Chapter 24: The Fierce God

"Sure." After all, he was a big buyer of tomatoes, so it was not a big deal to have breakfast.

When Chao Qianyu entered the door he saw Xiao Hei Xiao Hua lying on the ground and his eyes lit up slightly, but soon his gaze fell on the group of chickens around Xiao Hei Xiao Hua and he looked up at Lu Qingjiu and opened his mouth to say something when Bai Yuehu came out of the house.

When Bai Yuehu saw Chao Qianyu, he didn't say anything but gave him a nonchalant look. Chao Qianyu was caught by a fierce beast, and not only did his feet stop, but also a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

"Mr. Bai Bai." Chao Qianyu reluctantly greeted Bai Yuehu.

Bai Yuehu gave him a look and said, "What are you doing in here?"

"Oh, I saw that Mr. Chao hadn't eaten breakfast, so I thought I'd ask him to eat with me." Lu Qingjiu answered from the side. Today's breakfast was congee and cakes, the cakes were stuffed with meat, which Yin Xun had chopped up in advance last night, and Lu Qingjiu had got up early today, wrapped it in noodles and fried it in a frying pan.

"Oh." Bai Yuehu responded.

Lu Qingjiu had expected Bai Yuehu to refuse to let Chao Qianyu eat with him, but to his surprise he agreed so readily, which surprised Lu Qingjiu. The village aunts had coveted Bai Yuehu's tomatoes for a long time, but he had not given them out.

But soon Lu Qingjiu realised why Bai Yuehu had let Chao Qianyu in so easily, because he wasn't going to let him touch his meatloaf at all.

The meat pie was well-filled, with only a thin layer of crust, and when you bit into it, the rich meat juice filled your mouth, with some diced lotus root inside the meat filling, so that the greasiness of the meat filling was not so heavy, and the texture in your mouth had many more layers.

Lu Qingjiu couldn't understand what the look meant, but Chao Qianyu withdrew his chopsticks the moment he was stared at, not to mention the two men he had brought with him.

Yin Xun was sitting next to Lu Qingjiu, who had arrived late and didn't know what was going on, so he tried to give Lu Qingjiu a look to ask what was going on. Lu Qingjiu gave a look to Bai Yuehu, and Yin Xun was a bit bewildered by this, but he was smart enough not to say anything and continued to eat the meatloaf quietly.

Because of Bai Yuehu's gaze, the only food Chao Qianyu ate at breakfast was the congee cooked by Lu Qingjiu, and he didn't even get a bite of the meat pie. The three of them ate their fill, and Yin Xun even burped after he had eaten, causing Chao Qianyu to look more and more sourly at him.

Lu Qingjiu wanted to laugh, but he didn't want to get involved. He knew from what happened that night that this Chao Qianyu was not human, and since he was not human, it was better to settle their internal affairs internally.

This meal was probably the most resentful meal Chao Qianyu had ever had in his life, how could anyone in his position deny him food, but there was a big boss sitting in front of him, so he couldn't help but give in. He dared not even take more than one chopstick of pickled vegetables, something that no one would believe if he told them.

Until the last pancake was in Bai Yuehu's hand, Chao Qianyu was unable to satisfy his desire for a bite, and Lu Qingjiu got goosebumps as he stared at him from beginning to end with a sultry gaze.

After eating, Bai Yuehu naturally took his bowl and went to the kitchen, leaving Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun to eat in the house.

"Hey, what's Mr. Bai doing in the kitchen?" Chao Qianyu asked as he watched Bai Yuehu's back, wondering if there might still be some meatloaf in the kitchen.

Lu Qingjiu replied honestly, "Washing dishes."

Chao Qianyu's expression twisted for a moment: "Wash the dishes."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Or else what?" Bai Yuehu was the one who washed almost all the dishes in the house, and he and Yin Xun were used to it.

Chao Qianyu: ""He was silent for a moment, as if digesting what Lu Qingjiu had said.

Lu Qingjiu, full of food and in good spirits, stood up and greeted Chao Qianyu as he went to pick tomatoes from the field. Chao Qianyu took a deep breath, looked reluctantly at the empty table and said, "Okay."

Lu Qingjiu looked at him and couldn't help the slight smile in his eyes. Maybe next time he went to town he could bring Chao Qianyu two meat cakes, but today they would probably have to drink porridge.

After drinking a lot of porridge, Chao Qianyu was disgruntled but had no choice but to follow Lu Qingjiu to the nearby vegetable patch to prepare for picking tomatoes.

