By the time they got home, it was nearly two in the morning. The lingering effects of that cup of hot mulled wine had yet to wear off, and Qin Shu was so sleepy he nearly collapsed straight onto the rug in the entryway.
Far too many people had come out to watch the fireworks. When the show ended, there had actually been something resembling a pedestrian “traffic jam.” Firework smoke and ash drifted everywhere, obscuring visibility, and it was only with the police maintaining order that the crowd could slowly disperse.
To keep from becoming separated, Qin Shu and Pei Zhao held tightly to each other’s hands and spent ages weaving through the crowd before finally finding a gap they could squeeze through.
They followed the same quiet road they had taken earlier and slowly walked home. Only after breathing the fresh air for a while did they finally recover.
“We were so lucky! We didn’t run into a single ghost tonight. Now we can finally sleep in peace!” Qin Shu stretched and was just about to flop gracelessly onto the sofa when Pei Zhao caught him by the collar and hauled him upright again.
Pei Zhao sniffed the invisible traces of gunpowder clinging to him, frowned slightly, and urged, “Go take a shower.”
The little centipede Yuanbao crawled out from Qin Shu’s collar, wriggled affectionately onto Pei Zhao’s fingertip, and was promptly pinched up and tossed aside in disgust. “You go clean yourself too.”
Yuanbao crawled away looking aggrieved, while Qin Shu was equally reluctant. “What am I supposed to do? I’m too lazy to move… Zhaozhao, why don’t we shower together? A hot bath would feel amazing right now.”
“We can sleep together. We cannot shower together. Hurry up.”
Pei Zhao mercilessly rejected the suggestion. Still, considering how exhausting Qin Shu’s day had been, there was really no need to make him go through the trouble of preparing another guest room.
What Pei Zhao had not expected was for Qin Shu’s eyes to light up the instant he heard that. Qin Shu immediately grabbed him and started pulling him upstairs. “Seriously? You’re willing to sleep in the same bed as me?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Pei Zhao asked in genuine confusion. “You’re very well-behaved when you sleep. You don’t move around.”
“Hehe, good.” Qin Shu offered no explanation. Smiling to himself, he led Pei Zhao into the walk-in closet and handed over the pajamas he had prepared long ago.
They were loose, soft autumn-and-winter pajamas in a pale, muted blue, printed with several snowy-white cat heads. They looked rather cute, and anyone could tell at a glance that they were brand-new.
Of course Qin Shu had already considered the possibility of Pei Zhao staying overnight, so he had deliberately kept several sets of pajamas unworn. He had washed and dried them in the sun before the weather turned snowy, and they still carried a faint sun-warmed scent and a lingering softness.
“And there’s more. These are bath towels, and these are face towels. Pick whichever ones you like. If you get cold, you can wear one of my hoodies or jackets. They’re hanging over here, so just take whatever you want.” Qin Shu opened the wardrobe doors and cheerfully showed him everything.
“Thank you.” Pei Zhao picked up a bath towel, paused for a moment, then smiled faintly. “You look like a little kid having someone over to play for the first time.”
“That’s pretty accurate. This is your first time spending the night at my place, so of course I’m excited.” Qin Shu agreed as though it were the most natural thing in the world. He put an arm around Pei Zhao’s shoulders and pushed him toward the door. “Come on, come on. Shower time!”
…
It was late at night.
Sharing a bed with Pei Zhao felt even more harmonious than Qin Shu had imagined. In fact… it felt completely natural.
Qin Shu had not gotten around to putting a cover on the second duvet, but Pei Zhao did not seem to care at all. He naturally chose the side of the bed against the wall and climbed in with a bath towel draped over his shoulders.
They had spent the entire evening listening to the constant roar of fireworks, and neither of them wanted anything to do with a buzzing hair dryer now. So they simply sat quietly against the headboard together, letting their half-dry hair air out while playing on their phones. Once the ends stopped dripping, they could sleep.
Qin Shu was extremely busy because more than two hundred people had sent him “Happy New Year” messages.
There were classmates from kindergarten all the way through high school, people from extracurricular classes, basketball friends he had met at the gym, friends from outside school whom he had met at arcades, even the parents of a drowning child he had once rescued… His mother had transferred him money as a New Year’s gift, and even Xing Yong sent him a message telling him to study hard in the new year and stay out of trouble.
He had already put his phone on silent, but even that was not enough. He had to turn off vibration too before he could finally breathe.
