Chapter 63: Butterfly Removal, No Pollution, No Residue
In this world, there were many non-human entities, and once they fell, they were collectively known as “demons,” which posed a threat to humanity and needed to be exterminated by demon exorcists.
The one that had intruded into the Zhou household was a demon that had fallen from a ghostly entity.
With its appearance, a layer of black haze covered the floor, and the surrounding air was filled with dust-like black particles.
The demon’s magnetic field would alter the surrounding illusion to some extent, affecting people’s mental state. Most importantly, demons were more easily attracted to negative emotions.
Thus, after it entered, it headed straight for Father Zhou, who was held down by Yu Shi.
Yu Shi watched as the black footprints approached, releasing Father Zhou and retreating to the side.
At the Feng family, despite the gossip about how terrifying Ninth Master Feng was, Yu Shi had no real sense of it, since Feng Xuexiang was still a person.
In Yu Shi’s simple view, if something looked like a person and could be seen and touched, it could be considered human.
But now, this entity was intangible, only leaving black footprints and making sounds as it approached. He could subdue a strong man, but he couldn’t fight against something without a body.
The entity moved surprisingly fast. By the time Yu Shi had retreated, it had already entered Father Zhou’s body.
With his face reddened, Father Zhou’s limbs flailed uncontrollably, and he fell to the ground with a convulsing expression.
Soon, he twisted his body and got up—his waist arched first while his hands and feet dragged on the ground. His swirling head had two black, darting eyes looking in different directions.
Possessed by the demon, the first thing he noticed was Yu Shi, who was closest to him.
Yu Shi cautiously stepped back, holding a chair as a weapon.
“Ah!” Zhou Li and Mother Zhou suddenly screamed. “The door! Where did the door go?”
They both tried to escape, but the demon’s spreading power trapped them in the increasingly distorted living room.
Both the door leading to the main entrance and the door to the bedroom had vanished.
The “Father Zhou” approaching Yu Shi was drawn to their screams and turned its attention toward them.
The room was filled with more ghostly, howling screams.
“Mom! Mom, help!” The teenage Zhou Li screamed in fear.
Mother Zhou, pale with fright, pushed her son toward the other side. “Go to Zhou Shi’s side, hide behind him!”
Zhou Li understood and, while using Mother Zhou to distract Father Zhou, ran toward Yu Shi, shouting, “Dad! Dad, look here! If you want to harm someone, harm him first!”
Yu Shi raised the chair. “If you come any closer, I’ll hit you too.”
Zhou Li, frightened by Yu Shi’s tone and action, froze in the middle of the room. Meanwhile, Father Zhou had already tackled Mother Zhou, and the black, grotesque growths spilling from Father Zhou began to spread over Mother Zhou’s head.
The demon-possessed individual had gone from one to two. Mother Zhou’s shouting and cursing slowly turned into guttural sounds. Suddenly, she too twisted and got up, glaring at Yu Shi and Zhou Li.
Zhou Li was crying in terror, desperately holding his head and shouting, “Dad! Mom! Don’t you recognize me? I’m Xiao Li!”
Yu Shi’s expression was grim. He hadn’t expected that this kind of thing would be infectious. One was already hard enough to deal with, and now there were two.
Glancing at Zhou Li, Yu Shi realized that handling three would be even more difficult.
He put his phone, which had no signal, back into his pocket and decided to take action. He picked up the chair and moved to engage directly.
Bang!
With a heavy collision, Father Zhou was knocked down by the chair, but Mother Zhou charged forward again.
Another loud crash sounded as the chair Yu Shi was holding shattered halfway.
The strength of his body was still insufficient; after two strikes, his arms and palms ached.
The demon-possessed Father Zhou and Mother Zhou felt no pain and got up from the ground.
The black substance constantly growing on them dripped down and wriggled as if searching for new hosts.
Yu Shi grabbed a new chair and once again knocked the two of them back. Zhou Li cried out, “No! Don’t come near! Help, these things want to eat me!”
