A golden full moon climbed the sky. Night grew deeper.
Bai Zhi awoke on the sofa with a headache like a hangover. Supporting her upper body and looking down, she wore an orange and black combination work coverall, likely belonging to one of the gas station employees.
"Awake?" Ning Zhe walked in from the door, carrying grilled skewers in his hand. River shrimp and beef and such.
Ning Zhe sat on the sofa opposite Bai Zhi, tearing a piece of grilled meat from the metal skewer and taking a large bite. These skewers were grilled by the gas station owner and employees for themselves, with considerably more meat on them than those from barbecue shops.
"You'd better give me an explanation." Ning Zhe asked while eating. "With that degree of acute poisoning, normal people would have already died. Even if lucky enough to be rescued by a skilled doctor, the body would suffer permanent damage. But you're strange."
"You clearly didn't receive professional timely treatment. You just slept on the sofa for a bit, and all your poisoning symptoms disappeared. Not even a trace remained."
Sensing the ghost's existence. Somehow knowing vague rules. And... this seemingly immortal body.
Bai Zhi's mysterious aspects kept increasing.
"If I could, I really want to shoot a bullet through your head and see if you can still come back to life." Ning Zhe placed the finished skewer on the table and asked, "Tell me, what exactly are you?"
Don't come back with another "I think I'm an urban legend player" nonsense.
"I... I don't know." Bai Zhi pressed her hands on her knees, nervously shaking her head repeatedly.
Ning Zhe frowned. "That expression and tone... damn, she's hiding."
"What are you saying?" Bai Zhi looked at him confused.
"Nothing. Just that I didn't find the person I was looking for." Ning Zhe picked up a handful of grilled skewers and placed them on the table, standing up. "Come with me. I'll show you something."
Bai Zhi followed him out of the gas station without fully understanding. Several corpses still lay on the platform outside the door, uncleaned. Ning Zhe led her through the greenery, around to the back of the gas station where there was a small outdoor courtyard. A homemade barbecue rack inside was smoking with thick white smoke.
Beside the courtyard, two people were tied to two trees.
One person's limbs hung unnaturally. His joints seemed to be broken, and his clothes were soaked in blood.
The other person showed no signs of struggle, only faint bruising at the eye corner, also bound to a tree by Ning Zhe.
Ning Zhe pulled Bai Zhi in front of the gas station employee with broken limbs, bringing her wrist close to the employee's blood-streaked face.
"What are you doing?" Bai Zhi didn't dare resist him, asking carefully.
"See for yourself." Ning Zhe said. Only to see the employee's head, which had been hanging limply, suddenly raise up. His mouth opened, desperately trying to bite Bai Zhi's wrist. Ning Zhe pulled her hand back before she was bitten.
The employee with broken limbs raised his head, breathing heavily and urgently, making an almost pleading sound. "Brother, I'm begging you... let me go. Let me kill this girl. I really have to kill her... I must kill her, I must..."
"He wants to kill you." Ning Zhe said flatly. "Though he doesn't know why himself, he wants to kill you. Really, really wants to. It's like the instinct to eat when hungry, drink when thirsty. That level of instinctive reaction. He absolutely believes he must kill you."
"How could this be..." Bai Zhi's face was full of disbelief.
Ning Zhe then pulled her to the other tree and tried the same approach, bringing her wrist close to the relatively cleaner-dressed employee's face.
But this employee didn't try to bite Bai Zhi's wrist to cause her to bleed to death. Instead, he raised his head looking at Ning Zhe. "Are you crazy? Killing is illegal. You actually... all the boss and Old Liu and... this is a lawful society. You can't escape... if you have the guts, just kill me. You can't escape..."
"See? Both gas station employees, but he doesn't want to kill you." Ning Zhe released Bai Zhi's hand and asked, "Do you know what's different between them?"
Bai Zhi shook her head. "I don't know."
She truly didn't understand why someone would want to kill her for no reason. And with that kind of unshakeable conviction to kill. It was utterly bewildering.
"Because he stayed inside the gas station the whole time." Ning Zhe said.
Ning Zhe brought Bai Zhi back into the gas station and briefly explained what happened last night.
The Sunshine Gas Station had eight people in total, including the owner and employees.
When evening approached, two of the eight stayed at the front door maintaining normal gas station operations.
Among the remaining six, including the owner, five people barbecued outdoors in the courtyard. One person was inside cutting meat.
"The only one who didn't want to kill you was the person inside cutting meat." Ning Zhe concluded. "During the time when the sun set, 'something' happened."
"Everyone exposed outdoors became convinced they had to kill you, nearly instinctively. While I was hiding inside and that one employee in the cutting room, neither of us were affected. We didn't want to kill you."
Summarizing current information, Ning Zhe reached this preliminary conclusion:
Every evening when the sun set, the ghost would influence all people in outdoor environments, making them instinctively and deeply believe they must kill Bai Zhi by any means.
This belief wouldn't affect people's normal thinking. Everyone could still communicate normally. Everything about them was normal. The only thing was that they all wanted to kill Bai Zhi by any means.
Gods are omnipresent, but not indoors.
"What special attraction exists on you that makes the ghost want to kill you no matter what? So much so it focuses only on killing you, ignoring me entirely." Ning Zhe was curious for a moment. Why Bai Zhi and not himself? Aside from being an urban legend player, what was different between him and Bai Zhi?
All right, let me think through this from the beginning...
This ghost that influences people exposed outdoors when the sun sets each day is suspected to be deliberately driven by someone. Like how he himself wielded Taiyi's rules, or how Terang was deliberately released into the manor earlier.
The person who released Terang is suspected to have been seeking Zhaoyu, but he could only vaguely know Zhaoyu's location without accurately knowing who possessed it. Otherwise he wouldn't have indiscriminately slaughtered everyone at the manor.
Finally, if the person driving the omnipresent, ungaze-able ghost hunting Bai Zhi is the same one who released Terang, his motive is quite clear.
Bai Zhi and Feng Yushu, mother and daughter, were both survivors of the Jade Water Bay Manor incident. Ning Zhe was not.
At least not on the surface.
Who knew what identity Feng Yushu had driven him home under?
"So understanding this, Bai Zhi's words from yesterday also make sense. This ghost isn't hunting her alone, but equally slaughtering all survivors of the Jade Water Bay Manor incident."
Because it couldn't determine who possessed Zhaoyu, it simply had to kill all suspected persons.
Ning Zhe felt this conclusion might not be the full truth, but should be close enough.
Chapters in advance there: patreon.com/Thaniel_a_goodchild