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The smell of blood and meat made Zhou Xuan cough violently.
"Cough, cough!"
As Zhou Xuan kept coughing, he suddenly heard Xu Li's voice by his ear.
"Thank God, Xuanzi finally woke up. Oh dear! Ancestors, you really scared your sister-in-law to death."
Xu Li patted her thigh, her voice choked with sobs.
Zhou Xuan glanced at himself a few times. At this moment, he was in an extremely sorry state, covered in blood, with chicken feathers stained red clinging to his clothes.
At his feet lay a headless chicken.
"It's good that you're awake, it's good that you're awake." Xu Li held Zhou Xuan's face with both hands, examining carefully to confirm he was okay.
Zhou Xuan could see clearly. Xu Li's eyes were red, as if she had just been crying.
"Your Young Master is awake, but what about my wife? Today's incident needs to be explained thoroughly."
Wu Yun, off to the side, pointed aggressively, raising his fist to hit Zhou Xuan.
Fortunately, Third Brother Li Shuangyi was also in Luoying Hall.
Li Shuangyi, trained in opera since childhood, was on the path of the warrior role. Although not strong in stature, he was indeed not lacking in strength and had a wealth of skills.
He used one elbow to push against Wu Yun's waist, and pressed the other hand on his clavicle.
Wu Yun's struggles were thwarted, unable to move, he could only howl, "Why are you holding me back? I came to the Zhou Family's Troupe to invite the Netherworld Play Troupe for my wife, not for her to be the plaything of your Young Master! Today, the Zhou Family's Troupe must give me an explanation!"
Li Shuangyi's hand was clamped tightly, but his expression and tone were very polite, persuading, "Let's discuss this calmly, don't act impulsively, Boss Wu."
Zhou Xuan took the towel handed over by Xu Li, wiped off the dirty blood on his face, and looked at Zheng Meizhu's body.
Zheng Meizhu's body lay quietly on the wooden bed, except her clothes were in disorder, and the row of buttons on the slanted front lapel of her funeral attire had all been undone, the neckline pulled down,
revealing half of her soft breast and a black tummy band.
At this moment, Xu Li was engaged in a fierce argument with Wu Yun.
Zhou Xuan had not hurried to speak, but instead listened calmly, quickly piecing together the cause of the matter from the fragments of the argument.
It turned out that when Zhou Xuan was possessed, Xu Li had taken Wu Yun to the old opera stage to meet the actors performing in the Netherworld Play.
The process went smoothly, and Wu Yun was particularly satisfied with those roles.
But when Xu Li and Wu Yun returned to Luoying Hall, they saw—Zhou Xuan and Zheng Meizhu lying together.
The sleeping posture was very indecent.
Zhou Xuan's hand was on Zheng Meizhu's neck, while the latter's clothes were in disarray...
*Anyone normal would let their imagination run wild.*
Wu Yun only took one look, and anger surged within him. He picked up a stool to hit the sleeping Zhou Xuan.
Seeing his temper, he might have beaten Zhou Xuan to death.
Xu Li reacted quickly, hugging the furious Wu Yun, while jumping and shouting in the courtyard, "Something big happened, someone come help! Help!"
The several shouts alarmed Third Brother Li Shuangyi.
Li Shuangyi was in the courtyard teaching a few disciples the short base step. Upon hearing the cries for help, he rushed in, pulling and persuading Wu Yun away.
Xu Li took the opportunity to wake Zhou Xuan, finding that no matter how much she called, Zhou Xuan did not wake up, and his forehead, hands, and feet were cold, his eyelids opened, eyes rolling upward.
Having worked in the Netherworld Play Troupe for many years, and having experienced many strange events, she immediately realized—Zhou Xuan was possessed.
Her experience told her that he had to be awakened immediately after being possessed, or it would be very difficult to wake him.
She picked up the watering pot intended for the oleander in the hall and poured water over Zhou Xuan's head.
No response.
Zhou Xuan, more corpse-like than a corpse, made Xu Li cry anxiously.
"What do we do now, Xuanzi wake up, it's all sister-in-law's fault, I shouldn't have left you alone in Luoying Hall!"
