Thriller Night Talk

Chapter 120: It’s hard to say right now

Translator-Rhapsodite

Editor- Koneko, Proofreader-Ghostie

A’Liu’s answer fell within Bei Quan’s expectations, and she continued to report the eight characters of the deceased.

“Ding Chou Xin You Xin Wei Gui Si.”

Bei Quan immediately found the key issue to the problem.

The deceased was born in the fourteenth year of Ding-Chou. Astrologically, his birth month was Xin-You, his birth date Xin-Wei, and his birth time Gui-Si. All of his heavenly stems are from the five Yin stems, and all of his earthly branches are from the six Yin branches, meaning that his birth chart is purely of Yin.

These four pillars of pure Yin were rarely seen in the eight characters, especially in men. These men were prone to premature deaths since they would struggle with ill health from early childhood.

Upon reaching adulthood, such a man would be obstinate, his marriage would not progress smoothly, and he would be acting against the fate written against him. He would suffer many losses within his family, and he would not be beneficial to the prosperity of his male elders.

To sum up this situation, someone killed an adult male who carried these four pure Yin pillars, in addition completely peeled off their skin…..

Bei Quan: “……”

He did not ask any further questions, but instead lowered his eyelids and seemed to be in deep thought.

Qingzhu, who was driving, and A’Liu, who was in the passenger seat, both noticed Bei Quan’s silence. The two looked at each other when the red light proceeded to stop the vehicle, and they remained silent in thought together.

Three minutes later, the red light continued its sequence and turned green, Qingzhu restarted the car and asked,

“Bei Quan, what are you thinking?”

Bei Quan shook his head slowly, keeping his posture slightly lowered.

“It’s hard to say right now.”

He replied.

“I want to go and see the scene for myself.”

The key words “four pillars of pure yin” and “skinning” mentioned previously, triggered something inside Bei Quan and stirred up some memories that were deep inside his mind. These were in his “past life”, something that happened a very long time ago, with the impression being vague and just a light feeling, he was not too sure whether to dig any deeper inside his own thoughts.

He also needed to have some other corroboration and proper evidence to prove his hunch.

Qingzhu: “Okay.”

He had originally planned to take Bei Quan to see the skinned remains, but wanted to await the gentleman’s own clarification.

After all, if this kind of appalling and unusually big case were to be made a fuss and become public knowledge, it would attract a lot of negative attention, and would make people panic within minutes.

A certain case in Shancheng that happened more than ten years ago was still being brought up every now and then in general conversation. Even if the police repeatedly tried to dispel the rumours, they couldn’t stop the people from talking and gossiping about what could have caused the epitome of evil upon the town. This showed that this cannot be repeated and everything must remain underwraps.

If this case of people being murdered and their skins being taken becomes as big as the old case in Shancheng, not only would the local police involved be in trouble, but they, the members of the “Special Seven Field Service”, would definitely be held jointly liable.

“I heard that you are an expert in magic.”

Qingzhu turned the steering wheel to the right and turned into the highway.

“I have to trouble you to help me out this time.”

Bei Quan smiled, “No problem.”

He turned to look through the windows, casually glancing at the thinning traffic flow around him. His smile faded and his eyes gradually became gloomy.

.

“I also want to see, who could do such a thing ……”

——————————–

August 6, Friday, 10:25 am.

The high-speed train that Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an boarded, had arrived at the train station in T City on time.

The two stopped a cab outside the train station and headed straight towards the western suburbs of T City, as directed by the information provided by Zhu Ling.

Here protrudes the highest hill in the city, called the Yue Ling Mountain, which was designated as a private hunting ground by the local dignitaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the late Qing Dynasty, a manor house was built for special occasions such as for hunting and summer vacation.

Nowadays, the entire Yue Ling Mountain has been developed into a 4A scenic area, and the manor was renovated into a resort. This is a good and calm place with perfect mountain views, green waters and in general showcased a beautiful scenery.

