Chapter 006: An Emotionless Exorcism Machine

Behind the glass, Qiao Qiao’s face was deathly pale, his eyes laced with bloodshot lines, but that smile—chilling to the bone.

“Hm?”

He tilted his head, gazing at his own ghastly grin reflected in the mirror.

“Already able to affect someone I’ve just met?”

A miscalculation?

He was no newcomer like Shinji Arai, easily ensnared by a lingering wraith. By rights, he shouldn’t be so quickly influenced.

Far from afraid, Qiao Qiao simply mulled over the problem.

“Qiao-san?”

Shinji Arai, seeing nothing, shivered uncontrollably as a cold draft swept by.

“Please wait here,” Qiao Qiao instructed, then, as if suddenly recalling something, asked, “By the way, Mr. Arai, have you insured your valuables?”

“Insurance?” Shinji Arai was perplexed.

“Yes, you know, exorcisms sometimes result in property damage. To avoid disputes later, I’d better confirm with you in advance.”

“Oh, it’s fine, do as you need. There’s nothing valuable in my house anyway.” Shinji Arai nodded, instinctively taking half a step back.

With his consent, Qiao Qiao walked through the living room toward the den—the very spot, it was said, where the home’s first owner had hanged himself.

Along the way, every reflective surface revealed that ghastly, white face, contorted in a hideous smile directed at Qiao Qiao.

Bzzzt—

The television flickered on without warning. After a burst of static, a black-and-white image appeared: a woman in white crawling across the floor.

Bang—

A window burst open, the night breeze billowing the curtains.

Clang—

A kitchen knife suddenly clattered to the ground, ringing sharply.

Click—

The light in the den flicked on, then off again in quick succession. In the strobing glow, Qiao Qiao glimpsed a pair of feet beneath the curtain.

The light went out. The house plunged into darkness.

It blinked on—those feet had vanished.

Darkness again. Clouds drifted away, moonlight flooding the room with a tranquil hush.

The light flared—and a face appeared before Qiao Qiao.

Ordinary features, but the eyes lacked whites, drained of all color, a tongue grotesquely extended, a deep violet bruise encircling the neck, clad in an old-fashioned suit, half a head shorter than Qiao Qiao.

A wave of negative emotion surged, clawing at Qiao Qiao’s heart: fear, anger, confusion, despair.

“Give me back my home, give it back, give it back, give it back, give it back, give it back, give it back!”

The wraith howled, hands stretching toward Qiao Qiao’s throat, ready to squeeze the life from him.

But in the next moment, the vengeful spirit froze.

A massive revolver was pressed against its head.

Normally, a spirit would have passed straight through the gun barrel, but this one could advance no further.

Qiao Qiao, at some unknown moment, had drawn the revolver from his bag and aimed it at the wraith’s skull.

Those negative emotions vanished without a trace.

His heart remained utterly calm.

He might have been an emotionless exorcism automaton.

Bang—

No words were needed.

Qiao Qiao squeezed the trigger.

The bullet fired, gunpowder igniting with a burst of flame within the cylinder. The projectile, warped and liquefied by the force, exploded on impact, scattering a spray of metal fragments and liquid in a radial blast.

The wraith was still lost in confusion.

No—it would never be confused again.

Because its head was gone.

Along with half of Shinji Arai’s bed.

The shell from Qiao Qiao’s gun did not just contain shrapnel, but also a concentrated crystal of spiritual water, devastatingly lethal to vengeful spirits.

By his own tally, each bullet, including the spiritual water crystal, carried five standard units of spiritual energy.

Enough to evaporate nearly any vengeful spirit encountered in the world.

This one was no exception.

“???”

Hearing the gunshot, Shinji Arai peered inside.

He saw a man in an old suit crumple slowly to the floor.

His head was missing.

Qiao Qiao stood over him, revolver in hand.

Were it not for the fact that the wound shed no blood—only scattered motes of light drifting away—Shinji Arai would have called the police on the spot.

“Wait a moment, Qiao-san,” Shinji Arai blurted out.

“Using a handgun… you can exorcise spirits that way?”

This shattered everything Shinji Arai thought he knew about the supernatural.

No—about reality itself.

“Of course,” Qiao Qiao replied coolly.

“Don’t your company’s games let you shoot zombies with guns?”

As an exorcist, it’s perfectly reasonable for me to use a firearm for this work.

That was the message behind Qiao Qiao’s words.

Shinji Arai was momentarily speechless.

He even found himself thinking Qiao Qiao’s logic was oddly convincing.

In “Biochemical Outbreak,” you could mow down zombies with a mere handgun.

If bullets can kill people, why can’t they exorcise spirits?

Without pausing, Qiao Qiao resumed his work.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang—

He fired five more rounds, obliterating the already fading spirit, leaving nothing behind—along with half of Shinji Arai’s bedroom.

Only when the wraith had completely vanished, even its final whispered obsession drowned out by gunfire, did he stop.

A breeze drifted through the open window, carrying away the scent of gunpowder.

In the moonlit room, all was still.

“Was… was all that really necessary?” Shinji Arai wasn’t upset about his bedroom; he just felt that the first shot had already dispersed the spirit, and the rest of it seemed excessive—almost like desecrating the corpse.

“Absolutely,” Qiao Qiao replied, still unsatisfied. He took a spray bottle from his backpack and misted spiritual water around as he spoke.

“In the past, an exorcist once used a talisman to drive out a wraith and thought the job was done. But the spirit hadn’t truly vanished—it possessed the family’s child. In the end, the entire family died tragically, not a single survivor.”

He spoke in earnest.

“The exorcist, wracked with guilt, took his own life. Unexpectedly, his soul became a wraith. It took me quite an effort to erase him completely.”

When the spiritual water was gone, Qiao Qiao lit a stick of soul-calming incense.

Its faint, soothing aroma drifted through the room.

“There’s a saying in China: ‘Pull up the firewood from under the pot’—to cut off the root of a problem.”

In other words, always finish the job.

If he could not grant the spirit peace, he could at least ensure its utter erasure.

Not a single trace left in the mortal world.

Seeing the devastation in his bedroom, Shinji Arai suddenly understood why Qiao Qiao had asked about insurance.

Having finished everything, Qiao Qiao turned to Shinji Arai.

The dark shadow that had clung to him had dissipated entirely.

“It’s over, Mr. Arai. You may come in now.”

At this, Shinji Arai tiptoed cautiously inside.

He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but the house, previously cold and foreboding, now felt warmer, brighter.

After settling the payment of two hundred thousand yen, Shinji Arai suddenly remarked, “Now that I think about it, that wraith was rather pitiful, wasn’t he? His company went bankrupt, his family fell apart, and he took his own life in the end…”

Maybe developing a horror game had made him more sensitive to such things.

Qiao Qiao did not respond.

He did not care about the story behind the wraith.

Perhaps the spirit had been betrayed by his wife, left with no way out.

Perhaps he’d been backstabbed by a partner, made a scapegoat.

Perhaps he was just a pawn, sacrificed in the games of powerful corporations.

None of that mattered.

Qiao Qiao had read countless ghost stories, all with spirits burdened by tragic pasts and bitter vendettas—villains with sympathetic origins, spirits who were moved, even helped humans, sometimes even fell in love.

Once, a novice exorcist had asked Qiao Qiao,

“Isn’t there such a thing as a kind-hearted wraith in this world?”

Qiao Qiao wouldn’t deny it. If one searched hard enough, perhaps a kind wraith could be found.

But to him,

Only those spirits who never appeared before humans could be considered good spirits.