The kitchen door was nearly two meters high. Anyone able to float their head up to the top of the doorframe was obviously not human.
He Zhuoming fell silent, pressing her lips tightly together as she inched closer to Lin Qingyun and grabbed his sleeve. The two huddled tightly together, coming within a hair’s breadth of hugging each other as they shivered.
Because of sheer terror, He Zhuoming’s entire focus was locked onto the dark shadow hovering over the upper half of the door, completely missing Lin Qingyun’s expression.
Had she turned to glance at his face, she would have seen that there was not a trace of fear on it whatsoever—he merely cuddled close to her in cooperation, feeling very little of anything toward the ghost outside the door.
After all, he was merely a puppet, and the few drops of blood Lin Qingyun had bestowed upon him were not enough to support any intense emotions.
Right now, however, because they were pressed so closely together, the wooden branch puppet could hear Xiao He’s frantic heartbeat, her rapid, rising-and-falling breath fluttering against his palm.
A warm, living creature was nestled intimately against him.
This realization put the wooden branch puppet in a very strange frame of mind, making him completely forget about the monster lingering outside the door.
He was entirely at the mercy of He Zhuoming’s breathing and heartbeat—an influence completely devoid of reason, one the wooden branch puppet could not understand.
Especially the patch of skin in his palm stained with the warmth of He Zhuoming’s breath; it was nearly breaking away from the wooden branch puppet, turning entirely into something independent. That patch of skin grew damp and itchy, as if tender shoots beneath the surface were desperately eager to tear through flesh and skin to sprout.
The wooden branch puppet relaxed his grip, pinching his palm with his thumb as he lowered his arm.
He discovered it wasn’t his imagination: the skin of his palm where his fingertips touched was indeed slightly damp, and he could feel tiny, slightly swollen bumps beneath the surface.
He Zhuoming tilted her head, gently bumping her head against Lin Qingyun’s as she whispered in an ultra-low voice, “Did it… leave?”
Lin Qingyun looked up at the upper half of the door. The paper panel was now illuminated only by a dim, greyish wash of moonlight; the dark shadow was gone.
Head against head, their four eyes focused intently together on that upper half of the door.
He Zhuoming’s palms were slick with cold sweat from sheer tension, terrified that the dark shadow would suddenly smash through the door and press a bloody, ghostly face against hers.
Her hair was tangled with Lin Qingyun’s messy locks, and the long earring caught in his hair had even snagged into hers. She remained completely unaware of it—until a single drop of water landed on the top of her head.
Instinctively reaching up to touch her head, she found that what she came away with wasn’t water, but dark crimson blood.
He Zhuoming’s body, which had only just begun to relax, stiffened all over again. She asked Lin Qingyun with a shaking voice, “Doesn’t the kitchen… doesn’t the kitchen lack windows?”
Lin Qingyun remained silently unresponsive, raising his gaze to look up: directly across from the stove, inside the chimney, a clump of dark red shadow was wriggling its way down.
The chimney was extremely narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate half a youth’s body, yet the phantom’s build was clearly much bulkier and taller than a young person’s. Like a boneless mass of flesh and blood crammed headfirst down the chimney, its two arms hung limply at the very front.
Those two arms were actually severed cleanly at the wrists, the stump dripping blood continuously. Some of it landed on He Zhuoming’s hair, while some splashed across Lin Qingyun’s upturned face.
“Tang Shuayu… Tang Shuayu… Tang Shuayu…”
A voice brimming with resentment and malice spewed forth from that mass of flesh and blood, while a pair of crimson eyes hidden behind the dark shadow stared malevolently at the two people below.
He Zhuoming didn’t dare look up at all, terrified that the moment she did, a face would be pressed right against hers.
Pulling Lin Qingyun along, she screamed, “Stop looking, run, run, run—!”
People could always unleash limitless potential in moments of extreme terror. He Zhuoming usually struggled just walking up a slope, yet right then she managed to drag Lin Qingyun and leap in one breath onto the pile of debris barricading the door. The two of them crashed together into that half-door, which proved just as flimsy as expected, smashing it to smithereens in an instant!
