Chapter 172: Ghost Assistant (IV)

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Chapter 172: Ghost Assistant (IV)

The next day, Gibbs really did have surveillance cameras installed throughout the villa. From then on, every detail of Shao Feidu’s daily life would be exposed to monitoring.

Destroying the cameras would have been easy for Shang Ke, but that would only treat the symptom, not the cause. The best solution was to get rid of Mu Zhen entirely so he would no longer have any chance to control Shao Feidu’s life.

In Shao Feidu’s current condition, however, he was unlikely to handle the matter independently. Shang Ke first thought of his father. What was their relationship like? Not once had the man come to visit or even sent word asking how his son was doing. Did he truly not care at all?

To obtain useful information, Shang Ke decided to investigate the Shao family personally. What he discovered immediately explained Shao Feidu’s present situation.

The Shao family was one of the great families of the Northern Capital, and Shao Feidu’s father, Shao Qidong, was its head. He had considerable business talent but was notoriously unfaithful and had married three times. His first wife, Shao Feidu’s mother, had been a pianist. Growing up under her influence, Shao Feidu developed a deep love of music and displayed extraordinary talent.

Unfortunately, the good years did not last. Shao Feidu’s mother died in a car accident when he was ten, and from then on he began showing increasingly autistic and withdrawn behavior. Treatment gradually helped him improve—until Shao Qidong remarried and brought home both a stepmother and a seven-year-old younger brother.

This “stepmother” was merely one of Shao Qidong’s longtime mistresses, and the “younger brother” was his biological son. There were likely many more women and children outside the family; these two were simply the ones given official status.

Shao Qidong therefore cared very little about a son whose interests centered on music. After the remarriage, Shao Feidu’s condition worsened again. Compared with his clever, socially adept younger siblings, he was deemed to have little value as an heir worth cultivating.

When Shao Feidu held his first world tour at fourteen, Shao Qidong divorced his second wife and married his current one. Soon afterward, he hired a new manager to oversee Shao Feidu’s studies and daily life, then essentially stopped paying attention to him altogether.

That manager was Mu Zhen.

Shao Qidong had at least a dozen children outside the marriage and simply did not have the attention to spare for Shao Feidu. Mu Zhen was clever enough never to neglect appearances. At least in front of outsiders, he seemed to take excellent care of Shao Feidu, so Shao Qidong trusted him completely. As for Shao Feidu’s income and expenses over the years, his father had never bothered to look.

Clearly, going through Shao Qidong was a dead end. Shao Feidu’s maternal relatives, meanwhile, mostly lived abroad and had rarely been in contact with him over the years.

Shang Ke felt that this was the most miserably his man had ever lived in any world. He had been born into one of the wealthiest families, possessed a fortune of his own, and enjoyed worldwide fame—yet he lived under someone else’s control, reduced to a tool for making money.

Shang Ke decided to postpone his revival mission and deal with Shao Feidu’s situation first.

He focused his investigation on Mu Zhen’s finances and business dealings and discovered several investments made under Shao Feidu’s name. Most of the projects were overseas, making them easier to conceal.

Shang Ke slipped into Mu Zhen’s safe and hid several important documents, then altered the contents of some emails to manufacture a dispute between Mu Zhen and one of the investment companies.

For a vengeful ghost with telekinesis, none of this was particularly difficult. Ordinary ghosts generally possessed only enough power to create illusions or release ghost energy. Their memories were damaged and their intelligence incomplete, so they could not plan and execute complicated schemes the way Shang Ke could.

Exactly as Shang Ke expected, the investment dispute forced Mu Zhen to leave the country in a hurry.

That left only Gibbs and the housekeeper, both much easier to handle. Gibbs had already been planning to resign, and once the cameras were installed, he simply stopped coming to the villa.

As for the woman who delivered meals, Shang Ke used a small trick to make her injure an arm. She wasted no time using the injury as an excuse to stay in the hospital and avoid work. Her salary continued regardless, so she was perfectly happy to take the break.

If Mu Zhen had still been in the country, he would certainly have hired someone else. Unfortunately for him, he was overseas, while neither Gibbs nor the housekeeper cared much about Shao Feidu. Shang Ke also intercepted their communications: Gibbs assumed the housekeeper was still caring for Shao Feidu, and the housekeeper assumed a replacement had been arranged. For a time, Shao Feidu truly became an unsupervised, abandoned child.

Shang Ke’s real purpose was to use this period to guide Shao Feidu through some form of rehabilitation. Over the past two days, he had watched every surviving video of Shao Feidu from childhood onward and found several distinct changes in his condition. Before age three, his behavior appeared completely typical. After three, he gradually became quiet and withdrawn—probably because he had begun seeing ghosts and realizing both how frightening they were and how different he was from everyone else. His mother then introduced him to music and the piano, and his condition gradually improved.

Several years later, his mother died unexpectedly. He became withdrawn and cold again, then improved somewhat through treatment. Soon after, his father remarried and brought home another son. From that point on, Shao Feidu disappeared from the family’s daily-life recordings entirely. His stepmother clearly did not welcome him, and within the household he became almost invisible.

