Free in body, yet not free in spirit.
Tao Tao jolted awake, startling the driver: “What’s wrong?”
Tao Tao shook her head wearily. If she remembered correctly, this was the second time she had received such a message. The voice that had echoed in her Coffin Mind last time had said the same thing.
—The world would be destroyed, and she was the one who started it.
But how could she possibly be capable of such a thing? She was just an ordinary person.
The dream just now had felt too real. Tao Tao glanced at her watch—she had only slept for five minutes, yet her clothes were already soaked with cold sweat.
She knew she couldn’t sleep anymore. Gathering her spirits, she asked the driver, “Where are we?”
“Still far,” the driver replied, driving slowly due to the heavy fog. “We need another twenty minutes after passing the intersection ahead. Damn it, my phone still has no signal.”
Tao Tao looked in the direction he pointed. The fog was so thick it seemed almost impenetrable, making it impossible to see where the intersection was. But in the fog, she saw something else, and her pupils suddenly contracted: “Stop the car!”
The driver instinctively slammed on the brakes. Tao Tao, thrown forward by the momentum, bumped her head against the back of the front seat. Steadying herself, she looked again into the fog ahead.
She hadn’t been mistaken. Behind the thick fog stood a blurry figure—no, to be precise, a ghostly shadow.
It was even more ethereal than the fog, draped in a wide robe, with a curved scythe dangling from its left hand. Tao Tao recalled the seductive Evil Spirit from her dream that devoured the black mist—this figure bore some resemblance to it. She gripped the hilt of her Peachwood Sword, staring intently at it.
The thing moved unhurriedly, parting the mist step by step as it approached the car.
The driver’s forehead was covered in cold sweat: “There… there’s someone in the fog…”
Tao Tao was slightly surprised. Logically, he shouldn’t have been able to see it.
The figure in the fog emerged. It wasn’t the Evil Spirit from Tao Tao’s dream, nor was it a ghost—it was a frail man.
Had she been seeing things? Tao Tao studied the man.
The man carried not a trace of Evil Qi. He wore a plain backpack, his face pale, and the silver-framed glasses on his nose bridge gave him an air of refinement.
He walked up to the car and knocked on the window. The driver rolled it down.
He asked, “My car broke down halfway. Could I get a ride?”
The driver asked where he was going. The man adjusted his glasses, his gaze shifting to Tao Tao in the back seat: “Chengho Medical College.”
…
“My name is Lin Quan.”
After getting into the car, the man introduced himself.
He took off his glasses, fogged with his breath, and pulled out a cloth to wipe them: “The fog is really thick. There are no cars on the road—if I hadn’t run into you, I don’t know how long I would’ve had to wait.”
The driver chimed in, “There aren’t many cars on this road to begin with, and with the fog, even fewer. But what a coincidence—this young lady is also heading to Chengho Medical College. You’re going the same way.”
“Is that so?” Lin Quan smiled. “How lucky I am.”
Tao Tao stared at his clothes—the most ordinary jeans and black T-shirt, yet they were soaking wet.
Lin Quan noticed her gaze and explained, “I’ve been in the fog for too long. My clothes are completely soaked. Looks like I’ll need a hot shower when I get back.”
The driver asked, “Are you a student?”
“No, I’m visiting a friend,” he said, glancing at Tao Tao. “You’re also going to Chengho Medical College? What’s your name?”
Tao Tao ignored him. Lin Quan’s gaze drifted downward, landing on the Peachwood Sword lying across Tao Tao’s lap.
Tao Tao pulled the sword away, leaning it against the car door beside her leg. Lin Quan withdrew his gaze: “A very beautiful sword.”
“It’s a very fierce sword,” Tao Tao replied.
She closed her eyes, cradling her hands gently, and said softly, “If you dare take another look, it will chop you in half—one half to feed the pigs, the other to feed the dogs.”
Lin Quan politely fell silent.
