Azure Heart Horror Short Story

Chapter 15

Fang Shiyang returned his kiss: "But your idea is even better. You used acupuncture to temporarily disable her legs, and you repeatedly tried to convey my kindness to her subconscious."

"Yes. People who are mentally scattered are most easily influenced by external factors, so hypnotizing her is usually quite easy. But her insistence on removing the bandages really surprised me..."

"Don't be scared. If she hadn't seen herself looking so ugly, she wouldn't have completely broken down. That special effects makeup was really well done; even I was startled when I secretly peeked from outside." Fang Shiyang hugged Tong Bing tightly. "When she found out I was having an affair, I was almost scared to death. But she never imagined it was you, haha..."

Tong Bing paused for a moment: "The child in her belly isn't yours, is it?"

“I’ve had tests done, and my sperm survival rate is lower than that of a giant panda. So, it definitely can’t be mine,” Fang Shiyang said, emphasizing each word.

Corpse Shock

Summer nights are always restless.

Old Zhou returned home from drinking at his friend's house at two in the morning. As he passed Jiuyan Bridge, he saw a woman squatting on the ground, fiddling with something. The streetlights couldn't illuminate her long hair, and she looked like a huge shadow as she squatted on the ground.

Old Zhou walked past her and smelled a strange odor, but didn't react for a moment.

After walking twenty or thirty meters, feeling uneasy, I turned back to investigate.

Unexpectedly, the woman was tying a rope to her feet, with the other end of the rope attached to a large rock. After tying it, she got up, hugged the rock, and climbed over the railing of the Nine-Eyed Bridge.

"Girl, don't do anything rash!" Old Zhou shouted as he ran.

The woman seemed not to hear, standing outside the railing, she loosened her grip, and the stone fell straight down.

Old Zhou arrived just in time and grabbed the woman's shoulder.

The woman neither spoke nor struggled; she simply turned her head slowly.

It was a face covered in blood. The skull had been crushed, the right eyeball dangling from the fleshy tendon, blood gushing from all seven orifices, brain matter and hair stuck together. The bridge of the nose was broken. Half of the lip had been torn off, drooping listlessly below the nostrils…

Where is the life in this?! How could this possibly be a living person?

Old Zhou felt his blood surging, as if all his blood was rushing to his heart as if fleeing for his life.

Thump—thump—thump thump thump…

He clutched his already dysfunctional heart in pain and slowly fell backward.

The woman gave him a sly smile and gracefully jumped off the railing.

Thump.

...

Early that morning, Zhou Tie felt uneasy. Since he was going to his parents' house to get his household registration book, he casually bought some tonics and sent them home.

Before he had even parked his car, Zhou Tie saw a group of neighbors standing downstairs, pointing and whispering.

He peeked out and saw his father standing on the edge of the rooftop terrace, teetering on the verge of falling.

He was so frightened that he jumped out of the car and rushed over.

"Dad! Dad—! Don't jump!"

He ran as fast as he could, shouting wildly. The crowd gathered below, seeing the family of the man who was about to jump, made way for him.

Just as the crowd was dispersing, Lao Zhou fell down without any struggle, like a sandbag.

It landed right in front of Zhou Tie.

His head split open like a ripe watermelon, its flesh splattered all over the ground.

However, apart from the white brain matter, there wasn't a single drop of blood.

It took Zhou Tie a long time to realize all of this.

Zhou Tie took leave to stay home and care for his distraught mother. His mother fainted several times from crying. This added to Zhou Tie's already immense grief, beyond the loss of his father.

Through conversation with her mother, she learned that her father did not come home at all last night.

In other words, he came back this morning, went up to the rooftop, and jumped to his death.

But before last night, Father showed no signs of suicidal ideation, nor did he argue with Mother at all. Could it be that he lost money gambling?

Uncle Wang denied this speculation over the phone. He said that when Lao Zhou left last night, he had won a small victory and was in a good mood.

Zhou Tie absolutely refused to believe that his father would commit suicide.

The surface evidence was far removed from logic, but Zhou Tieqiang, suppressing his grief, decided to get to the bottom of the matter.

He insisted on having a forensic autopsy performed on his father's body to see if drugs had caused his father's mental breakdown. But the autopsy report made him realize that things were not as simple as he had imagined.

Based on physical signs, Lao Zhou's cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest. Moreover, the time of death was 5 to 6 hours prior.

