13: Chapter 13 Washing Hair in the Middle of the Night

On a summer night, a patrol car drove through the silent, deserted streets.

Not long after, the patrol car stopped outside the entrance of a small alley.

A middle-aged Public Security Officer, appearing to be in his thirties, stepped out of the car, followed by three mysterious individuals clad in black combat uniforms.

The middle-aged Public Security Officer was none other than Officer Zheng Hai, the veteran criminal Public Security Officer who had previously taken Lu Siye back to the bureau.

Ever since Officer Zheng Hai had indirectly come into contact with the Delivery Ghost incident, he had been recruited as an external member of the Evil Suppression Bureau.

His primary responsibility as an external member of the Evil Suppression Bureau was to conduct on-site investigations after Evil Suppression Bureau members handled supernatural incidents.

Upon entering the alley, Officer Zheng Hai felt a wave of chilling Yin Qi rush towards him.

However, the Public Security Bureau badge on his person immediately emitted a faint golden glow, dispersing the surrounding Yin Qi.

The group of four walked to the side of a small cart selling discs, not far from the alley entrance.

The group immediately noticed the messy scratch marks on the concrete floor; based on the marks, they appeared to have been made by human fingers.

In the middle of the scratch marks on both sides was a crater the size of a human face.

Looking at these marks, it was as if someone's head had been pressed into the ground, and one could only imagine the torture they had endured.

In their final struggle before death, their ten fingers had somehow managed to claw so many marks into the hard ground.

"These Ghosts are truly damnable! To torture a person like this."

"Fortunately, this Ghost has now been eliminated by the comrades of the Evil Suppression Bureau."

After observing a few seconds of silence, Officer Zheng Hai and his team looked at what appeared to be a frozen kidney placed on the small cart.

Officer Zheng Hai was not surprised; he had been informed of this when he became an external member of the Evil Suppression Bureau.

After death, all Ghosts generally left behind some kind of remnant—sometimes it was blood, eyes, hair, or perhaps some organ from their body.

These remnants made it convenient for them to assess the strength of the Ghost after the fact and determine rewards for the person who had slain the Ghost based on its strength.

Officer Zheng Hai pulled a palm-sized bagua mirror from his pocket, which emitted a faint green glow.

Officer Zheng Hai held the bagua mirror and walked towards the small cart.

The closer he got to the small cart, the brighter the green glow on the bagua mirror became.

Remembering the investigation guidelines he had memorized before departing, Officer Zheng Hai placed the bagua mirror in his hand onto the frozen kidney.

The green light on the bagua mirror began to extinguish in a counter-clockwise direction, starting from the Qian trigram, until only three trigrams remained glowing with a faint green light.

Subsequently, the faint light drifted up from the bagua mirror, forming the number 32 in the air.

"Strength of a low-level evil Ghost, point value assessed at 32!"

Officer Zheng Hai announced the assessment result to the people behind him, then put away the bagua mirror, which had returned to looking plain and unremarkable.

The three mysterious individuals nodded at each other and skillfully produced an evidence bag.

After bagging the kidney, they loaded everything else from the small cart onto the vehicle.

After the group returned to the car, the patrol vehicle made a U-turn and headed off into the distance.

They still had to head to the next investigation site.

For the external members of the Evil Suppression Bureau, a busy night had only just begun.

In Tianhai City under the pitch-black night, the sharp edges of the towering buildings had been blurred and faded by the darkness.

There was no moonlight tonight, and after every household had turned off their lights, the Tongjiang Residential Area plunged into darkness.

Shi Yimin collapsed onto his bed, exhausted, with his right arm pressed against his forehead.

The events he had experienced recently had caused the worldview he had built since childhood to crumble somewhat.

First, he had witnessed with his own eyes the college student next door, who usually appeared sunny and cheerful, acting like a murderous maniac, wielding a knife to cut out the kidney of a delivery person.

Immediately after, the Public Security Officers arrived; that murderous maniac was taken away, and they, the neighbors, were also taken away.

Until the afternoon, when the Public Security Officer who had taken him away explained that the delivery person was actually a Ghost, and that the college student who lived next door was a Ghost Hunter.

He didn't know if someone like him was called a Ghost Hunter.

Whatever, he would just consider him a Ghost Hunter!

After telling him the truth, that Public Security Officer handed him a non-disclosure agreement, along with a substantial amount of compensation for emotional distress, and then released him.

