If that was the case, then there was no mistake.
Ji Huaizhi had gone into that house for the sake of this very wish.
But he hadn’t gone out at night these past few days, which was why he hadn’t been struck by the gu. If one night he did head into that building, though, things would take a turn for the worse…
Ning Shuang’s thoughts drifted far away. He needed to pay a visit there himself, figure out who was behind all this mischief, and ideally resolve the matter entirely. After all, it involved the Miao Clan. If it blew up enough to draw the elders’ attention, it might even implicate him.
And the sooner it was settled, the safer Ji Huaizhi would be.
“Ning Shuang?”
Ning Shuang had blurted out that strange question for no apparent reason, then stared off into space in silence. Ji Huaizhi had no choice but to call out and snap him back to reality.
“Yeah, it’s nothing. I was just wondering.” Ning Shuang had no intention of pressing further. Instead, he smiled and changed the subject. “I made flavor-pot eggplant. Want some?”
Ji Huaizhi nodded. “Sure.”
“Then I’ll stir-fry some beef with celery and make seaweed egg drop soup. Sound good?”
Two seconds later, Ji Huaizhi’s voice rang out again. “Good.”
Dinner was ready in no time, with Ning Shuang handling the cooking as usual. He’d learned to make all sorts of dishes at a very young age. If he hadn’t been in such a rush, he could have whipped up some desserts for afterward too.
At the dinner table, Ning Shuang served rice for both of them and handed chopsticks to Ji Huaizhi. “Dig in.”
The moment he sat down, Ning Dundun reared up its upper body, resting its front paws on Ning Shuang’s lap and lolling out its tongue. “Woof, woof…”
“Didn’t I already feed you?” Ning Shuang picked up a piece of eggplant and dropped it into Ning Dundun’s bowl at the corner of the table.
Once Ning Dundun finished eating, it flopped onto Ning Shuang’s legs and nuzzled insistently into his lap. Ning Shuang gave its head a light tap. “Whine-woof!”
Ning Dundun withdrew its front paws from Ning Shuang’s legs and obediently crouched under the table. “No more eating,” Ning Shuang said.
Ji Huaizhi watched them, feeling his own mood lighten considerably.
“Alright, ignore it. Let’s eat!” Ning Shuang pushed some of the dishes closer to Ji Huaizhi. “Try the beef stir-fry.”
Ji Huaizhi picked up his chopsticks and, following Ning Shuang’s suggestion, took a piece of beef.
“How is it? Tastes good, right?”
Ji Huaizhi nodded.
“Then eat up. We can finish these off tonight, and I’ll make eight-treasure porridge for breakfast tomorrow.” Cooks were all the same— a little praise was all it took to get them even more enthusiastic.
“Good.” The living room lights were off, and the only illumination came from the dim yellow lamp above the table. The golden light bathed Ning Shuang, gilding him with a soft glow. Even his hair strands and eyelashes were tinged gold.
Ji Huaizhi gazed at the person before him, lost in a momentary daze. His long lashes trembled, and then he lowered his head without another word.
~~~
Around eleven at night, the whole house had fallen quiet. Downstairs, Ning Dundun was sleeping like the dead.
An hour had passed since Ning Shuang and Ji Huaizhi had bid each other goodnight, but Ning Shuang was still wearing the same clothes from earlier, now topped with a thin black jacket.
His room was dim, lit only faintly by the bedside lamp. He sat cross-legged on the rug beside the bed, surrounded by all sorts of bottles and jars.
The clan had long forbidden the raising or use of gu, but Ning Shuang had brought the ones he’d made in the past to school with him since he had nowhere else to store them. He never imagined they’d come in handy now.
He rummaged through them for ages. Being something of an amateur, Ning Shuang could barely remember the names or effects of some, and the labels on the bottles had gone missing.
After a long while sorting, he finally identified most of them.
“Mm…” Ning Shuang uncorked a bottle and sniffed.
Phew—
It reeked. His eyes watered from the stench.
“Sleep Gu.” Ning Shuang wrote out the label and stuck it on.
He sniffed another bottle. It was fragrant—a faint floral scent. “Love Gu—”
Ning Shuang slapped on the label and kept going.
Only one bottle without a label remained. He picked it up and inhaled. The scent was similar to the previous one, another faint floral aroma, but richer, laced with a subtle bloody undertone.
Huh? Another Love Gu? Ning Shuang took a couple of deep sniffs.
No, then the previous one probably wasn’t. He recalled there were two kinds of gu with extremely similar scents but wildly different effects. These must be them.
