Qin Shu’s steps stopped abruptly before he immediately picked up his pace again, continuing toward the study room with a grave expression. “Lin Shi Yu is dead?”
“Uh, probably not. I don’t think he’s really dead?” Liu Yang Yang sounded uncertain. “That fire was incredible. It burned through the wooden furniture inside for an entire afternoon and reduced everything to ash, but his corpse was still pretty intact and wasn’t badly charred. I checked his corpse pulse before calling the police. He’d only been dead about an hour—extremely fresh. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find his ghost anywhere.”
“What exactly is a corpse pulse?”
“Oh, just a corpse-herder’s little trick for examining bodies. Not important, not important. Anyway, Brother Qin, you don’t need to worry too much. Boss Lin died a long time after the fire started. There were no signs of struggle, no fatal external injuries, and no obvious traces of a fight…”
Liu Yang Yang scratched his face, sounding increasingly certain as he continued. “Judging by how fresh the corpse was, I’d stake Phoenix Village’s genetically inherited expertise with fire on this: Boss Lin is definitely no ordinary person. He clearly isn’t afraid of being burned, so he must have some real ability.”
“If he isn’t afraid of fire, then during all that time the place was burning, he should’ve had plenty of opportunities to put it out himself, yet he didn’t.” Qin Shu frowned thoughtfully. “Not only did he do nothing… he also died.”
Liu Yang Yang’s arm remained draped over his shoulder. After glancing left and right to make sure no one was nearby, he leaned closer and whispered, “My guess is he offended someone he shouldn’t have. They came to the teahouse looking for trouble, so he faked his death to escape.”
Qin Shu thought about it, then shook his head slightly. “Even you managed to guess that he faked his death. What would be the point of such a crude escape plan? If some powerful expert really came after him, wouldn’t they see through it immediately too?”
Liu Yang Yang froze, then slowly nodded along. “…Ahem. Right, right. Damn it, Brother Qin, why does everything you say make so much sense? You’ve wounded my fragile, sensitive self-esteem.”
“I genuinely can’t see which part of you is fragile.” Qin Shu sighed helplessly and thought for a moment. “By the time you arrived, the fire had already done serious damage, so there weren’t many clues left. There’s no point making wild guesses… Wait. I’m really ignoring the obvious. White dragon!”
Big Brother is sleeping. What do you want?!
The white dragon’s mental voice boomed like a great drum, answering immediately inside Qin Shu’s head.
Qin Shu rubbed his suddenly tense temples. “White dragon, lift your head and look at the alley behind the shops across from No. 2 High’s back gate. See it? The teahouse that burned down. Do you know who caused the fire?”
Of course I know. Big Brother has clairvoyance and ears that hear across a thousand li.
“You saw it happen and didn’t tell me? So who did it?” Qin Shu immediately pressed.
Up on the teaching building’s roof, the white dragon lifted its head, shook it smugly, and let out a muffled, thunderous scoff before leisurely lying back down.
I already told you I won’t help you with this matter. If I said I won’t help, then I won’t help. That’s called keeping one’s word and honoring a promise. Understand?
Qin Shu fell silent.
Then Qin Shu sighed again. He seemed to have been doing that quite often lately.
He turned toward Liu Yang Yang and said quietly, “I know who did it now. The one in the river.”
The white dragon’s brain truly was not very good. It had smugly sworn that it would never tell Qin Shu the truth while simultaneously identifying the culprit with remarkable precision.
The Dragon Mother of Jiangcheng.
The white dragon had promised that it would not help Qin Shu defeat the Dragon Mother.
Liu Yang Yang immediately understood what he meant. His pupils contracted as he swallowed nervously. “Holy shit.”
“Panicking won’t help. First we tell the people who need to know. Come on.”
Qin Shu took out his phone and sent Huang Yu Yuan a short message.
Whenever he referred to the Dragon Mother, he deliberately substituted an emoji for her name. Unfortunately, Huang Yu Yuan apparently belonged to the category of “elderly yao cultivators” who rarely kept up with internet culture, and several anxious messages went back and forth before he finally understood what Qin Shu meant.
Even then, Huang Yu Yuan found it difficult to believe.
