Chapter 140.1: Replacement (Part One)

They went to Cang Street at night.

Chen Chuan, Wang Ban, and a few Security Bureau members dressed in plain clothes walked along the bustling street.

Street food stalls covered every inch on the sides, and shops with lanterns and all sorts of decorations for sale were everywhere. There were also lantern riddles, pitch-pot games, wrestling, amateur opera performances, and other activities. Sometimes, even fireworks lit up the sky in the distance.

It was really lively for a small county town. According to Wang Ban, things were at their liveliest during the Craftsman God Festival itself. Practically half of the population in the county town would come out to celebrate.

This wasn’t what worried Jia County’s Department of Administrative Affairs. They were afraid of things spiraling out of control, but they couldn’t just order people not to come out. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to enforce such an order.

The sight before them eased their tightly wound nerves.

Chen Chuan said, “You should buy something or at least snack on something. If you don’t buy anything, you might find yourself with a Knot of Hearts when you go back. It’s just a possibility, but I wouldn’t risk it if I were you.”

Wang Ban and the Security Bureau members were terrified and quickly went to the stalls to buy something.

Chen Chuan waited for them to come back before saying, “Alright. You don’t actually have to do anything tonight. Please just have fun at the night market.”

Wang Ban saw that Chen Chuan had not moved from his spot and asked, “What about you, Mr. Chen? Aren’t you... going to buy anything?”

“No,” Chen Chuan answered.

Wang Ban shuddered.

Chen Chuan did not buy anything, nor did he eat anything. When it was past 10 p.m. and they left the night market, he saw his second self blurring out a little. He reached into his pocket and touched something that had not been there before.

As I thought, it really came.

He drew the thing out of his pocket and brought it to his eyes. Just as he had guessed, it was a Knot of Hearts, but it wasn’t a new one. It was the one he found on the corpse during the day.

He had placed it in the car, but it had suddenly shown up in his pocket.

When Wang Ban saw him taking out the Knot of Hearts, he was shocked and asked, “Why did you take it with you, Mr. Chen?”

“I didn’t. It just showed up in my pocket,” Chen Chuan said.

“W-What?” Wang Ban’s voice trembled.

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

Chen Chuan’s calmness helped Wang Ban regain his composure. “What should we do next, Mr. Chen?”

Chen Chuan put the Knot of Hearts away and said, “We’re going to wait until tomorrow. In the morning, please go and see whether anyone died from the butterfly tattoos. If no one did, my guess is correct. If someone did die, we will need to switch tactics.”

Supernatural beings operated on set patterns, especially those that manifested among groups. Based on the timeline, he noticed that a person died every day since the first discovery of the butterfly tattoos ten days ago, no more, no less.

That gave rise to a question: What if the person with the Knot of Hearts didn’t die?

Chen Chuan’s Knot of Hearts belonged to someone else before it came to him, but this person didn’t die from the butterfly tattoos. Instead, he died because of an accident. Now that it had ended up in his hands, it broke the rules by which the butterfly tattoos operated.

He wanted to see whether the butterfly tattoos would just skip him and infect someone else or whether it would be unable to continue spreading without killing him.

If it was the latter, then as long as Chen Chuan didn’t die, the other infected wouldn’t die either.

But if it had no effect whatsoever, then he would have to do something else.

After they left the night market, Chen Chuan went to the hostel Wang Ban got for him, which happened to be the best hostel in Jia County. He went to the receptionist and asked her to step aside for a while so he could call Cheng Zitong and give him a general report of the situation. He also shared his idea on how to get rid of the butterfly tattoos.

“Using this accidental death as a key to solve the problem is a good solution, but if you do that, you’ll be shouldering the fight against the butterfly tattoos all by yourself. Are you confident you can do this, Xiao Chuan?” Cheng Zitong asked sternly.

“I’m confident, Mr. Cheng. When I was discussing things with Mr. Lei, he told me that I have a talent I wasn’t even aware of myself. I can withstand the onslaught from supernatural beings, and I do think it’s true,” Chen Chuan assured him.

“True,” Cheng Zitong said. When other people did supernatural-related missions, they needed to take long breaks in-between. They also felt weak after every mission. Yet his mentee did such missions frequently and came back from them full of energy. He also seemed to be growing more energetic after each mission, so Cheng Zitong believed Chen Chuan’s words.

Even so, he still gave a stern warning. “Even so, supernatural beings are dangerous. If a good swimmer can drown, then so too can supernatural-extermination experts die to supernatural beings. You may have quite a lot of experience under your belt, but be careful. If you run into any problems, call me.”

“Got it, Mr. Cheng.”

Chen Chuan hung up and went to his room in the hostel.

He had thrown away the Knot of Hearts before he stepped into the hostel, but when he entered his room, he found it at the bedside.

He was not surprised by this.

After all, this thing had to turn into a butterfly tattoo, but his second self absorbed all the damage from it, so it could only reappear beside him as the Knot of Hearts.

Throughout the night, he could sense a wave of energy continuously attacking him, but it wasn’t strong. It couldn’t compare to the Flying Head.

In the morning, Wang Ban ran into the hostel panting and gasping. After Chen Chuan opened the door to answer his urgent knocking, he said, “Mr. Chen, we found a body by the riverbank. He looks to have died from the butterfly tattoo.”

“Where’s the body?” Chen Chuan’s eyes narrowed.

“We sent him to the Forensics Division. We should get the results soon.”

Chen Chuan nodded. All he could do was wait now. The results would determine his next course of action.

At noon, Wang Ban came over and told him that the corpse had indeed died because of the butterfly tattoo, but the state of decomposition suggested the person had died at least seven days ago, not recently.

Chen Chuan thought about this and asked, “Did you discover other similar bodies?”

Wang Ban shook his head.

By the looks of it, his method was useful, but in order to be truly certain, he needed to observe for two more days.

𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

That night, the blurring grew in intensity, but that just made Chen Chuan perk up, because he had a feeling that he had done the right thing.

The next day, they didn’t find any dead bodies. Even though quite a number of people were reported missing or dead, it was not due to the butterfly tattoos, so it seemed like Jia County was no longer plagued by the butterfly tattoos.

Still, Chen Chuan continued staying in the county. That night, the intensity of the blurring increased yet again, to the point that it began stimulating his mutated tissue. Chen Chuan was now certain that he used the right method.

It was difficult to get rid of supernatural beings like the butterfly tattoo in one go. The most effective way to deal with them was to find the heart of the problem and get into a battle of attrition with it.

This was going to be a tug-of-war, and it would end with either the supernatural being draining Chen Chuan or him draining all the power from the source of the butterfly tattoos.

The first possibility was highly unlikely, because he was going to leave Jia County if he sensed that things were going awry. This was another way to deal with most supernatural beings—leaving the place where they were. Unless someone was controlling the supernatural being, the target could just leave their territory.

However, the people living in a densely populated county town could not just leave whenever they wanted.