The car gradually drove out of the fog. The driver glanced at the back seat; Tao Tao seemed to have fallen asleep, while the man named Lin Quan was watching her with his head tilted.
Noticing the driver’s gaze, Lin Quan turned and smiled at him through the rearview mirror.
…
Chengho Medical College arrived. The driver woke Tao Tao and pointed at the meter. “Ninety-two yuan.”
Tao Tao didn’t know when she had dozed off. Sitting up straight, she rubbed her eyes and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills from her bag, counting them one by one under the dim interior light.
She wasn’t great at math and soon confused herself. Holding up a five-yuan bill and a five-jiao note, she asked Lin Quan beside her, “Why are there two fives? Which one is five yuan?”
The driver glanced back—the money in her hand added up to at most twenty yuan. After a night of fear and driving her all the way here, this girl was now trying to play dumb and skip the fare. He nearly laughed in exasperation.
Just as he was about to speak, he heard the man in the back say, “I don’t know. Probably both.”
The driver: “…”
Tao Tao eyed Lin Quan’s backpack. “Shouldn’t you split it with me?”
Lin Quan replied gently, “I’m just hitching a ride. Usually, hitchhikers don’t pay.”
Another fare dodger. Under normal circumstances, the driver would have cursed them out by now, but tonight he simply didn’t have the energy to argue.
He opened the back door for them. “Get out! My bad luck. Twenty years driving and I’ve never seen anything like this. I still have to report to the police station later. Go on, get out—I don’t need this bad juju.”
Tao Tao thought for a moment, then pulled out a yellow talisman and handed it over.
“What’s this?”
Without explaining, Tao Tao gathered her things and got out of the car. “The world hasn’t been peaceful lately. Keep this with you when driving at night. Consider it payment.”
The driver didn’t take it seriously. He didn’t think a young girl who couldn’t even scrape together twenty yuan could offer anything valuable. If she really had skills, she wouldn’t have just watched the Water Ghost drag that other car into the water earlier. He casually stuffed the talisman into a small drawer and shooed them out of the car.
Little did he know that a year later, this seemingly insignificant talisman would save his life.
It was a deep, dark night. All taxis in the suburbs received a pickup request from Shencheng’s old train station.
The message stated that a train would arrive at 1 a.m., and over a thousand passengers would disembark. Available taxis nearby were asked to come and pick them up.
Shencheng’s old train station had been out of service for two years, so a sudden arrival was somewhat strange. But no one thought much of it—perhaps the new station was overloaded during the holiday and had temporarily reopened the old one.
That night, 101 taxis entered the train station, each leaving with passengers. But when the sun rose the next day, 100 of those taxis, along with their drivers, had vanished without a trace.
Except for him.
When the driver woke up, he was clutching a tattered talisman. His car was parked by the roadside in the square in front of the old train station.
He suddenly remembered: a year ago, when the girl handed it to him, the talisman had been whole and new. Now, it looked as if something had torn at it, leaving it in shreds.
The driver carefully kept the remnants and asked someone to find the most renowned master in Shencheng. After studying it for a long time, the master asked, “Where did you get this talisman?”
The master told him that in Shencheng, there was no one capable of drawing this talisman. Looking across the entire world, although different schools employed varied methods when confronting the occult, those possessing the power to draw this talisman numbered no more than five.
The incident at the abandoned Shencheng railway station was horrifying. If he hadn’t held that talisman in his hand that night, or if it had been drawn by someone else, he would never have emerged alive.
Upon hearing these words, cold sweat trickled down the driver’s back, following the line of his spine and seeping through the hem of his clothes onto the floor.
…
Tao Tao stood at the entrance of Chengho Medical College. It was just past midnight. She pulled a worn-out notebook from the bag at her chest and flipped it open.
On the night of her birthday a month ago, Li Sanjiu had died suddenly without warning. While sorting through his belongings, she discovered his Spirit Master’s Exorcism Ledger. The notebook had been used for many years and was already tattered. One particular page recording an exorcism was nearly worn to shreds from frequent handling—it documented the incident at the Anatomy Building of Chengho Medical College.
