This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-65

Feng Xiuyun’s boyfriend is really Zhang Feng.

Jiang Luo recalled the information he had read earlier, that Zhang Feng was only 24 years old, a full six years behind Feng Xiuyun.

Even if Jiang Luo is not in the entertainment industry, he knows what would happen if a trainee, who is not yet a debutant, were to break the news that he is in a relationship with a member of the show’s crew who is six years older than him.

But therein lies the strangeness.

Zhang Feng is 24 years old, not too young, and he is desperate to make his debut, so how could he choose to fall in love at this time? Jiang Luo doesn’t mean to look down on Feng Xiuyun, but he knows exactly what men are like. If his partner was young, beautiful and rich, then so be it, but Feng Xiuyun was already thirty, he was ordinary looking, a small behind-the-scenes person, and could not help Zhang Feng in any way.

Zhang Feng’s relationship with her is, in all probability, for ulterior motives.

But what kind of intentions could there be for someone desperate to make a name for himself to risk ruining his career by approaching Feng Xiuyun?

Jiang Luo read through the diaries again and found that they were all written within three days, which means that Zhang Feng approached Feng Xiuyun and fell in love with him in just three days.

Three days later, Feng Xiuyun died.

Before this time, Li Zhen’s three trainees had already died.

To put it mildly, Zhang Feng has nothing to do with the deaths of Li Zhen, but why isn’t he dead?

Three words flashed through Jiang Luo’s mind: scapegoat.

Did Feng Xiuyun become the scapegoat for Zhang Feng?

” Did Feng Xiuyun leave anything else behind?” Jiang Luo asks.

Lu Youyi brought in a large cardboard box, “which was hidden under the bed by Feng Xiuyun, and we haven’t looked at it yet.”

The three of them paid their respects to the box and opened it to reveal a neatly arranged collection of storage bags.

There are all sorts of strange things in the storage bag, half-eaten biscuits, used cups and a mouldy apple.

Above each storage bag, there is a note attached.

“He gave me the headband.”

“The cup he used.”

“What he said to me.”

In addition to this, there is a folded up dark blue bed sheet at the bottom of the box.

Lu Youyi and Ye Xun opened the bed sheet, and in the middle of the sheet, there were a few drops of blood.

There was also a note on the bed sheet.

Jiang Luo picked it up and glanced at it, frowning, “They’re both in bed.”

This is Feng Xiuyun’s first testimonial.

The two men holding the sheets blushed and hastily put them back down, taking a step back sardonically.

The note on the sheet reads, “I didn’t expect this step to be so quick …… but that’s okay, he likes me a lot and hugs and kisses me every time we meet, I ask him why he likes it and he says he wants to leave his scent on me… …I don’t know why he felt a sense of relief after doing it, but I was happy, even if he became impatient with me when he left.”

The dead ghost, who had been watching, suddenly spoke out, “She’s a scapegoat.”

Jiang Luo’s thoughts coincided with his, and Jiang Luo looked at him, “Why do you say that?”

The dead ghost said, ” Zhang Feng left his scent on Feng Xiuyun’s body, which could fool the ghosts and monsters who wanted to kill him.”

Something will kill Zhang Feng. When Zhang Feng learns of this, he waits for an opportunity to get close to Feng Xiuyun, to be close to her, to fall in love with her, so that the ghosts that want to kill him will recognize Feng Xiuyun as him, so Feng Xiuyun dies and Zhang Feng escapes.

What would Zhang Feng know about dying?

And where did he get the scapegoat approach?

Zhang Feng, Li Zhen, Chen Lezhi and Lin Xiao have definitely done something to deserve the killing.

Jiang Luo pointed to Feng Xiuyun’s box, “Did he take Feng Xiuyun as a scapegoat and just need a kiss and a hug on the bed?”

The dead ghost nods his head.

He didn’t remember anything, but they seemed to come to him as if by instinct, “An embrace can only leave one’s breath on the other for a short time, a body . Fluid exchange is better, like a kiss, but there is no need to do the last step.”

