An Out of Style Game
This was a feeling that Tang Luo would never experience. He wasn't filthy rich, but he didn't need to worry over the bit of money for his day-to-day needs.
Even after receiving the compensation sum from the demolition of their old family property and buying a new property, Zhang Yuchou's family still had a few hundred thousand yuan left over.
However, he was working by himself away from home. That money was his capital for when he got married in the future. He couldn't possibly use that money for his daily expenses.
Thus, he was the exact opposite of Tang Luo and had to live from hand to mouth.
"Yes, yes, yes." Tang Luo gave a few absolutely insincere sounds of assent and changed the topic to what he was here for. "You haven't told me what you encountered."
"Do you really believe me?" asked Zhang Yuchou.
"Do you want to reimburse the cost of my high-speed rail ticket and hotel stay?" Tang Luo mock-berated him in amusement. "Would I come all the way here if I didn't? Do I have too much money to spare?"
Zhang Yuchou didn't reply yes like what he used to do in the past. Instead, he replied with a serious countenance, "I've encountered a Dish
"Dish God?"
The Dish God, as the name implied, it referred to the god of the dish. This was a metaphorical term of address. As the saying went, "That which cannot be measured or predicted is referred to as God."
Its origin came from the
As time passed, it gradually evolved into a supernatural game.
In horror movies, it was one of the common death-seeking methods used by the main character's clique of friends, who were experts at death-seeking.
Other methods included but were not limited to going for vacations in chalets located in extremely remote areas, watching videos rumored to be cursed, accessing out-of-bounds buildings, exploring abandoned houses, and so on.
To put it in the perspective of modern science, games like the Dish God or Pen
Even local horror films provided a scientific explanation of "Everything was caused by human factors".
One must believe in science!
However, in the case of Tang Luo's life experiences, he had already long gone past the stage of shouting, "This doesn't make
Tang Luo gestured to Zhang Yuchou to continue. He was curious as to why this fellow would play such an out-of-style game.
That's right, among the younger crowd of this era, things like the Dish God, Pen God, and so on belonged to the category of games that had already gone out of style.
Even if they wanted to play such games, there were supernatural apps and the Mobile Phone God, weren't there?
One must keep up with times.
Local horror films were about the only ones left that clearly wished to prove these scientific theories right and continued to invite the presence of the Dish God and Pen God time after time with their fearless and indomitable spirits.
"I have a coworker who wanted to hint at his feelings and confess to the girl he likes through the Dish God," replied Zhang Yuchou.
"…"
After a second of silence, Tang Luo gave him a thumbs up. "What a f*cking talent!"
To have thought of using a supernatural game to hint at and confess his feelings, that guy must have been single for more than 20 years and received more than ten Nice Guy
"The girl he likes is a fan of the occult." Zhang Yuchou shot him down.
Tang Luo lowered his thumb. The world truly worked in fascinating ways.
"And then? So all of you went along with him and played the dish god game?" asked Tang Luo.
"We didn't really want to either." Zhang Yuchou had a defeated look on his face. "But that fellow's the assistant manager of our department, even though he's only two years older than me. He asked us to stay back until 12 A.M. and said that we were free to do anything we wanted in the meantime, including even going home, just that we had to return before midnight. Helping him out this one time would count as two sessions of overtime!
"That's 500 bucks, you know. Tell me, who could resist that?"
When he reached this part, Zhang Yuchou's tone of voice even became worked up.
What was big money? This was it!
To youngsters like Zhang Yuchou, who had been brutally whipped by society, even if they verbally rejected something, their actions were very true to themselves.
This might not be the case when they got older, though. Even if they wanted to, their bodies wouldn't be able to keep up either.
Thus, just like that, Zhang Yuchou and three other coworkers had stayed behind. Including the department's young assistant manager and the girl he was interested in, there had been a total of six people—four men and two women.
Although it hadn't been the standard setup of two men and two women, they could go ahead and play, nonetheless.
However, who knew that playing a simple game would lead to trouble instead?
The game had gone pretty smoothly that night. The confession had been successful too. But the manager had been so thrilled that he had ended up committing a taboo.
This so-called taboo was the rules of the game. For example, questions must be asked one person at a time.
After a round of questions, when the players were supposed to send the Dish God back, they must close their eyes and chant, "Dish God, Dish God, please go back," thrice.
At that point, the Dish God would reset to its original position.
Everyone must finish their questions before the Dish God could be invited to go back.
After inviting the Dish God over, one mustn't neglect the procedures in sending the Dish God back too.
The mistake they made was that they had discontinued the game right in the middle without allowing everyone to finish their questions and neglecting to send the Dish God back.
Even the girl who had been confessed to, had merely treated the supernatural as an interest and nothing more.
None of them had given much attention to this matter.
After the confession's success, they had packed up and returned home in anticipation of the overtime pay they would be rewarded the next day.
However, it hadn't come. What had come instead was the news of the assistant manager's death.
"Speaking of which, considering that all of you were playing this game in the middle of the night in the company, and someone even died as a result…" Tang Luo asked, "If the deceased hadn't been the one to suggest it, surely your boss would have been all ready to kill?"
"My boss is heartbroken," replied Zhang Yuchou. "The assistant manager of the department is his son. Otherwise, how do you think he got that position when he's so young?"
"…"
"Our office forbids office romances." Zhang Yuchou supplemented.
"I understand now." Tang Luo nodded.
Why was this pure and simple supernatural case so grounded in reality?
"I heard from others that the assistant manager's death was extremely horrifying, as if he had been cut 1,000 times. Blood was everywhere."
"How did he die?" asked Tang Luo.