“…Why is everyone still awake? Why do I have this many people on WeChat? What is wrong with me?” Qin Shu muttered, though he still forced himself to reply to them one by one.
As he continued replying, the fatigue that came after a hot shower slowly washed over him. The scent of shower gel mingled with Pei Zhao’s pleasant fragrance around his nose, creating an inexplicable sense of security that instinctively made him want to relax. His eyelids began fighting to stay open.
“You’ve always liked adding people’s contact information. You’re still the same now. You like making friends too much. You brought this on yourself.” Pei Zhao leisurely dried his hair, his voice carrying a trace of laziness, though his assessment remained brutally accurate.
Aggrieved, Qin Shu bumped him with an elbow, then expertly rested his head against Pei Zhao’s shoulder. He wanted to argue, but there was absolutely nothing he could say.
Looking back now, he really had loved making friends. It was only after entering high school, when schoolwork became too demanding and he gradually grew closer to Pei Zhao, that his social circle shrank a little. He simply wanted to spend time with Pei Zhao… and many of the small, ordinary things he used to enjoy no longer interested him nearly as much if Pei Zhao was not there.
That was actually fine too. Given everything happening now, Qin Shu genuinely had no energy to maintain more relationships than he already had.
Pei Zhao stroked his hair, took the phone from his hand, and tucked it under his own pillow. “Your hair is basically dry. Go to sleep. Answer the rest tomorrow.”
Qin Shu laughed softly and discovered that he rather liked having Pei Zhao boss him around. “Okay. I’ll listen to you.”
He leaned toward the bedside table and switched off the main light. The bedroom instantly plunged into darkness, leaving only the small night-light near the bathroom, which cast a faint wash of blue.
“Good night,” Pei Zhao said softly as he lay flat and turned his head toward him.
Qin Shu froze for a moment, warmth quietly creeping over his ears. He had originally thought tonight would be like the last time they went out for hotpot—that he might have to sleep while hugging a giant block of ice.
But he was wrong.
With the two of them tucked beneath the same duvet, the low-temperature floor heating immediately began to make itself felt. Their breathing, heartbeats, and the faint rustle of fabric suddenly became extraordinarily distinct at such close range. The warmth had nowhere to escape, wrapping Qin Shu in a lazy, sleepy cocoon.
Qin Shu quietly extended one arm and very, very slowly moved it toward Pei Zhao until their arms touched, body heat seeping through the soft sleeves between them.
Warm. Alive. And he smelled nice. Pei Zhao was really lying beside him, telling him good night and accompanying him through the final night of 2025.
It feels so safe. What a strange feeling.
“Good night, Zhaozhao. Sweet dreams…”
Qin Shu had barely made it halfway through the sentence before his eyes closed and he drifted hazily into sleep. He had a feeling he was going to sleep very well tonight.
The only living person in the enormous house had fallen asleep.
Pei Zhao lay quietly on his back and watched as a plump, well-fed eyeball cautiously emerged from the bathroom, floated toward them, and tremblingly settled on top of their duvet.
The eye, once corpse-gray and lifeless, now had threads of eerie crimson coursing through it. It looked remarkably healthy and vigorous—actually prettier than the eye of a living person.
Pei Zhao picked it up, weighed it in his palm, and discovered that it had already grown almost as large as an adult man’s fist, soft and springy like a steamed bun.
Its growth rate was absurd.
“No outsiders have been inside Qin Shu’s home, and there aren’t any signs that someone placed a curse here.” Pei Zhao kneaded the eyeball in his hand as he spoke. “You’ve been the only one hiding in his pocket. Over the past few days, when Qin Shu was traveling back and forth to No. 2 High School, did you sense anything unusual?”
The eyeball stiffened for a moment, only to receive a speechless glance from Pei Zhao.
“…Yuanbao doesn’t count. It can’t poison you to death. Nothing else?”
“In that case, the matter involving Living Water Village should have had nothing to do with Qin Shu. So why was he dragged into it?”
Pei Zhao lowered his eyes in thought. What had happened with the horror movie that morning was one of the rare things he genuinely found difficult to understand.
At first, only Liu Yang Yang and Qin Shu had been dragged into the story of Strange Happenings in Water Village. At the time, Pei Zhao had even been able to watch a live feed through Qin Shu’s computer screen… and had accidentally gotten an eyeful of Liu Yang Yang washed ashore completely naked. Truly an assault on the eyes.
