Judge of Souls-Chapter 16 - Suicide

Chu Xuanliang walked out of the dormitory building, and Officer Ye returned shortly after. The two met at the parking spot near the east gate of the school.

Chu Xuanliang sat in the car without ceremony and asked, “How did it go on your end?”

Officer Ye turned on the air conditioning and casually replied, “Not much. They’re all insisting it was a suicide case, nothing more to say. We don’t have any evidence, so what can we do? Make unscientific and physically impossible guesses?”

Chu Xuanliang responded with a “hmm.”

Officer Ye then asked, “What about you? How did it go on your end?”

“Didn’t find much. It probably wasn’t suicide,” Chu Xuanliang said. “They didn’t do a proper job with the foundation when building the school, so they occasionally invite Taoist priests to check things out. Later, to suppress the area’s energy, they deliberately built an additional teaching building in front that looks like a tombstone. Now in this huge school, you can’t find a single wandering ghost who knows anything.”

Officer Ye watched him lowering his head to shake the compass and said, “Don’t be discouraged. Since getting to know you folks, I’ve become more accepting when facing these situations. People really can’t ignore karma. Those who laugh the most maniacally now will be the ones crying the most maniacally later.”

Chu Xuanliang sighed, “But she wants to kill sixteen people. That’s too many, and all within the same school – it will cause social panic.”

“But she hasn’t killed anyone,” Officer Ye said while adjusting his bangs in the rearview mirror. “They’re all still alive, aren’t they?”

Chu Xuanliang looked at him and said, “I’m seriously questioning your qualifications as a people’s police officer.”

“A people’s police officer is still human. What’s wrong with that? Besides, isn’t this the responsibility of you Taoist priests?” Officer Ye adjusted the rearview mirror back to position and started the car, saying, “I’ll drive you back to the temple, twenty yuan per trip. No credit.”

****

The night in A City was bustling with activity.

The bright lights illuminated the city like a sleepless metropolis on earth.

At three in the morning, an orange light still glowed in one of the high-rise apartment buildings.

Wu Zhiwei rubbed his forehead and continued staring at the computer screen without blinking. His teeth bit down hard on his lip, almost drawing blood.

He hadn’t slept properly for a week. Every time he closed his eyes, red and green trend charts would float through his mind.

If this continued, he would truly go mad.

Initially, when Ma Shiluo led him into forex trading, they only used twenty percent position sizing for test trades. Being finance students, they knew the risks of heavy positions.

During their first collaboration, by analyzing market information trends, Ma Shiluo helped him earn thirty thousand US dollars in one night.

Wu Zhiwei knew the risks involved – this level of return rate was equivalent to gambling with assets. Given his temperament, he wasn’t suited for such high-risk financial instruments, but he knew Ma Shiluo could handle it.

Unfortunately, Ma Shiluo wasn’t always so compliant.

She deliberately entered buy positions too early and set inappropriate stop-loss levels for him, resulting in his account fluctuating up and down through several operations, ultimately showing little change.

Ma Shiluo calmly said, “In financial markets, assets are king. Don’t you know that, Professor? If you have sufficient assets, in a two-way trading market, you don’t need to worry about my so-called stop-loss levels. As long as the trend is correct, you’re guaranteed to profit. What do the intermediate fluctuations matter to you?”

She was telling him to borrow money, but what she said wasn’t wrong.

The first step to becoming a gambler is growing desire and ambition.

Wu Zhiwei knew Ma Shiluo was doing it deliberately – she must have been doing it on purpose. Her grasp of buying/selling points and trend directions couldn’t be this loose, but he still fell for it.

How much does a professor make per month? What’s the price of buying a house in A City? How much money could he earn in his entire lifetime?

The stock market had suddenly dropped continuously, and he still hadn’t recovered the money he lost there. He couldn’t accept it.

When you see a smooth path laid out before you, leading straight to life’s peak, would you give it up?

He wouldn’t.

So he willingly took the bait.

Wu Zhiwei believed that before Ma Shiluo successfully graduated, she definitely wouldn’t harm him too much, so at least during this period, he could trade with peace of mind.

He borrowed about two million US dollars from his friends and relatives, investing all of it in the forex market.

Ma Shiluo’s thesis just needed her advisor’s signature.

He made an agreement with Ma Shiluo: if she could help him make a trade with over 400 points profit, he would ignore Lu Quan’s warning and give her a chance to graduate.

Wasn’t this a win-win situation?

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Ma Shiluo agreed very straightforwardly.

Wu Zhiwei put everything on the line, but Ma Shiluo deceived him.

With an extremely high stop-loss level closing the position, he directly lost two-thirds of his investment.

Just when he was about to confront Ma Shiluo, she died.

She committed suicide?

Wu Zhiwei knew he was finished too.