“It’s enough to fool some ghosts and ghouls who don’t use their eyes to recognize people.”

Lu Youyi’s realization dawned on him as he looked sympathetically at the box, “Then she was deliberately killed by Zhang Feng.”

The inside of Zhang Feng is rotten and foul-smelling.

If, as the dead ghosts say, there is no need to do the last step, it is enough to deflect the eyes of the ghosts. But Zhang Feng went to bed with Feng Xiuyun anyway. Zhang Feng was worried that the usual kisses and hugs weren’t enough insurance, so he coaxed and cajoled Feng Xiuyun to ensure that he would be his scapegoat before he could.

He took advantage of a woman’s love for him in this way, selfish and self-serving to the point of horror.

The reason Zhang Feng chose Feng Xiuyun as his scapegoat was also simple.

Feng Xiuyun is a low-profile, introverted person who is like a transparent person among the staff, with no background and no friends, and no one to hold her accountable even when things go wrong.

Feng Xiuyun is thirty years old and has never been in a relationship, and Zhang Feng could easily have coaxed her heart away. Even if the story of his affair with Feng Xiuyun were to be exposed, who would believe the words of an ugly, old man behind the scenes?

The public will only think that Feng Xiuyun is talking nonsense, that he can’t distinguish between reality and dreams, and that he imagines he is in love with a young and handsome trainee contestant.

Zhang Feng has really thought of everything.

Jiang Luo sneered, “He’s thinking really well.”

But now, although Feng Xiuyun has died on Zhang Feng’s behalf, Zhang Feng is clearly not yet free of what is behind him.

Jiang Luo closed his notebook, “Come on, let’s go check out that warehouse.”

*

Zhang Feng practiced the dance all morning, and the more he practiced, the more irritated he became. He went to the bathroom alone with a grim look on his face.

Zhang Feng washes his face and looks up at himself in the mirror.

He should have been relaxed after solving the problem weighing on his mind. But after looking at the state of the other trainees in the practice room, he became scared and jealous again.

He threw that away, and without the blessing of that, would he have succeeded in making his debut?

There are only eight places in the starting lineup, and there are many more ahead of him.

Zhang Feng thought grimly, let those people die with him, just as he had once wished.

Zhang Feng dries his face with a piece of paper, and when he looks in the mirror again, he feels something is wrong.

How come his expression never changed?

Zhang Feng made a strange face, but in the mirror he was smiling happily, still unchanged in his appearance.

What’s going on? Zhang Feng is panicking.

There was a sudden knock at the door.

Zhang Feng walked towards the door in a state of disorientation, panicking and becoming even more irritated, why knock on the door to enter the toilet when it can be opened with a push?

Yes, the toilet door opened with a push.

Zhang Feng paused abruptly, cold sweat beaning at the corners of his forehead as chills ran up his back, “Who?”

The person knocking on the door outside did not say anything and was still knocking on the door.

Zhang Feng’s heart jumps up, sweat explodes in a flash, hair rushes up his neck, he shakes his hand and locks the door and takes two steps back.

“Who are you, who?!” He said fearfully, “Speak!”

The knocking on the door continued with regularity.

Zhang Feng was so frightened that he covered his ears nervously, but the knocking still reached his ears clearly through his palms. Zhang Feng suddenly shouted angrily, “Stop knocking!”

The knocking at the door stopped abruptly.

Relieved and tense again, Zhang Feng cautiously went to the door to see if the people outside had gone, but there was no cat’s eye on the door and no glass windows around.

Zhang Feng’s breathing grew ragged and he dared not open the door, but the silence was even more anxious than when there had been a knock at the door.

The doorway is two fingers wide, just wide enough to accommodate one eye.

Zhang Feng pushed himself closer to the door, picking at the gap in the floor tiles, his forehead pressed up against the door.

His eyes darted from left to right and there was no sign of a human leg outside the door.

The thing that knocked on the door went away.

Zhang Feng came to life as he gasped for air and completely collapsed to the floor.

Don’t think about it don’t think about it …… It could just be a prank by one of the practice students to scare him on purpose.

