Chapter Eighty-Seven: Old Qian the Rascal

"Something the matter?"

With a creak, the duty room door swung open, and a morbidly obese middle-aged man stepped out to ask us the question.

He was enormously fat, wore black-rimmed glasses, and looked as though he had not washed his hair in days. It was greasy and stringy, his eyes were narrowed to slits, his face bloated and his ears large. Even his security uniform hung on him in a messy, disheveled way. He looked sleazy and filthy to the core.

"Excuse me, are you the guard replacing Old Liu? Old Qian?"

The middle-aged guard known as Old Qian shot us a wary glance, then frowned with obvious impatience. "What? You looking for me? I don't know you people. Get lost, now."

"Hey, you..." I was ready to roll up my sleeves and argue with him, but Old Liao grabbed me at once.

"What is there to bicker about with a man who's as good as dead? Next time we meet, it'll probably be at his cremation," Old Liao said with a mockingly loose grin, jutting his chin toward the fat man. Old Qian's face immediately darkened. He switched on the blinding flashlight in his hand and shone it straight into Old Liao's face.

"You cursing me? You filthy Taoist punk, looking to die?"

The intense white glare made Old Liao raise both hands to shield his eyes as he turned away from the beam. The fat man snickered viciously beside him, spewing a stream of filthy insults with a shameless grin.

"Damn it!" I strode over, lifted my leg, and kicked him hard in the stomach. The fat man cried out in pain, and the flashlight slipped from his hand and crashed to the ground, its beam skittering wildly into the surrounding darkness.

He dropped to his knees, both hands clutching his belly, a fine sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

He was clearly an old street thug, the sort who'd long made a habit of being a bastard. Even bent over in pain, he kept cursing through clenched teeth.

"You little bastard, just wait. If I ever find out where you live, I'll smash your whole damn house to pieces."

With people like him, there was no need for politeness. I leaned down, grabbed him by the hair, and forced his neck up so he had no choice but to look me in the eye. Then I gave a cold laugh.

"You keep talking like that, and one day you'll really end up lying dead in the street. Unless, of course, you want to follow Old Liu to the grave."

The moment he heard Old Liu's name, he abruptly stopped cursing and making a scene. He fell silent at once, dropped onto the ground, and the blank look on his face turned to fear and panic.

He pressed himself low to the floor, crawled over on his knees, and clutched at my trouser leg.

"Please, sir, don't hold a grudge against a nobody like me. I was blind and ignorant, didn't know you were real masters. Please forgive me!"

His face twisted in shock and his words came out frantic and tangled.

Behind me, Old Liao had finally recovered from the dizziness caused by the flashlight shining in his face. He pushed me aside and kicked Old Qian hard. The blow landed squarely in the man's most vulnerable place, and even I drew in a sharp breath at the sight.

That old swindler was ruthless indeed.

"Damn it, I try to be civil with you and you start climbing over my head? You really don't take me for a damn ancestor, do you?"

Old Liao cursed viciously for a few rounds. Then, as if noticing my strange stare, he turned back with a harmless smile and said, "Heh. For this kind of trash, you can't be softhearted. You have to beat them to within an inch of their lives."

After taking such a vicious hit, Old Qian no longer dared utter another dirty word. Old Liao and I hauled him up together, tucked him under our arms, opened the door to the gatehouse, and tossed him inside without ceremony.

The room wasn't very large, but it had all the comforts of home: an air conditioner, a television, and other appliances. The walls were plastered with posters of scantily clad women, and even the laptop on the desk was paused on an obscene image that made the blood rush hot.

In the half-open drawer beside the desk lay a heap of lottery tickets—well over a hundred by the look of it—stacked so carelessly they had spilled out and overflowed the drawer.

This fat bastard wasn't just a lecher; he was a gambler too. A true gutter rat.

Old Liao looked around the room and suddenly shouted, "Brother Xu, something's not right here."

"What's not right?"

"Look at the desk, beside the television, on the tea table. Every so often you can faintly make out engraved seal-script runes."

At that, I stepped closer and examined everything carefully.

Sure enough, not only the furniture, but even the wooden boards on the windowsill were carved with strange talismanic marks.

"What are these symbols for?"

Old Liao stroked his chin and thought for a moment. "They're for warding off evil. The plaque Old Zhang gave you just now seems to have the same mark."

He took the wooden plaque from my hand and studied it carefully, muttering the words engraved upon it: "Blue-robed spirit, blue-robed spirit, fly swift as the wind; find the wandering soul, quickly enter the body."

"What does the thing Old Zhang gave you mean?"

"Hm... not entirely sure."

"Uh... you two masters, please sit down and talk. I'll make you a pot of tea."

The fat man's voice suddenly came from behind us, scaring us so badly that we leaped back three steps and threw up defensive postures.

Our reaction left him a little embarrassed. "It's a misunderstanding. I'm a foul-mouthed fool. Please don't take it to heart."

I found a chair and sat down. His expression looked sincere enough, so I asked, "You know Old Zhang? What's his background?"

Seeing that we weren't going to hold his rudeness against him, the fat man sat right beside me. The wooden bench immediately shifted my weight and made my side tilt upward. After I steadied myself with some difficulty, he gave a nervous little laugh and said, "Old Zhang's a ruthless man, too. To be honest, this crematorium used to have trouble with nasty things as well. Thanks to Old Zhang, they were finally suppressed. He's got real skill, that man!"

Hearing this, I realized Old Zhang really was one of the hidden kind, only I didn't know how he knew me, or whether he was friend or foe.

Seeing the serious look on my face, the fat man also became shrewd and hurried on. "Of course, that old man isn't as capable as the two of you. I can see that much. So you must save my life!"

Old Liao ignored his flattery and sat down at the desk, pulling the stack of lottery tickets from the drawer. "You're Old Qian, right? You've made a good haul lately, haven't you? These tickets were all bought in just three days—twenty entries at once. For a security guard, your pockets are pretty deep."

The fat man scratched his head. "Well, I just got lucky some time ago and won a big prize. I've had a little more money on hand lately, nothing too outrageous."

Old Liao fixed his eyes on him. "I'm afraid it isn't that your luck was good when buying lottery tickets. It's that your luck was good when you picked up a fine little item, isn't it?"