No one could help him recover his losses; he would be buried in debt.

His entire life, both past and future, was about to end.

At this point, there was no turning back. He could only operate based on his understanding of Ma Shiluo’s theories.

Were Ma Shiluo’s theories useful? Of course they were. But even if they were complete and useful, not everyone could use them. There were many complete theories circulating in the market, but so what?

Even if you thoroughly understand the theory, everyone’s judgment of buying and selling points differs. Any slight change, or policy change, can result in completely different trends. Sometimes you need years of chart-reading experience, and sometimes you need heaven-given luck.

If it’s not suitable for you, it’s useless.

Those theories are all different, and their analysis results can even contradict each other. After all, saying a stock will rise or fall is both correct – the only difference is in the timeframe of realization.

In the financial market, there is no absolutely correct theory.

Wu Zhiwei grabbed his hair forcefully to calm himself down. He reached for the cup at the edge of his computer desk, picked it up and found it empty.

He pressed against the desk to stand up and walked to the kitchen to get water, looking haggard.

He lifted the small water purifier to pour into his cup and noticed that from his position, some liquid was dripping from above onto his hand.

It was red.

Blood.

If he wasn’t mistaken, that was blood.

Wu Zhiwei looked up and met Ma Shiluo’s blood-covered face. Her hair was clumped together with blood, hanging down. A face that seemed about to split into pieces was embedded in the ceiling, staring straight at him.

Then Ma Shiluo opened her mouth, and a drop of dark red blood flowed from it, falling onto his arm.

“Ahhhh!”

Wu Zhiwei let out a scream and fell to the ground. When he blinked again, the person was gone.

He clutched his chest, breathing heavily. He thought it was a hallucination from staying up too many nights. He covered his face with one hand, opened his eyes, and caught sight of the blood stain still clearly visible on his arm.

He shuddered all over, quickly rushed to the kitchen sink, turned on the tap, and washed his arm.

He scrubbed hard, even scratching with his fingernails, but found the blood wouldn’t wash off – instead, the area kept growing larger. Meanwhile, his dulled sense of pain finally returned…

He had scrubbed off his own skin, exposing his flesh.

Wu Zhiwei frantically backed away. The pressure that had built up for so long finally became unbearable at this moment. He stumbled toward the balcony, pulled open the window, and jumped down.

****

Early morning in A City began with several shocking news stories.

Such as: a man died from falling from a building, his death was tragic, and passersby uploaded photos online, many suspecting it was a cruel murder by a psychopathic killer.

Also: a woman fell while shopping, and her skin horrifyingly peeled off.

And: a corporate employee was scalded by hot water, and their arm skin completely separated.

While Chu Xuanliang was still lying in bed scrolling through news updates, a familiar contact from the hospital called to tell him that yesterday they admitted two patients with rapidly deteriorating skin. One was called Lu Meng. The other was a graduate student who had just graduated from A University.

At the same time, Officer Ye reported to him that Ma Shiluo’s advisor had died.

Well, now the supreme deity had appeared.

Chu Xuanliang took out that list and looked at it, finding that indeed, three more circles had appeared overnight.

Previously they came one by one, is she in a hurry now?

He heaved a deep sigh, and just as he was about to take a break, he had to shoulder this burden again.

He was tired, he was suffering, and he had nowhere to express it.

Officer Ye called him early in the morning to come check out the scene of the fall.

“Wu Zhiwei, most likely committed suicide,” Officer Ye said while flipping through the materials in his hand. “The external injuries on his body are similar to the previous cases, just skin problems. The actual cause of death was falling from the building. There’s only one footprint on the windowsill, so he probably jumped down himself. Of course, we can’t rule out that a ghost forced him to jump, but that we don’t know.”

Officer Ye sighed. “He’s now buried in external debt. His computer was still open showing his account – looking at the records, he lost over 1.8 million US dollars total. Damn! Those evil rich people! I just called his friends using his phone and asked – most of it was borrowed money.”

Because there was a death, attention suddenly increased.

All three victims were from A University, but this information hadn’t been released yet. To prevent panic, the police asked the media to help keep it confidential while notifying the school’s internal management first.

Chu Xuanliang frowned, knowing this wouldn’t do, and decided to go back to A University to take another look.

It didn’t make sense that Jiang Feng could encounter that female ghost just by walking around, while he couldn’t run into her even when keeping watch!

Maybe… he should call Jiang Feng too?

Jiang Feng?

Jiang Feng was… currently sitting across from Ma Shiluo, resting his chin on one hand, expressionlessly watching her eat the noodles he used for deliveries.

Ma Shiluo crouched on the ground curled up in a ball, and particularly enthusiastically stuffed a piece of paper into his hand, with several stock codes and expected prices written on it.

Jiang Feng: “…”

He felt like he had just been bribed.