This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-6

The proprietress could no longer be called a human being; she was like a mass of strangled flesh that had sewn itself together with the tug of a needle and thread, and having lost her daytime make-up, she completely revealed her most hideous face in the gloomy midnight.

No one knows why the boss’s wife turned out like this. But instead of attacking Jiang Luo, she lunged fiercely at the old man and the young woman sleeping on the bed.

Ye Xun subconsciously bit his finger and shoved it into the rabbit’s mouth, blood dripped out, a dark light flashed in the rabbit’s dark eyes, Ye Xun looked grave, he put the doll on the ground, ” Xiao Fen, go and swallow her.”

Xiao Fen moves stiffly towards the boss’s wife.

The doll, surprisingly, moved.

Jiang Luo’s face is rarely lost, blankly looking at Xiao Fen.

Ye Xun manipulatively threw the penultimate and penultimate at the door, “Get out and don’t make a mess of me here.”

The door slammed shut in front of Jiang Luo and Lu Youyi’s eyes. Jiang Luo took a long time to walk out onto the balcony, borrowed a cigarette from his boss who was smoking, and squatted down to smoke.

The exact same pose, he and the boss looked like the difference between an idol drama and reality. The boss, however, didn’t care; he was so flustered that the cigarette he held in his hand shook with it, and he didn’t know what he was saying himself, rambling lyrically about his nerves, “You still let people smoke in your school?”

Jiang Luo sidled up and puffed out a puff of smoke, the faint smoke blurring his lustrous, delicate brow as he lazily said, “It’s good to take time out of a busy schedule.”

On hearing this, Lu Youyi hesitantly asked the owner for a cigarette and squatted down to smoke it, just as Jiang Luo had done.

Jiang Luo asked, as if casually, “Boss, what zodiac sign are you and your wife?”

The owner said, “I am a rat and my wife is a horse.”

Jiang Luo nods seemingly indifferently.

Lu Youyi didn’t know how to smoke and was a novice, so Jiang Luo taught him, “Take a deep puff and exhale through your lungs.”

He demonstrated, his long, slender neck slightly raised, hitching a few strands of dark hair, his languid air matched by a playful smile at the corners of his mouth that was heart-stopping.

Naive Lu Youyi blushed, yes, but muttered, “Really, it’s not like there’s a Chi You brother here ……”

The boss on the side sighed and said bitterly, “Since the business failed, I can’t fight every day, it’s all my fault, it’s all because I didn’t notice my wife in time,” he gradually choked up and wiped his eyes, “my wife is like that… …and I didn’t even notice …… I’m so fucking inhuman!”

He cries so hard and in such a state of distress that Lu Youyi’s eyes are also red. Jiang Luo smoked his cigarette in silence, his expression somewhat indifferent amidst the smoke. When he reached the end of his cigarette, Jiang Luo crushed it out, stood up and looked at his boss in a condescending manner, saying, “Did you really not notice?”

The owner, who was still crying, was stunned.

Jiang Luo: “It is not easy to find such a feng shui site, and the fact that you dare to open a hotel here is proof that you are very concerned about feng shui. Your Chinese zodiac sign is Rat, which corresponds to the Zi of the 12 Earthly Branches, which is Kan Shui, while your wife’s Chinese zodiac sign is Horse, which corresponds to the Wu of the 12 Earthly Branches, which is Li Fire, and they clash. This room is facing south, the shape of the room is favourable to the male owner but unfavourable to the female owner, do you really not know that?”

The owner froze and looked up at him from the palm of his hand.

Jiang Luo smiled, the corners of his lips curved up, but his words were cold and to the point, “It’s only because you are too troublesome, too lazy to care and don’t take it to heart that you have caused such a big disaster.”

He turned and went back into the room.

Lu Youyi followed him with mixed feelings, ” Jiang Luo , is it true what you said?”

Jiang Luo gave an umph.

Lu Youyi wilted his mouth shut.

Jiang Luo Yu Guang glanced at Lu Youyi.

Lu Youyi’s sense of justice is strong, he will cry over a false story, and he will be angry about the tragic death of three girls, such a person is like a fire, will his fire also be extinguished at the moment because of the darkness and helplessness of reality?

Jiang Luo waited with Lu Youyi at the bedroom door for fifteen minutes before Ye Xun opened the door with a sweaty face, “It’s ready.”

Inside the door is no longer the owner’s wife, and Ye Xun is holding the pink rabbit doll in her arms in the same way as before. The grandmother in bed has woken up and is shivering with her frightened grandson in her arms.

