Netherworld Investigator

Chapter 71

Our confrontation with the cat spirit almost got the best of us. But at least Huang Xiaotao brought back good news—Officer Liao got an arrest warrant for Yu Jun and several officers had been dispatched to capture him.

Knowing that we now had a few hours to spare since there was nothing else we could do at the moment, we returned to our hotel and rested. At about five o’clock in the afternoon, Officer Liao called and informed us that Yu Jun was now at the police station.

We rushed there immediately and saw Yu Jun in the interrogation room. His previous boldness and arrogance had been swept off his face. When he saw me, he pleaded, “Officer, please tell them to release me! I must hurry back home! There’s an urgency that I have to attend to in my family!”

“What urgency?” I asked.

“My... My wife is sick! I have to go back and take care of her...” he answered.

“Is it really your wife that you need to take care of?” I sneered. “Or is it your cat?”

I told him that Bai Yidao had been arrested, and that the Wealth Beckoning Cat was now in our hands. Yu Jun was extremely distressed by the news and pleaded, “Please give it back to me, I beg you!”

“Why?”

Yu Jun hung his head low and explained, “Cat spirits are extremely hard to tame. I must feed it with my own blood every day, otherwise it will turn against me and kill me!”

I glanced at his hand and the band-aids on his fingers. So it was just as I had predicted.

“Confess that you committed the murders,” I demanded. “Otherwise, don’t even think about seeing that cat again!”

“No, please! I know you have connections in high places, please help me!” He reached over and tried to grab my hand, but the police officer guarding him noticed it and shouted, “Behave yourself!”

“So you admit that the curse is real?” I looked at him and smirked.

Yu Jun was speechless and his face turned pale.

“As long as you confess to your crimes,” I repeated, “then I will let Officer Liao allow you to be bailed out as you await trial so you can go back and feed the cat.”

“You can’t use your authority as a policeman to force out a confession from me!” he shouted.

I decided not to correct his misunderstanding about my identity.

“Yu Jun,” I said calmly, “if the curse isn’t real, then why should we believe that you should be released lest you’ll be killed? This isn’t a threat. I’m merely acting out of simple logic.”

Yu Jun bit his lip and glared at me in contempt.

I left him to give him time to think. As we were exiting the interrogation room, Yu Jun laughed wildly and bellowed, “Wherever you keep the cat figurine, there will always be bloody calamities! Just you wait, all of you will die! All of you will die!”

His threats made the police officers uneasy. After talking it over amongst themselves, they asked me if it would be safe to keep the Wealth Beckoning Cat in the police station.

I didn’t believe a word of Yu Jun’s threats, and I didn’t think that the cat spirit was powerful enough to kill so arbitrarily and easily. On the other hand, I understood the officers’ concern, so I made a compromise and locked the cat figurine inside a car and parked it in the middle of the parking lot outside the police station. With that, everyone’s peace of mind was preserved.

We spent the rest of the day waiting in the police station and even had dinner there. We were locked in a silent psychological battle with Yu Jun— he either confesses his crimes and lives, or he can die in the hands of the Wealth Beckoning Cat!

Yu Jun remained silent and refused to confess. It was then already eleven o’clock at night. Everyone was nearly bored to tears, even our phones which kept us preoccupied for most of the day had almost run out of battery.

“The bastard probably won’t confess, dude,” said Dali. “He killed seven people after all. There’s no escaping the death sentence for him! What difference would it make if he gets killed by the cat today?”

“No,” I replied, “don’t underestimate a human being’s survival instinct. Even living for one more day is worth fighting for. I’m sure he’ll give in.”

Then a policeman suddenly ran towards us and cried, “Bad news! Something happened to Yu Jun!”

“What happened?” I asked.

“It’s hard to explain. Come over and see for yourself!”

We went to Yu Jun’s cell and saw him gripping the metal bars tightly until his knuckles were white, and he was bashing his head against the bars repeatedly. All the while he kept chanting, “I am the noble cat spirit! I am the noble cat spirit! How dare you imprison me in this cell! When midnight comes, each of you will drop dead like flies!”

The policemen were all petrified. Officer Liao worriedly suggested, “He must’ve been possessed by the spirit. There are too many officers in this police station. Perhaps we should transfer him elsewhere?”

The other police officers echoed his sentiment.

If Dali hadn’t been possessed by the cat spirit this afternoon, I might’ve fallen for Yu Jun’s act. But unfortunately for him, I saw through it immediately—this wasn’t the way the cat spirit behaved at all.

“Drop the act, Yu Jun,” I sneered. “When midnight comes, you’re the only one who will die!”

