My family tree hollow connects to the modern era : Chapter 29

Bai Zhizhi slammed his hand on the table, and the three people beside him immediately rushed to comfort and coax him. Watching this, Lu Mingyu could not help but wonder if this fox demon had cast some kind of spell on them.

He could see it now never mind bringing this little fox demon back for questioning, if he asked even a few more questions here, these two elderly cultivators would probably kick him out.

After actually meeting Bai Zhizhi, the suspicion in Lu Mingyu’s heart had indeed lessened quite a bit. Although he believed that all demons were wild and untamable, he did not sense that wildness in Bai Zhizhi at all. Even if they were to speak strictly of evidence, the only link between Bai Zhizhi and the deceased was that trace of demonic energy.

But that could not serve as concrete evidence.

Lu Mingyu finished the tea in his cup, stood up, and said, “I will thoroughly investigate the case of that family. In the meantime, try your best to stay in the courtyard and do not go out.”

He directed these words to Gao Man and Bi Weiqin, meaning they should keep a close eye on this fox demon before the truth was uncovered.

After saying his piece, Lu Mingyu politely bid farewell to everyone in the house.

Bai Zhizhi watched him leave and gave a soft click of his tongue. With a wave of his hand, a pearl glowing with seven-colored glass light flew out of his palm, dispersing into a rainbow-colored halo in mid-air that blanketed the entire small courtyard.

The three of them looked up in unison.

Bai Zhizhi said, “This is a Phantom Bead. Anything that enters the boundaries of this small courtyard without coming through the front door will fall into an illusion. This goes for those with cultivation and those without. As long as you stay in the yard, I guarantee nothing can hurt you. No running around, you hear me?”

Yue Zhihuan pulled at Bai Zhizhi and gestured: [Where are you going?]

Bai Zhizhi replied, “To keep an eye on that guy and catch the killer, of course! He dared to suspect me, so I want to see just how capable he really is!”

Without waiting for them to object, Bai Zhizhi dashed straight out of the courtyard. Yue Zhihuan wanted to chase after him, but Uncle Gao held her back: “Let him go. Little White knows his limits.”

His cultivation talent was poor; despite a lifetime of training at his old age, he was only at the fourth level of Qi Refining. However, having lived through so much, his ability to read people was solid. Bai Zhizhi had a temper, but he was not a bad person, nor did he have a nature that would kill living things recklessly.

Helpless, Yue Zhihuan gestured to Uncle Gao: [Uncle Gao, you should still call him Zhizhi. The dog kept by our neighbor next door is named Little White, we can’t get them mixed up.]

Uncle Gao chuckled and said, “I know, I know. Zhizhi, Zhizhi, is that fine?”

The home of the deceased was not too far from the small courtyard, but it was not very close either; it took about five or six minutes to walk there through the alleyways. This was the trouble with alleyway courtyards—they were crowded and chaotic, especially with the elderly who had nothing better to do and loved to watch a scene. They were not even afraid of a dead body. If the doorway had not been blocked off, they would have loved to go inside the house to watch the spectacle.

With great effort, Lu Mingyu finally made his way back to the victims’ home. Just as he was about to ask the evidence collection team if they had found anything, a voice that was not quite familiar but not quite foreign rang out by his ear: “How can anyone live in such a tiny house? I thought Jiang Lin’s place was small enough, but turns out there are places even smaller than his.”

The entire house consisted of only two rooms—a bed in the inner room, and a sofa and TV in the outer room. It was so small that it could barely fit two people standing together.

Everything was a matter of comparison. Now that they compared, Jiang Lin actually had a bit of wealth after all.

Lu Mingyu turned his head, saw Bai Zhizhi following behind him, and frowned again: “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the courtyard? What are you doing here?”

Bai Zhizhi rolled his eyes at him: “Am I supposed to do whatever you tell me to do? Who do you think you are? Besides, the dark shadow that broke into our yard yesterday has not been caught yet. Who is to say it isn’t the killer? Of course I have to come and take a look.”

Pushing Lu Mingyu aside, Bai Zhizhi entered the house a step ahead of him. Inside, there was an incredibly thick stench of blood, which had fermented under the slightly warm temperature, making it smell fishy and foul.

