novelraw Chapter 1197: Immortal Life
Chapter 1197: Immortal Life
“The deceased’s name is Hai Dagu, he was in the building materials business in this city and had some assets. He had a wife and a daughter, but they were divorced, and the daughter was awarded to the mother.”
“The body was discovered around 10:30 in the morning by a part-time worker hired by the deceased’s family.”
“The community security confirmed that the deceased returned home around 11 p.m. last night and didn’t go out afterward. Surveillance footage was reviewed, and no one came by; the doors and windows were all closed…”
When Lin Feng arrived at the scene with his team, the first responders had already collected a lot of information.
Lin Feng carefully walked through the deceased’s home but found no traces of anything unusual.
The deceased had hanged himself, but the forensic team hadn’t arrived yet, so the body remained hanging—the earlier police had limited tools and didn’t want to damage any potential evidence.
“There’s no useful clue here; we’ll have to wait for the forensic team to examine carefully,” Lin Feng thought.
Sure enough, not long after, Lin Feng heard Little Bao’s voice outside—but when he looked back, the first thing he saw wasn’t Little Bao but a calm, composed woman, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with short hair.
Lin Feng’s first impression of her was coldness, then professionalism, and finally a well-proportioned figure and above-average appearance, enhanced by her unique aura—though it also made her somewhat intimidating.
This was the new forensic doctor, Nan, who replaced the previous Department Chief Qin. When Nan joined, Director Liu introduced her to the heads of each department. She was a junior from the same school as Qin.After greetings, Nan immediately started working, while Little Bao, carrying supplies, followed along, likely having received some scolding from the new superior earlier.
The whole process was silent—Lin Feng’s attention occasionally drifted to the black stockings Nan wore, but she had already finished her initial work.
“The preliminary conclusion is suicide.”
“Oh… suicide, hmm, suicide?” Lin Feng, finally snapping out of his distraction, asked, “How do you determine that?”
“It’s only preliminary, not final,” Nan replied, removing her gloves. “There were no signs of struggle, and aside from the ligature marks on the neck, no other obvious lethal injuries were found, but…”
Before she could continue, a police officer suddenly ran over.
“Sir Lin, we found it! The deceased did commit suicide!”
Lin Feng was momentarily surprised; Nan frowned, clearly annoyed at the interruption.
“What did you find?” Lin Feng asked curiously.
The officer took out a laptop placed on the coffee table. When they first entered, the screen faced the deceased but had shut down due to no power. After powering it and cracking the password, it was now operational.
On the video, a man faced the camera and confessed his wrongdoings in detail, recounting his misdeeds over the years.
Finally, he went through with his act—standing on a stool, hanging himself, and kicking the stool away. He struggled instinctively, then went still and died.
The man on the video was the deceased, Hai Dagu.
“I’ll be going back now.”
After watching the video, Nan immediately left with Little Bao, leaving Lin Feng and the others stunned.
“Sir Lin… what do we do next?”
Lin Feng thought for a moment: “Continue the investigation, then draft the report. If there’s nothing else, close the case and issue the death certificate for the family to claim the body.”
“Understood.”
……
Earlier, Miss Maid noticed the area had been undisturbed while the shop was closed. Luo Qiu nodded, understanding. Though he could sense and record everything around him, he only focused on areas of interest, ignoring most other details.
“Do you want to go in, Master?” Miss Maid asked softly.
Luo Qiu considered it and nodded. As he entered the alley, it felt like passing through an invisible, thin barrier—likely a precautionary measure.
The door led to a five-step stairway descending into a small basement-like space. The doorway was barely sixty centimeters wide, and the dim fluorescent light flickered weakly. A few more steps led to a roughly ten-square-meter space, the size of a small bedroom.
Inside were minimal furnishings: a large exaggerated desk, an old sofa, cabinets on three walls, and a small washroom. The cabinets contained mostly books with a few ornaments, including a crystal skull, which piqued Luo Qiu’s curiosity—it was similar to one he owned long ago.
On the sofa lay a person with a book covering their face, obscuring their features. A birdcage on the desk contained a crow. Suddenly, the crow squawked loudly, mimicking human speech: “Dummy 24, wake up! Dummy 24, wake up…”
The person on the sofa threw the thick book at the cage, but the cage didn’t fall—it seemed fixed. The crow stopped, folding its wings but keeping its gaze fixed.
“Sorry… this one’s been poorly trained since childhood…” the person said lazily, yawning.
He had messy curly hair, deep under-eye bags tinged gray, and looked around twenty-five or twenty-six. He got up, hunched slightly, sat behind the desk, and said: “Please sit.”
Despite his disheveled appearance, the small basement was immaculately tidy. Even the thick book he threw returned to the shelf automatically after hitting the cage.
Miss Maid pulled out a chair for her master. The mysterious young man opened his eyes slightly, inspected something, and remarked in surprise: “An alchemy doll? Such exquisite craftsmanship… didn’t expect such skill here.”