After a moment’s thought, Ning Shuang peeled off the previous bottle’s label and stuck it on the porcelain bottle in his hand. Then he wrote a new “Truth-Telling Gu” label for the other one.
With all the gu sorted, Ning Shuang stretched lazily and packed several bottles of Gu-Dissolving Medicine into his shoulder bag.
Tomorrow was the weekend. He could head to the Abandoned Experimental Building tonight, handle things, and catch up on sleep during the day.
Once he caught the mastermind behind this, Ning Shuang was going to give them a good pounding—a real lesson. How dare they only cause trouble for the Miao Clan, dragging even a branch family descendant like him into the mess.
After getting dressed, Ning Shuang pulled a handkerchief from his drawer, drizzled some Sobering Medicine onto it, pocketed it neatly, and quietly slipped out of his room.
He kicked off his slippers and padded downstairs barefoot. Ning Dundun, asleep by its dog bed, suddenly lifted its head. “Whine-woof!”
In the next instant, it bounded over and pounced on Ning Shuang. He quickly clamped its muzzle shut. “Shh! No barking!”
Ning Dundun stared at him with its big puppy eyes, utterly confused. “I’m heading out to hunt for you.”
“Be quiet, got it?” Ning Shuang whispered.
This time, Ning Dundun understood. When Ning Shuang released its mouth, it stayed silent.
Ning Shuang tiptoed to the entryway, slipped on his shoes, grabbed his keys, and stepped out.
Behind him, Ning Dundun watched the closed door with its tongue lolling. Then it turned and looked upstairs.
The door to Ji Huaizhi’s room on the second floor eased open slowly. A pair of dark eyes gleamed from behind it. The night shadows coalesced in his pupils into a layer of murky light, shot through with flickers of deep purple.
~~~
Though Huai’an City’s days were sweltering hot, the nights felt as chilly as autumn. Ning Shuang was glad he’d thought to bring a jacket.
He scanned a shared bike at the entrance and pedaled off toward the school.
The school never locked its gates; security guards worked around the clock. Ning Shuang had to flash his student ID to get in.
Truth be told, if this had nothing to do with the Miao Clan, he wouldn’t have touched this mess with a ten-foot pole. But there was no helping it—the whole affair screamed Miao involvement. As long as Miao blood ran in his veins, Ning Shuang couldn’t stay out of it.
Not to mention Zhao Wei Liang and the folks from the Student Union—they were his friends.
Ning Shuang sighed and plunged into the Bamboo Grove Path.
The night was at its darkest.
Moonlight filtered through gaps in the emerald bamboo leaves, dappling the ground like scattered segments of gleaming white bone. The crunch of decayed leaves underfoot echoed sharply, while gusts of night wind whispered through the eerie, silvery glow.
The closer he got to the Abandoned Experimental Building, the more uneasy Ning Shuang felt—not physical discomfort, just a deep-seated aversion.
He pulled his jacket tight, his all-black outfit blending seamlessly into the shadows. He was virtually invisible.
Before reaching the weed-choked entrance, Ning Shuang spotted several flashlight beams flickering inside the building. The so-called “Guardian God” was supposed to be mysterious—it wouldn’t make such a racket. This meant students had probably come to make wishes again.
Ning Shuang frowned and mounted the steps. Legend had it there were twenty steps; surmount them all, and you could enter to make your wish.
He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and counted each one deliberately.
“One, two, three…”
“Twenty.” The word slipped out the instant his foot hit the platform.
Didn’t that prove there were exactly twenty steps?
As for why some people counted an extra one, Ning Shuang had a pretty good idea.
They wanted their wishes granted too badly. In their nerves, they miscounted—or even after hitting twenty, they refused to accept it and stepped inside anyway.
And once they crossed that threshold, the trap was sprung.
Ning Shuang got it completely.
He flicked on his phone’s flashlight to light the way and stepped into the building.
A biting chill seeped everywhere inside, whipping up his hair. A thick gu fragrance assaulted him, accompanied by insect chirps from the corners.
Ning Shuang switched off the flashlight and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Sure enough, glowing blue footprints marked the steps. If he listened closely, he could even hear the crunch of “fireflies” bursting underfoot.
He pulled out a bottle of mosquito repellent, splashed it on the stairs, and soon a swarm of bugs scattered in panic.
On the second floor, he finally spotted the flashlight wielders: two boys, one fat and one skinny. The fat one was taller. They darted back and forth between the abandoned rooms.
Ning Shuang’s sudden appearance gave them a real scare.
“You here for the Guardian God too?” Once they’d recovered, the chubby boy demanded of Ning Shuang.
