“What?!”
After a momentary silence, Gu Daosheng and the Ghost Infant spoke in unison.
The human lowered his head; the ghost raised his. As they locked eyes, both saw the utter absurdity of the situation reflected in the other’s gaze.
Gu Daosheng was so shocked he wanted to fall flat on his back with his legs kicking in the air. At the same time, he swore with both hands and feet raised to the heavens, “He is not my child with you!”
The Ghost Infant followed suit, roaring, “I am not your child!”
What kind of thing is trying to be my parent?! The little ghost’s hair flared up in a burst of flame. He kicked his soft, short legs with all his might, swinging himself up and down like a pendulum. “You brat! What did you do to me?! Hurry up and let me move!”
“Put me down! I’m going to eat him in one bite! I’ll show him how vicious a ghost’s heart can be! He can actually see me; human eyes aren’t supposed to be able to see me at all! Fine, I’ll just eat him!”
This little ghost had a history of eating people. Gu Daosheng naturally couldn’t let him go, and he even planned to keep him around for a while.
The next second, Gu Daosheng realized something was wrong. Even more shocked, he grabbed the Ghost Infant by the scruff of his neck and held him up in front of Lou Hongchen’s face, thrusting him forward like a kitten or puppy. “You can see him?!”
The Ghost Infant’s face was shoved right up against his, magnified several times over. Lou Hongchen gazed down at him with a cool, detached expression. The gentle smile he had worn while saying “our child” still lingered on his lips, giving him a lingering trace of warmth.
Yet his eyes were utterly cold, as if they contained a hidden iceberg. Or perhaps he had just returned from the Yellow Springs, his body saturated with the chilling mist of the Wangchuan River. The cold had seeped into his very bones, a deep, haunting chill that pierced the hearts of the living and the hearts of ghosts.
The Ghost Infant’s bravado deflated by a good two-and-a-half meters. The fiery fur that had been blazing on his head suddenly died down, lying flat and docile against his back.
His body went limp as a rag doll, dangling from Gu Daosheng’s hand like an ornament. He swayed back and forth in the evening breeze, trying to distance himself from Lou Hongchen.
“…Put me down. I want to go back to my grave,” the Ghost Infant murmured, his mouth pouting as he was on the verge of tears.
“Yes. I can… see you,” Lou Hongchen said, leaning down to meet the Ghost Infant’s eyes. He began to recount things from before he was three. “When I was little, my health was poor. I could always see things that others couldn’t.”
Those women who were nominally his stepmothers had never seen him while they were alive, but after death, they saw him every month, once a month.
The Ghost Infant mumbled, “Liar, he’s definitely lying. No kid has ever seen me…”
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been unable to make even a single little ghost friend his own age, much less have caught Gu Daosheng, who could see him, to play with. This was a Heavenly Master; playing with him the wrong way would get you killed. Now he wasn’t dead but had still been caught. Throwing himself at someone really did end badly.
No man was any good.
Gu Daosheng didn’t hear him muttering and asked Lou Hongchen suspiciously, “He’s been playing here all day, running around so annoyingly. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“After I grew up, I couldn’t see them anymore. I thought it was all fake, hallucinations.” Lou Hongchen took the Ghost Infant charm from Gu Daosheng’s hand and, without a word, carried it himself.
A few knuckles inevitably brushed against the back of Gu Daosheng’s hand. Gu Daosheng felt a bone-chilling cold. Even someone born with a cold constitution wouldn’t be this cold. Lou Hongchen said, “Sheng Sheng, can I put him on the floor?”
The Ghost Infant was bound by talismans, its movements restricted. Gu Daosheng wasn’t worried about it escaping. He took a step east, standing tall with one hand clasped behind his back, his gaze sweeping the area. He lifted his chin and said, “Put him down.”
He chuckled. “Isn’t he your child? You decide what to do with him.”
It wasn’t Gu Daosheng who felt the prickle of annoyance; it was “Gu Daosheng” inside. The Little Celestial Master sensed this and asked, “Who did you conceive him with?”
“He’s not… my child. You can’t conceive a child,” Lou Hongchen said without a change in expression, feeling a twinge of guilt for his earlier joke. “I was afraid you’d be scared after hearing about the other young ladies who died, so I wanted to tease you a bit.”
Ghosts have no physical form; whether they run or float to scare people depends entirely on their mood. Now, thanks to Gu Daosheng’s talismans, the Ghost Infant had fully materialized and could stand upright.
But he didn’t.
The moment his legs touched the ground, the Ghost Infant collapsed with a splat, sprawling out in a tiny, star-shaped heap. This was his way of showing Gu Daosheng how much he disliked this strange man, Lou Hongchen.
Lou Hongchen lowered his head and asked, “Do you… recognize me?”
The Ghost Infant puffed out his cheeks, holding his breath. His eyes were now clearly defined, black and white. When Gu Daosheng had first met him, the Ghost Infant’s eyes had been in their “Underworld Eye” form, with the pupils white and the sclerae black, a grotesque reversal of yin and yang. Now, however, his eyes were normal: the pupils were black and shone with a startling brightness. After knowing him for a few days, this was the first time Gu Daosheng had observed the Ghost Infant from such a close distance.
The Ghost Infant stared up at the clear night sky with his black-and-white eyes, playing the part of a “Barbie” doll. Hearing Lou Hongchen’s words, he pretended to be a little fool, a child too young to understand adult matters, and feigned muteness.
Lou Hongchen said calmly, “If you don’t speak, I’ll strangle you to death.”
Such threats would only frighten human children. What use did they have against a ghost child? Gu Daosheng found the exchange amusing.
“…Don’t know you,” the Ghost Infant said in a muffled, husky voice.