Bai Yuehu's tomatoes are very different from the ones next to him, almost all of them are round and full, red in colour and without a single scar or even a single insect eye on them. The farmer usually sprinkles a lot of insecticide on the vegetables to prevent them from being infested, but Bai Yuehu doesn't use any of that stuff and no insects dare to target his tomatoes.

There were so many tomatoes in this batch that several people spent the afternoon picking them and after weighing them there were more than a thousand pounds, more than the first batch.

Lu Qingjiu kept a few dozen catties for himself and sold the rest to Chao Qianyu.

Chao Qianyu didn't bother to pay Lu Qingjiu's bill, then he broke a cucumber from Lu Qingjiu's house and said, "Are your cucumbers for sale?"

"Cucumbers," Lu Qingjiu said, "are not for sale, we don't grow many, we don't even have enough to eat at home.

Chao Qianyu looked regretful: "I'll take all the other dishes."

Lu Qingjiu looked at the vegetable patch and didn't let up: "Let's wait until it's ripe, I'll call you if there's any extra."

"Okay." Chao Qianyu nodded and prepared to leave with the tomatoes, but before he left he remembered something and urged Lu Qingjiu, "Don't go to the town too often these days, it's not peaceful."

"What's going on?" Lu Qingjiu rarely reads the local news and doesn't know much about what's going on in the area.

"People have died." Chao Qianyu said, "I think a few more will die." He said this and glanced towards where Lu Qingjiu lived, "It's safer to stay in the village."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Okay, I know, thank you."

Chao Qianyu nodded and drove off with his two men in their car.

Lu Qingjiu went home and saw Bai Yuehu lying on a chair looking at the sky again, he seemed to be particularly interested in the sky lately, not even sleeping.

"What are you looking at?" Lu Qingjiu asked casually.

Bai Yuehu said, "Look at the things in the sky."

Lu Qingjiu looked up and followed Bai Yuehu's gaze, but saw only white clouds hanging in the blue sky, he looked for a moment to make sure he saw nothing: "Where is it?"

Bai Yuehu points to the top of his head.

Lu Qingjiu knew he was out of sight, so he simply gave up and shrugged his shoulders and went into the kitchen to make dinner.

Lu Qingjiu was worried that they might get into trouble with the chickens, but seeing that both sides were fine, he let them go.

The main course for lunch today was boiled beef, which we had bought earlier in the morning and thawed in advance, and Lu Qingjiu was going to fry some balls and make a tomato ball soup with the tomatoes we picked today.

Bai Yuehu and Yin Xun are both good eaters of spicy food, so Lu Qingjiu put in more chillies when he made the boiled beef, but the chillies smoked his eyes.

Lu Qingjiu picked it up in a frenzy and saw two words on the phone: Hu Shu. Lu Qingjiu frowned, but pressed the button and said, "Hello."

"Hello, is this Mr. Lu?" Hu Shu's voice came from the other end of the line.

"Yes." Lu Qingjiu said, "What can I do for you?"

"It's like this." Hu Shu said, "I wanted to see you about that well in your yard."

Lu Qingjiu wondered, "Isn't this case closed? What happened again?"

Hu Shu said, "It's a long story, are you free tonight, I'll come over, can we talk in person?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "All right." He agreed.

Hu Shu is a police officer, and if the police have such a request, Lu Qingjiu, as a citizen, naturally has the obligation to cooperate, but I don't know if Hu Shu will have dinner at his house tonight, otherwise Bai Yuehu will be unhappy again.

Around 3pm, Lu Qingjiu, who was still napping, was woken up by a phone call and picked it up to find that Hu Shu had arrived at his doorstep.

"Ha," Lu Qingjiu, yawning and sleepy-eyed, opened the door for Hu Shu and said, "Officer Hu, come in."

"Still napping," Hu Shu said, "sorry to bother you."

Lu Qingjiu rubbed his hair, "Make yourself comfortable, I'll just go and clear my head and not sit in that rocking chair."

The rocking chair is Bai Yuehu's, and although he is nowhere to be found, there is no telling what might happen if he returns to see Hu Shu sitting in his chair.

Hu Shu didn't look into this and found a wooden bench to sit on.

Lu Qingjiu went back to the house to wash his face and brush his hair to clear his head before returning to the courtyard and sitting down opposite Hu Shu, saying, "Officer Hu, what is it that you need to see me about?"

"When you first arrived here, there was something strange going on in your backyard, wasn't there?" Hu Shu asked.

"Yes." Lu Qingjiu said, "I had a nightmare."

Hu Shu said, "What happened after that? Were there any more problems with the well at your house after the case was over?"

