The female sales representative pursed her lips a little hesitantly when she heard that:
"Well... I usually don’t go to her place, so I really don’t know her exact apartnt number. And company rules say we can’t casually disclose employees’ ho addresses."
Seeing this, Fang Cheng imdiately explained:
"I’m a high school classmate of Ning Yue. We haven’t been in touch for a while."
As he spoke, he raised his hand and pointed to the black SUV parked by the roadside outside the showroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows:
"That Land Rover outside was bought here a few months ago, handled by Ning Yuejing. I ca today because I was planning to find her to order another car."
The female sales rep followed the direction of his finger. That brand-new Land Rover worth over a million was parked in the sunlight, gleaming and eye-catching.
She did a quick calculation in her head. Since he was a big client and also an old classmate, making a little exception wouldn’t hurt.
"Please wait a mont."
The sales rep turned and walked to the front desk, tapping on the keyboard at the computer for a while, seemingly checking employee information.
A mont later, she tore off a yellow sticky note, copied down a line of address with a ballpoint pen, and ca back to hand it to Fang Cheng.
"This is the ho address she left in the system. It’s good for you to go check on her; we’re all doing what we can."
Fang Cheng took the slip of paper and glanced at the handwriting on it: Building 7, Apartnt 304, Lixin Garden, Baihua Street, Jiangdong District.
"Thanks a lot."
He folded the note and slipped it into his pocket, nodded to the sales rep, then turned and pushed open the glass door, striding into the wave of heat outside.
..................
On the kitchen stove, ghostly blue flas licked at the bottom of the clay pot.
The dark-brown dicinal decoction churned and bubbled inside with a "gulu gulu" sound, every so often pushing the lid up and opening a crack.
White steam hissed out through the crack, and a pungent, overpowering dicinal sll spread through the kitchen.
Through the open glass door of the kitchen, the scene in the living room was laid bare.
It looked as if it had just been ransacked.
The fabric sofa had been slashed open in several places, yellowed foam spilling out and scattered across the stain-covered tiled floor.
Two chairs lay crooked and toppled in a corner against the wall, one of their legs already broken.
The coffee table was piled with half-eaten takeout boxes, wads of crumpled tissues, and a few torn-up scraps of yellow talisman paper.
The whole place was filthy and chaotic, exuding an indescribable sense of wrongness.
"Ah————"
Suddenly, a shrill scream burst from the bedroom at the end of the hallway, shattering the oppressive atmosphere in the apartnt.
Right after, a string of filthy curses rang out one after another.
The voice was coarse and hoarse, like the guttural roar of so old man with a wad of phlegm stuck in his throat, laced with the vilest vulgarities from the streets.
The bedroom door was half-closed, with several people squeezed inside.
Right now, Ning Yue stood by the doorfra, her hands digging tightly into the wood.
Her eyes were bloodshot, a few loose strands of hair stuck by sweat to her cheeks, but she had no mind to brush them aside.
Looking in.
The cramped bedroom had its curtains drawn tightly shut; the light was dim, with only a single incandescent bulb overhead for illumination.
On the single bed against the wall, a young woman was twisting her body desperately.
She wore what had once been a light-pink nightgown, now utterly ruined.
It was stained with yellowish dicinal spots, dark red blood, and gri of unknown origin.
Her hands and feet were each tightly strapped to the iron bedfra with four leather belts.
With every violent struggle, the belts were pulled taut as bowstrings.
The iron bedfra groaned under the strain with a harsh "creak," the whole bed shaking violently, as if it might fall apart the next second.
The one bound to the bed was none other than Ning Yue’s younger sister-in-law, Li Jiajia.
Who would have thought that the girl who used to be so demure and obedient, who barely dared to raise her voice, would end up like this.
Her black hair was matted into a tangled ss, plastered damply across her face.
Through the gaps between the strands, one could see her features twisted, her lips cracked and bleeding, saliva constantly dribbling from the corners of her mouth down to her chin and dripping onto the sheets.
"Let go! You filthy bastards! Let go!"
The coarse, rasping voice kept bursting from Jiajia’s mouth, completely unlike anything a young girl would say:
"I’ll kill every last one of you! I’ll peel off your skin to feed the dogs, grind your bones to dust, and make sure none of you die a good death!"
As she spoke, she suddenly snapped her neck back, slamming the back of her head hard against the bedboard with a dull thud.
At the foot of the bed stood a man in his fifties with graying hair—Ning Yue’s father-in-law, Old Li.
