The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 139 Memory Maze
But..." Qi Dongjun continued, "these years of lurking have not been without gain. Some things cannot be hidden." A sharp light flashed in his eyes, which was the shrewdness of a businessman. "No matter who a person is in this world, what he wants to do is what he desires. Xihe enjoys the pleasure of manipulating others, and he likes to take away other people's favorite things. I didn't find Xihe, but I know the Golden Snake Immortal well enough. He wanted fame and profit, and he got them all because of Xihe's guidance.

I used donated money as bait, and every transaction was in cash, recording the initials of the cash. This was my preferred method, and I thought it would be the most accurate way to uncover transactions between the Golden Snake Immortal and Xihe. Sure enough, a large portion of the profits the Golden Snake Immortal had made from his clients went into his account, then, after several rounds of transactions, was withdrawn in cash.

On the fifteenth day of every lunar month, he would go to Nanling with cash to offer sacrifices to the god who would bless his business to prosper.

Unfortunately, they were too cautious, and I was never able to trace what identity Xihe was living under now.

What's even more surprising is that the 'god' Ying Shuigen worshipped appeared before your mother's murder. This makes me feel extremely guilty. It was my negligence that gave Xi He the opportunity to manipulate an adult at the tender age of a teenager. "Qi Dongjun said, his voice...

Qi Fei suddenly grabbed the paper on the table and looked at it again: "He is inviting me... For him, this is just a game..."
-
In Guiyue Apartment, the incense for the dead was burning brightly. Zhong Kui was in a deep, dreamless sleep, while Granny Meng was watching beside him with a worried and vigilant look.

There was a knock on the security door.

The wrinkles on Granny Meng's face moved slightly, and she stood up impatiently to open the door.

Sure enough, Qi Fei was breathing heavily with his hands on the rusty iron door frame, his eyes seemed to be burning.

"The immortal is resting, you can't disturb him." Grandma Meng's withered hand was about to open the door, but was interrupted by Qi Fei's hand.

However, Zhong Kui woke up at some point and appeared like a ghost under the corridor light. The moment the silver bell in her hand rang, Grandma Meng fell to the ground like a puppet with broken strings.

"Zhong Kui, your intuition is right!" He raised the crumpled photo in his hand and said impatiently, "I, monster, I know why we got together!"

Zhong Kui was not as excited as he imagined, and just said lightly: "Come in~"

She stood up, picked up the warm teapot, and poured a cup of tea. The fragrance of tea overflowed. Zhong Kui slowly stirred the amber tea with a silver spoon. The crisp sound of the cup rim hitting the porcelain tray made Qi Fei slowly calm down from the restlessness he had just arrived.

Zhong Kui politely handed a full cup of fragrant tea to Qi Fei.

"Marbles, the boy in Nanling." Qi Fei drank the hot tea in one gulp and showed the screenshot in his hand to Zhong Kui again. The pain from the burn in his throat made his voice hoarse. "I think it was Zhong Xiaoyu who made you unable to recognize this person. He is Xihe, the monster. You are right, my answer is not with you! I'm sorry, this person is my brother. I think the reason you found me is because you felt the same blood as Xihe flowing in my body.

Now, the only thing we need to know is why he found Zhong Xiaoyu. Eleven years ago, he killed my mother and disappeared.

I don’t know why he appeared in Baicheng, and you…” Qi Fei suddenly stopped. He realized that the person in front of him was looking at him with an overly calm gaze. He seemed so strange and yet familiar.

This person listened to him talking about his discoveries with an indifferent expression, as if nothing could arouse her interest.

"You're not Zhong Kui." Qi Fei slowly stood up, looking at the person in front of her warily. Her tone was completely different, lacking Zhong Kui's coquettish charm. She spoke politely, but with an inherent coldness like an icy field. "Very good, let's see what you remember." As she spoke, she had already taken out the silver pendant.

Qi Fei had already realized that something was wrong, but the aftertaste of the tea in his mouth was indescribably sweet, with a strong aroma of almonds, and it tasted dizzyingly bitter when it fell to the bottom of his throat.

"What did you put in the tea?" he said weakly, gradually seeing the amber light.

"We're getting close." The vibrations of Zhong Kui's pendant resonated with Qi Fei's fading pulse. "Let's see how much the detective cursed by blood can remember..."

It was Nanling, over twenty years ago. He walked and walked in the setting sun, his sobs audible only to himself. The mountain wind blew, brushing against the ancient stone walls and whimpering through the narrow, endless passage, mocking his sobs. The moss on the stone walls oozed sweet, fishy drops of water, and the sound of marbles rolling echoed through the corridor like ghostly laughter. As he curled up at a fork in the road, sobbing, in the dim, narrow passage, he saw the hand reaching out to him. The dark red "birthmark" on Xihe's wrist drew closer. It turned out to be a scar, the burn mark from his own injury.

"Brother will take you out." The child's voice was as warm as honey, but the temperature of his fingertips was as cold as the rocks in the Nanling Underground Palace. "Brother's pain, I want my younger brother to taste it too."

In the distance, the mother's call came and went: "Xiaohe, Xiaofei...where are you?"

Qi Fei opened his eyes to the mixed smell of camphor and tea. He was lying on the carpet in the tea room. There was ash from the Boshan stove between his palms, like the remnants of burnt memories.

"I..." He had a splitting headache when he stood up. He staggered to pick up the phone that had fallen to the ground and saw that it was already three o'clock in the morning.

Zhong Kui leaned against the window, playing with a silver pendant, looking like a living thing in the backlight: "Are you awake?" She stretched out her cold hand, took the soul-lost Qi Fei's hand, and asked him to sit on the sofa.

Qi Fei looked blankly at the heavy rain outside the window. The rusty security window helped him slowly calibrate the reality. His eyes swept across the cooling teacup on the coffee table, and a kind of primitive fear suddenly gripped his heart, the fear of the unknown.

"Why am I here?" Qi Fei murmured.

"You said that you would go to Yingshui Middle School tomorrow to track down the whereabouts of Huang Daqiu's illegitimate son." Zhong Kui said slowly.

Her words seemed to open the blocked channel of his memory. The bizarre thoughts in his mind returned to their "right" place with this answer: "Oh, yes... We went to Huang Daqiu's apartment. That illegitimate child is a major suspect in murder."

Qi Fei stepped on the accelerator hard, but he couldn't suppress the chill spreading from the pinhole on the back of his neck - the chill was crawling along his spine to his brain, freezing the last trace of doubt into memory scraps.

……

(End of this chapter)