the room, dimly lit. Every wall was covered in talismans. The only words Gu Hezhi could make out were his own and Que Bai's names. They were merely words, yet their names, superimposed on the talisman, resembled some alien creature, slowly wriggling and mating.
"You must be joking..."
Gu Hezhi raised his hand and carefully observed his body, but he could not find any evidence that he had turned into a ghost.
He clearly still had a heartbeat, could feel his body temperature, and even trembled uncontrollably out of fear...
Compared to him, Que Baiming, who looked haggard and had only a blue-gray shadow under his eye sockets, was the one who looked more like a ghost.
"I, how could I be dead..."
Gu Hezhi murmured involuntarily.
"Of course," Que Bai stared at Gu Hezhi inexplicably after hearing this, and smiled sweetly, "I did all this just to bring you, Ah Zhi, back to the human world."
He seemed unusually calm, but the more he was like that, the more frightened Gu Hezhi became.
Gu Hezhi moved his eyes with great difficulty. He watched Que Bai place the head on the altar, on which other parts were neatly arranged.
Palms, forearms, torso, thighs...
Like a dried butterfly specimen placed in a specimen box, Gu Hezhi's body was carefully cut into countless small pieces, wrapped with red thread and talismans to form a vague human shape.
Bright red blood continued to flow out from the cut surface of the corpse.
Gu Hezhi covered his mouth and didn't even have the strength to scream.
Que Bai stood in front of the altar, his eyes still fixed on Gu Hezhi, but his lips were already pressed against the ear of the frozen dead head.
He stuck out his bright red tongue and licked the frost on the surface of the corpse bit by bit.
"The first time I saw you, I knew that I came to this world just to meet you."
"I like you so much."
"Azhi, you will never, ever understand how much I love you... So, how could I possibly allow you to die..."
The man whispered softly to the corpse, but the paranoid voice appeared very clearly in the depths of Gu Hezhi's mind.
When Gu Hezhi heard Que Bai's last words, his heart suddenly twitched.
"What happened? What did you do to me?"
Gu Hezhi tried to appear calm, but his trembling voice only made him look more shaken and helpless at that moment.
Even if he looked away, even if he tried desperately to divert his attention, the extremely horrifying scene before him seemed to have been imprinted on his retina, making it impossible for him to escape.
Even after seeing everything clearly, every action Que Bai made on his body: every lick, every gentle caress and rub, was transmitted extremely strongly to Gu Hezhi "himself".
The strong feeling of vomiting accompanied by the faint taste of blood in his mouth gradually overwhelmed Gu Hezhi's sanity like a rising tide.
Sure enough, the next second he heard Que Bai say, "Azhi, do you know the Five Ghosts Returning Soul Technique?"
Along with Que Bai's voice, the air became colder and colder.
Gu Hezhi slowly raised his head and met Que Bai's eyes, which were as dark as two deep wells.
"Five ghosts...returning souls?"
After a pause, Gu Hezhi's mind suddenly emerged with the strange people and things he had encountered before.
"What did you do to the others?"
An extremely ominous premonition suddenly blossomed in my heart.
Que Bai's eyelashes trembled slightly.
His tone was unusually calm and gentle, as if he was discussing how to make lunch with Gu Hezhi.
"Azhi, actually, as long as we can find five tragically dead ghosts to create a formation, coupled with a special spell, we can drag the dead back to the human world..."
Gu Hezhi's eyes were filled with tears without him realizing it.
He thought he would scream out of fear and anger, but in reality, he could only sob as weakly as a kitten.
Que Bai didn't say much, but Gu Hezhi had already vaguely guessed the truth of the matter.
"You...what on earth...did you do?"
Even he himself didn't know why he asked such stupid questions over and over again.
As if Gu Hezhi's question was heard in the dark, one shadow after another quietly emerged from the shadows.
Gu Hezhi saw Ruan Qi's head drooping on his chest like a rag bag.
I saw Dong Ruiming, who was shattered beyond recognition after jumping off a building.
