Futile Devices Scans

Qin Shu slept extremely well that night without having a single nightmare, which surprised him quite a bit.

After all, before that mad dragon died, she had whispered an ominous curse into his ear: again and again, he would taste the pain that belonged to him alone. It certainly sounded threatening enough.

So before officially going to sleep, Qin Shu had deliberately wrapped Pei Zhao in his arms and, with an attitude bordering on shameless, buried his face in the cool, fragrant hollow of Pei Zhao’s neck. Even then, he had already prepared himself to spend the night tormented by nightmares.

Yet nothing happened at all. When Qin Shu woke up, he even found himself refreshed and in better condition than before, his entire body brimming with strength—so much strength, in fact, that it took him a little while to adjust.

At breakfast, Qin Shu secretly crushed an apple that was no longer particularly fresh. He did it with two fingers and barely used any force.

The first time Qin Shu had ever experienced a tangible sense of “becoming stronger” was when he worked through a physics practice exam and realized he could easily solve the final problem. The second time was today.

The two experiences could not have been more different, yet both were equally clear and immediate.

Looking back, Granny A-Shu’s red pill undoubtedly deserved most of the credit. At the time, Qin Shu’s adrenaline had been surging so violently that he could still endure it, but now that he recalled the agony of being scorched by flames and barely able to breathe, even he found the memory difficult to stomach.

That was simply how the path of a body cultivator worked: suffer, endure, and be hammered and tempered like a magical artifact. As long as you did not die, you would emerge stronger from the ordeal.

According to Pei Zhao, Qin Shu’s route to becoming stronger was already much easier than most people’s, since at least he had not needed to begin practicing foundational body arts in early childhood. Cherish what you have. Cherish what you have.

Once he returned to school, the familiar atmosphere thick with ghostly aura returned as well, and Qin Shu once again felt an inexplicable sense of coming home.

He let Coalball out to search for its own “parents and family,” hoping it could find some way to investigate the origins of those human-faced, eagle-bodied little ghosts.

Those monsters were different from the ones outside the school. They were stronger, nastier, and potentially capable of reproducing a second generation, so there was definitely an unusual story behind their mutation.

Even the well-traveled white dragon had let out a surprised hmph when it saw them before quietly suppressing its own aura and following Coalball.

With the white dragon helping keep an eye on it, Qin Shu felt much more reassured about Coalball’s safety. He was then forced to plunge straight back into the endless sea of studying that came with being a high school senior.

It was very much against his will.

The blame lay entirely with his beloved teachers, who cared far too much.

He had only taken three days off. None of his teachers seemed particularly worried that Pei Zhao might neglect his studies, yet they carefully scrutinized every bit of extra homework Qin Shu handed in before finally letting him go. Teacher Zhang, who taught Chinese, was especially merciless. After reading Qin Shu’s test paper, he actually assigned him even more writing exercises.

One airy remark—“Your essays finally have room for improvement now. Practice more, and practice hard”—was enough to consume nearly all of Qin Shu’s remaining free time.

He had only just about finished those assignments when another helping of extra work arrived, this time courtesy of Teacher Li, the physics teacher who kept an equally close eye on him.

This was the same Teacher Li who had once thrown Qin Shu and Tang Rui Cheng out of class to stand in the hallway, who was occasionally followed by a translucent little boy, and who had an enduring passion for handing her students competition-level physics problems.

Qin Shu was summoned to the office and seated at her computer desk, where she supervised him as he worked through a stack of difficult problems she had prepared in advance.

While Qin Shu worked, the little boy in a Morning Star Elementary School uniform remained nearby.

The child’s face was deathly pale, while his round eyes, which had no visible whites, were pitch-black and hollow, almost deeper than the black pearls produced by thousand-year-old clam spirits. He crouched quietly on the windowsill, occasionally snatching up a passing ant and stuffing it into his mouth. His yin energy was extremely faint, and he disturbed no one.