Luckily, Li Shuangyi reminded her, "Sister-in-law, water won't wake him, you have to use blood."
"Yes, yes."
Xu Li urgently instructed the few disciples gathered at the doorway, "Go, go to the woodshed and catch a chicken, the older the better, also bring a kitchen knife, be quick, the Young Master can't afford any delays."
The disciples rushed to catch an old hen that lays eggs.
Xu Li grabbed the rough and tumble old hen with her left hand and raised a kitchen knife with her right to chop.
After the chicken was beheaded, she aimed the severed neck at Zhou Xuan, dousing him with the blood.
The pungent and smelly scent of blood finally roused Zhou Xuan from unconsciousness.
The matter of the possession was temporarily resolved, but it seemed a bigger accusation hovered over him.
*Harassing Zheng Meizhu? That was an accusation that, if stuck, would make Zhou Xuan a pervert in the eyes of others.*
Xu Li and Li Shuangyi were still arguing with Wu Yun, the main focus of the argument revolving around "whether Zhou Xuan had molested Zheng Meizhu."
"Boss Wu, Xuanzi was possessed, you saw it, he was passed out, he certainly didn't do anything indecent."
"He was probably just possessed and crazed, and unknowingly fiddled with your wife's clothes."
Wu Yun, however, didn't believe this, saying coldly, "Don't try to twist the story on me, the clothes were undone like that, and you say he didn't? You think I'm a three-year-old?
Xu, I see why you arranged for me to talk with the roles, turns out you just wanted to send me away so that your beastly Young Master could engage in debauchery.
Though I, Wu Yun, am just a chief in the tram department, a man of little words, I have a few influential classmates, if you don't give me a satisfying answer today, just watch out Zhou Family's Troupe."
Zhou Xuan, the main suspect, remained quite calm.
*He felt that Xu Li's current argument focus was somewhat off.*
*Whether he had done anything inappropriate to Zheng Meizhu was hard to judge for the moment.*
*No eyewitnesses,
*no video evidence,
*difficult to prove, or rather, impossible to prove.*
*Only Zhou Xuan himself knew he hadn't done anything, but as the person involved, could he testify for himself?*
*The situation being what it was, it was a Rashomon, continuing to argue would be a waste of breath.*
*Moreover, whether Zhou Xuan had harassed or not, for the situation, was irrelevant.*
*The most important thing was—not to let Wu Yun firmly pin the accusation!*
*In simple terms, it was to make him shut up, stop causing trouble.*
*Presenting the facts and arguing evidence was only one way to make someone shut up, but not the only way.*
Zhou Xuan, taking advantage of Wu Yun's emotional agitation and his readiness to strike again, suddenly blurted out, "Resentful fetus!"
Wu Yun was taken aback immediately, his eyes dodging, but he quickly adjusted, cursing angrily at Zhou Xuan, "You brat, your Zhou Family's Troupe people may be numerous, I can't hit you, but just wait, in these days, I'll let the police..."
His eye avoidance didn't fool Zhou Xuan's eye.
*Zhou Xuan understood in his heart.*
*After he woke up, he always felt that what he had seen, heard, and encountered while possessed was like a dream of yellow grain, elusive, very unreal.*
*He couldn't be one hundred percent sure that the storyteller's tale of "Wu Yun raising a ghost baby through the resentful fetus method" had happened in reality.*
*So, he needed to test it.*
At this moment, Wu Yun's reaction to the three words "resentful fetus" was very telling, proving that what the storyteller said was definitely not fabricated nonsense.
"Heh heh."
Zhou Xuan boldly leaned close to Wu Yun's ear and whispered, "You're quite ruthless to your wife, cutting tongues, pulling nails... heh heh..."
There was no need to say more.
Wu Yun naturally calmed his emotions, picked up Zheng Meizhu's body onto his back, and left without a word, stating, "It was all a misunderstanding," and walked out of Luoying Hall.
Xu Li was puzzled. She couldn't figure out how Zhou Xuan, with just a couple of whispers, managed to straighten out the stubborn mule that was Wu Yun.
