Chapter 121

Li Zhuiyuan took a step back and stood beside Lin Shuyou. Reaching out, he pulled open the side zipper of the hiking pack on Lin Shuyou’s back, drew out a length of net rope, and handed it to him.

“Pull.”

Lin Shuyou grabbed the rope and tugged hard several times in a row, drawing the Homecoming Net fully into his hands. He gripped one end in each hand, ready to spread it open at any moment.

“Be ready to enter a spirit medium state and catch her.”

At those words, Lin Shuyou’s expression immediately turned solemn. The tip of his nose twitched slightly, and his eyes settled into that half-open, half-sharpened state.

When the Officers of the Command Banner had not yet opened the face, it was easy for the emotions not to be fully in place, which lowered both the speed and success rate of entering a spirit medium state. So Lin Shuyou chose to warm up in advance.

The hospital building was tall, but nowhere near as outrageous as the department store had been.

Even if Lin Shuyou did not enter a spirit medium state, with his normal skills it would not be hard for him to catch a young, slender woman falling from above.

Of course, he might be injured in the process, and Zhou Yunyun would likely be hurt as well.

But if he was in a spirit medium state and had White Crane Child catch her, that would amount to adding an absolutely reliable layer of insurance.

After pulling out the Seven-Star Hook, Li Zhuiyuan ran into the hospital building, with Tan Wenbin following close behind.

As they went up the stairs, Li Zhuiyuan slowed his pace. In his mind, he kept replaying the details of Zhou Yunyun’s behavior on the rooftop earlier.

Tan Wenbin was frantic, so anxious he wished he could rush straight to the roof and save her. But when Li Zhuiyuan slowed down, not only did he not overtake him, he deliberately kept half a step behind.

After facing so many life-and-death crises, Tan Wenbin knew very well that the more urgent the situation, the more important it was to stay calm.

Just before stepping out through the rooftop door, Li Zhuiyuan stopped.

They could not go straight onto the rooftop and reveal themselves in front of Zhou Yunyun.

Her earlier behavior had clearly shown fear. It could be some malevolent spirit, or some kind of possession, or even... a problem with herself.

In any case, what she was seeing now was very likely not reality as it truly was, but a reversal and distortion built on reality.

In other words, the closer someone was to her, the more terrifying they might appear from her perspective.

Li Zhuiyuan tossed the Seven-Star Hook to Tan Wenbin, then slipped both hands into his pockets and pressed them into the red clay.

Very soon, he pulled them back out. He pressed his left thumb against his own forehead, and pointed his right thumb at Tan Wenbin.

Tan Wenbin immediately bent down and brought his face close.

Li Zhuiyuan only marked a red circle on his own forehead, but on Tan Wenbin’s face, besides the same red circle, he also drew a red flourish above each brow and at both corners of the mouth.

Black dog’s blood naturally had an evil-breaking effect, and those added markings temporarily altered the facial appearance, borrowing a spotless aspect for the moment.

After finishing, Li Zhuiyuan took the Seven-Star Hook back from Tan Wenbin and said:

“Go!”

Li Zhuiyuan charged out through the rooftop door first, and Tan Wenbin followed immediately behind.

There were already quite a few doctors, nurses, and security staff on the rooftop. Everyone was trying to talk Zhou Yunyun down, but she was extremely agitated and standing in such a dangerous spot that no one dared approach and attempt a rescue, afraid of provoking her into doing something even more dangerous.

Li Zhuiyuan slipped through the crowd. Once he entered Zhou Yunyun’s field of vision, he did not stop and did not speak. He kept running straight toward her.

Zhou Yunyun first looked at Li Zhuiyuan, but then her attention was drawn to Tan Wenbin appearing behind him.

At first, in her eyes, Tan Wenbin was a flayed, blood-red figure with no skin. But in the next instant, as her vision warped slightly, he returned to looking like “Tan Wenbin.”

At that moment, Zhou Yunyun felt as though she had spotted a normal living person among a crowd of monsters. Even if it had not been Tan Wenbin, it still would have felt deeply reassuring.

She turned sideways, stretched out a hand, and opened her mouth as if to call out.

While running, Li Zhuiyuan flung out the Seven-Star Hook. What had been a bamboo rod the length of one arm instantly turned into a long fishing pole.

With a twist of the handle, a ring of locking hooks sprang out at the tip and neatly caught around Zhou Yunyun’s outstretched wrist.

Li Zhuiyuan braced his shoes against the ground, turned with the motion, pinned the Seven-Star Hook beneath himself, and threw his whole weight down on it.

Zhou Yunyun’s wrist was locked, blood immediately flowing out. Her center of gravity was completely pulled back toward the inside of the rooftop terrace, and she pitched forward.

Tan Wenbin arrived in time. Sliding forward, he caught Zhou Yunyun and kept her from hitting the ground.

Zhou Yunyun looked at Tan Wenbin in front of her. The face of “Tan Wenbin” gradually changed back into a skinless monster. Screaming, she clawed at him and began struggling wildly.

