Chapter 171: Ghost Assistant (III)

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Chapter 171: Ghost Assistant (III)

Shao Feidu’s daily life was simple and rigidly regular. He woke at seven, ate breakfast, practiced piano and composed music, had lunch at noon, napped for an hour, exercised for an hour in the gym, and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the piano room. Dinner was at six, after which he could arrange his own time. In practice, he usually listened to music or read, repeating the same activities for another two or three hours before bathing and going to bed.

His assistant Gibbs reported to the villa every day and updated Shao Feidu’s manager, Mu Zhen, on his condition. Mu Zhen controlled nearly every aspect of Shao Feidu’s schedule and daily life—including his income.

Shang Ke checked the home system and discovered that Mu Zhen took Shao Feidu to a psychological clinic for counseling on the fifteenth of every month. Today happened to be the appointment date, and Mu Zhen arrived on schedule.

The moment the housekeeper saw Mu Zhen, she complained, “Mr. Mu, Young Master Shao hasn’t been eating the meals I bring lately. I don’t know who’s been cooking for him on the side, but isn’t that practically a slap in my face?”

Mu Zhen frowned and looked at Gibbs. “Did you hire someone else?”

Gibbs hurriedly shook his head. “How could I hire anyone privately without your instructions, Mr. Mu?”

“Then what’s going on with his breakfast and dinner?” the woman pressed. “Surely Young Master Shao isn’t cooking for himself?”

Mu Zhen glanced at the silent Shao Feidu beside him, then turned to Gibbs. “Have cameras installed throughout the villa. Everywhere except the bathroom—the living room, bedroom, and piano room.”

Shang Ke, who was floating beside Shao Feidu, immediately felt anger flare inside him. What did Mu Zhen think Shao Feidu was? He was blatantly invading his privacy and controlling his life.

Cold ghost energy poured from Shang Ke’s body. A layer of blood-red light spread through his eyes as he stared icily at Mu Zhen.

Mu Zhen suddenly felt a chill and instinctively moved several steps away from Shao Feidu. After giving a few more instructions, he took Shao Feidu out of the villa and headed for the psychological clinic.

After spending the past few days with him, Shang Ke did not believe Shao Feidu was as profoundly impaired as people around him assumed. He did show autistic traits and had serious difficulty with communication and expressive language, but his thinking was clear and there was no sign of intellectual decline. With appropriate guidance and support, substantial improvement should be possible.

Judging from Mu Zhen, however, Shao Feidu was unlikely to receive any genuinely effective treatment.

“Dudu, how can you let a petty bastard like this control you? You need to stand up for yourself!” Shang Ke followed Shao Feidu and Mu Zhen all the way to the clinic, constantly encouraging him to resist and fight for his freedom and dignity.

Shao Feidu wore the same wooden expression, and Shang Ke could not tell whether he was listening.

The three entered the elevator, and Mu Zhen pressed the button for the fifteenth floor. The elevator rose steadily, then stopped at the fourth. The doors opened onto an empty hallway. Mu Zhen looked out, saw no one, and closed them again.

It stopped again on the seventh floor. Still no one. Then, at the thirteenth floor, it stopped a third time to another empty hallway. Just as Mu Zhen reached for the close-door button, the elevator suddenly sounded an overload warning.

“Strange. There are only three of us. How could it be overloaded? Is the elevator malfunctioning?” Mu Zhen muttered as he shut the doors.

He never noticed that dozens of expressionless “people” were now packed tightly behind him.

“Dudu, try not to come to this building again. The yin energy is very heavy here, and it draws ghosts from the surrounding area.” As he spoke, Shang Ke used his own ghost energy to form a protective barrier around Shao Feidu, shielding him from the other spirits.

Shao Feidu stared straight ahead, his whole mind seeming to retreat into a detached state. If Shang Ke had not noticed the unconscious tension in his body, he might have thought the man was completely fearless.

Ding. The elevator reached the fifteenth floor, and Mu Zhen stepped out first.

“Feidu, cooperate properly with Dr. Xu in a moment. He—” Mu Zhen stopped halfway through the sentence when a chill crawled up his spine. He turned and, to his alarm, thought he saw a crowd of people packed inside the closing elevator.

When he looked again, the doors had already shut and the elevator was descending automatically.

Mu Zhen’s mouth twitched. Unwilling to linger, he hurried Shao Feidu toward Dr. Xu’s office.

Shao Feidu stopped at the doorway, clearly resistant to entering. Mu Zhen ignored him and pulled him inside.

The moment Shang Ke followed them in, he understood the source of Shao Feidu’s resistance. Their psychologist, Dr. Xu, had two ghosts clinging to his back—one large and one small.

The larger was a young woman around twenty-two. Her eyes were blood-red and resentful energy surged around her. The smaller was an underdeveloped infant with distorted features and mangled flesh, as though someone had crushed the body and crudely pressed it back together.

The two heads pressed close to Dr. Xu’s shoulders, making him look at first glance as though he had three heads.

Shao Feidu lowered his eyes and tried not to look. But ignoring the ghosts did not mean they would ignore him. His constitution held an enormous attraction for spirits.

When the two ghosts smiled sinisterly at Shao Feidu and looked ready to come over and torment him, Shang Ke struck first. He yanked them off Dr. Xu’s back, dragged them into a corner, and began a very “friendly” ghost-to-ghost conversation.

