Chapter 563: Not Long to Live

The hysterical screams didn't sound human at all. The pregnant woman hurried into the villa with her heavy belly, and I stayed right behind her in case anything happened.

Though the villa was lavishly built, its location was terrible—far from the city on the outskirts of Shuangfo District, without a single pedestrian in sight.

Stepping into the entryway, the first thing I saw was a bathroom directly facing the front door, with the kitchen right beside it. I had never seen a floor plan like that before.

When I walked into the living room, a horrifying sight met my eyes. A middle-aged man was thrashing wildly on the floor, blood smeared all over his clothes and the sofa.

"Come help me!" The pregnant woman tried to pull her husband up, but the man acted possessed. Thrashing wildly and lashing out, he nearly shoved his pregnant wife to the floor.

I rushed forward, seized the man by the wrists, and used the grappling techniques I'd learned at the police academy to drag him out onto the balcony and pin him down.

Over ten minutes passed before he finally stopped struggling, his eyes rolling back as he passed out.

"That was close." I let go of his hands and hauled him back onto the sofa. Only after shifting his body did I realize that all the blood on the middle-aged man had come from wounds he had gouged into himself.

His hands were caked in blood, and his fingernails were packed with crimson.

"Looks like this episode lasted a long time, and unfortunately no one was around to notice." I beckoned to the pregnant woman. "What's wrong with your husband? Does he have a history of mental illness?"

His behavior resembled a manic disorder, though I couldn't be certain—even a manic patient wouldn't tear into himself this brutally.

"No, he's always been completely fine. It started out of nowhere last night." It was obvious how deeply the couple cared for each other; worry laced every word she spoke.

Last night was exactly when I was streaming. If I remembered correctly, the King of Bad Movies hadn't posted a single comment during the second half of the broadcast.

"Could it really be because he tipped that Paper Boat?" I muttered under my breath. Holding back the rest of my questions for now, I moved to bandage the man's wounds first.

Once I stripped off his shirt, I saw his torso torn and raw with lacerations. It was hard to believe he had clawed himself up like this with his own hands.

Watching the state he was in, the pregnant woman broke down crying. "Last night he said he had to stay up late working and told me to go to bed first. Then around one or two in the morning, I suddenly heard strange noises in the living room. I hurried out to check and found him on all fours, clawing at the floor like an animal. When I tried calling his name, he didn't just ignore me—he bared his teeth and snarled at me, looking just like..."

"Like what? Go on, say it!" Her hesitation left me on edge.

"Like he wanted to eat me." Cradling her belly, she sobbed quietly. In a suburban villa, a husband trying to devour his own wife—it was beyond belief.

"Eat you?" That reminded me of something from a long time ago. Back when we first pursued Lu Xing and thick fog had closed off the mountain, Tie Ningxiang led her team toward Suolong Village, and the officers there had lost their minds and started biting people. 'The gap in both time and space is huge. There shouldn't be any connection between the two.'

While I was talking with her, the middle-aged man's eyelids twitched and he let out a low groan. He opened his eyes as if waking from a nap and stared blankly around the room.

"I..."

He had barely gotten that single word out when the pain radiating from every part of his body nearly made him black out again.

"Bear with it. I just put the medicine on, so the sting is kicking in hard right now." I grabbed a nearby towel and stuffed it into his mouth. "The wounds are all shallow. You only tore open blood vessels in two spots, so it's nothing too serious."

Seeing that her husband had come to his senses, the pregnant woman wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and took one of his hands.

I tactfully stepped aside. After five or six minutes, the burn of the medicine subsided and the man finally caught his breath. Sitting up straight, he took in the blood-spattered room, his face draining of color. "I did all this?"

"Your condition isn't looking good." Just like an unscrupulous doctor scaring a patient into compliance, I decided to resort to stronger tactics so the middle-aged man would cooperate with me.

"You're... the Streamer?" Once he got a clear look at my face, the middle-aged man was so excited he nearly jumped to his feet.

I raised a finger to my lips. "Some things are cruel enough that they're best kept between you and me. Otherwise, innocent people could easily get caught up in this."

The middle-aged man immediately caught my meaning. With an effort, he waved a hand and said to his wife, "Meng Di, go make some tea for our guest—use the very best kind!"

Once she had left the room, the man forced a grimace of a smile. "Streamer, I'm the King of Bad Movies. My real name is Wu Youde. I never expected you'd track me down today when I only left you that message last night."

"If I'd gotten here any later, you probably wouldn't even be alive." I let out a sigh and pointed at the bloodstains across the floor. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Truth is, I don't know either." Wu Youde gave a helpless smile and flexed his hands. On the surface, he looked like a mild-mannered, genial chubby guy, though he possessed surprising strength. "I think I must have fallen ill."

"You aren't sick—you're possessed by something evil!" I drummed my fingers on the table, pressing the gravity of his situation further. "Do you realize you nearly ate your own wife last night?"

