Chapter 58: 58

Chapter 58: The Ebb and Flow of the Tide

Huang Jin knew himself well.

For example, he didn’t like the world. For example, he had never been a good person… For example, his eyes were different from other people’s.

At the age of 4.

The first sound he had an impression of was probably the sound of a juicer at night. Other people’s parents probably squeezed juice for their family, but his mother was different—every day before going to bed, he saw fresh eyeballs on the table.

His mother would slowly blend them up, pour them into the toilet, and flush them away. After making sure that there were only two eyes left on her face, she would pick up the “handicrafts” made during the day and deliver them somewhere.

Then, throughout the day, a lot of eyeballs would slowly grow out of her eye sockets like moist grapes.

Fortunately, he couldn’t see what they looked like on her.

…To recognize a person’s appearance, he could only look at immovable photos or portraits. Whether through a lens or video, when looking at others, he could only see a pile of dark, surging undercurrents.

This incident once confused him, but after knowing about it, his mother wasn’t surprised.

“It’s just a disease. I know it in my heart,” she said. “Don’t tell others.”

At the age of 14.

As the years passed, Huang Jin gradually understood the black runes crawling around—that seemed to be everyone’s “thoughts”.

They would increase or decrease based on people’s emotional activity. When people fell asleep or were in a coma, they would always be thinner. When people die, they would completely disappear.

After years of accumulation, he was gradually able to distinguish the meaning of some runes.

However, his mother failed to live in harmony with the “strange disease”. Those eyes of hers grew faster, and she became weaker. Finally, one day, she used a hot spoon to dig out all her eyeballs.

Though she went blind, they finally stopped growing.

However, after that, his mother’s physical condition rapidly deteriorated, and she became more neurotic. She was lying on a large double bed with only a thick blanket covering her thin body, looking like a huge black tomb.

The thoughts of “I shouldn’t have come to Haigu” and “I knew I shouldn’t have become involved with Sunken Society” crawled quickly around her body. It was mixed with sporadic thoughts like “I wish I hadn’t given birth to this child” and “I knew it wasn’t as bad as before”.

Regret, pain, hatred, fear. The thoughts around her grew thicker to the point that they filled the entire room. Those black runes surged back and forth in the bedroom like a tide.

Every time he would feed her medicine and wipe her body, Huang Jin was completely overwhelmed by those runes. All he could see was blackness in his eyes.

He didn’t like this kind of darkness.

At the age of 24.

Huang Jin lost his job, which was supporting his debt. He started selling old things in his home and discovered the book <Huang Thaumaturgy>.

Perhaps he could try to make something, just like his mother.

“Brother, my name is Lu Guangzu. The quality of your stuff is good, so I approve of all of it. Give them to me, and I’ll sell them for you.”

“Okay.”

Now that he could analyze more thoughts, the crowds in the street became even more hideous. Huang Jin didn’t want to deal with people, so this was convenient.

“Can you make a kind of more lethal spirit weapon? You should be able to.”

“Okay.”

After a long time of looking at himself in the mirror and then looking at the “black cocoons” all over the street, it was difficult for Huang Jin to feel the same way.

Under the premise of self-protection, as long as he could make money, he didn’t care.

……

“I got a big customer!” This time, Lu Guangzu approached him face-to-face. “I need a spell for ‘prosperity and luck’. That person doesn’t believe in this very much, so those little trinkets didn’t work well on him. I need some stronger stuff… After completing this ticket, you can pay off your debts. Isn’t this great?”

The small charms that changed fortune and gave rise to prosperity were essentially just taking a bit of fortune and favor in the future and moving them to present time in advance. Cutting one’s life in exchange for luck was what it ultimately did—directly sacrificing one’s own life force in exchange for strong luck.

Huang Jin stared at Lu Guangzu’s body. “I had a falling out with Sunken Society”, “If this goes well, I shouldn’t be retaliated against”, “Whether that guy will die or not, at least his fortune will change before he dies”, he sighed.

