The darkness in this place was thick as a pool of slurry; even the lackluster incandescent bulb overhead dispersed only half of it. The rest still brimmed with a gift for unease—as if the unknown crouched in some corner, waiting for its chance to deal the intruders a killing blow.
Lu You exhaled a long plume of smoke. Through the drifting haze he studied the cigarette stub at his fingertips, dim and indistinct, the amber pupils reflecting the ember as if warmed into embers themselves, kindling to burn amid all that indifference.
Watching the spark crawl toward the filter, Lu You clicked his tongue in impatience, flicked the stub to the ground, and ground it out underfoot.
“Can’t take it by force, then we take it by wit,” he said.
He Zhuchun tilted his head. “How do you mean, by wit?”
Lu You’s lips parted, and he let out three words: “Hide-and-seek.”
A Ghost Child was, in the end, a Little Ghost refined from a child—the mischievous, playful temperament remained.
“The lights died the second before I touched that little ghost chief—the Ghost Wall must have appeared right then. It sounds mystical, but at bottom, a Ghost Wall Illusion is just a false image conjured by Ghosts and Monsters.”
“A false image?”
“Mm.” Lu You said, “If it helps you wrap your head around it, you can call it a Barrier or an Illusion Formation. Either will do.”
“Now that you’ve said those two words, I get it—” He Zhuchun said. “So ‘by wit’ means finding the Formation Core of this Illusion Formation and Shattering it, correct?”
Lu You nodded. “Right.”
“Then we still have to go back into Qi Feng’s apartment.”
Mercifully, neither of them had the habit of closing doors behind them. Whatever He Zhuchun’s reasoning, Lu You’s was absolutely deliberate.
Perhaps in the very second the lights died he had already sensed something wrong, and had left himself an escape hatch with every single step he took.
And so they returned to the living room.
Both flipped on their phone flashlights. He Zhuchun’s came on abruptly, and sweeping it forward on reflex, he found himself eye to eye with a wrinkled old face. He jolted and flinched sideways.
Lu You, rather speechless, pushed him aside a bit. “Can you manage to be brave?”
His tongue tripping over itself, He Zhuchun stammered, “Th-there’s someone there!”
Lu You walked over, expression calm, and took the old woman’s gray-white photo from the center of the small table. “These little friends have nasty streaks—propping the photo back up just to frighten us.”
Speaking, he broke the Photo Frame apart and dropped it, then held the black-and-white portrait half alongside the phone light in one hand while the other drew the lighter and carefully set fire to a corner of the photo.
The flames swelled in an instant, soon swallowing half the old woman’s ghostly face. When only the forehead and half a head of gray hair remained, Lu You tossed the scraps into the Incense Burner on the small table, watched it burn to nothing, then turned and beckoned He Zhuchun over.
He pointed at the burner. “It’s gone now. Don’t be afraid.”
He Zhuchun craned his neck to look at the little mound of ash. An expression neither pleased nor displeased hung on his face—just a very strange one.
He paused a while, then said, “Thank you.”
Lu You had always been courteous. “It’s nothing.”
That handled, Lu You headed for the bedroom again, opened the door, and circled the room—nowhere any sign of Huang Xiaopao.
Presumably the Patron Spirits had all been shut outside the Barrier. Whether Kuaipao would panic at finding him gone, he couldn’t say.
By the time Lu You reached the room, He Zhuchun had limped in after him—and the picture was oddly like a toddler newly on his feet, wobbling from room to room after his mother.
“Why are we back in this room again?”
“To finish what I started,” Lu You said.
Speaking, he felt in his pocket for the three Talisman Papers he’d placed there specially that morning. Pressing forefinger and thumb together, he drew one out pinched at the fingertips, and with quick hands flipped open the cabinet doors—sure enough, a Kuman Thong was hiding inside.
At the sight of him, the Ghost Child bolted on instinct—but Lu You’s hand was faster, slapping a talisman square onto its forehead.
