Volume One, Chapter 104: The Failed Trial Subject

A bright crimson Lamborghini was parked in front of a dilapidated building.

Soon after, Lu Hualing stepped out with an umbrella in hand.

He stood outside the car like a knight, waiting for Qin Yu to get out so he could shade her at once.

Qin Yu wore a pale pink cheongsam. Two pearl clips adorned her petite earlobes, lending her less of a girl’s playfulness and more of that intelligent grace poised between maiden and woman.

She tilted her head up. On the gate, the cartoon sheep still faintly revealed the words kindergarten.

Back then, the incident had caused an uproar, and parents had united to cover the walls in spray paint of every color, writing the word death over and over.

The moment Lu Hualing followed Qin Yu inside, he felt a chill crawling relentlessly up his back.

“Master, don’t you feel cold?”

As he spoke, he shivered again.

With spiritual power protecting her body, Qin Yu felt no change at all. But seeing Lu Hualing’s bluish lips, she handed him a talisman. “One thousand.”

“Can’t you let it go for the sake of the drone?”

For now, his bank card had been frozen by his old man.

As for that matter...

He stole a glance at Qin Yu.

He absolutely could not let the Master find out.

Qin Yu rolled her wrist. “Business is business.”

“Even if something terrible happened here, this used to be a prime location. How come no investor ever came to reopen a shop or something?”

Lu Hualing followed behind her, asking in puzzlement.

Qin Yu looked at the faint black traces drifting through the air, her expression unchanged. “The answer will be clear very soon.”

For some reason, whenever Qin Yu said that, Lu Hualing felt a faint chill at the nape of his neck.

The kindergarten was not large. In front was an open play area for children, with a slide, a seesaw, swings...

The school building had four floors.

The first floor was for the youngest class, the second for the middle class, the third for the oldest class, and the top floor held the music room...

Dust lay everywhere in the building. Before long, Lu Hualing found himself short of breath, and on the second-floor railing he gasped desperately for fresh air.

By now the sun was high and fierce, and the hot air rolled over him like steam from a boiling basket, making his chest feel tight and stifled.

Creak... creak...

From afar came the grinding sound of something long out of repair.

When Lu Hualing looked up, he saw a little girl in red swinging on the swing directly opposite them.

She looked to be only three or four years old, with two small buns tied in her hair, very cute, though her expression was sullen and unhappy.

“Hey! Little one, are you by yourself? Swinging alone is dangerous!”

Lu Hualing called out.

The little girl seemed not to hear him at all, only swinging her legs higher and higher.

At that height, even an adult like Lu Hualing felt a chill of fear just watching, terrified that the child might lose her grip.

If she fell from there, she would surely be reduced to a pulp!

Hearing the sound, Qin Yu turned in confusion toward the window. She saw that Lu Hualing’s upper body had already leaned out, and one of his legs had gone out as well.

This was the second floor. A fall from this height would not necessarily be fatal, but it would almost certainly break at least two ribs.

“Lu Hualing!”

Qin Yu’s shout was loud enough to jolt Lu Hualing out of his fixation on the little girl. He looked over in delight. “Master, hurry and save that little girl! She’s about to fall!”

Anxiously, he pointed down from the opposite building.

Qin Yu followed the direction of his finger, and her face darkened beyond control.

“Lu Hualing, look carefully at what that thing is!”

“It’s not a thing! It’s... ahhhhhhh! What is that!”

Still speaking, Lu Hualing turned back.

But the moment he saw what was before him, he let out a slaughterhouse shriek so sharp it seemed to rip through the air.

What little girl was sitting on that swing? It was clearly a giant rat wearing a little girl’s dress!

Lu Hualing’s mind cleared instantly.

And once he came to his senses, he noticed another deadly problem.

Right now, he was hanging over the second-floor railing, with only half a leg still inside the building.

He clung to the railing in panic, screaming so hard the little uvula in his throat seemed visible. “Master, help! Master!”

Qin Yu silently cursed him for serving it right. She formed a hand seal and descended to the first floor.

But the rat on the swing, far from fleeing at the sight of her, swung even higher, nearly turning a full circle in the air.

The creaking in the air was eerie and shrill.

At such close range, Qin Yu saw a row of dense stitch marks running from the rat’s neck down across its body.

The workmanship was crude, crooked and uneven at a glance, clearly the work of a novice.

Another stitched-together ghost, but this one was far rougher than the last one she had seen, more like a trial piece.

The rat’s head and body turned uncoordinatedly toward Qin Yu. Its voice was hollow and lifeless.

“You are a bad person.”

Qin Yu said, “You’ve seen me before?”

The little girl’s gaze was vacant, her rat eyes fixed on the black mole on Qin Yu’s right temple. “You are the bad person who turned me into this! I’m going to kill you!”

The rat-girl seemed to remember something, and her emotions suddenly surged violently. The ghostly aura around her exploded upward in an instant.

At the same time, her little-girl body swelled by several times, soon becoming taller even than Qin Yu.

“You are all bad people! Bad people should die! Kill the bad people!”

The rat-girl kept repeating those few lines in a monotone.

As she spoke, she charged straight at Qin Yu.

Though massive in form, the rat-girl was extraordinarily agile.

Only, she seemed not to know how to use that agility, relying purely on brute physical force.

“You have the wrong person!”

Qin Yu dodged and tried to explain.

But the rat-girl could not hear any of it. Her eyes were red, her target unmistakable: Qin Yu must die.

Since communication was useless, Qin Yu stopped wasting time.

She took out a handful of talisman papers from her sleeve, chanting as she flung them into the air.

The noon sun was fierce, and the moment it struck the talismans, they ignited.

They floated in the sky like a wall.

The rat-girl seemed not to sense danger or pain at all and slammed straight into them.

The blaze left several holes scorched through her body, and black ghostly energy leaked from the gaps.

Qin Yu joined her hands and formed a seal.

“Change!”

The burning talismans obediently shifted formation.

They became a pliant net, blocking the rat-girl’s path.

The instant the rat-girl recovered her momentum and lunged forward, the net snapped shut and wrapped around her completely.