Chapter 77: Proceed with Caution!

By the time Wu Lifu and the shaman woke up, it was already the next morning.

The Pursuit Team interrogated the two men, spending half a day before finally learning the details of Wu Lifu’s crimes.

Just as Peng Xiaoxiao and Xiao Fen had guessed back at the clinic, Wu Lifu had terminal cancer.

His first victim was that stranger from a year ago.

That same day, he returned from the city with his diagnosis and utter despair about his life.

Like most people in town, he had spent all his remaining money on talismans and ritual items for ceremonies. He had nothing left for treatment.

That night, as darkness fell and a storm raged, he missed the last town bus and couldn’t hail a ride.

The stranger happened to be passing by the highway in front of the town and kindly gave him a lift.

On the road, they chatted idly, and the man unwittingly learned of Wu Lifu’s illness. The stranger shared his own story: though an orphan, he had never given up, worked hard, made a fortune in business, bought a car and house, and had children. He urged Wu Lifu not to lose heart.

But this only ignited jealousy and rage in Wu Lifu.

As they neared the Town Entrance and were about to part ways, he suddenly lunged and seized the steering wheel.

The car veered off the mountain road and plunged into the water. Wu Lifu was a strong swimmer and dragged the man out. Enraged, the stranger cursed him as a lunatic once on shore, threatening lawsuits and jail time. In the end, Wu Lifu drowned him in Five Directions Stream.

“I wasn’t thinking much at the time. I just wanted to feel what it was like to drive a sedan. The most expensive vehicle I’d ever driven was a three-wheeler.” Wu Lifu rubbed his face. “I thought, if only that car were mine.”

The car sank into the water, and he had killed the man.

That day, he sat by the submerged car’s shore for an hour in the pouring rain.

Wu Lifu wandered home in a daze and overheard people talking about Guo Dongying exposing the “evil deeds” of Substitute Life Well. An idea sparked in his mind.

No one in town knew the dead man. Why not pretend he was someone from over a hundred years ago?

That night, he dug the body out of the streamside bushes and secretly tossed it into Substitute Life Well.

To make his plan convincing, he later deliberately misled the town’s elderly long-livers, solidifying the legend for him.

Standing before the well that night, the Substitute Fate Legend echoed endlessly in his mind.

According to Wu Lifu, it was as if his soul was calling to him, simulating the entire process over and over. The more he thought, the more feasible it seemed.

Exchanging his own life for a stranger’s short one was impossible, of course. What he wanted was an obscure borrowing-life legend from the older generation.

A weasel hollowed out a living person’s organs and flesh, slipped into the human skin, deceived heavenly tribulation that way, and because it gained a human fate, cultivated in human form with twice the results for half the effort, ultimately ascending as an immortal.

Wasn’t that a perfect example?

He had poured all his savings into the Five Directions God. Now that he was sick, the god should ensure the legend worked.

In the dead of night, he braved the rain to Guo Dongying’s house, lured him to the dam, and knocked him out.

He took Guo Dongying’s jade pendant and began a year-long nightmare of imprisonment.

He targeted Guo Dongying for one reason: the man had a good fate.

Around the same age as Wu Lifu, Guo Dongying had become town mayor. And not long before that day, Wu Lifu heard he was being promoted to the city with a major position due to his excellent performance.

Meanwhile, after twenty years, Wu Lifu was still just an ordinary dam manager.

He envied Guo Dongying and greedily coveted his life.

So, he planned to borrow it.

He made extensive preparations.

First, he picked an auspicious day. Extremely superstitious but inept at fortune-telling, he failed for days. Then he decided the Five Directions God’s birthday during next year’s Temple Fair would be perfect.

Second, he honed his skills. He often assisted the Wild Boar Guy next door and knew skinning by heart. He built a shack in Guiwu Forest, imprisoned Guo Dongying there, and practiced on animals he hunted for a year.

A month before the Temple Fair, he grabbed Du Yutong as final practice.

He skinned her alive.

“Rumors say live skinning is most effective. If not possible, a dead one works too.” At this point, greed still flickered in Wu Lifu’s eyes. “As long as you wear it before they stop breathing, heaven mistakes you for them and lets you take their place.”

Because of this, though terrified, the thought of the vitality surging through him like a child’s made his knife plunge unhesitatingly into Du Yutong.

As the Temple Fair approached, an unexpected problem arose.

The H Country Program Crew arrived to film, announcing road closures and restricted access.

The fair was during that time.

He worried he couldn’t even reach the neighboring village.

When he got the Program Crew’s reminder text, his heart felt like it was being clawed.

His illness couldn’t wait.

Guo Dongying was on the brink of death.

Neither might survive until next year’s fair.

So, the day before the Program Crew arrived, he transported the barely alive Guo Dongying home and hid him. On Temple Fair day, he summoned the shaman home for a ritual.

After donning Du Yutong’s skin, he felt no improvement and suspected a missing step.

Otherwise, people carrying cowhide bags and wearing horsehide shoes would have cow and horse fates.

There must be a ritual step he forgot.

