Chapter 32: Living Coffin

"Tang Weining" was stunned for a moment, then smiled: "What are you talking about?"

Tu Lanxun was blunt, his voice soft but his eyes cold: "Stop pretending, you're not Tang Weining."

She looked up to the side and saw that the red dot on the surveillance camera was off. Tang Pengan smiled, "Miss, being too clever can be harmful."

Tang Pengan emanated from his body, his face as pale as a mourning cloth. His once handsome features took on a sinister air. He took a step forward and said, "If you want to blame someone, blame yourself for exposing me. Blame yourself for coming to this carriage..."

Tu Lanxun's calves trembled slightly, but he remained calm and said, "Why on earth did you do that?"

She didn't specify what it was, but Tang Pengan didn't take the bait. Instead, he sneered, "This has nothing to do with you..."

He looked at Tu Lanxun as if he were trash. There wasn't even the evil intent often associated with bad people in his eyes, just plain disgust and the irritation of having his plans interrupted. Tang Pengan reached out with one hand, cutting through the dark fog in the carriage.

"Bang——"

An invisible punch was thrown in the air, hitting Tang Pengan on the cheek. His body slammed hard into the dining car counter, making a hard sound like an iron tower falling to the ground.

Another punch followed, twisting Tang Peng'an's neck to an angle that would give anyone cervical spondylosis. His forehead slammed heavily onto the ground, leaving a streak of black blood. He shrugged his shoulders, lowered his head, and laughed strangely, "Hehehe..."

But the next second, the train stopped and Tang Pengan threw out something unknown from his sleeve, which hit Tu Lanxun directly. A blood mist exploded in front of her and a fishy smell hit her in the face.

Tang Pengan leaped up and rushed out through the gap just as the train door opened, startling the train attendant on the platform. He disappeared at the corridor entrance.

Tu Lanxun froze in place, her eyes wide and unblinking, unable to move a finger. The stinking blood mist droplets hovered densely in the air, but were blocked by an invisible protective shield, preventing them from penetrating her skin and hair.

N finally appeared at the spot where Tang Pengan had fallen. His face was cold, and with a wave of his hand, drops of blood fell like rain. The moment they touched the ground, they bubbled and evaporated. In the end, only a strong stench remained in the dining car, causing passengers who boarded the car from the side door to cover their noses. "Wow, who pooped in the dining car?!"

Tu Lanxun remained frozen in place, unable to even move his eyes. He looked like a wild animal frightened to death by headlights on a nighttime highway.

Her consciousness was clear, and she wasn't even overly afraid, but it was as if her mind and body were cut off from each other, and she couldn't move at all.

N walked up to Tu Lanxun, bent his index finger, and gently tapped her forehead. Tu Lanxun then took two steps back as if she was relieved and regained her breath.

"What... what is that... wasn't that 'Tang Pengan' just now..." she heard herself asking.

N replied: "You are quite perceptive. Tang Pengan is not that powerful. The one who attacked you is an old ghost hiding in Tang Pengan's body."

He paused, the scent of plants and trees surging from his body, enveloping Tu Lanxun and quickly suppressing the ominous stench. "As for that thing he threw, it must be made of refined human flesh. We often call it a 'living coffin.' As the name suggests, it will make a person feel frightened by the deathly aura, causing their whole body to convulse and tense, as if they were sealed in a coffin. In severe cases, they may even suffocate to death. They are so frightened that they lose their breath."

Refining human flesh? Tu Lanxun suddenly thought of a scene from a TV drama where an old Taoist priest was refining elixirs in front of a furnace.

N: "You're overthinking it. It's not really refined with fire, it's refined with Yin Qi."

"What about human flesh? You can't just go to the morgue and cut a piece of flesh from a corpse."

N smiled faintly: "How is that possible? It has to be the flesh of a living person. Dead people are useless."

Tu Lanxun's expression changed slightly. So, they were going to harm other people?

N sniffed the air and said, "Tang Pengan—10110101's stuff is made from fetuses, like miscarriages, or fetuses that were aborted but not yet dead. This kind of dying fetal tissue is no problem for Tang Pengan."

Tu Lanxun felt a little like vomiting, and after adjusting his expression, he suddenly thought of a question. Since 10110101 was in Tang Pengan's body, why was it Liang Wei who took away Bai Chao's ghost parasite?

"Maybe I was taken advantage of?" This was her only explanation.

Tang Pengan had already gotten off the train in Fu City. The train started slowly again. Tu Lanxun walked towards the sleeper car and happened to meet the anxious Tang Weining. "Hey, I've been looking for you for a long time. I thought you got off the train early."

The Tang Weining in front of him was real. Tu Lanxun smiled and said, "How could that be? But I have something to tell you. Tang Pengan followed us. 10110101 is in his body."

Tang Weining's face turned pale and he stammered, "How, how could it be? Then why did he follow me...?"

"Anyway, he has no good intentions. Be careful not to stay too far away from me," said Tu Lanxun.

Actually, it's about not being too far away from N. Tang Weining nodded like pecking at rice, then climbed back to his upper bunk. Tu Lanxun sat in a daze on her bunk. Taking advantage of a good cell phone signal, she sent a message to the computer ghost: "Sister, check Liang Wei's phone and see where she is."

If Tang Pengan hadn't followed Tang Weining this time because he was tracking her, then he and Tang Weining had the same goal: Liang Wei. They just happened to run into each other.

The computer ghost replied quickly: Liang Wei is still in Micheng, her social account is logged in via computer, and her IP address is 201, Building 3, Phase 1, Hehua Community, Fuqiang District.