The three people inside had died a gruesome death. All of them had been killed by a wooden stake driven through their hearts. The three of them were kneeling on the ground, and the stakes piercing their hearts happened to rest against the floor, propping up their corpses. Claw marks were visible on their backs—three extremely deep wounds with black energy swirling around the edges, alongside a lingering trace of demonic energy.

The family of three consisted of two males and one female. The son did not look very old, probably in his early twenties, and he had died the most horrific death. He had multiple wounds all over his body with flesh torn inside out, suggesting he had likely suffered a great deal of torture before dying.

With just one glance, Bai Zhizhi said, “This was not done by a demon.”

Lu Mingyu asked, “Why are you so sure? Just because they were killed by a sharp object piercing their hearts, you think it wasn’t a demon?”

Bai Zhizhi looked at Lu Mingyu: “Have you ever dealt with a person killed by a demon?”

No. Lu Mingyu lowered his eyes. He had never dealt with one, but he had seen it with his own eyes—the people who had been killed were his own parents.

Seeing him remain silent, Bai Zhizhi grabbed his hand, extended a finger, let out his claw, and lightly scratched his arm: “Take a look at this. How is it different from what’s on the victims?”

Looking at the scratch on his hand that was clearly somewhat deep, Lu Mingyu said speechlessly, “If there’s a difference, couldn’t you just tell me? Why did you have to scratch me?”

Bai Zhizhi replied, “Words can never make as deep of an impression as experiencing it yourself.”

Lu Mingyu could only feel that Bai Zhizhi was taking revenge on him!

But since the injury was already done, Lu Mingyu could only bear the pain and observe closely. There was no point in comparing the scratches themselves; different demons with different levels of force would leave different marks, so there was no comparability there.

Very soon, Lu Mingyu realized what the difference Bai Zhizhi spoke of was. It was the demonic energy.

This did not mean the scent of the energy was different, but rather its behavior. The demonic energy on the victims’ wounds was dissipating outward as if it had merely rubbed off on them. On the other hand, the scratch Bai Zhizhi gave him was deeply embedded in the flesh, lingering without dispersing, and even attempting to burrow into his muscles and blood.

Lu Mingyu said, “This is a fresh wound, and I am still a living person, so my blood and energy are flowing, which keeps the demonic energy from dispersing. They are already dead, and their blood flow has stopped, so the demonic energy is drifting outward?”

Even with the distinction laid out right in front of him, he could still find an excuse to pin the murder on a demon. Bai Zhizhi felt that this man simply held a prejudice against demons: “Think whatever you want. In any case, finding the killer is not my job.”

Lu Mingyu’s team member walked over with the organized files: “Captain Lu, we’ve conducted some inquiries. The male victim, Chen Li, forty-eight years old, worked as a supervisor at a design firm. The female victim, Wan Fang, forty-six years old, was Chen Li’s wife and taught at Mingde High School, currently leading the graduating senior class. Their son, Chen Baojun, twenty-one years old, dropped out of high school and has been unemployed at home.”

“Their relationship with the neighbors was decent; they hadn’t made any major enemies, but they weren’t very easy to get along with either. Chen Li rarely came home, Wan Fang was a bit snobbish and looked down on those around her, and their son was an absolute deadbeat who dropped out of school and stayed cooped up at home, barely stepping out of the door once in ten days or two weeks. Based on our preliminary assessment, a revenge killing is highly likely. Our next step will focus on mapping out their social network.”

After listening to his team member’s report, Lu Mingyu turned around to see Bai Zhizhi holding a wooden stick, pouring some unknown liquid into the blood on the floor. Once the dried blood was re-diluted, he used the stick to draw something on the floor with it.

Lu Mingyu walked up, initially intending to pull him up and tell him not to mess around in a way that disrespected the deceased. But as he drew closer and saw the totem that was almost completely drawn on the floor, it did not look like idle play at all. He held back his temper and asked, “What are you doing?”

Crouching on the floor, Bai Zhizhi did not even raise his head: “Summoning their spirits. Whoever killed them, the victims themselves would surely know best. I will call out their spirits to ask them.”

Spirit-summoning was an evil technique originally developed by human cultivators. Some human cultivators liked to craft puppets, but puppets without spirits were merely empty shells and dead things. Therefore, they would forcibly extract the spirits of living people, stamp them with a mark, and lock them inside the puppet shells to achieve complete control over them.

