Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

"I checked for you just now—there's no one around here at all," Yang Yanzhou said. "It'll be light soon. Let's get going."

Xia Xue had no choice but to nod helplessly. She knew as well that if there really had been a suspect, he would long since have fled; he would not be waiting here for her to arrest him.

Originally, this matter had little to do with Yan. Hauntings or car crashes, it was all the police's responsibility. Yang Yongjin would not have bothered with it even if he could. But now, it had caught Yang Juehuan's interest.

If his guess was right and the matter really was connected to Gu sorcery, then could it have been the work of forces hostile to Lanhai? The thought gave Yang Moyi the urge to investigate for himself.

Of course, if those forces really were involved, the police would have a hard time cracking the case. He would have to rely on his own efforts—at worst, he could hand all the credit to Xia Xue in the end.

Xia Xue knew too that further investigation would be futile, so she got back in the car with Yan. In a residential building beside the spot where Yang Ce and Xia Xue had just been, a trembling figure watched Yang Ce leave, then let out a breath of relief and plopped down onto the bed.

Chen Afu clutched his chest, silently cursing his luck. How could he be so unlucky as to run into this nemesis of his again? Every time he played ghost in front of the man, not only did it fail, but if he were caught, he would end up in a miserable state.

Chen Afu could not understand why his Gu sorcery, which had never failed him, had no effect at all on Yang Puqi. Not only did it fail, but after seeing through it, the man had actually dared to come back and investigate.

Anyone else would have been scared off long ago, but this Yang the Bold seemed not to fear these things at all. When Yang Ce came back to investigate, Chen Afu was terrified.

Afraid Yang Ce would discover him, he had stayed curled up in the corner without daring to move, watching out the window from the corner of his eye. Only after Yang Ce left did Chen Afu breathe easy.

The police had been investigating furiously of late, and Chen Afu did not dare go out to act; he could only lie low at home.

The street below Chen Afu's home led to the shantytown. There were few rich people in the shantytown to begin with, and even fewer who owned cars, so at night hardly anyone drove through.

Today he had finally spotted a good opportunity: a large truck passing along the road below his building. He had thought it would leave the driver dead and the truck wrecked, but instead it had brought Yang Cenbin, that jinx, down on him.

Chen Afu was deeply troubled. The Right Elder was pressing him hard, urging him to hurry up and get more corpses—the "art" he was practicing was about to be mastered. Chen Afu was also deeply afraid of the Right Elder. That man—or perhaps not a man at all—possessed some inexplicable power. Chen Afu clutched his head in pain and squatted on the ground. These last few scares had brought him none of the old thrill; it was as if he were merely going through the motions of a task. The more he was pressed, the more vexed he became, and Chen Afu did not know what to do. He even felt a faint nostalgia for his old high school days. True, he had been Wang Lin's errand boy every day, but at least there had been something to do, unlike now, living every day in fear and dread.

Yes—Chen Afu used to be the one scaring others, making them live in fear. But as the matter grew and the police took it seriously, Chen Afu became afraid. He feared the police would come for him. He no longer dared go out to frighten people, yet the Right Elder kept forcing him out—especially after he had just seen Yang Ce, which frightened Chen Afu even more. If Yang Ce discovered that he had been playing ghost at him again, he would probably be beaten to death. To be continued.

907. What I Hate Most

907 What I Hate Most. There were some things Yang Yongjin wondered whether he should tell Xia Xue. If his estimate was right, the haunting case was the work of Lanhai's enemies—but the matter was truly too incredible. Gu sorcery, in the eyes of ordinary people, was something mysterious and nearly inconceivable; most people even regarded it as legend and did not believe such sorcery existed in today's world.

Xia Xue in particular, being a believer in science, could not possibly believe in witchcraft and the like. So Yang Ce hesitated again and again and decided to let it go. If possible, he would contact Lan Ling's grandmother and see whether this person could be caught; at worst, he would give all the credit to Xia Xue.

Fried cakes, big dough twists—breakfast foods that had been popular in the nineties—were rarely seen now, replaced by handsomely decorated, hygienic teahouses, congee shops, and steamed-bun shops.

But Yang Ce had once seen a similar breakfast stall over in the shantytown, so he drove the car there. By now the sky was faintly light, and at the mouth of the shantytown's street many vendors had already started their fires and were getting ready to do business.

"Why come all the way here for breakfast?" Xia Xue was rather surprised.

"This is the only place with fried cakes," Yang Hengye said. "Come on, let's get out."

Xia Xue suddenly understood. Now she knew why Yang Ce had gone out of his way to eat breakfast at such an unremarkable little stall—so he had still been brooding over her wish to eat fried cakes.

"Thank you," Xia Xue said, a little moved. Since her grandmother passed away, she had never eaten fried cakes again, and such things were terribly rare in the big city—all but extinct.

"Thank me for what?" Yang Ce parked the car and got out with Xia Xue. "You said it yourself—I'm your long-term meal ticket, so naturally I have to satisfy your dietary demands."

"Ha!" Xia Xue burst out laughing happily. "Then if I said I wanted to eat the moon, would you satisfy that too?"

"If you can bite through it, I'll pluck it down for you," Yang Yuting answered without thinking.

"Tomorrow I'm going to get my teeth fitted with diamond." Xia Xue said it with a perfectly straight face.

"Fine. Tell me when you're done, and I'll go buy a Shenzhou-7 to fetch it," Yang Ce shot back.

"Yang Ce, are you deliberately picking a fight with me?" Xia Xue glared at Yang Puqi in exasperation. Whatever she said, he always had a comeback.

"You're the one who started picking fights with me, all right? Besides, I'm a meal ticket now—you should at least consider a meal ticket's feelings. You can't expect me to pay and take abuse on top of it," Yang Hengye said.

Xia Xue could not help but smile at that. The two of them sat down together in front of a stall frying dough sticks and fried cakes. "Boss, are you open yet?" Yang Yanchuan asked.

"The oil'll be hot in a moment. What would you two like? I'll fry your order first," the boss said, coming over with a grin. He had not expected to have customers the moment he set up—a good omen, it seemed.

"A catty of fried cakes and two sticks of fried dough. Two bowls of tofu pudding," said Yang Minlan, the boss.

"Coming right up!" Hearing that the two of them were ordering quite a lot, the boss happily bustled off to prepare it.

"Can you really eat all that?" Xia Xue watched as the boss tossed a whole cutting board's worth of fried cakes into the oil and could not help worrying. "Isn't that too many fried cakes?"

"They're for you. I'll just have the fried dough sticks," Yang Yanzhou said.

"What, do you think I'm a pig? How could I possibly eat a whole catty?" Xia Xue's eyes went wide, and she looked at Yang Ce, not sure whether to laugh or cry. To be fair, Yang Ce had ordered so much out of kindness, but even if she did love fried cakes, there was no way she could eat that many.