She added: She didn't take any pictures of the front camera because she blocked the camera with tape.

Tu Lanxun still didn't relax. He stopped a passing conductor and asked, "Excuse me, is there anyone else who needs to buy a ticket on this train besides us?"

The flight attendant was a little wary: "Why are you asking this?"

Tu Lanxun smiled bitterly, "I bought my tickets from a travel agency. There were other people in the same group, and they bought tickets for the wrong station for us. But, we didn't add any contact information, so we can't get in touch. Now it's just the two of us. I'm afraid I'll be left alone, so I asked others if they've made up for it."

The flight attendant finally calmed down a bit, looked through the booklet, and replied, "No, it's just you two who need to buy the tickets."

So Tang Pengan really got off the bus. The thing in his body couldn't beat N, so he probably didn't dare to continue riding with him.

N chuckled and glanced at Tu Lanxun, "You're quite clever. Why don't you tell me how you figured out Tang Pengan's identity?"

Tu Lanxun leaned his head against the wall of the compartment, his lips still. Through gritted teeth he said, "I smelled it."

She really wasn't lying, she could just smell it.

I don’t know if it’s because she’s been with N for too long, but she has developed a problem: she’s very sensitive to other people’s scent.

Before, Tu Lanxun was the type who didn’t like to use perfume because any fragrance was too strong for her. She could indeed distinguish the scent of different people, but that was usually based on long-term interactions.

But since meeting N, Tu Lanxun's sense of smell has become more acute. For example, a newly bought mattress has a fluffy smell, the shelves have a clean alloy smell, and the floor tiles that have just been mopped by N have a scent of detergent mixed with the fragrance of plants and trees.

Moreover, her sensitivity to the scent of spirits is even higher than that of objects and people.

She had no idea about the dead air and corpse smell that N could smell, but different spirits had different smells in her nose.

Needless to say, N smells like grass and trees, the computer girl ghost smells like a keyboard that has been used for a long time, Liu Maosheng smells like soil and water plants, and the brown ponytail teacher ghost of Experimental Primary School smells like a mixture of blood and plastic running track.

Although Tang Pengan was a living person, his vague smell contained a very strange complex scent, like a mixture of old wood with peeling paint, sunlight and rubber.

So Tu Lanxun knew as soon as he saw him that it was not Tang Weining, but only Tang Pengan.

N laughed in an ambiguous manner, remaining noncommittal. He simply said, "Don't be too happy. Being able to smell things in this world that others can't smell...isn't a good thing."

There were still two hours left before they arrived in Micheng. Time passed quickly as Tu Lanxun and Tang Weining carried their luggage out of the station. Micheng was a small city, and even though it was past four in the morning, the area outside the station was crowded with drivers soliciting passengers.

“West of the city, are you going west of the city? Twenty-one vans!”

"There's only one seat left for the old residential area. Pay the fee and the bus will leave!"

"Are there any minibuses going to Que County?"

Tu Lanxun read the guide he'd looked up earlier to Tang Weining—mostly to N. "Hey, Que County, they say online that the wine lees glutinous rice snacks in Que County, Micheng are especially delicious, a century-old specialty."

Tang Weining smiled helplessly: "Miss, it's already this late, and you're still thinking about snacks. Can I buy you a set from Taobao?"

The two men and the ghost dragged themselves out of the station and lined up for a taxi at the curved stainless steel road entrance. The driver asked where they were going, and Tu Lanxun said, "To the west of the city."

The west of the city is Fuqiang District, where Liang Wei's family lives. Tu Lanxun booked a hotel after getting in the car. After driving for fifteen minutes, they arrived downstairs of a homestay in the west of the city.

"Why don't you stay in a hotel? I see there's a three-star hotel here." Tang Weining was about to pay when Tu Lanxun stopped him: "Hotels are not convenient."

Tang Weining wanted to ask what was inconvenient, but he didn't dare. In fact, it was N who said that the hotel was inconvenient. His original words were: "I don't go to hotels. There are too many ghosts, too many eyes, and it's noisy."

After talking to the B&B owner on the phone, the group found a key on the edge of the illegal air-conditioning unit outside the stairwell. The key was not for opening the B&B door, but for opening the external milk box of the neighbor's house three floors above the B&B. The real B&B key was hidden in the milk box.

It is said that the house with the milk box is another B&B set up by the owner.

Tu Lanxun really admires the boss's imagination. With this idea, opening an escape room might make more money than running a B&B.

Sitting on the princess bed, Tu Lanxun was playing with his mobile phone indifferently, Tang Weining went into the bathroom to wash up, and N was sitting in the dreamy ocean ball pool, hugging his knees, staring grimly at the ribbons hanging from the hydrogen balloons.

He was annoyed: "Get lost..."

Tu Lanxun was puzzled: "Who are you talking to?"

N looked up at the hydrogen balloons under the ceiling. There were about five or six of them. He was staring at the space between the unicorn and the round, furry black ball.

There was no wind in the room, but the plush black ball began to rotate automatically, revealing half of its bluish-white face, which turned out to be a human face.

The ghost with only a head looked down from the ceiling, squinted his swollen eyelids, grinned at Tu Lanxun, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

The next second, N raised his hand and a stream of transparent air hit the human-headed ghost, who disappeared with a scream.

N started to throw a tantrum and lay down directly in the ocean ball pool, legs folded together, lying on his side with his back facing Tu Lanxun. He was really moody, "It's so annoying, there are balls everywhere!"

Before Tu Lanxun could figure out how to comfort him, Tang Weining's screams suddenly came from the bathroom.

"Ahhh! Miss! Help!"