Die Schönheiten des kalten Palastes Eine subtile und verführerische Frau

Kapitel 15

"Deduction complete! Go ahead and shoot."

Ji Yunsheng's eyes suddenly turned bloodshot, like those of a mad dog.

"But you still haven't told me who the vengeful spirit is?"

"I said that everyone I meet will die, but I don't know."

"I'm asking you again, who the hell did you send that video to? Don't think I don't know you used the internet to send video footage to a stranger!"

"What videotape? I never touch other people's things without permission."

"You're lying. You have three seconds. If you don't tell, you're dead!"

Ji Yunsheng raised his gun to shoot me in the temple. One second, two seconds passed. Just as I closed my eyes and awaited death, Ning Yu, who was driving, turned around:

"Mr. Ji, let me tell you!"

Her voice changed! I opened my eyes.

"Who are you?..." Ji Yunsheng was also surprised and panicked, because the woman was lifting her long hair from her face, and a fair and beautiful face appeared in front of us.

"Didn't you... lose your face?"

"Put down your weapons!"

"You are not Ning Yu!"

"Put down your gun! This is the final warning!"

"You bastard, you bitch, who are you?"

Ji Yunsheng turned the gun around and pointed it at the woman.

"A vengeful spirit!"

"A vengeful spirit? I'll kill you!"

"boom!"

A muffled explosion ripped through the car, a blast of air erupting from Ji Yunsheng's head. Inside, flesh and blood flew everywhere; half of the desperado's face was blown off. The shockwave sent me reeling backward. I couldn't comprehend this strange occurrence. Then I saw a piece of Ji Yunsheng's bluish-purple lips pressed against the shattered window, a small, blood-stained piece of cigar still dangling from his mouth. He had been killed in the explosion. Still reeling from the shock, I saw the ghost of the driver, Ning Yu, smile at me and slowly remove her sunglasses.

“I planted a miniature remote-controlled bomb in his cigar.”

When Ning Yu turned her face completely, she wiped the blood splattered on her face, and I finally saw her face clearly. So she was...

Chapter Forty-Six: Memories of Despair

"Tang Yuqing!"

Do I look like a female ghost?

"It's you? This...is really..."

"That was brilliant! Your reasoning completely captivated me!"

"You? Just now... it was clearly Ning Yu, how did it become you?"

"Your hallucination, and this guy's lingering fear, so I just covered my thigh with a black headscarf and let my hair down, which confused him. Even you were fooled? Ha! You thought I was really a ghost? But thank you for the coincidence in your deduction. Your judgment that Ning Yu turned into a ghost helped me a lot."

"Are you really Tang Yuqing?"

"What's wrong? Something's not right?"

"I'm so confused. When I got on the bus, I clearly felt it was Ning Yu's zombie, but I never imagined it would be you! But Ning Yu, where is she...?"

“A police scoundrel. Unfortunately, before we arrested her, her face was peeled off. She wasn’t dead then, but somehow she was thrown into a well. When we pulled her out, she was almost dead. I pressed her for your whereabouts, and she told me about the plan that Ji Yunsheng and his gang were going to carry out. They took two of their men to Wan’an Cemetery to kill you there.”

Is all of this real? It all happened so suddenly. I held my head in my hands, unable to believe what she was saying.

"So everything that happened in the Forbidden City was under the control of the police? Why didn't you take action sooner? Otherwise, so many people wouldn't have died."

“We have been trying to get close to the target, but we can’t find any evidence or motive for their killings. Since the first skinned body was found in an abandoned well by several firefighters, many people have lost their lives. Because it involves key national cultural relics, the Ministry of State Security instructed me to conduct an independent investigation. If it weren’t for the fact that this guy has committed many evils and colluded with foreign conspirators, and we needed to collect evidence, we would have arrested him long ago.”

"I don't want to hear about your mission. You're a great cop! But why did you run my sister over with your car?"

"The old Pang Zhen is dead!"

"She didn't die, you're the one who ultimately killed her!"

"Yuling, wake up! If you don't believe me, turn around and look at the Wan'an Cemetery behind us. Do you see that white dot?"

After Tang Yuqing finished speaking, she stepped on the gas pedal hard, and the car drove back to the cemetery like a madman. Her skillful driving skills were like driving Grand Theft Auto, and she was about to drive the car into the air!

"You'll believe it, you'll believe it, Pang Zhen is already an uncontrollable demonic corpse!"

As the car drove back towards the cemetery, that white dot was transforming into a leaping, terrifying note! It was a piece of walking flesh, the clothes that had just been crushed by the car dancing in the morning mist, like a plastic bag wrapped around a corpse being blown about by the autumn wind in the wilderness, heading towards the garbage dump of despair in my heart, and my heart was trembling!

"She's not my sister, she's not Pang Zhen!" I stubbornly and obstinately clung to my emotional conviction, even when the pieces of corpse suddenly rose from the distance and rushed toward my gaze. It was like a missing girl suddenly seeing a relative; the no longer human "she" stubbornly leaped toward my car with her remaining leg!

I painfully closed my eyes until three withered, shriveled fingers suddenly appeared outside the car window, clutching half a bloodied breast. Only when the horrifying sight was laid bare before my eyes did I truly believe it:

It was half a face covered in blood, or perhaps it was no longer a face, but a tragic superposition. The once rosy lips had become a piece of fleshy cardboard, stuck to the car window, dripping two drops of bright red blood, like a rainbow that had died young, slowly falling into the azure sky of my memory.

The car sped forward, and the sister with the butterfly ribbon in my memory, the fashionable and sexy Pang Zhen with her smile like a lotus flower, disappeared forever from my tearful eyes.