Su Lan’s hometown was at the foot of this Mountain. The government took the lead in the development of the scenic spot towards the end of the project, and the village took advantage of the geographical location it was situated in and started farmhouses, homestays, businesses selling handmade products, as well as agricultural and sideline products with typical souvenirs. On the contrary, instead of negativity and uncertainty, the whole village became rich and built small Western-style buildings one after another.

In the past, when Jiang Nan’an and Su Lan were dating, the girl mentioned that their family had just built a three-story Western-style building at the head of the village, saying that it was a dowry for her.

Although Su Lan laughed at the time when her parents told her they had built her a house in the village when she did not intend to return to live there, it now seems that after being tormented by the ghostly shadows that constantly followed her, the girl thought of returning back to her old home where she could feel most at ease, and hide away safely.

The taxi driver thought that Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an were tourists, and were visiting Yue Ling Mountain for a holiday experience. He was very enthusiastic along the way and acted like a tour guide; he would introduce them to the scenic spots on the mountain, the places that were worth visiting in the surrounding areas, as well as several various local areas. He even asked them if they had booked a place to stay; if they hadn’t decided on anything, he could take them to a homestay he knew well and recommended, whilst providing a 20% discount.

Wei Fuyuan listened carefully and asked a few questions from time to time, learning from Bei Quan to collect as much information as possible.

However, the usually chatty Comrade Jiang was much quieter than normal. He only looked out of the window with fixed eyes, sometimes in a trance and sometimes with sadness. He looked quite melancholic with a hipster disposition.

He recalled the time when he heard Su Lan mention her hometown– he had imagined that he would be bringing gifts to his girlfriend’s house to meet her parents in the New Year, and he secretly felt nervous and excited.

However, as a result of his worrying and generic bad karma, the two broke up before the New Year, and he became fixated on his daydreaming, naturally brainstorming away in his own mind……

“huuhh!”

Jiang Nan’an unconsciously sighed.

“Hey, little brother in yellow, did you break up with your girlfriend?”

The enthusiastic driver had long noticed that Jiang Nan’an was not in high spirits. When he heard him sigh, he quickly opened his mouth to comfort him.

“Then, you’ve come to the right place!”

Jiang Nan’an turned his head to look at the driver, his expression wilted.

Wei Fuyuan suddenly became very interested, “Oh? How so?”

“On Yue Ling Mountain, there’s a so-called Yue-gu Temple, in which the Heavenly Lady Yue-gu is worshipped. It’s said that it’s very effective in asking for marriage! Every year, I don’t know how many young men and women come to visit Miss Yue, just to ask for a good marriage!”

Wei Fuyuan: “I’ve only heard of the Yuè lǎo, who is the Lady Yue-gu? Is that the legendary ‘Matchmaker’?”

“Ha ha ha, I do not know!”

The driver let out a laugh.

“Anyway, everyone says it works very well. It doesn’t do any harm in going to visit the temple and worship, right?”

Jiang Nan’an opened his mouth.

He wanted to say that he had already converted to Buddhism, so other Gods and Ghosts could not be worshipped.

But, before the words were about to leave his lips, he became very uninterested, and only smiled dryly. He turned his head to the side again, pretending to look at the scenery.

The driver dropped the two off at the entrance of the village. Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an got out of the car and began looking for Cai Mingjian and Su Lan’s house.

Farmers build their own houses by drawing a piece of land, so there was no concept of a “house number”, the host family would need to arrange a pick up for any visitors, or for the guests themselves have to ask someone local to help guide them to find the correct place.

Originally, Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an thought they would spend a lot of time on this, but they did not expect that it only took ten minutes for the two of them to find the target.

It was a small three-story building with the outside walls painted in beige; the fence was raised so high that from the outside of the courtyard, only a brick-red roof could be seen.

The reason they quickly noticed this house was because the fence had a slip of a yellow talisman pasted onto it, and the smell of incense was faintly wafting out of the courtyard; it seemed that a religious ceremony had just taken place.

Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an looked at each other and went up to ring the doorbell.

About two minutes later, a young woman’s voice came across the intercom with a very alert tone, “Who is it?!”

Wei Fuyuan hadn’t heard Su Lan’s voice, so he didn’t know if the person speaking was their intended target, he could only look at Jiang Nan’an and judge by the other male’s response.

He watched carefully as Jiang Nan’an stepped forward and approached the intercom slowly, replying in a nervous tone.

“Hello, my name is Jiang Nan’an. I’m a friend of Su Lan’s… I’ve come to see her specifically.”

Wei Fuyuan pondered to himself, quickly realising that it was definitely not Su Lan who answered the buzzer.

The woman paused for a moment, then muttered, “wait a minute” before complete silence filled the air.

About five minutes later, the courtyard door opened and a woman stood in clear view.

She appeared to be about thirty years old, and wore an elegant dark-green printed silk dress. She was beautiful and was somewhat similar to Su Lan, so Comrade Jiang was 90% sure that this woman was Su Lan’s sister.

The woman’s pair of eyebrows were slender and tall, and with her strong red lipstick, her face looked sharp and a little serious.

She looked at the two men up and down several times with a critical eye before asking with a sense of uncertainty in her voice,

“May I ask which one of you is Mr. Jiang?”

Jiang Nan’an hurriedly raised his hand.

“Hello, I’m Su Lan’s classmate from college, and I’m very close to her. I heard that she seemed to have had an accident, so I came to see her!”

She had probably heard her sister talk about her ex-boyfriend with whom she had only been together for two months, and she must have had some impression of his name; her eyes became slightly softer, but the scrutiny was still written on her face as if she was subconsciously comparing Jiang Nan’an with her brother-in-law.

“Please, come in.”

The sister sidled up to let the two inside and asked Wei Fuyuan about his identity.

Wei Fuyuan stated that he was a colleague of Jiang Nan’an’s, and that he joined him this time around.

“What?”

Sister Su saw that Wei Fuyuan was tall and handsome, so she naturally had a few more positive feelings towards him; even willing to take the opportunity to talk to him more, “Look at you, you are only in your twenties, right? You’ve graduated and you are working?”

She raised an eyebrow, “What does your company do?”

Jiang Nan’an was prepared for this question from the beginning, and immediately grabbed the conversation, “Our company is engaged in comprehensive assistance and has a wide range of business.”

He casually slapped Wei Fuyuan on the back again.

“Xiao Wei is still an intern, that’s why he still looks younger.”

Sister Su was stunned by such high profile wording as “comprehensive assistance”, but had no idea what it was all about. She wanted to continue asking questions, but the three had already crossed the courtyard and walked to the main door of the small building.

The door opened slowly, and both Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an immediately smelled the strong scent of incense.

The living room was filled with smoke, and it was stuffed with a room full of people.

A middle-aged Taoist priest wearing a blue Taoist robe with his hair worn in a bun was holding a compass in his hand, directing several young people to work in the living room, moving various cabinets and tables around.

Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an exchanged a puzzled look.

“Ah, sorry, our family is doing something…”

Sister Su looked embarrassed and touched her nose.

“The master said that when performing a religious ceremony, the individual concerned must keep themselves away, so Xiao Lan and her husband are on the second floor.”

She pointed towards the stairs again.

“I’ll take you guys up, alright?”

Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an naturally had no objections.

When going up the stairs, Wei Fuyuan pretended to be nonchalant and casually asked,

“I saw some talismans pasted on the wall on the outside of your house just now. Are these also from the master below?”

Hearing this question, Sister Su suddenly looked embarrassed.

She was torn between “Don’t wash one’s dirty linen in public” and “paper cannot cover fire anyway” for a long time, and then let out a long sigh.

“About this matter, please let Su Lan tell you about this herself…”