The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 20 Another Zhong Kui

Qi Fei walked in the cold mountains for most of the day. He added shredded ginger to the rice wine, which tasted hot. There was nothing more comfortable than this.

"This Huadiao is at least thirty years old?" he blurted out after drinking it.

"Such good taste is not something that ordinary people can cultivate." Zhong Kui said incisively.

"What Wu Shanqiu couldn't remember was probably you asking her about me, right?"

"I'm just very interested in you. I calculated your horoscope and it says that the God of Food controls the God of Death. It's very interesting."

"The God of Food controls killing? What does that mean? Are you saying I can eat a lot?"

Zhong Kui shook his head: "This God of Food is not that God of Food, anyway, it's a good thing."

"Master, do you really believe in fate?" Qi Fei asked Zhong Kui with his eyes blurred by the rice wine.

"I believe it." Zhong Kui answered without hesitation.

"Why do you use fortune-telling to disguise yourself? What are you trying to avoid?"

Zhong Kui looked at Qi Fei with a look of great satisfaction, which Qi Fei could not understand.

"Eat it! The winter bamboo shoots from Zizai Mountain are a rare delicacy. Your life is too rough."

"Hmph, I like it." Qi Fei ate without hesitation and admitted it with his head down.

"That's good, but you don't seem very happy that you found the murderer?" Zhong Kui threw a plum into the rice wine, took a sip and said.

"Xu Wei is dead."

"Who is Xu Wei?"

"I thought you were so good at predicting things that you should have guessed his name."

"I'm just a half-immortal, not a god."

"I can only say that it's basically certain that he's the murderer of Yang Jinhan. As for Zhu Mingen, I'll leave it as a question mark."

"Oh? Officer Qi is quite efficient in handling cases."

"The trip to Lanhe was crucial. Unfortunately, Xu Wei did not leave any testimony. He was determined to die, and we were fooled." When Qi Fei said this, he still couldn't help but feel regretful.

"Looking at the situation, it's probably just a matter of vengeance, not money, right?"

"Well, we traced Xu Wei's whereabouts. A few months before Yang Jinhan's death, their movements overlapped greatly. After Yang Jinhan learned of Yao Leilei's death, he wanted to seize the inheritance. We speculate that Xu Wei used Yao Leilei's finger as bait to lure Yang Jinhan to the meeting place at the gas station, and then burned him severely in the same way."

"So attentive, are you closely related to Yao Leilei?"

"He died without leaving any testimony, so all we can do is speculate. They were middle school classmates, and it seems Xu Wei had a secret crush on Yao Leilei. He worked at a funeral home, saw Yao Leilei's body, and knowing that the girl he loved in his youth had been mutilated beyond recognition by Yang Jinhan, he became murderous."

"It sounds like a sad story." "However, many things cannot be explained." Qi Fei put down his chopsticks. "If killing Yang Jinhan was to avenge Yao Leilei. Then what about Zhu Mingen? Xu Wei has no connection with him."

"Fire is blazing upwards, wood is bending and straight. Perhaps Xu Wei likes the pleasure of punishing the so-called bad guys because he successfully killed Yang Jinhan? Officer Qi, don't you think so?" Zhong Kui stared at Qi Fei with his big eyes, and it sounded like he was asking him a question.

"The person is dead. We talked to people who had contact with Xu Wei. They all said that this person was introverted, but not a bad person. We didn't expect him to do such a thing." Qi Fei paused after saying this and continued, "The key is!" He looked at Zhong Kui hesitantly. His ethics as a police officer made him hesitate whether to continue discussing the details of the case with this suspicious woman.

"I've heard far more secrets than you can imagine. I know you want to share them with me." Zhong Kui saw through it immediately. "In this place, no matter what you say, you can't leave Zizai Mountain."

Qi Fei gave a wry smile, his defenses largely lowered. He knew he had finally been manipulated by this witch. After drinking the hot wine, he let go of everything and said, "You know what? What I found on Xu Wei was a dried finger. The fingerprints on it are no longer the same as before. But the fingerprints we found in Zhu Mingen's case are normal. Otherwise, we wouldn't have found the connection to Yang Jinhan's case so easily in the fingerprint database."

"Do you suspect the murderer is someone else?" Zhong Kui listened with great interest.

Qi Fei stared at Zhong Kui. The thick fog that had come at dusk appeared before his eyes, making him feel dazed.

"Xu Wei and Yang Jinhan's connection is Yao Leilei, and Zhu Ming'en and Chen Xiaojing's connection is Zhu Qi. I don't believe Zhu Ming'en's death was a random event. The murderer's meticulous planning doesn't fit the characteristics of a random killing. But what is the connection between Xu Wei and Zhu Ming'en? And why did the same monster pattern remain at the crime scenes of both victims?"

"Monster pattern?" Zhong Kui asked in doubt, but seemed nonchalant.

Qi Fei picked up the chopsticks, dipped them in rice wine, and slowly drew the shape of the monster on the table.

As the image of the monster gradually emerged, there seemed to be a vortex in Zhong Kui's eyes, and then he stared with a deathly coldness.

For a few minutes, the room was very quiet, and Zhong Kui was uncharacteristically silent.

Such an abnormal reaction would not escape Qi Fei's eyes.

"Zhu Ming'en and Yang Jinhan both sought help from you because of their inner demons, but ultimately died at the hands of this monster. You said Zhu Ming'en died from a curse. I want to know if Yang Jinhan died from the same curse."

Obviously, the pattern of this monster was something Zhong Kui had not expected. She was staring at it so intently that she didn't even hear Qi Fei's question. Her voice suddenly became extremely low, and she said something in a language that Qi Fei could not understand. It was like the whisper of a devil, which gave people goose bumps.

In the dark night, a few crows cried outside, and Zhong Kui looked at Qi Fei with empty eyes.

This absent-minded look was nothing like the Zhong Kui that Qi Fei knew.

"When we first met here, I mentioned that Zhu Mingen was looking for you because he often dreamed of the same monster. Did he describe to you what this monster looked like?" Qi Fei's eyes were full of suspicion, and his intuition told him.

However, Zhong Kui seemed not to hear him and continued to repeat the words that he did not understand.

There were only Zhong Kui and Qi Fei in the small house on Zizai Mountain. The scene was indescribably strange.

Outside the window, the big cat Rakshasa stared at Zhong Kui with its big amber eyes motionlessly, its gray fur standing up, full of vigilance.

"Zhong Kui?" Qi Fei called her name tentatively.

Zhong Kui seemed to have just discovered that there was someone in the room. She looked at the person in front of her warily, glanced at the food on the table, and then looked at Qi Fei, as if she was very surprised by his appearance. Then she murmured in annoyance: "Zhong Kui, what's wrong with you..."

　Dear friends, go!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)