The boss rushed in from behind and the little child howled instantly at the sight of his father, sobbing, “Daddy, hug!”

The boss hurriedly hugged his son and calmed the old lady, and walked up to Ye Xun with a complicated expression, “Ye students, my wife ……”

“She has become an evil creature, we will find a way to transcend her,” Ye Xun said after a pause, “her body is mixed with the skin and flesh of at least three people, your commission we have fulfilled.”

The boss’s eyes were red and he wanted to ask something more, but the little child was holding his head again and crying out that he was sleepy, so he wanted to say something but had to carry the child back and put him to bed, “Please wait until tomorrow, I have something else I want to ask.”

Ye Xun nods.

After the boss had returned to her room with the child in his arms, the grandmother also went to another room to rest in shock.

The three of them came down from upstairs and Ye Xun said, ” Jiang Luo , what did you say, the boss seems afraid to look at you.”

Jiang Luo waved his hand, “Who knows.”

Lu Youyi looked back and said slyly, “Yeah, who knows.”

When they went downstairs, Ye Xun and Lu Youyi went to bed, but Jiang Luo stood still and the two men looked back at him and wondered, “Aren’t you going back?”

Jiang Luo looked around and simply sat down grumpily on the steps, “Wait a minute.”

“Wait for what?”

Jiang Luo looked upstairs, “waiting for a scream, or a splash of child’s urine.”

Ye Xun cocked his head, “Screams?”

Lu Youyi : “Child’s urine?”

Jiang Luo asked slowly, “You really don’t think the boss’s wife is the killer, do you?”

Ye Xun stated the facts: “She had the flesh of three people inside her body, and Xiao Fen ate it out.”

Jiang Luo rested his chin and asked seriously, “But no one would somehow go from human to ghost. She was obviously human before, but now she has turned into such a shattered mess of flesh. Have you ever wondered why?”

Lu Youyi and Ye Xun looked at him blankly.

These two are good at everything, but too innocent. But if they weren’t innocent, they wouldn’t have believed Jiang Luo’s made-up story about him and Chi You.

Jiang Luo said patiently, “Is it possible that she, too, was a victim?”

After a moment’s pause, he said, “To be honest, she gave me the impression that she had once been swallowed in a large gulp, and then she ran away disemboweled, taking the shredded flesh of her other victims with her and sewing herself haphazardly into human form.”

Lu Youyi was horrified and couldn’t resist stepping forward, “What?!”

“Is there a ghost that can take the form of a human being, sneak into a person’s home and devour them when they are not looking?” Jiang Luo pondered and slowly said, “It has the exact same face as a human being and cannot be detected by our naked eyes when it turns into a ghost. But it loves to eat human flesh and will devour a person from head to toe, from skin to bone, leaving only a few hairs stuck to the pillow – Ye Xun, Lu Youyi, is there such a ghost?”

Lu Youyi said, “How is it possible-”

His words came to a screeching halt and he turned his head in shock to look at Ye Xun, the two men saying in unison, “Sphinx!”

The Sphinx, a ghost that takes on the appearance of a living person when dressed in clothes discarded by the living. It sneaks into human homes while the living are away, joking and laughing with families during the day, but at night the sphinx reveals its true nature and goes from room to room to eat people.

No crumbs left to eat.

The two men thought of a certain possibility, Ye Xun was a bit at a loss for words, Lu Youyi was even more speechless, they looked at Jiang Luo in a daze, as if they were terrified.

Jiang Luo pointed to the top of the building, “So I’m waiting for a scream, or a splash of child’s urine.”

His son was frightened and the boss coaxed him to sleep easily, but his mind was complicated and heavy, and he slowly fell asleep after a long time.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, he suddenly opened his eyes in the middle of the night with a jolt of shock.

Who knew that as soon as he opened his eyes, he would see an eerie figure standing next to the bed.

The boss was startled and his heart flew into his throat as he quickly turned on the light and saw who it was before he breathed a long sigh of relief and said in a cold sweat, “Mum, what are you doing here?”

The old man smiled, a strange and eerie smile on his dead face, and she said kindly, “O son, go back to sleep.”

The old man’s mouth was still chewing on something and her words were slurred. The boss subconsciously felt a little uncomfortable, “Mom, what are you eating?”

He fixed his eyes on the old man’s white teeth, but he saw bright red red blood on them. A sudden uneasiness rose up in the boss, and he looked down to see that the old man’s hands were holding his arm, which had been gnawed out in a bloody patch.

The boss’s eyes widened abruptly, a chill ran up his spine, and the extreme fear caused a cold “ho ho” sound to escape his throat, so that he couldn’t even scream.

