PD -Chapter 69 Bloody Mary

“Do you know… where the funeral is being held?” I poured a drink for the trainee forensic examiner and asked.

Zhang Haiyu frowned at me, probably finding it a bit strange. “Bro, academic research is one thing, but a funeral is a serious matter. Don’t tell me you’re planning to open the coffin and do an autopsy there? Even if I told you, the family would never let you do something like that!”

“Heh, that’s not what I meant. I was just asking casually.”

To avoid raising the forensic trainee’s suspicion, I quickly laughed it off and raised my glass, finishing it in one go with him.

“If you want to say it, say it. If not, forget it.” Zhu Zhu rolled her eyes and tossed out a remark at Zhang Haiyu.

The atmosphere at the table instantly dropped to freezing point. I was about to smooth things over, but after a brief silence, Zhang Haiyu actually told us the location where the funeral would be held the next day.

It seemed Zhu Zhu had him completely figured out—but he wasn’t stupid either. The time and location of a funeral weren’t exactly confidential, so telling us didn’t really count as a violation.

Having gotten what we needed, I didn’t ask any more sensitive questions. We chatted casually for a while, and the meal quickly ended. After returning to the office, I decided to have Liu Xiaopeng go with me the next morning to take a look.

The next day, at Heyi Mountain Cemetery, the funeral was underway.

I had hoped to get lucky and spot something unusual from the corpse, but as expected—the body had been cremated instead of buried.

At this moment, the ashes had already been placed into the tomb, and the family was performing the farewell ceremony. A group of people dressed in black stood in front of the grave. The funeral was unusually quiet.

From the scale of the ceremony, it was clear the deceased belonged to the urban middle class. The funeral… felt very Western, without the noisy suona bands or traditional rural rituals.

Liu Xiaopeng and I were dressed in black suits. We blended into the crowd and stood with the deceased’s relatives and friends, silently paying our respects in front of the tombstone.

“Who are you two?” A clear voice suddenly rang beside my ear just as the ceremony ended.

I was startled. I thought no one had noticed us, but it seemed we hadn’t escaped the family’s attention after all.

I looked up and saw two girls walking toward us—one about seventeen or eighteen, and the other much shorter, maybe around ten years old.

The older girl looked at me and asked, “I’ve never seen you two before.”

For a moment I was at a loss for words. My eyes darted around, and I noticed both girls were wearing mourning armbands—clearly close relatives of the deceased.

“You’re… Uncle Sun’s daughters, right? We used to work with your father,” I said after quickly improvising. “Uncle Sun was a good man… it’s just… his passing was too sudden.”

Of course, I had made that identity up on the spot. Even the deceased’s name, Sun Bin, was something we only learned from the tombstone.

“Thank you for coming,” the girl said softly, seemingly convinced, lowering her head slightly.

“Your father… how did he suddenly get a cerebral thrombosis…?” I tried to probe.

“I’m sorry… my sister isn’t in a good state right now. I’ll take her back to rest,” the older girl frowned slightly and said, pulling her younger sister close.

From her reaction, I felt she was hiding something, but the situation didn’t allow me to press further.

Suddenly, the younger girl began to cry.

Looking at us, she said, “My dad didn’t die from a cerebral thrombosis… his death… might be my fault.”

Tears streamed down her face, filled with guilt and regret.

“Sun Yutong! Don’t say that! This has nothing to do with you!” the older sister immediately shouted.

“Yutong, what exactly happened?” I asked gently. “Tell us in detail. Maybe we can help.”

“Before Dad died… we played a game we shouldn’t have… I used the mirror to summon Bloody Mary!” she said while wiping her tears.

“I stood in front of the mirror and called her name three times… she came out of the bathroom mirror and took my father’s eyes…” The girl was already sobbing uncontrollably.

“Don’t talk nonsense! This isn’t your fault! How can you believe something like that? It’s not your fault!” the older sister immediately crouched down, holding her sister’s face.

“Stop crying,” I said as I also crouched down. “Your sister is right—there’s no such thing as Bloody Mary in this world. Your father’s death has nothing to do with you. Besides, he didn’t actually summon Bloody Mary, right?”

At that moment, a woman in her thirties walked over. Her eyes were swollen from crying; she was likely the deceased’s wife. She immediately called the two sisters to leave with her.

I stood up and watched their retreating figures, lost in thought.

Bloody Mary is a supernatural entity from Western folklore.

According to legend, if you summon Bloody Mary, she can reveal the future. It is said that if you stand in front of a mirror and call her name three times, she will appear.

Sometimes she is harmless—you only see her reflection in the mirror, and she answers your questions.

Other times, she is extremely vicious, scratching and clawing people with her nails, tearing off their skin with fangs, killing them or driving them to suicide.

She can also trap people inside mirrors, and is especially known for gouging out eyeballs. Different versions exist with different details.

Based on the girl Yutong’s account, she and her sister had invited several friends over that night to play truth-or-dare…

After she lost, her sister dared her to hold a candle in the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror, chanting Bloody Mary three times, just like in a horror movie they had watched.

“Isn’t Bloody Mary a Western thing? How could it appear here?” Liu Xiaopeng asked what I was also thinking.

In truth, whether gods or supernatural entities, they are essentially formed from human belief and natural spiritual energy. Positive faith gives rise to gods, while negative fear gives rise to ghosts and malevolent entities.

But because Eastern and Western cultures differ greatly in beliefs, their supernatural systems are usually very different. So something like Bloody Mary appearing here was highly abnormal.

“Well, honestly, it’s not that surprising anymore,” Liu Xiaopeng sighed. “Forget Bloody Mary—Lucifer himself has come here to form alliances. What else is impossible?”

Hearing that, I became even more certain that this matter was not as simple as it seemed.

Perhaps Bloody Mary’s appearance here was connected to the alliance between Lucifer and the Five Direction Ghost Emperors.

Could it be that the fusion between Eastern and Western underworld realms has truly begun?

I began to believe more and more that the Ghost King and Lucifer might be hiding behind this incident. This was absolutely the best chance for us to uncover them.

So this case… we had to investigate to the end.