Chapter 239: The Broken Wind Chime
Inside the convenience store, the shelves were a disaster zone, with items scattered everywhere. One shelf had even toppled over, crashing onto the drink cooler on the other side, smashing countless bottles and creating a colorful puddle of liquor mixed with shards of glass.
Zhao Mingyue rushed in, scanning the place but finding no trace of Store Manager Li Tianan.
She spotted Li Tianan’s coat neatly draped over a chair in the break area, just like any other day, along with an unfinished bottle of wine on the table. She could practically visualize Li Tianan’s every move from last night or this morning.
These little details screamed that Li Tianan had been attacked, and that it had to have happened very recently.
Sure, the street was a bit out of the way, but there were still folks dropping by to buy stuff.
And with the store looking like a tornado hit it, the absence of a 911 call suggested this chaos must have unfolded last night.
Lu Liangting, having parked his car, hurried inside.
“Mingyue, what happened here?” he asked.
“The store manager has been attacked!” Zhao Mingyue replied while furrowing her brows at the surveillance camera, which was mostly useless — especially when she and Bai Yu were around. Cameras never worked well when she stood below them with Bai Yu’s magnetic aura messing with the footage.
“It could also be… not a human…”
“I’ll call the cops!” Lu Liangting quickly pulled out his phone and dialed.
Whether or not it was a human was irrelevant; the store was wrecked, and they definitely needed to report it.
“Bai Yu, see anything odd?” Zhao Mingyue asked as she sidled up to Bai Yu, who was crouched by the door, peering at something.
Bai Yu didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she picked up something from the ground.
The moment she touched an old little bell lying there, she felt a searing sensation—much stronger than what the Gatekeeper’s so-called soul-binding nails could produce. Even in her embryonic form, the burning was obvious; her true self would feel it even more.
“Hey, isn’t this the bell from a wind chime?”
Taking the bell from Bai Yu’s hand, Zhao Mingyue looked up, and sure enough, one of the wind chime’s bells had fallen off. This wasn’t your everyday wind chime; it was an antique made with nine tiny copper bells grouped together.
You couldn’t budge this chime with a light breeze—oh no, this thing had character. It emitted a sound much duller than your average wind chime, carrying a certain charm.
The chime itself was made of copper, covered in a dense array of talismanic inscriptions; even this small bell had at least a few hundred symbols engraved on it.
Its purpose? To alert folks that a ghost had rolled in.
And the sound varied with the ghost’s power; the stronger the ghost, the more frequently the chime rang. Bai Yu had already spooked it seven times—maybe even eight!
No wonder it felt like something was missing when they walked in; the chime hadn’t made a sound upon Bai Yu’s entrance. It had been so quiet.
“What happened? How did the chime even fall?”
The ceiling was pretty high, and most regular folks couldn’t reach it, which meant something must have caused it to swing too wildly, resulting in one bell dropping.
With no clues at hand, this fallen chime put a hefty pressure on Zhao Mingyue. What kind of powerhouse could knock off a wind chime? Heck, even Bai Yu couldn’t do that!
“Bai Yu, could it be the Evil God?”
“Not really, but it’s definitely related,” Bai Yu squinted and used bl**d Threads to wrap around the convenience store’s door handle, absorbing any lingering energy traces before she sensed them more profoundly.
The aura was distinctly different from an Evil God—more in line with the Painful Threads.
It didn’t smell like the work of the Gatekeeper, nor did it carry the signature of the Ghost Domain.
If it was a third-party force, why pick last night to strike?
Glancing around the store, Bai Yu plopped down in one of the break area chairs.
Li Tianan had likely been taken out in seconds; his lack of strong struggle indicated that he’d pulled down the items on the shelves himself as a signal for her and Zhao Mingyue.
Moments later, a police car arrived.
They started searching the scene for clues while pulling up the store’s surveillance.
The playback quickly rewound from eight-thirty this morning, showing everything was perfectly normal until ten forty-eight last night, when the footage began to skew.
At ten forty-eight, Li Tianan was seen casually sipping from a bottle of wine—which had been opened just prior—mumbling something unintelligible in the break area. Two minutes later, someone pushed the door open, and they could hear the chimes ringing from the doorframe.