Yao cultivators held an almost irrational reverence for dragonkind. It was not limited to dragons either; dragons, tigers, tortoises, and vermilion birds all occupied a unique position in their minds, much like the tiger yao Mountain Lord who was so deeply respected in the ghost market.
【Qin Shu: Brother A-Yuan, the police already took Boss Lin’s body away. I know people at the station, so he’s safe for now. You can sneak in and examine him yourself, but before doing anything, you should probably ask your maternal uncle first.】
That senior, the old yellow ox who refused to take human form, would probably have more insight. After sending the message, Qin Shu put his phone away. He did not expect Huang Yu Yuan to believe him immediately. All he needed was…
As long as Huang Yu Yuan, that handsome and apparently principled buffalo yao, did not stand against him at the Dragon Mother’s birthday banquet, that would be enough.
While they talked, the two of them had already reached the quiet music-building corridor. It was deserted except for muffled music coming from the practice rooms and a female ghost lying outside one of the doors, peeking in at someone playing piano.
Qin Shu and Liu Yang Yang startled her so badly that she flattened herself into a thin, human-shaped shadow against the wall.
Liu Yang Yang was startled just as badly and nearly jumped onto Qin Shu’s back on pure instinct.
Qin Shu’s eyelid twitched. Without disturbing the music-loving female ghost, he continued straight toward the study room at the end of the corridor.
Xu Min was already there, except he had been frightened back into fox form and was hiding beneath the table. Curled into a fluffy ball and trembling violently, he had left Pei Zhao and Fangfang sitting silently opposite one another at the table, staring at each other with big eyes in a strangely harmonious tableau.
At the sound of the door opening, Pei Zhao slowly turned his gaze toward them. Liu Yang Yang instinctively removed his arm from Qin Shu’s shoulders and shivered.
“Phew…” Liu Yang Yang was just beginning to relax when Fangfang looked over as well, causing him to tense all over again. “Holy shit! A little boy ghost! He’s tiny!”
“Why is everyone in the world so jumpy today?”
Qin Shu sighed yet again.
He had anticipated Liu Yang Yang’s exclamation, but this was the first time he had ever seen Xu Min so frightened that he could not even maintain human form.
If Fangfang had scared Xu Min this badly, that would be understandable. If he was afraid of Pei Zhao, however… Qin Shu found himself inexplicably irritated.
Every person who treated Pei Zhao like some terrifying monster baffled him beyond comprehension. Someone this beautiful was standing right in front of them, yet instead of appreciating him, all they knew how to do was cower in fear. Annoying.
Expressionless, Qin Shu bent down, pulled Xu Min out from beneath the table, and stuffed the trembling furball into Fangfang’s arms to serve as the child’s temporary emotional-support animal.
“All right, no more nonsense. Brother Liu, help Fangfang repair his tongue first. He’s a very well-behaved kid. He wouldn’t randomly hurt anyone, would you, Fangfang?”
His tone softened dramatically at the end. Apparently, coaxing children was another skill Qin Shu had somehow learned without instruction.
Fangfang obediently opened his mouth, revealing the gruesome, blood-soaked interior and looking every bit like a malicious ghost.
Liu Yang Yang’s eyelid jumped, but he was experienced enough to know exactly when he absolutely could not show fear.
He exhaled and took out the corpse-stitching tools he had prepared beforehand. First he used forceps to lift Fangfang’s severed tongue and repeatedly coated the torn surface with crushed herbs that gave off a powerful smell. Then he took out a needle-and-thread kit as fine as silkworm silk and drew out several snow-white threads that instantly gave Qin Shu unpleasant flashbacks, winding them around a silver needle.
Threading the needle, Liu Yang Yang slowly stitched the thick, bloody piece of flesh together from the inside outward. A viscous black sheen gradually spread across the silver needle as its point repeatedly pierced through flesh, and the faint sounds it made with every puncture caused everyone in the room to fall silent.
Fangfang sat quietly in the chair without struggling. Only the sharp pain made him instinctively tighten his arms around the little fox in his lap. Xu Min allowed himself to be held and even stuffed his fluffy tail into Fangfang’s hands.
