JOS Chapter 122
Classmate
Regarding her “curve ball suicide mission, taking all the damage” heroic behavior, the three people found it difficult to describe their feelings.
This at least proved that studying more was beneficial. Chu Xuanliang was even hesitating whether to enroll in some advanced studies.
But his intelligence had always been normal, without any particularly low moments.
Chu Xuanliang asked: “What about that classmate of yours? Where is she now?”
“After I returned home, I discovered… I couldn’t contact her either. She wouldn’t answer my calls or reply to my text messages. When I went to her house, her parents also said fiercely that she wasn’t there,” Miumiu’s voice weakened, “They were actually working together to deceive me, weren’t they?”
Chu Xuanliang said: “You’re still quite smart, figuring it out so quickly.”
Miumiu: “……”
Chu Xuanliang took out a pen and said, “Give me their phone numbers, names, addresses, and photos. It would be best if you had their ID numbers. I’ll help you find them.”
Miumiu asked: “Are you going to report this to the police?”
Chu Xuanliang replied: “You don’t need to worry about that. We have our own methods.”
Miumiu reported the phone numbers of the other two people.
Chu Xuanliang dialed the phone numbers she had given him. As expected, they showed as overdue, so he found acquaintances to help investigate.
Checking phone numbers was quick work. All current mobile phone numbers required real-name authentication, unlike before when you could just buy a random card on the street and make do with it.
Miumiu’s classmate had gotten a new number afterward, and that phone number had recent usage records, while the so-called college boyfriend’s phone had been shut off for a long time with no signs of replacement.
Chu Xuanliang first tried contacting the girl, whom Miumiu called Xiao Xia.
The first time he called, it had just connected when the other party irritably hung up.
Chu Xuanliang felt a bit drowsy and realized it was still late at night. But people who didn’t sleep at night had no right to let others sleep, especially when these three troublemakers had caused this mess.
He persistently made a third and fourth call. After being blocked, he borrowed Jiang Feng’s phone to continue calling.
Finally, a female voice responded on the other end, saying angrily, “Who are you! What are you doing, are you sick?!”
Chu Xuanliang was silent for a moment, then said, “I put it on speaker.”
Jiang Feng: “……I know.”
Xiao Xia was furious and shouted, “If you have something to say, say it. If not, I’m hanging up. Are you sick?!”
“I heard some sounds. There shouldn’t be anyone around you, so it must be a ghost,” Jiang Feng said coolly. “Have you been haunted by a ghost too?”
Xiao Xia’s voice immediately became quieter, with a trembling note as she asked, “What did you hear?”
Jiang Feng took the phone from Chu Xuanliang and said, “Someone is humming. Her voice is different from yours, and it’s stopped now. There’s also something being moved around. What are you doing?”
The sounds were fragmented and very muffled, like background noise coming through something, with a woman’s voice. The tone was also strange, like someone pinching their throat to imitate opera singing, but doing it poorly.
Xiao Xia said: “I’m… putting on makeup.”
Everyone looked puzzled.
Light “pat pat” sounds, which did indeed sound like applying makeup.
Chu Xuanliang asked: “You’re putting on makeup in the middle of the night?”
Xiao Xia: “I’m just putting on makeup! I…”
“How can a woman not wear makeup?”
The latter half wasn’t said by Xiao Xia, but by another person.
The other party even laughed. “I don’t care who you are, but I advise you not to meddle. We’re living very happily now.”
Jiang Feng said: “Give me your current address.”
Xiao Xia’s voice became flat, as if she had completely become a different person, saying plainly, “I’m going to sleep now. Don’t bother me anymore.”
Then the phone was immediately hung up.
When they called again, the other party had turned off their phone.
Hearing the busy tone, Miumiu asked, “What’s wrong with her? Was she deceived too?”
Chu Xuanliang said: “She’s a victim.”
After Miumiu discovered this, her mood instantly improved.
This was a matter of intellectual dignity.