Lu Qingjiu thought about it and said, "Is it a problem that everyone who has worshipped grows hair?

The police should not be particularly concerned about the impact of the well as long as nothing happens.

"Well, here's the thing." Hu Shu spoke with a slight hesitation, "I want to know if that well behind your house still has an impact, how do you deal with it, do you get someone, or do you do it yourself"

When he said that, Lu Qingjiu immediately understood what he meant and he said, "Is your police department having another case in this area?"

Hu Shu coughed dryly, "This was supposed to be confidential."

Lu Qingjiu blinked and didn't answer, waiting for Hu Shu to continue.

"But as you know, there are some things that can't really be explained by common sense." Hu Shu sounded a little bitter, "We started out investigating in the same artificial direction, but the deeper we went, the more wrong it became"

Lu Qingjiu said, "What's going on?"

Hu Shu hesitates for a moment: "Can you promise not to tell a third person what you are about to say?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "I can guarantee that."

Hu Shu now nodded and took a dozen photos out of his pocket and put them in front of Lu Qingjiu: "Take a look at this first and prepare yourself, it's a bit gory."

Lu Qingjiu picked up the photos and looked at them. As Hu Shu had said, the photos were very gory, and included two of the dead, both of whom were in a very sad state of death, with wounds all over their bodies, almost as if they had been abused. The latter photographs were of the deceased, a man and a woman, both smiling brightly and looking well.

Lu Qingjiu looked at the photo for a while, but didn't see anything in it, and said, "Yes, and then what?"

Hu Shu said, "The problem is with this photo." He holds the photo of the deceased at the time of his death in his hand first, "This is the scene we found on the seventh, but this," he points to the photo of the deceased still alive and smiling, "is the photo we got from their friends and relatives on the twelfth, and the date on the photo shows that the photo was taken on the same day. "

Lu Qingjiu said, "Could it be a friend or relative lying?"

"No, it's not." Hu Shu said, "There wasn't more than one person who saw them, and if it was a lie, there couldn't have been such a wide range of lies, and each one was certain."

Lu Qingjiu said, "So you are saying that the dead have come back to life."

Hu Shu let out a long sigh, the blood in his eyes and the stubble on his chin telling Lu Qingjiu that he had obviously been worried about this for more than a day or two, and that his whole body was haggard as hell.

"Yes, resurrected." Hu Shu said, "We had been looking for the identity of the deceased before, but we didn't find it, and were wondering if it was an outsider, but then we realised that the reason we couldn't find it was because the deceased had actually been alive." Since he was alive, no one around him would have come to the police, and the fact that everything that could be used to prove his identity had been taken from him made it difficult to conduct a search.

Lu Qingjiu frowned and said, "Is it possible that the murderer disguised himself as the deceased?"

Hu Shu said, "Impossible, because the deceased lived with their family for at least a week after they came back to life, until the police came to their door, and then suddenly disappeared, during which time their family did not notice anything different."

Lu Qingjiu was silent. Indeed, if all possibilities were ruled out, there was only one reluctant and compelling fact left to accept: this case was indeed full of factors that science could not explain.

Lu Qingjiu handed the photo back to Hu Shu and said, "Well this is indeed a strange matter, so what did Officer Hu want to ask me when he came here today?"

Hu Shu said, "I just wanted to ask how the well in your backyard was finally resolved." Lu Qingjiu was one of the most certain paranormal cases he had ever encountered, and this, coupled with what happened to the two little thieves the other day, made him speculate that they might also exist around Lu Qingjiu.

Lu Qingjiu nodded his fingers on his knee and said, "It's like this, the well in my backyard isn't really solved, it's just that it doesn't make any more noise, and after the case was over, I did invite a divine woman to come to the house to do some pujas, but that divine woman doesn't seem to be taking over that aspect of things anymore."

Hu Shu said, "So do you have any views on this case?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "I'd say this is the first time you've come across a case like this?"

Hu Shu sighed again, "I guess I've come across it before, wasn't that a paranormal incident before you? In fact, if this kind of thing is found to be the case at the end of the investigation, we usually close the case, but this one couldn't be closed because just yesterday afternoon, we found a third body."

Lu Qingjiu was stunned. Indeed, if it turned out to be the vengeance of the demon gods, that would be fine, after all, the killer and the murderer were gone and the case would be closed, but if the demon gods refused to stop, the case would never be closed unless the culprit was found.

Having said that, Lu Qingjiu was basically clear about the situation, but he couldn't make any promises to Hu Shu because he was also an ordinary person, so he said, "Tell you what, you go back first, I'll think about it, and if I think of anything I can help you with, I'll call you."

