Chapter 52: The Holy Mother
Li Mingjuan didn’t know why, but she felt more relaxed than she had in a long time.
The car was slowly getting out of the thick fog, and even the cold that made her shiver was starting to fade.
But that didn’t change the nervous look on her face. Even though there was a handsome guy next to her, being kind and asking if she was okay, she didn't have time to pay attention.
“I took something I shouldn’t have...” she muttered softly, looking down. Her face was pale.
Besides her, the other three people in the car had all gone very quiet.
The silence in the car made Li Mingjuan feel even more uneasy. She looked around nervously, pressed her lips together, and asked in a small voice, “You’re not bad people, right?”
Chen Yi took a moment to pull something from his pocket and threw it into her hands.
She picked it up and saw it was an auxiliary police officer’s ID.
Seeing that ID made Li Mingjuan feel much safer. Most people in the country naturally trust the police.
Yu Fan leaned over to take a look. “Uncle, you’re a cop?”
“Auxiliary police. I don’t have an official position.”
Probably to make ghost-exorcism work easier to carry out?
He quickly figured out the reason.
Now the only sound in the car was from the moving vehicle. After a while, Chen Yi finally spoke again.
“Tell us, what have you taken recently that didn’t belong to you?”
Li Mingjuan’s lips were almost white. She stammered and said, “I-I just saw a wallet on the roadside. It looked handmade and really nice, so I cleaned it and used it for myself.”
“From your reaction, something must have happened after that,” Chen Yi said with a smile.
“......”
Li Mu turned around and looked at Li Mingjuan in the back seat, staring into her eyes.
He looked shocked. “Did you really push Lin Xi down there?”
Even though he had guessed it earlier, seeing her reaction made it hard for Li Mu to believe.
“Stop talking...”
“You must have dreamed about killing and cutting up a body. Then you saw a related story on the news and thought you actually did it.”
“Stop talking!” Li Mingjuan broke down, lowering her head. Her shoulders were shaking. But after a while, she suddenly looked up, confused, and stared at Chen Yi, who was driving. “Thought I did it?”
“No way, no way. You, with those thin arms and legs, cut up a body?” Chen Yi said in a half-joking tone. “Ever since you were possessed by that ghost, every dream you’ve had was something the ghost wanted you to see. And you actually believed it.”
Li Mu almost believed the ghost had used Li Mingjuan to kill someone too. But sitting in the front seat, he turned to look at Chen Yi and noticed that even though the uncle was joking, his face looked very serious and complicated.
“It was fake?” Li Mingjuan looked dazed.
Yu Fan patted her on the shoulder. “We’re a professional team. And Uncle Chen Yi has been doing this for decades. He doesn’t make mistakes with stuff like this. He’s seen cases like yours so many times. If he says the ghost tricked you, then it definitely did.”
“That ghost wanted you to go crazy, so of course it made you think you did something unforgivable.” He gave her his signature bright smile, then looked at Chen Yi and asked, “Right?”
“Yeah.”
Maybe it was Yu Fan’s smile that helped her feel better, but Li Mingjuan calmed down a lot. She wiped her tears, let out a long sigh, and said softly, “These past days, I really thought I...”
“By the way, that wallet is the ghost’s core, right?” Yu Fan asked. “Why didn’t you just throw it away?”
“I tried, but I couldn’t. Whether I threw it out or even burned it, it always came back the next day...”
Li Mu still felt scared, thinking how lucky he was that Lin Xi wasn’t an evil ghost. If she had been, he might have ended up like Li Mingjuan too.
Of course, Lin Xi didn’t need to kill anyone to finish her last wish… But she might have taken control of his body and made him go around confessing love to random men. Then people would think he had gone crazy.
The car suddenly stopped.
Chen Yi pointed at a hospital across the street and said, “Perfect. You can go get your hand checked.”
Li Mingjuan, who had just been emotionally broken down, was now much calmer. She even had a small smile on her face.
She let out a long breath. For days, she had been wondering if she was the killer from the news. Now that the truth was clear, her whole body felt relaxed. Even the pain in her arm seemed to fade.
“Give me the keys to your house.”
She hesitated for a second.
“We’re going to your place to destroy that wallet,” Chen Yi explained as he took out a handful of red bills and handed them to her. “Use this for the hospital. If it’s not enough, message me on WeChat.”
When she heard they were going to destroy the wallet, Li Mingjuan looked up. Her cheeks were still covered in tear stains.
She took the money and handed over the key, but she stayed standing outside the car door. “Thank you.”
Yu Fan gave her his warm and comforting smile and said kindly, “Don’t worry, we’ll definitely solve this.”
“But… will it be dangerous?”
“It won’t.”
The car door closed. Chen Yi drove away. Li Mingjuan quietly watched the car's rear lights disappear into the distance.
…………………………………………
Just a few minutes later, the small car stopped outside Li Mingjuan’s apartment complex.
Chen Yi quickly grabbed his ghost-hunting tools, opened the car door, and said, “Let’s go. Time to search Li Mingjuan’s place.”
Although the plan had some small changes, things were going pretty smoothly. Now they just needed to go to her home, find the ghost’s core, and destroy it.
“Will Li Mingjuan be okay?” Yu Fan still seemed worried about the girl he had only met a few times.
Chen Yi opened his mouth, then simply said, “She’ll find her own way out.”
Li Mu also got out of the car, looking back in the direction they had come from, a little worried.
They say that when someone is haunted by a ghost, both their body and mind suffer a lot.
He didn’t know exactly how much pain Li Mingjuan was in, but he could sense it wasn’t small.
He hoped Chen Yi’s words had helped her.
“Let’s go,” Chen Yi said as he locked the car and started walking upstairs.
The hallway was old and dark. The walls were covered in peeling paint and full of stickers advertising locksmiths and other repair services. Phone numbers were written all over.
The three of them walked quietly. In the silence of the night, only the sound of their footsteps could be heard.
Suddenly, Li Mu stopped walking and said, “That ghost…”
“What about her?”
“I saw her story in the news last year. She was… killed by a man.”
“......”
“She was a left-behind child. An old man from her village killed her and cut up her body… They didn’t catch him until six months later. I think he’s already been executed by now.”
“So sad,” Yu Fan said with a sigh.
When the tragedies you read about in the news suddenly appear in real life, all you feel is sadness and anger.
After a moment of silence, Yu Fan asked, “Then what’s the ghost’s obsession? The killer was already caught.”
“She killed someone,” Chen Yi interrupted. “More than one person.”
“She was a victim too… It’s complicated. Maybe I’m just being too soft-hearted…”