“No going to do it.” Huang Jin shook his head. “Lu Guangzu, I don’t want to cooperate with you anymore.”

His debt was about to be paid off, so he no longer urgently needed money. This person was too greedy and shortsighted. Sooner or later, he would be pulled into the water by him—it would be too dangerous to sink, and the gain wasn’t worth the loss.

His life had calmed down for a while, until one night.

Huang Jin was making spirit weapons in the basement when a quick knock on the door suddenly sounded behind him. He was taken aback as he hid his tools. “Who is it?”

“Me, Lu Guangzu. I have something to tell you!” The smell of alcohol wafted through the crack of the door. “If you don’t open up, I’ll smash the door!”

Huang Jin hesitated for a moment and finally opened the door.

The next second, he was overwhelmed by the surging black tide.

Countless runes full of “Kill you” surrounded Lu Guangzu. His rapidly expanding mind almost filled half the basement. The crazy, surging text filled his field of vision so much that Huang Jin didn’t even know where the other person was.

Before he could react, he was pushed back abruptly. Huang Jin stumbled backwards a few steps and almost knocked over the tool table.

“If—If you hadn’t forced so many things in the first place, screwed up my business, Sunken Society wouldn’t have noticed!” The center of Lu Guangzu’s mind shouted like an angry wave. “Fuck! Now laozi got a big debt, and it’s all your fucking fault!”

Huang Jin saw the frantically surging “Kill you” and bowed his body cautiously. “Calm down, I can give you money…”

“What little money you have can do shit!” Lu Guangzu roared. “First bring—”

“The alcohol is really strong”… “This kid wrecked my business”… “A spirit smith’s house must have valuable spirit weapons…”

“Kill him after you get the money”, “Kill him after you get the money”, “Kill him after you get the money”…

Those “Kill you” quickly split and turned into more complicated thoughts.

Huang Jin took a deep breath and took out the cash that was used to easily avoid tracking. “I only have this much. The valuable things have already been sold long ago. At any rate, you and I have worked together, so this matter…”

As Lu Guangzu approached, Huang Jin’s vision was once again overwhelmed by countless malice. He couldn’t see anything except the dark resentment.

In a trance, he seemed to have been transported back in front of his mother’s bed, swallowed by the deep black sea.

“Use the coma potion now”, “Use the coma potion now”, “Use the coma potion now”…

“Corpse water should be fine”, “Corpse water should be fine”, “Corpse water should be fine“…

Wrapped in a dense killing intent, Huang Jin gritted his teeth. He fumbled around for a while, grabbed the carving knife on the table, and struck hard towards the part that was most concentrated in thoughts.

“Argh.”

The knife slashed across Lu Guangzu’s throat.

The wound wasn’t deep, but it was fatal. It was a pity that none of them noticed—Lu Guangzu swayed his body, which was paralyzed by alcohol, and lunged again towards Huang Jin. Half of the room continued to flare up with killing intent. Huang Jin was pressed to the ground. He clutched the carving knife and continued to haphazardly slash towards the darkness.

Half a minute passed. Blood kept spurting everywhere, and the clutter around the basement was scattered. Lu Guangzu staggered to the ground. A fishy smell gradually overshadowed the smell of alcohol.

With the loss of blood, Lu Guangzu’s thinking gradually weakened. He seemed to be trying to say something, but he couldn’t make a sound.

This was the first time Huang Jin was able to see Lu Guangzu’s face.

Only a thin layer of thoughts remained on Lu Guangzu’s body at this point. It lay on his face with difficulty and was sluggish, like a frozen centipede.

“Cold”… “Am I dying?”…

“That idiot”… “I’m carrying a ‘life bond’ from Sunken Society”… “They will catch him”… “He’ll have a worser death”…

The last thought fell silent, like snowflakes that melted on the skin. The black tide completely faded, exposing a body in a pool of blood.

He’s dead?

…What should I do?

Huang Jin stood in the middle of the pool of blood. His brain was buzzing. The carving knife was covered in blood and was sticky and slippery.