So Qin Shu ignored him as usual and concentrated on solving the problems. He had barely filled half a page of scratch paper, however, when Teacher Li pulled it away and inspected his work carefully.

As far as Qin Shu was concerned, the pressure in Teacher Li’s gaze was several degrees more terrifying than that of the mad dragon, and even scarier than Old Fu, their homeroom teacher.

Whenever she hauled him into the office alone to solve problems or explain his reasoning, and whenever Teacher Li’s silence stretched just a little too long, a chill would slowly creep up Qin Shu’s back. After enduring this for long enough, however, his ability to withstand pressure from authority figures had improved considerably.

Today, unexpectedly, Teacher Li showed no dissatisfaction at all, though her expression remained as cold and stern as ever. “Has your homeroom teacher spoken to you about registering for the Strong Foundation Program?”

“Mm, Old Fu mentioned it, but my competition results are only so-so…”

“Competition results aren’t important. I’ll give you three key points,” Teacher Li interrupted. “First, raise your ranking on the province-wide final exam. I want to see your name on the honor roll this time. Second, during the Gaokao, don’t start yelling in the examination room or looking all over the place. Just perform properly. Finally, start preparing for the university assessment now. What school are you aiming for?”

Elio’s Notes: The Strong Foundation Program (强基计划) is a Chinese university admissions pathway that considers Gaokao performance together with additional university assessments for selected foundational disciplines.

“…Jiangcheng University.” Under her gaze, Qin Shu found himself inexplicably nervous and lowered his voice.

Teacher Li raised one sharply defined eyebrow. “You’re not going to Jing City? You received a spot in Jing University’s winter camp. You actually have a decent chance.”

“Ahem. I’d still rather stay in Jiangcheng,” Qin Shu said, growing even more nervous. “Zhaozhao… Pei Zhao is planning to stay too.”

Teacher Li gave him a meaningful look before shaking her head. “Fine. I’ll ask Teacher Fu to prepare Jiangcheng University’s past assessment papers and practice exams for you. Don’t think Jiangcheng University is easy to get into. Your only advantage is being a local student. You cannot relax during these last six months.”

“Yes, yes…”

Time crawled more slowly than a snail. Qin Shu endured and endured until the torturous long break finally ended.

Rubbing his stiff neck, he escaped the office and hurried downstairs for PE class. Teacher Li’s habitual tendency to run overtime apparently remained unchanged even when she was merely giving one student extra tutoring during a break, and Qin Shu was already close to being late.

Yet when Qin Shu reached the empty stairwell, his steps abruptly slowed. He could sense a faint gaze behind him, quietly following him all the way there and refusing to disappear.

Frowning, he turned around and discovered that today’s silent stalker was none other than that pale, skinny elementary-school ghost.

When Qin Shu stopped, the ghost stopped too. The cool early-spring sunlight streamed through the corridor and fell over the stairs in bands like scattered fragments of pale gold, passing straight through the child’s thin, translucent body before landing at Qin Shu’s feet.

Human and ghost stared at each other for several seconds. Qin Shu adjusted his expression and tried a gentle smile. “Little guy, is there something you need?”

When Qin Shu had first encountered the child, the little ghost had scared the life out of him. Now, however… well, he looked like an obedient child, and he was rather cute too. Peaceful communication seemed worth attempting.

After Qin Shu asked in such a friendly tone, the little boy took a small step forward while still maintaining a safe distance between them. His lips moved as though he were whispering something.

Just as Qin Shu tried to hear what he was saying, however, the boy opened his mouth, revealing two densely packed rows of white teeth shaped like silver needles and, hidden behind those grotesque teeth… a severed tongue.

Qin Shu was no longer as easily frightened as he once had been, but in that instant, when he looked straight into the child’s mouth and accidentally “saw through” his cause of death, his heart still clenched uncontrollably.

