“If your name is registered below, by rights you should have passed long ago and never lived to now. Yet here you are, hale and hopping—” Lu You said. “My guess: Li Bingjun and company used some special method to deliberately keep you alive.”
He Zhuchun made a small sound. “Huh? How do you know it’s Li Bingjun?”
Lu You pointed at the computer. “From Qi Feng’s chat logs with him.”
He Zhuchun crossed to the computer in a few strides and started scrolling. The further up he read, the darker his face grew, until at last he couldn’t help an angry spit. “Those two beasts wreck their own wives and kids and their students—fine—but why do they have to wreck me too!”
In the middle of that solemn atmosphere, Lu You was genuinely amused. “What do you take yourself for, a god descended to earth? You expect evil things to detour around you when they do harm?”
He Zhuchun’s face crumpled, and he said, dead earnest, “Going by gut feeling? I honestly do.”
Yang Yun’s Huang Xiaopao hadn’t left yet, and stood obediently at the table’s edge, a pair of round black-grape eyes fixed on the two of them.
Lu You paid He Zhuchun no more mind. He turned his head—and met the little weasel’s gaze directly. Huang Xiaopao wagged its tail, tilted its head, waved a paw at him, and then trotted off on its own.
Lu You sensed something. He exchanged a look with He Zhuchun and gave chase.
Huang Xiaopao was clearly leading on purpose—every few steps it glanced back, and only once it saw them both following did it relax and keep running, until at last it stopped before the one door in the apartment that hadn’t yet been opened.
Its small bright paw pointed at the door.
Lu You glanced down at it, obliged, and gripped the handle. The door opened easily.
This had to be Qi Feng’s bedroom.
Compared to the other two rooms, this one was almost aggressively normal: a double bed, an enormous wardrobe, a desk. Rarely, it was even a sun-facing room—the curtains likewise pulled deathly tight.
The sky was darkening now, clouds pressing down the sunset, the remaining half-disc of evening light unable to reach this side. The apartment sat sunk in shadow, especially cold and dreadful for it.
Lu You flicked on the main light, his gaze following Huang Xiaopao to the enormous floor-standing wardrobe.
He Zhuchun stood behind him, arms crossed, leaning on the doorframe. “Great Immortal, another new discovery?”
Lu You ignored him, gripped both handles, and pulled the doors open.
A tide of cold air poured out.
Lu You looked closely—the enormous wardrobe held not clothes, but a stuffed-full wardrobe of dolls.
…All manner of little ghost dolls.
Copper-cast, iron-wrought, beaten gold, plus cloth and other materials he couldn’t even identify.
Identical in one respect: every doll’s body was painted with dense, long strips of talisman script, and every doll—regardless of material—stared out with the same pair of hollow, empty eyes, all at once.
A full wardrobe of Thai Ghost Children fixing their gaze on him—Lu You’s scalp prickled involuntarily, goosebumps layering on layer.
Seeing him frozen before the cabinet, He Zhuchun leaned in curiously too.
Given their positions—Lu You still planted before the wardrobe—He Zhuchun had to thread his head through the gap between Lu You and the open doors. He looked back for a proper look and locked eyes dead-on with a female doll wearing an exquisite little dress.
He Zhuchun: “…”
The doll: “…”
Lu You, flattened by He Zhuchun’s bizarre contortion: “…”
Expressionless, He Zhuchun extracted himself, swept one long arm around Lu You and hauled him away from that spot, then—expressionless—shut the cabinet doors, seized Lu You’s wrist, and marched out.
Huang Xiaopao tilted its head at the two of them.
Dragged out the door, Lu You glanced at the little weasel as they passed and still had presence of mind to think: This little weasel looks so clever and cute—how is it that actually dealing with it feels like it’s a little mute?
Only once they were outside the bedroom and He Zhuchun had shut the door did he ask, coldly, “The things in there—what are they?”
“Ghost Children,” Lu You said. “The naked ones are Kuman Thong; the doll-like ones are Kuman Li.”
