Antique Shop Zero: Disfigured School Beauty Becomes a Succubus to Pay Off Debts

"Young lady, I'm dying... Could you please call the police for me?"

The elderly woman in the hospital gown walked towards us with a smile on her face.

That smile on the face of a dying man looked utterly wrong.

Peng Zhenni instinctively took two steps back, her eyes filled with terror.

How can someone who has been in a car accident and is on the verge of death laugh?

And why is he laughing so...weirdly?

She suddenly realized that all the horror novels she had read before were nonsense.

What do you mean by "the old man in strange clothes is obviously suspicious, but the female lead still insists on helping him"? Isn't that just plain stupid?

Now that she's actually in that situation, all she wants to do is run, run as far away as possible.

The old lady's smile widened further and further:

"Why didn't you save me... Why didn't you save me!"

The voice grew sharper with each repetition, until finally it no longer sounded like a human's.

The next second, the old lady suddenly dropped to the ground, on all fours, and charged at her like a wild beast.

Peng Zhenni covered her mouth tightly, her pupils filled with fear.

That fear was etched into their bones; it was an instinctive scream.

This thing in front of us is like humanity's natural enemy!

She didn't even have the courage to run; her legs felt as weak as if they were filled with lead.

The moment the old lady lunged at him, Jiang Chao came to life.

A hand suddenly grabbed the old woman's head, tightened its grip, and lifted her off the ground before slamming her down hard.

"boom--"

The old lady fell to the ground, but as if nothing had happened, she tried to get up again.

Jiang Chaosheng raised his foot and stepped squarely on her neck.

The entire set of movements was clean, crisp, and fluid, possessing a violent beauty that made one's teeth ache.

Peng Zhenni swallowed hard.

"What... what's going on...?"

Jiang Chaosheng opened his backpack and rummaged through something, his tone as calm as if he were saying that the weather was nice today:

"Your grandfather told you that ever since he told me about hell, they've been watching you."

Peng Zhenni slowly lowered her head, looking at the old woman on the ground whose neck had been stepped on, her face filled with horror:

"This...this is what's in hell?"

Then, who are you? A priest? An exorcist?

"Crunch—crunch—"

The old lady's neck suddenly twisted 180 degrees, and her face turned towards Jiang Chaosheng.

Blood was already seeping from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were bulging and bloodshot from the extreme angle of his head, but that eerie smile never disappeared.

"Manager".

Her voice became low and hoarse, as if squeezed out from her throat:

"Are you really going to get involved in this mess?"

Peng Zhenni stared blankly at Jiang Chaosheng.

Manager?

What does that mean?

Jiang Chaosheng finally found what he was looking for in his bag.

An old flintlock musket, its barrel gleaming with a dull light.

He held the gun in one hand, aiming it at the old woman's forehead:

"So you knew who I was."

Pull the trigger.

"boom--"

A scarlet bullet pierced the old woman's forehead.

Peng Zhenni screamed and covered her eyes, but couldn't help peeking through her fingers.

The anticipated scene of his head smashing did not occur.

That bullet simply disappeared in the old woman's forehead.

"ah!!!"

The old woman let out a heart-wrenching scream.

Two seconds later, the screams stopped abruptly.

She closed her eyes, her face unusually serene, as if the previous ferocity and eeriness had never existed.

Like... an ordinary old man who has been possessed.

Once the thing that possessed her died, she returned to her original form.

The gunshots were especially piercing in the night.

Small groups of pedestrians had already noticed this area, and some started taking out their phones to call the police.

Jiang Chaosheng put away his gun and glanced at Peng Zhenni:

"Go get something."

"Oh, oh! Okay!"

Peng Zhenni forced her malfunctioning brain to reboot and quickly ran upstairs.

. . . . . . .

Night falls. Jiangchuan Third Hospital.

"Quick! Get out of the way!"

The stretcher sped down the corridor, several nurses pushed it as they ran, and the doctor ran ahead to clear the way.