Tan Wenbin shut his eyes and endured it all.

He restrained his instinctive response, such as rolling over and twisting both her arms and legs into a lock the way he would with a Dead Sinker.

Back in the dorm hallway, even Lu Yi, a burly northeastern man, had been completely pinned down by that move when he was possessed.

Li Zhuiyuan walked over and loosely clenched his right hand, then tapped Zhou Yunyun’s forehead three times with the knuckle of his ring finger.

Confusion filled Zhou Yunyun’s eyes. She stopped struggling and resisting, and tears slid from the corners of her eyes.

The medical staff behind them immediately stepped forward, wanting to take Zhou Yunyun back to her room. Li Zhuiyuan noticed that one of the nurses was holding a syringe.

“Binbin, control the situation.”

With one arm, Tan Wenbin lifted Zhou Yunyun up. With the other, he quickly reached into his pocket, pulled out his student ID, swept it around in a flash, and stuffed it right back, while loudly shouting:

“I’m a police officer.”

He had been the one who had just saved her, and with Tan Wenbin’s family background and the presence he carried now, when he pretended to be a cop, no one there actually doubted him.

Li Zhuiyuan quietly said beside him, “Back to the room.”

“I’m taking her back to her room. Aside from the attending doctor and nurse, no one else is to come near. Please cooperate with police work. Thank you.”

Zhou Yunyun was taken to a private hospital room. The nurse treated and bandaged the injury on her wrist, and the doctor also performed a preliminary physical examination.

Tan Wenbin refused the suggestion of a sedative, and he also did not allow them to use necessary restraint measures on Zhou Yunyun in the bed, such as... tying her down.

Those suggestions and measures were not exactly wrong. After all, Zhou Yunyun had just nearly jumped off a building, and she had shown some aggression.

“Thank you. You’ve worked hard. Please leave for now. I want to ask the patient a few questions alone. Also, tell the people from the school not to come into the room and disturb her.”

The doctor and nurse left. Before they went, they both glanced especially at Li Zhuiyuan, who was sitting on the stool nearby. They vaguely remembered that this boy had also played a role in saving her on the rooftop, but everything had happened so fast that even they themselves were no longer sure.

Now only Li Zhuiyuan, Tan Wenbin, and Zhou Yunyun on the hospital bed remained in the room.

Zhou Yunyun’s gaze was still vacant, but compared to before, it seemed to focus a little better now. She could not speak or move. She could only look at Tan Wenbin standing by her bed.

“Hiss... class monitor, you really are vicious when you scratch people.”

Tan Wenbin gently touched his face and neck. They were covered in scratch marks, many of them bleeding, and in a few places strips of skin were still hanging loose.

He looked exactly like a husband who had just finished fighting with his wife at home, and the one who had lost, at that.

Li Zhuiyuan stepped down from the stool and came to the bedside, looking at Zhou Yunyun.

Seeing that Li Zhuiyuan was not looking at him, Tan Wenbin simply went halfway around the bed to Li Zhuiyuan’s side and whispered:

“Brother Xiaoyuan, my brain short-circuited just now.”

Tan Wenbin had come over to admit fault.

There had always been one rule in their group: when facing a sudden situation, they had to make the calmest and most correct choice possible based on the circumstances at hand.

Put simply, do not do anything stupid.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “It’s fine. She can’t scratch you to death.”

Tan Wenbin chuckled twice. He could sense that Brother Yuanzhi was gradually changing. Somehow, he seemed to be growing more and more human.

“Brother Xiaoyuan, what do we do next?”

“Call your father. Your fake police act won’t hold for long. Have him come control the situation.”

“Oh, right. And... under what reason?”

“A poisoning case.”

“Poisoning?” Tan Wenbin immediately caught on. “Someone used a dirty trick on her?”

“That’s possible, but it still can’t be confirmed.

“But Zhou Yunyun is a university student. She had an episode in her dorm first, then nearly jumped off a building after being admitted to the hospital. None of this can be kept hidden.

“And once she gets completely tied to the label of mental illness, her studies and her future will both be ruined.

“The best way to wash away the mental illness label is to turn this into a poisoning case, to explain it as abnormal behavior caused by poisoning.

“That way, after treatment is over and she returns to campus, the negative impact can be reduced as much as possible.”

“Thank you, Brother Xiaoyuan. I’ll call my dad right now.”

As Tan Wenbin walked toward the hospital room door, he was still muttering to himself in his heart: That brain of his is terrifying.

He was still only focused on Zhou Yunyun’s condition, while Brother Xiaoyuan was already thinking about how to clean everything up afterward.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Send Lin Shuyou in.”

“Got it.”

Tan Wenbin opened the hospital room door and stepped out. He saw Lin Shuyou sitting on a bench in the hallway, his expression grave and his fists clenched tight.

What was wrong with this guy?

To be honest, Lin Shuyou was happy that Zhou Yunyun had been rescued in time and had not jumped.

