Warm sunlight streamed through the old aluminum-framed windows into the living room.
Xie Qingmian was curled up beneath the blanket. Woken by the glaring sunlight, he squinted until his eyes adjusted, then sat up from the sofa.
Xu Keke came out of the bedroom. “You’re awake? I’m going to the outskirts today. I’ll get your phone repaired while I’m there.”
Xie Qingmian had not fully awakened from his dream. After taking a while to collect himself, he nodded.
The big job Xu Keke had taken the night before was to inspect the feng shui of a vacation villa on the outskirts. He brought Xie Qingmian through several transfers on the subway and bus to the place where they had arranged to meet their benefactor.
Xu Keke was wearing the same thing as yesterday, a gray traditional robe that had been washed until it had faded in places. It gave him the air of a proper fortune-teller.
When they arrived, Xu Keke saw that the benefactor had not come yet, so he took the opportunity to give Xie Qingmian a few instructions.
“Just stay behind me later and don’t say anything. Once we finish this job, we’ll have a big meal, and then I’ll get your phone fixed.”
Xie Qingmian sat on the bench at the bus stop. With the slightest turn of his head, he could see the villa development in the distance.
And one of the houses there was filled with an especially dense concentration of ghost qi.
He warned him, “This may be a difficult situation. Be careful.”
Xu Keke waved dismissively, not taking Xie Qingmian’s warning to heart at all.
Xie Qingmian said no more and silently followed beside him.
Before long, a young man came out of the villa development.
“Hello, hello. My name is Zhou Kai. I’m the one who contacted you yesterday.” The young man looked anxious, but he still introduced himself politely.
Xu Keke nodded. “Take us over and let us have a look.”
On the way back, Xu Keke asked Zhou Kai about the situation at the villa.
Zhou Kai was silent for a while. Then he took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and exhaled a plume of smoke.
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you as we look around.”
Zhou Kai’s villa was quite close to the bus stop by the road, and they soon arrived at the entrance.
Unlike the two neighboring houses, whose small gardens were kept in immaculate condition, Zhou Kai’s yard was completely overgrown. Even the iron gate was covered in rust.
Xu Keke pushed the gate open. As he entered the yard, a vague sense of unease suddenly rose in his heart.
Zhou Kai’s voice was heavy.
“My parents bought this house from an elderly couple at a low price. At the time, my father thought he’d gotten an incredible bargain.”
“The original furnishings were already quite good, so we only made a few minor changes before moving in. But I work downtown, so I rarely come back here. I only heard from my mother that she could never sleep well at night. She always felt as if there were a lot of people watching her from inside the room.”
As they entered the house, a gust of chilly air blew straight into their faces. Xu Keke could not stop himself from shivering.
He did his best to keep his voice steady. “Is the air conditioning on? Why is it so cold?”
“No.” Zhou Kai’s voice was hoarse, and there was a trace of terror in his eyes. “Not long after something happened to my parents, this house started becoming stranger and stranger.”
Xu Keke frowned. “Something happened to your parents?”
Zhou Kai swallowed. “Yes. Not long after they moved in, they were in a car accident. They’re still lying in the intensive care unit at the hospital.”
His expression turned bitter. “They worked so hard to raise me, and I hadn’t even had the chance to take care of them before…”
Xu Keke patted him on the shoulder.
While the two of them talked, Xie Qingmian began looking around.
He could tell at a glance what was wrong with the house. The ghost qi was so dense that it had already formed a ghost tide.
Forcing down his fear, Zhou Kai continued upstairs. “The master bedroom is up there. My parents were already extremely tense in the days before the accident. I suspect the state they were in caused the crash.”
Standing at the foot of the stairs, Xu Keke suddenly regretted taking this job.
There were no ghosts in this world!
After gathering his courage, he continued up the stairs. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered something, he turned and said to Xie Qingmian, “You wait outside.”
Xie Qingmian froze. After a long moment, he nodded.
A single day together had been enough for Xie Qingmian to understand what kind of person Xu Keke was.
He was somewhat greedy and had done a few inconsequential bad deeds, but overall, he was a decent person.
Still, he had plenty of debts to repay for all the people he had deceived.
Xie Qingmian hummed in acknowledgment and watched Xu Keke go upstairs. He did not leave, however. Instead, he walked over and sat down on the brown-red sofa.
The sofa’s color looked jarringly out of place in the living room. From a distance, it even gave the illusion that blood was seeping from it.