Liu Yang Yang worked extremely quickly. He barely breathed throughout the entire procedure, his movements swift and steady, even more precise than those of an experienced surgeon. When he reached the final layer, he tied the thread off with a tiny, almost invisible knot.
“Liu Yang Yang. Crouch.”
Just as Liu Yang Yang was about to relax, Pei Zhao spoke without warning.
His words were short and direct, not a request but more like an order Liu Yang Yang had no choice but to obey. As though possessed, his knees went weak and his center of gravity suddenly shifted backward, sending him down with a thump.
BOOM—!
A deep, dizzying peal of thunder exploded immediately afterward, except the sound did not come from outside the window. It came from Fangfang’s mouth.
The thunder struck with an invisible wave of sound too faint for the naked eye to distinguish, spreading outward in layers like a furious tide surging ashore.
The force slammed into them. Standing behind Liu Yang Yang, Qin Shu stumbled backward several steps before bracing himself against the wall, where the blast flattened him so thoroughly that he felt like a pancake and could barely move.
The scene before his eyes seemed to become a slow-motion animation. Qin Shu watched the hair over his forehead stream upward, while the fluffy fur covering Xu Min’s fox body thrashed violently beneath the sound wave. Liu Yang Yang had been far too close and had insisted on raising his head to stare at Fangfang, so even his eyelids were blown backward until they bulged grotesquely.
Fortunately, Pei Zhao was perfectly fine. Not even a strand of his hair moved. Pei Zhao raised a hand and lightly brushed the cat’s-eye bracelet still hanging from his wrist. In the next instant, golden light burst throughout the room, enclosing everyone within it as distant Buddhist chanting echoed around them.
Pei Zhao had activated it quickly enough to confine the sudden impact within the golden barrier and isolate the fragile building from the force before anything could collapse. The walls, which had only just begun to tremble, immediately became still.
Qin Shu recognized that light. Chang Liu Yi’s bracelet had carried exactly the same protective measure: the Ucchuṣma Vajrapāla Mantra. It worked remarkably well.
His own bracelet, however, should have been a single-use item. After it activated in Phoenix Village, the inscription Chang Liu Yi had layered onto it with spiritual power had vanished, leaving behind nothing more than a valuable string of red jade beads.
Qin Shu had never expected such a thing to be reusable. He had merely intended to use the bracelet afterward as a substitute for the blood-red bracelet Yuanbao normally disguised itself as. Pei Zhao’s, however, not only still worked, but the golden protective barrier it produced had enclosed several people at once. It looked exceptionally sturdy and reassuring, far stronger than when the same spell had activated back in Phoenix Village.
“Holy shit, a divine artifact! Brother Pei, where’d you buy that bracelet?!” Liu Yang Yang’s thought process clearly resembled Qin Shu’s. His first reaction was to stare at the golden barrier with shining eyes.
“We’ll talk about that later.”
Pei Zhao gave no explanation. After confirming once more that the school building would not collapse from the impact, he turned sideways, placed one hand on Fangfang’s shoulder, and spoke in a relatively gentle voice. “Fangfang, don’t cry. Look at me.”
Don’t cry…?
The earthshaking thunder had been Fangfang crying. Realization dawned on Qin Shu, followed immediately by curiosity. This little ghost truly did not seem to be anything simple.
After hearing Pei Zhao’s voice, Fangfang miraculously quieted down, even though there was clearly something very wrong with him.
Inside his pitch-black eyes, which had no visible whites, crimson liquid like blood plasma churned and gathered, rising until it filled the rims of his round eye sockets and threatened at any moment to spill over as bloody tears.
Even more filthy blood had accumulated in his mouth. Wave after wave forced its way up from his throat and poured outward, rapidly staining his densely packed needle-like teeth black. Once the thunderous crying stopped, the sounds of blood surging from his throat like vomit became painfully clear, and Qin Shu caught an atrocious stench that was intensely, intensely familiar.
His brows drew together. He soon remembered exactly where he knew the smell from. The River of Forgetfulness. One encounter with that stench was enough to make sure you never forgot it for the rest of your life.
But Fangfang had said that no underworld officer had ever taken him away. Why, then, was such powerful bloody filth pouring from his throat? Repairing his tongue seemed to have released some kind of strange seal, and Qin Shu had no idea whether that was good or bad.
