Captain Yan gave Wen Jiubo the cold shoulder and rolled his eyes but let him in. Shi Yitong and I followed behind but we were stopped by the bad-tempered captain.

“You’re not allowed.”

Hearing this, Wen Jiubo looked back and smiled at the captain. “Don’t worry, they’re with me.”

Captain Yan’s face became sullen again, he touched his forehead and said agitatedly, “Allowing strangers inside a crime scene, Wen Jiubo, you owe me two favors.”

“What’s the matter? You know I’ll pay you back.” Wen Jiubo smiled. He lowered his body to cross the barricade tape and entered the building.

I forced a smile at Captain Yan before following behind him and entered the crime scene.

The building was empty, the corridor was quiet and looked longer than usual. I wasn’t sure if it was just my feeling, but the temperature here felt colder than outside and I shivered uncontrollably.

“The classroom is down this corridor,” Captain Yan stopped halfway, pointing toward a direction and told us. “I’ve put the bodies on the table inside the classroom as you asked. What happens next depends on your witchcraft.”

“Well, no need to be so mean. But, thanks anyway, Captain Yan.” Wen Jiubo smiled before walking towards the classroom.

I looked at Captain Yan’s face, it was hard to tell what was his current mood. So I asked cautiously, “Aren’t you.. coming with us?”

Captain Yan shook his head and replied, “No, I am a realistic person who believes in socialism. I don’t want to go inside and see something that goes against my world ideology.” He took out a cigarette from the pocket and lighted it. “Be careful. You’re still young, don’t waste your precious time on him.”

I frowned, not quite understanding what he meant. Captain Yan lifted his chin toward Wen Jiubo. “That guy is a cunning old fox from head to toe.”

“Gu Yu? Aren’t you coming?” Shi Yitong, who was walking in front of me, turned around and waved to me.

“Okay!” I hurriedly ran towards him to catch up.

The moment I entered the classroom, I felt that the temperature in here had dropped by two degrees. But when I looked up, I found out that the air-conditioning was on.

“It’s to prevent the bodies from decomposing. If that happened, they would be in big trouble even if we find and got their souls back,” Wen Jiubo sensed my confusion and explained. Then, after Wen Jiubo moved aside, I saw three bodies, laid side by side on the table.

They were still breathing. I could hear the breathing sounds even though I was standing a distance away.

I had already seen two out of the three bodies – Liang Kaifeng who was hung from the ceiling and the girl majoring in Journalism who suddenly died in the classroom; the third was my roommate Zhou Lang.

Zhou Lang had on a shabby shirt and his face was pale and lips had turned purple, laid lifelessly on the table. He had a steady breath, which was moving his chest up and down, making his body even creepier.

“He was found on the balcony of your dorm room this morning,” Shi Yitong whispered. “Di Yizhen told me that he didn’t see Zhou Lang in his bed when he got up. At first, he thought he was in the bathroom. But after all your roommates got up, someone found Zhou Lang curled up on the balcony. He face was bloodless, and he wasn’t moving at all. When Di Zizhen grabbed his arm to feel his pulse, he found out that Zhou Lang had no heartbeat.

I secretly bit my lips in anger when I heard this.

That parasite spirit..I’ll never forgive him! No matter what excuses he has, he hurt my friends, and that is unforgivable!

“Although your roommate died in the dorm, I asked Captain Yan to declare that this building was the crime scene so they can blockade it, and I can have the chance to perform the exorcism ritual.” Wen Jiubo walked in front of the bodies, holding out his hand to me. “Gu Yu, the charms.”

I took out the three charms that I brought from the old residence. On those charms were some weird drawings and Taoist signs. Wen Jiubo took them over, slightly licked each of them with his tongue, and put them on their foreheads one by one.

“...That’s kind of disgusting,” Shi Yitong whispered.

Indeed! He said out loud what I was thinking to myself! I looked at him respectfully, but the look on my face made him a little confused.

Wen Jiubo glanced at us in dismay. I coughed in order to change the topic.

“So, what are you going to do with these things?”

“Conjure,” Wen Jiubo stood up and said in a flat tone. “Everything in this world leaves traces in their wake, if we follow these traces we will find the truth. The same can also be applied to the parasite spirit. We can find it by following the traces it left. In other words, we will use these bodies to set a trap.”

Even though I only understood half of what he said, I nodded. Then, Wen Jiubo gave an order to the ferret.

“Bai, set the trap.”

Bai quickly jumped off from Wen Jiubo’s shoulder, and he gave a salute to Wen Jiubo. “Yes, sir!”

After that, Bai bit his claw and ran in circles on the floor, using his almost invisible blood drops to draw a complicated pattern.

“Um, this.. I saw this pattern in grandpa’s journal,” Shi Yitong said in surprise. “This isn’t a picture, it’s the Chinese character ‘Feng’ in the XiaoZhuan font, it means ‘seal’.”

“Gu Yu, did you bring a bowl of water with you?” Wen Jiubo suddenly called my name.

“Yes, I did.” I took out a bottle of water from my backpack. Wen Jiubo asked me to bring a bowl of water, but I couldn’t just directly bring it here, so I found a bottle and put the water inside. The preparation process was really hard.

“So, if it’s just a bowl of water, why can’t you just use the water here?” I poured the water into the bowl.

“Do you actually believe that the tap water here can be used for conjuring a spirit?” Wen Jiubo smiled. “Water from different locations have different effects. Hold this bowl, I’ll use it later.”

“What are you going to use it for?” I was curious and asked.