MLV Ch 6

Li Miaomiao’s face was deathly pale. 

“Could it be our mom?” she asked.

Jiang Ye wasn’t sure either. He edged slightly closer to the trunk and asked, “Mom, is that you? Answer me if it is.”

The trunk was as silent as a tomb. Just as Li Miaomiao was mustering the courage to approach, another loud “THUD” came from inside. A fist-sized bulge appeared on the metal lid of the trunk, and Miaomiao instantly leaped back behind Jiang Ye.

Now they could be certain of one thing: the person inside was either their mother, who had already become a headless corpse, or it wasn’t their mother at all. No matter which it was, they couldn’t risk opening the trunk rashly.

“What do we do now?” Li Miaomiao asked, poking her head out.

“Tomorrow, in the daylight, we’ll go straight to the police station and report it,” Jiang Ye said.

Looking at it from another angle, having a headless corpse in the trunk was a good thing. Jiang Ye guessed that the group of headless corpses at Tianlu Mansion was likely gone by now. Even if they called the police, the officers wouldn’t find anything. Besides, something as unscientific as headless corpses would only make people think the two high school students were spouting nonsense. But now they had a living, breathing piece of evidence. Their words would have one hundred percent credibility. Plus, there were more people around during the day. As long as there were enough people, they wouldn’t have to fear those things lurking in the shadows.

“But…” Li Miaomiao hesitated. 

“Don’t you want to know if it’s really our mom in there?”

Jiang Ye fell silent.

It was true. He wanted to know, too.

They had to open this trunk tonight.

The headless corpses were ferocious; they had to be fully prepared. He scanned the construction site but couldn’t find any suitable weapons for self-defense.

“You stay here. I’ll go home and get the baseball bat,” he said.

Li Miaomiao shook her head so vigorously it was like a rattle drum. 

“No way, I’m not staying here with it. I’m scared.”

“You can hide somewhere and wait for me,” Jiang Ye said.

Li Miaomiao continued to shake her head.

Truthfully, Jiang Ye didn’t feel comfortable leaving her here alone either, but two people were too conspicuous and would be easily spotted.

Forget it. 

“Let’s go together,” Jiang Ye said. 

“We’ll be quick.”

They returned to their apartment to grab the baseball bat and a coil of nylon rope. On their way down to the first floor, they happened to run into Jin Feize, who was taking out the trash. He was wearing a white t-shirt and light gray pants. Though it was a simple and casual outfit, it seemed as if the night itself had brightened a little because of him.

The moment Li Miaomiao saw him, the floodgates of her tears burst open.

“Senior Jin,” she ran to him, her eyes brimming with tears. 

“My dad is gone.”

Jin Feize tilted his head in confusion. 

“What?”

Li Miaomiao babbled incoherently, “There are monsters in our house. My dad was killed, and now my mom might be in our trunk.”

Jiang Ye stopped her. 

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

Jin Feize’s delicate brows furrowed. He asked with concern, “It sounds like you’re in big trouble. Do you need my help?”

Li Miaomiao and Jiang Ye spoke at the same time—

“Yes!” said Li Miaomiao.

“No,” said Jiang Ye.

Jin Feize smiled faintly. 

“So, is that a yes or a no?”

Jiang Ye grabbed Li Miaomiao, about to leave. 

“I can handle it myself.”

Li Miaomiao disagreed, expressing her worry. 

“You had a hard enough time dealing with Dad just now. Brother, are you sure you can do it?”

“It just so happens I’m free. I’ll go take a look,” Jin Feize said.

Jiang Ye didn’t particularly want to team up with Jin Feize. 

“There’s no need.”

Jin Feize stared at Jiang Ye, his beautiful eyes holding a faint smile.

“Jiang Ye, you seem to really dislike me, don’t you?”

Having an extra person would indeed be safer. Jiang Ye struggled for a moment before saying, “The thing inside is beyond comprehension and extremely dangerous. Think it through.”

“I’ve thought it through,” Jin Feize replied with a calm smile.

“Alright, follow me.”

The three of them returned to the construction site. The trunk was still thumping. Jiang Ye handed the nylon rope to Jin Feize and said, “You’ll know what’s inside soon enough. Play it by ear. I’ll knock it out, and you tie it up immediately.” He then instructed Li Miaomiao, “You open the trunk. Be quick. Open it and run.”

Li Miaomiao took a deep breath, reached out to open the trunk, and then immediately retreated. The trunk popped open with a click, and a thick, foul stench surged out as the thing inside stood up. It was indeed a headless corpse. Judging by its clothes, it was a woman, short and stout with a round belly that looked like a wok inverted on her stomach. Li Miaomiao was so frightened she turned and fled, hiding her head behind a pillar.