Not long afterward, Mu Zhen appeared, became his manager, and took control of virtually everything. Shao Feidu left the family home, and from then on no one cared what he liked, what he hated, what he wanted, or what frightened him.

“I’ll take care of you from now on.” Shang Ke wrapped an arm around Shao Feidu’s shoulders.

For the moment, he did not destroy the villa’s cameras, but he could block their signals whenever he liked. There was absolutely no way he would let outsiders see anything they should not—such as Shao Feidu’s flawless naked body.

He designed a new daily schedule for Shao Feidu: wake at seven, go out for a morning run, eat breakfast, practice piano; lunch at noon, then a nap, exercise, more piano; dinner at six, followed by an evening walk.

Getting Shao Feidu out for the first morning run took considerable effort. More accurately, Shang Ke scared him outside. When coaxing failed, he abruptly pulled off his own head and threw it at him.

Clutching Shang Ke’s head, Shao Feidu stumbled out of the villa in panic. Strangely, despite being frightened pale, he never once threw the head away.

Headless Shang Ke chased him for several hundred meters before finally snatching his head back. Only then did he lead Shao Feidu on a jog through the beautifully landscaped grounds.

Back at the villa, Shang Ke prepared a hot breakfast, then accompanied him while he practiced piano and composed new music. At night, after Shao Feidu fell asleep, Shang Ke went out in search of “fresh” corpses that might be suitable for revival.

Shang Ke had cleared nearly every other ghost out of the villa, so Shao Feidu was no longer harassed at night and the quality of his sleep improved dramatically.

Shang Ke deliberately encouraged him to speak, starting with simple names and moving on to common everyday words. After several days of practice, Shao Feidu began growing accustomed to calling his name. “Keke” became the word he said most often.

During their evening walks, Shang Ke taught him to recognize various signs and symbols. He suspected Shao Feidu was not truly unfamiliar with them; rather, his subconscious rejection of the outside world had produced a degree of cognitive blockage.

Shao Feidu held Shang Ke’s hand tightly, listening as he described the scenery along the way while staring fixedly at Shang Ke’s face.

“Stop staring at me all the time. Look at the world around you.” Shang Ke lifted a hand and turned his face forward.

Shao Feidu let his gaze wander lazily over the surroundings, only for it to return almost immediately to Shang Ke. He was like a young eagle that had not yet left the nest, waiting for someone to feed and guide him.

“Keke,” Shao Feidu suddenly called.

“Mm?” Shang Ke turned to him.

“I stepped on Keke.” Shao Feidu looked down at his feet.

Following his gaze, Shang Ke found a suspicious dark-brown substance smeared across his shoe.

Black lines practically appeared over Shang Ke’s face. “That’s dog shit, not cocoa!”

Shao Feidu looked silently at him, apparently asking what he should do.

“We’re almost back at the villa. We’ll clean it there.” Shang Ke pulled him along for a while, then suddenly glanced back. “Dudu, do you like pets?”

Shao Feidu answered, “Like Keke.”

“Keke isn’t a pet.” Shang Ke patiently explained, “Pets are little cats, dogs, rabbits…”

He listed more than a dozen small animals, then asked again, “Any you especially like?”

“Yes. Keke.” Shao Feidu remained utterly devoted to this particular “pet.”

Shang Ke: “…Fine. Then we’ll get a puppy and call it Keke.”

“No.” For the first time, Shao Feidu rejected one of Shang Ke’s suggestions.

“Why?” Far from being angry, Shang Ke was delighted by the refusal.

Shao Feidu knitted his brows, clearly struggling to organize the words.

Shang Ke watched him with sparkling eyes.

Shao Feidu looked at him and opened his mouth, then turned his head away. A moment later he looked back, opened his mouth again, and turned away once more. After repeating this several times, he still failed to say a single word.

Amused, Shang Ke answered for him. “I understand. You don’t like dogs. You like cats.”

No!

He just… did not want a dog to be called “Keke.” He wanted that name to belong only to him.

That night, Shao Feidu emerged from the bathroom in a bathrobe and found Shang Ke lying naked on his bed reading. The blanket covered him from the waist down, leaving the smooth, elegant lines of his back exposed like a flowing phrase of music.

Shao Feidu walked over and could not resist touching him. The same sensation traveled through his palm—first icy cold, then burning hot.

During the day, Shang Ke existed as a translucent spirit form, his body faint and indistinct. At night he could materialize like a living person. In front of Shao Feidu, he did not even bother manifesting clothes and simply walked around naked.

It had taken only five or six days for Shao Feidu to go from fearing him to seeking his closeness.

Shao Feidu lifted the blanket, lay down beside Shang Ke, and silently watched him.

Shang Ke put down the book and slipped under the covers. “There’s an opera tomorrow. Want to go see it with me?”

Shao Feidu said nothing. He merely rested one arm carefully around Shang Ke’s waist and quietly drew them closer together.

Shang Ke smiled, hugged him first, and nestled intimately against his chest.

Shao Feidu’s heart pounded. The familiar presence beside him stirred a restlessness he could not suppress.

Instinctively, he slid one leg between Shang Ke’s and pulled him closer. Then he closed his eyes and, despite the heat still stirring in his body, gradually fell peacefully asleep.

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