As they tumbled out, Lin Qingyun reached out to scoop He Zhuoming into his arms, using his own body as a cushion.
The moment they hit the ground, he heard the sound of bones cracking inside him—yet even with his bones fracturing, the pain remained faint, vague, and indistinct.
Thus, completely unfeeling as if nothing had happened, he grabbed He Zhuoming’s arm and helped her up.
At the same time, a shadowy phantom scrambled over the upper half of the door they had just broken through.
Now He Zhuoming couldn’t avoid it even if she wanted to. The moment she looked up, she was met with the ghostly face illuminated by the moonlight, clear as day: it was a male ghost.
The upper half of the male ghost’s face was still intact, save for a deathly white complexion, but the lower half was reduced to blood-streaked bare bone. Its two wrist-severed arms were frantically tearing at the remaining wooden frame of the door.
Its frame was too large; the gap He Zhuoming and Lin Qingyun had smashed open wasn’t big enough for it to crawl through yet. At the same time, it looked thoroughly enraged, whipping up a gale of ghostly wind and swirling black miasma all around.
On a summer night, wave after wave of freezing aura made He Zhuoming shiver from head to toe.
Fortunately, she had eaten a full dinner. Scared as she was, she immediately reacted, grabbing Lin Qingyun and sprinting toward the post station’s main hall.
The two bolted all the way back into the hall. Just as He Zhuoming rushed to drag a table over to barricade the back door, Lin Qingyun pulled her back and kept running toward the stairs.
The dilapidated, time-worn wooden stairs creaked loudly underfoot. Worried whether the staircase might collapse, He Zhuoming yelled, “The door isn’t closed!”
Ignoring her entirely, Lin Qingyun kept pulling He Zhuoming until they reached their room, shoving her inside. Stumbling in a circle from the momentum, He Zhuoming spun back around to face Lin Qingyun, dizzily grabbing his arm. “Wait! Wait! We—”
Before she could finish, Lin Qingyun clapped a hand over her mouth.
In her panic, He Zhuoming took a deep, instinctive breath, inhaling a mouthful of strange wooden scent.
It smelled somewhat like roadside street trees, carrying a damp fragrance.
She raised her gaze slightly to look up at Lin Qingyun—even in such a perilous moment, Lin Qingyun was still managing a smile, though his appearance was a mess right now, the long pearl chain on his left earlobe twisted right into his tangled locks.
His free hand raised an index finger to his lips in a motion for silence.
Though she didn’t understand the reason, He Zhuoming understood the gesture. Nodding hastily, she covered her own mouth and whispered in a breathy voice, “I won’t make a sound.”
Lin Qingyun smiled, his hand—which had just touched his own lips—gently brushing against He Zhuoming’s face.
Xiao He’s face was damp and burning hot, her skin rising and falling with her breaths.
Parting his lips, Lin Qingyun forced stiff syllables out one by one from his throat: “Stay, quiet, in, the, room.”
With that, he pushed He Zhuoming further into the room and pulled the door shut.
The room key was still in the wooden branch puppet’s possession. Moving swiftly, he locked the door from the outside, turning around just in time to encounter the male ghost drifting effortlessly inward from the back door.
Their eyes met. The male ghost’s eye sockets streamed with blood and tears of hatred, yet the wooden branch puppet merely smiled at it, opened its mouth wide right in front of it, and swallowed the door key straight down into its belly.
The ghostly wind swept tables and chairs tumbling across the hall, making the wooden staircase pound loudly. The male ghost and the wooden branch puppet locked into a fierce brawl. Being non-human entities of comparable strength, and both possessing immunity to spells, neither could rely on magic to attack the other; they could only tear at each other like wild beasts, tumbling from the upper floor down to the lower one, leaving scattered dots of blood spattered across the corridors and stairs.
The radiance of the full moon gradually faded, leaving a bright, pale azure hue rising along the edge of the sky.
The tightly shut front doors of the post station suddenly swung open on their own. A youth dressed in red, adorned with jade rings and wearing a cheerful, breezy smile on his face, stepped inside—perched on his shoulder was a flower-carrying swallow, puffing out its chest proudly as it looked all around.