The footage revealed the intruder: a pale-skinned old man in a burial robe, towering at least two meters, even while hunched over.
At the sight of this man, Li Tianan cast a casual glance before springing up in shock, his chair clattering backward. This tiny detail screamed surprise—Li Tianan did not expect this old dude to show up!
What followed was quick; Li Tianan rushed toward the door, and the old man’s lips moved, but no one could hear a word. In less than three seconds, a gust blew in from the door, plunging the footage into darkness. In the last two seconds, Zhao Mingyue heard the wind chime ringing.
The chime’s sound was urgent, yet heavier than usual—but it was unclear how many times it had rang.
For those critical minutes, the footage was either blacked out or so distorted no one could make out any details; even the recorded sounds morphed into sharp crackles of static.
Three minutes later, the screen flickered back to life, showcasing an empty store—Li Tianan and the old fellow had vanished, leaving the place in shambles.
Everyone, including the three policemen, stood in silence.
Late at night, around eleven, a two-meter-tall old man in a burial robe wandering into a convenience store was hard to believe—even his face, white as paper, made it tough to accept he was a living person. Comforting thought? Perhaps the old chap had some illness?
But if that was the case…
How did a frail, sickly old man make a strong young man like Li Tianan disappear?
And why did the surveillance black out? This wasn’t a case of signal interference or some other technical issue.
If it was a group of old man conspirators, how did they manage to poof just those three minutes away while everything else remained normal?
The footage was accessed from the computer behind the counter. After watching it a few times, the officer stood, “Lu, we’ll take it from here. You and this girl aren’t family, so here’s the plan: you three come back to the station with me for a bit. It’s just a formality, wait for news at home. I’ll also notify Li Tianan’s family.”
“Okay, thanks, Uncle Li!” Lu Liangting quickly replied.
The morning dragged on until ten, when Zhao Mingyue and Bai Yu finally emerged from the police station, simply stating what they did today and what they saw at the convenience store. They were asked if any bizarre customers had dropped by and whether Li Tianan had crossed anyone.
“Mingyue, I’ll handle this for now. I’ll look into the old man’s identity to see if there’s anything useful. You and Bai Yu should head home and rest; once I get leads, you’ll be the first to know.”
At the taxi stand outside the police station, Lu Liangting waved for a cab, then turned to Zhao Mingyue.
He wasn’t planning to head home just yet. If the footage had captured the ghost’s face, surely they could uncover its identity. He had some connections with the police, so it made sense to gather information rather than let Bai Yu and Zhao Mingyue run around blindly.
He had no idea why the ghost showed up on camera, but hey, a silver lining, right?
Ghosts used to be humans, and every human had a record somewhere… unless they had died a long, long time ago.
“Alright, I’m counting on you. Bai Yu and I will head back,” Zhao Mingyue said, nodding as she got into the taxi.
As the taxi rolled up to Sunshine Apartments, Zhao Mingyue and Bai Yu just reached their door when they heard a constant jangling inside, as if a thief was busy at work.
This time, they hadn’t brought the big fox along—it wasn’t practical, plus they felt bad leaving the Little Black Cat home alone. So Zhao Mingyue had decided to let the sly fox stay, even gifting it an old phone she used to have, complete with a few bucks to play around with.
That fox figured out how to order takeout and buy stuff online in no time flat.
Casting a glance at Bai Yu, Zhao Mingyue took out her keys and opened the door.
As soon as the door swung open, they were greeted by the sight of the fox proudly clutching a chunk of prime beef, resting it on the table. The room was littered with takeout boxes—everything from ocean critters to sky fliers—there was nothing this fox wouldn’t order, with some pricey items tossed aside like they were yesterday’s news after just one bite.
The kicker? The crafty little rascal also knew Bai Yu was a cat lover, so it stocked up on high-end cat food, fancy treats, and toys piled high, even upgrading the Little Black Cat’s bed from a cardboard box to a cozy little villa!
“Ahh, welcome back, my esteemed leaders! You didn’t even give me a heads-up? I could have cooked you a meal or something!”
The fox, caught between embarrassment and pride, greeted them sheepishly.
Now this was going to be an interesting night!