I saw Qi Wei hanging in the air with an invisible rope, his neck broken, his toes still twitching, and shaking in the air.
And Qiao Liang.
The weak man who had always been following behind him had bloodshot eyes at this moment. Long glass fragments pierced his eye sockets, and blood kept gushing out of his mouth...
Gu Hezhi's face was pale. Even though he knew rationally that he was no longer alive, the suffocating feeling of being unable to breathe was so vivid that it almost drove him crazy.
"You killed them?"
Gu Hezhi asked weakly.
Unexpectedly, Que Bai shook his head with a look as if he was about to cry.
"I didn't make it in time."
Only when mentioning Gu Hezhi's death did Que Bai reveal emotions other than sweetness and stubbornness.
The man lowered his head, staring blankly at Gu Hezhi's body on the altar, and spoke hoarsely with a hint of timidity.
"I'm sorry, Ah Zhi, I didn't have time to help you get revenge."
*
Gu Hezhi's body was discovered by Qiao Liang the next day.
Because he didn't want to face his own weakness, Qiao Liang slept in the company at night using the excuse of working overtime.
However, that day, for some unknown reason, Qiao Liang felt that he should go back no matter what.
Then he discovered Gu Hezhi's death.
His body was forcibly taken away by Que Bai, who had come upon hearing the news. The scene at that time was very unpleasant. The extreme madness that Que Bai showed when he hugged Gu Hezhi's body caught the eyes of Qi Wei, who was wandering outside the crowd with cold sweat on his head.
"...Maybe he was worried about leaving traces of his theft."
Que Bai whimpered in Gu Hezhi's ear as if begging for mercy.
"Just as I took your body away, your rental house caught fire."
According to speculation, Qi Wei originally only wanted to start a small fire and destroy some evidence.
However, perhaps it was because of panic, or perhaps it was because the materials used to partition the room did not meet the fire protection standards at all, or perhaps it was God's will.
The fire was completely out of Qi Wei's control, and the entire room 1401 was instantly engulfed in flames.
The fire then spread throughout the building.
And that day, Dong Ruiming, Ruan Qi and Qiao Liang were all there.
"The woman fell down the stairs and was stepped on by the panicked crowd who were fleeing for their lives."
Que Bai spoke to Gu Hezhi seriously, word by word, as if he was reporting something.
"When we were cleaning up the fire scene afterwards, we discovered her head had been completely severed from her body."
"Dong Ruiming became separated from Ruan Qi while fleeing, and was forced by the encroaching fire onto a security window on the exterior of a house. After holding on for over ten minutes, he was forced to let go due to the intense fire and the burning railing, falling from the tenth floor to his death instantly."
"Qi Wei took the initiative to escape to the fireproof floor. At that time, a cushion had been laid down below, so he took the initiative to jump from the building... However, during the fall, he accidentally got caught on the external cable, so he was hanged to death."
"As for Qiao Liang, he didn't die in the fire. However, he seemed to have happened to see Qi Wei hanging from the cables. He was later sent to a mental hospital. Hehe, it seems that the excessive mental stress led to a complete breakdown. Later, he broke the glass in the ward, stabbed himself in the eyes with the shards, and cut out his tongue... He died from excessive blood loss."
Que Bai tilted his head and chuckled twice: "Maybe he also knows that it's useless to have such a pair of eyes and tongue. It's better not to have them at all."
After hearing this, Gu Hezhi looked at the man in horror.
Do these bizarre and strange ways of death really have nothing to do with Que Bai?
How could Que Bai possibly say that?
However, at this point, Gu Hezhi was unable to say a word as he faced this extremely strange and terrifying man.
Que Bai seemed completely oblivious to Gu Hezhi's fear. On the contrary, after reporting everyone's deaths, he actually still had the energy to grin sweetly at Gu Hezhi, "Fortunately, they all died tragically. At that time, Ah Zhi, you were already dead. No matter how I begged the doctors in the hospital to save you, they just said there was nothing they could do..."
