Another night of wind and snow.
Inside the silent room, the sound of cold wind occasionally forced its way through the gaps in the window lattice.
Tang Li lowered the bed curtains, barely managing to block out some of the cold. She lifted the quilt and squeezed in beside the person on the bed.
“……”
Yuchi Shuang spoke first. “You are not going home today?”
Tang Li hesitated for a moment and pulled the quilt tighter around herself. She did not want to get too emotionally involved with any NPC in the original story. Paper figures did not have feelings. Rather than seeking sympathy, it was better to extract more information and complete the system task as soon as possible.
So Tang Li put on a bright smile, rolled over to face Yuchi Shuang, and deliberately blinked her innocent doe-like eyes.
“…Does my sister not like staying with me?”
“……”
Yuchi Shuang considered herself a cold-hearted person who did not like being close to others, but this suddenly adopted “younger sister” was like a chirping little sparrow, constantly breaking into her world.
She closed her eyes and replied helplessly, “As you wish.”
The little sparrow beside her only stayed quiet for half an incense stick of time before breaking the silence again.
“Sister, I can’t sleep…”
“Mm.”
Tang Li rolled under the quilt, turning over several times, but still could not fall asleep.
She sat up slightly and leaned close to Yuchi Shuang’s ear, gently tugging at her sleeve as she asked in a soft voice.
“Sister, are you asleep? Can you talk to me for a bit?”
“……”
Yuchi Shuang truly had no way of dealing with her. With her eyes still closed, she responded, “Mm.”
Tang Li carefully organized her thoughts. She needed to extract information from Yuchi Shuang without letting her notice.
After a pause, she tentatively asked, “Sister, what is Gu Sorrow?”
There was not much detail about this in the original story. When she asked the system, she did not have access to deeper plotlines. The main story revolved entirely around the male and female leads’ romance, and she had never touched any deeper side plots. Even the system had no clear understanding of it.
The only thing the system revealed was that it was a terrifying power. In the original story, Shen Mo defeating Wen Shuyu, who held the imperial tiger tally, was inseparable from this force.
Yuchi Shuang remained silent for a long time. Just when Tang Li thought she had fallen asleep, she finally spoke.
“The evil of Gu is called a curse. Once ingested, it becomes confused, causing strange phenomena and disaster.”
“…?”
The archaic, formal phrasing made Tang Li’s head spin. She understood every word individually, but put together, they made no sense at all.
Fortunately, Yuchi Shuang continued.
“When a living person is afflicted by Gu Sorrow, they lose their original consciousness and perform actions that ordinary people cannot understand. In some places, common folk privately call them monsters.”
“Oh, oh, I get it. So it’s kind of like a parasite.”
Tang Li shivered slightly. She had always been afraid of insects.
In modern times, there was even a ghost story about brain worms crawling into people’s heads through their noses while they slept and eating their brains.
Yuchi Shuang did not understand what “parasite” or “dormitory” meant, but she did not dwell on the unfamiliar terms.
“It is similar, but also not.”
Yuchi Shuang opened her eyes and patiently explained.
“Gu Sorrow has a mother gu and a child gu. It itself has no distinction of good or evil. The mother gu is confined to a vessel for its entire life.”
“But if someone with intent places the child gu into a living or dead body, the vessel carrying it will undergo strange changes and gain unnatural power. That is when disaster is born.”
Tang Li listened intently, her eyes widening in shock.
“…C-Can you even put this on dead people?”
“Yes.”
Yuchi Shuang seemed to recall something and continued carefully.
“The Guanyin Gu of Wuyou Township is like this.”
“…What is that?”
Tang Li had heard bits and pieces about recent incidents in town, but she had never expected something so bizarre.
“It is a clay figure. The Ghost Guanyin in Daoist robes is half-rotten, with only half a head remaining. The rest of the body is made of yellow soil mixed with straw, molded into a human shape.”
“…What?”
Tang Li felt goosebumps rising all over her body as she listened, though she was the type who was both scared and unable to stop listening.
“It… it walked around in broad daylight as a dead thing, and it was killed that day, right…”
“It is not dead.”
“Hmm?”
Yuchi Shuang continued, “A corpse affected by the child gu is different from an ordinary dead body. I only destroyed part of its body. Its limbs and torso are still missing.”
