Investigation of the Malevolent Spirit

The time goes back to last night.

Out of the eight cases, only two corpses remained.

But that was enough.

Wearing gloves, Liu Zheng carefully examined the two cold bodies. The cause of death on the official report was clear and faultless.

However, when he struggled to turn one of the bodies over, his movements suddenly paused, and the smell of formalin in the morgue seemed to fade a little.

"What, did you find something?" Kuang Jianhua, whose nerves had been tense the whole time, leaned in closer and asked cautiously.

"It was done by something dirty."

Liu Zheng straightened up, took off a glove, and threw it into the medical waste bin. "And it's quite fierce. I need to call someone."

Kuang Jianhua was stunned when he heard this. He leaned over and repeatedly examined the body under the light of the shadowless lamp. The skin on the back of the corpse was smooth; apart from livor mortis, there was nothing else.

But what Liu Zheng saw was a completely different scene.

On the back of the corpse was branded a pair of blackened palm prints. The five fingers were incomplete, leaving only fragmented traces.

It was just that the blackness was not a physical entity, but a cold, malicious resentment that penetrated the bone marrow.

He didn't explain much, took out his phone, and dialed out.

"Hello! Old Bai, are you still with Shouzhen?"

It was a bit noisy on the other end of the phone, and Old Bai's voice was loud: "Yes! I'm just about to stuff him into the car and send him back to the Chunyang Temple!"

"Don't send him back. Come over to my place. I'll send you the address. There's a murderous evil spirit hurting people, and we might need him to take action."

"Alright, I'll bring him over!"

Hanging up the phone, Liu Zheng turned around, put his glove back on, and went to examine the other body.

It was in a different location, but it had the same blackened palm print. Only this mark was fainter and even more incomplete.

He raised his head, his eyes falling on Kuang Jianhua's face.

"Jianhua, track down all the bodies from those previously closed cases. As long as they haven't gone into the incinerator, I want them all back."

Kuang Jianhua's face instantly fell, his expression uglier than if he were crying. "Old Liu, this... this is not just ordinarily difficult. The cases are closed, and the bodies have been returned to the families. If I go ask for them back now, it'd be a miracle if they don't tear me apart."

Despite saying this, he still walked out of the morgue, taking out his phone, preparing to make those calls that were destined to get him severely scolded.

Because the cases were closed as accidents, many bodies were returned to their relatives.

These two bodies were only left here because their relatives hadn't come to claim them yet.

However, since Liu Zheng said so, he definitely had to get them back.

Not long after, the door to the morgue was pushed open, and a flurry of hurried footsteps approached.

"Where is the person? Where is the ghost? Where is it?" Old Bai's voice arrived before he did. Behind him followed a helpless-looking Shouzhen, and Xia Zhi, whose eyes were full of curiosity mixed with a bit of nervousness.

Liu Zheng pointed at the autopsy table, briefly going over the situation in a few words, and finally looked at Shouzhen.

"Shouzhen, take a look."

Shouzhen originally had a rare day of leisure today. He came down the mountain to have a casual meal with them, but just as they finished eating, they ran into this incident.

He didn't have any complaints, just treating it as fate that couldn't be avoided.

He walked to the side of the corpse, brought his fingers together into a sword mudra, wiped them across his eyes, and muttered an incantation.

When he opened his eyes again, the colors of the entire world seemed to have changed.

"It's a fierce spirit."

Shouzhen immediately saw the pair of malicious palm prints and the lingering black aura wrapped around them. "It's taking revenge. This resentment is stacked layer upon layer. The resentment on this second corpse is much thicker than the other one."

His expression was very serious. Obviously, this matter was not simple either.

"Every time this thing kills a person, its own resentment skyrockets. It uses the resentment of the newly dead to fill its old hatred. Once its revenge is complete, its own bit of resentment will dissipate, but the resentment of those it killed will completely devour it.

By then, it will no longer kill for revenge, but will exist purely for slaughter, turning into an out-and-out evil ghost!"

Xia Zhi only half-understood these deeply mysterious concepts. She couldn't help but ask, "That's not right, little Daoist Shouzhen. Didn't you say that once a great grudge is avenged, the resentment should dissipate? How can it keep getting stronger?"

Shouzhen shook his head.

"The theory is correct, but think about it. When it kills someone, doesn't the person being killed hold resentment before they die? This new resentment is like ink dripping into its original bowl of water. The more it kills, the blacker the water becomes."

Shouzhen paused, pointing at the incomplete palm print, his voice growing a bit deeper.

"Its own resentment might be resolved, but the resentment from killing others becomes an unpayable debt. In the end, it will only be left with the instinct to slaughter."

Old Bai sucked his teeth as he listened. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's hurry up, find it, and finish it off!"

Shouzhen didn't reply. His gaze was fixed dead on the incomplete parts of the palm print, and he suddenly spoke.

"Incomplete. Why is this mark incomplete?"

He seemed to be asking himself, but also seemed to be asking Liu Zheng.

"This shows that its process of killing wasn't smooth. Or rather... its will wasn't firm enough, and its power was insufficient, which is why it left an incomplete mark."

Shouzhen slowly raised his head, looked at the three people present, and said word by word,

"It is evolving. Next time, what we see will probably be a complete pair of hands."

--System: Then let's dig it up.--

In the office of Yanhuang Awakening, the lights stayed on all night. The air was filled with a mixed smell of instant coffee and the heat radiating from equipment.

Xia Zhi rubbed her sore eyes. Her fingertips swiped across the giant electronic screen, leaving behind intersecting trails of light.

She was checking the files of those few people.

"Come look at this."

Her voice wasn't loud, but like a stone thrown into stagnant water, it instantly attracted everyone's attention.

"I have circled the residential and work locations of all eight victims."

On the electronic screen, circles of various sizes overlapped one another. And in the area where all the circles intersected, a distinct route ran straight through.

"And then, I saw this."

Eight cases, eight deceased individuals. Their life trajectories were completely different, yet they all had one overlapping route.

"This is no coincidence," a young agent muttered to himself. "This fierce spirit isn't killing randomly?"

"The victims definitely aren't random passersby," another person chimed in, their brows furrowed tightly. "But what exactly did they do? It can't be that eight people made an appointment to go to that street together and offended the exact same ghost."

"Is it possible that they did something that caused someone to turn into a fierce spirit? They might actually be the culprits of some sort. Or perhaps, before the fierce spirit died, it encountered these people, but what did they all do?"

Old Bai didn't join the discussion. He was wearing headphones, his ten fingers flying across the keyboard, comparing massive amounts of case registration information while checking the victims' phone data.

Suddenly, he ripped off his headphones and violently sprang up from his chair.

The commotion was so loud that it startled the drowsy Shouzhen next to him.

"Stinky Bucket Hat, I found it!"