Those things have been sorted out and nothing will come back to haunt him.

Zhang Feng calmed himself with trepidation and was about to stand up when he subconsciously glanced at the doorway again, only to be met with another wide, staring eye.

The eye had been on him for who knows how long.

“……”

“Ahhhhhh!”

*

Jiang Luo Four men are walking towards the warehouse.

On the way, Lu Youyi sighed quietly, “I really want to go back to school, except for the canteen, everything here is not as good as our school. Every day is just training, it’s so boring.”

Jiang Luo slyly asked, “Isn’t the canteen good enough?”

Lu Youyi is silent.

Curious, the dead man asked, “Back to school?”

“We’re still in school,” Lu Youyi explained, “Deadbeat, did you go to school?”

The dead ghost was confused for a moment and shook his head hesitantly.

“He’s a living dead man, even if he went to school, it was hundreds of years ago,” Ye Xun said lightly, “Where’s your knife, dead man?”

The dead ghost said, “Hidden in the dormitory.”

Lu Youyi gave him a thumbs up in admiration when he was able to hide his big knife when others had difficulty hiding a mobile phone.

The deadbeat thought for a moment and said, “I’ve got about twenty more shots hidden.”

“What’s the point of hiding the camera?” Jiang Luo didn’t understand the thinking of the living dead, “By the way, how did you get into this show?”

The deadbeat told them about being scouted by a talent scout and about the 20-year contract he had signed with his agent.

“Twenty years?” Lu Youyi sucked in a cold breath, “Isn’t this a pit?!”

“What are you nervous about,” Ye Xun spat, “he’s not a human being.”

Lu Youyi scratched his head, “Right, oh.”

As we speak, the warehouse has arrived. As the director had said, the location of the warehouse was extremely remote and the warehouse was very shabby and rudimentary. Several windows were broken and weeds were growing in the corners.

The iron door was rusty and Jiang Luo pushed it, but it was locked and could not be entered through the front door.

Ye Xun found a window he could climb into, “Here.”

They jumped in through the window and the moment they landed, they stirred up a cloud of dust. Jiang Luo fanned the dust in front of him with his hand and saw a few muddy footprints on the floor.

Ye Xun compared the muddy footprints with Zhang Feng’s shoes and said with certainty, “Zhang Feng was here.”

The footprints lead to a window in the back wall of the warehouse. Jiang Luo follows the footprints and Yu Guang sweeps around the warehouse.

Inside the warehouse there are a few worn tables, chairs and electrical appliances, with a few long screws scattered on the floor. A small, slightly cleaner table sits against the left wall.

There are also four cardboard boxes that act as seats next to the table.

Jiang Luo said, “There’s something odd about this table.”

Ye Xun followed and looked over, “Go and have a look?”

As I approached, I saw that there was a broken bowl on the table. There is black ash pooling in the corner of the table. Jiang Luo rubs it on his thumb and smiles, “It’s incense ash.”

“Is this a game of cup fairy?” Lu Youyi wondered.

The cup fairy is a game like the pen fairy or the ouija board fairy, which can predict problems. It is evil and those invited up are ghosts, and if they are invited and not sent, they are even more likely to be in great trouble.

But Jiang Luo saw no sign of such ghosts in this accident.

Is it possible that these people were really killed by the Cup Fairy?

And what about the faceless monster in the darkness.

The creature has now forced Jiang Luo to stand in the dark, fearing that if there is darkness, the monster will already be at Jiang Luo’s side and kill him before he is caught off guard.

Jiang Luo let out a “tsk” and said, “Let’s follow his footprints first.”

They tumbled out of a window in the back wall of the warehouse and into the mud. It had only stopped raining this morning and the mud had not yet dried out.

Rubbish is everywhere, half hidden in the mud and half emerging, like a big carrot with no place to get down.

There was a line of footprints in the middle of the muddy ground, spreading into the woods. Jiang Luo is glad that it rained yesterday, otherwise they would not have been able to find Zhang Feng’s trail so easily.

The forest was not very dense, but the path was bad because of the muddy ground. They walked for almost twenty minutes and followed the footprints to a pile of rubbish.