Jiang Ye let out a sigh of relief. His mother took good care of herself and had a good figure. This was definitely not his mother.

Jin Feize gazed at the thing standing in the car, a hint of surprise in his eyes.

“Ah…” he said. 

“Truly terrifying.”

The moment he spoke, the headless corpse shot towards him like a cannonball. Jiang Ye quickly swung the bat, only to realize he had overlooked a fatal detail—the headless corpse had no head. Where was he supposed to hit it to knock it out? In a split second, he changed the target of his swing, ducking low to strike its legs. Unexpectedly, the corpse’s body was as hard as steel. The baseball bat snapped in half at the impact. Jiang Ye hadn’t slowed it down at all; it was still heading straight for Jin Feize.

“Jin Feize, run!” Jiang Ye roared.

Jin Feize didn’t move. He bent down and picked up a chainsaw. It was the kind used on construction sites to cut steel and stone, with a blade longer than a man’s arm. Jin Feize started it up. The chain whirred to life with a grating sound that set one’s teeth on edge. The headless corpse charged directly at him. The chainsaw in Jin Feize’s hands sliced into its body. The headless corpse, stuck on the blade, trembled violently as blood splattered all over Jin Feize’s face and body.

He revved the chainsaw, its blade churning the corpse’s abdomen with the viscous sound of flesh and blood being blended. He turned off the saw, kicked the corpse, and it fell off the blade. He started the chainsaw again and methodically sawed off the corpse’s limbs. Even without its arms and legs, it continued to squirm like a fat maggot. The sight was so horrifying it would give anyone nightmares. Jin Feize clicked his tongue with a “tsk,” kicked it over onto its front, and plunged the chainsaw into its back, severing its spine.

It finally stopped moving.

Li Miaomiao stared at the bloody, dismembered limbs on the ground, completely dumbfounded.

Jiang Ye was also stunned. He hadn’t expected Jin Feize to choose such a brutal method.

Jin Feize tossed the chainsaw aside, wiped the blood from his face, and said, “Problem solved. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

He said it so casually, as if he hadn’t just dismembered a person, but had simply peeled a head of garlic.

Li Miaomiao snapped back to reality as if waking from a dream, clutching the car door and vomiting uncontrollably.

Jiang Ye frowned. 

“Jin Feize, you dismembered it. If the police find this, we won’t be able to explain ourselves. No one will believe we encountered a corpse that could move without a head.”

Jin Feize offered an apologetic smile. 

“I didn’t think that far ahead. So, what should we do?”

Jiang Ye didn’t know what to do either. He looked at the dismembered body on the ground and suddenly noticed the black hair on its hands. So far, every headless corpse Jiang Ye had seen had black hair on it. He found a screwdriver and prodded the black hairs.

“So gross,” Li Miaomiao said. 

“Brother, stop messing with it.”

He thought about how to dispose of the body. He stood up, found a woven plastic sack, and cleaned up the severed limbs. Then he walked over to the wall, opened the fire hydrant cabinet, pulled out the fire hose, turned the valve, and sprayed down the bloodstains on the ground. The blood was quickly washed away. By the time the workers arrived in the morning, the water would have evaporated, and all traces would have vanished without a trace.

Now only one problem remained: what to do with the severed limbs in the sack?

“We can keep it at my place for now,” Jin Feize suggested with a smile.

Jiang Ye looked at his smile and found him a bit strange. The guy’s smile was perfectly still, like a mask.

Noticing Jiang Ye’s scrutinizing gaze, Jin Feize smiled and asked, “Why do you keep looking at me?”

“…” Jiang Ye looked away. 

“I’m thinking about what to do.”

“Does looking at me help you think faster?”

“…”

“Just leave it at my place. I have a freezer,” Jin Feize said.

Li Miaomiao was on the verge of a breakdown. 

“We’re supposed to be the victims, so how did we end up acting like murderers?”

Jiang Ye said to Jin Feize, “Thanks, but we have a place to go.”

Jin Feize smiled faintly. 

“Where else can you go? Lugging around a bag that big, who’s going to take you in?”

Jiang Ye didn’t answer. He pushed Li Miaomiao into the car and threw the sack into the trunk. They couldn’t stay at the construction site; they had to find a deserted place to deal with the body parts. He got into the driver’s seat, started the car, and slowly drove out of the construction site. In the rearview mirror, Jin Feize stood where they had left him, his white shirt stained with blood. His thin figure in the cold night wind looked like a plum tree in winter.

“Where can we go?” Li Miaomiao whispered. 

“Maybe we should just make do at Senior Jin’s place.”