“So they’re just Little Ghosts, right?”
“Right.”
He Zhuchun reflected that following Lu You around really was educational. They’d known each other barely two days, and already he’d seen evil arts, Vengeful Immortals, bone-ash plaques—and just now, at point-blank intimate range, a whole wardrobe of Little Ghosts.
#Ghost Child Wholesale Market#
“These Ghost Children really do keep up with the times,” he said. “Braiding hair and dressing up your little ghost. But does that actually look presentable on an Altar Offering Table?”
Lu You shook his head. “Kuman Li aren’t worshipped. They’re kept.”
A bad premonition crept over He Zhuchun. “…Huh?”
Lu You said, low-voiced, “Plenty of women in our country are keen to display their boundless love. Sellers tell them these are children who lost their mothers at a tender age, ever so pitiful, to stir their sympathy. Those women pay hefty sums to take them home, offer Incense Offerings, snacks, and candy, and even buy toys specially developed for the Little Ghosts’ amusement.”
“They don’t know there are Little Ghosts inside?”
“They know about half of it.” Lu You said, “The sellers gave these Ghost Children a prettier name—Child Deity Figurine.”
He Zhuchun grinned. “Those dolls in dresses must look pretty eerie too, right?”
Lu You only said, “Love makes people blind.”
He Zhuchun couldn’t understand it. He only felt his uncanny-valley response was about to be frightened clean out of him.
He rubbed his arms. “So what do we two do next? Is our trio’s situation even saveable?”
The trio being He Zhuchun, Liu Yingying, and Li Jiayuan.
“It is,” Lu You said. “We just need to find the Spellbook.”
“Thai initiations come with a Spellbook?”
“I’ve never gone deep into it, so I can’t say for sure,” Lu You said. “I’m just using the name we use on our side.”
“Got the general idea.” He Zhuchun planted his hands on his hips. “I just hope Qi Feng left the Spellbook here in this apartment—ideally somewhere I trip over it the moment I turn a corner.”
“It may well be easy to find,” Lu You said.
“What makes you say that?”
Lu You went back and pushed the bedroom door open. Huang Xiaopao hadn’t come out with them earlier; it had stayed inside, posted at the wall corner by the door, gnawing its own paws as it waited for them.
Now, seeing Lu You enter again, it swished its big tail over to the wardrobe and pointed.
The hint could not have been more obvious.
Lu You walked over a second time and opened the wardrobe, sweeping his gaze over every doll in turn—until it finally settled on the largest one in the middle: a gilded Kuman Thong.
Just as his hand reached out—illusion or not—every Ghost Child’s eyes in the cabinet seemed to snap onto him in the same instant. The sensation of being fixed by malice crawled involuntarily up his spine.
Lu You did his best to ignore it and pressed on with the motion—yet in the last second before his hand touched the big doll, the room’s main light suddenly crackled with unstable current. The bulb flickered twice and died.
He Zhuchun was caught off guard by the abrupt turn. He went to the door and flipped the switch several times, but the light stayed dead. Before he could try again, the familiar electric crackle came one after another—the living room’s and study’s bulbs going dark in sequence.
The sun crawled slowly down past the horizon. The last thread of afterglow was extinguished, and the world sank into unprecedented silence.
Frowning, Lu You reached forward into the blackness—and grasped empty air. He understood at once: this was the Ghost Children’s doing. He steadied his mind—but before he could act, He Zhuchun’s sudden sharp cry rang out from by the door.
His heart sank. He snapped on his phone’s flashlight and shone it over.
He raised his voice. “He Zhuchun, are you all right?”
The figure by the door was silent a while. Just as Lu You took several more steps toward it, he answered as if suddenly waking, hurried: “I’m fine.”
Lu You halted, raising the phone higher to stretch the light as far as it would go.
Perhaps it was the lighting, but He Zhuchun’s face looked exceptionally pale just then. He walked a few steps in an odd posture and drew a sharp breath. “Lu You, I think I’ve sprained my ankle.”
“How did you sprain it?”