Ning Shuang raised an eyebrow. “Yeah.”
“Then forget the second floor. We’ve been poking around forever—nothing here.” The two stood shoulder to shoulder, their flashlights sweeping up and down Ning Shuang. He threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare.
“Mind turning those flashlights down a bit?” Ning Shuang’s frown deepened.
“Oh, sorry about that.” Skinny Guy switched off his flashlight. “Fate brought us together, so why don’t we head up and take a look?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t. This place gives me the creeps,” Ning Shuang said. He was certain the scent permeating the building was gu fragrance, identical to the one on Ji Huaizhi. Ji Huaizhi had definitely been in and out of here before.
Of course, Zhao Wei Liang and Chen Lu carried the same scent on them.
So while he had no idea if there was a guardian god or not, it was clear that people from the Miao Clan—like Ning Shuang himself—were involved.
“You’ve come this far and now you’re scared? What a waste of that big burly body of yours,” Fatty shot back at Ning Shuang, leveraging his own hefty build for some bravado.
Ning Shuang was speechless.
Fine, whatever. With Ning Shuang here, nothing too bad could happen anyway.
He ignored them and turned to continue up the stairs. The two exchanged a glance and hurried after him.
As soon as they reached the third floor, a wave of scorched smells mingled with dust and various chemical agents assaulted their senses. Ning Shuang lifted his sleeve to cover his nose.
In the moonlight filtering through the windows, Ning Shuang’s almond-shaped eyes scanned their surroundings intently. The floor was covered in a tangle of footprints, along with plenty of fresh trash—clear evidence that people had been coming here, perhaps every day for the past few days.
This was trouble.
“Hey, didn’t a bunch of people burn to death here? How could there be a guardian god?” Ning Shuang stayed silent, but Skinny Guy’s sudden question from behind made him jump.
Ning Shuang nodded. Good point—how could a place stained with death house a god that granted wishes?
“If you don’t speak up, no one’s gonna mistake you for a mute,” Fatty snapped, rolling his eyes at Skinny Guy.
In truth, both of them were a bit scared, but compared to Ning Shuang—who showed not the slightest hint of fear—they looked downright timid.
The overpowering stench of rust and nose-stinging chemicals made Ning Shuang’s throat spasm. What a bizarre smell.
He took another deep breath.
Suddenly, a sticky, honeyed floral fragrance flooded his nostrils. The scent quickly seeped into his lungs and brain. Ning Shuang froze, whipping around to tell the others to cover their noses—but it was too late.
The two of them stared blankly ahead, their faces expressionless.
Soul-Confusing Gu.
This gu bewitched the mind, trapping its victims in illusions specially woven by the gu master. In the Miao Frontier, it was commonly used as an anesthetic for outsiders.
During surgery, it kept patients from feeling pain by ensnaring them in its haze.
Their arms hung limp at their sides as they staggered unsteadily toward the upper floors. Ning Shuang quickly stepped aside to let them pass.
This time, he was certain: someone in the building was using gu.
If word of this got out, the Miao Clan would send people to handle it soon enough. Every Miao clansman at this school would come under investigation—and they might all get shipped back to that backward, rundown village.
Since Ning Shuang had come here, he had to stop whoever it was from making any more mistakes.
He followed them up to the fourth floor and glanced around. The hallway was thick with dust, everything strewn about haphazardly. The layer of grime told Ning Shuang that no one had set foot on this floor.
They must have fallen under the Soul-Confusing Gu’s influence on the third floor, which had driven them upward—that explained the untouched dust on the fourth.
Night wind whistled in through the windows, swirling inside the building as if lost for an exit, producing eerie wails like the screams of ghosts.
The leaves outside rustled in the gusts. Anyone would be unnerved by such a sinister scene.
But Ning Shuang wasn’t afraid. For one thing, he didn’t buy into ghost stories. For another, he knew a clansman from the Miao Frontier was behind this—so aside from anger, he felt nothing else.
The two kept heading upward.
Ning Shuang lifted his foot to follow, but a sharp sting suddenly pierced the back of his neck. As he clutched it in pain, a distinct “crack”—like a dry twig snapping—echoed from the stairs behind him. In the building’s silence, broken only by wind and insects, the sound stood out sharply.
His foot hovered mid-step. From the corner of his eye, he spotted an empty laboratory with its door ajar and slipped inside.
Dust blanketed the lab. Moonlight streamed in, illuminating the walls—blackened from the old fire, now crawling with patchy mold that resembled faces pressed together.
All of them seemed to be grinning at Ning Shuang.
