[Ke Fei]Shanghai Knights

Early morning, Shanghai, outside the gate of Xitong Public School

The morning sun pushed through the thin clouds and projected shyly on the ground, bringing the first dim light to the still-awakened city.The chill of the night has not completely receded, and the cleaners wrapped in thick coats walked slowly according to their daily routine, and the brooms that kept waving brushed the ground and made regular "rustling" sounds.He let out a long breath and stopped working, raised his hand to touch the sweat beads that oozed from his forehead, leaned back against the telephone pole, and took a short rest.

Suddenly, his heart sank heavily in his chest, and the vague and strange feeling made him turn his head and look around in doubt.He swept across the quiet street, his cold appearance was the same as what he saw every morning, and he couldn't see a single pedestrian.Only a black cat strolled through the empty streets, as if aware of the gaze, it stopped, uttered a mocking squawk at the impolite gazer, then jumped up and disappeared. behind the wall.Heaving a sigh of relief, the man laughed at his suspiciousness, picked up the broom and planned to continue his work. As soon as he turned around, he met a pair of empty, dark eyes.

"what--!"

The horrified scream pierced the tranquility of the morning, and the man sat down on the ground, shaking his body and looking up at the terrifying scene in front of him.

It was a face contorted with fear.

A young man in a short jacket was hung upside down on a towering electric pole. His bluish-white face had no trace of blood, his body was frozen as if he had been frozen, and he had already lost his vitality.From under the unbuttoned collar, two abrupt blood holes were branded on his neck, but no blood flowed out, as if the man's blood had been drained.

"Zombies... are zombies!"

"Look, she's here!" Ferid caught a glimpse of the tall girl who was squeezing through the crowd, and immediately raised his hand to wave and shouted loudly, "Here! Here!"

Taking advantage of his height, Crowley easily distinguished Gu Xiaoman from the crowd.The girl raised her eyes and looked at Ferid for a moment, but she didn't immediately walk in the direction of the silver-haired vampire.She frowned and observed the whispering onlookers for a moment, and her eyes fell on the cordon left behind by the patrol room.

It was late in the evening, and it was supposed to be the end of the school day, but there were no students pouring out of the school. Instead, the school gate was surrounded by a thick human wall.In addition to the police officers and reporters, there were more residents who came to watch. Everyone from the old to the young was talking about the weird incident that happened early this morning.

"Have you heard? It's a zombie!"

"It's terrible. That gangster surnamed Huang was drained of blood and hanged there?"

The girl pursed her lips, and the wrinkles between her brows became more obvious.She suddenly quickened her pace and walked towards the two of Crowley. Before they could stand still, the question came first, "What's going on? Is what they said true?"

"What's real?" Ferid raised his eyebrows, but he still didn't care about anything.

The girl showed impatience, and raised her voice, "Of course it's a zombie!"

"Ah, that, I don't know, anyway, it's already like this when we came here." Ferid shrugged, "Could it be the remnants that weren't cleaned up yesterday?" As he said, he Still playing, he leaned close to Crowley, showing a look of fear.

"How could this be..." the girl murmured to herself, then raised her head and turned, "Tell me the details."

"Well, actually, I didn't see it with my own eyes, but I just heard some rumors." Ferid made a look of reminiscence, and then shivered as if remembering something terrible, "It's really terrible, not only sucked up that human blood, and hung him upside down on a telephone pole. What kind of zombie would do such a cruel thing?"

That zombie is you, right?Crowley watched the silver-haired vampire's performance with great interest, and the involuntary smile on the corner of his mouth made him look out of place at the murder scene.

Fortunately, the girl didn't seem to notice. She followed the direction Ferid pointed at and looked towards the towering telephone pole where the dead body was hanging. "That's where?"

The silver-haired vampire nodded vigorously, "That's right, it is said that the corpse is hung on the top. Ordinary people can't do it at all. It really is a case that only zombies can commit."

Crowley resisted the urge to let out a long sigh. Humans really couldn't do it, because it was all his masterpiece.In the middle of the night, I climbed up a thin telephone pole with a dead body on my back, while being careful not to be discovered, and at the same time endured Ferid's annoying instructions to "go left" and "go right" standing on the ground, such a thing Crowley didn't want to go through that again.

The girl immediately shook her head when she heard the words, and said affirmatively: "No, zombies have no intelligence, so it is impossible for them to do such a thing."

"That's strange, if it's not a zombie, then who else is it?" The silver-haired vampire pondered pretentiously.

"This..." Gu Xiaoman was dumbfounded.

Ferid suddenly clapped his hands in front of his chest, and with a clear "snap", the eyes of the girl and the red-haired vampire fell on him.Ferid curled his mouth, showing his usual frivolous smile, and said, "It's useless to think about it here. Aren't we here to investigate the case today? Let's go, let's start~"

Ferid was the first to push open the door of the bookstore opposite the public school, turned slightly and smiled to make room for Gu Xiaoman to pass.He raised his eyes and met the eyes of Crowley who was following behind the girl, and the corner of his mouth curled into a narrow arc.Before the latter could react, the silver-haired vampire suddenly let go of the palm holding the door, allowing the bookstore door to slam straight into Crowley's face.