He Zhuchun sighed. “Right when the lights died, something seemed to slip past me, brushing close. I grabbed at it on reflex. I’d barely felt something ice-cold before it yanked me into a stagger—I lost my footing and turned my ankle.”
Lu You crouched and shone the phone on his ankle. Sure enough, the spot was bruised red and swollen—that had to have been a nasty sprain.
He felt it with his hand and judged, “Probably a torn tendon. You need a hospital.”
He Zhuchun sucked in a breath at the pain. “Talk about bad luck.”
Lu You rose to his feet, a pair of peach-blossom eyes fixing on him, level with his for a moment. He sighed too. “Let’s go. Looks like the Spellbook isn’t being found today. I’ll take you to the hospital first—no sense leaving yourself with lingering damage.”
He Zhuchun nodded. “I suppose that’s all for now.”
The elevator needed no key card. With his ankle hurt, He Zhuchun’s gait was bizarre; Lu You moved to support him but was sidestepped, the offer refused.
He grinned again. “It’s hardly so dire I can’t walk on my own. Don’t worry over me too much, Great Immortal.”
Lu You glanced at him, pressed his lips together, said nothing, and entered the elevator; He Zhuchun shuffled in behind him.
The elevator descended, drifting from the Sixteenth Floor down toward the First. When the inner and outer doors slid open in turn, Lu You stepped out first—and froze.
He Zhuchun trailed behind, and with Lu You planted there, found his own path blocked. “Why’d you stop?”
Lu You sidestepped. He Zhuchun looked—and his expression froze on his face.
—The doorplate 1601 slammed into view. The familiar water stains, dragged long across the floor, barely held their shape under the voice-activated light. Unwilling to accept it, he took two steps, and through the half-open stairwell door he saw it: that bag of fish innards floating in bloody water.
Lu You’s kick back then had carried real force—one fish bladder had tumbled out of the gaping bag and onto the ground, its thin white membrane skinned with a film of blood.
He Zhuchun glanced back, unwilling, at the elevator’s floor display.
The number that had glowed “1” when they’d exited had, in the blink of an eye, somehow become “16.”
He looked to Lu You. “What’s going on?”
Lu You’s verdict was mostly formed. He stepped back into the elevator, closed the doors, and pressed the First Floor.
Ding—the doors opened again. Lu You looked up.
Still 1601.
He pressed his lips tight, irritation rippling across his features, and said, low and heavy, “It’s a Ghost Wall Illusion.”
“Ghost Wall Illusions are actually real?”
“They are,” Lu You said. “A nasty technique. Ghostspawn simply have too many tricks.”
“Then what do we do? Is there a way to break it?” He Zhuchun limped to his flank and rear.
Lu You reached into his pocket, took out the newly bought pack of cigarettes, broke the seal, and tapped one out between his teeth. He mumbled vaguely, “Let me try a Spirit Invocation.”
Click—
In the dim corridor, the lighter’s red flame flashed once. Lu You found a clean stretch of wall to lean against, and in the curling smoke his eyes sank half-lowered as he quietly waited.
He Zhuchun waited quietly alongside—until the cigarette had burned past half before he carefully asked, “Well?”
“Can’t reach the Patron Spirits.”
Lu You tapped the ash and looked around. “This one’s probably not going to be easy.”
It was the first time He Zhuchun had ever seen Lu You thwarted. So the famed Great Immortal Lu also had matters where Ghosts and Gods gave him trouble—the novelty inexplicably thrilled him. “So there are things even you can’t solve?”
Lu You laughed lightly—and the laugh landed just as the voice-activated light died. In the blackness, only the cigarette at Lu You’s fingertips still held its small red point.
He coughed loudly, twice, and once the light relumed, he drawled, “I’m no immortal. Of course I’m not all-powerful.”
“Then are we going to be trapped to death here forever?” He Zhuchun’s body lurched unevenly as he came to stand beside him, shoulder to the wall, his tone wheedling. “Great Immortal Lu, I don’t want to die. You have to think of something for me.”