However, a ghost domain had its own rules. It was essentially a complete miniature world in its own right, and everything within it operated according to established laws.
If Pei Zhao had simply broken it apart with brute force, everyone inside might have vanished together with the domain, like raw egg spilling out when its shell was smashed. Even if they survived, they could have been left badly maimed.
For that reason, Pei Zhao had chosen the cautious approach. He forced his way into the story together with the eyeball and took over two of the few vacant roles remaining in the film—
The “ancestor ghost” whom the people of Living Water Village feared, revered, and dared not offend, and the vengeful ghost that had followed the ancestor in to shamelessly demand a share of the offerings.
He had not allowed the little centipede Yuanbao to enter because its poison was far too lethal. An ordinary flesh-and-blood human would die from the slightest contact, and if Yuanbao lost control, the consequences could have been every bit as catastrophic.
Ultimately, Yuanbao counted as a spirit beast bound by contract to Qin Shu. If Pei Zhao and Qin Shu ever came into serious conflict over what to do, Yuanbao would most likely obey Qin Shu in the end.
Given the crucial fact that Qin Shu had lost his memory, bringing an unstable and dangerous creature like Yuanbao into the ghost domain would have been extremely risky.
As for the remaining “teammates” Pei Zhao could choose from…
…there had only been the eyeball.
Fortunately, Qin Shu had not changed much even after losing his memories. The story had progressed smoothly, so whether his teammate was reliable no longer mattered.
Yet even after successfully bringing both idiots back out, Pei Zhao still could not let the matter go. A seed of unease had already taken root inside him.
There was actually another power in this world capable of taking someone who belonged with him away right before his eyes.
If he wanted to prevent anything like that from happening again, he would have to investigate everything Qin Shu had encountered recently and understand it thoroughly.
The eyeball was extremely obedient. Ever since its ashes had arrived in Yuncheng, the formal date for its joint burial had been set, and Pei Zhao had frightened away most of its resentment, it had behaved remarkably well.
Whatever Pei Zhao asked, it answered. It carefully reviewed every major and minor incident from the past week, working from the more distant possibilities toward the most recent. In the end, however, the most conspicuous anomaly still came from the previous night—and from Qin Shu himself.
“…Last night he burned incense before a statue of the Supreme Lord Laozi? Three sticks of incense. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what exactly did he wish for?” Pei Zhao frowned slightly. After a long silence, he waved his hand and released the eyeball, which was on the verge of fainting from fear.
Elio’s Notes: Supreme Lord Laozi (太上老君) is one of the highest deities in Daoism and a deified form of Laozi. Burning incense before his image is a traditional act of worship or supplication.
Then Pei Zhao turned slightly and stared at Qin Shu’s peaceful sleeping face. He and the eyeball had been talking for quite some time without lowering their voices at all, yet Qin Shu showed absolutely no sign of waking.
Wasn’t the Nine Nether Scripture supposed to sharpen the ears and eyes until one could perceive even the smallest details, and at full mastery allow its cultivator to see through all things in every direction beneath heaven?
Someone was talking continuously right beside him, yet he could still sleep this soundly.
Unable to tolerate it any longer, Pei Zhao reached out and pinched Qin Shu’s cheek, murmuring gloomily, “You even burned incense to the Supreme Lord for Liu Yang Yang’s sake… So stupid.”
The current era was only at the beginning of the spiritual energy resurgence. Spirits and strange creatures remained hidden, while the gods rarely manifested themselves. Unless a person’s faith was sufficiently devout and their intent genuinely unwavering, burning incense, making wishes, or praying to gods and Buddhas could not possibly work every single time.
Elio’s Notes: Spiritual energy resurgence refers to the recent return of supernatural energy to the world after a long period of decline. As spiritual energy strengthens, ghosts, spirits, cultivators, and other supernatural phenomena become increasingly active.
But when Qin Shu burned incense, naturally it worked.
He had offered incense, and his wish had come true. In doing so, he had effectively forced himself into another person’s karmic cause and effect, taking upon himself a portion of the divine punishment and tribulations that Liu Yang Yang should originally have endured alone.
There was an even more important reason why they had escaped so smoothly this time without encountering any truly desperate predicament, beyond the fact that Pei Zhao already knew the plot of Strange Happenings in Water Village.
Liu Yang Yang genuinely had not committed any act that grievously violated heaven and morality, and the little centipede Yuanbao, whose actions had brought the tribulation upon him, had not been coerced or imprisoned through sinister supernatural methods.
