Chapter 1 Zhou Ze Was Stunned

Zhou Ze paused, then examined the female corpse again.

She was naked, likely because the landlady hadn't expected anyone else to see her, so she hadn't prepared anything.

Zhou Ze nodded and said, "You have a nice figure."

The landlady wasn't shy or angry, but smiled and said, "Thank you for the compliment."

Having died once, she had become more open-minded. It wasn't that she'd become promiscuous, but she was truly unconcerned with trivial matters.

Zhou Ze reached out and gently stroked the landlady's neck, asking, "You weren't immediately bitten to death, were you?"

According to her introduction, she was supposed to live until she was thirty, and adding her five years as a ghost official, she would have been a teenager during the zombie incident at the end of the last century.

But this corpse didn't look like a teenage girl at all.

"No, I wasn't bitten to death right away. In fact, that wasn't what killed me. Sir, it's cold down here. Let's go upstairs to talk."

Zhou Ze wanted to say it wasn't necessary, that he was quite comfortable there, but seeing the landlady shivering, he nodded in agreement.

They returned to her office, and Zhou Ze sat at the main desk, in a good mood.

He hadn't expected to find a lead so quickly, possibly even finding one of the victims from back then.

Sometimes, you really do find what you're looking for when you least expect it.

The landlady brought him another cup of tea. Zhou Ze wasn't a tea person; he had a demanding job in his previous life and didn't have time for such things. In this life, he drank more coffee, and when he did drink tea, it was usually pu'er that Yingying brewed for him.

Pushing the teacup aside, Zhou Ze said, "Tell me about it."

The landlady didn't ask why Zhou Ze was investigating this matter, partly because of their respective positions, and partly because she was very willing to help if Zhou Ze wanted to pursue it.

After becoming a ghost official, she had tried to find traces of that night when she was walking home from school, but in the end, she still found nothing.

She wanted revenge.

She really wanted revenge.

Because that wound on her neck, though it didn't directly kill her, brought her something even more terrifying: over a decade of torment!

If she had been bitten to death that night, she might not have held such a deep grudge.

"It was more than twenty years ago. I was twelve years old, and I lived in Dujiangyan since I was a child, but back then, Dujiangyan was just a small county town, not nearly as developed as it is now.

I remember that night, I was walking home from school alone with my backpack, because I had to rehearse for a school dance performance, so it was already dark when I left school."

Speaking of this, the landlady seemed a little heavy-hearted.

That memory must have been one she was reluctant to recall.

Of course, Zhou Ze wouldn't be so insensitive as to offer comfort at this time, let alone hand her a handkerchief or tissue to wipe away her tears.

What a joke, they've both been to hell, did they need someone else to comfort them?

"A dark figure suddenly grabbed me from behind, and then I felt this itch on my neck."

"An itch?"

Zhou Ze couldn't help but touch his teeth with his gloved hand.

Itch?

What did that mean?

"Yes, a very itchy feeling, like being bitten by mosquitoes. At the time, it really didn't hurt, it just itched, a sour itch that permeated to the bone."

Zhou Ze felt a bit itchy himself after her description,

But it wasn't convenient for him to scratch his back right now.

Seeing this, Yingying immediately got up and started scratching her boss's back.

Ah, that's better.

"And then, I fainted."

The landlady said.

"Fainted?" Zhou Ze was a little puzzled. "You fainted from an itch?"

"Blood loss."

"Oh."

"The whole process lasted about thirty seconds. I could even hear the sound of the other party sucking blood from my body."

"Why didn't you die?"

This was what Zhou Ze was curious about, since the person in front of him wasn't a ghost official at that time, but just an ordinary twelve-year-old girl.

"Someone found me passed out on the road and took me to the hospital. I was saved then."

"And then, did you have any health problems?"

"Yes, not long after I was discharged from the hospital, I dropped out of school because my health was getting worse and worse. Every night when I slept, I would have nightmares, terrible dreams.

I felt like I was being haunted, and not only that, the aching, tingling sensation in my body was constantly tormenting me."

"Not fatal?"

"If my grandfather hadn't been an old traditional Chinese doctor, if he hadn't used his folk remedies to treat me, I wouldn't have lived for more than three months."

"Oh, is your grandfather still alive?"

"Yes, but I don't have contact with him anymore, because as you know, it's not good for us to have too much contact with ordinary people.

Especially with blood relatives from a previous life, there's too much heavy karma involved."

Zhou Ze nodded, indicating that he understood, but he still remembered this person.

