This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-26

With three hours to go before the end of the competition, Jiang Luo was in no hurry to submit his answers.

He eases the excitement of having screwed the evil spirits and walks over to Ye Xun and joins him in looking at Xiao Fen, who has been pulled out of the pool.

Xiao Fen reveals the lint inside, which is soaked in water and torn as if by a sharp knife, and looks pitiful.

Jiang Luo, who had fought alongside Xiao Fen against the Sphinx, and who could vaguely sense the importance of Xiao Fen to Ye Xun, was silent for a moment, asking with less than skilled concern, “Is Xiao Fen okay?”

Ye Xun is silent as he looks at the rabbit doll split in half, his eyes slowly turning red. Kuang Zheng had just jumped into the water and fished Xiao Fen out, and was now wringing the water from his body. Wen Renlian hands him a long towel from the swimming pool and says with a worried look on his face, “Can you still fix it?”

Kuang Zheng didn’t have time to clean himself before he quickly walked over to Xiao Fen and crouched down beside him. The smith had a unique ability to sense what he had made, and after examining it, he looked a little relieved, “It can be repaired.”

Ye Xun looked up at him abruptly, without speaking, but the tension was evident.

“But it requires a special material,” Kuang Zheng said with some formality as the crowd watched, “a grievance spirit that is willing to be absorbed by a grievance doll. The resentment of the spirits is so strong that it can replenish the energy of the spirits’ dolls.”

Ge Zhu sighed, “A resentful spirit willing to be absorbed by a resentful doll? It’s not that easy to find. ……”

Jiang Luo pursed his lips and suddenly stood up, “Aren’t there two evil spirits in this school?”

Zhuo Zhongqiu said in surprise, “You mean the two female ghosts?”

Ye Xun looked up at Jiang Luo with a hopeful look in his eyes. Jiang Luo raised his eyebrows and looked back, “If you grant them their wish, the two spirits will be willing to do so.”

Kuang Zheng whispered, “Actually, just one would be enough.”

Lu Youyi and Sai Liaoer stayed behind with Ye Xun, while the others followed Jiang Luo to find the spirits. Although Jiang Luo talks a good game, he does not have much confidence that he can make the ghosts willingly become part of the doll.

But perhaps it was because Ye Xun looked so sad, or perhaps because he had just dealt a major blow to the evil spirit, and was even now in a state of emotional turmoil, that Jiang Luo volunteered to do something he was not sure of.

Something he would never, ever have done before.

Wang Xinhui’s grieving spirit is on the sixth floor of the boys’ dormitory, and Jiang Luo walks at the end, having a few moments of delirium. But stepping into the corridor on the sixth floor, his companions in front of him abruptly disappeared.

Jiang Luo frowns and stares at the promenade.

The lights wavered and the bulbs were a few years old. The walls are yellowed and the whole view looks like an old filter has been put over them.

The concrete floor was damp and the corridor was dark at the end, as if it led into the mouth of some giant beast.

Jiang Luo knew that he was being dragged back into the memories of the evil spirits.

His physique was a bit ‘lucky’, but after confronting Chi You, the biggest evil spirit in the whole text, other ghosts were nothing in Jiang Luo’s eyes. He calmly walks on, and makes his way to the toilet.

A girl covered in blood stumbled and fled from the toilet.

There was Wang Xinhui, her clothes half torn and her body covered in several dirty footprints. Her face was swollen and she looked back in horror as she ran forward, dragging her twisted left calf.

Behind her, three men came out of the toilet, like cats catching mice, not in a hurry to catch Wang Xinhui, but slowly behind her.

Jiang Luo watched as Wang Xinhui ran into a familiar dormitory, which coincidentally was the same one they had been living in for the past three days.

Jiang Luo’s eyebrows jumped as he walked into the dormitory.

Wang Xinhui panicked and pushed against the dormitory door, but it was broken open by three strong workers. The next scene was so bloody and brutal that Wang Xinhui struggled violently against the dormitory iron pillar, bleeding to death.

The workers cursed the “bitch” and, with their anger still fresh, they killed Wang Xinhui in the dormitory, dismembered her and flushed her down the toilet.

Jiang Luo had thought that Wang Xinhui had died in the toilet, but he had never thought that he had died in the dormitory.

Even the bed where Wang Xinhui was killed was the same one Jiang Luo slept on.

For a moment, he was at a loss for words about his unlucky physique. Averting his face, Jiang Luo saw a book dropped by the bed, and he went over to pick it up.