Yuanbao actually liked Liu Yang Yang. His aura was upright and righteous, so Yuanbao had been perfectly happy to stay inside his little gourd bottle. When danger came, it had even broken off part of its own tail to help him without the slightest resentment.
But what about next time?
If Qin Shu decided to protect someone else and accidentally became entangled in a grievance steeped in far deeper resentment, only to be dragged into another similar ghost domain, then things could become genuinely troublesome.
Either he had to become so powerful that no danger could threaten him, or he had to learn to avoid danger in the first place.
Pei Zhao thought for a moment and concluded that, given Qin Shu’s personality, he would probably only consider running away after confirming that everyone else was safe.
He had always been that kind of extraordinarily troublesome person.
So, just in case, Pei Zhao could only make Qin Shu grow stronger even faster. There were the basic methods of medicines taken internally and treatments applied externally, the more advanced practice of cultivating within dreams, and then… the most efficient method of all: Slaughter.
Taking life, killing hostile beings, slaying demons and eliminating evil, and fighting in defense of the Dao were all recognized methods of tempering oneself within the Nine Nether Scripture. Pei Zhao did not mind giving Qin Shu a few more opportunities to grow.
As for whom Qin Shu should kill, how many he should kill, and how he should do it, those were questions Qin Shu himself would have to answer.
For now, Pei Zhao needed to prepare a new set of clothes. He took out his phone, opened a delivery app, and searched for funeral-supply shops near the city center.
It was already extremely late, so there were not many shops that still offered delivery in the middle of the night. Only three appeared: Peaceful Longevity One-Stop Funeral Services, Huang Family Funeral Center, and Blackhearted Paper Effigy Shop.
Pei Zhao raised an eyebrow slightly and chose the last shop without hesitation. For a small additional fee, they would urgently customize various autumn and winter everyday outfits and deliver them to his door overnight.
Naturally, all of them were paper funerary garments. A living person could never wear them.
After he placed the order, barely more than ten seconds passed before the outfits Pei Zhao had selected materialized soundlessly inside the bedroom.
Weightless sheets of paper slowly drifted down, graceful as fine snow falling through the air, yet also like shadow puppets manipulated by an invisible hand, possessing an eerie agility utterly devoid of life.
Pei Zhao leaned against the headboard and allowed layer after layer of paper clothing to descend onto him. They softly adhered to his face, covering his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, as though those thin sheets had always belonged there, meant to grow directly from his flesh. Not even the slightest opening remained through which he could breathe.
If an ordinary person experienced this, their senses would already have been cut off. The more desperately they struggled, the worse it would become, until they quickly died from horrific suffocation—a scene of utter despair fit for the most terrifying nightmare.
The malice attempting to seize Pei Zhao’s body was practically written across the paper itself.
Pei Zhao merely gave a soft laugh and calmly lay back down in the warm bed. He took Qin Shu’s hand, placed it on his own stomach, and rubbed it lightly.
“An uncivilized idiot.”
“Aaaah!”
Three kilometers away, at the corner of a pedestrian street, a piercing scream tore through the night, making diners at the late-night market turn their heads.
The scream had come from a funeral-supply store that was still open for business, specializing in paper clothing and shoes, model houses and luxury cars, and all sorts of other realistic paper goods intended to be burned for the dead.
Although the shop was open in the middle of the night, its sign was unlit, and the interior was gloomy and shadowed. Unsurprisingly, business was usually not particularly good.
Now, as the scream faded, the shop owner suddenly smashed through the window and leaped outside. His legs trembled uncontrollably as he raised two blood-soaked arms. Shards of glass were embedded in his face, which had turned even whiter and more translucent than the paper effigies inside his shop.
“Sir, are you all right… Aaaah!”
A kindhearted female university student cautiously approached him, but before she could finish speaking, the sight of the shop owner made her scream as well, and she hurriedly backed away.
Every finger on the shop owner’s hands was gone.
That was where all the blood had come from.
Some unknown and horrifyingly sharp weapon had severed them cleanly at the base. Only small sections of stark-white finger bone remained, slick with thick, wet blood. The fat, skin, and flesh seemed to have silently melted away into the cold wind, leaving no trace behind.
“Don’t save me. This is… this is my punishment…”
He spoke in a trembling voice. His black pupils, dilated wildly from terror, made him look almost like a corpse that had not quite finished forming.
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