The talisman ignited without flame, and with it came the little Ghost Child’s shrill shrieking. The cry was unbearable, as if meaning to bore straight through the eardrum—sharp and sustained until the talisman burned itself out, collapsing into a pinch of ash on the cabinet shelf.
Afterward, the script covering the Kuman Thong’s body dissolved like spilled ink, blooming into one great blot across its form. The little Ghost Child lost all vitality and never moved again.
A single talisman had wiped this Yin Entity out entirely.
He Zhuchun, moving stiffly, walked over and inspected it back and forth, then asked cautiously, “Is it dead for good?”
“Dead for good,” Lu You said.
“Great Immortal, your Dao Attainment truly runs deep.”
Lu You ignored the flattery and said to himself, “Let’s go. Try and see whether we can get downstairs.”
They tested another round, and the result was self-evidently poor: the elevator opened onto the familiar 1601.
Generally speaking, Ghost Wall Illusions and the like come in two kinds. One: a host of ghosts jointly holding the Formation—relatively simple; kill any Little Ghost, tear an opening in the Illusion Formation, and you’re out.
But Lu You’s sacrifice of one talisman’s cost proved the situation was not trending that way. The truth pointed to the other, far more troublesome possibility: a Ghost Child King presiding.
That is, the strongest among those little Ghost Children had laid the Formation alone to trap him here—and to breach this wall, he would have to find that “Ghost Child King.”
“Looks like a failure, Great Immortal. What’s our next move?”
“Searching by brute force is too hard. We’ll invite them out directly.”
“Invite?”
“Inviting gods and inviting ghosts follow the same method,” Lu You said. “Lay out the Offering Tributes, light the Incense, and lure out the Ghost King.”
As for the Offering Tributes…
Their gazes crossed for a moment, and by unspoken agreement both landed on that garbage bag in the corner, full of fish guts soaking in bloody water.
The Offering Tributes, naturally, would be whatever was at hand.
Given a choice, He Zhuchun felt he would go his whole life without touching something so filthy and disgusting.
But as things stood, he apparently had no choice.
By the time He Zhuchun carried that plastic bag in, bloody water trailing a line all the way across the floor, Lu You was just emerging from the kitchen, a steel basin of moderate size in his hands.
He set the basin on the floor and directed, “Just dump it all in.”
He Zhuchun poured the fish guts in as told.
Lu You kept directing. “Set the basin on the old woman’s little table. The crowd on the big table probably won’t dare eat. Once it’s placed, light the Incense—and remember, one stick only.”
“Why do I have to do all of it?”
He Zhuchun tried to push back. “I’m the injured one here, Great Immortal Lu. Can’t we split this a little more evenly?”
Lu You flicked his flashlight over to the sofa and sat down to rest. He smiled and said, slowly, “And when the Ghost Children come, who’s going to be fighting them? You handle the chores, I handle the combat. How is that unfair?”
Talked into silence, He Zhuchun could only keep his head down, grunting and slaving away.
Somewhere along the way—whether the fish stench was simply too thick—He Zhuchun kept having to swallow, looking every second like he’d be gagged into vomiting.
When the single stick of incense was lit and planted in the burner, it went right into the center of the old woman’s photo ashes.
A single thread of blue smoke drew itself up, drifting faintly in midair.
The fish stench thickened by degrees.
Lu You could already faintly make out the sound of swallowing from the dark.
After roughly half an incense stick’s time more, at last a Ghost Child could not resist the lure, flinging itself onto the steel basin to feast.
With a leader, more and more Ghost Children poured dense from the dark; in a blink, the basin was ringed by bruise-black little hands.
All of them the hands of infants: pudgy, like segments of lotus root—provided one ignored the eerie markings upon them.
Lu You drew out another talisman and pinched it in his hand.
He Zhuchun stood at the side of the Altar Offering Table, staring at the fish scraps in the basin, palms sweating in sympathy.