While Qin Shu was still puzzling over it, Pei Zhao moved.
His expression remained perfectly calm. Golden-amber eyes lowered slightly, a faint gleam passing through them as they radiated a reassuring tranquility.
Pei Zhao showed no concern whatsoever for Fangfang’s increasingly monstrous appearance. Instead, he personally pinched open the child’s jaw and slowly inserted his long, pale fingers into the foul blood filling Fangfang’s mouth. His fingertip came to rest on the little ghost’s tongue and pressed down gently.
Fangfang’s eyes snapped shut. When they opened again, the dark irises at the center of his pupils abruptly split apart, tearing into vertical slits that widened rapidly. In an instant, the swampy mixture of black and crimson that had filled them disappeared completely, replaced by… a shade of gold that Qin Shu found both familiar and strangely foreign.
At some point, the study room had become frighteningly quiet. Liu Yang Yang unconsciously let his own mouth fall open and did not dare make a sound. Xu Min was even more accomplished at playing dead; his fluffy body had gone rigid in Fangfang’s arms, as though Pei Zhao’s sudden approach had frightened him unconscious on the spot. Utterly hopeless.
Qin Shu did not speak either. He turned toward the window and looked at the white dragon circling far above the school. It refused to come closer, yet its head kept stealing glances toward them.
The distance was considerable, but Qin Shu could clearly see its expression and its eyes. He compared the white dragon’s golden vertical pupils with Fangfang’s eyes.
Sure enough, the two displayed an eerily similar shade of gold. Fangfang’s pupils were even stranger, however, like two pieces of dark gold forcibly torn open, carrying an extra trace of icy inhumanity and an aura of corruption that the white dragon lacked.
The blood pouring from his mouth had finally stopped beneath Pei Zhao’s hand. Only the crimson filth that had already overflowed remained, running from Fangfang’s lips in drops and rivulets before soaking into his neat school uniform.
The school emblem and its surrounding patterning were rapidly stained red and blurred into an indistinguishable mess.
Morning Star Elementary School. Qin Shu stared at that muddled emblem, his gaze growing sharper until he suddenly realized he might have overlooked something extremely important.
The strangeness surrounding this school differed from that of Jiangcheng No. 2 High. Morning Star Elementary School had once genuinely existed in Jiangcheng, though it had apparently possessed very little presence and an extremely low enrollment rate, and it no longer existed today.
The last time Qin Shu had found any information connected to Morning Star Elementary School was in the case file concerning Du Xiao Xue’s disappearance.
Du Xiao Xue had disappeared near Morning Star Elementary School on Zhongshan South Road. Qin Shu remembered the address perfectly.
Yet there was absolutely no discussion of the school online. He could not find so much as a trace of former students or parents. Qin Shu had discreetly asked Su Ting Lian to investigate it before and she had likewise found nothing. At the time, his own abilities were insufficient, and since this child had stayed peacefully at No. 2 High without causing trouble, humans and ghosts had continued coexisting without incident.
One strange event after another had piled up, and that first eerie clue had simply been delayed until now. Qin Shu had never once gone near Zhongshan South Road.
Daoist Master Xu might know more about it. After all, when the Jiangcheng police were searching for the blind old woman’s associates, they had specifically invited a genuinely capable Daoist priest and spent considerable effort investigating. Unfortunately, even if there had been internal information, it would naturally have been restricted to the people directly involved. At the time, even Xing Yong had temporarily been reassigned outside the province and excluded from the matter, so there was even less chance that Daoist Master Xu would have told Qin Shu anything useful.
Now, however, the matter had been placed directly in front of him. Fangfang’s grotesquely transformed golden vertical pupils, combined with the thunderous hum of his crying, only made the mystery more complicated.
Perhaps all the bizarre things happening around Qin Shu were connected in the end.
It was just like the so-called Cave God secret arts in Phoenix Village, nearly all of which had actually been secret arts belonging to the evil deity. In hindsight, there had been no need to investigate and eliminate possibilities one by one. Every person who appeared favored by the god had privately come dangerously close to becoming a completely parasitized puppet whose energy and vitality were continuously drained. Every one of them was a victim, yet every one of them had also nearly become the culprit behind a catastrophe for Phoenix Village.