Old Li had both hands pressed against the iron rail at the bed’s foot, trying to steady it.
All the wrinkles on his face were drawn tight together, his eyes bloodshot. He said nothing, but the veins on the backs of his hands bulged one by one.
"Jiajia... my Jiajia..."
Ning Yue’s mother-in-law collapsed on the floor by the bed, sitting limp, her face buried in her hands, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.
She cried as she slapped her own thighs with her hands.
Ning Yue took a few quick steps to her mother-in-law’s side, squatted down, wrapped her arms around the old woman’s shoulders, and pulled her firmly into her own embrace.
"Mom, don’t look, it’s okay."
Ning Yue bit her lower lip, her voice clearly trembling, but she forced herself to soothe her:
"The priest said this is a normal reaction, it’ll be over soon, Jiajia will get better."
Her mother-in-law leaned on Ning Yue’s shoulder, her hands clenching tight around Ning Yue’s arms as she wept in anguish:
"She used to be so good, she wouldn’t even dare kill a fish, how did she beco like this... What sin did our family commit!"
Standing beside the bed was a priest in a black cassock.
He looked a little over forty, with a pair of gold-rimd glasses on his nose and a conspicuous silver cross hanging over his chest.
After Li Jiajia’s illness relapsed this ti, the hospital had run every possible test, but they still couldn’t find a cause, and the dication had no effect at all.
With nowhere left to turn, the family had invited monks and Taoists to co perform rituals at ho, praying for blessings and exorcism.
But instead of getting better, her condition worsened day by day.
In utter desperation, Ning Yue asked around for any possible solution, and eventually found a nearby church.
She heard that this priest was good at dealing with strange incidents like this, so she went to beg him over and over, and brought him to their ho.
She had no other options now and could only cling to this last sliver of faint hope, treating a dead horse as if it were still alive.
When a person is cornered, they’ll try anything.
Maybe this foreign monk’s prayers would actually work?
At this mont, the priest took a small glass bottle from the black leather bag he carried, and pulled out the cork.
He took a deep breath, held a thick, worn Bible in his left hand, and dipped his right thumb into the clear liquid inside the glass bottle.
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy na..."
The priest began to chant the prayer, his voice steady and powerful, trying to drown out Li Jiajia’s shrieks.
Then he flicked his right hand, sprinkling the Holy Water from his fingertips onto Li Jiajia’s forehead.
"Ah—"
Li Jiajia suddenly let out an extrely sharp, blood-curdling scream.
The scream had trendous penetration, stabbing at the eardrums of everyone in the room.
She jerked her chest upward, her whole waist lifting off the bed, forming a grotesque arch.
The belt bit into her flesh, and thin lines of blood seeped from her wrists.
"It’s working! Father, keep going!"
Seeing this, Old Li’s once despairing eyes flashed with a hint of light, and he shouted.
Beads of sweat broke out on the priest’s forehead. He swallowed, turned a page of the Bible, and raised his voice even higher:
"Evil spirit, in the na of the Lord I command you: leave this body! Return to your abyss!"
Then he dipped into the Holy Water again and flicked it repeatedly onto Jiajia’s face and neck.
Jiajia’s body twisted even more violently, her hair whipping from side to side across the pillow, a beastlike growl rumbling from her throat.
Ning Yue held her mother-in-law tightly, staring at the young sister-in-law suffering on the bed, and finally couldn’t hold back her tears.
She had seen what Jiajia was like when she was normal.
The girl who would help her watch the kids on weekends and call her "sis-in-law" with a smile now looked like so kind of monster.
"Jiajia, just hang in there, once you get through this it’ll be okay..."
Ning Yue’s eyes were red as she muttered to herself.
Just as the priest was about to pour out the entire bottle of Holy Water for the final banishnt—
The commotion on the bed suddenly stopped.
Jiajia’s taut body went limp all at once and crashed heavily back onto the mattress.
She stopped screaming, her chest rising and falling slowly.
The room fell into a deathly silence.
Only the sound of everyone’s heavy breathing and the mother-in-law’s broken sobs remained.
"Is... is it over?"
Old Li loosened his grip on the bed rail and leaned forward cautiously.
The priest also froze, his hand holding the cross suspended in midair. His brows furrowed slightly, a trace of hesitation in his eyes.
He stepped closer and lowered his head to carefully examine the girl on the bed.
Suddenly, Jiajia’s shoulders twitched.
Then a low, muffled laughter rumbled out of her chest.
"Heh... hehehe..."
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