There were really many amazing folk artists, each of them a treasure, and the skills of the old traditional Chinese doctor who was able to save the person in front of him were truly admirable.

It was just a pity that Zhou Boss's current injury couldn't be cured by medicine; no matter how amazing the doctor, they couldn't make you grow younger, right?

He remembered that there was a time in his previous life when anti-aging health products were heavily promoted, and the manufacturers even hired an old celebrity who was always pretending to be young to endorse them, which ended up being a complete mess.

"I survived, but it was a real torment.

Nightmares, constant nightmares,

Tormenting your nerves every day.

For others, sleeping is a happy thing, but for me at that time, sleeping was a real torture."

"What about now?" Zhou Ze stabbed, "Do you think even having nightmares was a happy thing back then?"

The landlady was stunned for a moment, then nodded with a smile, tacitly agreeing.

At least it was much better than now, when she couldn't even sleep.

"This torment lasted until I was thirty. I never got married, and my family knew about my physical and mental condition, so no one pressured me."

"How did you die in the end?" Zhou Ze asked curiously.

"An accident."

"Oh."

"I was electrocuted."

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes, it lasted much longer than I expected, so long that I regretted it."

"Expected?"

"On my thirtieth birthday, I sat in the bathtub and dropped a plugged-in hairdryer into the water."

"Hmm." Zhou Ze paused, and continued, "Well, it's better than a car accident."

Yingying, who had been scratching her boss's back, found the conversation increasingly strange and couldn't help but smile.

The two of them were actually seriously discussing how they died.

Perhaps, this was a topic that only ghost officials could talk about.

Zhou Ze also seemed to feel that the topic was getting too off-track, and immediately asked, "Did you ever investigate that incident when you were alive, or after you became a ghost official?"

"I investigated, but it was useless. I didn't see the person's face, which is the most fatal thing, because I was so scared at the time. I really regret it now, I should have looked back even if I was scared."

After all, she was just a twelve-year-old girl at that time.

"However, those kinds of things were very common back then, and the situation was very tense. It's said that many people died."

"It wasn't reported?" Zhou Ze asked.

The landlady shook her head. "My family discussed it at the time, but they decided to keep it a secret."

It was like when a girl was violated, many people were unwilling to report it to the police for the same reason.

"What happened after that?"

"After that, I never gave up searching, but it was all in vain. However, after I became a ghost official, I returned to my hometown and lived under a different identity, which allowed me to find a clue."

"What clue?"

"That was in the second year after I opened this hotpot restaurant, the third year after I became a ghost official. Late at night, the restaurant received a customer who was eating hotpot alone. He drank a lot of wine, and I had a little drink with him too."

Zhou Ze frowned.

Wasn't there supposed to be no hostess service?

Seeming to sense Zhou Ze's confusion, the landlady added, "He was quite good-looking."

Zhou Ze coughed and said, "You don't have to explain."

"I'm sorry, sir, I had a drink with him."

"After drinking?"

"He paid the bill and left."

"Oh."

"But he said that his mother had been sick at home, which caused him a lot of pain. Not because he didn't have money to treat her or because he was unfilial, but because he felt sorry that his mother had suffered so much for so many years."

"His mother has a problem?"

"Yes, he said that his mother often had nightmares, her body would keep spasming, and she was very afraid of the cold. He had taken his mother to many hospitals, both domestically and internationally, for treatment, but nothing worked.

I didn't think much of it at the time, until he told me when his mother first started getting sick, and that's when I became alert."

"It was the same time you were bitten?"

"Yes, it could even be narrowed down to the same day, because he said that his mother was injured on his birthday when he was a child, which he remembered very clearly.

And that day was the day I was bitten, which I also remember very clearly."

"And then?"

"I followed him home, not in his car, but behind him, to his house."

"His mother is also a victim?"

"Yes."

"Did you ask her?"

"I secretly snuck into her mother's room, but she had already lost her mind and couldn't say anything."

Zhou Ze blurted out, "Kill her and just ask her soul."

The landlady's face changed.

She looked at Zhou Ze in disbelief, seemingly not expecting such words to come from the mouth of a ghost hunter.

You had to know, ghost officials weren't allowed to kill ordinary people without a reason, or they would be punished by the underworld.

Zhou Ze laughed awkwardly.

The landlady ghost official in front of him was really pure.

However, he didn't want her to think that he was a cold-blooded person who disregarded human life, so he immediately followed up with some chicken soup:

"She's only suffering if she continues to live; killing her would be like freeing her from torment;

At the same time, it can help her and you get revenge together.

Am I right?"