Xie Qingmian counted the seconds. Only after hearing two screams in succession from upstairs did he leisurely make his way up.
The decor upstairs was even more unnerving. Brown-red wallpaper with vertical stripes covered most of the walls, the wooden floor was red as well, and even the furniture inside was made of redwood.
He crossed the long corridor on the second floor and walked straight to a north-facing room, then twisted the doorknob.
When the door opened, everything inside was laid bare before Xie Qingmian’s eyes.
Xie Qingmian entered the room, which was filled with black qi. He paused beside Zhou Kai, who was lying on the floor, raised a hand, and made an almost imperceptible gesture. Then he continued forward until he reached the corner of the room.
Xu Keke was curled up in the corner with his head buried between his knees. Listening to the strange wind inside the room, he was practically out of his mind.
Today had completely overturned his worldview.
He had been a fraudulent fortune-teller for years. He had taken at least eighty jobs involving people supposedly haunted by ghosts, but he had never believed ghosts existed.
After all, he had received nine years of compulsory education! He was a standard materialist!
Xu Keke was already extremely experienced at dealing with these sorts of jobs, but he had never imagined that one day he would actually encounter a ghost.
Zhou Kai had brought him to the door of the master bedroom on the second floor, but then he had not dared to open it. Xu Keke had always scoffed at such intangible nonsense, and to make sure the benefactor’s money was well spent, he had stepped in front of Zhou Kai and said he would open the door himself.
But if he had known that opening the door would send a female ghost with an eyeball hanging out of its socket lunging straight at him, he would never have taken this job even if someone had beaten him to death.
Xu Keke swallowed. Was he simply too frightened? Why did he seem to hear footsteps?
He raised his head shakily, his expression dazed.
What was even more bewildering was that he felt as though he had seen Xie Qingmian.
…
Xie Qingmian took in Xu Keke’s expression and knew that fear had driven him halfway out of his mind. He did not waste his breath calling out to him.
What if calling him back to his senses only made him scream again?
Xie Qingmian glanced at the evil ghost blocking Xu Keke in the corner. She wore a red dress covered in patches of dried, blackened blood.
His gaze slowly moved upward. The flesh on the female ghost’s face was rotten all over, and one of her eyes was nearly falling out of its socket.
Apparently, she had died from a fall.
Xie Qingmian snapped his fingers without much interest, took out the piece of paper he had prepared the night before, and tossed it at the female ghost as she lunged at him, clawing and snarling.
“Aaaah!”
Xie Qingmian quickly stepped back, avoiding having the rotting flesh flung from the ghost’s face land on him as she screamed and struggled.
But Xu Keke, who had been sitting there in a stupor, was jolted back to his senses by the sudden, agonized scream. Terror slowly appeared on his blank face.
Holy crap, ahhhhhhh! This is so terrifying!
Xu Keke was so frightened that he nearly curled back into a ball. Before he could, however, he saw the terrifying female ghost crouch down with a scream, revealing the person behind her.
“Xie, Xie Qingmian?”
Xie Qingmian cast Xu Keke a sidelong glance.
Xu Keke spoke in a trembling voice. “I, is it over?”
“No.”
“!!!” Xu Keke had just scrambled to his feet when his legs went weak. “It, it’s not over yet!”
“We’re doomed, we’re doomed! What if she gets furious and kills all three of us?”
“Let’s run! Right, there’s still the benefactor. Is he heavy? Let’s carry him out together!”
Amid the tense and terrifying atmosphere, Xie Qingmian spoke up… and yawned.
Xu Keke stopped dead.
Several seconds later, he said, “It seems like maybe you were the one who saved us just now?”
“Of course.”
After receiving confirmation, Xu Keke’s expression instantly became three parts complicated, three parts bewildered, and four parts terrified.
Xie Qingmian casually picked up a car-advertisement magazine from the table and lightly tapped Xu Keke on the head with it. “Stop making up a whole character for me in your head.”
Xu Keke said, “You even know what a character is?”
Xie Qingmian: “…”
The female ghost’s howls from the floor interrupted their conversation. Xie Qingmian shook his head, crouched down, and brought his eyes level with hers.
“What’s your name?”
The female ghost was pinned to the floor by the talisman. Under Xie Qingmian’s gaze, a trace of clarity slowly returned to her eyes.
Fear was impossible to conceal in her gaze, but she still clenched her teeth and refused to speak.