The blood was washed into the dormitory’s bathrooms by the workers nearby. Jiang Luo followed Jin Yuangao into the bathroom and watched as he poured a basin of thick blood into the pipes with shaking hands.

Jiang Luo suddenly remembered the bright red liquid that had come out of the pipes on his first day in the dormitory. Jiang Luo thought with an expressionless face that the water was Wang Xinhui’s blood?

Oh, and a real surprise.

Jiang Luo Yu Guang glanced casually, but suddenly stopped. Somehow, there was a bloody female ghost beside him.

The female ghost’s face was pale and blood continued to bubble out along her skin, her bloodshot eyes bulging wide as she looked at Jin Yuangao and muttered, “Boyfriend, girlfriend …… boyfriend, girlfriend… …”

Jiang Luo recognized it as the ghost of Wang Xinhui. He didn’t know if Wang Xinhui could hear him, but he said, “Such a boyfriend would be better off.”

Wang Xinhui slowly turned his head, his vacant eyes looking straight at him.

It turns out that it can be heard, which makes it even better.

Jiang Luo said without moving a muscle, “Why didn’t you kill Jin Yuangao, did you still love him?”

Wang Xinhui said, “Boyfriend, girlfriend.”

Jiang Luo asked, “Do you have any more wishes to fulfil?”

Wang Xinhui remained stilted: “Boyfriend, girlfriend.”

Jiang Luo : “……”

As Jiang Luo discovered, most of these spirits are so unconscious that they may not even know what they are doing. There is no such thing as a Chi You ghost who has become stronger after death.

Without wasting any more time, he dragged Wang Xinhui out of the dormitory, took out a talisman and stuck it on the wall of the dormitory corridor.

Kuang Zheng and the others were looking for where he had gone when they suddenly saw him appear with an evil spirit.

Jiang Luo said, “How can we make her willing?”

Kuang Zheng carries Xiao Fen, who is barely put together, to Wang Xinhui, who seems to be irritated by the scent of the disgruntled doll and briefly awakens with a moment of confusion in her eyes.

Kuang Zheng asked carefully, “Would you like to be part of a spiteful doll? We can help you fulfil your wish in return. Becoming part of a grievance doll does not mean you are dead, you still have your own consciousness, you just live in a different way.”

Wang Xinhui’s face was pale and puffy as she looked at the doll for a moment before speaking dryly and hoarsely, “Find her, find her ……”

Jiang Luo asked, “Fu Yuaner?”

Wang Xinhui looked to him, “Find, find her ……”

“We’ve found her,” Jiang Luo said, “do you have any more wishes?”

Wang Xinhui stares blankly down at the hairpin in her hand.

She did not seem to understand Jiang Luo’s meaning. Looking at the miserable state of the evil spirits, Jiang Luo sighed with a headache, “Forget it, you can …… remember not to find a scum like that as a boyfriend in your next life if you want to be overtaken.”

Jiang Luo had already given up when Wang Xinhui suddenly stepped forward and dug into the mouth of the spirits’ doll.

The female ghost disappeared, leaving only a hairpin that had fallen to the ground.

Kuang Zheng immediately sealed the grievance doll’s mouth and wrapped it in the yellow silk cloth he had prepared before saying with a sigh of relief, “There you go.”

Jiang Luo picked up the hairpin that Wang Xinhui had left behind and looked down at it for a moment, “There’s also a grudge spirit.”

But halfway through, Zhuo Zhongqiu took a call and told them, “Fu Yuaner’s body is no longer at the school. And my father told me something,” she paused, “at the police station Liu Zhi said he didn’t know there were four bodies inside the wall.”

The crowd froze.

What does this mean?

They went to the office anyway, looking for Fu Yuaner’s grievance spirit, but found none. Fortunately, one grudge spirit was powerful enough and the group went to the staff to submit their answers while the game time was almost over.

The answers to the competition involved filling in all the points that the candidates knew on the paper. Jiang Luo took two sheets of a4 paper and wrote down the whole story in a flamboyant manner.

Fu Yuaner and Wang Xinhui were good friends, and the diary tells us that all of Wang Xinhui’s jewellery was given to her by Fu Yuaner. It was for this reason that Liu Zhi recognised the jewellery that Wang Xinhui had lost, as it had been given to her by Liu Zhi.

Jiang Luo has written out the basics, but there is only one thing: Why didn’t Liu Zhi know that there were four bodies in the wall behind him?

Jiang Luo tried to write up the conjecture.

After Fu Yuaner was killed, Liu Zhi took advantage of the school’s expansion to build Fu Yuaner into the wall of his office, keeping it under his nose at all times. Afterwards, he began to fall in love again, but for fear that Fu Yuaner’s body would be discovered, Liu Zhi never took time off work to go on dates with his girlfriend and would visit the office on his days off.

His girlfriends gradually become suspicious of his behaviour and, challenged by them, Liu Zhi, fearing that they will discover his secret, turns on them.

If you kill one, you kill a second. Liu Zhi used a smarter way of disposing of the bodies, not necessarily also by building them into the wall.

But Fu Yuaner, who was buried in the white wall at his back, pulled these bodies to his side ……

After handing in his answers, Jiang Luo walked out of the room. The three-day game was over in his eyes, and he stretched out and walked to the curb to wait in the dreary weather.

The companions came out one by one and the group boarded the staff bus back to the hotel.

After arriving at the hotel, Jiang Luo was ready to pack his bags and spend a couple of days relaxing in Yun Nan. Before the results were known, Feng Li summoned all the Feng disciples to meet him in the hotel garden.

At such a time, even if Jiang Luo was a disciple under the name of a minor disciple, he had to meet Feng Li according to the rules.

He had a lunch before making his way slowly to the garden.

The Feng family has a very large number of disciples, and a third of the one hundred and thirty contestants who entered the competition could be associated with the Feng family.

Although there were many people, very few had seen Feng Li in person. So when the opportunity arose to meet Feng Li, the Master of Heaven, everyone came early.

By the time Jiang Luo arrived, he was at the very end, blocked by several rows of people behind him.

He was happy to hide at the end of the line.

After the crowd had gathered, Feng Li walked in with two of his first disciples. He looks aloof, a Tang suit draped around his feet, like a man who has stepped out of a painting.

Feng Li’s eyes wandered through the crowd and finally settled on Jiang Luo.

He turned on his heel and walked towards Jiang Luo. The other disciples in Jiang Luo’s way scattered one by one, revealing the dark-haired youth at the very back.

The dark-haired youth had changed out of his Bai Yefeng blood-stained clothes, his black hair slightly ringed by leather straps, his red lips perfunctorily raised, his eyelids half drooping like a large, listless cat.

Feng Li looked at him, a sinister aura that no one could see wrapped around Jiang Luo, flailing around the dark-haired youth.

He frowned and said coldly, “You are surrounded by an evil spirit who wants to kill you.”

Jiang Luo’s smile falters.

The evil spirit that tried to kill him?

He could think of no other possibility than Chi You.

But Jiang Luo doesn’t feel Chi You at all.

He is still too weak.

Jiang Luo’s heart crossed with hostility, and in an instant his eyes turned red and he looked anxiously to his side, “Mr. Feng, where is he?”

Feng Li stretched out his hand and tried to grasp the black fog with its teeth and claws. But the black fog wrapped itself around Jiang Luo even harder, as if it wanted to crush Jiang Luo.

Feng Li paused and looked back at Jiang Luo. Jiang Luo’s listless look disappeared and he said cautiously, “Chi You?”

The black-haired young man’s fragile appearance was a far cry from his sharpness during the match, but both were equally appealing. A tear fell from his eye and Feng Li couldn’t help but reach out to catch it, but the next moment the crystal tear on his fingertips turned scarlet and bloody.

Feng Li looked cold, pulled out a piece of paper to wipe away his tears, and looked up to meet the black mist.

The black mist condensed into an evil spirit, handsome as a god, who smiled and warned Feng Li pleasantly, “Don’t touch him.”

The evil demon looked sideways at Jiang Luo, the gaze seemed to be looking at his lover, the smile turned deep, the evil demon’s thin lips were hooked, but the cold twisted killing intent was as thick as substance, “After all, this is my beloved.”

He murmured ambiguously, in a low voice, “How can anyone else touch it.”

After seeing Jiang Luo’s performance at the moment.

A new and intense desire rises up in the rage of the evil spirits.

Before he kills Jiang Luo, he has to put him through the despair of not being able to live.

Leaving the dark-haired youth’s babbling mouth to utter nothing but pleas for mercy, leaving his eyes to flow only with tears of fear.

To make the falsity that Jiang Luo now acts out into real fear and regret.

Such thoughts burned hotter and hotter, and intermingled with the evil spirit’s anger and killing intent, making the evil spirit’s interest grow stronger and stronger.

He couldn’t wait for Jiang Luo to look the way he wanted to see him.

But he is not in a hurry.

The best gifts should also be opened with the utmost ceremony, shouldn’t they?