(4) Legend and Truth

  Zhang Haiyang finally came back to his senses from his grief, he gently laid Lily down and closed her eyes.

  "The thing I left with you, you returned double to me. Now it's time for me to return something to you."

  Zhang Haiyang picked up the hidden knife and ran upstairs.

  The power system in the building seemed to be paralyzed, and it was pitch black everywhere.

  Zhang Haiyang ran up the stairs with a knife, completely ignoring the world outside the corridor window. Snowflakes were dancing there, white and bright against the light, covering up all the ugliness of the city, like a fairy tale beauty.

  Near the top floor, there was a light. Zhang Haiyang saw that the old man who helped him was arguing with an old woman. One wanted to go up to the top floor to chase and kill the corpse demon, while the other wanted everyone to evacuate. The other women were dressed in strange clothes, waiting for the result of the argument. They did not show any surprise at Zhang Haiyang's arrival, nor did they stop him.

  Zhang Haiyang kept going upwards, with tears streaming down his eyes.

  When Zhang Haiyang ran to the rooftop, he saw a strange scene. A man covered in blood was waving a photo in front of a monster, which had stopped in its tracks. The monster's foot also had a miniature fire extinguisher, but it was unclear what it was for. The bloody man pulled out one photo after another, and the monster looked at each one. On the other side, Wang Nian seemed to be performing some sort of ritual, with a reddish stone in front of him. He was using a knife to cut open his arm, letting blood drip onto the stone.

  "Idiot! What are you doing? You can't summon the 13th devil, anything else is fine!"

  The bloody man shouted at Wang Nian, but Wang Nian didn't pay attention and even gave a crazy sneer.

  "If I can't live, then let this world die with me!"

  Zhang Haiyang took a knife and walked towards Wang Nian, but just as he had taken a few steps, a red glow suddenly appeared in front of him, like a bloody mist that filled the air, blocking out everything between heaven and earth.

  "Idiot!"

  Yang Ming's desperate cry.

  At the same time, a detective walked into the Wang family's old mansion with its open gate. There was no one inside. He shouted several times, but no one responded.

  The old house was pitch black inside, dead silent, and the furniture stood upright in the dark shadows like a group of ill-intentioned villains.

  The young detective swallowed his saliva, carefully took out his mobile phone, and used the faint light to illuminate the road under his feet. He walked to the wall and finally found the lamp cord. However, the lamp only flashed a few times before going out again. The detective felt a chill run down his spine, he coughed loudly to boost his courage, and continued to move deeper into the old mansion.

  Going through one door after another, checking one room after another, not a single person was found. But this couldn't alleviate the detective's unease, he began to regret not bringing a colleague along. Yet it would be embarrassing to call for backup when nothing had been discovered, so he steeled himself and continued deeper.

  In front was a small courtyard, snow had fallen thickly, the young detective's eyes swept over one place, and finally found something unusual, it was a person lying on the ground, already covered with snow.

  He immediately called an ambulance and for support.

  There were no signs of a fight at the scene, only that shrine-like house was rummaged through. The young detective suspected in his heart that perhaps the old lady had encountered a thief and then suffered a relapse of her heart disease, dying in the yard. At least on the surface, it seemed so. But what the truth was, he couldn't know.

  Just as he was about to enter the house, his eyes suddenly caught a glimpse of something in the old lady's hand. He tiptoed over and gently pulled it out, which turned out to be a small booklet filled with dense, tiny characters that recorded an unbelievable story.

  At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, a Taoist priest named Li Yi from the Quanzhen sect fell in love with a rich family's daughter and returned to secular life. The two were deeply in love, but unexpectedly, the girl's family opposed their relationship and colluded with the government to frame Li Yi as a rebel thief. Li Yi had no choice but to flee for his life. During this time, the girl's family forced her to marry a newly established king of the Southern Ming Dynasty. The girl vowed not to comply and was forcibly taken away in a sedan chair. After hearing about it, Li Yi brought a group of real bandits to rush over and kidnap the bride. However, when they opened the sedan chair, they found that the girl had already killed herself with scissors.