"Xuanzi, what did you say to him? He's not someone easy to deal with," Xu Li curiously asked.
Zhou Xuan continued wiping his face with the wet towel, not following up on the topic.
*He was contemplating how to continue dealing with Wu Yun. While Wu Yun might have conceded, Zhou Xuan couldn't swallow this bitterness, having been tormented by the ghost baby for a whole afternoon, finally waking up only to have Wu Yun pin blame on him; he couldn't let him off easily.*
*Write an anonymous letter to the police? Report him?*
*Judging by Wu Yun's words, he had connections in the court, wouldn't want to stir up trouble and invite trouble for himself.*
*Most importantly, he still had no evidence, the storyteller's words couldn't be used as evidence.*
*Reveal Wu Yun's weakness to his sister Zhou Lingyi? Let his resourceful sister handle Wu Yun properly?*
*That seemed like a plan.*
"I'll go find her later."
As Zhou Xuan murmured about the idea of calling for help, his face had just dried off, when Wu Yun carrying his lover's corpse reached the doorway of Luoying Hall.
Suddenly, a sound of copper bells echoed into the room.
Zhou Xuan looked up, only to see Zhou Lingyi entering with an umbrella.
*Thinking of his sister, and she arrives?*
Zhou Lingyi folded the umbrella, shaking the cowbell once more with a smile, "Luoying Hall is quite lively."
Li Shuangyi and Xu Li hurriedly lowered their heads to greet, "Class Leader."
"Class Leader, the commotion just now... it was all a misunderstanding." Wu Yun took the initiative to smooth things over.
Zhou Lingyi leaned against the grand master's chair, and Li Shuangyi, being observant, took out a cigar box from the cabinet, lighting one for her.
Exhaling a puff of smoke, Zhou Lingyi instructed, "Third Brother, Sister-in-law, I need to chat with Chief Wu, you two step out first."
Li Shuangyi and Xu Li quickly left the room, closing the main door of Luoying Hall behind them.
Wu Yun looked at the shut door, asking, "Class Leader, what's the meaning of this?"
"Chief Wu, let me ask you, where is your heart?"
Zhou Lingyi asked a cryptic question.
"My heart? My heart is in my stomach." Wu Yun, unsure why she asked this, grew a bit impatient.
"Why don't you check your stomach and see if your heart is still there."
Zhou Lingyi smoked the cigar extremely slowly, without pausing, the light from the cigar started hidden within the ash, gradually brightening, until it glowed like a piece of red-hot iron.
Zhou Xuan could see, his sister's eyes also changed with the light of the cigar, becoming ever deeper and mysterious, not to be looked at directly.
*It seemed that the more he looked at her, the more his spirit would be under her control.*
Wu Yun, affected by Zhou Lingyi's gaze, became completely dazed, his hands loosening, causing Zheng Meizhu's body to roll off his back.
Not caring about the body, Wu Yun suddenly became very anxious, like an addict, touching himself all over while muttering, "My heart must be in my stomach, but my hands can't reach inside, really can't."
Just as he was about to go mad from anxiety and pull at his hair, he suddenly saw a bloody knife on the table.
This was the knife Xu Li used to chop off the chicken's head.
As if seeing an addiction, he seized the knife fiercely, with one vertical slash to his belly, the cut extended from the point under his sternum down to his navel.
Then a horizontal cut, the incision ran from the left side of the ribs to the right side of the ribs.
The speed of his actions, the brutality of his technique, made Zhou Xuan click his tongue, even felt slightly nauseous.
*In his past life, the most gruesome scene he had witnessed was slaughtering cattle.*
*A live person, cutting themselves, with gaping wounds was tens of times more shocking than slaughtering cattle, making Zhou Xuan feel physically sick.*
The cross-shaped slash opened Wu Yun's abdominal cavity.
Wu Yun, grabbing the wound with both hands, roughly pulled it apart, flaunting arrogantly, "Master Zhou, take a look, is my heart in my stomach?"
Zhou Lingyi sneered coldly, not looking at all.
Zhou Xuan, however, looked closely, but nearly made himself vomit...
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