Chapter 278

In September in Nancheng, the scorching heat made a comeback as if unwilling to give up.

At the entrance of the Sheng family's recycling station, heat steamed from the concrete ground. Looking through the surging air, the lowered rolling shutter door seemed to be shaking.

But everyone knew there was no one inside.

Qi Fei looked through the cordon as the fully armed technical personnel pulled up the rolling shutter door. A pungent stench rushed out, which could be smelled even from several meters away.

"Hmm?" Zhong Kui, who was beside him, suddenly changed her expression, "This smell..."

Qi Fei said in a deep voice: "I was worried it would be like this..."

The two of them were speaking in riddles.

"When we came last time, this smell wasn't so intense." Zhong Kui's face was gloomy.

"This only shows that the thing is still there." Qi Fei said immediately.

The testing personnel walked out of the recycling station with instruments and said to Qi Fei: "Your speculation is correct. We detected a relatively high concentration of hydrogen sulfide gas inside."

"Can you track down the source?" Qi Fei said.

"We are already using a leak detector to look for it. We borrowed an industrial one from a chemical plant."

"The forensic colleagues previously collected evidence in the recycling station and searched around but didn't find any chemical products that would emit hydrogen sulfide. I hope there will be a harvest this time." Qi Fei said.

The testing personnel added: "Hydrogen sulfide isn't necessarily produced by chemical products. There is one other place where hydrogen sulfide can accumulate." Having said this, he suddenly paused.

"Where?" Qi Fei became curious.

"Slaughterhouse." The testing personnel's words made Qi Fei's heart even heavier.

"The decay of animal viscera can also produce a large amount of hydrogen sulfide gas." The testing personnel said.

Qi Fei took a deep breath and found that Zhong Kui was gone. Looking around, he found that she had walked to a place not far away.

As time passed, a few sporadic passersby came to watch the excitement near the recycling station in the afternoon.

Zhong Kui didn't know when she had blended into these people, chatting warmly with them under the banner of fortune-telling.

Qi Fei knew it was her "persona" at work and walked over helplessly to pull her away, explaining to the crowd: "We are conducting a normal investigation. Everyone, please disperse."

But one middle-aged woman jumped out and said: "This is a real Great Immortal. You police should listen to her!"

Qi Fei was speechless and said to Zhong Kui: "What kind of soul-stirring soup did you feed them?"

Zhong Kui raised an eyebrow: "When you came to investigate before, didn't you hear about the ghost haunting?"

"What ghost haunting?"

"Look, there are some things they will only tell this Great Immortal, not the police." Zhong Kui said proudly, breaking free from Qi Fei's hand, and instead pulled him in front of the middle-aged woman who had just spoken: "Sister Wang, tell him again what you told me."

Sister Wang hesitated upon hearing this: "The police won't believe what I say, right? They'll just treat me like a lunatic and arrest me."

"It's okay. I'm a lunatic, and you see they haven't arrested me." Zhong Kui smiled wickedly, "I will make him believe you."

"Okay, Great Immortal, I believe you." Sister Wang bit her lip as if making a decision, "I have neurasthenia and sleep lightly in the middle of the night. For the past two months, I've been hearing crying in my kitchen in the middle of the night, but when I get up to look, there's no one there. I got divorced many years ago and originally lived alone. After it was so noisy for several days, I told my sister. I was really scared, so she said she would come over to sleep with me. But strangely enough, after she came, the crying at night stopped."

"Just now, the Great Immortal said that looking at my complexion, something is definitely wrong. I must have encountered something unclean recently. It's too accurate!"

Qi Fei was confused. Wasn't this just a trivial matter of a middle-aged woman's suspicion and auditory hallucinations? He couldn't help but mutter to Zhong Kui: "What does this have to do with the case?"

Zhong Kui wasn't in a hurry, her mouth slightly curled: "Then you need to know where she lives."

"Where?"

Sister Wang pointed her hand upon hearing this: "That first floor is my home."

Qi Fei looked in the direction she pointed. It turned out that there was a green belt behind the right side of the recycling station, and across the green belt was the residential area. Sister Wang lived on the first floor, separated from the recycling station by a wall.

"Most importantly, you need to know when her sister came." Zhong Kui continued, "September 2nd."

"Yes, I remember very clearly. Wasn't it the day this family had an accident? Many police officers came. I thought, this female ghost was probably scared away by the righteousness of so many police officers like you." Sister Wang said it as if it were true.

Qi Fei didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He had never thought that being a police officer would be praised from the perspective of scaring away a female ghost, but this date was enough to alert him: "The crying disappeared on the day of the Sheng family's accident?" He said and looked at Zhong Kui.

"Isn't it a bit of a coincidence? I think we can go to Sister Wang's house for a look." Zhong Kui said with a smile.

Perhaps because of the lack of the female ghost's disturbance, Sister Wang seemed to be in a good mood and took the initiative to take Qi Fei and Zhong Kui into the residential area, heading straight to her home on the first floor.

The kitchen was right at the entrance. Through the window, one could see the back of the shops, but these shops were all built against the wall and had no back doors.

This kitchen was semi-open, with only enough space for one person to cook.

"Where did the crying come from at that time?" Qi Fei asked while opening the cupboard to check.

"It was right here where I cook." Sister Wang imitated it with lingering fear, "Sob sob sob, it was just like that, in bursts, drifting out from this stove. It was very clear. I'm sure I didn't hear it wrong."

Zhong Kui's hand suddenly grabbed Qi Fei's arm, pulled him out of the small kitchen, and stood in the position of the stove herself, standing motionless for a long time.

The room became quiet all of a sudden. Sister Wang looked at Zhong Kui's statue-like back and became nervous, quietly asking Qi Fei: "Is the Great Immortal possessed?"

Qi Fei didn't answer. He wasn't afraid of possession; in this situation, he was afraid of whether Zhong Xiaoyu had appeared again.

Fortunately, when Zhong Kui's voice came again, it was still her.

"Don't you feel that it's been smelly at home lately?" She turned her head and looked at Sister Wang.

Hearing Zhong Kui say this, Sister Wang had something to say: "Now that you mention it, it really is. I thought it was because of the hot weather. Because you see, outside this window is the green belt. It's possible some cat or dog died in the grass and rotted. However, if you really say it's smelly, it's not that strong. It's just in bursts. It wasn't very obvious, so I didn't tell the property management. Anyway, I figured the smell would be gone when the weather cools down."

"This smell didn't come from outside the window; it came from this range hood." Zhong Kui said and looked at Qi Fei.

Qi Fei knew the information her eyes conveyed. He knew that Zhong Kui would be particularly sensitive to a certain smell—the smell of a rotting corpse...