Chapter 20: Another Zhong Kui

Qi Fei had been walking in the cold mountains for most of the day. The yellow wine had ginger shreds in it, and drinking it down was hot; there was nothing more comfortable than this.

"This Yellow Rice Wine must be at least thirty years aged, right?" he blurted out after drinking it.

"Such good taste doesn't seem like something an ordinary family could cultivate," Zhong Kui said pointedly.

"The content that Wu Shanqiu couldn't remember was probably you asking her about my situation, right?"

"I'm just very interested in you. I calculated your *bazi*—'Eating God controls the Seven Killings'—very interesting."

"'Eating God controls the Seven Killings'? What does that mean? Does it mean I'm a big eater?"

Zhong Kui shook her head: "This 'Eating God' is not that 'Eating God.' In short, it's a good thing."

"Great Immortal, do you really believe in fate?" Qi Fei asked, looking at Zhong Kui with eyes blurred by the yellow wine.

"I do," Zhong Kui answered without hesitation.

"Why use fortune-telling to disguise yourself? What exactly are you running from?"

Zhong Kui looked at Qi Fei with a rather gratified gaze; Qi Fei couldn't understand this look.

"Eat. The winter bamboo shoots of Zizai Shan are a rare delicacy. Your line of work is too rough."

"Hmph, I like it." Qi Fei ate big mouthfuls without standing on ceremony, burying his head and admitting it.

"That's fine, but the killer has been found by you, yet you don't seem very happy?" Zhong Kui dropped a preserved plum into the yellow wine, took a sip, and said.

"Xu Wei is dead."

"Who is Xu Wei?"

"I thought you were omniscient and should have already calculated his name."

"I'm only a half-immortal, not a god."

"I can only say that it is basically certain that he is the killer who killed Yang Jinhan. As for Zhu Ming'en, I'll put a question mark there."

"Oh? Officer Qi's case-solving efficiency is quite good."

"That trip to Lanhe was critical, but unfortunately, Xu Wei didn't leave any testimony. He was determined to die; we were tricked." Speaking of this, Qi Fei still couldn't help but feel remorse.

"Looking at the situation, it's mostly about grudges, and has nothing to do with money, right?"

"Hmm, we tracked Xu Wei's trajectory. In the months before Yang Jinhan died, their trajectories overlapped highly. After Yang Jinhan learned of Yao Leilei's death, he wanted to seize her inheritance. We suspect that Xu Wei used Yao Leilei's finger as bait to lure Yang Jinhan to that meeting spot at the gas station and burned him into a severe injury in the same way."

"So dedicated, was he close to Yao Leilei?"

"He died without leaving any testimony, so everything can only be our speculation. They were junior high classmates. It seems Xu Wei had a secret crush on Yao Leilei. This person worked at the funeral home, saw Yao Leilei's body, and knew that the girl he admired in his youth had been devastated by Yang Jinhan, so he developed murderous intent."

"Sounds like a sad story."

"However, many things cannot be explained," Qi Fei put down his chopsticks. "If killing Yang Jinhan was to avenge Yao Leilei, then what about Zhu Ming'en? Xu Wei had no connection with him at all."

"'Fire is flaming upward, wood is bending and straightening.' Perhaps because Xu Wei succeeded in killing Yang Jinhan, he grew to like the pleasure of punishing so-called bad people? Officer Qi, don't you think so?" Zhong Kui's big eyes stared at Qi Fei; it sounded like a question for him.

"The person is dead. We have talked to people who had contact with Xu Wei; they all say this person was introverted but not a bad person. I never thought he would do such a thing," Qi Fei said, paused, and continued, "The key is!" He looked at Zhong Kui hesitantly. As a police officer, his professional ethics made him hesitate whether to continue discussing the details of the case with this woman who was full of suspicious points.

"I have heard more secrets than you can imagine. I know you want to share with me," Zhong Kui saw through him immediately. "In this place, whatever you say will not leave Zizai Shan."

Qi Fei gave a bitter smile, his inner defenses let down by more than half. He knew that he had ultimately been manipulated by this shaman. With the hot wine in his stomach, he stopped caring and said: "Do you know? What I found on Xu Wei was a dried finger. The fingerprint on it had long since changed from the original, but the fingerprint we found in the Zhu Ming'en case was normal. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been so easy to find the connection with the Yang Jinhan case in the fingerprint database."

"You suspect the killer is someone else?" Zhong Kui listened with great interest.

Qi Fei stared at Zhong Kui. The thick fog that came at dusk floated before his eyes, making him feel a bit dazed:

"The intersection between Xu Wei and Yang Jinhan is Yao Leilei; the intersection between Zhu Ming'en and Chen Xiaojing is Zhu Qi. I don't believe Zhu Ming'en's death was a random event. All the killer's precise arrangements do not fit the characteristics of random killing. But what is the connection between Xu Wei and Zhu Ming'en? Also, why did both crime scenes of the two deceased leave the same monster pattern?"

"Monster pattern?" Zhong Kui said the question, but appeared indifferent.

Qi Fei picked up his chopsticks, dipped them in yellow wine, and slowly drew the shape of the monster on the table.

As the monster's image gradually revealed itself, a whirlpool seemed to rotate in Zhong Kui's eyes, followed by a deathly cold gaze.

For a few minutes, the room was very quiet. Zhong Kui was uncharacteristically silent.

Such an abnormal reaction would not escape Qi Fei's eyes.

"Zhu Ming'en and Yang Jinhan both sought your help because of inner demons, and both eventually died at the hands of this monster. You said Zhu Ming'en died of a curse. I want to know, did Yang Jinhan die of the same curse?"

Obviously, this monster pattern was something beyond Zhong Kui's expectations. She stared at it so intently that she didn't even hear Qi Fei's question. Her voice suddenly became exceptionally low, and she said a sentence in a language Qi Fei couldn't understand, like a devil's whisper, making one's skin crawl.

In the dark night, a few cold crows shrieked outside. Zhong Kui looked at Qi Fei with hollow eyes.

This absent-minded look was not at all like the Zhong Kui that Qi Fei knew.

"When we first met here, you mentioned that Zhu Ming'en came to you because he often dreamed of the same monster. Did he describe the appearance of this monster to you?" Qi Fei's eyes were full of suspicion; his intuition told him so.

However, Zhong Kui seemed not to have heard his words and continued to repeat that sentence he couldn't understand.

In the cabin on Zizai Shan, there were only Zhong Kui and Qi Fei. This scene was indescribably eerie.

Outside the window, the big cat Luosha's amber eyes stared at Zhong Kui motionlessly, its gray fur standing up, full of vigilance.

"Zhong Kui?" Qi Fei tentatively called her name.

Zhong Kui seemed to have just discovered that there was someone in the room. She looked at the person in front of her vigilantly, glanced at the food on the table, and then looked at Qi Fei, as if very surprised by his appearance, and then muttered as if very annoyed: "Zhong Kui, what is going on with you..." ===== CHAPTER 21 =====