But deep down, he also felt a tiny bit of personal regret at having missed a chance to show what he could do. He was deeply ashamed of that regret and was currently carrying out a fierce self-criticism.

“Hey, Ayou?”

“Ah, Brother Bin, how’s sister-in-law doing?”

“I’m going to make a call. You go in.” Tan Wenbin could not be bothered to correct the way this idiot addressed her right now.

“Then I’m going in.”

Lin Shuyou carried the hiking pack into the room.

Li Zhuiyuan pulled out one of his yellow talismans from his pocket and handed it to Lin Shuyou, instructing him, “Walk around the room carefully a few times. Climb up and check the ceiling too. While you’re at it, stick the talisman around in different places.”

“Okay.”

Lin Shuyou set the bag down, took the talisman, and first wandered around the room. Then, like a gecko, he climbed up the wall, moving along it while testing different spots with the talisman.

Because the talismans Li Zhuiyuan personally drew only worked like pH test paper, there was no need to plaster them everywhere. As long as one sheet did not change color, it could be used to test all over the room.

After busily checking for a while, he even cleared away several spiderwebs in the corners, but found nothing.

“It’s all checked, Brother Xiaoyuan.” Lin Shuyou held up the talisman, still yellow, for Li Zhuiyuan to see.

“Do you feel anything yourself?”

“No. This room is very clean.”

“Yes. Very clean.” Li Zhuiyuan nodded. “And that’s where the problem is.”

When ordinary people ran into unclean things, either the unclean thing stuck to them, as with Jingjing, or even if it was no longer on them, it still left very heavy traces behind, like when he himself had been afflicted by Little Oriole.

But he had already checked. There was not a trace of anything on Zhou Yunyun.

And yet her symptoms clearly showed that she had encountered a malevolent spirit.

Lin Shuyou asked cautiously, “Brother Xiaoyuan, could Zhou Yunyun have been hit by someone?”

“A curse?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.

“At our temple, people often come asking us to remove evil because they think someone has ‘hit’ them. I’ve helped with that before too.

“But this kind of thing is very troublesome, because changes only happen when the person is being hit. After the effect ends, it’s hard to detect any problem.

“Unless they get hit a second time.

“So when we run into cases like that, we usually just have the person stay at the temple, or at a nearby hotel, and wait for it to flare up again. Then we immediately set up an altar and enter a spirit medium state for them, using the power of the Officers of the Command Banner to slam it right back!”

“Ayou.”

“Yes, Brother Xiaoyuan?”

“Do you know how to cast curses?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“What about your family temple?”

“How could our temple possibly know that? Any person or sect with even a shred of shame and morality would never do something so vile and underhanded. They wouldn’t even bother to learn that kind of filth!”

Lin Shuyou lifted his chin, faced upward, puffed out his chest, and spoke with ringing conviction.

But after a long while, he still received no response from Brother Xiaoyuan.

In that instant, an enormous wave of regret struck him.

Lin Shuyou felt that he might have said the wrong thing.

“Brother Xiaoyuan... do you know how?”

The moment he finished asking, Lin Shuyou bit his lip hard, so regretful he wished he could slap himself.

“Yes,” Li Zhuiyuan said. “I do.”

Lin Shuyou lowered his head, like a little wife, staring at his feet pressed neatly together.

Li Zhuiyuan really did know how.

In Chronicle of the Orthodox Demon-Suppressing Arts, Wei Zhengdao had fiercely condemned curse arts. In order to make readers loathe them even more and fully understand how filthy they were, Wei Zhengdao had even analyzed some classic curse traditions in detail in the book.

And since Li Zhuiyuan was already highly skilled in physiognomy and fate calculation, the greatest obstacle to learning curse arts had effectively been cleared away for him in advance.

But the problem was that curse arts had immense limitations. No, not limitations. Defects.

First of all, the success rate of curse arts was not high, and whether the curse succeeded or not, the caster had to pay an enormous price.

Second, even if it did succeed, if the harm done to the cursed person was one, then the harm to the caster was at least two or more.

That was why many of the famous curses in history had been cast only when one side was already on the brink of extermination, whether of clan or country. It was a case of smashing the pot because it was already broken anyway.

Aside from that, in real life, the ones who helped people curse others, stick needles in effigies, or use vicious methods were always the sort of rotten people who could not even keep their own lives straight.

Either they themselves lived miserably, or their relatives did. In any case, their lives were always extremely hard, and in order to keep scraping by, they continued doing this sort of work, forming a vicious cycle.

The reason upright and famous sects did not learn this stuff was not because they were upright and famous sects. It was simply because this thing... was too terrible a bargain.

Before you could curse someone else’s family into ruin, your own whole household would probably die first to liven things up.

That was why this was also the part Li Zhuiyuan could not understand right now.

He had seen Zhou Yunyun yesterday, and she had still been normal then. Yet a curse capable of producing such violent effects overnight had to be of an extremely high level.

Zhou Yunyun had been his classmate in his final year of high school. Although they had not interacted much, he knew she was only an ordinary person, from a clean and ordinary family background.

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