However, the spirits of living people varied in strength; the stronger ones naturally belonged to those with high cultivation. Such people were difficult to capture, so those puppeteers turned their attention toward demon cultivators. The demon race was born with powerful spiritual bodies, making them, in the eyes of puppeteers, the most suitable candidates to be refined into puppets—becoming powerful and loyal once marked.

Spirit-summoning was a mandatory lesson for the children of their clan; they had to know how to summon spirits, and also how to resist being summoned.

These three people had only died a short while ago, so Bai Zhizhi wanted to try and see if he could call out their spirits to ask. Since learning this art, he had never actually used it.

When the final stroke of the totem on the floor was completed, a flash of red light swept across it, and a sudden gust of wind howled inside and outside the house, slamming the doors and windows with loud bangs.

A few people standing close to Bai Zhizhi had just heard him mention summoning spirits. Seeing this commotion, they thought the spell had succeeded and were waiting tensely, only for the wind to quickly die down. Bai Zhizhi let out a surprised “huh” and muttered, “There are no spirits.”

Bai Zhizhi turned his head to look at Lu Mingyu: “They have no spirits left.”

Lu Mingyu did not believe him. He harbored deep wariness toward demons; when someone’s parents had died at the hands of a demon, it was impossible for them to hold any goodwill toward the species. He was already being extremely restrained by not hating all demons indiscriminately.

Thus, he would not blindly believe whatever Bai Zhizhi said, but he would not dismiss it outright either; he would verify it using his own methods.

Lu Mingyu had someone fetch a case from his car, which was filled with various medicine bottles, red strings, and incense sticks of different thicknesses. Bai Zhizhi watched from the side as he lit a stick of incense. Wisps of spiritual energy drifted outward along with the smoke. After bowing three times toward the empty air, he controlled the smoke to condense into talismans.

Bai Zhizhi could not understand those talismans, but he could feel a pulling force coming from them. Sure enough, the smoke slowly split into two streams—one wrapping around the three corpses, and the other condensing into an array.

A moment later, just before the talismans could fully solidify, both streams of smoke vanished simultaneously.

Bai Zhizhi asked, “Well? Did you summon them?”

Lu Mingyu turned back to look at the corpses in the room: “Their spirits have been devoured.”

Bai Zhizhi nodded: “And then?”

Lu Mingyu glanced at him: “There is no ‘and then’. Whatever killed them harbored deep hatred toward them, posing their corpses in a kneeling position and devouring their spirits. This proves the killer is not a living person—though of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that the mastermind hired a ghost to do the dirty work.”

But Lu Mingyu felt this last possibility was unlikely. To hire a human killer, you only needed money; but to command a ghost to kill was not something an ordinary person could achieve. Given how ordinary Chen Li’s family of three was, even if they had offended someone who should not be crossed, there would be no need to go through such trouble to kill them.

Bai Zhizhi retorted, “Oh, so after all that fuss, you still can’t find the killer.”

Lu Mingyu did not argue with him. After instructing his team to clean up the scene, he walked outside.

Tossing the wooden stick aside, Bai Zhizhi followed him out. Lu Mingyu looked at him: “Why are you following me?”

Bai Zhizhi replied, “I’m not following you, I’m keeping an eye on you. What if you can’t catch the killer and try to pin the blame on me?”

He did not trust this human in the slightest. Judging by how he harbored a prejudice before they had even met face-to-face, Bai Zhizhi felt that framing someone was exactly the kind of thing this guy would do.

Lu Mingyu, who had originally planned to force him back to the courtyard, paused. Rather than letting him go back where he could not be monitored, it was better to keep him right under his own nose: “Fine, get in the car.”

Bai Zhizhi looked at him suspiciously: “Where are we going?”

Lu Mingyu said, “Besides the victims’ social network which will take time to investigate, we have two directions right now. One is malevolent energy, and the other is demonic energy. Demonic energy cannot appear out of thin air. My team just sent me the analysis report, and this demonic energy belongs to a fox demon. Right now, there are only two fox demons registered with the Management Bureau. One is you, and the other…”

Bai Zhizhi blurted out, “Works at the zoo!”

Lu Mingyu: “…So I am going to see if that fox is still there.”

Bai Zhizhi quickly hopped into the car: “Let’s go.”

He had been here for over a month and had not met any other demons yet. This was the perfect opportunity to see what kind of life that fox demon was living here.