Yu Shi instructed, “Get on the dining table.”
Terrified and disoriented, Zhou Li climbed onto the dining table while continuing to cry.
Yu Shi took a blanket from the sofa and threw it over Father Zhou. As soon as the blanket covered him, Yu Shi quickly tied the two corners together, hoping to trap him inside.
He knew that if he could just buy enough time, the demon hunters would arrive and take care of the situation.
The Ming family, being one of the Four Great Families, had a reputation for managing the high prices of their properties and dealing with any anomalies within them.
Now, it was a matter of how quickly they would respond.
The blanket briefly restrained Father Zhou, but the substance oozing from his body quickly began to corrode it. In less than a minute, it was starting to break free.
At this moment, Yu Shi used another cushion from the sofa to control Mother Zhou in a similar manner.
With only a brief respite, Yu Shi had no choice but to continue fighting the two of them.
Their strength continued to grow, and they were nearly transformed into two pitch-black silhouettes, only distinguishable by their height.
Yu Shi’s physical strength, however, was waning.
After a prolonged struggle, he was finally engulfed by the black substance. His arms grew heavy, unable to lift.
This was a different sensation from being pulled into an illusion; he could clearly feel his limbs burning as if corrosive liquid was being pumped into his pores, attempting to take over his body and corrupt his flesh.
As his mouth and nose were about to be covered, Yu Shi suddenly heard a clear, distant chime.
Ding-ling—
Ding—
A breeze blew from behind.
A faint scent of lotus flowers filled the air.
Yu Shi tried to turn his head to see, and as he slightly tilted it, a butterfly fluttered past his ear, leaving a trail of purple on his retina.
Its wings shimmered with iridescent hues of blue and purple. Though so delicate, the writhing black substance seemed to encounter a natural enemy. It rapidly collapsed and disintegrated after the butterfly passed.
The black substance covering Yu Shi fell away in chunks, the sticky clumps drying and becoming brittle before crumbling to black ash on the ground.
The black covering Father Zhou and Mother Zhou also fell away, revealing the two of them, bruised and unconscious.
…
Two apprentice demon exorcists from the Ming family arrived at the Mingjiang Garden neighborhood, accompanied by a junior demon exorcist.
The presence of a ghostly entity in the area had been reported a few days earlier. However, Ming family demon exorcists were always busy, and such low-level threats were usually addressed later.
No one anticipated that within such a short period, the ghostly entity would devolve into a demon. Upon detecting magnetic field fluctuations, they hastily dispatched a team.
“This apartment houses a family of three? This is bad. Ordinary people can’t handle demons. They might already be dead.”
“There’s nothing we can do. The monitoring isn’t real-time; there’s a delay. We arrived as quickly as possible.”
As they stood downstairs, the junior demon exorcist could sense an unusually foul odor from somewhere upstairs. By the time they reached the scene outside the door, he was surprised and puzzled.
“What’s going on? The demon’s presence is gone?”
“Did it run away?” the apprentice demon exorcists asked nervously.
“Even if it fled, there would still be residual traces. But it’s particularly… clean in there.” The junior demon exorcist ordered, “Break the door open!”
The door was forcibly opened, and a gust of wind rushed out of the room, causing the people outside to squint. The lead demon exorcist squinted in astonishment, “The Feng family?”
Inside the room, two people lay on the floor, and a terrified teenager stood on the dining table. A young man was standing in the center of the room, turning to look at them.
The room contained nothing but overturned dishes and a mess of blankets and chairs. There were no traces of the demon remaining.
True to the Feng family’s reputation for being “domineering,” their approach to demon exorcising was ruthless and starkly different from the Ming family’s gentle “transcendence” methods.
Father Zhou and Mother Zhou, fortunate to be alive, were taken to the hospital, with the dazed Zhou Li accompanying them.
Yu Shi finished his conversation with the Ming family demon exorcists and walked over to Zhou Li.
“You—you’re not coming to the hospital with us? Mom and Dad haven’t woken up yet,” Zhou Li said, his gaze evasive.