The boy’s tongue had been cut off directly from the root. The injury bore signs of a violent struggle, making it almost certain that another person had done it.

The instrument used to cut his tongue had probably been an old pair of badly worn, blunt iron scissors. The edges of the severed root were so jagged and irregular that they looked like a clumsy lump of modeling clay shaped by a kindergarten child.

Even more horrifying was the fact that the brutally severed tongue was still being held firmly inside the child’s mouth. A large piece of twisted, ugly crimson flesh blocked his throat, its edges dotted with pale-gray granulation that had only begun growing after his death and now tangled around his needle-thin teeth.

In modern society, it was almost unheard of for someone to die from having their tongue cut out. Yet here before Qin Shu stood precisely such an impossible exception, and he could scarcely imagine anyone being cruel enough to do this to a child.

By now he already knew that unless a ghost possessed powerful cultivation and had learned some kind of transformation art, every deceased soul would continue reproducing the appearance it had at the moment of death. With time, that appearance would only deteriorate further, becoming more grotesque as resentment eroded it.

The drowned ghost Song Qian Li and the hanged ghost Du Xiao Shuang were both classic examples. On the very first day Qin Shu had stepped into this new world, they had given him more than enough of a shock.

Yet all the twisted and horrifying acts he had witnessed before, all the bloody and resentful ghosts he had encountered… the anger and alarm those scenes had inspired suddenly seemed to pale beside the sight of this quiet, pale child simply opening his mouth in front of him.

“You can’t speak, can you? Can you write…? No, wait. I have another way.”

Qin Shu reached toward his wrist and pulled Yuanbao out of its bracelet disguise, giving the sleepy little centipede a shake. “Yuanbao, you can transmit thoughts. Help me listen to him and find out what this kid wants me to do.”

Reluctantly, Yuanbao jumped up, landed on the child’s face, then slowly crawled into his gruesome mouth.

This was the difference between a child and a child ghost.

If a blood-red centipede suddenly appeared, stretched out its many cold legs, and crawled over an ordinary child’s face, that child would inevitably be scared out of his wits and burst into tears.

A little ghost who could not speak, however, merely closed his mouth in silence, then floated obediently beside Qin Shu and learned at remarkable speed how to use the centipede to accomplish what he wanted.

PE class during senior year was not difficult. Everyone was already familiar with the events they had registered for, so the PE teacher hardly needed to supervise them closely.

Qin Shu was one of the students who caused the teacher the least concern, so no one needed to worry about him at all. He practiced shooting baskets by himself for a while before voluntarily beginning his required laps around the track. Gradually, classmates fell in behind him, treating him, as always, as the person responsible for setting the pace.

Today, however, Qin Shu’s pace was much faster than usual because his mind was nowhere near running. After glancing toward Pei Zhao, who was brazenly sitting in the shade, Qin Shu continued chatting with the little ghost floating beside him.

The child could not remember what year he had died, where Morning Star Elementary School had been, or even his full name. He had been too young at the time of death and suffered too much trauma; after wandering around in a daze for a very long time, he had somehow stumbled into Jiangcheng No. 2 High School and become trapped in this ghost prison ever since.

Yet he did not dislike life in his “prison.” Every year he could watch new groups of older brothers and sisters laughing, arguing, getting angry, and making up. He could stay close to Teacher Li, who looked very much like his mother, and he could pick up anything he found on the ground and taste it without worrying that an adult would scold or punish him.

All he knew was that his childhood nickname had been Fangfang and that he once had a younger sister named Yuanyuan. As for why he still had not reincarnated, the reason was unexpectedly simple: when he first died, no underworld officer had ever come to collect his soul.

More importantly, despite Fangfang’s childish and rather simple mental age, none of the larger or smaller ghosts at No. 2 High seemed ever to have bullied him. It was almost as though no ghost dared provoke him.