With a flick of Lin Qingyun’s hand, the flower-carrying swallow landed in his palm, transforming into a sleek, dark longsword. With a casual swipe across the male ghost’s neck, the blade effortlessly swept away all the lingering malevolent qi blanketing the entire post station.
The warm humidity unique to a summer night gradually returned, enveloping the post station once more.
The mottled bloodstains across the floor of the main hall, the stairs, and the corridor floor all dissolved into wisps of black smoke and vanished.
Lowering his gaze, Lin Qingyun looked toward the wooden branch puppet sprawled on the ground—after the fierce struggle, the puppet’s human form had suffered severe damage.
Its torn skin revealed interwoven tree roots beneath, while its severed limbs leaked the sap characteristic of trees. Yet its face had been remarkably well-protected, without a single scratch, marred only by patches of black ghostly blood.
Their eyes met, and the smile on Lin Qingyun’s face deepened.
Squatting down, he straightened the puppet’s ragged collar and said in a gentle tone, “You did very well. You really protected Xiao He.”
The wooden branch puppet stared fixedly into Lin Qingyun’s face. A moment later, its corners of its mouth twitched upward as it tried to mimic Lin Qingyun and produce an identical smile.
Before it could finish displaying that smile, however, its entire face was covered by Lin Qingyun’s palm. Lin Qingyun exerted a heavy force; though he was still smiling, the strength behind his hand was entirely meant to crush the life out of it.
Yet since the wooden branch puppet was made of wood rather than flesh, having no real need for respiration, only its head was crushed inward, and it did not immediately die.
Maintaining his gentle tone, Lin Qingyun remarked, “Still, don’t smile at me. Seeing a puppet with my face imitating my expressions is a bit repulsive.”
Slowly closing his fingers, he felt the puppet’s head gradually collapse beneath his palm, while a faint sound drifted out from between his fingers.
Wooden branch puppet: “Xiao He… likes me.”
Lin Qingyun: “?”
This time, he was genuinely surprised—partly because the puppet had spoken aloud, and partly because of what it had said.
Releasing his grip, he revealed the thoroughly crushed head beneath.
The skull was no longer recognizable, reduced to a heap of splintered wood chips, while several wisps of vital essence drifted out from the puppet’s body. Attracted toward Lin Qingyun’s wrist, they sank directly into his skin.
Returning alongside that vital essence was the day the puppet had spent in brief companionship with He Zhuoming.
The corners of Lin Qingyun’s mouth, which had been curved upward, slowly dropped. He gazed down at the pile of wood chips—tangled among the wood fragments were a few intertwined strands of hair.
Those were strands of He Zhuoming’s hair that had been accidentally snagged by the earring when the puppet and He Zhuoming were hiding together in the kitchen.
Staring expressionlessly at those few strands of hair, Lin Qingyun’s unsmiling eyes appeared sharp and gloomy.
He let out a sudden, cold snort, as if hearing a hilarious joke, and muttered, “Low-level puppets are just that low-level. When they start acting cheap, it’s like a dog that can’t stop eating shit. Spouting filthy rubbish like ‘Xiao He likes you’—disgusting.”
“How hilarious. Who would ever like a piece of wood? Go die.”
With a twist of his wrist, the few drops of blood that had just seeped into his skin were forced back out, and he casually fed them to the flower-carrying swallow.
Clasping her wooden sword, He Zhuoming pressed her ear as tightly as possible against the door, trying to make out the commotion outside.
Only minutes ago, the outside had sounded like a howling tempest of ghosts accompanied by a chaotic clatter of impacts, but now it had suddenly gone dead silent.
This left He Zhuoming on edge: Was the fight over? Who won? Qingyun or the male ghost?
It had to be Qingyun, since he was the male lead… but Qingyun had also said he couldn’t beat that male ghost—was the male ghost really stronger than that strange deity statue in the village?
She kept turning it over and over in her head until her head pounded with splitting pain, even bringing on a wave of nausea. Unaware that she had been crying for a long time, she obediently stayed put and kept quiet, not daring to fling the door open with her wooden sword.