Although he was clearly smiling, two dark bloodstains appeared on Que Bai's face.
Those were the tears of blood that slowly flowed out of his eyes.
"I originally wanted to die with you, Azhi. But, you know, my grandmother told me that I was originally an evil ghost who forcibly crawled back to the human world from hell, but you, Azhi, are a celestial being outside the six realms of existence... Once I die, it will probably take thousands of years to find you and follow you."
Que Bai's voice gradually became choked.
"That's why I don't dare to die. However, the world without Ah Zhi is too scary."
"I kept thinking and thinking, and finally came up with this idea. You see, these people were so evil. They could have saved you, but they killed you over such a trivial matter. So, it's only natural for me to extract their souls and use them to set up the formation, right?"
Gu Hezhi's pupils constricted. After Que Bai's overly calm words fell, he saw with his own eyes that the twisted ghosts of his former roommates began to spasm at the same time.
Their swollen, purple, and rotten cheeks were all pointed at Que Bai in the bloody shadows, and the faces of the dead were filled with surging resentment that almost seemed to spurt out black air.
However, Gu Hezhi had no way of taking care of the ghost who was full of resentment and twisted by pain.
All his attention was on Que Bai.
Does blood really flow from the eyes of a living person?
Where did the piece of meat in the mouth of his head come from?
Also, this bloody energy in the air...what on earth is going on?
Why does the dark brown color on those runes look so much like blood?
…
Countless questions flashed through Gu Hezhi's mind, no one answered, but in a trance he seemed to have already foreseen the answer.
The Five Ghosts Returning Soul Technique, as the name suggests, should use the souls of five people, right?
Dong Ruiming, Ruan Qi, Qi Wei, and Qiao Liang.
So far, there are only four no matter how you count them.
So, the last person's ghost is...
"If it weren't for me, Ah Zhi wouldn't have kept running away, wouldn't have wronged himself to live with a group of people like that." Que Bai's voice was hoarse, blood and tears like a spring, soaking Que Bai's thin figure. "If it weren't for me, Ah Zhi wouldn't have been an alcoholic, wouldn't have been so out of control."
"If it weren't for me... Ah Zhi would not have died so young."
Que Bai said with sobs.
"so..."
A sharp buzzing sound came from deep within my brain.
Gu Hezhi was in a daze for a moment and missed Que Bai's last words.
After realizing he was already dead, Gu Hezhi felt as if he had become empty, like a deep well. The things that should have caused him to completely lose control and collapse were like small stones that Que Bai grasped in his hands and slowly dropped into the bottom of the well.
It took a long time before Gu Hezhi could hear a dark echo coming from the bottom of the deep well in his body.
He stared blankly at Que Bai's face, and in a trance he seemed to see the man in front of him slowly spreading out his palm in front of the wellhead, revealing the last small stone in front of him.
"Don't cry."
Que Bai stretched out his hand, and his cold fingers brushed across Gu Hezhi's cheek.
It was not until this moment that Gu Hezhi realized that he had already burst into tears.
"What did you do..."
Gu Hezhi asked again.
But this time the meaning is - Que Bai, what have you done to yourself?
"So, if I, a sinner like me, die, I will become the final ghost needed for the resurrection technique."
*
Que Bai opened his arms and hugged Gu Hezhi.
Gu Hezhi felt a chill down his spine. He staggered and tried to avoid the man's cold arms, but soon found that he could not move.
A bone-chilling chill spread deep into his soul, and his mind suddenly became chaotic.
He was covered in a thick shadow.
"No--"
Gu Hezhi's eyes swept across the strangely decorated room. He was horrified to find that all the red lines and all the talismans were trembling, and fresh bloodstains appeared in those dark brown runes.
The cold wind blew, and the familiar wailing sounds were sharp and continuous.
"don't want..."
Gu Hezhi's wailing was drowned out by a wet and bloody kiss.
He rolled his eyes in despair, and in fear, he felt Que Bai's tongue melting between his lips, melting into a cold, sticky and fishy liquid, gurgling into his stomach.