Miss Maid frowned slightly but said nothing, as Luo Qiu also observed the young man. She marveled silently, realizing the young man was trying to peer into something. In the past, such observation would have terrified him, but now he seemed unaffected, implying Luo Qiu’s mastery could restrain the club’s protective powers.
However, the young man had already seen through the external illusion…
“Hello,” Luo Qiu greeted first.
“Hello.” The mysterious young man nodded as well, looking slightly more awake than before, sitting up straighter. “You two shouldn’t have come here for any particular reason, right?”
He didn’t react to the calm demeanor of the man who had entered or the alchemy doll—after all, they clearly possessed power and wouldn’t be surprised by the unusual, or terrified by supernatural forces.
Luo Qiu smiled. “We were just passing by and curious… Cursed Killing Horror House. May I ask, what exactly do you do here?”
The young man replied directly, “Just like the name of this place. Cursed Killing—killing through curses. Here, we accept clients’ requests to curse people.”
“Oh?” Luo Qiu nodded. “I see… how do you charge for this?”
The young man smiled. “It depends on the situation and the target. The more difficult the target, the higher the fee. If it’s too difficult, even exchanging a life for a life, I might refuse, depending on my mood.”
Luo Qiu thought for a moment, then curiously asked, “Is it only curses?”
The young man shrugged. “It can also be bad luck—tripping while walking, choking on food, sudden illness, frequent nightmares, failing tasks unexpectedly, or being physically unable to act. And comparatively, those are cheap.”
“How’s business?” Luo Qiu asked.
The young man hesitated, then replied, “We just opened, so it’s quiet for now, but a few clients have already come.”
Luo Qiu nodded, then stood and smiled. “Thank you for your time. I’ll visit again, Mr. 24.”
“Oh… okay.” The young man nodded subconsciously.
Afterward, Luo Qiu climbed the steps, while Miss Maid returned the chair to its place—an action that made the young man feel comfortable, though Miss Maid’s piercing gaze sent a shiver down his spine.
Once they were gone, the young man frowned. “Damn… how does this sub-world have such a powerful alchemy doll? An immortal doll? And this man—compared to the original… immortal? Supreme?”
He pondered.
……
Right now, he was very weak, not even one ten-thousandth of his original body. Coming here had been an accident.
It all started over two months ago, when a temporal disturbance caused a rift in this sub-world. Curious, his original self, exploring the endless time-space, sent a thought through the rift into this sub-world.
Unexpectedly, the rift quickly corrected itself, severing the connection to his original body. Only a fragment of his consciousness remained here.
The original self might not care about this fragment, but the consciousness trapped in the sub-world refused to shrink away and fade—or be devoured.
Yes, devoured.
During the sudden temporal disturbance, several other powerful wills also split off consciousness to explore this sub-world. Those fragments, like him, were trapped because the rift corrected too quickly.
Anyone who had achieved true immortality would know the benefits of consuming another fragment of consciousness.
Being unrecognized by the world’s will made him a “blacklisted” existence in time-space, needing to act carefully—but hiding forever wasn’t a solution. So he returned to his old trade, the kind of work he did years ago as a weak sorcerer.
He rubbed his chin. “This sub-world is interesting… the elemental concentration suddenly thickened, and it’s still rising. Soon, it might rival the semi-demon world I explored before…”
At that moment, Young 24 felt the desk vibrate slightly.
He opened a drawer under the desk, took out a phone, glanced at it, and smiled. “Oh, business… best if they never wake up? What a ridiculous, low-level request… oh well, even small prey is still meat.”
……
“Immortal life?”
On the way back, Luo Qiu paused—this was Miss Maid’s insight.
“Yes. Above immortality, there is eternity. But not true eternity—at most, pseudo-eternity. Even eternity has levels. For example, the one in Heaven can be called the top-level pseudo-eternity, also known as a ‘Thresholder’,” Miss Maid nodded. “This is only how some sub-worlds refer to life transcending the world’s will, mostly in magic-dominated sub-worlds. Even the immortals who appeared here before were the same.”
“Magic…” Luo Qiu nodded. For him, magic immediately brought to mind a boy with a lightning bolt on his forehead from a certain movie.
Miss Maid added, “Although weak, the owner of this horror house carries a slight incongruity. He’s probably not a native of this sub-world… which is odd. Even adjacent sub-worlds have defenses that are hard to bypass. Like Transcendents traveling between worlds through dimensional rifts—it leaves a mark. But the horror house owner doesn’t carry this, so he must have arrived by some other method, and only recently.”
Her deduction was almost correct… You Ye’s speculation.
Luo Qiu, uninterested in wasting time investigating further, purchased the intelligence. After reviewing it, the young man’s origin became clear.
“So it’s from that airport incident…”
(End of Chapter)