Chapter 139: The Knot Of Hearts

A shudder ran through Wang Ban’s body, and he immediately asked the driver to stop the car. Then, he leaned out of the car window and shouted his orders loudly while pointing at the bald man who just walked past.

The Security Bureau members immediately felt pumped. They were really irritated after the long patrol. Now that they finally found their target, they jumped out of their cars and charged over to pin the man on the ground.

Shocked and furious, the bald man resisted while shouting, “What’s this?! What are you doing?! Who are you?! Let me go!”

One of the Security Bureau members snarled, “Don’t you know what you’ve done?”

The bald man just looked lost.

When Chen Chuan saw this, he said, “We don’t need to be so rough with him. He should be just one of the people with a butterfly tattoo, not our real goal.”

His second self was only blurring out faintly, so this person shouldn’t be the source.

Wang Ban was still a little uneasy. He looked outside and asked tentatively, “But, Mr. Chen, could these people be...”

“Don’t worry. Supernatural beings don’t affect people through the usual means of infection. Otherwise, the butterfly tattoo would have spread through the entire county town already instead of having only such a small number of infected people.”

Honestly, it was a good thing that he had not found other such people even after coming through the place several times. It meant that the butterfly tattoos had not spread wide, but were acquired in a certain way.

Wang Ban relaxed, but didn’t get out of the car. He just said to the Security Bureau members, “Drag him into your car and see whether he has the butterfly tattoo.”

The Security Bureau members immediately brought the man into the car to check him from head to toe, and they did find a colorful butterfly on his back. Shocked, one of the members ran over and said, “Secretary Wang, he does have one!”

Wang Ban quickly turned to Chen Chuan.

“Ask him where he was today and where he was over the past two days,” Chen Chuan instructed.

Wang Ban relayed his orders and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Chen, these guys are the best at getting answers out of people.”

“Okay. Tell them to make sure he’s telling the truth, though,” Chen Chuan said.

Wang Ban cleared his throat. “Of course. He’ll definitely tell the truth.”

But as he pondered over this, he started getting worried and said awkwardly, “I’m just... going to take a look.”

Wang Ban came back after a while and said, “Mr. Chen, we got an answer.”

Since he knew that Chen Chuan didn’t know the area, he grabbed another map and circled the places on it. “Please take a look. The man went to these spots today...”

Chen Chuan scanned the map and took out the one he had to compare it with the routes the other butterfly tattoo infectees took. He only compared the bald man’s route with the ones who were infected within the past few days. There was no longer any way he could trace the routes of the older infected.

He circled an area where the infectees’ routes overlapped and pointed at it with his pen. “Let’s go there.”

Wang Ban took a look, and his expression changed abruptly. There was a bus station at the center of that area. Worried, he asked, “Could these people have come from other places?”

If that were the case, the area of their investigation would become much larger.

“That might not be the case. Let’s go over and take a look first,” Chen Chuan said.

“What should we do about the man we just arrested?”

“Let’s bring him with us,” Chen Chuan said.

Usually, after a supernatural source was dealt with, the ones affected by it would be fine, though they would suffer some side effects. This was out of Chen Chuan’s control. The only thing he could do was locate the source as soon as possible and get rid of it to prevent more people from getting affected.

“Alright.” Wang Ban got into the car again and instructed the driver to head to the location. The Security Bureau’s cars also followed along with the bald man in tow.

Since the place was not far away, they arrived in just a few minutes.

This time, Chen Chuan noticed his second self blurring out the moment he arrived. He looked toward a middle-aged man who was standing by the road with a briefcase in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He was about to start reading it.

“That one,” Chen Chuan said.

Wang Ban didn’t need any more instructions. He got out and ordered the Security Bureau members to arrest the man, who resisted furiously before they dragged him by the collar to one of their cars.

After a while, Wang Ban came back with puzzlement on his face. “We checked him, Mr. Chen, but he doesn’t have the butterfly tattoo.”

“He might not have it on his skin, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one on his internal organs,” Chen Chuan stated.

Wang Ban trembled and said, “I’ll go ask him.”

“I’ll go with you,” Chen Chuan said after some thinking. He got out too and was about to head to the car, but slowed down after just taking a few steps.

He checked his second self and noticed him blurring out faintly.

There’s still more!

He looked around. When the Security Bureau arrested the middle-aged man, all pedestrians went scurrying away in fright. Now, aside from their team, the street was empty.

He looked up. There were no tall buildings around. At most, there were just a few birds. If that were the case...

He looked down at the street, and his gaze eventually landed on a manhole cover.

Whatever was causing his second self to blur out was under his feet.

He walked over and spoke to Wang Ban, stunning him with his words. “Are you sure?” the man asked.

Chen Chuan nodded.

After some hesitation, Wang Ban said, “Alright. I’ll go make the arrangements.”

He looked around and found a shop by the street with a telephone, and he used it to make a call.

In just a little over half an hour, the maintenance workers from the Municipal Engineering Department came over and opened the manhole cover. In an hour or so, they dragged out a swollen, rotten, dark-green corpse. There were even maggots squirming on it.