Yu Jun shook his head furiously and continued, “Impudent mortal! How dare you talk to a noble spirit like me that way! I will kill you! I will definitely kill you!” He pushed his head between the metal bars and the blood on his forehead ran down his nose, making him look like a wild beast.

“In a few minutes, I will use my power to make all of you kill each other!” he threatened.

As soon as he spoke, the atmosphere in the police station became tense. Everyone eyed each other nervously, seriously fearing that their lives would end by the hands of their colleagues.

I was not impressed.

“That’s enough, Yu Jun,” I said. “I have seen someone possessed by the cat spirit, and your acting looks nothing like it at all.”

My words almost broke Yu Jun’s character. His lips trembled and I could see his eyes darting around in panic.

“I know you’re trying to scare us,” I added. “You think that we’ll let you go for fear of the curse? Well, I hate to spoil your plans, but that’ll never happen. If you want to keep going with your acting, then go ahead. We’ll see who ends up dead by midnight.”

I called Huang Xiaotao aside and whispered some words to her, then told the rest of the room, “Everyone can leave the room now. I will deal with him myself!”

Officer Liao didn’t like the sound of that, but after my insistence, he and the rest of the police officers finally left. Huang Xiaotao looked at her watch and remarked, “Oh my god! Song Yang, there are only ten minutes left until midnight!”

Yu Jun glanced at the wall clock, sneered, and his confidence returned. He then continued his lame acting. This time he even shook his head and foamed at the mouth as he stated, “I, the noble cat spirit, will soon show you my power! If you heed by my orders, mortal, I will let you live. Otherwise, you shall perish!”

I took a chair and sat down in front of Yu Jun and snickered, “Only ten minutes left. We’ll soon see who will die—all of us, or just you!”

“Dude,” whispered Dali, “what if he’s not lying?”

“Impossible!” I replied with confidence.

Dali didn’t see what it was like when the cat spirit possessed him, so of course he was terrified and didn’t realize that Yu Jun was only acting. I told him to wait outside if he was afraid, but Dali insisted, “How can I just leave you here? Aren’t we bros?”

Time passed by, Huang Xiaotao suddenly exclaimed, “Hey, Dali’s gone!”

I looked around and didn’t find him anywhere, until I heard a rustling noise underneath the table. Dali was curled up down there holding his head and shaking.

“Idiot!” Huang Xiaotao and I simultaneously chided.

At that moment, there were only two minutes left until midnight.

Finally, Yu Jun couldn’t take it anymore and pleaded with a deflated tone, “I confess! I confess! I killed both of the families!”

“How did you kill them?” I asked.

“I wrote down their birth dates and star signs on a piece of paper, burnt them, and mixed the ashes with my blood and fed it to the Wealth Beckoning Cat. Then I placed the figurine in their house, and the cat spirit would emit a magnetic field to make the residents of the house go insane and kill each other.”

He then bit off a small chunk of flesh from his middle finger. I shuddered at how painful it must’ve felt. But he then stretched out his finger which bled profusely and begged, “Please take my blood and feed it to the cat now! It’s a cold-blooded beast and it’ll turn against me the instant I stop feeding it!”

“What happens next?” I asked.

“The figurine is just a cell to suppress its soul,” continued Yu Jun. “I drop my blood into the figurine every night to feed it. If I fail to do that, it will break through the seal and wreak havoc! I had to rent a house opposite of Huang Youcai’s to enable me to feed it in time. This cat spirit is especially wild and hard to tame. It is always fighting against me, trying to free itself from my control.”

I was fascinated. No wonder the cat spirit had fought us so fiercely to destroy the figurine that it was trapped in! It turned out that the cat spirit had been imprisoned and enslaved all along!

“Did you sneak into the home of the deceased every day to feed the cat spirit with your blood?”

“No, I didn’t have to drop my blood directly onto the cat figurine. As long as I dropped it onto the flame of a burning red candle within 20 meters of the figurine, the cat spirit would smell the scent of blood and feed off of it.”

“Where did you get this cat spirit?” I asked.

“From a wandering Daoist priest who sold it to me,” explained Yu Jun. He then grew ever more anxious. “Please, Officer, stop asking me questions for now and take my blood to the cat and feed it! I beg you!”

Compared to the arrogant and composed countenance that he wore earlier this afternoon, Yu Jun’s current desperate pleas made him look like an entirely different person.

I pulled out my phone from my pocket and handed it to him.

“Look at what time it is.”

Yu Jun did so and his jaw dropped.

I instructed Huang Xiaotao earlier to adjust the clock on the wall to be thirty minutes faster as the other officers were leaving the room. It was now only half-past eleven.

Plus, I had also recorded everything that Yu Jun said with my phone. This was enough evidence to be presented in court as proof that Yu Jun was a serial murderer!