Gu Daosheng: “…”
His ears immediately perked up. He didn’t interfere or stop them, focusing all his attention on Lou Hongchen as he continued to question the Ghost Infant.
This little ghost definitely knows a lot.
Lou Hongchen: “Then why did you tell Sheng Sheng that I’m not a good person?”
The Ghost Infant looked speechless. “…I can tell you’re no good. You’re seducing him.”
Gu Daosheng: “…”
What kind of nonsense is this little ghost spouting? he thought. How could a kid his age even understand a concept like that? What a joke.
“Yes,” Lou Hongchen said, “I am indeed seducing him.”
Gu Daosheng: “…”
The Ghost Infant declared, “You want to get him killed.”
Lou Hongchen frowned. “I do not.”
“You’re trying to screw your dad’s little wife, and you’re telling me you don’t want to get him killed?” The Ghost Infant’s argument was sound and logical. He should have been firm, using his childish voice to issue a thunderous condemnation of such an immoral and depraved act. But as Lou Hongchen’s expression gradually darkened, he looked less like a living man in the night. The Ghost Infant’s voice began to tremble, losing all its strength, sounding pitiful and weak.
Lou Hongchen fell silent for a long moment, unable to think of a retort. He suddenly grabbed the Ghost Infant by the collar and yanked off his little bowtie.
The man showed no fear of the ghost, his anger turning cold.
“Come on, eat me.”
“Didn’t you say you were going to eat me?”
“Eat me. Right. Now.”
“Hurry up and eat me.”
“Waaaaah!” The Ghost Infant burst into tears, his voice a sharp, long, and resentful wail that pierced the silent night. He howled like a banshee, “I want to go back to my own grave, let me go home, waaaah, Mommy, even a desecrated grave is better than this, I want to go back, !”
“Hey, hey, Hongchen… he’s only two or three years old. Don’t scare the kid,” Gu Daosheng hurriedly stepped in to separate the two, one man and one ghost, acting as a mediator.
He pressed one hand against Lou Hongchen’s chest, pushing him back, while his other hand reached forward to scoop up the Ghost Infant. “We’re humans; we shouldn’t stoop to the level of a little ghost. Give the little ghost back to me.”
After his plea, he lowered his head to look at the Ghost Infant, whose face was now a tear-streaked mess. His eyes were filled with utter bewilderment: How strange. A vicious little ghost that actually eats people is scared into crying like this just by a few questions from Lou Hongchen.
As soon as they were away from Lou Hongchen, the Ghost Infant immediately stopped crying. His instinct to seek good fortune and avoid evil broke through the faint power of the talismans. He scrambled on all fours, wiggling his limbs as he coiled himself tightly around Gu Daosheng’s arm, refusing to let go.
“Sorry, I lost my composure,” Lou Hongchen said, staring at a spot on his own chest. He seemed lost in a dream, unable to snap out of it for a long time. After a moment, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.
He covered his chest, treasuring the lingering warmth of Gu Daosheng’s hand as if no one else existed.
Night had completely fallen. It would be improper for others to see the family’s eldest young master spending almost the entire day with his own stepmother.
“I have to go, Sheng Sheng,” Lou Hongchen said obediently. When he looked up again, his expression was back to normal. With a tone that brooked no argument, he pointed to the Ghost Infant clinging to him. “I want to take him with me.”
Before Gu Daosheng could even refuse, the Ghost Infant paused for just a second before wailing at the top of his lungs again. Tears fell freely, more abundant than the waters of the four great oceans.
They flooded the ground.
“I don’t want to go with him, Good child, you’re the best! As long as you don’t give me away, I’ll be your slave, your ox, your horse, I’ll never cause trouble again, You can play with me if you want, and if you don’t, that’s fine too, I’ll help you catch other ghosts, You’ve only caught half a ghost so far, when will you ever get to go back to the mountain? With me, it’s different! With me, you have the whole world, I’ll never betray you, not until the day you die of old age, I’ll still be your ghost pet, Waaahhh, Mommy, ”
Every word of the infant’s wailing made Gu Daosheng envision himself. When things were fine, he’d declare, “I am a genius master, a divine charlatan.” When trouble struck, he’d cry, “Master, save your good disciple! I’ll be so filial to you from now on!”
This utterly unscrupulous behavior pricked Gu Daosheng’s conscience, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to hand over a fellow rogue.
“Ghosts have heavy yin energy. It’s not good for them to stay with humans; he’ll affect you.” Gu Daosheng’s ears ached from the wailing. He turned his head away, but finally, unable to take it any longer, he reached out and pinched the Ghost Infant’s mouth shut, turning him into a little duck. After hearing a few muffled “puddu” sounds, he rejected Lou Hongchen’s request and told him to go back to sleep.
The deep, walled courtyard of a family that had already seen ten wives die was an eerie place at night. A chilling wind had already begun to whistle through the grounds.
Lou Hongchen didn’t argue with his stepmother and remained relatively obedient. “Alright,” he said.
Only after he finally departed, pausing every three steps to look back with lingering reluctance, did Gu Daosheng finally achieve some peace. His ears and mind felt much clearer now. But the breath he had just released in relief was instantly held tighter as a realization struck him.
Lou Hongchen hadn’t even asked why he could see ghosts.
It was as if he had known all along… that Gu Daosheng wasn’t the “Gu Daosheng” he was supposed to be.
“Sheng Sheng,” Lou Hongchen suddenly reappeared, standing far off outside the courtyard. The pale crescent moon hung low in the western sky. Gu Daosheng felt as if he were being stared down by a ghost. “We will see each other again tomorrow. I want to know… why you chose to marry my father.”
“When that time comes, you’d better explain it well.”
“Good night.”