Chapter 8

The streets were hot and noisy.

Even the clamor on the streets was briefly silenced when the shouts in the alley steeped up.

Zhou An was slightly stunned.

The miserable screams just now came from the alley he had just come out of.

Some of the people had already walked towards the alley when they heard the screams.

People were all greedy for lively events, and gossip was innate to everyone.

There was a problem in the area patrolling the streets, Zhou An did not stop and walked towards the alley with his long sword across his waist.

When he arrived at the alley, he saw that there were already quite a few people surrounding him, and could hear the people whispering.

“Isn’t this Old Wang, why is he crying so hard?”

“I don’t know, he seems to be crying at home, should we go in and take a look?”

“Who dares to go in? He is usually a sickly ghost, and has to rely on his daughter to take care of him, if he goes in, I’m afraid he’ll dip his body.”

The chatter was small at first, but as more people came, it gradually became louder.

Zhou An stood outside, coughed and shouted: “The constable is handling the case, idle people evade!”

As the shout rang out, the people who were close by immediately reacted and flew back.

One of the people did so, immediately started a chain reaction, the rest of the people saw Zhou An wearing a constable suit, slowly came.

If it was in the past, maybe it was nothing, but now that something had happened in the alley, and there was a constable coming, the people were afraid to stick things to themselves.

This group of people like retreating from the plague, flying away from the alley.

In an instant, the entire alley was empty, and there was no one left.

At the mouth of the alley, there were still a few more daring ones, picking at the walls and poking out a head, looking around.

“Clang!”

Zhou An drew his saber.

Those few people with more guts immediately retracted their heads and there was no more trace of them.

Only then did Zhou An withdraw his saber and looked at the house in front of him.

The house was dilapidated, and the front door still had a few holes in it.

At the moment, the wooden door was open, and it was possible to see a skinny man kneeling inside, crying bitterly with his back turned to him.

And next to the man, there was another skinny figure, only the light in the room was too dark to see clearly.

Zhou An carried his long knife and walked in.

The skinny man seemed to hear the footsteps and turned his head back, allowing Zhou An to see his face.

The man was thin and pale, with heavy dark circles under his eyes, a sickly look.

And after adjusting to the dark light, Zhou An also saw the situation beside the man.

A little girl was kneeling on the ground with her hands together, making a bowing appearance.

The little girl’s chest was broken open, and her internal organs had been pulled out cleanly.

Zhou An’s gaze sank slightly.

The little girl was exactly the one he had just seen.

This kind of death was exactly the same as the previous corpse, both making a bowing appearance.

“My lord, my lord! Please help me! My daughter this morning, suddenly became like this, help me, catch the murderer and make sure to punish him severely!”

The skinny man seemed to have grabbed a straw, crawling on his hands and knees to Zhou An’s feet, constantly kowtowing, tears streaming down his face.

“You get up first.”

Zhou An sighed and was about to help the skinny man up.

He saw the corpse next to him and his gaze grew low, his grip on the hilt of the knife tightening slightly.

The skinny man didn’t get up, still pleading, his bone-thin arms, gripping Zhou An’s clothes in death.

“You get up first, let’s go to the Yamen first, naturally someone will check for you.”

Zhou An suddenly felt as if this skinny man in front of him had lost his only support.

Associated with the scene he had just seen, the little girl stumbling out alone to buy meat, the bloodied copper coins and the little girl’s helplessness linked together, Zhou An suddenly developed a nameless fire.

He knew that this world was dangerous.

Even prepared for it.

But he didn’t expect that ordinary lives would be like grass.

The man who died a few days ago, Zhou An went abruptly and didn’t feel much, but this little girl, Zhou An was empathetic.

The gray rat worshipping the man, the hollowed out entrails, the dead little girl.

Zhou An’s grip on the knife grew tighter and tighter, veins emerging on the back of his hand.

He tried to take a deep breath.

“You get up first, if you don’t get up, how can we help you investigate? Go to the Yamen first, there are professionals to do this.”

The skinny man was still kneeling, when he heard this he raised his head and just wanted to speak.

But his own body was weak, plus being struck by a blow, it had already made the skinny man reach a point of despair, and he even rolled his eyes and directly fainted.

Zhou An sighed.

He turned around, wanting to go back to the government office first and report this matter.

Just at this time, however, a sound of footsteps came from behind him.

Zhou An turned his head to look.

At some point, in the doorway behind him, there stood a gray rat.

The rat was the size of a fist and stood upright.

With its two front paws clasped together, it was bowing to him.

It was clearly a rat, but its face wore a human expression, the corners of its mouth rising.

This scene was inexplicably bizarre and made Zhou An think of a story that was circulating in the folklore of the Great Chu Kingdom.

Animals make a bow, their lifespan is approaching.

A creepy feeling suddenly rose up from his body, and Zhou An only felt the sweaty hairs on his body all stand up.

He felt a cold wind blowing behind him and turned his head violently to see shadows swaying on the dark wall.

The sunlight outside the door shone in, and the shadows on the wall looked like black water streaming off of it.

“Kir!”

The gray mouse squealed and lay on the floor becoming stiff.

The shadow on the floor stood upright and turned into a blurry humanoid shape, twisting in the darkness.

Zhou An suddenly felt like he couldn’t move, and looking down, he realized that the shadow of his legs had connected with the human figure on the opposite side.

The legs were confined in place, unable to move at all.

The black silhouette was gradually approaching, the silhouette’s hands elongated, and pitch-black nails emerged from its ten fingers.

“Just the legs?”

Zhou An whispered.

The black silhouette’s speed began to skyrocket, and in the blink of an eye, it had arrived in front of Zhou An.

Zhou An could even feel that the black silhouette’s pitch-black nails flashed with a cold light.

Each nail was half a meter long, and it was digging right into Zhou An’s abdomen.

“I see, that’s what was used to pull out their internal organs, and then what, eat them?”

With the last fight with his aunt fresh in his mind, Zhou An was calm and collected, the qi currents in his body constantly reverberating.

The hand that had been holding the long sword was drawn.

“Clank!”

A light chirping sound rose as the knife became a white line.

Qi flow covered the blade.

In front of Zhou An’s eyes, the black shadow was no longer a shadow, but a dish that was being prepared for cutting.

Clarity rose in his heart, and at the moment of crisis, the knife in Zhou An’s right hand cut diagonally from bottom to top.

Fast!

This blade highlighted the word fast.

The air flow covered the blade, pulling out a thin white line in the darkness.

The white line spread, one turned into two, two turned into four, and in the blink of an eye, it had turned into a dozen white lines.

The white lines transformed by the blade penetrated through the body, and the black shadow suddenly stopped, looking down at his chest.