Pei Zhao seemed able to follow Qin Shu’s train of thought. He withdrew the hand pressing against Fangfang’s tongue, though his other hand remained on the child’s shoulder like a silent, gentle restraint. Turning slightly, he said softly, “Qin Shu, look more closely.”
That was practically an explicit instruction.
Qin Shu nodded, drew a deep breath, shut his eyes tightly, then slowly opened them again and stared straight at the increasingly crimson bloodstain.
See Through.
A moment later, Qin Shu frowned in confusion, his voice thick with disbelief. “Lucifer Morningstar… huh?”
“Brother Qin, Brother Qin, what’s going on? What kind of gibberish are you talking? I don’t understand any of that.” Liu Yang Yang was equally curious about Fangfang’s transformation, and now that the atmosphere appeared to have relaxed somewhat, his thirst for knowledge immediately became impossible to suppress.
“Brother Liu, did you seriously never complete nine years of compulsory education? I think that might actually be illegal…”
Qin Shu replied gloomily, then bent down toward the pale Fangfang and instantly softened his voice by several degrees. “Fangfang, you were really good today. You did an amazing job. Oh, right—did you understand what I just said?”
“Mm. I understand.” Fangfang cautiously opened his mouth and awkwardly moved his tongue several times before adapting to its presence. His voice sounded murky and muffled from being steeped in blood, but his pronunciation retained the unmistakable clumsiness of a young child.
Liu Yang Yang scratched his head and, still unwilling to come too close, asked with even greater curiosity, “What? What did he say?”
“See? Even an elementary-schooler understands! Fangfang, you’re amazing.” Qin Shu shook his head helplessly and patted the child’s head in encouragement before sighing again.
“First we got the Lord of the Flies, then Hades, and now even Lucifer has shown up. When is Jiangcheng ever going to be peaceful? Hiding demonic references inside a school’s name definitely isn’t anything good. There might be some cult organization we don’t know about. Zhaozhao, should we find time to consult Pastor William? We can get some holy water while we’re there too. He’s probably the best exorcist in the entire city.”
Pei Zhao nodded in agreement, though he did not seem in any hurry to resolve the problem immediately. Instead, he turned toward the bewildered child. “Fangfang, do you still want to stay at No. 2 High?”
“…Yes. I like it. Mama Li.”
“Then you can’t cry casually anymore, and you aren’t allowed to open your mouth wide to scare other people. Only then can you remain beside Mama Li. If you feel upset, press your tongue down with your hand the way I did just now, then come find me directly.” Pei Zhao deliberately slowed his speech, his tone a gentle reassurance and an unquestionable threat at the same time. “Otherwise, I’ll kill you.”
Qin Shu raised an eyebrow at the final sentence and immediately looked toward Fangfang, carefully studying every tiny change in his expression.
Good. Fangfang remained the same extremely quiet-tempered little ghost. The death threat did not strike him as remotely inappropriate. Instead, he nodded vigorously with renewed enthusiasm and broke into a silly smile. “Okay. I’ll be good.”
Qin Shu discreetly withdrew his gaze and smiled as well. “Good. One task successfully resolved. Next comes another equally important matter. Mr. Xu, please return to human form.”
The fat fox curled in Fangfang’s arms suddenly trembled. Reluctantly, he climbed out of the little ghost’s embrace. Golden light flashed, and the familiar school counselor appeared before them with a face so pale he looked like a ghost… which, on second thought, he was.
“Holy shit!” Liu Yang Yang was shocked yet again. His sharp instincts sent him retreating rapidly into the corner before he cautiously asked, “Wait, Senior… are you a yao cultivator or a ghost? Why can I sense yao energy and a human scent from you, but you also kind of feel like a ghost?”
“Ahaha… haha, pardon the embarrassment. This humble one is a dead fox spirit pretending to be human. My transformation skills are poor, so I rely almost entirely on a human-skin disguise to hide it.”
Xu Min’s voice trembled, carrying a faint note of despair and deathly resignation. “Even the disguise doesn’t work anymore. Now everyone can tell I’m not human… How did this happen? Everyone can tell I’m not human…”