Otherworldly Merchant

“You said that you were his partner! Did you deceive me?” Fengshen Nana was enraged.

“I had no choice! Grandmaster, save me!” The man in black continued to beg.

Save you? Like hell!

I glared at him. “Now that the truth has come out, I’m leaving.”

Fengshen Nana stopped me. “Aren’t you going to ask what he did?”

After hearing her words, I calmed down. Right, I know nothing about this guy. What if he continues to bother me or Yin Xinyue’s door after getting discharged? 

So, I asked her, “Why did this man get arrested?”

“He assaulted children,” Fengshen Nana said. “Moreover, it’s not the first time he does that. He’s a recidivist.”

I was baffled. “He assaulted children? How childish is he to pick a fight with children? What a weirdo. The police should take care of this scumbag. If you let perverts like him mingle in society, everyone will be in danger.”

The man in black bowed his head toward me and begged. “Grandmaster, please save my life! I have my reasons. If you ignore me, I won’t be able to live on…”

I coldly said, “Get lost. I don’t have time to care about your business.”

Then, I proceeded to leave the police station.

The man in black saw that he couldn’t play soft. He began to act more aggressively. “Grandmaster, if you don’t help me after I get out of here, I will sleep in front of your shop every day. You see, I have a lot of infectious diseases, and I can’t guarantee that I won’t infect you with something.”

As he talked, he took the cloth covering his face off.

When I saw the man’s face, my stomach clenched. Goosebumps rose on my body, and I didn’t dare to take a second look at him.

This man had moldy white spots all over his face. He looked as if he had a tinea versicolor condition. However, hair grew from those spots. The hair covered his face entirely.

Those spots were even on his lips!

Fengshen Nana was even more shocked than I. She turned around and dashed toward the toilet to vomit. She didn’t come back for a long time.

“Grandmaster, this disease is infectious. Moreover, I have mold all over my body. If you don’t save me, I will rot to death.” The man in black begged me.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Why don’t you go to a hospital to check it out? How can I help you with this skin disease?”

I couldn’t deny that the man’s threat had worked. I was very afraid that he would infect me with that horrible disease.

Still, how could a living person become moldy? Only corpses could grow mold under specific circumstances!

The man in black said reluctantly, “Grandmaster, I think I’ve provoked some evil thing. Every day, frightening thoughts appear in my mind, and I can’t control myself anymore. But if I stay at your shop front, those strange thoughts disappear. That’s why I didn’t want to leave. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence, but that policewoman told me that you were an expert. That’s the reason I used such a method to ask for your help. I hope that you can save me!”

The man in black begged me miserably. He cried and whined nonstop. It didn’t look like he was pretending.

“You mentioned frightening thoughts. What kind of thoughts are we talking about?” I asked.

“Thoughts about eating children,” he said. “Whenever I get hungry, I get a very strong urge to eat children. I just can’t help it.”

Eating children?! 

His reply was enough to make my scalp tingle.

In this world, cannibalism was one of the most disgusting things, and we were talking about eating children here!

Did such perversions still exist in our current era? I knew there was something wrong with this fellow. I took a deep breath then asked, “Have you ever visited a psychiatrist before? It could be a mental problem of yours, you know?”

“That’s useless.” The man in black looked depressed. “I was normal before and had a compassionate heart. I was a public officer, so I wasn’t inclined to commit crimes, let alone eat children.”

He continued, “However, after my wife gave birth to my son, I became strange. At first, I was unaware of my strange behavior. It was my wife who told me that I would drool whenever I saw the kid. Then, I got this disease. More and more white spots started to appear on my body as time passed by. Grandmaster, you must save me! Only you can save me!”

He burst into tears and cried loudly.

Fengshen Nana asked, “Mister Zhang, tell me, is this man pestered by some evil creature?”

I cursed under my breath. Yin Xinyue and I had started to prepare for our wedding. I didn’t want to accept any case right now, but business came to my door on its own.

I sighed inwardly. Ever since I entered the otherworldly-item business, more and more troubles were coming my way. I didn’t even have time to rest.