Miumiu said: “I told you so. They say that when people are being deceived, they subconsciously ignore all the loopholes. It’s human nature.”
She picked up the sweet soup on the table and took a sip. As the liquid flowed down her throat, she could no longer restrain herself and began gulping it down voraciously.
Jiang Feng snatched the bowl from her hands and slammed it on the table. Her eyes had gone blank, and it took a moment before she returned to normal, exhaling in relief.
Chu Xuanliang said: “Just stay with us and don’t wander around. You’re not suitable for carrying talismans, but the situation isn’t optimistic either. I think you saw it yourself just now.”
That ghost was still somewhat wary of the few of them, knowing to hide and not dare come out. But a hungry ghost was ultimately a hungry ghost – it wasn’t easy to control itself. If there was any opportunity, it might cause trouble again.
What Chu Xuanliang feared most was her going to the bathroom and not coming out… After all, hungry ghosts weren’t picky about what they ate.
Through Xiao Xia’s phone number, Chu Xuanliang found her personal social media accounts, then used the information there to trace her IP address, locating her in the same town not far away.
“Damn!” Miumiu cursed angrily. “So she was at home, and her parents lied to me saying she wasn’t there. I knew she had no money – where could she have gone!”
After a while, she said again, “You Taoist priests are really amazing, like detectives. Did you graduate with a computer science degree?”
“I graduated from the university of life,” Chu Xuanliang said, hugging a pillow against the bedside. “Let’s sleep for a while. I’m really tired.”
The next morning, Xie Lanzhi had already cleaned up the dog blood from the first floor. The group went downstairs, preparing to go to Xiao Xia’s house.
According to Miumiu, Xiao Xia’s family wasn’t short of money. After her parents made money, they built a rural villa in town, but they usually weren’t there, leaving Xiao Xia to live alone. They didn’t care about her studies or life either.
The town’s schools, whether in terms of facilities or faculty, couldn’t compare with those in the city. Her parents, having left home early, weren’t close to her at all. Combined with Xiao Xia’s lack of discipline from childhood and poor academic performance, they never mentioned transferring her to a good school. They just waited for her to stop studying so they could take her to work for them and eventually marry her off to some honest man.
If Miumiu’s parents were poor but doting, then Xiao Xia’s situation was the complete opposite – her parents only cared about money.
Although their backgrounds were completely different, their pursuits coincidentally aligned perfectly.
Make money! Leave this family!
Xiao Xia was more decisive than Miumiu and had more ideas, so she boldly ran away from home during high school.
At that time, her parents had just returned from abroad, and there was a stack of euros and US dollars in the cabinet at home. She took the opportunity to steal their bank cards and cash, then ran away with Miumiu and her boyfriend.
That also became the “startup capital” for their later venture.
Although Miumiu had been deceived, she still had some admiration for Xiao Xia.
“She obviously was the type who would achieve great things in the future. She was particularly smart and decisive in her actions. All our teachers said so – they disliked her but couldn’t deny this, always lamenting her wasted talent. I think if she had studied properly, she could have made something of herself. Her grades were particularly good in elementary school, but later she deliberately stopped studying to spite her parents,” Miumiu said. “Tch, as if her parents cared whether she studied or not. She was just too stupid about this. Who cared what degree she graduated with – they were going to make her work for them in the end anyway.”
Miumiu snorted. “But Xiao Xia wasn’t dumb either. She said about her parents – they only spent money, never earned it. Once she could make money, she’d run away and not give her parents a penny.”
Looking at her smug expression, Chu Xuanliang suddenly found this group of young people quite interesting.
They actually had ideas, but those ideas, limited by their own experience or influenced by social atmosphere, carried a kind of restlessness that made them seem too immature.
People of his generation had similar experiences when they were young. At that time, it coincided with the great development of the internet economy – who hadn’t dreamed of getting rich overnight? It was just that the pursuit of profit wasn’t promoted as severely as it was now. The overall environment still pursued academic supremacy, down-to-earth work, and a practical economy. Schools also promoted the usefulness of studying, and the idols and dreams established from childhood were scientists, doctors, and the like. These things restrained the restless impulses in their hearts.