The old man continued to smirk, burying his head and gnawing on his arm, the blood being sucked into his mouth with cherished greed like a delicious juice drink.

The sound of chewing food grew louder and louder. The old man’s wrinkled face was half red with blood and the boss’s eyes were falling out in horror as he convulsed, his shaking other arm constantly pressing against his son’s fleshy little belly, the sleeping little child senseless while the child’s urine he had been holding in all day stained a large part of the bedspread without a sound.

As the old man ate, his face suddenly changed and he backed away from the child’s urine, staring at the boss and the child with resentful eyes.

The boss was finally able to scream, “Ah-!”

The three men downstairs instantly rushed up.

When they arrived, the owner was hiding in the corner of the bed with his son in his arms, shivering and shielding his son. When the bloodied sphinx saw them, his eyes became more spiteful and he turned to jump out of the window to escape.

Lu Youyi was quick, he pulled back the sphinx’s clothes and was about to drag it back, but the clothes were torn, and the moment the torn clothes were destroyed, the sphinx’s skin seemed to be destroyed as well, and it instantly became a mass of blood and rotting flesh.

Like a man without a skin.

The boss lost his breath and passed out with a roll of his eyes.

Lu Youyi almost screamed out, except the headless corpse’s head beat him to it with an “ahhhh”, “It’s horrible, horrible!”

Lu Youyi’s scream choked hard in his throat and contemptuously tossed the head that was purposely meant to follow him over to Jiang Luo , “I’ll go clean up the Sphinx! Sphinxes are afraid of fire, have a fire!”

Jiang Luo fished out the lighter from the boss and threw it to him, Lu Youyi pulled the sheet and was about to pounce on the sphinx.

There was still the smell of child’s urine on the sheets, and the sphinx screamed in alarm, its voice as piercing as the sound of a mouse. Ye Xun understood, glancing with a smile at the small child who was sleeping and whirring, and said, “It’s a good thing that a bubble of child’s urine was peed, otherwise this sphinx would have finished the whole boss long ago.”

Jiang Luo shrugged and did a good deed, “Yeah.”

Ye Xun was worried that Lu Youyi would not be able to control the sphinx, so he bit his finger again and asked Xiao Fen to help Lu Youyi. The rabbit doll’s hand shook and he got up and walked towards the sphinx.

Jiang Luo moved next to Ye Xun and watched with rapt attention, ” Ye Xun , is this really a doll?”

Ye Xun glanced at him and said, “Spiteful dolls.”

Jiang Luo : “……” What he said before to fool the boss seems to have come true.

Anyone with the word “grievance” in it is not to be messed with, so Ye Xun took the initiative and asked, “Do you want one too?”

Jiang Luo was flattered: “May I?”

Ye Xun laughed: “No, I’m just craving you.”

Jiang Luo : “……”

Lu Youyi, who was still struggling with the sphinx, said with difficulty, “Grass, can you guys look at me?”

As soon as he said that, the rabbit doll was already in front of the sphinx, half the size of an adult but extraordinarily rigid.

The Sphinx’s body was made up of all the various humans it had eaten. Lu Youyi’s stomach turned and he stepped aside, leaving the rabbit doll and the sphinx to fight it out. The sphinx yelled at the doll rabbit in anger, like a rat whose tail had been stepped on.

Lu Youyi covered her mouth and retreated to Jiang Luo, “So disgusting ……”

Jiang Luo thought for a moment, stroked the hair of the severed ghost in his arms and suddenly revealed a smile, ” Ning Xiu Lao, how about a favor?”

The broken-headed ghost was in a trance as he laughed and said dementedly, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Jiang Luo said, “Thank you, Brother Ning Xiu.”

With these words, Jiang Luo straightened his arm and swung his head round in a half circle, using the severed head as a leather ball, and smashed it hard into the sphinx.

The severed head ghost let out a scream in the air and smashed the back of the sphinx’s head with precision.

Lu Youyi took the opportunity to cover the sphinx with a bed sheet and lit it with a fire engine.

He and the rabbit doll were firmly pinned to the sides of the sheet until the flames reached the edge of the sheet and Lu Youyi picked up the rabbit doll and stepped back, watching as the flames completely surrounded the sphinx.

As the fire grew larger, Jiang Luo looked back and asked, “What next?”

Lu Youyi rubbed his arm tiredly and said, “No wonder you only have three credits …… Of course you should call the police and then the ambulance, oh yes, call the fire alarm by the way.”

Jiang Luo : “……” has learned that it can be so scientific.