Qin Shu suspected that Fangfang’s resentment at the time of death might actually have been extremely heavy. Paired with those fine, needle-sharp teeth inside his mouth… well, he certainly did not look easy to mess with. Of course, this was only Qin Shu’s preliminary guess.

Considering the disorder in the underworld and its shortage of personnel in recent years, the fact that no underworld officer had managed to collect Fangfang’s soul seemed perfectly plausible.

Qin Shu did not discuss any of that with Fangfang. Instead, he continued jogging while speaking to him gently, without the slightest trace of breathlessness. “The uncles and aunties in the underworld are just too busy. Look, there are lots of ghosts at school who haven’t managed to reincarnate either, just like you. Those uncles and aunties simply haven’t had enough time to come get everyone. It isn’t because they don’t want you.”

Fangfang nodded, completely reassured, and broke into a clean, innocent smile of realization. Qin Shu considered his eyesight excellent, yet for the time being he could see no sign whatsoever of whether this child possessed a more sinister, ghostly side.

“So, Fangfang, besides wanting me to fix your tongue, there really isn’t anything else you want? I can help you find your mom and dad, or find the people who hurt you.”

Hoping to prevent this ordinary child’s lingering obsession from deepening until he eventually became increasingly monstrous, Qin Shu proactively offered his help. Fangfang, however, merely shook his head and calmly conveyed his one and only wish.

He wanted a complete tongue.

There was no hatred, no resentment, and no desire whatsoever to take revenge on whoever had killed him.

Qin Shu sighed. “I understand. Meet me in the study room after school. I’ll find an older brother who’s even better at this than I am and have him fix your tongue for you.”

Fangfang smiled expectantly, opening his gruesome, bloodied mouth and cautiously reaching out to touch the little centipede curled between the pieces of his severed tongue.

A child’s natural curiosity suddenly won out. Fangfang pinched Yuanbao between his fingers and tentatively tried biting its damaged tail legs with his pointed teeth. When he discovered that he could not bite through them no matter how hard he tried, he finally pulled Yuanbao out with a faintly disappointed expression and returned it to Qin Shu.

“Kid, you…”

Qin Shu tucked away the inexplicably sleepy Yuanbao and was about to say a few more words when Fangfang simply turned around and floated away.

Ghosts really do have it good. They can fly. Qin Shu looked up as Fangfang drifted back to the top floor of the teaching building, climbed through the office window, and quietly sat down on Teacher Li’s computer desk.

He was completely satisfied with this life, content simply to remain beside a woman who looked very much like his mother and unwilling to ask for anything more.

“So there really are ghosts like this in the world.”

After PE class, Qin Shu pulled Pei Zhao down beside him outside the school convenience store and ordered two bowls of chilled coconut dessert. He ate while talking, the early-spring sunlight warm and pleasant as it fell across Pei Zhao’s pale profile and gilded it with soft gold.

Pei Zhao did not tolerate heat well. After slowly eating a few spoonfuls of dessert, he finally spoke in a thoughtful tone. “A severed body part is much like a damaged soul. It can intensify resentment, but it can also suppress a ghost’s power.”

“…You mean—!”

“I suspect Fangfang was killed by a curse,” Pei Zhao said very softly. “Silver needles driven into the gums, the tongue cut off with blunt, rusty iron shears, then the severed tongue left blocking the throat. A low-grade occult trick meant to leave the dead unable to speak while their resentment remains trapped inside them, with nowhere to voice their grievance.”

“That’s horrible. Who could possibly hate a little kid that much?” Qin Shu’s brows drew tightly together.

“Once his tongue is repaired, we may learn the answer, but we should be prepared.” Pei Zhao set down his little spoon; his bowl was already completely empty. “Fangfang may not be so easy to talk to once he can speak.”

Qin Shu’s gaze immediately shifted toward him. “Got it. Want another bowl?”

“I’ll eat yours.”

Pei Zhao reached out, pulled Qin Shu’s barely touched dessert toward himself, and leisurely scooped up an ice cube before putting it into his mouth and biting down.