Finally entering society, they also saw that there was actually an impractical distance between dreams and reality. That distance might be bridged by talent, family background, luck, or opportunity, but more often, it was ordinary people who fell along the way.
But no one knew in advance whether they were part of the 99% of ordinary people or the 1% of geniuses.
Risk and reward coexisted.
Jiang Feng glanced sideways and said, “I won’t talk about your classmate’s situation first. But you – despising your parents is never something you should be proud of.”
Miumiu pouted.
****
Xiao Xia’s parents had returned during this period. When Jiang Feng and the others arrived, they were preparing to go out shopping.
As soon as the two heard their purpose, they immediately put on stern faces and said, “Our daughter isn’t home. She hasn’t been back for a long time. Go look for her somewhere else.”
“She told us last night that she was here,” Chu Xuanliang said. “We have something to discuss with her. There’s something strange about her.”
Xiao Xia came out from the stairway, carefully showing half her face, hiding behind the wall to peek at them.
Miumiu caught sight of her and screamed, “Who is that?!”
That face was deathly pale, covered with who knows how many layers of powder, resulting in a bizarre and uneven color, with a stiff facial expression, looking like she was wearing a mask. Her eyelashes and hair looked clumpy, as if they hadn’t been cleaned in ages.
Chu Xuanliang tentatively called out. “Xiao Xia?”
She nodded.
Miumiu immediately got goosebumps. “How did you become like this?”
Xiao Xia’s parents hurriedly closed the door and said in lowered voices, “If you want to talk, come in and talk. Don’t stand here! I’ve said before, don’t bring those questionable friends home anymore! You’re not allowed in next time!”
Xiao Xia said, “Don’t mind her, she’s just sick like that. Let’s go.”
Miumiu sensed the hostility in her mother’s words and kept quiet, following her classmate upstairs.
Xiao Xia’s room was very messy, with only one chair. She cleared clothes from the bed and told everyone to sit wherever. She looked through various bottles and jars on the table, picked up a mirror, and looked like she was going to start putting on makeup again.
Miumiu said: “Won’t you wash your face?”
Xiao Xia replied: “How can I wash off such thick powder?”
“You know that? Then you’re just going to leave it like that?” Miumiu said. “I’m about to throw up looking at it!”
Xiao Xia turned to different angles in the mirror to look at herself and said with satisfaction. “I think I look beautiful like this. I want to keep wearing makeup. Women must always be beautiful.”
Miumiu looked at Chu Xuanliang for help, asking quietly, “Why does she seem normal but also not normal?”
Chu Xuanliang replied, “I told you, this is a contract, not possession. The ghost influences your thoughts, making you subconsciously act according to its wishes. Like you constantly wanting to eat, or her constantly putting makeup on her face. Only when you don’t comply for a long time will it come out to control your body and force compliance.”
Miumiu asked: “So… she’s really mentally abnormal?”
As soon as he finished speaking, they heard that eerie laughter.
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll tear her face apart.”
Only Jiang Feng and the others could hear it, but none of them paid attention.
The female ghost, being ignored, gnashed her teeth in resentment and half-emerged from Xiao Xia’s body.
She wore a qipao dress and had the kind of wavy curls from posters of the seventies and eighties. Both hands were painted with bright red nail polish, forcefully curved into claws, aimed at Xiao Xia’s face.
Xiao Xia’s hand holding the powder compact paused, her expression somewhat confused. She looked in the mirror again and cursed loudly, “Holy sh*t!”
Yama picked up a shoe he had just taken off, sneered “Finally a fool shows up,” and immediately hurled it at the female ghost’s face.
Xiao Xia’s body shivered with cold, and following everyone’s gaze, she turned her eyes to see a shoe floating in the air by the bookshelf, with something glittering. In her daze, she also heard a woman’s piercing scream.