Setting down the yellowed photograph, Ning Qiushui felt his heart hammering wildly!
Who on earth had been watching him all this time?
Someone whose spying... not even the fog world could keep out!
Sitting on the sofa, it took Ning Qiushui a long while to finally collect himself.
After a moment's hesitation, he sent all of this to his friend "Mole."
Mole's reply came quickly:
"Wonderful. Haven't even cracked the first letter and now there's a second one... Fine, don't you worry. I'm not too busy these days; I'll figure something out for you. And if all else fails, I'll contact that woman..."
At the mention of that woman, Ning Qiushui visibly paused, and after a moment said only:
"Thank you."
He hung up, and as if all the strength had been drawn out of him, slumped back into the sofa.
One morning several days later, Ning Qiushui was brushing his teeth when a feeling stirred in his chest.
He rinsed quickly, went to the window, and looked down at the street below.
Sure enough.
Thick fog had risen inside the residential complex.
A battered old bus was parked right below his building—and in a ten-meter radius around the bus there was no fog at all, as if it had been cordoned off.
Ning Qiushui opened his front door.
The whole building stood in dead silence.
As if he were the only person left in it.
He sighed, went back for the blood jade he had brought out from behind the first Blood Door, and headed downstairs.
The moment he boarded the bus, a familiar voice cried out in delight:
"Bro!"
Ning Qiushui looked up—and needed a solid two seconds to realize... it was Liu Chengfeng.
Only, Liu Chengfeng had apparently spruced himself up after going home: the bushy beard was shaved clean off.
Beardless, Liu Chengfeng looked a good deal fresher and cleaner, though the man as a whole was still unmistakably rough-hewn.
"Just us?"
Ning Qiushui sat down beside him.
"Guess so."
Liu Chengfeng sighed.
He was still his usual careless self, but Ning Qiushui didn't miss the dark circles under his eyes.
Clearly he hadn't been sleeping well.
"Nightmares again these past few days?"
Ning Qiushui asked.
Liu Chengfeng nodded, twisting open a bottle of mineral water, cursing as he did:
"Goddamn it, that ghost-woman... shows up in my dreams every single night. Scares the life out of me."
Ning Qiushui teased:
"Then her love for you truly runs deep. As they say, fate ties the red thread across a thousand li—you'd better treasure an opportunity like this..."
Pfff!
Liu Chengfeng, mid-drink, sprayed water everywhere.
"Bro, that's too far!"
"If you understand treasuring people so well, how about you go love her tenderly yourself!"
Ning Qiushui shrugged, all regret:
"I'd like to. But the lady has no eyes for me—she hasn't visited my dreams even once."
At that, Liu Chengfeng's face went several shades paler, and he muttered a few curses about handsome men attracting nothing but trouble.
Then Ning Qiushui thought of something and asked:
"By the way—you still haven't told me why you glued yourself to me in the first Blood Door."
With several days gone by, and the question raised anew, Liu Chengfeng's eyes rolled around and he put on a face of deep mystery:
"Bro, let me ask you one thing first... Do you believe in fate?"
Caught off guard by the question, Ning Qiushui paused.
He gave it careful thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"No."
Liu Chengfeng grinned.
"I do."
He turned his palm over, and in it appeared three square-holed copper coins.
Each was strung on fine thread—one red, one yellow, one blue.
"Inside that Blood Door, I cast three readings in all."
"And what I found was: the other two readings were death signs, every one. Only the reading on you, bro, was different."
"You were the team's... one and only sign of life."
Light flickered through Ning Qiushui's eyes, and he smiled:
"Liu Chengfeng. So you can read fortunes after all."
Liu Chengfeng sighed:
"What can I say—earning a bowl of rice isn't easy these days. Out on the road, no skill is ever dead weight!"
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
At Ning Qiushui's question, Liu Chengfeng's face filled with superstitious dread:
"Bro, in my line of work, there are rules—"
"First: never divine for yourself. Read others, never yourself; read yourself, and death is certain!"
"Second: never divine for a fellow practitioner knowingly!"
"Third: never divine for the dead!"
"Besides those three no-reads, there are also two no-tells—"
"First: to the one you've read for, never tell all. The more you tell, the more years you lose."
"Second: matters of too great a consequence must not be told. Saving one man, or turning one disaster from him—the cost to the diviner is limited. But if that man's life and death are tangled up in too many things... then the diviner must not casually interfere, or he may bring down the wrath of Heaven itself!"
Ning Qiushui understood.
"So once it's all over, saying it out loud costs you nothing. Right?"
Liu Chengfeng nodded.
"Exactly."
"What's already happened, you can talk about however you please."
The bus drove on into the fog. No other passengers boarded. The two of them rode all the way to the familiar lodge, and the moment they walked in, they saw four people seated in the main hall.
They seemed to be deliberating something important; the instant the two entered, the conversation cut off.
"Looks like we've come at a bad time."
Ning Qiushui said, half joking.
Liang Yan replied evenly:
"The lodge is our home, and yours as well. You may come home whenever you wish—there is no good or bad time."
"By the way, your second door is about to open. Are you ready?"
Ning Qiushui sighed.
"And if we're not ready—do we get to not go in?"
An odd silence settled over the hall.
Bai Xiaoxiao rose.
"Come on. Third floor."
She had changed into a trim athletic outfit; it lent her a youthful energy, far less bewitching than she'd looked before in her slip dress.
The two followed her up to the lodge's third floor.
At its center still stood that wooden door, radiating an aura that chilled them to the bone.
On its surface, several new lines of blood-writing had appeared.
【Task: Survive the temple rite on the village's seventh day】
【Clue—】
【The kind bled themselves dry, and became the sweet rain; the merciful cut off their heads, and bestowed peace; the innocent closed their eyes, begging for the sweet rain and the peace to come—and they waited, and waited, and waited...】