Huo Fu paused, “Do you want to give it a try?”
Zuo Zhu looked puzzled, “Try what?”
Huo Fu held out the black shadows in front of her, “Tear them apart for fun?”
Zuo Zhu rubbed her hands bashfully, “Then I suppose I should respectfully obey?”
Excited, she stretched out her guilty hands and grabbed a large clump of the black shadow, tearing it off by force.
A loud, miserable scream followed.
“Bitch! Let go of me! Do you want to die!”
Zuo Zhu’s expression hardened. She raised both hands and tore with full force.
“How dare you insult me? You really don’t know your place! I’ve wanted to tear you apart for a long time! For bullying my son, for trafficking people, for abusing children!”
Screams and curses echoed together.
Before long, the two clumps of shadow were reduced to thin layers of gray mist. One final tear could completely obliterate them.
The two shadows trembled in fear.
“Huo Fu, please spare us! We really understand our mistakes, we’ll stay in this village and go nowhere, we’ll spend the rest of our lives reflecting!”
Zuo Zhu pouted, clearly unconvinced.
“Enough,” Huo Fu stopped her from continuing, watching silently as he held the nearly transparent gray mist in his hands.
Seeing him hesitate, the two shadows pressed harder.
“Huo Fu, we’ve already died once, can you spare us this time?”
“We really understand our mistakes, please let us stay in the village quietly!”
“…”
Zuo Zhu muttered, “You weren’t soft when you were about to eat me, but now you’re soft while dealing with these assholes…”
Her words had barely fallen when Huo Fu expressionlessly crushed the last bit of gray mist.
The two wicked foster parents, who had committed countless atrocities, let out one final scream and were completely obliterated.
Huo Fu chuckled, clapping his hands.
He had never intended to spare them. They didn’t even get the chance to repent as ghosts in the village.
Zuo Zhu, delighted at his decisiveness, jumped beside him, “Huo Fu, you’re really handsome!”
Huo Fu gave a faint smile, “I’m even handsome when I eat you.”
Zuo Zhu groaned, “…”
Annoying!
Huo Fu dealt with Li Fang and the two ghosts, then returned Zuo Zhu safely, vanishing again afterward.
Zuo Zhu stayed quietly in her room, afraid of encountering a second Li Fang.
Not just her, Lin Tianming also didn’t step outside the room all afternoon.
With no signal in the small mountain village, Zuo Zhu spent the afternoon playing a single-player watermelon-cutting game on the original owner’s phone, addicted to the sound effects as she sliced through various fruits.
It wasn’t until after dinner, lying in bed, that she was still holding the phone, immersed in the game.
Demon Huo Fu’s whereabouts remained unknown.
Zuo Zhu was completely absorbed in the game until a sinister voice suddenly echoed, “Is this the watermelon you dropped?”
Zuo Zhu, caught in the moment, replied without thinking, “Can’t you see I’m playing a game? Stop messing around…”
Mid-sentence, she froze.
Huo Fu wasn’t here, so whose chilling female voice was that?
Zuo Zhu swallowed, reaching for the light switch, only to feel a watermelon and a cold, wet, slippery hand resting on it.
“!!!”
Shining her phone light, she saw a disheveled female ghost lying on the bed edge, holding a watermelon and stretching her hand toward Zuo Zhu.
Instantly, Zuo Zhu recognized her as the female ghost from the well that she hadn’t pulled out the day before.
“So you stole my watermelon!” Zuo Zhu shouted angrily, “At your age, why can’t you do anything right and instead learn to steal like others!”
“I’m already over thirty,” the well ghost replied softly.
To convince Zuo Zhu, she pushed her hair aside to reveal a worn face of someone in her thirties.
However, once she moved her hair, a terrifying truth appeared: she had no face. Her head was a mass of hair, looking like two backs of heads.
Zuo Zhu took a deep breath, “Don’t come near me!”
She declared firmly, “You’re clearly not a character I drew, stop trying to scam me! I drew a male-oriented leveling-up comic, your style is straight out of a Japanese black-and-white horror manga!”
Her limbs tingled. Though normally fearless because she considered all the ghosts in her comic as her children, this distorted daughter shocked her.
The well ghost didn’t understand, still fiddling with her hair, but couldn’t touch her face.
Pausing, she asked Zuo Zhu, “Did you see my face?”
Zuo Zhu hesitated, “…Maybe I did?”
Unable to reach her face, resentment surged, “My face is gone! My face is gone!”
She crawled onto the bed like she had no bones, stretching her deformed, pale arms toward Zuo Zhu’s face, “Hee hee hee, my face is gone, give me your face! Give it to me!”
Zuo Zhu jumped down, grabbing a slipper to strike the ghost’s face.
“I warn you, don’t even think about taking my face! Look at your shriveled, dehydrated body, do you deserve my beautiful face?”
Feigning authority, she braced herself, unsure if she could run outside, hoping to subdue this one ghost with her own courage.
Her bravery seemed effective. When she looked again, the ghost had disappeared. Soon after, water droplets sounded behind her.
Zuo Zhu’s scalp tingled. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, swinging the other slipper behind her.
Though a tiger doesn’t eat its cub, she had no choice.
The well ghost shrieked sharply, wailing through the room.
Zuo Zhu was pleased. Perhaps she was that strong?
She opened her eyes and saw that Demon Huo Fu had grabbed the well ghost by the neck.
In moments, burn marks appeared on the pale neck, spreading over her body as if invisible flames consumed her.
Twisting in the invisible fire, the ghost pleaded, “Great Demon, spare me, I won’t dare again!”
The demon ignored her pleas, opening his mouth to swallow her whole.
Zuo Zhu cautiously asked, “Was it tasty?”
Demon Huo Fu spat twice, “Tasteless.”
Zuo Zhu asked, “Then are you full?”
The demon gazed at her, “What do you think?”
Zuo Zhu, like a doting wife, patted his chest, “Then shall we eat something else?”
Just don’t eat me.
The demon glanced at her. Though tempted, he had already been warned by the daytime Huo Fu to temporarily spare her life.
After a moment of sulking, he became excited again, “Let’s go eat that skinny woman next door! I’ll give you an arm each!”