“You don’t think there’s something off about him?” Jiang Ye asked coldly.

Li Miaomiao had always been oblivious and didn’t sense anything amiss. 

“Are you talking about how he dismembered the body? That was scary, but what choice did he have? The headless corpse kept moving.”

Jiang Ye turned the steering wheel, entering another small alley. 

“His technique for dismembering a human body was too clean. Bones are hard; dismemberment isn’t that easy. The entire process took him less than ten minutes. He’s too skilled. He must have killed someone before.”

Li Miaomiao was stunned, stammering, “Brother, aren’t you being a little too paranoid? He’s a high school student, just like us!”

Jiang Ye shook his head. 

“He said he has a freezer at home. The apartments in our building are all old and small, none bigger than 50 square meters. Why would someone buy a freezer for such a small apartment? Don’t you find that strange?”

Li Miaomiao refused to believe Jin Feize had killed anyone. His hands were so fair and slender, and his smile was so warm. How could he possibly kill someone?

“But he’s your deskmate. Don’t you know what kind of person he is?”

“We’re not close,” Jiang Ye said, turning off the engine. 

“I’m going to buy some water and bread.”

Li Miaomiao felt vexed. She got out of the car and followed behind Jiang Ye. She still thought Jiang Ye was overthinking things. If they were talking about who was strange, her brother was pretty strange too. After witnessing someone being dismembered, shouldn’t the most normal reaction be to feel sick and vomit, like she did? Yet her brother had remained calm enough to clean up the scene.

If you asked her, they were both equally strange.

The more important reason she wanted to go to the senior’s house was that it was exposed out here, and she was afraid they would run into more of those filthy things. Walking on the pitch-black streets, she felt like a ghost could pop out from anywhere. Goosebumps rose on her arms. As she walked, she looked around suspiciously, not noticing that her brother had stopped at the mouth of the alley. She bumped right into his back.

“Wha—”

Before she could finish her question, Jiang Ye clapped a hand over her mouth. He pressed himself against the wall, frowning at the building diagonally across from them. A group of people in dark clothes was gathered in front of the convenience store. Without exception, all of them were wearing scarves. Wearing scarves in the middle of summer… and a strange, indescribable smell hung in the air, the very smell of the headless corpses.

Jiang Ye immediately pulled Li Miaomiao back and turned into another street. The moment he poked his head out, he saw several scarf-wearing figures at the end of the street. Jiang Ye pulled his head back, his heart sinking. There were headless corpses everywhere. They were surrounded, with nowhere to go.

The sight of those bizarre things made Li Miaomiao start trembling with fear again. She was even more afraid that her father was among them. The thought of it made her unable to stop her tears.

But this wasn’t the time to be sad. She wiped her face, trying to stay calm like her brother, and asked, “What do we do?”

Jiang Ye sighed. 

“There’s no other choice.”

A high school student who might be a murderer was probably easier to deal with than headless ghosts, right?

He went back to the trunk, got the sack, and ten minutes later, they were at Jin Feize’s front door.

Li Miaomiao knocked. Strangely, a long time passed and Jin Feize didn’t answer. They almost thought he hadn’t come home yet, but where could he go this late? The longer they waited, the more anxious Li Miaomiao became. Those things had followed them to the vicinity; they would inevitably come to the apartment building to check. She kept looking back at the pitch-black corridor, terrified that a headless monster would appear.

Li Miaomiao was as frantic as an ant on a hot pan. 

“I have a feeling they’re coming.”

The words had barely left her mouth when “thump, thump, thump” footsteps echoed from downstairs.

Jiang Ye: “…”

This girl was a jinx.

The footsteps were rapid and chaotic, like the drumbeat of doom. Li Miaomiao’s face instantly turned white. Jiang Ye listened as the footsteps grew closer. Second floor… third floor… fourth floor…

Just then, with a click, the door opened. Jin Feize smiled faintly. 

“Sorry, I was just wash—”

Before he could finish, Jiang Ye shoved him into the entryway by his chest. Li Miaomiao quickly followed, shutting the door behind her and locking it.

“What’s wrong?” Jin Feize asked.

Jiang Ye covered his mouth. The three of them were squeezed together in the entryway. Jin Feize and Jiang Ye were face-to-face, inches apart. The motion-activated light went out. In the darkness, Jin Feize blinked. The sound of footsteps echoed in the hallway, getting closer and closer. As if afraid of disturbing a wild beast, the three of them stood motionless, silently listening as the footsteps approached.

Keep going up, keep going up, Li Miaomiao chanted in her mind. As long as the person went upstairs, it meant they were just an ordinary resident, not a headless corpse.

However, her prayers went unanswered. The footsteps stopped right outside the door.