Jiang Luo’s face turned blue at the stench and he covered his nose and said, “Is that where he’s going, the rubbish heap?”

Ye Xun pinched his nose and replied in a jarring voice, “Did he leave something here?”

Jiang Luo : “…… won’t have to pick through rubbish.”

Ye Xun’s eyes shone with curiosity as he said forcefully, “The truth is in the eye of the beholder, Steak.”

Jiang Luo : “……”

You really can’t go on a mission with a man like Ye Xun, who is far too curious. He can suppress fear and terror and actively rummage through rubbish to get to the truth.

Ye Xun pulled up his sleeves, found two clean plastic bags and put them on his hands, urging, “Hurry up, you guys.”

Lu Youyi was used to it, he skillfully found three pairs of plastic bags and after distributing them to Jiang Luo and the dead ghost, he pushed the dead ghost forward and said cheaply, “Dead ghost, you have a good nose, you first, remember to alert us if you smell something that smells like Zhang Feng.”

The deadbeat nodded honestly and began rummaging through the rubbish, shielding his two friends behind him.

The stench of rubbish disturbed the dead ghost’s sense of smell, but soon he smelt something different in it.

The dead ghost followed the smell, flipped open a cardboard box and found a packet tightly wrapped in plastic.

“I found it.” He turned around.

The four men got off the rubbish pile and wanted to see what it was right there on the spot, but it stank so bad here in the rubbish pile that they would have thrown up if they smelled it any more, so they simply went back to the warehouse.

But away from the rubbish heap, Jiang Luo can still smell the stench.

He sniffed sideways at the smell of himself, his breath hitched and he quickly inclined his face.

He was already stinking of rubbish heaps.

Jiang Luo was disgusted by his own stench, but it suddenly occurred to him that if he had been in his current state last night, wouldn’t Chi You have been disgusted by him?

Do you want to disgust Chi You in this way tonight?

However, Jiang Luo soon gave up on this idea.

It stinks so badly he can’t help himself.

This is a completely stupid way to kill a thousand enemies and lose eight hundred.

The warehouse was a long way from the dump and back in the warehouse, the dead ghost placed the plastic bag on the table, “This thing doesn’t smell right.”

He took the contents out of the plastic bag, which was still wrapped in a thick layer of cling film. The dead ghost peeled off the cling film to reveal a two palm-sized clear glass bottle.

Glass bottle with a withered, bald baby inside.

The baby’s arms and legs are like dead branches, its eyes are shut tight and its skin is dark.

The black gas surrounded the baby, and Lu Youyi’s face fell, “It’s a brat.”

A young ghost is extremely similar to a Gurmantong, but the two are not the same thing. The Gurmantong is made by a white azan who takes in wandering young souls with compassion and invites them away to worship, for good. They are made by the black-robed Atsan using cruel methods, and they do not rest in peace even after death, and their grievances are so strong that they are evil.

The young demon’s magic is stronger than that of the Gurmukh, and it works quickly and with great effect, but the backlash is also great.

Jiang Luo had no idea that Zhang Feng would dare to keep such a thing.

He walks up, picks up the plastic bag and rewraps the plastic bottle, ” The baby Zhang Cheng saw at Zhang Feng’s feet must have been the brat.”

It was at this point that the director called them, in a panicked tone, “Master, something has happened to Zhang Feng.”

*

Zhang Feng was found passed out in the toilet and the crew took Zhang Feng to hospital, but when Zhang Feng woke up, he shouted and went crazy.

Keeping his face covered, he said, “My face! My face!”

When Jiang Luo arrived at the hospital, they heard a nurse say in a panicked voice, “The patient who was just brought here went crazy and gouged his eyes out, so hard that the nurses threw up several times.”

Another nurse clutched her arm, chills rising, “He’s scratched his face, but he’s still smiling, crazy, absolutely crazy!”

Jiang Luo and his companions looked at each other and walked quickly to the ward.

Zhang Feng was sedated by the doctor and is now lying helplessly in bed.

