Chapter 98: Bone Claw Annihilates Evil
The sky was just beginning to lighten, the night not yet completely gone, and the surroundings were still a gray expanse.
A figure wearing a mask stealthily circled a house, and only stopped in front of a star-shaped window after confirming no one was around.
It was Marcus, who had arrived under the cover of darkness.
He reached out and pushed the window; it was locked. He then took out a wire and carefully worked it along the crack for a few moments, before pushing again—still locked.
"Fine, I'll do it the hard way!"
Marcus placed his right hand on the window, flexed his arm muscles, and gave it a powerful push.
A cracking sound of wood breaking, accompanied by the clanging of a latch falling to the ground, and the window was violently flung open.
He used one hand to brace himself, nimbly and smoothly stepping into the house.
The living room wasn't large, and the lights in the room were already on, but rather dimly lit, clearly low-wattage bulbs used to save electricity.
For someone who was so frugal to forget to turn off the lights, something truly extraordinary must have happened.
Marcus glanced around the living room, finding nothing amiss. He walked past the yellowed beige sofa and coffee table, parted a beaded curtain, and entered the inner room.
A middle-aged man, dressed in gray-black work clothes and soaking wet, sat with his back to Marcus at the table, facing the wall.
He kept grabbing handfuls of rice from the rice cooker and stuffing it into his mouth, as if he hadn't eaten for three days.
Marcus ignored him, surveying the surroundings. There were two bedrooms.
One door was decorated with posters of pop stars and movie characters, clearly geared towards a younger audience; the other room was bare, its original oak finish showing, with a large dressing mirror hanging on the door.
Marcus strode towards the oak door.
He didn't want to acknowledge the man, but the man seemed to want to greet him.
The middle-aged man, facing the wall and shoveling rice into his mouth, disappeared.
As Marcus approached the door, his reflection appeared in the mirror.
Marcus's right hand twitched.
Just as he was about to turn the doorknob, Marcus's reflection in the mirror slowly turned its head, intending to face him.
Smack!
Marcus slapped the mirror with his right hand, causing it to emit a grating, middle-aged scream, release black mist, and shatter into pieces.
He glanced at his right hand; it was indeed quite useful.
After obtaining the fragments of Bug's claws, he hadn't chosen to glue them back together.
Instead, he removed the metacarpal bone from his right hand and placed the fragments of the claws that could have injured Lily, piece by piece, into his own right palm, choosing to only restore the connective tissue.
It was essentially a bone transplant; his right hand was now a claw. Now, after trying to slap Andrew, it seemed to work well.
He turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom, ignoring everything else, and immediately began searching the wardrobe.
At the very back of the second shelf, he found a package of clothes. Opening it, he found a black fragment about half the size of a hand, shaped like a mask mold.
The empty chair beside him suddenly slid and hurtled towards Marcus, who easily kicked it to pieces.
On the empty double bed, the sheet slowly swelled up to a height of one person, but Marcus didn't even glance at it.
He pulled out a crimson silver bag, placed the black fragment inside, stored it in his spatial storage, and turned to walk out of the house.
The sheet seemed to panic, lunging towards Marcus.
"Just waiting for you!"
This time, Marcus used his spiritual power in conjunction with his bone claws, creating afterimages as he grabbed at the sheet with a whistling sound.
The sheet was torn to shreds, and in the instant it was ripped apart, the bluish-black face of Andrew was revealed, but he too was torn to pieces along with the sheet.
"Pathetic!"
It's just a ghost that's only been dead for a few hours, not like Lily who's been dead for over a decade. How dare it come out and cause trouble?
Marcus climbed out of the window and walked all the way to the countryside before driving back to the hotel.
He had just gone to Jamie's aunt, Rachel's house.
Rachel had rushed to the police station because her husband, Andrew, was dead, found hanged at the town entrance.
Marcus had been observing the situation at Rachel's house because her husband, Andrew, was worshipping the fragment of the 'Soul Collector' that was left outside.
The reason he hadn't dealt with it earlier was because cutting off other escape methods of the Soul Collector and directly taking the fragment would be too obvious and easily alert the Soul Collector, causing the previous plans to fail.
Perhaps because of what Marcus had done earlier, the Soul Collector also sensed something was wrong. It actually killed Andrew ahead of time.
Marcus's previous plot had come to a perfect end. Now that the Soul Collector seemed to have noticed something was wrong, he quickly went to collect the fragment of the Soul Collector.
The core of the Soul Collector was suppressed beneath the ancient oak tree at the town's entrance. This fragment, which had been scattered elsewhere, possessed little power; at most, prolonged contact would bewitch ordinary people.
However, it caused the Soul Collector beneath the tree to be incompletely sealed, allowing some of its power to seep out and kill at the town's entrance.
Indeed, as Marcus had predicted, the Soul Collector totem lying beneath the tree now had blood-red light flashing in its eyes, looking utterly bewildered.
Jamie, the psychic he had chosen to complete the ritual, had disappeared for three whole days.
"Where could a girl run off to? Could it be that her uncle, Andrew, often beat her, causing her to run away from home?"
So the Soul Collector used the fragment to subtly guide Andrew to the town's entrance, and then, through the permeating power, hanged him.
"Your uncle may have often beaten you, but now he's dead. You should at least come back and see him!" the Soul Collector thought.
Lying beneath the tree, the Soul Collector pondered this, only to find its fragment suddenly vanished, completely devoid of feeling, its whereabouts unknown, its eyes blazing with red light.
Two hours later, it was eight in the morning.
Marcus received a call back from Father Samuel, who said he would eliminate the demonic entity causing trouble in the area.
Marcus asked Father Samuel to find more like-minded people, and he would cover all the expenses.
He mentioned that back then, Father Cross, along with two disciples, suffered one death and two injuries, but still failed to completely eliminate the Soul Collector.
Father Samuel was surprised to hear this and said he would contact his old colleagues in the clergy immediately to ensure the complete elimination of the Soul Collector.
In this circle, people of a certain age know each other very well.
After hanging up the phone, Marcus drove to the town where Andrew had died the previous night and first observed through binoculars.
Under the big oak tree at the entrance of the town, there was a dense crowd of people, with police tape and many police officers.
A stiff middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt was hanging from the tree. He was slowly lowered down. This figure had appeared briefly in a movie; he was Andrew's boss and a drug trafficking leader.
In the original story, he went to investigate under the tree out of curiosity about how Andrew was killed, only to be killed by the Soul Collector himself. Now it seems he's hit the jackpot again.
The middle-aged man in the Hawaiian shirt was placed on the ground, but he stood upright. A police officer wearing white gloves tried to push him, but the body didn't move.
Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment.
Soon, surrounded by a group of people dressed as local officials, a thin middle-aged man in a white button-down shirt, with a string of prayer beads and a cross pendant around his neck, entered the center.
It was none other than St. Michael's remaining priest, 'Master Alex'.
Master Alex frowned upon seeing the manner of the corpse's death, sensing something was amiss. He took out a blessed paper, drew a line in the air with it, and then placed it on the corpse. With a loud prayer, the corpse collapsed.
The others then stepped forward to handle the aftermath.
Master Alex gave a few instructions and turned to leave.
(End of Chapter)
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