After seeing the old man collapse, the skinny man went over to check, confirmed there was no hope, then turned back with some resignation and said, "I'm just saying, Po Jun, you could have let me finish asking the questions before hitting him. What do we do now? When we go out, you tell Director Gao yourself."
The tall man was Po Jun, whom I would come to know several years later. He lowered his head and pretended not to hear.
At this point, Hao Wenming—the skinny man—paused, blinked, then continued, "Just say that the old geezer slipped and hit his temple on the desk corner, killing himself. Remember, you and I were just trying to scare him. Nobody actually touched him." Hao Wenming repeated these instructions carefully.
Then he turned to Old Mo and said, "After standing face to face with him for so long, you're still on your feet. I gotta say, your luck isn't bad." He stepped forward and helped Old Mo out of the autopsy room.
Outside the forensic department, Hao Wenming took Old Mo directly out of the police station. The duty room was empty now; the officers who had been chatting with Old Mo earlier had apparently disappeared. Old Mo's heart started pounding—if he called for help now, nobody would hear him.
Once outside, Old Mo saw two men standing side by side near the police station entrance. One was his own father. Seeing Old Mo come out, the other man—a somewhat older, plump fellow—said to Old Mo's father, "I told you it'd be fine. See? Your son came out intact, didn't he?"
Seeing only Old Mo brought out, the plump man frowned and asked the skinny man, "Why just bring him out? What about the main guy?" Before Hao Wenming could answer, Po Jun suddenly interrupted, "I knocked him dead with one stick."
Po Jun did not follow Hao Wenming's plan at all. Hearing this, the plump man's face immediately darkened. He glanced sharply at Hao Wenming and demanded again, "I didn't hear you clearly. Say that again."
Hao Wenming forced a smile and said, "That old rascal... that Gao guy slipped on his own, hit his head on the table corner, and killed himself."
"Oh." The plump man nodded, then looked at Po Jun again and said, "Why didn't you say that in the first place? Had me asking twice." Then he turned to Old Mo's father and said, "Old Mo, I consider this a favor returned from back then. The rest will be handled properly by my people…"
Only then did he look seriously at Old Mo. That look seemed to reveal that he had noticed something unusual about Old Mo.
Old Mo still felt like he was dreaming. He glanced at the three men and asked, "Can any of you tell me what actually happened?"
The plump man smiled faintly and said, "Now's really not the time to talk about this. But don't worry, you'll know everything sooner or later."
Later, after Old Mo joined the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation and reviewed the files of the old man Po Jun had beaten to death, he finally understood that Hao Wenming's words were no exaggeration. The old man's name was Gao Mancai, and he was essentially a centuries-old cunning figure.
Before Liberation, Gao Mancai had been a low-level official in the local Kuomintang government. After the Liberation, he was investigated for a time, then assigned as a security guard at a local middle school.
During the subsequent political campaigns, Gao Mancai was mostly left alone due to the insignificance of his former rank. During the Cultural Revolution, the school auditorium where Gao worked was used as a warehouse to store confiscated belongings from "class enemies."
Gao Mancai had helped move confiscated goods and took a fancy to a small kang table. At that time, supervision of these seized belongings was lax. Taking advantage of the empty nights, Gao secretly moved the little table back to his home. Initially, he didn't think much of it—until the political movements grew more intense and finally targeted him personally.
At the peak of the political campaigns, most of the so-called "black five categories" had been repeatedly criticized and struggled over multiple rounds. Authorities began re-examining those previously overlooked. Gao Mancai's former employment under the Kuomintang before Liberation was discovered, and the school's revolutionary committee had already summoned him for questioning. It seemed inevitable he would soon be publicly denounced.
Gao grew nervous. According to procedure, the home search would happen within two days. Taking advantage of the remaining time, he searched his house thoroughly that night. Except for the small kang table—laden with feudal, corrupt symbolism—he found no contraband. That table had to go. Gao planned to disassemble it during the night and burn the parts as firewood, so no one would suspect it had ever been in his home.
He didn't expect dismantling a small table to be so troublesome. To avoid disturbing neighbors, Gao dared not use an axe or saw, not even turn on the lights to avoid suspicion. In the pitch dark, he used a kitchen knife bit by bit to unscrew the four table legs. When he began splitting the tabletop, he discovered a hidden compartment—a thin oilcloth package was concealed inside.
Inside the oilcloth was an ancient book of unknown age. The paper had been specially treated; despite its age, it had not decayed. Unfortunately, the book's title and some early and late pages were stained by oil, rendering the text illegible. Fortunately, a dozen or so pages remained intact, with clear writing. To avoid alerting neighbors, Gao covered his head with a blanket and used a flashlight to read the ancient text.