He leaned against the doorframe, keeping his eyes on the stairwell opening, waiting for whoever was below to come up.
Truth be told, Ning Shuang had considered it might be a student there to make a wish, or the culprit behind all this, or even a patrolling security guard. But he never imagined the face that appeared would be one so achingly familiar.
Moonlight poured through the window, casting its glow on the man’s stern features. Night wind tugged at his long hair, and an icy chill emanated from him, mirroring the pale light.
Ji Huaizhi.
Why was Ji Huaizhi here?
Ning Shuang’s pupils dilated, shock flooding his eyes. Ji Huaizhi moved with light steps. Unlike the other two, he didn’t seem gu-ridden—his gaze remained as cool and aloof as ever. The black trench coat wrapped around him only amplified his unapproachable iciness.
Ji Huaizhi scanned his surroundings, hands tucked into his coat pockets. He must have sensed someone watching, because he suddenly turned his head. Ning Shuang ducked out of sight just in time.
Rustling sounds came from outside.
After about half a minute, Ning Shuang heard Ji Huaizhi ascending the stairs.
He moved up them with impeccable poise, the wind lifting his long hair and billowing his trench coat.
Ning Shuang waited until Ji Huaizhi had rounded the corner before slipping out of the lab and trailing him quietly upward.
The fourth floor was deserted. Ning Shuang shone his flashlight down the hallway—no footprints marred the dust. They’d gone higher.
Ning Shuang couldn’t make sense of it. Why was Ji Huaizhi here? If he’d come for a wish, why hadn’t he fallen under the gu on the second floor like the others?
For the moment, his curiosity about Ji Huaizhi overshadowed his crush.
Right now, all he wanted was to figure out just who Ji Huaizhi really was.
Ning Shuang climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. One more flight led to the roof on the sixth. The fifth was also empty. Holding his breath, he crept up to the sixth.
Unexpectedly, the sixth floor was empty too—just a trail of footprints in the dust-covered hallway, leading deeper into the corridor, confirming they’d passed through.
Ning Shuang stood at the stairwell entrance and peered down the hallway.
The massive fire from back then had gutted the experimental building. Paint peeled from the walls, windows gaped broken, blotchy mold clung to the surfaces, and bloody handprints from fleeing students marred the walls. It all looked utterly grotesque.
Wind eddied through the corridor, carrying whispers of voices and screams.
Ning Shuang followed the hallway forward. The footprints vanished before a tightly shut door. From inside came the clamor of many voices, crying, rain pattering, and sharp crackling sounds.
An inexplicable panic stirred in Ning Shuang’s chest. Each powerful thump of his heart felt like a warning, urging him not to open the door.
The iron door—once blackened by smoke—had become an ancient wooden one, entwined with vines. Ning Shuang’s throat bobbed as he pushed it open.
An archaic mustiness hit him first—humid and cloying, laced with the tang of blood in the air.
He… was back in the ancestral hall in his hometown?
Hometown was always beset by drizzly weather, and a heavy downpour raged now. The bells hanging beneath the nearby stilt houses jingled wildly in the wind. The air hung wet and sticky, oppressively stuffy—even standing there made breathing difficult.
This time, he stood outside the ancestral hall. For once, he could see his own form clearly.
He had always experienced this dream from the first-person view before, convinced the version of himself in it was very young. But observing it now from the third person, he realized the boy in the dream wasn’t so young after all—thirteen or fourteen, at least.
His mother knelt on the ground, cradling his unconscious body and sobbing uncontrollably. All around her were relatives, weeping and cursing, their eyes brimming with hatred fixed on the ancestral hall.
Inside the hall…
A boy of eleven or twelve knelt on the ground. His purple clan robes hung in tatters from lashings of the whip, his back a mess of blood. The Clan Leader’s whip descended mercilessly on the boy’s back.
Blood droplets from the lash splattered onto the candle flames, hissing with a sizzle.
Who…
Who was he…
Ning Shuang yearned to rush forward and see the face of the boy taking the beating, but an invisible force barred him from the hall’s entrance. It held until the Clan Leader bellowed, “Unfilial wretch!” “You’ve destroyed him—and yourself too!”
Whip after whip, again and again.
Ning Shuang’s heart ached until he could scarcely breathe.
The boy suddenly turned his head. In the dim ancestral hall, his face remained indistinct, but those dark eyes—brimming with possessive hunger—sharpened into crystal clarity.
That gaze struck like a venomous serpent from the depths of hell. It coiled tight around Ning Shuang’s throat, chill seeping upward from his soles to engulf his body. His breaths grew shallow, labored.