The Heavens had a will, and an otherworldly merchant had his destiny. I couldn’t escape my fate.

If I went against it, I would violate the principles of my profession.

Left with no choice, I accepted the task. “I can’t say for sure at this moment. We’ll have to investigate carefully.”

Fengshen Nana looked pensive. “This man has been arrested before, and all the cases are related to the assault of children. Also, the way he assaulted the kids was strange. He bit them… I’m now worried that he might have infected them.”

“He bit the kids?” I shivered once more. If an evil spirit was behind this, then that spirit was extraordinarily hateful.

“You have to tell me all the things you’ve encountered. You shouldn’t omit any detail, even if they are small. I’ll try my best to help you,” I said.

The man in black was touched and nodded continuously. “Yes, yes. Thank you, Grandmaster.”

According to him, he used to work at a local power plant, and he was some sort of public servant. He was kind and had good relationships with the people in his company. Whenever he saw someone in trouble, he would voluntarily offer to help them.

Since his name was Lei Long, his colleagues often called him Lei Feng’s descendant or Lei Feng of modern times. [1]

If it weren’t for the strange disease he had contracted, Lei Long’s life wouldn’t be bad. He had a happy family, a career that people envied, and his pay was good too.

However, ever since his wife gave birth to his son, his life changed drastically.

One day after his son’s birth, Lei Long started to act strange.

At first, Lei Long’s appetite became much bigger. No matter what he ate, he couldn’t feel full. As such, he ate all day long.

Moreover, he became lazy and didn’t even help his wife during her postpartum period.

If his wife wasn’t an understanding spouse, they would have been divorced already. His wife had to take care of their infant son, cook, and feed the kid all alone.

Although Lei Long ate a lot, he just laid on his bed, feeling powerless. He didn’t move and didn’t even care about his newborn son.

He thought that he might be sick, so he went to the hospital for a check-up. The results were okay, but the doctor found something strange on his body.

Some white hairs were growing on his left cheek. The doctor guessed that it might be due to mold. However, how could human skin actually become moldy? The doctor was puzzled and asked Lei Long if he had done any surgery on his face. For instance, if he did some plastic surgery to make his face thinner.

Lei Long shook his head. He laid on his bed all day and didn’t feel like moving a finger. There was no way he would bother with plastic surgery.

The doctor teased him, “Haha, perhaps you became moldy precisely because you don’t do anything all day!”

Lei Long went home disappointed. After that, his situation became even worse.

He stopped going to work and only thought about eating.

This reminded me of the jade thumb ring. Lei Long’s symptoms were similar to the ones caused by that ring, which also forced people to eat uncontrollably.

The only difference was that the jade ring made people fat, while Lei Long grew mold on his body.

I suspected that Lei Long had eaten something poisonous that caused such strange symptoms.

Every day, at around 9 PM, he would start feeling sleepy. Even if he had a gun pointed at his head, he would still fall asleep. It was as if he had overdosed himself with sleeping pills.

Then, around 2 AM, Lei Long would have a strange dream. He would dream of being hungry and going to the kitchen. Whenever he picked up a knife in the dream, he would suddenly wake up and discover that he wasn’t in his bed. He would be standing in the kitchen with a knife in his hand, gazing at his reflection in the kitchen mirror.

Prior to these strange events, Lei Long had never walked in his sleep. But now, it happened almost every night.

Every time, he had the same dream. He would dream of himself cooking in the kitchen then wake up while holding a knife in his hand, gazing at his reflection in the mirror.

The first thing Lei Long saw every time he woke up was his reflection in the mirror; he would be angrily wielding the knife. He started to find his face more and more unfamiliar. It was as though he had never seen his face before. Yet, that was indeed his face.

At the same time, the mold spread all over his face. If he touched it or yanked the white hairs down, he would feel sharp pain, and the hairs would come off with some disgusting mucus.

Lei Long was scared and looked for treatments everywhere, even visiting a mental hospital. However, he couldn’t find a cure. He lived his life in fear and felt that he would soon go crazy...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_Feng