A shadow was punched out of He Yu’s shadow. It curled up on the ground in a tiny lump, like a small stone.
He Yu was about to punch it when he suddenly sensed an emotion coming from this thing.
Grievance, fear, and also an eagerness to please.
He Yu froze for a moment, bared his little white teeth, and raised his fist at the Shadow-Devourer again!
Don’t even think about tricking me!
The little black lump trembled, both anxious and aggrieved: I’m not the Shadow-Devourer that was hiding under the flowerpot!
Huh?
He Yu lowered his hand. “Speak! What’s going on? Confess honestly!”
This matter had to be told starting from a few days ago.
At that time, the Shadow-Devourer had thought He Yu was an ordinary person, and hid inside his home, preparing to eat his shadow while He Yu slept in order to heal its wounds.
In this world, a person’s shadow is also the reflection of their spirit and possesses paranormal qualities. A person whose shadow is eaten will, at best, become dazed and confused, and at worst, lose their soul and spirit.
Since shadows possess such qualities, they naturally also possess power. The Shadow-Devourer had crashed headfirst into Bronze Mask’s shadow. Not only did it fail to get a delicious feast, it nearly got devoured itself. If it hadn’t run fast, it wouldn’t even have lived to see the Jiang siblings arrive.
This was also why it hadn’t fled, and hadn’t split off a shadow.
The injuries were rather serious.
Most of the Shadow-Devourer’s body was spontaneously swallowed by the shadow. Its consciousness was ground away, but a few of its qualities were left behind. These qualities stayed within his shadow and gradually developed a bit of spiritual intelligence, becoming the little guy before him.
It grew from within He Yu’s shadow, and could only survive within He Yu’s shadow. Every second it spent away from the shadow, it grew weaker. If He Yu were to die and the spirit within his shadow withered, it would not be able to survive either.
The little black ball carefully stretched upward from the ground, like a sprouting seed, and elongated itself into the shape of an amaryllis. On top it bloomed several flowers, black ones with a velvety texture. Classy! Grand! Opulent! It swayed toward He Yu, trying to please him.
He Yu: A little tempted!
Black flowers are so precious!
He reached out and touched it. Ah, it really did give a feeling of “this is my shadow.”
So this swaying little black flower could now probably be counted as a little guy raised within his shadow. It had only just been born, and unilaterally shared life and death with He Yu.
“What else can you do?” He Yu asked.
The little coal ball climbed onto the tabletop and stretched itself out into a big flat sheet. With a single “ah-wu,” it swallowed the entire table, then shrank back into a ping-pong-ball-sized lump. It shifted to another spot and spat the table back out.
This was a portable space!
He Yu’s eyes lit up. “How large an item can you hold?”
The little coal ball indicated that a table this size was its limit, but it was still small! It could still grow! In the future it would be able to hold even more!
The little coal ball normally had very little presence and liked to curl up quietly in the shadow and stay at home.
After a whole day of fiddling around without releasing any spiritual power, He Yu had come to an understanding: he probably couldn’t learn those cool human special effects. Big boss Bronze Mask’s method of exorcising spirits was probably just physical attacks.
Perhaps the most advanced way of beating ghosts was exactly this plain and unadorned.
It was already dark, and He Yu began to feel sleepy. He looked at his watch: 9:40, twenty minutes earlier than when he usually fell asleep. Since transmigrating here, his routine had been very stable: sleeping at ten at night and waking at seven in the morning, never getting sleepy before the time, sleeping straight through until dawn, and never dreaming.
Today it had suddenly come twenty minutes early. He Yu suspected that spiritual power was like a person’s vitality and spirit: when used too much and running short, it needed to be replenished with sleep.
Since he was sleepy, he went to bed early. This night was a little different from usual. He Yu had a dream.
It was very black, very dark. He couldn’t see anything, and could only feel wave after wave of cold, yin energy boring into his body.
All around was the sound of water, layer upon layer, as if ripples were echoing in an enclosed space. Other than that, there was no other sound.
He didn’t know how long he had stayed in the darkness, he only felt very lonely. So long that he began to get used to this loneliness.
Then, he began to hear a different sound.
At first he didn’t pay attention. The sound was too faint, mixed in with the sound of water, like a tiny bubble, inconspicuous.
Later he noticed that this sound was different, and tried hard to catch that difference. It was a bit like singing, but the words were very blurry, and only a long, drawn-out melody could be made out.
He Yu tried hard to distinguish it, wanting to hear clearly what that voice was singing, but no matter what, he couldn’t hear it clearly.
Then, he woke up.
Grayish-blue daylight came in through the gap in the curtains, and the room was very dim. He Yu lay with his eyes open in the darkness, staring blankly at the pitch-black ceiling.
The air was very quiet, as if the room were also asleep and hadn’t yet had time to awaken.
The feelings from the dream vanished quickly from his chest, impossible to grasp, like a snowflake landing in the palm of a hand.
……
Sanhei Mountain.
Three mountain peaks slanted toward the middle, forming a deep valley in their embrace, and this was how Sanhei Mountain got its name.
Because of the three surrounding mountains, this valley was shrouded in shadow all year round. The valley floor had no tall trees, only low shrubs and lush, tender fine grass, yet no animal had ever entered.
Because of this valley, it was also called Death Valley.
At this moment, however, at the edge of Death Valley stood a mysterious modern high-tech building, its concrete walls carved with mysterious patterns filled with blue-green metal. This was a secret branch of the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau.