His face was covered in blood marks from his own nails scratching, and a bloody hole had been gouged out where his eye had been. The director closed the door and complained, “He just almost scratched a doctor and insisted that the other doctor’s nose was his nose. I think he’s possessed. Master, have a look, is he possessed by a ghost?”

Jiang Luo looked Zhang Feng over and sneered, “No, he was finding himself without a face.”

The director didn’t understand the words, but Jiang Luo walked over to the bed and looked down at Zhang Feng.

Zhang Feng saw him and got excited again, “Where’s my face, where’s my face!”

Jiang Luo tugged at his lips, “Shouldn’t I ask you if you haven’t seen your face?”

Zhang Feng stiffens.

Jiang Luo placed the glass bottle containing the brat on the table in front of his bed and said coldly, “I’m sure you know this thing. You are also to blame for raising the brat and then discarding it, and being devastated by the backlash. You have only lost a face now, if you don’t want to lose your life, then tell us the truth about the deaths of Li Zhen’s three people.”

Zhang Feng shuddered, “I, I don’t know ……”

“The four of you played Cup of Immortality and summoned something, and while the others died one by one, you were given a way to avoid death by finding a scapegoat,” Jiang Luo said with a cold face, even as he guessed, ” Feng Xiuyun died, you didn’t have to die, you think you’ve escaped death, only to find that something wrong is still happening around you …… You see the new trainee and you think of the three dead Li Zhen, thus remembering the truth about their deaths. You’re afraid, you’re scared, you’re worried that you’re still going to die, but then you console yourself that someone has already died in your place, you don’t have to die, do you?”

Zhang Feng’s face went pale as Jiang Luo taunted, “If you don’t want to talk, we can’t stop you from getting killed.”

He made a move to leave when Zhang Feng shouted, “Don’t go!”

He reached out to tug at the man, only to roll woefully off the bed and onto the floor, snotty and tearful, “Help me, please help me!”

Jiang Luo A few people stopped and looked at him sideways.

“You’re almost right,” Zhang Feng cried out, “we, we played Cup of Fairy and brought out a faceless monster! The faceless monster said he could grant our wishes, Li Zhen The three of them wished to debut, but I got larded up and I made a wish, I wished that everyone ahead of me in line would die so that I could debut in C position …… The faceless monster promised.”

“But before the others died, Li Zhen and the three of them died first, and that’s how I learned that you have to give your life before you can get your wish.”

“What’s the point of debuting if you’re dead?” Zhang Feng gets emotional, “I was going crazy in those days, but Fu Wei came and mocked me, what does he know? What does he know? Does he think he has everything because he has that face? I’ll take him with me even if I die! I found a way to get the faceless monster to target him, and went to the little ghost I had. I begged it to bless my life, but the ghost couldn’t stop the faceless monster, and in my anger I dropped the ghost once, scolding it for not being of any use …… The next day I stole away to an internet cafe to look up information, but I found a way to use a scapegoat.”

Zhang Feng found that Feng Xiuyun was the best to do, so he didn’t hesitate to strike. He made the faceless monster think that Feng Xiuyun was himself, and Feng Xiuyun was dead.

But the spooky happenings around Zhang Feng didn’t stop there. If Zhang Cheng hadn’t seen the ghost of a baby around him, Zhang Feng wouldn’t have known that the ghosts had started to turn against him and wanted to kill him.

Zhang Feng crawled forward shivering, trying to hold Jiang Luo’s leg, “Please help me ……”

Jiang Luo took a few steps back and turned around and said, “Did you call the police?”

Ye Xun nodded, “The police will be here soon.”

Zhang Feng falls to the ground.

As they leave the hospital, Lu Youyi lets out a breath, “The faceless monster threatened the crew to continue recording because of Zhang Feng’s wish, and it has set its sights on Fu Wei, and if the faceless monster is not solved, this matter is not yet resolved.”

Jiang Luo smokes a cigarette and suddenly says, “I’m also being targeted by the faceless monster.”

But ……

Jiang Luo came up with a whimsical idea.

Will he be able to put Chi You up against the faceless monster.