Call the police? Honestly, he wasn’t afraid of going to jail, but rather of the thoughts he would see while in prison…

But if he got rid of the body, Sunken Society wouldn’t be able to collect on their life bond, so they would search for traces of Lu Guangzu…

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Huang Jin’s limbs became numb, his limbs went soft, and the nausea of committing murder lingered—he was trying his best to escape for the whirlpool, but he was only getting deeper.

At the age of 25.

He put on another face and carried another debt.

Huang Jin strolled through the coastline-like streets. He passed through bursts of gray and black thoughts, shuttling through the streets and alleys during the day and the eaves of the ghost market at night, selling all kinds of spirit weapons he made.

He got in touch with Lu Guangzu’s old friends and learned to better imitate Lu Guangzu. He also learned how to enter and exit the ghost market and hide himself in the darkness. He even learned to distinguish the level of production of spirit weapons—he knew that his skills were absolutely top-notch.

But he only felt more tired.

Now that he was wearing the skin of a dead man on his face, the crime of murder on his back, and the ever-growing debt of Sunken Society, “self-protection” was meaningless.

It didn’t seem so interesting to be alive, although instinct made him want to live, but after thinking about it carefully, he didn’t seem to miss anything.

Huang Jin was sitting on a flowerbed by the side of the street. He raised his head and looked at the sky. There were no thick and crowded black thoughts on the ground, and the sky looked exceptionally clean. If he just—

Before he could finish a single thought, the sky darkened.

Huang Jin: “?”

Someone’s thoughts buried his entire body. For the third time in his life, Huang Jin was submerged by the tide. He subconsciously shrank his body and almost touched the carving knife.

When he took a closer look, it didn’t seem to be the case. This time, the tide was strange. It wasn’t murderous or malicious, but something almost ridiculous—

“It’s over, I’m going to be late”, “The weather is really nice”, “The bird sounds beautiful. What kind is it?”, “I’m cooking sweet rice porridge tonight”, “I have to write a new song! I need to write down this inspiration”…

How could anyone think about these boring things with such a strong will?

Huang Jin turned his head and looked at the extraordinary, huge black cocoon of thoughts in the crowd… No, it was probably more like a black tornado of thoughts than a black cocoon.

The tornado rolled past him and slammed across the ground. A blind person’s cane rolled away and stopped at Huang Jin’s feet.

The minds of the people around immediately reacted as black runes flowed…

“That blind girl deserves it for walking so fast”, “Is she okay?”, “This woman is really careless”…

The tornado didn’t care. She still had those extremely boring thoughts around her, but there was an extra “Ow, that hurts” that jumped around.

Huang Jin looked down at the cane.

He picked it up and patted the boring tornado. “Hey, your stuff.”

“Oh, oh, oh, thank you.” A very pleasant female voice came out of the tornado. “Do you want this? We are going to have a show at the bar tonight. Give them my name and you can enter for free!”

She happily stuffed a flier from a nearby bar into his hands. The runes “Thank you” began to float quickly around her.

“My name is Ding Lizi,” she said.

……

“That’s it?” Fu Xingchuan knocked on the table and looked at Huang Jin in the interrogation chair.

The painted demon skin on his face hadn’t been removed yet, but his expression completely changed—there was no longer the arrogance of “pretending to be Lu Guangzu”, nor the fear of facing Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo; only tension and anxiety were left.

“Just like they said in their report.” Huang Jin stared at a point in the void. “Ding Lizi and I became friends, and then she disappeared, so I went to report the crime. There was no result in reporting the crime, so I pretended to be the true culprit so you could immediately investigate with all your strength.”

Although he didn’t know what the two of them had done, his initial expectations were fulfilled—the true culprit had made a mistake and proved his existence.

Now Huang Jin had the opportunity to confess everything.

Fu Xingchuan snorted. “You…”

“You want to ask me, why didn’t I use Huang Jin’s identity to pretend to be the culprit?”

Huang Jin smiled bitterly. “I reported the case on her, so this relationship is very easy to investigate. In case the true culprit noticed this, I’m not sure what he would do to her.”