A crisp crack came from his slightly puffed cheek as the ice shattered. Pei Zhao ate happily while Qin Shu sucked in a breath and offered a solemn assessment. “You have the strongest teeth in the entire world.”

“Mm.” Pei Zhao did not argue. He was usually in a good mood after eating his fill, and today was no exception.

Before the bell ending PE class rang, he lazily stretched out on the bench outside the convenience store, resting his head on Qin Shu’s thigh and enjoying the last lingering coolness of early spring.

Several classmates burst into the store with their arms around one another’s shoulders, only to come charging back out a short while later. They laughingly threw a few of the internet’s latest terrible memes at Qin Shu, then scattered noisily elsewhere after Pei Zhao glanced at them once.

The smell of instant noodles drifted through the air. A microwave hummed inside the store, an empty potato-chip bag tore open with a rrrip, and the PE teacher blew the assembly whistle twice before dismissing class.

Qin Shu stayed exactly where he was, resting his palm on Pei Zhao’s soft hair and stroking it gently. Without realizing it, he had been thoroughly infected by Pei Zhao’s lazy attitude toward life and accepted it without resistance.

He could close his eyes for a little while first. The headache-inducing problems could wait until afterward.

Once he relaxed, the remaining classes passed quickly.

By evening, Qin Shu was sitting in a classroom that was gradually emptying out, listening to people howl that they were starving as the sound of running footsteps faded down the corridor toward the cafeteria. He slowly exhaled and realized that he was oddly unused to such a peaceful scene.

Whenever his surroundings became quiet, a vague uneasiness would rise in him, as though something was inevitably going to happen in the very next second.

His phone sounded with a ding. Qin Shu opened the notification, then immediately pressed the volume button.

“Brother Qin, Brother Qin! The security guard caught me and won’t let me in! Save me!”

Liu Yang Yang’s despairing wail blasted from the phone. The man possessed an eternal talent for turning every minor inconvenience around him into a dramatic incident.

Qin Shu laughed. “I’ll go rescue him. Liu Yang Yang getting caught doesn’t matter, but I also told him to bring us milk tea—with ice. Zhaozhao, go to the study room first. I booked one already, the room at the very end of the hallway. Mr. Xu will come over after he gets off work.”

“Okay.”

Pei Zhao’s eyes brightened by an almost imperceptible degree.

The self-study rooms at No. 2 High were beside the music classrooms, divided into small, soundproof rooms. Some served as practice rooms for students preparing for arts examinations, while the remaining enclosed study spaces were equally sought after and usually required advance reservations.

In order to find somewhere quiet enough to deal with “ghost business,” Qin Shu had specifically asked around among students from the neighboring class and finally managed to trade for a reservation slot.

Fangfang arrived at the classroom door exactly on time. He voluntarily held out his small hand and quietly allowed Pei Zhao to lead him away. Strangely enough, Fangfang seemed to be the only ghost in all of No. 2 High who felt absolutely no urge to avoid Pei Zhao.

The obedient sight made Qin Shu’s chest ache. He quickened his pace toward the guardroom, signed Liu Yang Yang out of custody, and at the same time received a piece of explosive news.

Quite literally explosive.

“Brother Qin, Brother Qin, something huge happened! I figured this wasn’t the kind of thing I should say over the phone. I had to tell you in person.”

Liu Yang Yang’s expression was slightly stiff. He carried milk tea in one hand and threw his other arm around Qin Shu’s shoulders, pretending they were merely walking arm in arm. His face looked somewhat blackened, and a faint burnt smell clung to him.

Before Qin Shu could even ask what had happened, Liu Yang Yang lowered his voice and spoke rapidly. “Qingfeng Teahouse exploded! It kept burning, and I don’t know why nobody was putting the fire out. I only realized something was wrong when I passed by… and after I put out the fire and went inside, I found Boss Lin’s body!”