PD -Chapter 79 The Person in the Sewer — Human Skin

Liu Xiaopeng was about to explain, but after thinking for a moment he just smiled, as if he didn’t intend to go into detail. He simply said, “Right now, the priority is still to clear Xiao Ming’s name.”

Then he turned to me and asked, “Brother Han, what do you think that thing actually is?”

I thought for a moment and asked him, “Have you ever heard of… the Painted Skin?”

“The demon from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio?”

I nodded and continued, “The story in Liaozhai about a female ghost who wears human skin as a disguise, walking among people and seducing young scholars—don’t you think this case is very similar to that?”

“There are many types of creatures in our folklore that can change their appearance. I think what we’ve encountered is likely one of them.”

Liu Xiaopeng kept staring at Xiao Xiao’s phone in his hand, as if he hadn’t heard me at all. After a long pause, he suddenly looked up and asked Xiao Xiao:

“The surveillance cameras captured him going in, so they should’ve also captured him coming out. Did you see any footage of him leaving?”

Xiao Xiao shook her head. “The police retrieved all the surveillance from that night. There was no footage of him escaping.”

“That’s strange,” Liu Xiaopeng frowned, glancing back toward the residential complex through the car window.

“Maybe… he climbed over the wall in the end?” Zhu Zhu suggested.

I immediately felt something click in my mind, then shook my head and denied it. “Impossible. The security guard was very lax at the time. If he really wanted to leave, the front gate would’ve been the fastest way.”

“Let’s go back in and take another look.”

With that, I opened the car door and led everyone back into the residential complex. We circled through it again, carefully inspecting every inch, trying to find any clue.

I walked them around several times, repeatedly checking the route from the murdered girl’s home to every corner of the complex. In the end, I discovered something at the deepest part of the courtyard wall—a manhole cover with obvious signs of being loosened.

I stepped on it and pointed at the marks along the edge to show Liu Xiaopeng.

“This was pried open not long ago,” I said.

Liu Xiaopeng thought for a moment, then we both reached down and lifted the cover together.

A foul, pungent stench immediately erupted from the opening. I couldn’t help but cover my nose.

“Brother Han!” Liu Xiaopeng pointed down into the shaft and called out to me.

I squinted and looked inside carefully. There was a patch of dark red staining the surface, looking like dried blood.

“Go down and check?” Liu Xiaopeng asked. Before I could answer, he had already taken off his jacket and thrown it aside.

I thought to myself, this brat really hasn’t given up on Xiao Xiao yet. He’s going into a sewer like this without hesitation.

And that left me in a rather awkward position. Why was I being so proactive? It’s not like anyone was going to appreciate it.

Still, considering Liu Xiaopeng had saved me several times, I couldn’t refuse.

So I followed his example, took off my jacket, handed it to Zhu Zhu, turned on my phone flashlight, and jumped into the sewer after him.

It was a stormwater drainage pipe—wide enough for a person to walk through while slightly bent over.

Because there had been no rain for days, there was very little water inside. We moved forward with our phone lights on, following the tunnel.

Even though there wasn’t much sewage, it was still a sewer. The smell alone was unbearable. Every gust of air flowing in from the entrance made it worse, and I almost felt like using a Daoist breathing suppression talisman to block it out.

Just then, Liu Xiaopeng, who was walking ahead of me, made another discovery.

Holding his nose, I watched as he crouched down and picked something up from the dirty water.

I frowned and leaned closer. In his hand was something blood-soaked, with patches that looked disturbingly like human skin.

My heart jumped—I thought there was a corpse in here. But Liu Xiaopeng casually lifted it up with almost no effort.

Looking closely, I realized it was a shriveled, empty skin bag…

As if an entire layer of human skin had been peeled off a body.

Liu Xiaopeng didn’t look disgusted at all. He simply frowned, shook off the slime on his hands, and spread the skin out over the sewage water. It floated lightly on the surface as he unfolded it completely. Even for someone like me, who had seen countless bizarre things before, the sight made my scalp tingle.

And yet Liu Xiaopeng was even bolder than I was. I had to admit—what the ancients said was true. The power of love really can make someone fearless.

After the skin was fully unfolded, the facial features were surprisingly clear. Nearby, we also found discarded clothing that matched what we had seen in the surveillance footage.

So Liu Xiaopeng concluded that this skin belonged to Xiao Ming.

“Is this really the Painted Skin ghost from Liaozhai?” he asked, still finding it hard to believe despite not being afraid.

I picked up a floating stick from the side and flipped the skin over. On its back, there was a long tear running down the middle. After thinking for a moment, I said, “This isn’t a Painted Skin ghost.”

Liu Xiaopeng looked at me in confusion.

I continued, “In Liaozhai, the Painted Skin demon kills a living woman and wears her skin as its disguise. But what we’ve encountered is something far more advanced.”

“What do you mean?” he asked quickly.

“Think about it,” I said. “If it were just like the Painted Skin ghost, it would only be able to peel off skin to disguise itself. Then Xiao Ming would’ve already been skinned. But he’s still sitting safely in detention.”

I pointed at the skin again. “Look at the tear on the back—it’s full of viscous fluid. What does that remind you of?”

Liu Xiaopeng thought for a moment, then his expression changed as he realized it too.

I nodded. “Exactly. Like a snake shedding its skin.”

“I suspect this thing is closer to something like the Monkey King’s Seventy-Two Transformations. It can replicate a person’s appearance based on memory. After using the skin, it sheds it like a snake, meaning it can reuse this ability repeatedly—cycle after cycle.”

I frowned.

If that’s the case, things are getting serious…

If we don’t find it soon, it will continue using this ability to commit more crimes. And by then, the number of victims won’t be limited to just Xiao Ming.