“When the shaman saw the dying Guo Dongying, he wanted to call the police right away. I knelt and begged him, pleading for mercy. I’m not even forty, haven’t married, haven’t risen to power or enjoyed wealth. How could I die?” Wu Lifu choked up pitifully. “Luckily, he was moved and taught me the method.”

The shaman said one person wasn’t enough; he needed five, one for each Five Elements direction as sacrifice. The Five Directions God would absorb their bazi, suppress their living souls. Those dead couldn’t enter reincarnation or the book of life and death, allowing the human skin to steal fate from heaven.

The shaman had made it up to buy time, planning to escape and rescue Guo Dongying later.

Wu Lifu took it seriously and followed through.

“He could barely stand. I just chased after to clarify details: Did it have to be in the directional spots? Did they have to be alive? Before I finished, he panicked, tripped, and slit his throat on the cleaver.” Wu Lifu clutched his head in despair. “He died with eyes wide open, blood pooling everywhere. I stood there for half an hour before I could move.”

The shaman died in his home.

The whole town of Tengcha would kill him for it.

Even confessing this in the interrogation room, he sobbed like a child, insisting it was an accident.

What followed was much as Fang Si Ting had deduced. Even dead, the shaman’s corpse retained magical power to deter the malevolent ghost in the well from interfering.

Amid the storm and night, he loaded the body and unconscious Guo Dongying onto his three-wheeler, covered them with black tarp, prepared the Bloody Eight Characters, and planned an on-site ritual and skinning at the well—he was proficient now, just twenty minutes needed.

But that night, Substitute Life Well was unusually busy with mishaps, especially the Pursuit Team patrolling like they knew something, until near midnight when he panicked and drowned Guo Dongying to silence him.

His original plan relied on the town believing the legend again after last year’s incident, attributing it to ghosts and avoiding the body by the well, making skinning easy.

But the Program Crew dismissed the town’s tales, dissected the body, and stored it at the clinic.

“Substitute Life Well couldn’t stand me stealing its soul, so it summoned outsiders to sabotage!” Wu Lifu raged. “That malevolent ghost deserves to die.”

“It’s already a dead ghost,” Fang Si Ting reminded him.

Dead beyond dead—how could it curse him?

When scaring Zhong Houwang, he unluckily got spotted by Lu Kaiyu.

In a flash of quick thinking, he claimed the shaman was being reborn, freeing himself from the old shell to grow a new body from the neck that was now just a flap of skin.

The feed would be Guo Dongying.

The shaman’s immortality secret had always been a mystery. Lu Kaiyu, who believed him his whole life, was temporarily fooled. Together, they hauled Guo Dongying to the well and tossed him in eagerly.

Later, he lured Lu Kaiyu home, knocked him out, skinned him, swapped the corpse with Guo Dongying’s to get his skin, dug up Du Yutong from a month ago, and buried her by Yellow Springs Road per the shaman’s instructions.

As for the shaman, dead was dead. Guilt wouldn’t help, so he skinned him too and put it to good use.

“I figured the shaman was wood fate, I was water… Don’t laugh; there’s basis. Think about it—why did I always escape during storms? Heaven’s water aided me; I’m blessed by the gods.” Wu Lifu analyzed earnestly. “Our elements generate each other; I should absorb his magic.”

All live stream viewers: “…”

【Logic forms its own closed system—clear and meticulous thinking, yet utterly deranged.】

【This brain circuit would need its own page in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Too abstract.】

【The scariest part is a sane-sounding madman. Nowhere to reason with.】

“I never imagined our fates meshed so well that the shaman revived.” Wu Lifu broke down crying. “How could he come back? I saw him die with my own eyes.”

“Dead and reborn—that’s the fate I’ve always wanted.” A ruthless smile twisted his tear-streaked face, like a desperado on a path of no return. “If killing him once worked, killing him again will too.”

As a local, finding the shaman was easy. He knocked him out and took the Guiwu Forest path back to town.

“First time, I miscalculated. He wasn’t wood; he was fire fate. We clashed.” Wu Lifu said. “Sure enough, I got caught right after Refectory Hall. He’s my natural nemesis; we’re fated enemies.”

Fair enough; that tracked.

“Who caught you?” That was what Fang Si Ting wanted.

Terror flashed in Wu Lifu’s eyes. The once garrulous man clammed up, refusing to speak.

No matter how the Pursuit Team pressed, he curled up, shaking his head in horror, silent.

Seeing no answers forthcoming, Fang Si Ting called it off.

Next, they handed the criminal to local Vice Squad Officers. Untrusting of town locals, he called city officers to escort him away.

Viewers from H Country and Y Country buzzed in discussion. Some departments vowed intensified education against superstition in remote mountain towns.

In vast society, shadows lingered in unseen corners, waiting for discovery.

Without the Program Crew’s shoot, those skinned victims would have vanished into endless twisted legends passed by word of mouth.

No Escape popularized cutting-edge forensics, infallible criminal profiling, while unwittingly exposing society’s darker underbelly and cracking down on crime.