As the red, bloodied contents dwindled, the living room curtains suddenly swayed twice on their own—and the next moment an infant’s arm, conspicuously larger than the others, hooked up onto the Altar Offering Table. Then a head emerged from beneath it.
This Ghost Child had been born with one large, round skull, its face blue-black with bruising, its pupils long gone—no whites remaining, only a hollow black void. It groped its way to the basin’s edge, and the other Ghost Children scattered at once, enclosing it in a small ring.
The larger Ghost Child seemed long accustomed to such treatment. It squatted straight down at the basin, thrust its face in, and lapped up the remaining bloody dregs and scraps.
Lu You stared fixedly at this Ghost Child for a long moment. Seeing the basin all but empty, he pinched the talisman, rose, and closed the distance in a few strides. The talisman self-ignited the moment it neared the surrounding Ghost Children—the flame a searing, brilliant red, wreathed in a layer of Golden Radiance, dragging out a long fire-tail as it swirled around Lu You’s wrist. Every Ghost Child the flames seared shrieked piercingly.
In an instant the Ghost Children scattered, all slinking back into the dark, not daring a sound.
Talisman clipped between Lu You’s forefinger and middle finger, aimed with unshakable intent straight at the big Ghost Child at the center.
It couldn’t dodge in time. The final tail of fire struck it square between the brows; a scorching pain bloomed there—and the next moment its limbs failed, its body scattering into motes of fluorescent light and fading away.
Half a talisman had, outright, scattered its soul and shattered its spirit.
He Zhuchun gaped, stammering, “…Is—is it dead?”
“Not necessarily.”
Lu You’s gamble had, in truth, set his own heart hammering, a thin sheen of sweat rising at his temples. He said, “This whole thing is a phantom cast by the Ghost Wall Illusion. Death itself can be faked here. Only by testing whether we can leave this building can we know whether that Formation Core Ghost Child really died.”
“Then we head down?”
Lu You gave a low sound of assent.
Ding—
The elevator chime rang a fourth time that night.
Lu You drew a deep breath, eyes locked on the view widening through the door seam.
The dim corridor, the pallid voice-activated lights, the main gate finally in sight—and no hateful 1601 anywhere. The First Floor!
“We made it out!” He Zhuchun cried with delight.
Lu You peered through the compound’s main gate.
For whatever reason, the compound’s streetlights hadn’t come on tonight—yet outside was bright. Bright as though a layer of snow had been spread across the ground.
They stepped out of the building, standing beneath the night sky.
He Zhuchun’s walk was still far from easy, yet he stubbornly forged ahead, uneven step by uneven step.
He turned back, waving. “Great Immortal, hurry it up a little, would you?”
But Lu You stopped—the open gate at his back.
“He Zhuchun.” Lu You called, softly.
He Zhuchun stood there. “What is it?”
Lu You raised his voice. “I still remember what you asked me today—since Spirit Medium Shamans are so skilled at telling humans from ghosts, whether I could tell if you were human or ghost.”
He Zhuchun gave an “mm,” and laughed. “Why bring that up all of a sudden?”
Lu You also pulled out a smile, hands in his pockets, pacing over to stand before him, and said, softly:
“The world of the living has a moon. You’ve been dead too long—you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be alive, haven’t you?”
Watching the face before him go rigid, Lu You stretched his smile wider:
“Remember what I said?”
“…” His voice was silent a moment, then rasped, “What?”
“If something were wrong with you, then the one who should be afraid wouldn’t be me.”
Lu You, perfectly composed, formed a hand seal with one hand, the last talisman pressed together in his palm—and the yellow paper strip, trembling in the windless air, abruptly blazed up in a wash of gold-red fire.
Lu You’s eyelids lifted halfway, wearing once more that deeply compassionate air, and he said, quiet:
“Thank me. I’m escorting you to hell personally.”
Under the empty night sky, the talisman’s flame leapt high in an instant.
When a clear, cool breeze had passed, at last a sly moon hung over half the sky.