At this moment, Zhou Tie recalled that there was no blood splattering when his father jumped off the building.

How is that possible?!

Could it be that my father died somewhere else and was then moved to the rooftop...? But so many eyes clearly saw that he was the only one standing on the edge of the rooftop when he jumped off.

The investigators thoroughly examined the rooftop and confirmed that Zhou's father had indeed gone up there alone, with no signs of him being moved.

At this time, news came from the Wangjiang Road Police Station that a woman's body had been retrieved from the Fuhe River. It was suspected that she had died in a car accident and then been dumped in the river. However, after reviewing the surveillance footage, it was discovered that the woman had jumped into the river herself, carrying a stone. An elderly man appeared in the surveillance footage, and the Wangjiang Road Police Station is now trying to locate him to understand the actual situation.

Upon hearing that this case was very similar to his father's fall from the building, Zhou Tie went to the Wangjiang Road Police Station. In the surveillance footage, he immediately recognized the elderly man who tried to dissuade the woman from jumping into the river as his own father.

When he saw Lao Zhou clutching his chest, slowly backing away, and then collapsing to the ground, he immediately realized that his father had already suffered a heart attack.

How did the father get home?

In the video, only Lao Zhou was lying quietly on the ground. It was fast-forwarded for about half an hour before a woman walked over to check on Lao Zhou's condition.

Strangely enough, after the woman performed CPR on Old Zhou by pinching his philtrum, Old Zhou actually stood up. The two then went their separate ways.

Zhou Tie felt that something was wrong with the video, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

On the fourth viewing of the video, Zhou Tie suddenly realized that his father and the woman hadn't exchanged any words at all. It seemed that the woman knew from the beginning that Old Zhou was having a heart attack, and after reviving him, he didn't even thank her... Logically, the woman should have at least helped Old Zhou notify his family or taken him to the hospital for further examination, but there was absolutely no interaction between them.

The bizarre scene was like changing the battery of a robot that had run out of power, and the robot started moving on its own.

It seems that this woman is the key to the whole case.

On the other hand, the video footage showed that the woman who jumped into the river emerged from the woods along the riverbank. Once out of the woods, she was already carrying stones when she climbed over the railing and jumped into the Fu River. Zhou Tie reviewed the nearby CCTV footage but couldn't find any trace of this woman. So where did she come from?

Zhou Tie thought of police dogs.

Using police dogs to track the woman, they quickly determined that she had come from Jiande South Road, which was one kilometer away.

It appeared out of thin air.

It seems someone drove her here and then she walked to Jiuyan Bridge.

They then retrieved CCTV footage from Jiande South Road and discovered that the woman had stepped out of a blue POLO.

Judging from the way she got out of the car, she seemed a little stiff, not like a normal person. Or rather, not like a living person.

The police began to focus their investigation on the blue POLO.

Zhou Tie then began investigating another woman.

From the aerial footage, we can see that the woman left the bar, said goodbye to her friends, and then stumbled into a public restroom near the bridge. At this point, she appeared to be quite drunk and was just relieving herself. However, after emerging from the restroom, she seemed like a completely different person, walking steadily towards Old Zhou. Based on this, she should have just been a random passerby returning home from a nightclub, so why did she then do something so perplexing?

There was another suspicious point in the video: people occasionally went in and out of the public toilet, but a dark figure entered before the woman who jumped into the river went onto the bridge and didn't come out until Lao Zhou left. However, because it was too dark to see clearly, Zhou Tie couldn't be sure if the dark figure was the same person who stayed in the toilet the whole time. Even if it was, it could be a pervert or something similar.

Zhou Tie began investigating the woman's identity.

Three days later, he finally obtained some relevant information. The woman's name was Yang Chunlei, and she worked at a public relations company, but she hadn't come to work for several days. The department head recalled receiving a text message from Yang Chunlei a few days earlier saying that she had suffered a stomach hemorrhage after drinking with clients that night and needed to take a week of sick leave. Considering that she had just signed a big deal, the supervisor agreed. There had been no further contact since.

Zhou Tie took the address his supervisor had given him and went straight to Yang Chunlei's house. He knocked on the door for a long time, but no one answered.

For some reason, Zhou Tie felt the answer lay behind the door. So he used a piece of plastic to pry open the lock and quietly went inside.

The thick curtains were drawn, making the room dark even in broad daylight. A pungent, musty stench filled the air, lingering for a long time.

Zhou Tie inwardly cursed. He was all too familiar with this smell.

