The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 15 Graffiti
She sighed deeply, "Yes, he was so good at pretending. So good that for a long time, when he got married and became an alcoholic and gambler, beating and scolding me, I thought I was a bad wife and had let him become like this. Later, the elders said he might have been possessed by an evil spirit. With no other options, my family took him to see a Taoist priest, but the Taoist priest said he was born bad and could not be saved. I didn't dare tell him this, for fear of another beating. Now I think about it, I was so stupid back then!"

"It's not your fault." Wu Shanqiu couldn't help but pat Gu Ruyun's back and comfort her.

"You said he had harmed other people, who were they?" Gu Ruyun asked anxiously.

"We don't know yet, so we need your help to find him." Qi Fei said, "Since he's not from Sanwu Town, where did you meet him?"

"Oh, our ill-fated relationship, it really does have a traceable origin..." Gu Ruyun glanced at the statue of Wong Tai Sin inside the gate, thoughtfully, "I went on a trip that year. Yang Jinhan was the owner of a local B&B. Business was not very busy, and we got along well, so I exchanged contact information. After I came back, we often chatted, and I gradually developed a good impression of him.

From the beginning, I'd mentioned to him that my parents were looking for a live-in son-in-law. Later, as we developed feelings for each other, I didn't dare bring it up, fearing he'd mind. Unexpectedly, one day, he showed up at my house and said he'd sold his homestay and moved to Sanwu Town to be with me. He said his parents were both deceased, and he had no relatives back home, so he didn't mind being a live-in son-in-law.

This man looked handsome and spoke very politely. He was different from the peasants in the town. He seemed to be my father's ideal son-in-law. We didn't think much about it and let him stay.

Now that I think about it, I actually knew very little about this person. I don't know why I was so obsessed with marrying him.

"When did Yang Jinhan's hand get burned?" Qi Fei asked.

Gu Ruyun looked puzzled. "Are you talking about the scar on his palm? It's not from a burn. It was scraped from a motorcycle fall. When I first met him, his hand was still wrapped in gauze. I asked him about it."

"Is it what happened after we came to Sanwu Town?"

"No, his hands were like this when I met him. I asked him and he told me so himself. He said he sold his motorcycle after the accident and never rode it again. Could he be lying to me about this?"

"Now that everyone is dead, we don't know whether it's true or not." Wu Shanqiu said from the side.

Gu Ruyun thought for a moment and said, "That's not necessarily true. I might have a photo of his hand. Wait a minute."

She opened her phone and searched carefully. After a while, she finally found the photos and showed them to them. "This was taken by chance when we were dating. He really doesn't like having his photo taken. When I wanted to take a picture, he raised his hand to block my camera, and that's when he was captured. I'm a lazy person, so I usually back up my photos automatically and don't delete them very often. Otherwise, I would have deleted all his photos long ago."

Qi Fei took a closer look and saw obvious contracture around the scar, which could not have been caused by abrasion. It seemed that Yang Jinhan had lied to Gu Ruyun again.

"You just said you met at a B&B. Which B&B?"

"In Lanhe, during the time when he and I were going through a divorce, he often went back to Lanhe. I don't know what he was doing there, but then he had an accident at a gas station there."

Qi Fei gave Gu Ruyun his business card and told her to contact him if she had any ideas. Gu Ruyun took it but hesitated to speak. Qi Fei saw this and asked, "What do you want to say?"

"I don't know if I should tell you this. My parents said Yang Jinhan's death was a manifestation of Wong Tai Sin, but I've never believed it. I know you've all worked so hard to find the murderer who killed Yang Jinhan. But I have to thank that person. I know killing is wrong. If you catch him one day, can you tell me? I want to know who this person is."

Gu Ruyun put her headphones back on and ran forward. The fog had completely dissipated. When Qi Fei and the others returned to Wong Tai Sin Temple, neither Zhong Kui nor the old lady had been found. Everything was like a story from a Chinese Strange Stories studio: in the middle of the night, a feast and a beautiful woman, and at dawn, everything was gone.

Qi Fei and Wu Shanqiu walked through the streets and headed towards the parking lot at the town entrance.

The door of Old Man Gu's house was still closed. That deliberate avoidance always made Qi Fei feel that there was still an unsolved mystery. However, as a policeman, his pragmatic side prevailed, and the most urgent thing was to go to Lanhe first.

So far, apart from the fingerprint, and the vague and mysterious connection between Sanwu Town and Zhong Kui, there is no real connection between Yang Jinhan and Zhu Mingen's death.

He didn't believe Zhong Kui's so-called curse at all. Only by finding a complete chain of evidence could he find out what exactly happened to the two deceased.

The car slowly drove away from Sanwu Town. His mind was full of information about the case, and driving became a subconscious mechanical action. In his ears was the voice of Wu Shanqiu discussing the case with him from time to time.

Suddenly, the car slowed down sharply and the car behind it almost hit it from behind, honking its horn angrily as it overtook it.

"Ah, Brother Fei, what are you doing?!" Wu Shanqiu was still in shock as she looked at the absent-minded Qi Fei.

Qi Fei recovered, looked in the rearview mirror, restarted the car and resumed its normal speed, muttering, "Sorry, I was distracted and forgot we were on the highway."

"This is not like you, Brother Fei!" Wu Shanqiu said to Qi Fei with some concern.

"I just saw the monster's logo."

"On the highway?"

"Maybe I saw it wrongly, like a guardrail on the side of the road...it was just the corner of my eye...but it's also possible that I didn't sleep well last night." Qi Fei took a deep breath and tried to wake himself up. The two of them talked back and forth as the car drove a distance on the highway.

Lanhe City is a prefecture-level city adjacent to Nancheng. Its tourism has developed well in recent years, and there are many people like Yang Jinhan who open homestays in the local area.

Their first stop was the gas station where Yang Jinhan was killed.

This gas station is not far from the highway and is surrounded by desolate scenery. No wonder it was so difficult to find an eyewitness.

More than a year had passed, and no trace of the tragic scene remained. Only the low wall not far away and the monster that appeared in the graffiti in the photo, with four eyes, were still staring at them.

The effect seen on the scene was even more shocking than in the photo. It was exactly the same as the painting seen in the morgue where Zhu Mingen was murdered.

(End of this chapter)