Chapter 1122: Chapter 764: The Curse_2
"Bang!"
"Bang! Bang!"
"Bang bang bang!!"
Fu Qingzhu, who was responsible for finishing shots, fired several times, blasting the face of a fat man in a white shirt to a pulp.
"What’s wrong with you?" Yang Xiao noticed that Fu Qingzhu was behaving very strangely.
As Fu Qingzhu turned around, Yang Xiao saw an expression of obsessed enjoyment on his face, his mouth slowly curving into a grin as if the kill brought him immense satisfaction.
Noticing the gun in his hand, Yang Xiao decisively swung a stick at him. Fu Qingzhu was knocked down but not injured, and his eyes regained some clarity after that.
Seeing the smashed face on the ground, Fu Qingzhu himself was startled. He vaguely remembered doing it himself, but he couldn’t recall why.
"Just now... I seemed to be possessed, feeling incredibly happy—an inexplicably euphoric feeling. My mood was particularly pleasant, and I wanted to laugh, to laugh out loud and release all the joy inside me." Fu Qingzhu responded, sounding exhausted.
Through Fu Qingzhu’s description and examining the scene’s bodies, Yang Xiao boldly speculated that affected people would experience excited emotions, which would gradually escalate. Once someone laughed to the point of tearing their mouth corners, they would be immediately killed by the ghost.
He remembered that during the time they were drinking, sounds of laughter continuously came from outside and grew more intense. Later, those laughs disappeared because all the people laughing had died.
Had he not been vigilant enough to detect the odd atmosphere early, the three of them might not have escaped this fate.
Yang Xiao took out some tape from his backpack, "From now on, don’t speak anymore. I’ll seal your mouth with tape."
Knowing Yang Xiao meant well, Fu Qingzhu didn’t refuse. He even asked Yang Xiao if there was a needle and thread in the backpack, hoping to sew his mouth shut.
Saving face was a minor issue; he certainly didn’t want to become one of the corpses lying on the ground.
"Who knows you invited us here tonight?" Yang Xiao asked once they left the room.
"No one knows. I just said I booked a room, but they don’t know who I invited." Fu Qingzhu typed on his phone and showed it to Qu Muzhi.
The occurrence of such an event was most embarrassing for Fu Qingzhu, as he, being from intelligence, hadn’t realized he had walked into someone else’s trap.
"This hotel is owned by the United Federation. The owner here is one of us. I only told him." Fu Qingzhu typed swiftly.
"Where is he now?" Qu Muzhi asked.
"He should be here. I originally planned to find him after dinner tonight for some arrangements." Fu Qingzhu typed in response.
"Take us to him," Yang Xiao urged. "Don’t call; go directly to his office."
Under Fu Qingzhu’s lead, they took the stairs to the 4th floor. The top of the hotel was the 4th floor, a non-public administrative office area.
Along the way, they encountered some guests and staff. If their identities were uncovered, these guys had combat power equivalent to ordinary people and posed no threat to the three of them.
Easily overcoming obstacles, they reached the 4th-floor administrative area and found the general manager’s office. Yang Xiao kicked open the door to find a man and woman embracing each other.
Seeing a stranger interrupting his affair, the man in a high-end suit got angry, cursing Yang Xiao’s entire family. But upon seeing Fu Qingzhu enter with tape on his face, the man instantly went mute.
"President Fu?!" The man was shocked, "What happened to you? And who are these two guys..."
Yang Xiao raised the Ghost Lantern, its green light instantly covering the man and the disheveled woman assistant. Both instinctively shielded with their hands, but the eerie dead faces were still visible.
These two had also died, making the situation worse than Yang Xiao imagined. It seemed, apart from the three of them, there were no living people left in the hotel.
They didn’t immediately attack the two because they wanted to extract some intel from them. These guys didn’t seem to realize they were already dead; their memories were cut off, but they still retained memories before being killed.
Seeing that typing explanations were unclear, Fu Qingzhu simply tore off the tape on his face, "Bian Yugui, who internally knows that I’m visiting the hotel for dinner tonight?"
Bian Yugui paused and quickly explained, "No one, I didn’t tell anyone. President, you are..."
The next second, Fu Qingzhu grabbed Yang Xiao’s gun and shot the bewildered female assistant standing by the table, bursting a bloom of blood from her head.
Bian Yugui was terrified, seeing Fu Qingzhu pointing the gun at him; he immediately knelt, raised his hands, and pleaded for mercy, crying, "No, President... President, don’t shoot. I only reported to Leader Lei; it’s our standard procedure."
"I swear, I only told her. I wasn’t targeting you; it would be the same for anyone." The man cried desperately, fearing Fu Qingzhu would shoot him.
"Just her?" Fu Qingzhu asked, intensely, "I’ll ask one last time—it’s not too late to speak now!"
"I swear, I swear!!"
"Bang! Bang!"
"Bang!"
Two shots to the heart, one to the head, Fu Qingzhu finished him off, and that peculiar thrill engulfed him again.
"Who is Leader Lei?" Yang Xiao asked quickly.
Fu Qingzhu returned the gun to Yang Xiao, face tense, "An intelligence adjutant of the United Federation, beyond my jurisdiction, directly responsible to the top echelon, more senior than me."
After speaking, Fu Qingzhu stepped forward and took the man’s phone. These were all evidence.
At that moment, news came from the Patrol Defense Office, stating they had completely sealed the area around the hotel. The situation was far worse than expected. They found living dead attempting to escape and had identified and cleared over twenty people.
Huang Guozhao personally called, speaking firmly, ordering Qu Muzhi to find the source at all costs and resolve this supernatural incident swiftly. This was not the sparsely populated Jingping Town; if the situation spiraled out of control, half of Rongcheng’s people might be buried with it.
"No time for a thorough search, bring in a few death row inmates quickly!" Yang Xiao decided to use the simplest, most brutal method to solve the problem.
But what he didn’t anticipate was that within a few minutes, a death row inmate was brought over, indicating his and Huang Guozhao’s thoughts aligned; he was also someone who achieved objectives by any means necessary.
Huang Guozhao asked Qu Muzhi to inform Yang Xiao that he only brought along one death row inmate this time, with more on the way, advising him to go all out.
The only requirement was to resolve the supernatural incident swiftly; the tragedy of Jingping Town must not be repeated.
Yang Xiao and his team arrived at the hotel entrance, dealing with several infected staff along the way. Ordinary people stood little chance of surviving such a sudden supernatural event.
Soon they saw a handcuffed prisoner jogging into the hotel entrance. To Yang Xiao’s surprise, the prisoner wasn’t very old, around 23 or 24, not much younger than Yang Xiao, and appeared honest, like a regular guy.
"Who’s Director Yang, 971081 reporting for duty, please... please instruct me." The young prisoner looked a bit nervous.
Yang Xiao pulled him along toward the corridor on the east side of the hotel’s first floor, where a large room was hosting an art salon.
Standing outside the elegant double wooden doors, it was eerily silent inside, but upon pushing it open, the room was bustling with activity, the door seemingly separating two worlds.
A dozen well-dressed ladies were sharing their insights, while the screen projected the theme of their reading session: Life and Death, Red and Black.
As the Ghost Lantern swayed, Yang Xiao sighed inwardly; these people had been dead for some time.
"Who are you?" a woman who was sharing asked.
"I’m the hotel’s special manager. Knowing you are discussing insights on life and death today, I brought a death row inmate; I think he’s better suited to answer this topic."