When the Security Bureau members saw this and smelled the stench, even if they were already wearing masks, they still ran to the side to hurl.

Chen Chuan asked for a pair of gloves and went to the corpse. He searched around under the corpse’s clothes until he fished out a knotted string that had soaked in water for so long that it had turned white. The knotted string formed two large loops and two small ones, resembling a butterfly.

When he picked it up, his second self blurred out even more.

“Secretary Wang, do you recognize this?” he asked.

Wang Ban forced down his nausea and took a look. “The Knot of Hearts?”

“Is it common?” Chen Chuan asked.

Wang Ban thought about it. “One of the old traditions of the Craftsman God Festival is for women to weave these knots as love tokens. But the youth don’t really do this anymore. Only the older residents do it. Is it related to the butterfly tattoo?”

“I’m not sure. I need more information. Please bring the two men over,” Chen Chuan said.

When Chen Chuan did not seem interested in inspecting the corpse again, Wang Ban sighed in relief and immediately called for the two arrested men. He showed them the Knot of Hearts and asked whether they had seen something similar recently.

The bald man took a look and nodded. “I did. I went out to the night market the day before yesterday, and when I came back, I had this in my pocket. I don’t know who gave it to me.”

“Where is it?” Wang Ban followed up quickly.

The bald man scratched his head. “I threw it away. I’m a man, and my son is about as tall as I am. Why would I want this?”

The middle-aged man stared at the bald man and looked like he had something to say.

Wang Ban fixed his gaze on him. “You have something to add?”

“I got one too. I found it when I came back from the night market, but I never bought it. It just appeared in my pocket.”

“Where is it?”

The middle-aged man hesitated for a bit before he mumbled, “I gave it away.”

“To whom?” Wang Ban demanded.

“A f-friend,” the middle-aged man stammered, but judging by his reaction, Wang Ban could already figure out what exactly happened, and he sneered.

Chen Chuan came to a general conclusion. “Secretary Wang, please ask the infected in detention whether they saw or were in contact with something similar and how they dealt with it.”

“Okay, please wait here for a moment. It might take some time.” The mystery was starting to unravel, so Wang Ban felt motivated. He ran over to the shop to make another call.

Meanwhile, Chen Chuan spoke to the company driver. The man nodded and went to buy some drinks and cigarettes, then brought them to the Security Bureau members.

Chen Chuan took out a tube of nutritional paste and ate it before going over to talk to the Security Bureau members.

When they heard that he was related to a constable brigade commander, they immediately became much friendlier and more respectful toward him.

The title of a supernatural-extermination expert did not mean much to these Security Bureau members, but being related to a constable was a different matter. After all, the Constabulary was also part of the Department of Administrative Affairs. If these people wanted to become government employees, not only did they need a stamp of approval from the county’s Department of Administrative Affairs, but also to pass the Constabulary’s review. Right away, all of them started cozying up to Chen Chuan so that he would remember them.

A little over an hour later, Wang Ban came running back while sweating bullets. He handed a piece of paper to Chen Chuan and exclaimed, “Mr. Chen, we’ve asked them, and all of them have seen the Knot of Hearts. These are their testimonies.”

Chen Chuan looked through them. While the infected got the Knot of Hearts at different points of time, all of them shared one common characteristic—they found the knot after they came back from the night market, and they either lost it or gave it away.

After some thinking, he said, “They got the butterfly tattoos after they lost the Knot of Hearts... No. I wouldn’t say they lost it. Instead, I’d say that the Knot of Hearts formed on their bodies.”

Wang Ban was taken aback and cried out in fear and shock. “Are you saying that the Knot of Hearts is the butterfly tattoo?”

“It’s very likely. Secretary Wang, you’ve identified eight people who died because of this, and the first death was ten days ago, right?” Chen Chuan asked.

“Yes.”

Chen Chuan nodded. “If that’s the case, one person should have died per day, which fits certain patterns followed by supernatural beings. Ten people should have died if we start counting from ten days ago, which means that there should be two more...”

He trailed off when he remembered the corpse from the sewer. “Correction. We have one more undiscovered dead body, or they have been discovered but haven’t been reported.”

Wang Ban remembered something. “Wait. Something’s wrong. Mr. Chen, the corpse’s flesh...” He broke off to gag. “His flesh is still on his body; it didn’t turn into butterflies. He also still has the Knot of Hearts on him.”

“It’s precisely because he died beforehand that the Knot of Hearts was still with him and didn’t turn into a butterfly tattoo,” Chen Chuan stated.

Wang Ban realized what he meant. “Are you saying that he died because of other causes? I see. That must be it...”

As for how he died in the sewer? Perhaps the manhole cover was not around that day, and he fell in. That thought made Wang Ban feel ill at ease, and he quickly chased it away. “What should we do next, Mr. Chen?”

Chen Chuan looked at the sky and said, “I have an idea. If my deductions are correct, there’s a way to get rid of the butterfly tattoos.”