Jiang Luo was inexperienced and followed the instructions of Lu Youyi and Ye Xun. Half an hour later, the police and ambulance arrived at Hotel 129. To Jiang Luo’s surprise, the police and ambulance doctors reacted calmly to the strange phenomenon at the scene, and after putting out the fire, they put the charred sphinx into a yellow cloth bag and led Jiang Luo away.

Before leaving, however, Jiang Luo thought of something and turned to the small child’s hand, reaching out and touching the circle of black mist.

Numerous fragments of memory came barreling towards him.

He “saw” the memories of the boss’s wife.

The owner opened her eyes in the middle of the night to see her mother-in-law, with whom she had been joking and chatting during the day, standing at the window, finishing herself off with a bite.

He saw the desperation and fear of the owner’s wife, the hatred and anger she felt after the sphinx coveted her son.

The greatness of a mother’s love will always be astounding as the boss lady, dragging all her broken flesh, crawled out of the belly of the sphinx and sewed herself into a human form with needle and thread.

She had lost her human mind, but instinctively tried to protect her son. After waiting until her son fell asleep in the middle of the night, she stood rigidly at the end of the bed, staring at her son and the sphinx’s every move.

This child, so cute.

She wanted to.

She couldn’t scare him.

So she thought up make-up.

The sphinx, too, thus never ate another person after killing three girls and the owner’s wife.

The owner’s obsession with protecting her son rushed into Jiang Luo’s head.

Jiang Luo was so affected by this raging emotion that he could not control his tears, and he gritted his teeth as large tears fell heavily on the floor.

Jiang Luo breathes in oxygen with difficulty and crouches on the ground trying to calm himself.

Can affection be so great?

It was not a story played out on television or reported on the news, it was happening right in front of Jiang Luo’s eyes, frame by frame, scene by scene, along with the owner’s desperate and angry mood, all incredibly real.

It turns out that motherhood can look like this.

Jiang Luo kept his head down and raised his hand to stop people from caring for him as he tried his best to say in a steady voice, “I’m fine.”

After a long time, he lifted his head, gave a complicated look back at the little fat man and followed his companion out.

In the car, the police uncle gave them a cup of hot water and said in a warm voice, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the rest. You guys are too tired today and this case is more intense than we expected, we’ll talk to the school and give you extra credit.”

Lu Youyi, who didn’t care about credits now, nodded, his eyes looking at Jiang Luo every now and then, hesitantly saying, ” Jiang Luo, are you alright?”

Jiang Luo shook his head, not wanting them to ask more questions, and took the initiative to change the subject, “Can the police know about the metaphysical community?”

Ye Xun said, “The state knows about the existence of the metaphysical community, and naturally the police officers dedicated to our part of it will know about it too.”

Seeing Jiang Luo’s distraction, he explains in more detail, “The metaphysical community, in collaboration with the state, has established ‘natural science and social studies’ programs in twelve universities nationwide, each with one class of less than ten students. ”

“The metaphysical community is declining, and there are fewer and fewer people who practice the profession and have the talent to do so; the total number of people in the country’s universities is only about a hundred,” Ye Xun was silent for a while, “After the country meets a paranormal event, it will distribute it as a task by region to the twelve schools. Apart from the schools, there are six other major schools in the occult world.”

Ye Xun looked at Jiang Luo, his dark eyes cold as jade, ” Chi You’s Chi family is the Puppet Soul Refining School.”

“Puppet soul refining?” Jiang Luo repeated.

Ye Xun said, “That is a sect that can manipulate both people and ghosts. This is the Chi family’s fearsome discipline, which allows both the souls of the living and the souls of the dead to be refined. But this technique is so unbelievable that the only person in the Chi family who has truly mastered the puppet soul refinement is Chi You.”

That is to say, while Chi You is alive, both men and ghosts can become his puppets, puppets on strings in his hands.

He has eyes that can be everywhere.

Jiang Luo looks up at the people around him with a sense of awareness. Everyone is hurriedly going about their business, and occasionally Jiang Luo is greeted with a polite and courteous smile.

In Jiang Luo’s eyes, such a smile is covered with ghostly shadows, eerie and ghastly, gradually twisting into the shape of Chi You.

Jiang Luo looked back and smiled to himself, suspecting that he was overthinking things.

In the original text, Chi You is now in a weakened state due to an incomplete soul, and thanks to the help of Feng Li, the protagonist, he is able to cultivate and take revenge.

He was able to show himself in the toilet earlier also because the timing and location fitted.

How can it be possible to have recovered to the point where you can manipulate people.