"He was sliced to death by the shards of a broken dish," replied Zhang Yuchou.
"Eh?" Tang Luo raised his eyebrows slightly.
Zhang Yuchou said, "It's that dish which we had used that night, like a sauce dish but a bit larger than the typical sauce dish."
He reached out his arms with his fingers spread. Then, he drew his fingers together slightly, used his thumbs and index fingers to form a circle, and indicated the size.
"After the confession that night, all of us returned, respectively. No one remembers what happened to that dish," said Zhang Yuchou.
"Your coworkers' and your fingerprints should be on the dish, right?" asked Tang Luo.
Since they had played the game, fingerprints would definitely be left behind.
"Yes." Zhang Yuchou said, "When I was assisting with investigations, they told me that they managed to detect our fingerprints on the dish after much difficulty. But even so, the only fingerprints on it are ours."
"But just these factors alone don't really make it a supernatural incident, right?" replied Tang Luo.
Putting on gloves and using the sharp edge of broken ceramic crockery for murder was something a human could achieve.
"That assistant manager lived alone. The door was locked from the inside when he was found dead. There were no signs of wreckage in the house, just that the window was half-open. But even so, there's a metal railing outside," said Zhang Yuchou. "Also, when the shards in his home were pieced together, it was approximately 1/6 the size of the original dish."
How had the assistant manager's death been discovered?
Although everyone had worked overtime until midnight, they needed to report to work the next day as per usual, nevertheless.
The assistant manager hadn't shown up in the morning.
However, Zhang Yuchou and the rest hadn't found anything wrong with this. He was the son of the boss, after all. Skipping work for half a day wasn't an issue.
However, when he still hadn't shown up by the afternoon, that was when the boss had found it strange.
That assistant manager hadn't been a good-for-nothing son of the wealthy. It hadn't been entirely because of connections that he had been able to take up the assistant manager position.
His attitude toward work had been relatively serious.
He had rarely skived.
The boss-cum-father had called him, but no one had picked up. When he had gone knocking on the door of his residence, no one had opened the door either.
The moment he had opened the door, he had discovered his son covered in blood and lying on the floor of the living room.
The boss had almost broken down there and then.
"The shards that were found, when put together, form the shape of a pizza slice," said Zhang Yuchou. "It's roughly 1/6 the size of the dish. There happens to be six of us who were playing the dish god game that night."
His voice shook when he said that. His tone was also rather empty and hollow.
"Two days later, the girl that the assistant manager liked died too. Bloody shards were similarly found at the crime scene.
"Following that was the third victim.
"Three out of six people died! And shards were found at every crime scene."
"This has become a relatively malicious murder case," said Tang Luo. "Didn't the police send anyone to protect you?"
"They did." Zhang Yuchou broke out of his mood.
"So, a total of three people have died?" asked Tang Luo.
"That was originally the case." Zhang Yuchou let out a helpless laugh. "But three days ago, another one died all of a sudden!"
There weren't even seven days between the death of the assistant manager and the death of the third victim.
Zhang Yuchou resigned right away when the third victim was killed.
Uneasy and fearful, he couldn't focus on work at all.
His family had received compensation payment, so he still had a little something to fall back on.
The two remaining coworkers didn't quit their jobs.
Three days ago, one of the sole two survivors informed Zhang Yuchou that something had happened again.
It was the same method of murder. Same as the previous cases, shards were found at the crime scene too.
Zhang Yuchou had assisted with investigations the day before. He couldn't leave Xihang City either, because the police might need him to assist with investigations anytime.
This had already been elevated to a major case. Even a special investigation team had been established.
"Do you think it's the Dish God?" asked Zhang Yuchou, gazing at Tang Luo.
"Yes, it's possible," replied Tang Luo, even though he didn't find any signs of resentful aura lingering around Zhang Yuchou.
Fine… Tang Luo wasn't familiar with this.
"I'll just bless you for now," said Tang Luo.
"Bless?"
"Didn't I go out traveling? I met an impressive monk and learned the divine skill of blessing from him. It can eliminate impending ill-fortune and disasters and keep you safe." Tang Luo said in all seriousness.
"Sure, sure," replied Zhang Yuchou.
His state of mind was as though a rollercoaster—absolutely fine and joking around with Tang Luo one moment and then fearful, uneasy, and incredibly restless the next.
He even wore an amulet that he had gotten from a temple.
If Tang Luo wanted to bless him, then he was more than welcome to do it.
Even Zhang Yuchou himself couldn't tell deep down in his heart whether he truly believed that a terrifying Dish God existed or that everything was a result of human factors.
His world perspective that had been formed over all these years was on the brink of collapse.
If this was being superstitious, then so be it. Everyone was a pragmatist here.
People probably wouldn't believe in something like a Dish God going around murdering people.
However, if someone were to tell them that the stray cat in the neighborhood was actually a cat spirit and that it would turn into a catgirl to repay their kindness for feeding it, most people would definitely laugh and say, "Yes, yes, I believe you, where's the catgirl?"
The process of blessing someone was very simple. Tang Luo pressed his palms together with the Jade Lotus of Virtuous Merit in between and lowered his head. With his eyes closed, he softly chanted a sutra that Zhang Yuchou didn't understand.
Two to three lines later, it was over.
"What's the matter?"
Zhang Yuchou sensed very clearly that upon finishing the sutra chant, Tang Luo had lifted his head and given him a look.
It came across as a little unexpected.
"Nothing's the matter. Believe in my divine skill of blessing. It'll keep you safe for sure," replied Tang Luo with a smile.
Zhang Yuchou got up and said with a smile, "Let's go. I'll treat you to a meal."
With a friend visiting him, his mood was definitely a lot better.