Though he had no idea what had Feng Xi so on edge, Fang Tian charged down out of the dorm building after her and dropped into the passenger seat of her sedan. No sooner had he buckled his seatbelt than Feng Xi floored the gas.
On the way down, the file on the former owner of Cat Whisper Café three years ago had already landed on Feng Xi's phone. But she was focused on tearing through traffic and had no time to read the details her Fourth Division colleagues had sent, so she tossed the phone to Fang Tian beside her. "Read it."
"Ahem."
Fang Tian cleared his throat and opened the unread message. "Song Cai, a Qingkong City local. Dropped out in his second year of high school and has knocked around various entertainment venues ever since. Strained relations with his family. After Cat Whisper Café closed down he took seven odd jobs one after another; he's currently a security guard at the Yuyang Road market, living alone in Apartment 404, Building 1173 Yuyang Road."
Having read the message through in one breath, Fang Tian asked, "So what's the situation now?"
"The situation now is that I hope Song Cai can hold out until we get there."
Feng Xi's eyes didn't stray from the road.
"It's that serious?"
Fang Tian's heart gave a thump.
Just because he'd drawn one conclusion from Lin Jiu's game, this man named Song Cai had landed in mortal danger?
"For what it's worth, your conclusion may not be right."
Feng Xi went on, "Everything you got from Lin Jiu has passed through her subjective imagination and embellishment. It won't necessarily match the truth of three years ago. And Lin Jiu is in an extremely unstable state right now — which is exactly why I warned you not to involve yourself in the case on your own."
By proper procedure, even if they'd pried a few leads from Lin Jiu, they would carefully compare them against the evidence gathered three years ago, stripping out the subjective parts as far as possible to deduce the case's true course. "And among all of it, mentioning the killer's name and details to the victim is an absolute taboo. It has a very high chance of sending the victim's emotions out of control."
Which was precisely why Lin Jiu's movements, after leaving Fang Tian's dorm, were now perfectly clear.
"You think Lin Jiu's gone to take her revenge on Song Cai right now?"
Fang Tian grasped Feng Xi's meaning at once.
"I don't know how much you understand about the existence of ghosts, but Lin Jiu is different from any ghost you're familiar with. She didn't approach you because she wanted to start a fresh campus life — she did it because......"
At this point Feng Xi suddenly stopped, as if choosing her words.
"Because?"
"Because what she wants is here."
"What does she want?"
"Leads to help her find her enemy."
***
After a breakneck drive, the two reached Building 1173 Yuyang Road, mentioned in the message, in under a quarter of an hour. The moment they got out, the first thing to hit Fang Tian's nose was the smell of rotting fruit. This lone apartment block sat less than 500 meters from the market, an old-style building, most of its wall plaster fallen away, its living conditions describable only as filthy and squalid.
The clock on his phone already read 1:47. At this hour Yuyang Road was utterly silent, the whole building wrapped in darkness.
The instant she'd locked the car, Feng Xi drew her gun and headed straight for the fourth floor. There was no elevator; each floor had only two units.
And by the time the two reached the fourth floor, the smell of blood seeping through the door said it all.
Feng Xi's heart sank to the bottom. Skipping the knock entirely, she landed a roundhouse kick on the security door, and while Fang Tian was still marveling at the force of it, she stormed in, gun raised, into the cheap rental that looked no more than 60 square meters.
The first thing Fang Tian saw on entering was the man named Song Cai.
The man had a pinched, ratlike face, his frame gaunt — perhaps from long-term malnutrition. At this moment his eyes were stretched wide, fixed in terror on the uninvited intruders who'd broken down the door. His gaze was full of pleas for help, yet the fleshy bud jammed hard against his lower jaw kept him from getting out a single word.
The festering skin of Song Cai was the source of the blood-smell. He hung upside down in the cramped living room, half his body already swallowed into a ventilation-pipe mouth that had appeared out of thin air in the ceiling, and the sickening fleshy buds wormed out from that very mouth.
And this was the first time Fang Tian formally met Lin Jiu in reality.
Hearing the commotion behind her, Lin Jiu turned her face to look at them, an eerie red glow flickering in her black, hollow sockets. She stood less than a meter in front of Song Cai, her raised left hand working the fleshy buds wound around his body. Apart from the bud pressed to his lower jaw, two more, bristling with barbs, hung before Song Cai's wide-stretched eyes.
Fang Tian quickly grasped what Lin Jiu meant to do —— though she'd ultimately escaped that puppet monster alive, she'd been gravely wounded when it spotted her on her first attempt to flee the cubicle.
Feng Xi at once trained her muzzle on the spot between Lin Jiu's brows and said coldly, "Lin Jiu, kill him and there's no turning back for you."
Lin Jiu said nothing. She only split her mouth into a grin, a smile both bloodthirsty and skin-crawling.
The exchange between the two lasted mere seconds, and already the negotiation teetered on collapse. Song Cai seemed to sense his fate; his body thrashed wildly, eyes locked on the barbs all but touching his eyeballs. He knew full well that one more light flick of Lin Jiu's index finger and those barbs would punch through his eyes.
Lin Jiu didn't look like she was joking, and seeing the other side refuse to talk, Feng Xi's finger came to rest on the trigger.
Only she couldn't be sure whether the bullet would pierce Lin Jiu's skull first, or the two barbs would skewer Song Cai's head first. Her palm had begun to sweat. If Lin Jiu killed Song Cai, the final "ritual" would be complete.
And then she would become an aberrant monster in the truest sense.
Just as the standoff hung in the balance, a ringing shout broke the deadlock. "Hold on!"
Fang Tian steeled himself and stepped forward. "I just thought it over more carefully — there are still holes in my earlier reasoning. Song Cai isn't necessarily the real mastermind."
Lin Jiu remained unmoved; if anything, the barbs before Song Cai's eyes crept forward a fraction.
This girl's bloodlust runs deep!
In truth Fang Tian was tense to the core right now — this was, after all, the first time he'd faced a killing unfolding before his very eyes.
At the critical moment, inspiration struck. "Song Cai is a key figure in the case. Kill him and you'll never find the real mastermind behind it all!"
This time, Lin Jiu finally hesitated a long moment, looking at Fang Tian in puzzlement.
"Lin Jiu, hold off for now. I can have Officer Feng leave first, and the two of us can talk alone."
"What? Who said you could give the orders?"
Before Lin Jiu could speak, Feng Xi sternly snapped at him from behind. With all his attention on Lin Jiu, Fang Tian jumped at the sudden objection at his back — he even felt rather backstabbed. He fired right back, "Hey, whose side are you on, exactly? I'm working out a plan here, can't you cooperate a little?"
"Her state is highly unstable. Leaving the two of you alone could well——"
"Trust me on this. I've got a way."
Fang Tian's tone was firm, and he gave Feng Xi a reason she couldn't refuse. "Otherwise Song Cai's as good as dead."
Feng Xi gritted her teeth, her gaze flicking between Fang Tian and Song Cai a moment, and finally said, face cold, "Five minutes. The instant anything moves wrong, you call for help immediately."
With that, she walked out alone.
Lin Jiu locked onto Fang Tian with those black, hollow sockets, silently waiting for his next words.
The room fell into utter silence.
"So, um......"
After a few deep breaths, Fang Tian said, "Don't do anything rash. Have a cup of jasmine tea first, and let's sit down and talk it over nice and slow."