“What an interesting ability.” Fu Xingchuan touched his chin. “Since you can see my thoughts, I’ll be blunt—God, I haven’t seen such a fool in years.”

Huang Jin: “……”

“But stupidity also has its benefits.” Fu Xingchuan commented with a smile. “At least in order to frame you, the true culprit exposed his modus operandi and the characteristics of his crimes, and in the process, released two victims.”

Lu Yuanyuan, Fan Yong, Liang Caihong, Ding Lizi… They currently had determined the identities of four of the seven.

For the police, this was enough information to make a breakthrough.

Crossing Fu Xingchuan’s shoulders, Huang Jin stared at Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo from not far away.

“…In fact, the complete thoughts I saw that day were like this.” He raised his head and looked at the ceiling lights.

“Lu Yuanyuan, as the first one, is a bit eye-catching, but the finished product works well. There’s no one looking to find the next six people, so it’ll be a lot easier.”

“My chair is about to collapse. I want to change to a bean bag. I have to find better ‘talent’.”

“That blind woman is so noisy, but the degree of completion is quite high. Should I throw it away?”

“Okay, take it easy.” Fu Xingchuan smacked the table. “Come on, use your abilities in the right way—since you’re considered friends with Ding Lizi, you should understand her thinking pattern. In this situation, what is she most likely to think?”

Fu Xingchuan threw a tablet in front of Huang Jin. “Write it all down, one by one.”

Huang Jin looked hard at Fu Xingchuan—not knowing whether it was intentional or not, Fu Xingchuan had entered a state of high-speed thinking. Those thoughts crawled too fast that it made it difficult for him to see clearly.

“Stop looking. Hurry up. Do you want to find your friend?” Fu Xingchuan noticed his little movements and snorted.

Huang Jin pursed his lips tightly and began typing quickly on the tablet.

“Minister, what shall we do?” Yin Ren raised his hand happily. “Now ‘Lu Guangzu’ isn’t Lu Guangzu, we have no work to do.”

“Then take a two-day break.” Fu Xingchuan gave them a sideways glance. “Oh, by the way, don’t gossip on this matter. We still need to smoke out the true culprit.”

Yin Ren put down his hands in satisfaction. He could be worry-free with such an expert, and he didn’t need to mention anything else.

……

The next day, Shian released the results of the investigation, saying that “Lu Guangzu isn’t the murderer in this case”, and then claimed that the case needed to be further investigated.

At the auction time of the ghost pawnshop, the encrypted chat room on the extranet reacted again.

In fact, shortly after giving the address of the human painting, the person started trying to contact them again. Before the news was disclosed, the two of them looked at each other while eating. They had kept the true culprit hanging dry for two days.

[winner99: Are you there?]

[skinship: ?]

Zhong Chengshuo tucked back his beloved nightcap, took a sip of hot milk, and tapped leisurely on the keyboard. He was crowded around by Yin Ren, Hu Tao, and Lu Tanfei—with three big ghosts around him, it created an indescribable scene.

[winner99: Do you want to break your promise?]

[skinship: Who broke his promise? Why did Shian suddenly announce that Lu Guangzu isn’t the murderer?]

[skinship: It took me a few days to clean up. Don’t you see that the momentum is wrong. You want to blame me for this bad debt?]

[winner99: I absolutely cleaned up all the evidence.]

[winner99: In short, I gave you my work, so our transaction is still valid. I don’t need you to answer my previous question. I want to change the conditions.]

[skinship: What are your conditions?]

[winner99: I will produce another work. Let me know who you are. You already know something about me, don’t you?]

[skinship: That’s your problem. For me, this deal isn’t very worthwhile.]

[winner99: Okay, if things go well, I can teach you the skills of keeping them fresh.]

[winner99: As you can see, I need a trustworthy person right now.]

Kinky Thoughts:

Since the culprit hasn’t been revealed yet, don’t focus too much on the gender used when describing them (if you’re trying to guess who it is). He/she is simply used as a placeholder to make the translation flow better.

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