  Li Yi was grief-stricken and killed Miss Guan's entire family before fleeing into the mountains. When he emerged from the mountains again, the Qing dynasty had already taken over the world.

  In the early Qing dynasty, wherever there had been massacres, things were not peaceful, and strange occurrences followed one after another. The government posted notices calling for able scholars to exorcise evil spirits and subdue demons, but few responded. Li Yi had spent several years in the mountains studying the art of magic, and he had developed a technique that could bring people back from the dead, but it required a blood sacrifice to work. Originally, national affairs were already stable and the world was at peace, so this technique could not be used, but now there was an opportunity to exorcise evil spirits and subdue demons, and use this technique.

  Li Yi spent two years to complete this magic, causing thousands of innocent people to die or be injured. However, at the last moment, he hesitated. The young lady was kind and gentle, if she knew that Li Yi had used innocent lives as a sacrifice for her resurrection, she would definitely not be happy. Li Yi then realized that he had gone down the path of evil, so he wrote down the truth and hid it in his own tombstone, then disguised himself as the thirteenth ghost and killed himself on the altar.

  "This thirteenth spirit is called: Love."

  The booklet ends with these words.

  The young detective looked thoughtful after finishing reading, he glanced at the old lady's body on the ground again, and suddenly no longer sympathized.

  Qifeng Entrepreneurship Building Top

  The red glow that filled the sky suddenly shook and disappeared, Wang Nian looked around in a daze, no evil spirits appeared, not even the corpse demon was seen, nothing was there. Yang Ming also didn't understand, according to Li Yi's little book, at this time, the young lady should have been reborn.

  Zhang Haiyang's eyes hurt from the red light, but as soon as it disappeared, he recovered. Wang Nian was right in front of him, still dazed, and this opportunity was not to be missed. He raised his knife and quickly stepped forward, stabbing fiercely.

  A flash of the knife, and Zhang Haiyang couldn't believe it himself, that he had succeeded so easily. But then he discovered that he too had been pierced by Wang Nian's knife, at the third rib below his left chest, with their blood spraying towards each other in the wind, making a hissing sound. The pain was spreading from the wound, but Zhang Haiyang felt a warmth in his heart, and a smile played on his lips as he gazed at Wang Nian's disbelieving expression, before softly falling over.

  Two people leaned together, head against head, shoulder against shoulder.

  Yang Ming was still in the eerie atmosphere of the red light that had just enveloped him, and he saw the corpse demon's hand reaching out to him, but suddenly stopped. The corpse demon seemed to have seen something, and it actually smiled shyly, with the writhing muscles on its face beginning to fall off, revealing its true appearance. It was a face that wasn't scary at all, pale, and even looked weak. In the next moment, the corpse demon walked towards the depths of the red light, opening its arms as if embracing something.

  When the red light ended, the corpse demon disappeared. But what exactly happened? Yang Ming had no idea.

  Is the miss loved by Li Yi already reborn? Where did the corpse demon go? These are no longer important, what's important is that the calamity has ended, even Wang Nian and Zhang Haiyang, these two killing stars, have died. Yang Ming was excited for a moment, crazily laughing on the rooftop, even being kicked to the ground by Li Ke couldn't stop him from continuing to laugh.

  "Do you see? Do you see? I'm still alive! I'm still alive! Haha, I'm still alive!"

  Bai Guang and others finally crawled out of the secret passage, coughing non-stop with a dusty face. This secret passage didn't know if it had never been swept, full of dust.

  "Police! Put your hands up!"

  Squinting in the bright light, I saw a row of police officers standing in front of me. It turned out that they had already heard the noise from within the wall and were waiting here.

  "Amitabha! What kind of world is this?!"

  "This is a society ruled by law!"

  The police responded with a burst of light, and then a group of people were taken away from the Qifeng Building, and the reporters' flashlights finally waited for their prey.