Que Bai seemed to be melting.
While screaming, Gu Hezhi vaguely noticed that Que Bai seemed to be rubbing against his shoulder.
"It's okay, Ah Zhi, I already know I was wrong."
"I won't make you unhappy again."
"us..."
The soft and sweet whispers were gradually replaced by vague spells with strange rhythms.
Gu Hezhi's pupils trembled for a moment, and then became blurred.
"Que Bai? What... are you going to do..."
Even if I tried my best to stay lucid, I couldn't resist the extreme sleepiness that spread from the deepest part of my soul.
In the end, Gu Hezhi inevitably fell into the cold darkness.
In the last moment before he lost consciousness, he only heard Que Bai's choked whisper.
"We will always be together and never be apart again."
end--
"Mr. Xiao Que, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I still need you to sign this document—"
In the underground parking lot, a tall and handsome man was stopped by a young secretary who came hurriedly.
The girl's head was covered in sweat and her face was flushed red.
The document should have been submitted to the man before leaving get off work, but it was delayed until now. In theory, this was a serious work error. Apparently, the man's assistant thought so too. His face darkened. Just as he was about to speak, the man, whom the girl called "Boss Xiao Que," smiled helplessly and waved his personal assistant to be silent.
"It doesn't matter."
He opened the document, glanced at it quickly and understood everything, then signed his name on the corner of the document and handed it back to the young novice secretary.
"I hope there won't be such mistakes next time."
He said helplessly to the girl in front of him who was almost crying.
It was clearly a rebuke, but after hearing the man's voice, the originally frightened girl calmed down as if comforted.
She sniffed and nodded vigorously.
"No, no, I will never make such a mistake again—"
…
As he spoke, the assistant had already skillfully opened the car door for the man.
The car slowly drove out of the underground parking lot. The assistant looked at the rearview mirror while driving and found that the car had driven a long way away. The girl was still standing there holding the documents, staring blankly in the direction the car had left, and couldn't help but sigh deeply.
"Mr. Que, you are always like this—"
"It's just that someone tripped me up. There's no need to pick on such an unlucky girl and make a fuss about it."
The man in the back seat smiled slightly and looked softly at the assistant in front of him.
"My dad warned me before that the old men on the board wouldn't be happy to see me. I thought there would be some other tricks, but..."
"I didn't expect that I wouldn't need to grab the official seal or climb over the wall to cut the wires in the computer room?"
The assistant rolled his eyes in the driver's seat.
Then he saw his boss, the youngest person in charge of Fengyu, burst out laughing in the car.
The assistant caught a glimpse of the man's smiling face in the rearview mirror. Even though he was extremely sure of his straight male orientation, his heart couldn't help but beat faster at this moment.
Even if you put aside his billionaire identity, you have to admit that Que Bai is an extremely charming man.
Generally speaking, a man with such a face is inevitably a little stupid.
And if someone is smart and handsome, he usually has a very strange temper.
But Que Bai is incredibly intelligent, handsome, mild-mannered, humorous, and incredibly wealthy—too perfect to be real. No wonder Que is so eager to transfer all power to Que Bai.
The assistant was driving, feeling a deep emotion in his heart. He inadvertently recalled those special rumors about Que Bai.
It is said that when he was young, Que Bai did not look like a normal person at all.
He suffered from a very serious mental illness and was almost sent to the police several times for long-term harassment and stalking of others.
Later, he disappeared for half a year because of the accidental death of his boyfriend.
At that time, even the Que couple believed that Que Baihe might have committed suicide for love.
But Que Bai finally came back alive. When he was found, he was covered in wounds, had lost a lot of blood, and was almost losing his vital signs. When he woke up in the hospital, he had completely lost his memory.
But for the Que family, this may be a great gift from God to them - after losing his memory, Que Bai never showed any madness again, nor did he do anything strange that was beyond common sense.
He began to become normal, smart, handsome, considerate, funny and humorous... as if he had all the advantages that a human being should have.
