Chapter 697: The Rising Anger

Chen Shi replaced the paper over the camera and asked, “Who is your ‘master’? Did they make you call them that?”

Xin Bai covered his ears and shook his head desperately, like a turtle retreating into its shell. “I can’t say, I can’t say, the master will punish me. I’m sorry, master, I was wrong. I’ll write, I’ll write!”

Chen Shi changed tactics, “Do your injuries hurt?”

Xin Bai, tears streaming down his face, nodded.

“I’ll take you for a check-up, okay? Get you treated.”

Chen Shi called in Lin Qiupu and Peng Siyue. Although Lin Qiupu said nothing, his expression showed his disdain for this “actor.” As a straightforward and upright person, he had little patience for dishonest suspects.

Xin Bai was taken to Peng Siyue for examination. When he took off his clothes, they saw his body was covered in cuts and bruises, with new wounds overlaying old ones. His arms bore cigarette burns, and his back showed whip marks.

“Take off your pants too,” Peng Siyue instructed.

“My pants?” Xin Bai glanced at Lin Dongxue.

“Should I step out?” Lin Dongxue offered.

“Hehe, taking my pants off in front of so many people is kind of exciting!” Xin Bai’s face reddened as he began to remove his pants. He even started to pull down his underwear until Chen Shi stopped him, “Hey, nobody wants to see that.”

“Then this exam isn’t thorough. Forensic exams need everything off,” Xin Bai complained.

His legs were also covered in wounds, mostly scratches and whip marks. Xin Bai touched his private area and said bashfully, “There are injuries here too…”

“Everyone out, I’ll do the exam,” Peng Siyue said. He soon called them back, and Xin Bai, now dressed, was sitting on the autopsy table, swinging his legs like a child.

“His urethra is swollen, and there are burn marks on his penis from electric shocks. He claims someone inserted something into his urethra and electrocuted him,” Peng Siyue reported.

“That’s… sickening,” Lin Dongxue could barely imagine it.

“Were these injuries caused by someone else? Couldn’t they be self-inflicted?” Lin Qiupu questioned.

“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” Xin Bai yelled, suddenly lying on the table, clutching his stomach and writhing. “My stomach hurts! There are magnets in my intestines. It hurts!”

Peng Siyue moved to examine him, but Xin Bai struggled too much to get close.

“He’s acting again. Whenever we get to the crucial questions, he starts performing. What an actor!” Lin Qiupu said with disdain.

“I think we should do an X-ray,” Chen Shi suggested. “There was a similar scene in his novel where a maniac fed magnets to the victim. That part was written very vividly. It might be his own experience.”

“What happens with magnets? They’re not poisonous,” Lin Dongxue asked curiously.

“One or two wouldn’t matter, but several would attract each other inside the intestines, causing blockages, necrosis, and inflammation over time,” Peng Siyue explained. “Take him for an X-ray!”

Meanwhile, in a Long’an City supermarket, a TV hung from the ceiling was playing an ad, “What tea? Clean Tea Intestine; Clean what? Clean intestines; What brand? Changqing Brand! For smooth digestion and no constipation, use Changqing Brand Clean Intestine Tea!”

Every time he heard this ad, his scalp tingled, and a vein bulged on his forehead.

This damned ad played every three minutes. He worked in the supermarket for ten hours a day, meaning he heard it a hundred times. A hundred times!!!

“Bro, what’s the code for broccoli?” his colleague Xiao Wang asked.

“XD9873!” he snapped impatiently.

He continued bagging groceries for customers, surrounded by old men and women who had no sense of queuing and exuded the smell of age.

An old man threw a bunch of celery on the counter, chatting loudly with a nearby elderly woman, splattering dirt on his hands.

He mechanically bagged and weighed the celery. The old man grabbed it without a word of thanks. Hearing “thank you” ten times in ten hours was a miracle here.

Resentment built inside him, rising, rising!

“What tea? Clean Tea Intestine; Clean what? Clean intestines; What brand? Changqing Brand! For smooth digestion and no constipation, use Changqing Brand Clean Intestine Tea!”

It played again. He felt his blood pressure rising. It was rising.

“Bro, what’s the code for broccoli?”

“XD9873!” he answered, more impatiently.

“What tea? Clean Tea Intestine…”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, cursing the ad creators and broadcasters eighteen times, trying to suppress the rising anger.

“Bro!” Xiao Wang grinned sheepishly, “What’s the code for broccoli?”

Life was a daily grind. His nostrils flared as some internal energy reached a critical point.

He picked up a white radish, walked to Xiao Wang, whose face bore a flattering yet puzzled smile. Suddenly, the radish came down, smashing into Xiao Wang’s face and breaking in two.

He raised the electronic scale and smashed it over Xiao Wang’s head, shouting, “XD9873! XD9873! XD9873! Pig brain, remember it, stop asking!”

Xiao Wang’s ugly head slowly flattened, red liquid oozing like a crushed radish, and the air filled with the smell of blood. The elderly customers fled, tripping and screaming.

He brushed his sweaty hair back, raised his hands, and shouted, “Are you even alive? Huh?”

“What tea? Clean Tea Intestine…”

He threw the bloody scale at the TV and screamed, “Screw you!”

Under the influence of adrenaline, his nostrils flared to the limit, greedily inhaling the blood-tinged air. This was living. This was living…

“Bro, what’s the code for broccoli?” Xiao Wang’s voice snapped him out of his fantasy. He was holding a bag of unweighed potatoes, staring blankly, while an old man urged, “Hurry up, what are you spacing out for?”

Suppressing the urge to hit someone, he took a deep breath and continued acting like his docile self.

After work, he went to the manager’s office, claiming he was unwell and needed a day off. The manager replied bluntly, “Take one day off, lose three days’ pay. Think about it.”

“I’m really not feeling well, a bit feverish,” he mumbled, the reflection of his meek, pathetic self in the manager’s glasses making him feel disgusted, like a harmless sheep.

“Tell HR and get a leave slip for me to sign,” the manager waved him off, continuing to play Hearthstone on his phone.

Leaving this hellish place, his steps grew lighter. He accidentally bumped into a burly man, quickly apologized, and backed away. The man brushed off his clothes and glared, “Are you blind?”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m in a hurry,” he stammered.

Finally escaping this world, he returned to his dark, warm little nook. Excitedly, he muttered, “My baby, my writer baby, are you okay? Daddy misses you!”

In his narrow, dark room, he had only one computer. He opened a surveillance program, stared at it for a few seconds, then widened his eyes.

He quickly grabbed his phone, then put it down, and searched online for “Xin Bai.”

Several links popped up: “Is Xin Bai a woman?”, “Seeking Xin Bai’s ‘Detective Abyss’ Chapter 476!”, “What’s the name of that online writer who looks like Chen Daoming?”

In an obscure Long’an City forum, a post caught his eye: “Read before deletion: First-hand report, writer Xin Bai arrested, unknown body found in his car!”

Staring at the post, his pupils dilated, and his breath grew heavy. “Am I the psycho, or is the world too dull? If it’s a game you want, I’ll play along!”