The silence outside was abruptly broken by approaching footsteps.
Each heavy step felt as though it were treading directly on He Zhuoming’s stomach, intensifying the nauseous churn in her gut with every echo. Yet she held back from vomiting and swallowed her breath, struggling to recall whether these footsteps sounded anything like Lin Qingyun’s.
…She couldn’t tell.
The moment the door lock clicked open, tension buzzed so loudly inside He Zhuoming’s head that she felt ready to retch—and then Lin Qingyun appeared before her eyes, wearing his usual smiling expression. “Xiao He, you…”
With a loud retch, He Zhuoming threw up, cutting Lin Qingyun off mid-sentence.
He had no choice but to rush forward to support her. The moment he grabbed her arm, he could feel He Zhuoming leaning limply against him, completely drained of strength.
Her complexion was deathly pale and slightly bloated, the skin around her eyes ringed with a pomegranate-red shade from crying for too long.
Unable to resist, Lin Qingyun brushed his fingers against her face—cold, damp, and rising and falling with her ragged breaths.
Lin Qingyun murmured, “How pitiful. How did you get scared out of your wits like this?”
He Zhuoming asked in a weak voice, “Did you win?”
Lin Qingyun answered, “I won.”
Reassured, He Zhuoming let go of her grip, dropped her wooden sword, and collapsed headfirst onto the bed.
Walking over to the bedside, Lin Qingyun squatted halfway down and said with a smile, “Xiao He was so brave yesterday, even remembering to drag me along when you ran away. I’m so touched.”
Receiving no response, Lin Qingyun leaned in closer, only to realize that He Zhuoming had already fallen asleep.
Reaching out to pinch and twist her cheek, he found she didn’t react at all, sleeping soundly as if dead to the world.
The smile instantly vanished from Lin Qingyun’s face.
Poking her cheek while staring unblinkingly at her, he muttered with a cold, gloomy edge, “Not sleeping early or late, but falling asleep the moment I talk to you—where on earth do you find so much sleep all day long?”
“If you had just obediently eaten your dinner and gone to sleep last night instead of wandering around outside with others, how could you have run into a corpse revival?”
The revived male ghost was none other than the black-clad swordsman who had previously attacked Lin Qingyun.
Nursing an intense hatred for Lin Qingyun, upon encountering a wooden branch puppet carrying Lin Qingyun’s aura after his death, he immediately underwent a corpse revival to become a vengeful ghost, willing to forsake any chance at an afterlife just to exact revenge on Lin Qingyun.
Thinking it over, Lin Qingyun couldn’t help a sigh, the fingers previously poking He Zhuoming’s cheek suddenly softening considerably. “Xiao He, you really are just unlucky. Originally, he was just coming after me for a blood grudge—if you hadn’t dragged me along and just run away by yourself, none of this would have happened.”
“Soft-heartedness gets you bitten by dogs.”
Sleeping until she was woken by hunger, He Zhuoming opened her eyes to find the room bathed in the dim shadows of night, momentarily thinking she was still back on that terrifying night and jumping straight up in fright.
Suddenly, a snap of fingers sounded right before her eyes—blinking in a daze, she slowly lifted her head to look at the person who snapped: it was Lin Qingyun.
His hair was neatly groomed once more, the long pearl chain hanging by his left ear entirely untangled from his locks, while a smile hovered across his delicate, pretty face, his eyes curved into crescents.
His clothes were spotless as well.
Staring blankly at him, she watched as Lin Qingyun stopped snapping his fingers and tilted his head with a smile as he gazed back at her.
After a moment, He Zhuoming spoke up. “Did you change your clothes?”
Lin Qingyun replied, “Yeah, new clothes. Do you want some?”
He Zhuoming said, “I’m hungry. I want to eat first.”
With food ready-made in the room, as He Zhuoming wolfed down her meal, Lin Qingyun informed her that she had slept through an entire day.
Cupping his face with both hands and resting his elbows on the dining table, he remarked, “I kept worrying whether you were dead or alive, so I had to check if you were still breathing every half-hour.”
Deeply touched, He Zhuoming said, “Thank you for caring about me.”