By the time the assistant took office, the Que Bai he knew had become the "Little President Que" who was admired and adored by everyone.
"Are we going to Anlin Clinic next?" While waiting for the red light, the assistant checked Que Bai's schedule again.
There was an obvious sign of change in the itinerary on the schedule: the original plan was for a dinner arranged by Mrs. Que, saying that a friend's child had returned from abroad and everyone wanted to have a meal together, but anyone with a discerning eye could tell that it was a blind date dinner.
As a result, Que Bai changed the itinerary himself to go to Anlin Clinic. Although the name looks very ordinary, it is actually a top private medical institution.
"Um."
Que Bai nodded.
The assistant felt a slight sense of disobedience.
Normally, Que Bai was a man who took everything into consideration and did things almost flawlessly. However, this time, he changed his schedule and directly refused to attend the blind date, which seemed very rude.
Even the assistant could foresee that Mrs. Que would be very unhappy about this matter.
As if sensing his assistant's doubts, Que Bai suddenly raised his head from the back seat of the car.
"Don't worry about the blind date."
The man's expression seemed a little strange at this moment.
"...I...I won't be with anyone else."
He said softly.
The man's voice echoed in the carriage, sounding a little hoarse.
For some reason, the assistant suddenly shuddered while driving.
*
Anlin Clinic——
In the elegantly decorated clinic, Que Bai received his test results from the doctor.
"Teratoma?"
He looked at the line of words and was slightly stunned.
"Yes, a teratoma in the brain."
The young but incredibly experienced doctor clicked on the three-dimensional model of the teratoma constructed using the latest equipment. Under the AI rendering, the soft, reddish mass of flesh appeared deformed and weird.
"This is a germ cell tumor. Many people believe that teratomas occur when a dominant embryo absorbs another embryo during its development within the mother's body. However, teratomas are not... The good news is that your tumor capsule is very intact..."
The doctor's words gradually faded away, as if they came from far away.
Que Bai's gaze was fixed on the tumor on the screen, but his eyes were somewhat empty.
A few snow-white teeth, faintly visible black hair, and a small scarlet line hidden between the teeth can be seen on the tumor.
"What's this?"
Que Bai didn't know why he cared so much about the lines on the surface of the tumor.
The doctor's eyes widened in surprise. He looked in the direction of Que Bai's fingertips and paused for a moment before answering, "It could be a blood vessel. Of course, it's also possible that the machine made some compositional errors when taking the sample."
He obviously didn't pay much attention to the minor anomalies in the modeling.
"However, the location of this teratoma is somewhat dangerous. Mr. Que, the auditory and visual hallucinations you described, after ruling out psychiatric factors, could also be caused by nerve compression... Of course, if surgery is performed, further examinations will be required for follow-up measures..."
"We will never be separated again."
Suddenly, a very familiar voice came to Que Bai's ears.
His hand trembled slightly.
"I can't perform surgery."
By the time he realized it, Que Bai had already blurted out the answer.
The rude words obviously scared the doctor, but Que Bai, who was usually gentle and polite, didn't care about the doctor in front of him at this time.
"Mr. Que? Mr. Que, what's wrong with you?"
He staggered to his feet and rushed out of the clinic with a pale face.
My head started to ache again.
He had to put both hands on the railing to steady himself.
"Ah."
In a trance, he suddenly felt as if someone was calling him.
However, when he turned around, all he saw were nurses and doctors walking towards him with worried faces. He instinctively felt that these were not the people calling him.
My heart is beating faster and faster.
There was also a faint smell of blood in the throat.
["Azhi…"]
At this moment, he suddenly raised his head and looked at the glass wall in front of him.
In the hazy reflection of the glass, he saw his own reflection at a glance.
as well as...
And the illusory shadow that was entangled around him like a white snake.
["Azhi, I like you so much."]
"Don't worry, no one will separate us."
Along with the sweet and hoarse murmur, Que Bai finally realized that the voice did not come from anyone's mouth.
That voice came from deep within his own brain.
——"Broth"·the end