Frightening Joke: Above the Mist
Chapter 98 Love and Hate

Chapter 98: Chapter 98 Love and Hate

A line of police officers exited the elevator, with Bai Yanliang and Ren Wudao bringing up the rear while Yang Wanlong went forward to knock on the door.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

Yang Wanlong really was a bit impatient; he ignored the doorbell and directly banged on the door loudly.

However, despite his large movements, there was no reaction from inside the house.

Not home?

No matter if someone was home or not, Yang Wanlong was determined to open the door today.

"Cutting machine, battering ram, dismantle this security door for me!"

The officers behind him, without a word, began to work with the tools they brought.

After half a day’s effort, they were finally close to breaking open the security door.

"One, two, three, hit!"

Four officers crashed through the already-cut security door on cue.

The next moment, an unimaginable stench rushed forth.

"Ugh..."

Tang Guo turned pale; the instant the smell hit her nose, she began to retch until the entire scene inside the house unfolded before her eyes.

The newly-employed policewoman could not hold back and turned aside to vomit profusely.

The lavishly decorated room’s floor was crawling with a dense mass of white maggots, hardly a place safe to step.

After taking just a few photos, the officers could not help but bend over and start to retch.

This was the most natural human physiological response, very normal.

Even Ren Wudao, a medical doctorate, and Gao Fei, who regularly dealt with corpses, could not help but dry-heave twice.

Surprisingly, Bai Yanliang, who remained calmly composed, seemed particularly abnormal.

"Everyone out, let me in!" Gao Fei shouted.

As a forensic scientist, he knew how terrible the stench from a crime scene can be.

The officers taking photos quickly retreated; Gao Fei changed into a protective suit, donned latex gloves, and entered the room alone with an examination kit.

The sensation of stepping on the dense mass of white maggots was truly unpleasant.

Unable to stand waiting idly, Yang Wanlong instructed the officers to fetch a few more sets of disposable protective suits and handed them to Bai Yanliang and Ren Wudao.

The trio then entered the maggot-infested, stench-filled room one after another.

At this moment, Gao Fei bent down, picked up a few white maggots with tweezers, and placed them into an evidence bag.

Disgusting as they were, they could help determine the time of death.

Bai Yanliang and the others chose spots with fewer maggots to step; what had this room been used for?

Why was there no smell when she opened the door yesterday, yet today it’s suffocating with such a stench and so many maggots?

However, despite the disgust, apart from the maggots, there seemed to be nothing else in the living room, the source of the foul smell clearly not here.

Over there, after roughly examining the living room, Gao Fei walked toward the bathroom.

Bai Yanliang and the others followed, exchanged glances, and nodded before abruptly pushing open the bathroom door.

The scene inside the bathroom was shocking!

Even Yang Wanlong, who had been in law enforcement for many years and had witnessed a dismemberment case in his childhood, hadn’t seen such a horrifying scene in a long time.

The place could be described as downright dreadful.

The blood on the floor had congealed into a viscous state, the stench so intense it was hair-raising.

Ahead stood a bathtub, half obscured by a shower curtain, the showerhead still dripping water inside, with a large amount of black and brown clots pooled at the bottom.

Inside the bathtub were two bodies.

A woman, and a... should be a man?

Or rather, a headless human skeleton, covered with a swarm of flies.

In fact, as soon as the bathroom door was opened, a swarm of flies had already flown out.

Yet, the two highly decomposed bodies in the bathtub were still clearly teeming with flies.

The woman’s skin had already collapsed, or rather, the skin and tissues of her entire corpse had begun to soften.

Her hand drooped outside the bathtub, the muscles clearly decomposed, with tiny maggots crawling out from the back of her hand.

Her entire body was riddled with maggots that had drilled through her skin, a dense cluster, with each hole revealing their white forms burrowing in and out.

"Is it confirmed to be her?" Yang Wanlong managed to resist the urge to vomit and asked.

Ren Wudao and Gao Fei were somewhat overwhelmed and turned their gaze away.

Bai Yanliang, however, fixed his gaze on her and nodded.

"In her current state, she doesn’t look like someone who was alive yesterday; this clearly indicates she’s been dead for quite some time, could it be you all saw a ghost yesterday?"

Yang Wanlong admittedly made a point; a person alive yesterday couldn’t decay to such an extent in a single day.

Ren Wudao and Gao Fei frowned deeply, struggling to figure out why.

But Bai Yanliang knew that Yang Wanlong might be right; indeed... it was a "ghost".

Bai Yanliang stepped forward, where the liquid and blood remnants from the corpse were thick and sticky on the bathroom floor.

He discovered two knives by the bathtub.

Not fruit knives, but a... cleaver and a boning knife.

Both knives had bloodstains on them.

One body belonged to Lei Dongming’s wife, the other headless skeleton was almost self-evident.

The bodies at one end of the bathtub were revealed while the other end was obscured by the curtain.

Bai Yanliang stepped forward and pulled it open.

A swarming mass of flies flew out once again.

What was hidden at the other end of the bathtub now faced the four of them—

A pile of rotting, foul, skinned flesh.

Human flesh.

On top of the pile of decaying flesh lay two heads, barely recognizable as male and female.

"This is... Lei Dongming, Fu Yunqing."

Ren Wudao hadn’t even noticed, his voice a bit hoarse.

Cold sweat drenched Gao Fei’s back as he said, "What kind of deep hatred..."

Bai Yanliang turned his head and said, "This isn’t hatred, it’s love."

The three looked towards Bai Yanliang.

But he said nothing more and instead turned and left the bathroom.

Upon seeing Lei Dongming’s wife’s corpse, Bai Yanliang understood everything.

This was a woman who appeared submissive but was actually intensely possessive. After enduring Lei Dongming’s infidelities for a long time, her psychological stress grew and her emotions became increasingly unstable, leading to a complete distortion of her thoughts and actions at the end.

Lei Dongming probably never thought, until his death, why this woman, once so honest and gentle, had become so terrifyingly monstrous.

In reality, hardly anyone knew that those with the best temperaments and gentlest appearances can erupt with immense power when some taboo in their hearts is touched, so much so that they seem to transform completely into another person.

Bai Yanliang didn’t even know this woman’s name, but none of it mattered to him anymore.

The dark shadow on her body had left.

Perhaps... neither Hao Bowen nor the rotting form of her in the bathtub.

The two would transform into entirely different images, that twisted shadow surely did something.

What... exactly is it?