Shao Feidu glanced toward the corner and quickly looked away again. Once Shang Ke drew the cold presence away, the fear inside him gradually subsided and his mind returned to calm. As for whatever Dr. Xu was saying, he did not hear a single word.

Although Shao Feidu could not express himself normally, he understood the situation perfectly well. The psychologist before him was just like Mu Zhen—neither man truly wanted him to recover. He remembered every word Shang Ke had said, but he did not know what to do. Without someone to guide him, he was afraid even to step out of his own home.

Dr. Xu talked for more than half an hour without receiving any response from Shao Feidu. Finally, he could only shrug at Mu Zhen. “Young Master Shao’s condition is unchanged. There’s been no improvement at all.”

“Mm. Thank you for your work.” Mu Zhen sounded unsurprised.

Dr. Xu smiled. “Mu Zhen, I really have to envy your luck. You actually found yourself a money-making machine you can control however you like. He may never be able to perform publicly again, but every piece he composes sells for a fortune. You must have made over a hundred million from him these past few years.”

Mu Zhen only smiled. Dr. Xu did not know that all of Shao Feidu’s income was under his control. A mere hundred million did not even come close.

“That will be all for today. We’ll make another appointment next month.” Mu Zhen checked the time, pulled Shao Feidu to his feet, and said, “Treatment is over. Let’s go.”

Shang Ke immediately followed, furious. “I asked those two ghosts what happened. Dr. Xu really is scum. He used his position as a doctor to drug women and rape them. Many of his victims did not even know they had been assaulted. Then one woman became pregnant and began to suspect him. To protect his reputation, Dr. Xu forced her to undergo an abortion, and both she and the baby died.”

Shao Feidu’s eyes remained indifferent, as though the woman’s fate did not interest him, but every word Shang Ke said entered his ears clearly.

“Those two ghosts are overflowing with resentment. If Dr. Xu weren’t carrying a protective talisman, he would have met with disaster a long time ago.” Ghosts might not be able to murder living people directly, but they could certainly engineer accidents. Shang Ke had no intention of helping human trash like Dr. Xu. If anything, he was perfectly happy to give the ghosts a push.

A moment earlier, he had secretly thrown Dr. Xu’s protective talisman out the window. It could injure Shang Ke as well, but brief contact was not enough to do serious damage. Punishing evil and aiding the wronged was heroic in his book. Whether the System agreed was the System’s problem.

After leaving the building, Mu Zhen drove Shao Feidu back toward the villa.

Halfway there, traffic came to a standstill on a bridge. Mu Zhen’s sports car was ground-only and could not fly. Congestion was rare on these roads, but an accident had occurred ahead.

A few minutes earlier, a mechanical carriage styled after an antique horse-drawn coach had been promoting an amusement park. More than a dozen elaborately dressed teenagers and young adults were riding inside, and the carriage had not been moving quickly. Then an out-of-control car came hurtling straight toward it. In swerving to avoid the collision, the carriage plunged directly into the river.

Every passenger fell into the water. A crowd gathered along the bank to watch, but only two or three people actually jumped in to help.

A thought flashed through Shang Ke’s mind, and he immediately flew toward the river.

The moment he realized the ghost beside him was gone, Shao Feidu—who had been indifferent to everything around him—instinctively opened the car window and looked down from the bridge, his gaze following Shang Ke’s figure.

The moment Shang Ke reached the river, he saw a ghost float up from beneath the surface, look around in confusion, and then disappear without a trace.

Drowning victims often experienced temporary separation of the soul from the body. If the soul failed to return within a certain period, the person would die. Shang Ke realized this was an excellent opportunity to revive, but he waited patiently until he was certain the soul had truly disappeared before diving into the water.

A short while later, a young man broke the surface and gulped down several breaths. He was about to swim toward shore when he noticed a girl struggling nearby. He immediately swam over, supported her head above the water, and brought her toward the bank with him.

Several people onshore rushed over to help. Once the girl had been taken from his arms, the young man started climbing out—only for something to seize his ankle. With a splash, his entire body was dragged back underwater.

“He went under! Hurry, someone check!” a person on the bank shouted.

The water near the bank was not very deep. Several people dove down, only to discover in horror that the young man had already been dragged a considerable distance away. No one could see what was pulling him.

The young man was none other than Shang Ke, who had just possessed the body. A mass of long black hair was wrapped tightly around his ankle.

Unfortunately, Shang Ke had run into a vicious water ghost immediately after reviving. In a sense, it was inevitable. The poor thing had spent decades—perhaps a century—alone in the lightless depths waiting for a substitute victim. She had finally found one, only for Shang Ke to beat her to it. How could she not be furious?

Once inside a living body, Shang Ke was only an ordinary human and naturally no match for the water ghost. After she held him underwater for five or six minutes, he finally drowned from oxygen deprivation and gloriously became a ghost again.

His first revival attempt—failure!

“Gagagaga…” A cold laugh sounded from the darkness below. The young man’s corpse swayed eerily in the water, as though the water ghost were flaunting her victory.

Shang Ke sighed. Poor kid. I hope you can rest in peace. Being taken as the water ghost’s substitute victim was far worse than having Shang Ke borrow his body. The boy’s soul, which had already been free to leave, would now be forcibly trapped in this river until the next substitute victim appeared.

Depressed, Shang Ke floated out of the river and returned to Shao Feidu’s car.

Seeing his dejected expression, Shao Feidu felt no sympathy whatsoever. For some inexplicable reason, he almost wanted to laugh…

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