Blood and sweat covered Ma Laosan's face as he trembled violently. A yellowish liquid slowly seeped from between his legs.
"Ugh! Ma Laosan, are you serious? You wet yourself already?" Tiger exclaimed, stepping away in disgust.
Liang Ge's attention was firmly on Lu Fei.
"Lu Fei, is the knife's evil aura gone?"
"The aura has dissipated," Lu Fei confirmed after a careful examination of the blade. In just a few moments, the once razor-sharp blade had dulled and rusted.
"Does this mean it's been subdued?" Liang Ge asked, still skeptical. The thought that the flaying knife—a killer every seven years—was neutralized so easily felt almost too good to be true.
"Under normal circumstances, yes," Lu Fei replied, stroking his chin. The now-corroded blade left him with the same lingering doubt as Liang Ge.
The fact that the knife had started acting up the very night they planned to deal with it felt more like a setup than a coincidence.
"Could we really have been that lucky?"
Exchanging glances, Lu Fei and Liang Ge saw the same unease reflected in each other's eyes.
But the absence of malevolent energy on the knife was undeniable. What else could be wrong?
"Ma Laosan, how are you holding up?" Lu Fei nudged him lightly with his foot. Given how long Ma had kept the knife, he might know something useful.
"I-I…"
Ma Laosan was in shock, his eyes vacant as he stared at the blade mere inches from his groin. He remained unresponsive despite Lu Fei's efforts to rouse him.
"Should we send him to the hospital?" Liang Ge asked, frowning.
"No need—it's just extreme fright. I'll snap him out of it."
Channeling a burst of energy into his palm, Lu Fei delivered a sharp slap to Ma Laosan's face.
*SMACK!*
The crisp sound echoed in the air as half of Ma's face swelled instantly. He jolted awake, gasping for air as if escaping a nightmare.
"My head! It feels like it's splitting open!" he wailed, clutching his head as the sharp pain intensified.
Liang Ge glanced at Ma's head.
It was a bloody mess, but the wound seemed superficial—just a split scalp. After all, the knife's intention wasn't to kill outright but to flay.
"You're lucky we got here in time. A minute later, and you'd have ended up like those victims in the photos—just a lump of raw flesh, dying in agony," Liang Ge said grimly.
"H-how could this happen?" Ma stammered, his voice tinged with despair.
"I warned you that the knife was cursed," Tiger said, his tone laced with schadenfreude. "You treated it like a treasure, hid it away, and even sold fakes to others. If anyone deserves to be skinned alive, it's you!"
"I didn't know…" Ma's face turned pale as waves of regret and fear washed over him. He shakily rose to his feet. "Can the knife still… still flay people?"
"Hard to say," Lu Fei replied, his expression serious. "When you first acquired the knife, did you notice anything unusual?"
"Unusual? It's always been fine… except tonight," Ma replied, wincing as he cradled his throbbing head. "Please, enough questions—call an ambulance!"
"Think harder. If you miss anything, the knife could come for you again," Lu Fei pressed.
"Come for me again?" Ma froze, instinctively distancing himself from the blade on the ground. He racked his brain before groaning, "I can't think straight with this pain… I've had the knife for two years, kept it locked in a safe, and never touched it until tonight."
"Wait, you never touched it until now?" Liang Ge interrupted.
"Yeah. If you hadn't shown up today, I wouldn't have taken it out," Ma admitted.
Liang Ge's eyes lit up. "The flaying knife kills every seven years but doesn't target a fixed date. That means the timing isn't the trigger. It's the seventh year, and Ma Laosan only just touched the knife tonight—that's what activated it!"
"So, whoever first handles the knife in its seventh year becomes the victim?" Lu Fei deduced.
"Exactly!" Liang Ge exclaimed. "The knife acting up tonight wasn't a coincidence—it was because of us! If we hadn't come for Ma Laosan, he wouldn't have taken it out."
"Please, stop analyzing! Just get me to a hospital!" Ma pleaded, his head still bleeding profusely. He feared he might pass out at any moment.
But Lu Fei and Liang Ge ignored him.
"That explains why the knife activated today, but it doesn't explain why subduing it was so easy," Lu Fei said, his eyes scanning the ground. "It feels like we missed something."
"Maybe we overthought it," Liang Ge suggested. "We feared the culprit because we didn't know what it was…"
Before he could finish, Lu Fei shouted, "Wait! Where's the sheath?"
He rushed to the roadside. "It fell here earlier—I saw it with my own eyes. Where did it go?"
"The sheath?"
Liang Ge's heart sank as he followed Lu Fei.
He, too, remembered seeing the sheath land nearby. Yet now, the area was empty save for dust and debris.
The sheath, roughly finger-width and designed to wrap snugly around the knife's handle, wasn't so light that it could've been carried off by the wind.
Besides, there had been no wind.
"Could we have overlooked something?" Lu Fei murmured, a chilling thought crossing his mind.
"The sheath couldn't have vanished on its own unless… it's a cursed object too!"
"Could the knife be a decoy, and the sheath the real culprit?" Liang Ge speculated, his voice tinged with alarm.
"Search now!"
Both men felt a creeping dread as they combed the area for the missing sheath.
Meanwhile, Tiger stayed by Ma Laosan, who was frantically searching his car for his phone.
"Where's my phone…" Ma muttered, his hand pressing against his throbbing head as he rummaged.
Then, he noticed a faint glow beneath the car.
Peering down, he saw his phone halfway under the chassis, its screen emitting a dim light.
"How'd it end up there?"
Ma crouched to retrieve it.
The moment his hand reached for the phone, another hand grabbed his wrist.
The hand was pale yellow, ice-cold, and rubbery, as though it lacked bones.
It felt like a venomous snake slithering out from under the car, coiling tightly around his arm.
In that instant, Ma's blood seemed to freeze in his veins.