“I wanted to let your parents know that I’m an unlucky person who attracts ghosts easily. They were fortunate this time to escape with their lives. If they try to contact me again, I can’t guarantee they’ll have the same luck.”
“If you don’t want to encounter something like today again, don’t disturb me. Understood?”
Zhou Li shivered in fear.
…
After watching the ambulance drive away, Yu Shi, who had just given a stern warning, shook his sore hands and prepared to take a cab back to the Feng family residence.
It was getting late, and he needed to get back to work.
Although there had been some unexpected events today, the objective should have been achieved.
Returning to the Feng family house, Yu Shi got out of the car and started walking toward the entrance, thinking about repairing his broken phone from the earlier fight.
He ran into a man in Feng family uniform whom he didn’t recognize.
“Are you Mr. Zhou Shi, who is responsible for taking care of Ninth Master Feng?”
“I am. What’s the matter?”
“Great! You’re back. We were just about to look for you. There’s been a problem with Ninth Master Feng. The steward asked us to get you right away. We need to go to the lake house and check on Ninth Master Feng’s condition!”
The man, both relieved and anxious, held his communicator to his chest and said, “Mr. Zhou Shi is back. Bring the car around to the front gate and get him there quickly.”
Yu Shi was taken aback.
“Again?”
“Again? I’m not falling for it this time!” Jiang Mang’s loud voice came from behind.
She was dressed in outdoor clothing and carrying two large bags. Two Feng family members were following her, urging her to hurry.
Upon seeing each other, it became clear that this time it was real. They couldn’t return to their residences and were immediately driven to the lakeside.
The sky by the lake was dark, as if rain were imminent, but this was only by the lake. Beyond the lake’s edge, the sky remained clear and blue.
The old steward stood by the lake with a somewhat grave expression. “There has been some unusual activity at the lake house recently. We can’t approach, so you’ll need to check on Ninth Master Feng and find out what’s happening.”
Yu Shi asked, “When did the unusual activity start?”
“About an hour ago,” The old steward urged. “Alright, you should hurry.”
This time, they didn’t even check their equipment or suggest changing clothes.
As Yu Shi approached the lake house, he already had a suspicion. An hour ago was likely when he had encountered danger at Zhou’s house and had suddenly seen the butterfly.
“Jiang Mang, would you like to stay outside and observe the situation?” Yu Shi suggested. “If something goes wrong, at least you might be able to escape.”
“You can’t always be the one taking the risks. Don’t worry, I’ll do my part, and we’ll split the work!” Jiang Mang’s expression was serious and resolute.
“Alright.” Yu Shi didn’t insist further but suggested, “If you encounter anything, consider it a way to practice your special abilities.”
According to the information provided by the system, the illusion in Feng Xuexiang’s domain affected people less the closer their blood relation was. Since Jiang Mang was related to him by blood, her safety should be somewhat assured.
Before they could even reach the door of the lake house, the world went dark. Yu Shi was instantly pulled into an illusion.
This was Yu Shi’s third time entering the depths of the Feng Xuexiang illusion.
Before he could even see where he was within Feng Xuexiang’s domain, he was immediately and tightly restrained.
The suffocation was worse than being bound by those black masses.
“You can’t leave, you can’t leave, you can’t leave, you can’t leave!”
“Why, why, why am I left alone again? Where did you go? No, I won’t let you leave again! I don’t want to be alone here!”
Previously, Feng Xuexiang’s mental state had seemed relatively stable, but now it was frenzied, with babbling and the unsettling sound of teeth chattering.
“I won’t fall asleep again. If I fall asleep, you will disappear. I won’t sleep again…”
“You’re mistaken,” Yu Shi said calmly, “You should sleep normally. Even though I may leave, I will come back next time. I won’t disappear completely.”
The rambling voices in his ears suddenly ceased.
Yu Shi grasped Feng Xuexiang’s arms, trying to push him away. “I promise I will get you out of here. If I can’t, I will keep coming back.”