In an underground area, in a room that required at least three layers of verification to enter, a strange instrument was installed. This instrument was made of ancient bronze together with high-tech metal, bearing both patterns as mysterious as talismans and simple, orderly electronic circuits.
Around the outer ring of this strange instrument stood eight upright bronze plates. These bronze plates were all corroded, showing a mottled blue-green color, and each was etched with different strange patterns, some like mountain-and-river maps, some like rare beasts and strange monsters, some like mysterious rituals… And within these patterns, the unrusted metallic luster faintly glimmered, the patterns alternately bright and dim, as if reflecting some kind of fluctuating values.
Several people in modern work uniforms, along with people in ancient, mysterious embroidered robes, were busy together in this room. In front of each bronze plate sat a staff member recording the patterns.
At the moment He Yu entered his dream, the patterns on all the bronze plates suddenly shed their rust at high speed, revealing their original appearance.
The staff member responsible for recording data was dumbstruck. “Wang Mountain… something has gone wrong!”
……
Yaoxin City, in an abandoned mine shaft.
A group of people with mysterious patterns painted on their faces in ash-gray or bright red pigment were gathered together, with torches planted all around.
On the ground in the middle of them, a platform had been built. The platform was studded with countless horn-like spikes, and from each spike hung a peculiar gold ornament, casting strange shadows on the mine’s stone walls in the torchlight.
Only the center of the platform was smooth, and there sat a long cup polished from obsidian. The long cup was sunk deep into the platform, like a deep well. Inside it was a heap of mushy, rotten stuff whose original form couldn’t be discerned, giving off a strong smell of blood.
This group of people, who looked at a glance like cult believers, gathered together, their hands forming a strange gesture in front of their chests, mumbling words under their breath.
The gold ornaments on the platform suddenly began to quiver one by one, and the shadows on the stone wall swayed with them, as if they had come alive.
At the same time, the bloody smell in the obsidian cup grew ever stronger, and the stuff inside seemed to move, making sticky, viscous sounds. Long blood-red threads crawled out of the cup’s mouth, climbed up the spikes one by one, and wrapped around the gold ornaments.
The crowd gathered around cheered and shouted wildly:
“Wang Mountain is unsealed!”
“Our Lord descends!”
“Wang Mountain is unsealed!”
“Our Lord descends!”
……
Seven Parts Association headquarters.
On the third basement level, which no one knew about, there was a circular room with walls lined with silver sheets. The entire room was one giant pool, with only a small platform near the entrance.
In the middle of the pool lay a man with his eyes closed. His ink-black hair was spread out loose, his skin was icy white, his chest showed no rise and fall of breathing and no heartbeat, like a jade statue.
The man suddenly opened his eyes.
The pool water was clean and cold. He exhaled a breath, and several bubbles rose in the water, the walls of the bubbles instantly freezing into delicate frost flowers.
He rose from the pool water. Water droplets slid down the corners of his clothes and the tips of his hair, like raindrops sliding off a lotus leaf, leaving no wet trace.
The instant he left the pool, all the precious spiritual liquid in the pool evaporated completely.
He didn’t care in the slightest. He lowered his head and pressed a hand to his chest, his voice dispersing amid the increasingly thin spiritual mist:
“Soon…”
……
Happiness Residential Complex.
He Yu turned over and fell back into sleep.
This time he didn’t dream.
At seven in the morning, He Yu got up on time, having completely forgotten last night’s dream.
He wrote two letters, printed them on a computer, wearing gloves so as to leave no fingerprints.
He had already chosen the place to run away to. It was a medium-sized city that was never mentioned in that paranormal novel, and that had a branch of the Paranormal Affairs Bureau. It offered safety and security while being far from the center of the whirlpool, perfectly fitting his needs.
When Ghost Shadow Xie brought the gold over, He Yu weighed the gold ball in his hand, twisted his wrist, and stored the gold in the little coal ball’s shadow space.
Besides the gold, Ghost Shadow Xie also brought an unregistered card, with the rest of the money deposited in it.
“Good work,” He Yu said.
Ghost Shadow Xie’s face was full of excitement.
“I have a confidential letter that needs to be delivered to the Chairman. Go make the trip,” He Yu said, taking out the sealed letter.
“Yes! Your subordinate will surely not fail your trust!”
After sending Ghost Shadow Xie off with his bluff, He Yu left the residential complex, found a deserted spot to change clothes and face, dropped the other letter, an anonymous report addressed to the Paranormal Affairs Bureau, into a mailbox, changed clothes and face once more, and then went to the station. Fortunately, this world hadn’t yet had time to implement real-name ticket purchasing.
By the time the Chairman of the Seven Parts Association received the letter, he had already gotten off the train in the new city.
Sunlight passed through the station’s large glass windows, and the pedestrians around him were noisy and lively.
He Yu had already changed back to his own face. He raised a hand to shade the top of his eyes and smiled in the sunlight, the little dimple on his left cheek faintly visible.
At the same time, at the Seven Parts Association headquarters.
The Chairman, who had only just awakened, took this letter that was said to be very important and opened the envelope:
Respected Chairman:
Hello.
I have suddenly had an awakening recently: the “Seven” in the Seven Parts Association turns out to be the seven in 007.
This kind of work where you give your life and don’t even get a salary, not even capitalists would dare to be as cutthroat as you. Only slave owners can compare with you.
I’m not saying this for any other reason, I just want to tell you:
I quit, damn it!