The remaining two walking corpses didn’t dare to fight Ao Bai head-on. They stuck to the wall and moved back and forth. Ao Bai was enraged; he grabbed one of them and forcefully pressed the corpse’s head in its thoracic cavity.

With a puff, the walking corpse’s head was sunk deep into his chest. The scene made sweat stream down my face. Fortunately, Commander Ao was our ally.

The other walking corpse howled like a wild animal and stormed forward. Ao Bai rose to the challenge with a louder roar. He directly punched the walking corpse away. The punch was so strong that the corpse’s blood splashed everywhere as it hit the wall. The scene looked extremely scary.

Ao Bai still had anger to spare. He sat on top of that corpse and punched it, creating noises like those heard when a butcher chopped off a massive chunk of frozen pork. Our scalps were numb with fear.

One punch, two punches… In the end, the walking corpse had become a mess of crushed meat. It convulsed and then stopped moving.

Ao Bai turned to look at us, his eyes as ferocious as those of a blood-thirsty beast. “Where’s the rat that imprisoned me inside that drum?”

“Right in this building. I’ll help you find him!” I answered while shivering. Then, I asked Yin Xinyue to stay and keep an eye on Fengshen Nana before leaving with Ao Bai and Li Mazi. We were going upstairs.

We searched the second floor and the third floor, but we had yet to see the murderer’s shadow. On the way, Ao Bai finished off the walking corpse that had been torn into two halves as he was still crawling on the ground. I wondered what the officers would say the next day when they entered the station and saw this mess in the corridors. I really wanted to see the faces they would make.

“You lowly creature, show yourself!”

Ao Bai stood in the main building’s office. His raging scream made us cover our ears, and his resentful energy summoned a powerful gust of wind, just like one seen when a Ghost King appeared.

Li Mazi lowered his voice to ask me, “Little Brother Zhang, how could Ao Bai get out of that otherworldly item? I don’t think we’ve ever encountered this situation before.”

I smiled, telling Li Mazi that he still had to learn a few more things. Actually, otherworldly items could be categorized into two kinds.

The first kind was the otherworldly item that had been with its owner for quite a long time. After the owner died, one wisp of their soul would remain attached to the item they loved the most. For example, the pair of embroidered shoes, the ancient mirror from the Tang dynasty, and even the Thunder Sword of the Hegemon King of Western Chu, to name some.

The second kind was also the most malicious one. To create this kind of otherworldly item, the user had to catch and restrain a departed soul in some tool and refine that tool into an otherworldly item. For example, the legendary Chi You’s bone carriage. This sort of otherworldly item had the strongest resentful energy, which also made it the hardest to deal with.

In historical records, after Kangxi had caught Ao Bai, Ao Bai was so angry he had vomited blood and died in prison. It seemed he didn’t rest in peace after he died. Apparently, someone had used his corpse to make a small drum. That was why his resentful energy had accumulated and had yet to disperse. Automatically, he considered the owner of the otherworldly item his archenemy.

While we were searching on the fourth floor, Ao Bai suddenly cried, “Demon!”

“What?”

Ao Bai pointed at the celebrity posted on the wall. It was Maxim Gorky’s portrait and his quote, ‘Books are the stepping stones to human progress.’

Ao Bai sternly asked me why we had a picture of a demon there and whether he was a wanted criminal.

We couldn’t help but laugh. Then, Ao Bai suddenly roared angrily, his eyes bulging. I was sobered up by fear right away, thinking we had offended him somehow. Right after, we heard drumbeats coming from somewhere.

“Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!”

The mysterious drum beats were clearly discernible, just as if someone were playing a drum in our ears. Ao Bai clutched his head with both hands, grunting in pain. It seemed as if he had a head-splitting headache.

“I will kill you!” He suddenly dashed away. A scar-faced man wearing a black sweater emerged from a dark corner. He continuously banged an old drum he was holding.

Although Ao Bai was full of resentful and murderous energy, he didn’t have the power to resist this drum. Before he could touch the man in a black sweater, we all heard the cracking noise as his arms were twisted into strange angles.

Then, his legs also broke. Ao Bai knelt in front of that man, gasping for breath and grunting in pain. However, he couldn’t control his body; he started to bang his head on the ground as the drum became louder.

It seemed he didn’t sense any pain as he eventually split his head open. His brain was scattered on the ground, but he kept pounding his head. I was appalled by the power of this wicked otherworldly item, but it wasn’t the time to be a coward.

I drew the Sirius Whip and lashed at the man in black. He sneered as his hand kept on hitting the drum. After a serious rattling and thumping noise, Ao Bai spurted a big puddle of small, black insects. Together, they filled and swarmed the corridor like a rising black tide. Li Mazi was scared silly by this and quickly hid behind me.

“Little Brother Zhang, what the heck are those?!” Li Mazi cried.

“Don’t be scared. It’s just some corpse worms,” I said.

Corpse worms were born while the corpse was refined. They were similar to maggots as they were also a kind of parasites living off the dead bodies.

I wielded and lashed my Sirius Whip, trying to kill the worms on the ground. However, there were too many of them; they were like slugs that continued to approach us and crawl up to our shoes. Li Mazi and I stomped to smash them. The popping sounds and the sticky, mucus-like substance they left behind were really disgusting.

That mysterious man had disappeared while we tried hard to finish off those corpse worms.

I spotted an open window, so I went over to check. The man was riding on a corpse that crawled and slithered like a lizard. They soon disappeared into the woods nearby.

“Damn!” I punched the wall.

A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived. They gave Fengshen Nana a quick check and took her to the hospital.

It was 4:00 AM already.

Officer Liang took us out of the police station. All of us were exhausted. I just wanted to go home, take a warm bath, and have a nice sleep.

“Mr. Zhang, I still have a question. Even if that man wanted to destroy the corpses to erase the evidence, he didn’t need to come to the police station alone, right?” Captain Liang was puzzled.

“Could it be because the money he robbed is being kept in the police station?” I asked.

“It’s a lot of money, and it’s not safe to keep it here. I will ask my people to count and return the money to the bank this afternoon,” said Captain Liang.

I furrowed my brow. That man’s goal was still a mystery to us.

We could only see how things evolved and act accordingly.

I suddenly remembered something while waiting for a taxi. I turned to Captain Liang. “Please, pay attention to this. In the next two days, you might find the dead body of a five to seven years old child found in Wuhan.”