Xie Qingmian remained unhurried. “Let me guess. You died falling from a building?”
Perhaps the words “falling from a building” awakened the female ghost’s nightmare. She suddenly began struggling again. “What do you know? You know nothing! You people who claim to be acting on Heaven’s behalf only know how to wipe out every ghost with your so-called desire to eliminate anyone who doesn’t agree with you!”
“Acting on Heaven’s behalf?” Xie Qingmian gave a light laugh. “Why would I act on Heaven’s behalf? Heaven doesn’t have any damn Way to act on.”
It was nothing more than a petty enforcer who happened to possess a little power.
Xie Qingmian curled his lips. He became angry whenever he thought about how the Heavenly Dao had left him without a physical body, drifting around for nearly a thousand years.
The female ghost was stunned by his blunt words. She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to determine whether he was lying.
“Speak up, or I’ll send you on your way.” Mentioning the Heavenly Dao had put Xie Qingmian in an even worse mood.
But Xu Keke was the one who spoke.
“Send, send her where?”
Xie Qingmian said, “The reincarnation road in the underworld, obviously.”
“I’ll talk.”
The female ghost was silent for a moment before finally speaking.
It was actually a very cliché story. The female ghost’s name was Zhang Yingying. She had been a university student in Hai City. She met a romantic partner in an online game, and the two of them began an online relationship.
After about two months of dating online, she went to meet him in person. The meeting place was this very villa.
Xu Keke said earnestly, “Who chooses the man’s house as the place for an online date to meet in person? Even if you’re in love, you still have to stay cautious!”
Zhang Yingying lowered her head in shame. Paired with her face covered in mangled flesh, however, the sight was horrifying no matter how one looked at it.
On the night they met, the man said that since neither of them had class the next day, she might as well stay there for the night. Zhang Yingying was deep in the throes of love at the time, so she agreed without giving it much thought.
But halfway through the night, the bedroom door opened. When Zhang Yingying woke in a daze, she discovered the man pinning her down.
She might have been blinded by love at the time, but she was not stupid. She immediately began shouting that she was being raped and struggled against him. In the process, she accidentally fell from the third-floor window.
“That man also took my phone and sent messages to both my parents and my teacher, making them think I was still alive to this day.”
At this, Zhang Yingying gritted her teeth. “That scumbag’s parents immediately sold this villa at a low price, so I didn’t even have a chance to take revenge.”
After listening, Xie Qingmian nodded.
Xu Keke’s fear had turned into indignation. He could not help speaking up for Zhang Yingying, but Xie Qingmian patted him on the shoulder.
“Call the police.”
Xu Keke stopped with the words on the tip of his tongue. “What?”
Xie Qingmian said, “Call the police. Once they find the body, the police can uncover the truth.”
Xu Keke: “???”
“It can be that simple?”
“You have to believe in the power of the state.” After experiencing all of the original body’s memories in his dream, Xie Qingmian had already adapted perfectly to the language of the modern world.
Zhang Yingying was stunned as well. She opened her mouth, then her expression slowly turned resolute. “Right, call the police! I want that scumbag murderer in prison!”
“You should be grateful Zhou Kai’s parents didn’t die. Otherwise, you would have had quite a punishment waiting for you in the underworld.” After urging Xu Keke to call the police, Xie Qingmian continued speaking to Zhang Yingying.
Zhang Yingying lowered her head in even greater shame and whispered an apology.
Xie Qingmian shook his head.
Fortunately, the situation was still within his control. Xie Qingmian turned and walked over to Zhou Kai, who was lying on the floor.
Xu Keke came back after making the call and asked Xie Qingmian whether he could wake Zhou Kai.
“It’s a little troublesome. He was scared out of his wits.” Xie Qingmian clicked his tongue softly.
Xu Keke said, “Huh?”
Xie Qingmian took another piece of paper covered in writing from his pocket and asked Xu Keke for a lighter.
“Go pour a glass of water.”
“Talisman water?” Xu Keke asked excitedly.
Xie Qingmian was speechless. He simply took the lighter, set the crude talisman alight above Zhou Kai’s head, and let the ashes fall onto his forehead.
“Bring the water.”
Xu Keke handed it over.
Xie Qingmian poured the water over Zhou Kai’s face, then calmly took two steps back and watched as Zhou Kai suddenly sat up.
“There’s a ghost!!!!”