Hu Shu looked at Lu Qingjiu and saw that he looked calm and his tone was certain, so he knew that this was basically the only way to go, and he put his things away and said, "Alright, I'll go back and wait for your news."

Lu Qingjiu escorted him out the door.

After Hu Shu left, Lu Qingjiu sat in Bai Yuehu's rocking chair and waited for Bai Yuehu to return. These days Bai Yuehu likes to go out, but he doesn't know what he's been doing, as he's so lazy, it's not easy for him to get up and walk.

About half an hour or so after Hu Shu left, Bai Yuehu returned.

" Bai Yuehu ." Lu Qingjiu climbed up from his chair and said, "You're back."

"Hmm." Bai Yuehu responded.

" Isn't Yin Xun with you?" Lu Qingjiu asked.

"No." Bai Yuehu said, "A stranger has come to the house."

Lu Qingjiu said, "It's like this, a policeman came to the house just now." He told Bai Yuehu what Hu Shu had told him, carefully watching Bai Yuehu's face and seeing that he did not look impatient before he finished the story.

Bai Yuehu didn't react to this, and just when Lu Qingjiu thought he wouldn't be interested, he asked, "There's another one dead."

Lu Qingjiu nodded as he remembered what Chao Qianyu had told him when he left in the morning, "By the way, Chao Qianyu told me to be careful when I go to the town recently, saying that it was not peaceful, so this must be what Hu Shu said." This is proof that the person who did this is not human, but a non-human like Chao Qianyu.

Bai Yuehu said, "Where did he die?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "It was said to be on the town's highway near the city, and the person had already been run over twice when they were found, and the identity of the deceased has not yet been found."

Bai Yuehu didn't say anything, and seemed to be thinking about something when he said, "I want to see the photos of the two dead men."

Lu Qingjiu was relieved to know that Bai Yuehu was interested in the matter and he said, "OK, I'll go to town tomorrow and get the photos some time."

Bai Yuehu looked at the sky and said, "Better hurry up, in a few days, the moon will be full."

Lu Qingjiu then remembered that Bai Yuehu had been watching the sky for the past few days and he said, "Does the full moon have any effect?"

Bai Yuehu said, "Well, there are things that like the moon."

Lu Qingjiu thinks it must be bad

Since Bai Yuehu is interested in intervening in this matter, it is good that Lu Qingjiu is worried but does not want to bother Bai Yuehu to do it, after all, he does not know anything about this matter, what if the murderer is particularly vicious and hurts Bai Yuehu.

In the evening Lu Qingjiu called Hu Shu and told him that he had to come to the police station tomorrow and that he should have the photos ready.

Hu Shu was smart enough not to ask why, but just said hello.

The next day, Lu Qingjiu drove his minivan to town and got the photos at the police station.

Hu Shu said, "A high ranking person is willing to make a move."

Lu Qingjiu said helplessly, "He's just looking at it first, he's not necessarily going to be able to give a critical opinion, have you identified the deceased?"

"No." Hu Shu said, "The body was too broken up and the identification information was taken, and it's still being found."

Lu Qingjiu said, "What about the surveillance? Did they capture anything?"

Hu Shu said, "Alas, forget it, the body appeared suddenly in the surveillance, not in the first frame, and the next frame it was lying on the ground." This is why they are so sure it wasn't a human crime, if the surveillance had been tampered with, that would be possible, but how can one explain this kind of situation where it appears the next second.

Lu Qingjiu took the photos and left, promising to get back to Hu Shu later, and then drove back to the house.

Bai Yuehu was still sitting in the courtyard when Lu Qingjiu saw him and handed over the photograph.

Bai Yuehu took the photograph and looked at it carefully, finally resting his gaze on the picture of the living, gently raising his hand and placing the picture of the living on the tip of his nose and sniffing it.

Lu Qingjiu saw his movements and gave a curious look.

Bai Yuehu did not say anything, but handed the photo to Lu Qingjiu and said, "Smell it."

Lu Qingjiu sniffed the photos, following Bai Yuehu's example, and was shocked to see that the photos smelled of incense and candles.

"It's the smell of incense and candles." Lu Qingjiu looks to Bai Yuehu and confirms what he smells.

Bai Yuehu said, "Yes, the smell of incense and candles." He laughed in a rare moment, "It's the smell of that guy."

Lu Qingjiu said, "That guy means the killer."

"No." Bai Yuehu spat out with thin lips, "It's the fierce god."