# 991
Chapter 992: Under the Bridge
Hot Spring Bathhouse.
"Three strips."
"Two筒."
"Pon!"
The pleasant clacking of mahjong tiles echoed through the entertainment room of the bathhouse. Su Zhe stared at his nearly empty pile of cash, his expression bitter beyond words.
"Sis, lend me some more money?" he whined, reaching out to Su Yuan with a pitiful look.
Su Yuan shot him a disgusted glance, then pulled out a portion of her thick stack of bills and tossed it onto the table in front of Su Zhe. "Interest accrues by the hour. You already owe me two hundred yuan."
"Aww, we're family—do we really need to charge interest? Don't be like that, sis."
"Who are you? Do I know you?"
"Su Zhe, your sister wants to cut ties with you." Ding Chongfeng quipped with a perfectly straight face.
Su Zhe: ...
While Fang Mo drew tiles, he watched this pair of bickering siblings with a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Just as he was about to say something, knocking came at the door, followed by it opening to reveal a woman in a professional suit standing outside. She spoke in a soft voice:
"Boss, would you like a leg massage?"
"Yes!"
Su Zhe leapt up from the table, only to be slapped to the floor by Su Yuan's sandal.
Ding Chongfeng blinked, then turned to look at Fang Mo beside him, who merely shrugged with a confused expression. "My legs are fine."
"...No thanks then."
Ding Chongfeng declined.
The woman left the room.
Su Zhe covered his face, clambering up from the floor with wounded indignation. "Su Yuan, why did you hit me?! I'm a mentally mature, physically健全的成年男人，发育健全的成年男人 who's been single for nineteen years—I just want a leg massage, what did I do wrong?"
Su Yuan replied coolly, "Oh, there was a mosquito on your face."
"It's winter! Where would there be mosquitoes?!"
"...Look."
Su Yuan pointed toward Fang Mo.
Slap—!
Fang Mo casually swatted a mosquito that had been preparing to suck his blood, tossing it into the nearby trash bin. Looking inside, one could see the bin was already densely packed with the corpses of insects.
Su Zhe: ...
"What kind of monster are you..." Su Zhe said, baffled.
Before his words even finished, the ceiling light in the mahjong room flickered once, then quickly returned to normal.
But whether it was just Su Zhe's imagination, after the light flickered, the illumination in the room seemed to have taken on an inexplicable eerie greenish hue.
"Hmm?"
At the card table, Fang Mo and Su Yuan both turned their heads simultaneously toward a certain direction, their eyebrows furrowing tightly.
...
In the corridor of the bathhouse, the woman in the professional suit walked up to a guest room door.
She peered through the round glass pane in the door. The room interior was pitch black, with only a faint green light emanating from the television. On the bed across the room, a vaguely humanoid figure lay there, though the dim lighting made it impossible to see clearly.
She reached out and knocked on the door, then opened it.
"Boss, would you like a leg massage?"
As she opened the door, an inexplicable chill flowed out from within the guest room. In a bathhouse with the heating running at full blast, it felt like an ice cavern.
The air conditioning in this room broke?
A thought flickered through her mind.
In the frigid guest room, a ghastly green light from the television illuminated the pallid mattress. The blurred figure lying in the shadows remained utterly motionless. After a long while, a voice drifted out:
"...Yes."
The woman rubbed her arms, which had been exposed to the cold, then stepped into the room.
"Boss, let me get you a different room? It seems like the air conditioning in this room is broken..."
"No need." His voice was as grating as mechanical friction.
The woman internally muttered to herself as she walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Even at this close proximity, she still couldn't make out the face shrouded in shadow.
The sickly green light from the television fell upon the bedsheets and walls, exuding a诡异森然的气息. As the woman glanced at that blurry, indistinct face from the corner of her eye, her heart grew increasingly uneasy.
She gave two perfunctory rubs on his legs, then reached for the edge of the pale bedsheet, wanting to finish quickly and leave this haunted place.
As she lifted a corner of the sheet, under the dim greenish light, the woman saw that leg.
It was a leg covered in green hair, rotting and foul-smelling.
Dark green pus oozed down from the hair, dripping onto the bedsheet beneath. The surface of the sheets under the blanket was already covered in nauseating mold and sloughed-off尸skin. The moment she lifted that corner of the sheet, an extreme stench erupted forth, assaulting the woman's nostrils!
"Ah—!!!"
At the sight of this, the woman screamed in terror.
The blurred figure in front of her suddenly sat upright, a rotting, ferocious face pressing nearly nose-to-nose with the woman's. One hand shot out like lightning, clawing toward her throat.
Bang—!
A white figure crashed through the guest room door, leaving trails of afterimages in the dim environment, instantly darting to the front of the rotting figure.
It was a white cat with heterochromatic eyes.
In the faint greenish light, the white cat's form blurred, transforming into a young man gripping a short blade. The blade's gleam flashed through the air, slicing off that festering hand just before it could touch the woman. Then, pivoting sideways, he delivered a powerful kick to the rotting figure's chest.
The figure was sent flying off the bed by the blow, crashing through the window behind it, plummeting downward.
Ding Chongfeng and the others had followed through the doorway. Their gazes swept across the large area of decay on the bed and the woman who had fainted beside it, their eyebrows pinching tightly.
"A 'Mystery'? How could a 'Mystery' suddenly appear here?"
"No idea." Fang Mo's eyes narrowed slightly. "But since we happened to come across it, let's just take care of it while we're at it..."
Under the moonlight, his figure transformed into a white cat once more. He stretched out his nose to sniff the air, then nimbly leapt from the window, dropping from the twelfth floor to the ground with ease, and charged after the rotting figure.
"Follow him."
Su Yuan immediately spoke up.
Ding Chongfeng walked to the window, glanced at the twelve-story height, and his lips twitched slightly.
"...Maybe we should just take the elevator."
...
Vroom—!!
A high-speed train roared past the tracks, its friction with the air producing a droning wail. Under the bridge spanning the tracks, a figure sat quietly on the ground.
It was a one-eyed boy. He leaned against the rough concrete wall, a blade of grass dangling from the corner of his mouth. As the train whistled past overhead, the gust of wind stirred a few strands of black hair at his temple. His eyes were closed, as if sleeping.
After an unknown amount of time, his eyes slowly opened. He frowned and looked to the side.
In the hazy moonlight, a girl in tattered clothing carried a broken bowl, walking toward this bridge underpass.
A beggar?
Lu Baoyou's eyes narrowed slightly.
The little beggar caught sight of the one-eyed boy under the bridge and froze for a moment. After a brief exchange of glances, fear flickered in her eyes... She turned as if to leave, but after hesitating for a moment, she steeled herself and carefully approached Lu Baoyou.
"Um, um..." The little beggar抿了抿双唇, speaking in a timid voice. "This bridge underpass... it's where I sleep..."