Chapter 93: Paper Man

Peng Lei’s words still left Peng Li speechless. He stood to the side with a stone-faced silence, unable to answer.

Peng Lei continued, “Once the supernatural investigation team is formed, what is the first thing you want to do—seek revenge on that lot from years ago? Do you think you can handle them now?”

At that moment, not only Peng Li but I too caught the meaning in his words. Peng Lei was not an atheist after all. He believed that with Peng Li’s current abilities, he could not possibly carry the full weight of the supernatural investigation unit. If he formed it too hastily, Peng Li might easily be lured into certain death.

So Peng Lei had deliberately set this challenge. On one hand, it was to settle a long-cherished wish; on the other, it was to push Peng Li into finding a true ally from the Yin-Yang realm.

As long as the helper Peng Li finds can summon his old brother Han Qiang from the Underworld, that helper would be proven truly capable and could also lend Peng Li a hand. The helper Peng Li had found was me—and I, clearly, had passed Peng Lei’s test.

Thinking it over, Peng Li understood exactly what Peng Lei intended. He almost couldn’t stop himself from kneeling to him.

Peng Lei then slid the document bag in front of Peng Li. “Inside this bag are the files. They are the official papers for establishing the supernatural investigation team, signed at higher levels two years ago. Thirteen cities across the country already have such teams. I’ve kept mine on hold, waiting for this day.”

After a deep breath, he said, “That day has finally come. Today the fourteenth national supernatural investigation team is formally established.”

He opened the bag, pulled out a thick stack, and handed it over for Peng Li to review. “Take these and check them,” he said. “If everything is in order, sign them, then bring them back here and I’ll seal them.”

Peng Li had no patience to read the documents in that state. He signed his name in an instant. Peng Lei didn’t argue. He took out a seal and pressed it firmly.

Then he said, “Within a week the Bashu City Supernatural Investigation Team will be fully prepared. By then, I’ll also let you select the finest officers from the police to join the team under your command.”

He turned to me and added, “Wuda, if I invite you to join the supernatural investigation team, would you accept?”

I had already guessed he would ask. But before he spoke I had already settled my answer. I am only a student, and I carry too many burdens already. The Huangquan Book and the Hell Lord’s Seal sit on me like ticking bombs. Joining the team might bring me privileges, but it would also bring endless trouble—who knows when the secrets of those relics might be exposed.

So I declined. Peng Lei and Peng Li did not force me. They said that if the team had been established, it would certainly need experts from the underworld, and at this initial stage they hoped I could at least offer what help I could.

I told them there was no problem. If they truly needed me, I could never refuse.

Soon after, I left Peng Lei’s office with Peng Li. Outside, Peng Li told me to go home and wait for updates. Once the team was officially established, he said, he would be the first to request taking over the case.

I nodded, then rode back to school in Peng Li’s car.

Three days later, Peng Li called. The team had been formally established, and he had already taken over the case. He had reclassified it as a supernatural case. If we could clear this matter completely, Liu Dong would certainly be exonerated.

I answered with excitement and asked where he was now. I would come at once.

Peng Li said he was assigning people to pinpoint where the Ghost Scholar was, and planned to inspect Wang Lun’s body. I hurriedly said I needed to go too. Peng Li agreed and told me to wait for him at the school gate.

About half an hour later he arrived in his BYD SUV. I was startled to see that he had had it repainted; even the previously crumpled dents were pulled out. Strangely, his once wild hair had been cut into a neat crew cut, and even his stubble was gone. He looked more awake and alive by far.

After I got in, I laughed, “Brother Peng, I almost didn’t recognize you! Are you still driving after drinking now?”

Peng Li tapped the back of my head and replied with a grin, “What? Have you learned to tease me too?” Then he floored the accelerator and drove off.

Not long after, we reached a funeral parlour in the city. There, in a refrigerated coffin, lay Wang Lun’s body. Because of the peculiar nature of the case, police were still on guard there.

Peng Li signaled them to leave, then pulled on a pair of white gloves and gently slid the ice coffin aside.

Wang Lun had earlier had his head smashed off by Liu Dong with a beer bottle, so now his head had been reattached, and there was a fist-sized cavity at his temple. At the sight of him, the image of Wang Lun torn into pieces flashed through my mind again, and my stomach lurched.

Then, Peng Li lightly pressed his gloved finger against Wang Lun’s body. The instant his fingertip touched, he jerked back as if shocked by electricity.

I sensed something wrong too. I instinctively jabbed my own finger at Wang Lun’s body and quickly withdrew it as well.

We looked at one another. Then, looking back at the corpse, I reached out once more and pinched his face.

“How is that even possible?”

In that instant, every hair on my body stood on end. I turned to Peng Li, terror in my expression, and murmured, “Brother Peng, I think I may already know the final ending of the Ghost Scholar.”

Peng Li’s face showed shock too. He nodded. “The ending should be like this,” he said.

That night, when the carpenter touched his wife’s face with a finger, his fingertip sank through her skin and tore a large hole in it. The carpenter then came off the bed in panic and rolled across the floor, and when his wife woke and found something wrong, she instinctively touched her own face. In panic she clawed at it, and half of her face was left mangled.

That was the final ending of the Ghost Scholar’s tale. And the reason the skin could be pierced so easily was that both the carpenter’s wife in the story and Wang Lun now before us were not flesh at all, but paper figures.

Indeed, the real Wang Lun had been torn into pieces and killed two weeks earlier. The one later seen at the KTV, whose head Liu Dong cracked open with a bottle, was actually a paper figure.

Just moments ago, when Peng Li pressed his finger to Wang Lun’s face, he had made the same kind of hole. Beneath it there was no cheekbone at all, only a thin layer of bamboo strips.

Then it made sense why Liu Dong had been able to smash Wang Lun’s head off with a beer bottle. He was only a paper figure, no blood or bones inside him. Bamboo strips held the whole framework together.

That is how Liu Dong could easily break off his head.

Yet another question arose: if Wang Lun was made of paper, how could he move like a living person? How could a paper figure endure wind and rain? And when Liu Dong smashed his head off, didn’t I see blood spurting everywhere?

Peng Li furrowed his brow and lit a cigarette. “What do we do now?”

I said I didn’t know for sure, but I believed I had to bring one friend here at once.

“Who?”

“A professional paper-craft master.”