Back at the Tongjiang Residential Area, Shi Yimin looked at the compensation money on the table; there was not a shred of happiness in his heart.

After living for over twenty years, if anyone were suddenly told by the authorities one day that things like Ghosts really existed in this world, who could possibly be happy about that?

After nightfall, Shi Yimin sat on his bed, looking nervously at the wardrobe, shoe cabinet, under the bed, and drawers in his room...

He always felt that in these places he couldn't see, there seemed to be Ghosts hiding, just waiting for him to approach so they could skin him, strip his bones, and devour him completely.

The more he thought about it, the more afraid he became; the lights in the bedroom could not bring him a sense of security.

In the silent bedroom, all sounds were invisibly amplified.

Whenever any faint sound rang out in the room, Shi Yimin would curl up like a frightened bird.

Before long, he was covered in sweat, his face pale.

In a trance, he felt as if he were inside a sealed fish tank, the endless fear like a slowly rising water level, gradually engulfing him.

Suddenly, the sound of a door opening came from next door.

It was that college student Ghost Hunter; he was back!

In Shi Yimin's mind, the image of Lu Siye pinning down an evil Ghost and raising a butcher's knife automatically surfaced.

The fear in his heart instantly dissipated, his tense muscles relaxed, and a wave of exhaustion washed over him.

Shi Yimin fell backward, pressed his arm against his forehead, and before long, he fell into a deep sleep.

"Itchy... So itchy..."

He didn't know how much time had passed, but in his sleep, Shi Yimin began to scratch his scalp incessantly.

After a while, Shi Yimin could no longer stand the itching scalp.

He climbed out of bed, walked barefoot to the bathroom sink, turned on the faucet to wet his hair, squeezed out a large amount of shampoo, and began to wash his hair.

Once, twice, three times...

He scratched his scalp frantically, not even stopping when he had scratched his hair raw.

The water flowing down from his hair gradually turned light red as it was stained with blood.

But it was as if he couldn't see it, and he continued to scratch his scalp frantically.

No matter how many times he washed it, he always felt his scalp was itchy.

He reached out again to squeeze the shampoo nearby, but squeezed several times without anything coming out.

It was only then that he realized, without realizing it, the entire bottle of shampoo beside him had been completely used up.

"Honey, are you looking for shampoo?"

Suddenly, a woman's sweet voice rang out from behind him.

"Yes, hurry up and give me the shampoo!"

Shi Yimin kept his head under the water, one hand scratching his scalp, while the other hand reached behind him, and he shouted urgently.

"Honey, here is the shampoo!"

Two or three seconds later, the sweet voice rang out again, and a cold, icy lump fell into his palm.

Shi Yimin didn't think much of it, immediately retracted his palm, wiped it onto his hair, and scrubbed frantically.

Suddenly, he seemed to notice that the water flowing down in front of him had turned blood-red, like gore.

Large patches of hair fell onto the sink, and those hairs were even attached with some ghastly white flesh.

The movement of his hands paused, and he stared at the hair in front of him, seemingly stunned.

"Honey! What's wrong with you? Is the shampoo not good?"

The sweet voice came from beside him.

"Oh, it's nothing, just a bit..."

Shi Yimin suddenly widened his eyes, his whole body trembling violently, even his lips couldn't help but quiver, and the words he was halfway through speaking suddenly stopped.

He suddenly remembered, he wasn't married, so where would he have a wife from?

Moreover, he had been the only one living in this room from start to finish.

Shi Yimin's hair stood on end; he stiffly raised his head and looked at the mirror in front of him.

In the mirror, at some point, all his hair had fallen out, and even most of his scalp had fallen off, revealing his ghastly white skull.

And standing behind him was a woman wearing white clothes, with not a shred of flesh on her head.

Countless maggots crawled on her skull, constantly wriggling in the eye sockets, nostrils, and mouth area.

And in her hand, she was clutching an eyeball that had already burst.

"Honey, what's wrong with you?"

Five cold finger bones crawled from behind him onto his face, and the sweet voice rang in his ear.

"Ah!!!"

Shi Yimin woke up in an instant, looking around in a panic, the bright bedroom before his eyes.

"It was just a dream! That scared the hell out of me!"

Shi Yimin said with lingering fear.

He lay back down with relief, not noticing that there was some foam sticking to the soles of his feet.