On the top floor, after the few of them had waited by the conference table for some time, Feng Bo frowned, sensing that something was wrong, and said,
“I’m afraid something’s happened. It’s been too long. Under normal circumstances, whether they succeeded, failed and retreated, or didn’t run into him at all, Sun Qiang should have sent word back by now.”
Wu Chao had his legs crossed and propped up on the table, playing with his phone.
But when he heard this, he could not help frowning and looked up at Feng Bo.
“You mean the three of them failed? They’re dead?”
Another ghost handler, a woman named Li Yu, said in surprise, “That can’t be, Brother Feng. Three ghost handlers, plus the malicious ghost from that supernatural incident, and four professional mercenaries—yet they couldn’t take down one person?”
Feng Bo pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t want to believe it either, but Sun Qiang and the others know that ghost in the subway’s killing pattern. They wouldn’t fall for that.
“But now no news has come back at all. The only possibility is that the problem lies with Wang Liang.”
Hearing this, Li Yu stood up, her expression somewhat uneasy.
“Then shouldn’t we go support Sun Qiang and the others now? Once the attack on the city’s person in charge is exposed, then we…”
“Sit down, Li Yu,” Wu Chao said coldly.
Li Yu’s body trembled, and she sat back down.
“Those useless wastes. They can’t even handle a simple task, only know how to cause me trouble.”
Wu Chao then turned his head to look at Feng Bo, a cruel smile appearing on his face.
“Old Feng, go take out the Ghost Bowl. That good item they just sent over—I didn’t expect we’d get a chance to use it so soon. Perfect. We’ll test its effects on this Wang Liang.”
Feng Bo nodded silently, got up, and went into a compartment in the inner room, opening a safe.
The inside of the cabinet was entirely made of pure gold. Clearly, the whole cabinet had been forged from gold, with only a layer of iron plating wrapped around the outside.
There was only one thing placed inside: a blue-black ceramic alms bowl, shaped like the vessel Buddhists used when begging for food.
From the outside, its base was flat and its opening small. But when one looked inward through the mouth of the bowl, the bottom could not be seen at all. All one could see was a mass of unfathomable darkness, as though staring into an abyss, giving off a faint, icy chill.
Feng Bo carefully picked up the blue-black alms bowl and walked back, placing it in the middle of the conference table.
Wu Chao had already lowered his legs from the table. His usual lazy and casual expression had been put away, and he looked solemnly at the blue-black bowl on the conference table.
“Hmph. Prepare the things and call someone up. Using this Ghost Bowl to take out Wang Liang can be considered an honor for him,” Wu Chao said coldly.
Feng Bo pressed a special button installed on the conference table.
At the same time, Li Yu also stood up of her own accord and operated the computer beside the conference table, starting the printer to print something.
Soon, the elevator on the top floor opened. Two men who looked like security guards escorted a nervous middle-aged man out and brought him to the conference table.
The two security guards kept their heads lowered the entire time. After delivering the man, they went back down in the elevator, leaving only that middle-aged man standing there alone.
Li Yu had just finished printing. Holding a freshly printed color photograph, she came to the conference table.
In the picture, Wang Liang was carrying his luggage as he had just walked out of Da’an City Airport, looking around for the vehicle that had come to pick him up. It had been captured candidly at that moment.
It was a photo Gao Yan had secretly taken when he went to pick up Wang Liang, then sent to Yongsheng Club.
Looking at it now, this had not only been to pass the new person in charge’s appearance to Yongsheng Club, but also for some even more unsettling and bizarre purpose.
Li Yu pushed the photograph in front of the middle-aged man, then sat back down in her seat.
“Th-this is…” The middle-aged man looked at the photograph before him, at a loss, not knowing what he was supposed to do.
“Throw this photograph into the bowl, then wait quietly. That is your task,” Feng Bo instructed.
The middle-aged man picked up the photograph in front of him, then looked at the bowl on the conference table, which was emitting faint wisps of black vapor.
“If… if I do this, will all my debt be cleared? And you’ll let my wife and daughter go?”
The middle-aged man felt that the blue-black bowl on the table was not right. It gave off an obvious chill.
Strange black vapor was also rising from the mouth of the bowl. Especially after getting close, he felt an inexplicable unease in his heart.
If he could, he did not want to do as they said.
But he had no choice. He owed these people a very large sum of money—money he could not repay even if he worked for the rest of his life.
“Hurry up,” Wu Chao said impatiently.
“That’s right. After you do as you’re told, your wife and daughter will be fine, and the debt on your head will be wiped clean,” Feng Bo said.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
The middle-aged man swallowed, holding the photograph as he came before the blue-black bowl.
Black vapor drifted from the mouth of the bowl, and the darkness inside seemed bottomless. But this was clearly just an alms bowl only the height of a palm.
The middle-aged man could not understand it, but he still carefully put the photograph in his hand inside.
The photograph was placed into the bowl, but it did not sink completely. Instead, it was held up by the rising black vapor, bobbing within the bowl.
At first, there was no change. But ten seconds later, while the others did not feel anything special, in the middle-aged man’s senses, he suddenly felt all the sounds in the surrounding environment begin to fade.
The environment became empty and silent. Everything seemed to be moving far away from him.
Creak, creak…
But only one new sound grew clearer and clearer by his ear. It was the sound of some inexplicable creature chewing on something.
The middle-aged man subconsciously lowered his head to look into the bowl before him. To his horror, he discovered that the upper right corner of the photograph floating in the bowl now bore a trace of being gnawed, a corner missing out of thin air.
Creak, creak…
The lower left and lower right edges of the photograph also suddenly each lost a corner, likewise bearing marks of being chewed away.
This time, the middle-aged man had been staring at the photograph in the bowl the entire time. He clearly saw the entire process of the photo’s corner vanishing in an eerie manner.
It was a sudden disappearance without the slightest warning, as if an invisible, sinister rat had bitten off a corner of the photograph and swallowed it.
“Th-this!”
Terror appeared on the middle-aged man’s face. Frightened, he took a step back and raised his head to look at the others by the conference table.
Only then did he discover that at some point, everyone else had already stood up. Their gazes were similarly fixed on the photograph inside the bowl, their faces calm, as if they had expected this all along.
The photograph in the bowl was still changing. Its four edges were constantly becoming incomplete and disappearing, the gnawed marks spreading, about to reach the position of the unfamiliar man in the picture.
As for what would happen after the spot where the man in the photograph was located was chewed away, the middle-aged man did not know. But he felt it definitely would not be anything good.
Because as the parts of the photograph being chewed and disappearing gradually drew closer to the person in the picture,
the middle-aged man also felt, at that moment, as though there were an invisible creature beside him, pressed close against his body and sniffing.
Its breath blew against him, making his skin break out in an unnatural layer of goosebumps.