The moment those words left my mouth, Wu Youde's expression changed completely. Just as I'd guessed, he loved his wife deeply.

"That's impossible! How could I ever do something like that? I'd eat my own flesh before I ever laid a finger on Meng Di." He spoke without a shred of hesitation, clearly meaning every word.

"What kind of force can override human emotion and make you act completely against your own will? Ghost possession? A hex sorcery art?" Out of habit, I pulled out a cigarette and was about to light it when I spotted his pregnant wife still busy in the kitchen. I tucked the pack away. "Alright, let's leave that for a moment and talk about the tip you sent."

I found a pen and paper under the coffee table and set them in front of Wu Youde. "What does the livestreaming platform's user interface look like, and how is the tipping system laid out? Draw all of it for me."

"Draw it? You're a streamer on the platform—don't you know what the user interface looks like?" Puzzled as he was, Wu Youde still did as I asked and sketched a rough layout of the Live Show's user page. It was remarkably sparse, featuring only three functions: Tip, Contribution Leaderboard, and Follow.

"Once you tap the Tip button, all kinds of gift items show up—lowest-tier ones like Underworld Coins and Yuanbao, and high-tier ones like the Paper Boat and Dragon Coffin." Wu Youde thought back for a moment and added another detail. "Tipping doesn't require topping up with money, but you can't just send anything on the list. Only the first three gifts on the page were in color, while all the ones after them were grayed out. I originally wanted to go all out for you and send a Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin, but the system told me I didn't have enough Yin Merit. The highest gift I could send was the Paper Boat. What's even stranger is that right after I sent the Paper Boat, every single gift option turned gray, and I couldn't send anything else."

I frowned. The King of Bad Movies had spent Yin Merit to send that tip, and a single Paper Boat had completely drained his reserves, which explained why he couldn't send anything else afterward. "Did you feel any changes in your body after sending the tip?"

"Nothing at all."

"Yin Merit drains away unseen. You were already hit before you even realized it."

Before I could say another word, Wu Youde cut me off. "Streamer, I'm an atheist—I really don't buy any of that supernatural nonsense. You're an entertainment streamer, and I run an entertainment studio. I know how this industry works, so you don't need to keep up the act in front of me, do you?"

"Wait—you thought everything I ran into on my stream was staged?" I let out a stunned laugh. Only now did it click that the King of Bad Movies had sent that Paper Boat simply because he didn't believe any of it was real. What a terrifying misunderstanding.

"It's all for show—everyone in the business gets it." Wu Youde let out a breath. "I've produced ghost-hunting and shock-value shows way more extreme than yours. Too bad I don't have your kind of backing—my videos and web movies got axed by the authorities the moment they came out."

As he was speaking, his pregnant wife walked over carrying the freshly brewed tea.

I took the teacup and gestured toward her. "You might not take the word of an outsider like me, but she's a different story. Let your wife tell you how you were acting earlier."

Her full name was Zhao Mengdi, and she seemed like a gentle, devoted wife. After serving the tea, she sat beside Wu Youde and faithfully recounted everything that had happened since the night before.

Wu Youde fell silent, staring at the gashes crisscrossing his body and the bloodstains still streaking the floor. "Could it be some kind of hallucinogenic drug?"

He looked at his pregnant wife, the woman who had stood by him through thick and thin. If it really was a drug, who was the only person here who could have slipped it to him?

He shook his head. Hard as it was to believe in ghosts and the supernatural, believing his own wife would harm him was even more impossible.

"I must be sick."

Wu Youde kept muttering that he must be ill, unable to overturn his lifelong worldview all at once.

"Have your wife leave the room, and I'll prove it to you." Once the doors and windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and only the two of us remained in the living room, I used the Ghost Ring to summon the Seductive Ghost.

There was something seriously wrong with the villa's feng shui. The instant the Seductive Ghost appeared, a sinister wind swept through the room. Even in broad daylight, the place felt like a house of the dead, a bone-deep chill creeping over the skin.

Wu Youde shrank back into the sofa. Every door and window was shut tight, yet he could clearly feel the icy gusts brushing past him. "I-is this a magic trick?"

"No." Without opening the Heavenly Eye, an ordinary mortal cannot see ghosts. In fact, the Seductive Ghost was sitting right beside Wu Youde at that very moment. If I hadn't been holding her back, she probably would have drained nearly half of Old Wu's vital essence already.

Only after I demonstrated the Five Ghosts Transportation, the Yin-Yang Ghost Art, and the Profound Truth Dao Method in succession did I finally earn his trust.

Once he caught a glimpse of the hidden side of this world, Wu Youde reacted like almost everyone else—going from disdain to terror, and finally to awe.

"Streamer, what's happening to me then? Am I possessed by a ghost? Am I going to die?"

"Your situation is critical—you probably don't have long to live. I'm going to ask you a few questions now, and you can't hold anything back."

Wu Youde nodded. "I'll tell you the whole truth."

The corners of my mouth curved up. The fish had finally taken the bait.