Crowley sighed, reached out to stop the door panel, and couldn't even muster the energy to complain. "I thought we were going to investigate the case. Why are you here?" As he spoke, the red-haired vampire looked curiously at the surrounding bookshelves. Books in Chinese, English, and Japanese were placed regularly. on it.Although the bookstore was only a few steps away from the public school and their mansion, this was the first time Crowley had stepped into it.

"This is for investigating the case." Ferid did not look back, and greeted the bookstore owner in Japanese.

The owner of the bookstore was a 40-year-old Japanese man with a pair of round-frame glasses on his nose. He bowed respectfully to them, and when he noticed Crowley's attire, he greeted him in English with a slight accent. : "Peace in the Lord."

The owner of the bookstore also seemed to be a Protestant. He looked down at the cross on his chest, and Crowley replied pretendingly, "God be with you."

The girl glanced at Ferid in surprise and said, "I didn't expect you to speak Japanese."

The silver-haired vampire smiled and said nothing, and turned to the bookstore owner after a while, "Do you have any newspapers from the past three months?"

The owner of the bookstore was startled, "Yes, but it's my private collection, and it's not for sale."

"Then how about lending us a few days? By the way, if there is a recently published ghost story magazine or something, I will also buy it together. Anything is fine." Ferid said with a smile.

The owner of the bookstore was obviously an enthusiastic person, and after thinking for a moment, he agreed to the silver-haired vampire's request.He turned around, bent down and fumbled behind the counter for a while, and when he turned around, a large stack of newspapers was placed on the counter with a muffled sound.There are several magazines placed in front of them together with them, and the covers are all outlining hideous and distorted monsters with weird brushwork, which reveals an unbelievable atmosphere no matter how you look at it.

Ferid reached out and flipped through the newspaper a few times, raised his head and said with a chuckle, "Thank you, you have really helped us a lot."

Looking at the crystal chandelier on the ceiling, Crowley yawned as he shook the seat under him in a "gadagada" manner.At this moment, a huge force directly hit the chair leg under his buttocks, and at the same time as the solid wood let out a mournful "squeak", Crowley smashed the chair to the floor together.

Crowley touched the forehead that hit the wall in a daze, and when he raised his head, he saw Feridel shyly retracting the assailant's foot.

"Did you get enough sleep? I've read newspapers for three months here." The silver-haired vampire twitched the corner of his mouth, showing a non-smiling smile.

Crowley blinked, only to notice that outside the window behind Ferid, the sky had completely darkened.Standing up, he moved closer to the other party, glanced over the silver-haired vampire's shoulder at the Chinese newspapers spread all over the table, and said innocently: "No way, I can't read Chinese. By the way, have you found any clues?"

"There are only some sporadic reports without any details. It seems that we can only investigate bit by bit." The girl let out a tired breath as she said.

"I marked on the map all the incidents related to zombies that I could find." Ferid took out a map marked with red dots, and spread it out in front of the eyes of the other two.

"This is where we are." Ferid drew a circle with a pen where there were a few scattered red dots.

Crowley walked to the side of the table and found that compared to the place where the circle was drawn, the place with the most dense red dots was about four or five kilometers southeast of them, near the big river flowing through the urban area, "Hey, I thought this was a zombie I didn’t expect them to have other strongholds.”

"Actually, there should be quite a few speculative reports, but it's really unusual that they all gather in this area." The girl standing on the other side of the table stared at the map and murmured, "Maybe those zombies we encountered were just strays. Only a few came out."

"Actually, besides this, I found another interesting thing." As the words fell, the silver-haired vampire took out a newspaper from a pile of newspapers and placed it on the top of the table.He tapped a simple portrait with his fingers, and looked up at Crowley excitedly, as if expecting the latter's answer.

Crowley poked his head over. Although he couldn't read the text, he could probably guess that it was a wanted warrant from more than two months ago, and the man in the portrait was the suspect pursued by the patrol room.After pondering the picture-like Chinese characters up and down several times, the red-haired vampire finally looked away as if giving up, and said to Ferid: "Okay, what's interesting?"

The silver-haired vampire's eyes widened when he heard the words, and he couldn't believe it with a hurt look: "You don't remember? He chased me for a long time yesterday, howling!"

Howling and chasing after?Is it a zombie?After Ferid's reminder, Crowley vaguely remembered the face in the portrait.Although it was much more ferocious than the portrait in front of him, the memory of the vampire still allowed him to easily recognize the other party.

"What's interesting is that this man should have been arrested a month ago, imprisoned, and then died in prison due to a sudden illness." Ferid added with interest, tapping another newspaper .

Gu Xiaoman frowned upon hearing this, "Dead? Then the one we saw was..."

"Maybe he turned into a zombie after death, or maybe he turned into a zombie and escaped from prison." The silver-haired vampire waved his hand indifferently, and said after a while, "Oh, yes, I almost forgot I just told you. The prison he was sent to is here." After the words fell, Ferid tapped twice on the map with his fingers.

Crowley couldn't help raising his eyebrows—the place Ferid was pointing at was the center of the area with the densest red dots.