The living room was empty, the kitchen was empty, the toilet was empty... only the tightly closed bedroom remained.

Zhou Tie kicked the door open and discovered that it wasn't locked, but just ajar.

The stench grew even stronger. A woman's corpse, dressed in a fashionable suit, hung silently below the ceiling, her face ashen and eyes bulging. Her hands gripped the nylon rope around her neck tightly, indicating she was in considerable pain before her death.

Zhou Tie covered his nose and looked around. There were no signs of struggle or fighting, so it seemed like a suicide. He then turned away and called the police station to ask them to send someone over.

At this point, he overlooked two things:

The first thing that happened was that the female corpse's finger joints suddenly moved, her hands gripping the nylon rope, and her head slipped out of the noose. Slowly, very slowly, she fell to the ground behind him.

Silently.

This shows that the female corpse possessed considerable strength.

Guided by his professional sense of smell, Zhou Tie suddenly felt the stagnant, foul stench in the air being stirred, and a gust of wind rushed up behind his head. Quick-witted, he ducked down, narrowly avoiding a punch thrown by the female corpse.

Zhou Tie turned around and saw that Yang Chunlei's face was still ashen, her eyes bulging, and she had no expression. The skin and flesh of her finger joints had completely rotted away, exposing the finger bones, making her look like a real-life version of the Nine Yin White Bone Claw.

Even with his extensive experience in battle, he was terrified and broke out in a cold sweat.

Yang Chunlei had no combat training, but she possessed immense strength, and each of her blows caused severe damage to furniture or walls. Fortunately, Zhou Tie was agile and dodged them all.

Zhou Tie seized an opening, sidestepped Yang Chunlei's lunge, and delivered a heavy elbow strike to the back of her neck. Yang Chunlei immediately fell face-first to the ground. Zhou Tie quickly twisted her hands behind her back, pressing her two skeletal claws together. During the handcuffing, Yang Chunlei struggled desperately, and Zhou Tie clearly heard the sound of her arm bones cracking, a sound that sent chills down his spine.

Yang Chunlei struggled to stand up, but Zhou Tie kicked her in the buttocks, causing her to fall back down. Zhou Tie quickly found a rope, tied it around her feet, and intertwined it with the handcuff chains. Now she couldn't stand up anymore.

Like a fish out of water, it flails about aimlessly.

The second thing Zhou Tie overlooked was the pair of cold, indifferent eyes behind the large wardrobe. It wasn't until he had tied Yang Chunlei up and was knocked unconscious by a heavy blow to the head that he realized there was someone else in the room.

When I woke up, my colleagues had already arrived.

Yang Chunlei was no different from any other corpse.

Everyone was puzzled as to why Zhou Tie would take down the body of a woman who had hanged herself and then handcuff her...

The information for the POLO car was found; the owner is a man from Guangxi named Liu Dang. Zhou Tie compared his photo with the security footage from Yang Chunlei's apartment complex and discovered that Liu Dang had indeed been there on the day he was attacked. Elevator footage almost certainly confirmed that the person hiding in the closet at the time was indeed Liu Dang.

Based on the clues from the POLO car, colleagues checked his dashcam footage and discovered that the woman who jumped into the river to commit suicide was hit and killed by Liu Dang, who was speeding, at an intersection halfway out of the city, and then dragged into his car. Liu Dang taking her to Jiande South Road was merely a cover-up. However, judging from the video footage, the woman who jumped into the river should have been killed instantly. Why was she able to walk to the Jiuyan Bridge on her own?

Could this person have the ability to manipulate corpses? Zhou Tie's mind was in turmoil.

Now that their target was identified, they quickly launched an operation to arrest Liu Dang.

At this time, the autopsy report also arrived. The forensic doctor discovered that the skulls of the woman who jumped into the river, Zhou's father, and Yang Chunlei all contained some undocumented parasites. These parasites were translucent grayish-white, with slender bodies and tentacles that extended deep into the brain like roots. Without careful examination, they could easily be mistaken for normal tissue such as cerebral blood vessels.

Based on this, it seems that Liu Dang manipulated the corpse through parasites.

This explains why Yang Chunlei was completely different before and after entering and leaving the public restroom. It's because Liu Dang, hiding inside, witnessed the woman jumping into the river and terrified Lao Zhou. He then strangled Yang Chunlei while she was using the restroom and manipulated her to implant a parasite into Lao Zhou's brain.