“That is why I have been worried it might continue to cause harm. If it is not found, the child gu will keep killing to nourish the mother gu.”
“?!”
This is way too hard to kill!
Tang Li trembled as she spoke, “So… this town is always in danger…”
Yuchi Shuang nodded.
Tang Li completely broke down.
This Gu Sorrow was far more terrifying than she had imagined.
She only had one fragile life left.
Being forced into a strange world was already bad enough, and now she was told there were killing threats everywhere?
She slumped onto the pillow, almost crying in grievance.
She regretted it. Deeply.
What Gu Sorrow. What clues to the Prince’s rebel faction.
She was done.
Wen Shuyu, you better handle this yourself. As the original story’s final villain, you can deal with it alone!
“Who is it!”
Yuchi Shuang suddenly pulled back the bed curtain and shouted sharply toward the outside.
With a bang, the broken window was slammed open by the wind.
A half-asleep Tang Li was instantly jolted awake. She clearly saw a long, thin figure crouching on the courtyard wall outside.
A pair of blood-red eyes, not human at all.
Yuchi Shuang immediately threw on her outer robe, grabbed the Condensing Frost Sword beside the bed, and rushed out.
Tang Li knew her limits. If she followed, she would only get in the way and force Yuchi Shuang to protect her.
So she obediently stayed in the room.
After Yuchi Shuang left, she pulled the bed curtains tightly and curled up under the quilt.
Plop!
A faint dripping sound suddenly echoed in the empty room.
It grew clearer and clearer.
Tang Li’s body went weak. Cold sweat slowly rolled down her forehead as she covered her ears with the quilt and desperately recited every deity she could think of.
“Nameless Buddha… Vajra Bodhisattva… Jesus… God…”
Suddenly, the dripping stopped.
Instead, an eerie sensation filled the air.
Trembling, Tang Li opened her eyes.
She looked down. A pair of cold, wet hands was gripping her ankle.
Chai Family Medical Clinic
Wen Shuyu stood under the eaves not far from the clinic, retrieving a slip of paper from a messenger pigeon’s leg.
It was a report from Peiying.
He untied the string and scanned it quickly.
A few days ago, he had fled in embarrassment after that strange, overly sweet nightmare, even leaving behind his ghost mask. It could be described as quite a mess.
He had originally intended to abandon his other identity as well, the fool A’Niu, but Peiying’s message stated that the remnants of the Prince’s faction were still lurking nearby, seemingly plotting something larger.
Things were becoming more serious.
He could not rest assured about Tang Li’s safety, so he picked up the basket again and resumed his role as A’Niu, the fool who had gone out to sell pastries.
“Sir!”
Hasty footsteps approached from behind.
Wen Shuyu calmly folded the letter and, with a flick of his hand, the messenger pigeon flew out from under the eaves, circling twice before heading north.
“What happened?”
He turned around, looking at Yuchi Shuang, who was rushing over. He remembered Tang Li had been avoiding him these days and constantly clung to this woman.
It seemed she had even acknowledged her as a sworn sister, always calling her “sister” endlessly, to the point that the entire clinic knew of their close relationship.
From inside the room, he had even heard their conversations under the grapevine trellis. Unlike the noisy Tang Li, this woman seemed quiet and reserved.
Seeing her so flustered was unusual.
“Sir! Miss Tang is missing!”
“What did you say?!”
Wen Shuyu’s expression changed instantly.
Yuchi Shuang, catching her breath, quickly explained.
“Last night, Miss Tang stayed in my room. A Gu Sorrow intruded into the courtyard. I went out to chase it.”
“When I returned, Miss Tang was gone!”
Regret filled Yuchi Shuang’s eyes.
She should not have left Tang Li alone.
The Ghost Guanyin had deliberately lured her away, circling her with a decoy while the real target was elsewhere.
She had been tricked.
Without hesitation, Yuchi Shuang turned and rushed back.
When she pushed open the room door again, the interior was deathly silent.
The candle had gone out. The room was pitch black.
On the floor were pools of sticky blood.
The bed curtains were torn open, the quilt thrown aside in chaos.
The bed was empty.
Tang Li had disappeared.