"She's a zombie, her soul is beyond redemption! The seventeen girls who died tragically in the haunted building were all her sins. Ji Yunsheng used her to create supernatural events, abduct innocent girls, and then cruelly kill them according to their methods. He then used the eternal bond of love between couples to further commit his sins. Yu Ling... she and Pang Zhen are both my friends. Do you think I want her to die?"

"Stop talking! I know she was no longer in control of her own life. Let her rest in peace."

My rage gradually subsided. Staring at Ji Yunsheng's half-eaten head, a surge of emotion, still fresh from the shock, welled up again. I didn't know what Tang Yuqing's rescue of me and her sudden appearance meant, so I couldn't help but ask coldly:

"You already knew about their plot when you called me?"

"A phone call?...What phone call?"

"When I was trapped in the haunted building and about to meet my death, you called me and told me to escape through the hole in the exhaust fan."

"No! We only spoke on the phone once, when we were exchanging video data."

"But that voice was definitely yours, how could it be...?"

"Absolutely impossible. How would I know where you are? Maybe it's that person..."

"It's a ghost. She imitated your accent to make me believe her, but she saved me."

A moment of silence followed. I didn't want to recall those terrifying experiences because the situation was still terrible, and I couldn't even make sense of what was going on with these strange occurrences.

Are you alright?

Tang Yuqing asked with concern.

"Nothing, where are we going?"

"Back to the Forbidden City."

"Are they searching everywhere for me, sending me back to my death?"

“Don’t worry, I recorded Ji Yunsheng’s speech in the car just now, which can serve as corroborating evidence to clear your name. I received a report on my way here that the special police team has sealed off the haunted building. There is a secret passage under the floor of the bathroom basement that leads to other parts of the Forbidden City. Many skeletons have already been found, so I believe that Qi Silong’s case will soon have a new conclusion.”

"But tomorrow is October 10th, the 80th anniversary celebration of the Palace Museum. I'm worried that Ji Yunsheng may have someone behind him. They may have deliberately used Ji Yunsheng as a card to distract the police."

"It goes without saying that he mentioned an expert who is the mastermind behind it all, and we know nothing about this person."

"Alright, I'll go back. I want to find the well where Luo Yi died unjustly first; maybe I'll make some new discoveries."

"I'll help you. But... there's a question you can answer."

"What's the problem?"

"Is she... very beautiful?"

"who?"

"The woman named Luoyi... she is a ghost from many years ago, but she seems to have a special feeling for you, or perhaps an inextricable fate."

"Beautiful? I've never even seen her face. Let's not talk about that now, okay? What I want to know now is what the results of the analysis of the video I sent you last time are."

"Look at this."

After Tang Yuqing finished speaking, she opened a laptop next to the driver's seat.

"I am now connected to the State Criminal Investigation Bureau's confidential archives database via wireless technology. Our data analysis is located there."

She skillfully connected to the national public security top-secret system document database.

“The video from February 17th is very strange. I couldn’t find the footage of the well you mentioned. Also, please watch it again carefully.”

I carefully reviewed the video footage shot in night vision mode. The desolate courtyard remained eerily quiet under the moonlight, a corner of the eaves and a large locust tree stillly captured in the frame. Suddenly, a black silhouette appeared, legless, hovering near the tree. Then, Qi Silong's burly figure entered the frame, enveloping the shadow, which in turn embraced him. The image revealed a deathly pale face, without eyes or a nose, only a blurry red dot around the mouth. I couldn't see anything wrong with it.

"It's no different from what I've seen before. That shadow is Luo Yi, it must be her."

“Take a closer look at Qi Silong’s back.”

"Back view?"

"Yes, although it was dark, his physical characteristics were very clear. I will now enlarge the size of his back and compare it with the physical characteristics data of Qi Silong in the police academy records."

She fumbled through the data, conducting a simulation analysis. The result? The screenshots from the video didn't match the stored information about Qi Silong. The computer software warned of discrepancies, and the red flashing on the screen completely shattered her initial judgment. Why did the fact that she had always assumed the tape was filmed by Qi Silong himself, along with his February 17th diary as circumstantial evidence, turn out to be someone else entirely in the National Criminal Investigation Bureau's analysis? ...So, who was he?

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Vengeful Spirit's Bridal Sedan Chair

"If it's not Qi Silong, then who could it be?"

"However, judging from the fact that Ji Yunsheng couldn't find this video, it must contain some secret. I'm thinking..."

"Could the figure in the back be a vengeful spirit?"

Seeing Tang Yuqing's innocent and curious gaze, I voiced her concerns. She seemed very eager for my further explanation of this logical analysis.

"It is highly likely that Luo Yi said the vengeful spirit was formed from the accumulated hatred and resentment of Emperor Huizong of Song. His soul was hidden in the gold seal on the painting, and was later eaten by the twin princesses of Emperor Chongzhen before his exile. From then on, the two girls who were disfigured and died tragically in the well became the vessel of the vengeful spirit. But the figure in the back is a man... which is hard to explain."

"Perhaps we don't need to speculate. It's enough to know that Qi Silong wasn't the one embracing the woman at the time, and that the intimate story he described in his diary was fabricated. He was actually behind the person being filmed, and the tape was recorded by him."

I leaned over and started operating the computer myself, watching the image several times. Suddenly, a simple detail reminded me, and I stared intently at the tree in the picture.

"Yuqing, can you tell what kind of tree this is?"

"I can't see clearly. The trees in late winter and early spring have no leaves, and it's so dark..."

"It's a locust tree."

Are you sure?

"The scent of locust blossoms on Luo Yi's clothes should be a clue. It seems that as long as we find that locust tree, there must be a dry well next to it!"