Gao had dabbled in the I Ching in his youth. Though never mastering it, he had a foundation, so he roughly understood the contents of this similar esoteric book.
The book recorded some so-called "heterodox" Taoist techniques. Most were trivial, but one was astonishing—a technique that could transfer another person's lifespan onto oneself. Theoretically, it solved the mortal problem of immortality. However, the method had many restrictions, and much of the lifespan was lost during the transfer. If a full lifespan was transferred, less than a tenth actually remained; over ninety percent disappeared mysteriously.
Gao treated the book like a myth and didn't believe it. But one illusion-causing technique caught his interest. After hiding the book in a public restroom, Gao inexplicably set up the technique at his front door. The next morning, when Red Guards came to raid his home, only Gao himself appeared normal. As soon as they stepped in, the others seemed to search the air, fumbling around for over half an hour before giving up. Of course, they found nothing.
From then on, Gao fully believed the book. But constrained by the times, he dared not try the techniques openly. The Cultural Revolution ended, but Gao remained an old bachelor living alone. By then he was almost seventy and in poor health. A hospital exam later revealed terminal lung cancer.
At this point, Gao gave up and resurrected the ancient book, beginning to study the lifespan transfer technique.
Once he started practicing the technique, he couldn't stop. Initially experimenting on pigs and dogs with no effect, Gao then tried humans. The first time, he used a spell combined with a confusion technique to transfer a homeless man's life to himself. The homeless man immediately died; Gao's aged appearance became youthful again. A hospital check showed his cancer cells vanished. Unfortunately, the effect lasted less than a year before his body quickly aged and the cancer returned.
Having tasted success, Gao targeted children next. After cruelly transferring a child's life to himself, Gao lived five more years looking young. When his old appearance returned, he sought the next victim. This cycle repeated for over thirty years until his case finally drew the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation's attention. Investigators Hao Wenming and Po Jun were dispatched.
Gao's luck ran out—he chose the wrong people to cross. Though initially disoriented by Gao's illusions, Hao Wenming as the Bureau's lead investigator quickly tracked Gao down.
Except for the lifespan transfer, Hao Wenming dismissed Gao's other minor tricks like confusion spells. Hao and Po Jun captured Gao alive. Po Jun even broke Gao's spells. Although Gao might still transfer lifespans, his youthful appearance would never fully return. Po Jun's verdict: for someone who harmed even children, no need to bring him to the Bureau alive—just kill and bury him. But Hao Wenming was intrigued by the ancient book and wanted to bring Gao in for interrogation.
On their way back to the capital with Gao in custody, they were in a car accident. Hao was knocked unconscious; Po Jun was trapped inside the wreckage. Gao jumped through the window and fled. At that moment, Gao looked decrepit, his body near collapse. In front of Po Jun, Gao transferred the life of a passing boy to himself. The boy collapsed while Gao vanished.
Though he escaped, Gao's body deteriorated. Lifespan absorption became less effective—only about ten to twenty percent of the transferred life remained, and the trend worsened.
His lifespan renewals became more frequent. Where once he waited years between transfers, now he needed new victims every one or two months. This time, his greed led to trouble.
After killing the chosen victims with dark magic, Gao couldn't immediately absorb their lives. He placed their bodies in an extremely yin (阴) place, allowing him to slowly draw their lifespans. Otherwise, the magic would backfire—as when he transferred the boy's life before, resulting in his current condition.
Because Old Mo and his colleagues took three of Gao's recent "lifespan supply" corpses, Gao changed tactics. That same night, he turned the forensic surgery room into an extremely yin convergence point. Then he used a confusion spell on the director's soul, transferring it into the third corpse.
That night, the director thought he was dissecting the third corpse. In fact, he was cutting open his own body, removing organs one by one, and eventually writing his own autopsy report. After finishing the report, Gao appeared to end the confusion spell. Seeing his tragic condition, the director's soul did not seek revenge on Gao but instead resented Old Mo—if Old Mo hadn't disappeared suddenly, it would have been Old Mo dissected that night.
The shadow Old Mo saw after midnight was the director coming to demand revenge. Fortunately, Old Mo's father knew some methods to repel evil, saving Old Mo's life.
By yesterday evening, Gao had completed his life transfer with the three corpses and the director in the surgery room. But his greed stirred again when he noticed Old Mo's vibrant life force. Unluckily for Gao, besides Old Mo, two of his greatest enemies also showed up...
After this event, Old Mo was deeply unsettled by what he saw that night in the surgery room. His heart developed a minor condition—enough to make him unsuitable for forensic work.
He approached the police chief and requested a transfer. A few days later, he was reassigned directly to the capital, joining an organization called the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation.