Human Skin

What kind of gaze was that?

Obsession, wonder, greed... as if a parched traveler in the desert had finally discovered an oasis, yet hidden within was something even more primal and cold, like a predator locking onto its preferred prey.

Such an expression was completely beyond the scope of an eight-year-old child—it even exceeded the boundaries of common sense.

Yue Shi and the assistant investigator beside him both paused in their tracks. No more words were needed; at this moment, they both intuitively and deeply felt the indescribable fear and certainty Mrs. Li had spoken of.

The little girl before them was definitely not as simple as having just "become well-behaved."

The young assistant investigator reacted quickly, immediately opening the silver-white suitcase and taking out a sophisticated supernatural detector. He aimed the scanning probe at the little girl on the bed, whose eyes were filled with fanaticism.

The device emitted a faint hum, and the indicator light glowed steadily—green.

"Green... green light?" The assistant investigator looked up at Yue Shi in disbelief. "The test results show... no abnormality?! There are no supernatural aura fluctuations."

This result was somewhat unexpected, as the intense sense of dissonance coming from Xiao Ya was certainly not fake.

The hope in Mrs. Li's eyes dimmed instantly, replaced by a deeper confusion and fear.

Yue Shi, however, suddenly remembered that when they dealt with the Parasitic Mushroom, the detector had also stayed green the whole time.

In the next second, beneath the hair covering his brow, a very faint golden vertical mark silently emerged.

In his Insight vision, everything around him was annotated with text information. Mrs. Li beside him had the label 【ordinary human】, and the same was true for the assistant investigator.

But when his gaze moved to Xiao Ya on the bed—

【A Human Skin】

It was actually 【A Human Skin】!

The cold text felt like a poisoned blade, stabbing him unexpectedly.

How could a living little girl display such information?!

After a brief moment of shock, a name suddenly flashed through his mind—Boss Pi!

It was said that Boss Pi enjoyed collecting human skins, could wear them to perfectly disguise himself as a human, and could even sell human skins by collecting the source, allowing other supernatural creatures to gain the ability to disguise themselves as humans.

He hadn't expected this unknown existence, whose movements were a mystery and whose appearance was unfixed, to suddenly appear before him like this.

If Xiao Ya was Boss Pi wearing a skin, then all the irrationalities would make sense.

The real Xiao Ya had already been murdered. This fake Xiao Ya only looked exactly the same but couldn't mimic the temperament of an eight-year-old child, which was why Mrs. Li had noticed the flaw.

Now, the greedy and burning gaze the fake Xiao Ya was giving Yue Shi wasn't looking at him as a person at all—it wanted to obtain a beautiful skin!

"Officers, Xiao Ya..." Mrs. Li's trembling voice interrupted Yue Shi's thoughts.

Yue Shi focused his mind, and the golden vertical mark on his brow faded away. He nodded slightly, his voice calm to the point of being cold. "I've identified the problem. I will handle it immediately."

Xiao Ya, on the bed, was clearly taken aback. A hint of bewilderment flashed through her fanatical eyes, as if she didn't understand the sentence.

The assistant investigator was also at a loss. "Identified what? The detector didn't even react."

Mrs. Li, however, acted as if she had caught a life-saving straw, excitedly grabbing Yue Shi's arm. "Officer! Then... what should we do next? Can my Xiao Ya still be saved?"

Yue Shi's gaze locked onto Xiao Ya, his eyes cold as frost. "She is likely beyond saving..."

Before he had even finished speaking, he struck without warning, moving like a bolt of lightning. The five fingers of his right hand clamped onto the little girl's slender neck like iron pincers, slamming her down onto the bed.

Under the suppression of absolute strength, Xiao Ya didn't even have time to react. Her small body was pinned down firmly, her little face quickly turning red and then purple from suffocation!

She kicked and scratched frantically with her limbs, but all her struggles were like an ant trying to shake a tree—fragile and powerless. Broken gasps squeezed out of her constricted throat, her eyes began to roll back, and her body convulsed!

"Ahhh!!!"

Mrs. Li's scream almost pierced their eardrums. Yue Shi's movements were too fast; by the time she realized what was happening, she lunged at him like a madwoman. "Let go of my daughter! You lunatic! Let her go!"

"Stop her," Yue Shi said without looking back, his voice calm.

The assistant investigator was stunned by the sudden violence, his mind going blank, but his body subconsciously followed the order, pinning down the out-of-control Mrs. Li from behind.

This was the basic professional conduct of an assistant investigator. In supernatural incidents, many incomprehensible phenomena often occurred. Transcendents might perceive things that ordinary people could not. Assistant investigators would not waste time foolishly questioning their words or asking for reasons; hesitating for even a second could very likely lead to irreversible consequences.

"Let go! Let go! It's murder! Someone is trying to kill my daughter! Help!!" Mrs. Li cried and struggled hysterically, her fingernails leaving bloody streaks on the assistant investigator's hands.

The assistant investigator was drenched in sweat. He couldn't understand this scene at all. While struggling to control Mrs. Li, he shouted in a breakdown, "Mr. Yue Shi! What on earth are you doing?!"

Yue Shi felt the fake Xiao Ya gradually losing her life force under his hand, yet he didn't forget to take a moment to comfort Mrs. Li in a polite tone. "Don't worry, the one I'm killing is not your daughter."

In this situation, combined with his cruel act of strangling the little girl, those words only made him seem more like a demon!

Mrs. Li's wails were filled with despair.

Finally, Yue Shi released his grip.

The "Xiao Ya" on the bed completely stopped struggling. Her expression was distorted, her eyes wide open, and her skin had taken on a terrifying bluish-purple hue. Her body lay limp, devoid of all signs of life.

Mrs. Li's legs gave way, and she collapsed to the floor, letting out a heart-wrenching wail. "Xiao Ya... my Xiao Ya..."

The assistant investigator sheepishly let go. Looking at the collapsed Mrs. Li and the scratches on his own hands, his face was pale as he muttered to himself, "What's going on? Did he just solve the person with the problem because he couldn't solve the problem itself..."

Yue Shi, however, did not relax in the slightest. His gaze remained firmly locked on the "Xiao Ya" on the bed, staying vigilant at all times.

In his Insight vision, the information appearing over the gradually cooling corpse of the "little girl" had not changed at all—【A Human Skin】.

What lay beneath that layer of skin?

Time seemed to freeze. The only sounds in the room were Mrs. Li's uncontrollable sobs and the assistant investigator's heavy breathing.

After waiting in silence for a moment, the corpse of "Xiao Ya" on the bed remained limp, displaying the gruesome hideousness of death.

Yue Shi's brow furrowed as he gradually lost his patience. He spoke to the small corpse, his voice low and carrying an imperceptible hypnotic resonance that seemed to pierce the soul: