He Zhuchun had long been aware of a fishy smell circling the tip of his nose. At first he’d chalked it up to the fish in the old woman’s hands—never expecting there to be an entire bag of fish innards here, dumped with all its bloody water and stench.
Now that Lu You had laid things bare, the old woman dropped the act too. She flung the plastic bag and bolted—but Huang Kuaipao kicked off and clamped its jaws on her neck, sealing her lifeline in an instant and leaving her sprawled on the ground, unable to move.
Lu You walked over and crouched in front of her. The old woman still tried to flee, and Kuaipao only bit down harder. The dead can’t bleed, so her body merely went rigid with black cords of muscle, and the last whites of her eyes vanished, leaving two hollow black pits staring out—enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.
Lu You asked, “You’re a ghost Qi Feng keeps. He sent you out to draw us away, didn’t he?”
The old woman clenched her mouth shut and said nothing.
“Staying silent is fine too.” Lu You laughed lightly. “If you won’t talk to me, go tell King Yama of the Netherworld instead. Once I go back tonight and file the report, someone will come especially to collect you.”
At those words, the old woman’s bloody mouth split wide—so wide the corners tore back to her ears, exposing pale bone beneath the skin. “Even if you beat me until my soul scatters to nothing, I’ll never tell you anything!”
“Then we’ll drag you off to the City God.” Lu You rose and waved a hand. “Kuaipao, call a few of the Huang Family to go with you. Later I’ll pay the City God a visit myself and explain everything in person.”
“On it!” Kuaipao answered.
And so, dragging the old woman along, it hollered for several Huang Family Immortals of the Jin generation, and together they set off for the City God Temple.
Turning back, Lu You met the questioning gaze He Zhuchun had cast his way.
He Zhuchun asked, “You knew from the start she wasn’t living?”
“I only knew once I saw the fish,” Lu You answered.
He Zhuchun laughed. “And here I thought you Spirit Medium Shamans could tell human from ghost at a single glance.”
“There’s a difference. The living are yang and ghosts are yin. The young and strong carry heavy Yang Energy that evil things struggle to enter; the old, weak, and sickly carry light Yang Energy that Ghosts and Gods can invade easily. At first, her Yin Energy read extremely heavy, and I was still working out whether it was her Yang Lifespan running low or something else entirely.”
“Then how did you tell in the end?”
Lu You simply had him change places with him. He Zhuchun walked over, followed the line of Lu You’s fingertip—and froze.
Sunlight slanted down through the open corridor window, spilling onto the dim-toned flooring and laying bare the trail of water dragged all the way from Unit 1601 to where they now stood.
“The trail looked fresh,” Lu You said, “and the old woman claimed the apartment had sat empty for over a year. Empty homes don’t produce their own garbage. Qi Feng must have just come back today with fish meat and innards, run right into us, and hidden them in a hurry—and the old woman did sloppy work, smearing water everywhere, the smell still reeking.”
He Zhuchun still didn’t follow. “Then why not just hide it inside his own place? Why dump it outside the door?”
“Who said Qi Feng was the one who dumped the fish innards outside the door?”
“Huh?”
“Guess when the old woman first started following us,” Lu You said.
A chill crept up He Zhuchun’s back as he listened. He fished a peculiar word out of Lu You’s sentence: “…Following?”
“Yes. Following.”
He Zhuchun replayed everything from the moment they’d entered the compound—and suddenly remembered that this fishy odor had clung to him ever since they’d stepped into the building.
His back went even colder. He swallowed hard. “Don’t tell me… ever since we entered this building…?”
“Mm.” Lu You said, “My guess is Qi Feng is long gone by now, leaving the old woman to send us off—and take the fish back along the way. Sadly, the old woman has a bit of a brain, but not much. She realized we’d get suspicious seeing fish innards, so she even hid them. She just hid them in the wrong place.”
Lu You delivered his summary. “A little clever. But not much.”
He Zhuchun swallowed again. “Ghosts can really be this clever? But you told me before that ghosts have lost their souls and are usually simple-minded…”
“Ordinary Ghosts and Monsters, certainly,” Lu You answered. “But the ones in Qi Feng’s keeping are different. Everything he raises, Old Ghost or Little Ghost alike, has fed on Incense Offerings and been enshrined, strengthened by human faith and vow-power—they’ve long since cultivated genuine Dao Attainment. Muddle-headed ghosts can’t compare to them.”
He Zhuchun straightened out the threads in his head and concluded that this Qi Feng was wicked to the core—no wonder he’d been able to do so much evil. The man’s cunning and brains were fully online.
“So what do we do now?”
“Go inside,” Lu You answered.
He Zhuchun looked at the front door. “How?”
There’s a folk saying: what you seek may be distant as the horizon, yet right before your eyes. Lu You pointed at a small advertisement pasted on the wall beside the door, faded yellow with age from who knew how long ago.
He Zhuchun tilted his head to look.
—Lock opening, repair, replacement. Twenty years in the trade. Call now, there in ten minutes. Followed by a short string of digits.
“…Doesn’t this count as breaking into a private residence?”
Even as he said it, his hands briskly took out his phone and dialed the number.
The locksmith arrived quickly, opened the lock, and He Zhuchun handed over eighty yuan. The man pocketed it and left without dragging his feet in the slightest.
Lu You pushed the door open—and looked up to find a familiar face dead center.
He Zhuchun saw it too and let out an involuntary cry. “Why is that old woman in here?”
There, sitting squarely on the small table facing the front door, was the black-and-white funeral portrait of the very old ghost Huang Kuaipao had just dragged away. A raw fish lay offered on the table—none too fresh, clearly sitting there a while. Fresh fish must have been bought from the market today to replace the Offering Tributes and feed this old ghost.
The instant the door swung open, an even thicker stench rolled out, and He Zhuchun couldn’t help gripping the door frame and retching several times.
Lu You’s expression never changed as he stepped inside. He went first to the old woman’s private Altar Offering Table, gave it two looks, met the black-and-white portrait’s gaze until his skin crawled, and flipped the photo face-down onto the table. Only then did he have the leisure to survey the room.
The living room held two offering tables. One was a small table dedicated solely to the old woman; beside it stood an enormous Altar Offering Table, roughly five meters long, red and black, three tiers from top to bottom, its surface grained with singularly strange wood, nearly filling an entire wall.
It was Qi Feng’s Altar Table.
The Statue Vessels enshrined upon it were a motley bunch: some white-faced and red-tongued, seated cross-legged; some black-faced and black-bodied, glaring with bent legs. Strangest of all was a big-headed deity—its head taking up more than a third of its body—hair done in a bun, face snow-white, lips blood-red, a red mole between the brows: a goddess figure.
Off to one side, black Buddha statues of every kind, malicious ghosts and skeletons, many styles scattered loosely across the table—and even amid that heap of black, a Thai Fox Fairy Amulet had its place, the fox fairy’s body half bared, brows and eyes smiling, every line brimming with allure.
Lu You found the sight genuinely nauseating and turned his head away.
He Zhuchun, seeing such a scene for the first time, leaned in to look—and on the bottommost tier found many trays, each holding small plaques of every style, most of their designs sinister and strange.
“What are these?” he asked Lu You.
Lu You swept a glance over them and frowned. “Thai Amulet Plaques.”
“The little designs are pretty novel,” He Zhuchun remarked.
“Most plaques like these are made from bone or bone ash,” Lu You told him. “The truly deranged ones use human bone or human bone ash. Watch yourself.”
The moment He Zhuchun heard this, he flung the thing back, hand half-raised, hunting for somewhere to wipe it. “Great Immortal, now I feel like my pure heart has been defiled.”
“That’s why I don’t like Thai things.” Lu You walked two steps off and went to open the side door.
Presumably the dead fish’s stench in the living room had been masking it—because the moment the door opened, the long-blocked reek of rot and filth hit with nuclear-bomb force, driving Lu You back several steps.
The room faced away from the sun, curtains drawn tight even in broad daylight, not a sliver of light getting through. In the pitch dark, Lu You groped for the switch and flicked it on just as He Zhuchun crept over with his nose covered.
“Holy crap…!”
Right then, He Zhuchun wanted to cover his eyes along with his nose.
The room was packed full of fox pelts. Hanging on the walls, heaped on the floor—black, white, brown, and red pelts strewn in every corner. The door panels and walls were painted with extremely long strips of talisman script, row upon dense row filling the eye, leaving one dizzy and needing a pause after a single sweep.
“I think I finally understand what Chen Zhuzhuo meant by ‘unrighteous,'” He Zhuchun murmured.
Lu You, stung badly by the smell as well, shut the door to seal the odor in. “No more worrying about Qi Feng calling the police. With a roomful of fox pelts like this, if he did report us, who gets arrested first is anyone’s guess.”
“Great Immortal, I’m starting to regret coming with you. This stench is about to knock me flat.”
Lu You patted his shoulder. “Hold on a bit longer. We haven’t finished searching.”
The complaints were just complaints; He Zhuchun had no intention of actually leaving. He trailed after Lu You with a long-suffering face.
In a flash they’d opened the next room over. This time the two of them braced themselves in advance—and, contrary to expectations, saw nothing more macabre or gory.
It was a study.
Materials and books were neatly arrayed inside, with a desk holding a desktop computer. Lu You went over and clicked the mouse; the tower roared to life at once—the owner had apparently left without shutting down, and the machine had only entered a brief sleep mode, which worked out conveniently for them.
WeChat was logged in. Lu You opened it, scrolled through an overview first, then began searching with intent. Sure enough, he found Li Bingjun’s name and clicked in.
The most recent conversation dated back a week.
Li Bingjun: Master, Li Jiayuan’s side is almost due. The incense has kept being used on her—get the materials ready.
Qi Feng: Are you certain not a single day off?
Li Bingjun: Not a single day.
Qi Feng: Clever idea of yours, swapping through several vessels—burning incense for the kid on one hand while pumping money into your massage parlor on the other.
Qi Feng: The parlor’s made quite a bit over the years, hasn’t it?
Li Bingjun: That’s all thanks to the Feng Shui you laid out for me, Master.
Li Bingjun: Master, a debt of grace this great—this disciple will never forget it.
From the logs, Qi Feng had gone a good while without replying.
Li Bingjun sent another: Master, I just transferred 500,000 to your card. 300,000 is this year’s price for the three students; the other 200,000 is my filial offering to you.
Qi Feng finally replied: Good. Received.
Li Bingjun: Then Master, anything else you need me to prepare?
Qi Feng: Nothing on your girl’s end. It’s that student of yours.
Li Bingjun: He Zhuchun?
The moment Lu You read that name, his hand tightened on the mouse. He studied He Zhuchun’s reflection in the glossy screen—and found him crouched before a low cabinet, rummaging through something.
So Lu You kept reading.
Qi Feng: Mm.
Li Bingjun: That student’s sense of smell is freakishly sharp—like a dog’s nose. No way to apply incense to him directly.
Qi Feng: ?
Li Bingjun: But this disciple thought of a brilliant method. Guaranteed no one will be the wiser.
Qi Feng: You’ve always been clever.
Li Bingjun: All thanks to your teaching, Master.
The conversation ended there.
There wasn’t much information in it, but it went a long way toward indirectly confirming Lu You and company’s earlier guesses. The part about He Zhuchun, though, left him in a complete fog.
“What are you thinking about, Great Immortal? So absorbed.”
He Zhuchun lifted his head from the low cabinet and beckoned. “Come quick—look what I found!”
Lu You rose, walked over, and crouched down beside him to peer inside.
Inside were paper bags resembling file folders, stacked in heaps—an enormous quantity. If you hauled in a scrap collector to weigh them, the lot would probably run a good ten-odd pounds.
He Zhuchun was halfway through digging into the pile, arm stretched deep inside without pulling anything free, half his head plunged in after it. He busied himself a while longer until he’d fished out a single one to show Lu You.
Lu You looked. In the name field of the file bag was written: Li Bingjun.
“These all look like Qi Feng’s client files,” He Zhuchun said. “That dog—this many clients—how much dirty money has he raked in?”
Lu You untied the white string, opened the mouth of the bag, and scanned inside.
There was a lot: detailed paper records, films from hospital scans, and a small sealed zip bag holding stray strands of hair and clippings of nail.
He pulled everything out in one go. He Zhuchun gave it an idle glance, picked up one sheet, studied it closely—and startled.
“It’s an ultrasound report.”
He Zhuchun checked the year and the name.
“Expectant mother: Zhou Ru. The date is…” A moment of quick mental math, and his eyes went wide. “Fourteen years ago—the very year before Zhou Ru conceived Li Jiayuan.”
“Lu You, you’re incredible,” he exclaimed. “There really was another child!”
Lu You took the prenatal report and frowned at it closely.
He Zhuchun’s face twisted with disgust. “So working backwards—Li Bingjun took the first child the moment Zhou Ru gave birth and refined it into a Ghost Child, then immediately got the freshly delivered Zhou Ru pregnant again with Li Jiayuan, and all these years he’s been having the first child keep swapping souls with his second?”
“He’s an animal. Absolute scum!”
Lu You pressed his lips together. He was just about to say something when a piercing ringtone split the air.
One of the default system ringtones.
He Zhuchun jolted, every muscle tensing on reflex—then watched Lu You unhurriedly draw his phone from his pocket, answer, and raise it to his ear.
The caller was Yang Yun.
Her voice through the receiver came across somewhat muffled, but her tone sounded exceptionally worked up.
“Lu You, you’ll never guess what I did yesterday. What exactly I did doesn’t matter, though. What matters is…” She deliberately paused, milking the suspense, then slowed her pace and said in a deeply mysterious tone:
“Regarding Liu Yingying and He Zhuchun—I’ve made a major discovery on my end!”
Lu You brought the receiver closer. “Go on.”
“Liu Yingying’s Little Ghost came from a native soul,” Yang Yun said, “but it was refined with Thai methods. Li Bingjun’s side uses Thai Esoteric Occult Arts.”
Lu You gave an “mm.” “And?”
Yang Yun abruptly fell silent. She asked softly, “Is He Zhuchun beside you right now? If he is, you absolutely must not let him hear this.”
She repeated it for emphasis. “Lu You, this is important.”
Lu You didn’t answer. He silently turned the volume down a notch.
Then he heard Yang Yun say, “Last night I made a trip down below and pulled strings to trace that Little Ghost’s origins. My family’s Nether Immortal told me the dead thing’s name. It’s He Zhuchun.”
“Lu You, something is wrong with He Zhuchun.”
Lu You started—was about to say more—when the phone was suddenly snatched away and hung up. He looked up and saw He Zhuchun looking down at him, smiling, his fine white teeth eerie in the dim room.
His smile was stiff and uncanny. “Great Immortal, I just remembered what you told me about telling humans from ghosts. Since you Spirit Medium Shamans are so skilled at judging Ghosts and Gods…”
He Zhuchun lowered his voice and asked,
“Then Lu You—take a look at me. Am I human, or am I a ghost?”