After resolving a supernatural incident, the responsible Spirit Master would assign a star rating based on its difficulty and danger level, ranging from one to seven stars, from simple to complex. The vast majority of supernatural incidents fell between one and two stars. Tao Tao searched through the entire ledger and found only this one incident at Chengho Medical College marked by Li Sanjiu with a three-star danger rating.
Not only that, he had added a note beside it: Extremely dangerous! The seal must be reinforced again in twenty years!
The supernatural incident occurred in 2000. Now, less than a month remained before the twenty-year deadline.
A father’s debts are repaid by his children; a master’s duties are inherited by his disciple. With Li Sanjiu having passed away, the responsibility of reinforcing the seal naturally fell upon Tao Tao.
Though she didn’t know what strangeness lurked within the Anatomy Building, she had to make this journey.
Sensing someone nearby, Tao Tao took a brief glance at the location of the Anatomy Building before putting away the exorcism ledger. She slung the Peachwood Sword over her back and walked to the edge of the school’s wall.
Lin Quan followed her. “Which department are you heading to? If it’s on the way, we can walk together.”
“It’s not on the way.”
“I haven’t even said where I’m going, and you already know it’s not on the way?”
Tao Tao replied, “Because I don’t want to walk with you, no matter where you’re going, our paths won’t align.”
Lin Quan asked, “You seem to dislike me quite a bit.”
“Would you like someone who appears mysteriously, with unclear origins yet no discernible flaws?” Tao Tao said coldly. “Stay away from me. Though I don’t know what you are, I’d rather err on the side of caution than let you go. If you keep hovering around, watch out—I might just cut you down.”
Lin Quan smiled.
After speaking, Tao Tao leaped nimbly, grabbed the top edge of the wall, and then, right in front of him, climbed over into the school.
The night was as dark as ink, with no moonlight visible behind the clouds.
The smile faded from Lin Quan’s face. He took off the backpack from his shoulder. Earlier in the car, he had kept it pressed behind him, so Tao Tao hadn’t seen it. Unlike his damp clothes, his backpack looked as if it had been fished out of water. He unzipped it and emptied the contents.
An umbrella, a stack of yellow papers soaked beyond recognition, a box of cinnabar, a worn-out notebook, and a wallet.
Lin Quan picked up the wallet. The few paper bills inside were already ruined by water. The ID card was indeed his—twenty-seven years old, not a local of Shencheng.
He carefully put away the ID card, wallet, and notebook, then tossed the rest into the trash bin.
Lin Quan walked towards the school gate. The security guard on night duty was smoking at the entrance. He passed directly in front of the guard, but the other did not stop him, as if he couldn’t see him.
The campus in the dead of night was empty and quiet, with only the faint scraping sound of his sneakers against the asphalt road. After walking for a while, he stopped.
A hazy moon emerged from behind the clouds, revealing half of its dim face, stretching his shadow long before him.
The shadow was alive—or rather, something living was trapped within it.
Lin Quan remained motionless, but the shadow rippled like water under the moonlight. At first, it swayed and twisted slightly, the movements gradually growing larger until it began to struggle violently, as if it might break free from the shadow’s confines at any moment.
“Though you possess a body of freedom, you are not a free soul. All living beings in this world are but pawns in a cage, with life and death beyond their control.” The man gazed at the struggling ghostly shadow on the ground. “I spared your life, but you refused it.”
The ghostly shadow seemed to understand something. It stopped struggling and abruptly shrank backward, trying to escape from the man’s presence.
But how could a shadow separate from its owner?
The man extended a pale finger. The shadow, originally ink-black, gradually faded until it condensed into a misty vapor that settled on the tip of his finger.
“Since that’s the case,” his voice was detached and ethereal, “return it to me.”
Standing under the faint moonlight, Lin Quan swallowed the misty vapor from the shadow.