Patients and their families in the emergency room quickly moved aside, their eyes following the car—some with pity, others with curiosity.

Lying in the car was a motorcyclist who had just been in a car accident, his face covered in blood, one leg twisted at an unbelievable angle, limp and hanging down like a noodle next to the stretcher.

The vital signs were so weak that they were almost undetectable.

As the stretcher was wheeled into the emergency room, the doctor immediately began administering IV fluids and stopping the bleeding, while the nurses quickly connected the monitoring equipment.

"Beep...beep...beep..."

The heartbeat was slow and weak.

"Adrenaline! Blood bags!"

Sweat rolled down the doctor's forehead as his hands never stopped moving.

"drop--"

The drawn-out note felt like a needle piercing everyone's heart.

The nurses stopped.

The doctor stood there, silent for a few seconds, and slowly took off his blood-stained gloves.

"Send it to the morgue," he said, his voice a little hoarse. "Notify the family."

He turned and walked out of the emergency room, leaned against the wall in the corridor, closed his eyes and sighed.

The sound of nurses packing up equipment could be heard from inside.

"Beep...beep...beep..."

The monitor suddenly went off again.

The doctor was taken aback, then turned around and pushed the door open to go inside.

The white sheet was suddenly pulled back, and the motorcyclist on the stretcher sat up straight.

The two nurses were so frightened that they staggered backward, their faces turning ashen.

The motorcyclist stared wide-eyed, his pupils swirling wildly in their sockets, as fast as two out-of-control gears.

It didn't look like a living person, but more like a machine that had just been forcibly started.

"What's wrong? What happened?!"

The doctor rushed in, saw this scene, and froze on the spot.

His pupils suddenly froze, shrinking to the size of a pinhead.

The corners of his mouth slowly turned up, curving into a strange arc.

The motorcyclist rolled out of bed, his steps unsteady, like a puppet that had just learned to walk.

He ignored everyone present and walked straight toward the door, his destination terrifyingly clear—the stairwell.

The doctors and nurses didn't dare to breathe, watching him disappear at the end of the corridor.

. . . . . . .

At the same time, in the morgue.

The mortuary cabinet was coldly embedded in the wall, and a dozen stainless steel beds were neatly arranged, each with a person lying on it, covered with a white sheet.

Under the harsh white light, the young security guard sat in a chair, head down, playing on his phone.

Being a security guard at the morgue of the Third Hospital is a cushy job; the salary is several hundred yuan higher than that of a regular position, but the workload is pitifully small.

Aside from the unsettling feeling of being around dead people, everything else is fine.

He was bold and didn't believe in superstitions. He would just laugh at the jokes online about "morgue security guards being reclusive masters".

The question netizens love to ask him most is, "Have you ever seen a ghost?"

What a joke, there are no ghosts in this world.

"Bang!"

The sound wasn't loud, but it was startling in the quiet morgue.

The security guard, who was playing online games with his sister, almost dropped his phone because his hand trembled.

He slowly turned around.

A dozen or so dead bodies, covered with white sheets, sat up in unison.

They sat motionless, the white cloth hanging down like a row of silent sculptures.

The security guard let out a short, sharp scream.

My sister's dissatisfied voice came from the other end of the phone:

"Are you kidding me?! You scared me half to death!"

He didn't have time to reply.

The white cloth covering a dead person slipped off, revealing a pale, stiff face.

His pupils spun wildly in their sockets, and his head trembled violently, an amplitude far beyond what a human could do.

Then—the frame freezes.

The pupils shrank to pinpoints.

A strange smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

"Bang!"

The security guard stiffened and turned his head.

The sound was coming from the mortuary cabinet.

Someone inside is banging on the cabinet door.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang bang bang—"

The sounds grew louder and louder, and the entire cabinet was vibrating.

The security guard's vision went black, and he collapsed to the ground.