“I can’t see her.”
Liang Ming Yue was silent for a long time, her rigid hand motionless. Only after several slow, shallow breaths did she cautiously look toward Qin Shu. “She’s touching me, isn’t she?”
“Mm. The little girl is adorable. She’s even wearing the dress you burned for her,” Qin Shu said. Finding her too cute to resist, he reached out and poked the child’s round cheek. “Huang Yu Yuan disappeared somewhere, and we don’t have any bull’s tears at home… Let me think. I remember there’s another way to let ordinary people see ghosts. Brother Yong told me about it.”
After a moment’s thought, he took a knife and cut his finger. Under Liang Ming Yue’s startled gaze, he let a drop of blood fall onto a napkin, and warm crimson instantly spread across the paper.
“My blood should work too, but the effect seems a little too good. Mm. It can make you see certain things you really shouldn’t.”
“Things I really shouldn’t see… You mean things even scarier than ghosts?” Liang Ming Yue tilted her head slightly. There was not a trace of fear in her eyes, only anticipation she was barely able to suppress. “I’m not afraid.”
Qin Shu gave a light cough, folded the napkin into a strip, and handed it to Liang Ming Yue. “Wipe your eyes with this and you’ll be able to see the child right away. You should still prepare yourself mentally first. Mainly because, well, Brother Yong said I look especially frightening too. I can’t tell what’s so frightening about me, but he was badly scared back then.”
“A wet-behind-the-ears young detective who hasn’t seen much of the world. Of course he’d get scared. His courage has always been mediocre… I’m different.” Liang Ming Yue chuckled, making no effort to hide her disdain for Xing Yong.
Her voice sounded calm, but the hand taking the bloodstained napkin trembled faintly. Her other hand, quietly giving off light, remained stiffly suspended in midair. Even though her arm had grown sore from holding it up, she could not bear to relax it at all.
When the fresh blood on the napkin soaked her eyes, Liang Ming Yue hesitated for a rare instant.
She pressed the napkin over them with considerable force, almost wishing she could squeeze every last bit of Qin Shu’s blood into her stinging eyes, then asked hoarsely, “Is that enough? Can I see now?”
“Of course. No rush.”
Liang Ming Yue nodded softly, then drew another deep breath before abruptly pulling the napkin away.
“Mommy!”
Liang Ming Yue’s pupils contracted violently, but for a moment no sound came out. Her eyelashes were wet with blood, with a few damp scraps of tissue still clinging to them. Her vision was veiled in a hazy dark red, yet certain details appeared bizarrely, exceptionally clear.
And somehow that indescribable clarity of sight seemed to sharpen her hearing too, even faster than her eyes could process what they were receiving… allowing her to hear a voice so unfamiliar that the sound made her eardrums tremble almost painfully.
“Ya Ya… is that you?” She did not dare rub her eyes, afraid the fair, soft little girl before her would disappear with the motion. Her gaze abruptly dropped to her aching left hand.
Exactly as Qin Shu had said, Ya Ya’s small hand was tightly clutching one of her fingers.
The little girl, looking like a plump child from a New Year print, hugged Liang Ming Yue’s hand as though cradling her most beloved toy. Her hands were plainly too small to wrap around it or hold it properly, yet she could not bear to let go for even a second.
“Mommy!”
Hearing Liang Ming Yue’s voice, Ya Ya happily called out again. Then she tilted her head curiously, burrowed into Liang Ming Yue’s arms, and studied her face up close. “Mommy looks a little different. Eyes, nose, mouth… Huh?”
“So clever. Mommy has more wrinkles now.” Liang Ming Yue’s voice was slightly hoarse. She awkwardly held the daughter who had suddenly flung herself into her arms, even her breathing becoming lighter. “Do you like the old Mommy, or the Mommy now?”
“Mommy now!” Ya Ya answered without the slightest hesitation. “But, but what are wrinkles? Are they the little flowers beside Mommy’s eyes?”
“…Mm.”
Before Ya Ya was born, Dragon Mother had taken her from Liang Ming Yue’s body, so strictly speaking, mother and daughter had never truly met before.
Dragon Mother had disguised herself in Liang Ming Yue’s appearance, which was why the child recognized “Mommy’s” face. But she had no idea that all her pretty clothes, toys, and little pieces of jewelry had actually come from the mother outside the Dragon Palace.
Yet there was always an instinctive bond between blood relatives. No lengthy explanation was needed for a child to instinctively come to love her true mother. After asking about the “little flowers” beside Liang Ming Yue’s eyes, Ya Ya curiously touched her damp eyelashes, poked the tears at the corners of her eyes, and kept asking what this was and what that was.
It was a heartwarming reunion. Qin Shu alone listened with a slight frown.
The child spoke clearly and fluently, had been raised fair-skinned and chubby, and was about the age to start elementary school… yet she possessed almost no common knowledge at all. She knew practically nothing. She did not even know that the folds of skin at the corners of Liang Ming Yue’s eyes were wrinkles that naturally appeared on humans.
Judging from their conversation, Dragon Mother had probably almost never held her. She normally would not even let the child get close and had never taught Ya Ya anything at all.
Aside from recognizing freshwater fish and river-bottom creatures, and knowing the names of different gemstones, Ya Ya recognized practically nothing else. She could not even read.
“Find a decent kindergarten or hire a tutor. She needs to go to school. Even if she doesn’t attend school, she still needs to gradually enter society. Otherwise, other children her age will bully her later.”
Only after Liang Ming Yue had cried while holding the child and her emotions had stabilized somewhat did Qin Shu speak quietly.
Liang Ming Yue’s eyes lit up. “She… she can still return to the human world? I thought from now on Ya Ya could only be… a ghost.”
“Of course she can. She has a tongzi fate, but in the beginning she never even truly got the chance to be born… Mm, fundamentally speaking, Ya Ya is actually still an embryo. Naturally, none of her allotted lifespan has been used up.”
Qin Shu poked Ya Ya’s cheek again. “Turning her back into a human might be troublesome. She’ll have to personally go through the process of being born, so it isn’t something we can finish in a day or two. But even if she remains in a ghostly state, ghosts still need to socialize. Underworld society is a lot more dangerous than the human world. These days, if you can’t read, you won’t even know how to buy things when you go shopping at a ghost market.”
“All right. I’ll cooperate fully. As long as it’s good for Ya Ya, I can do anything.” Liang Ming Yue listened attentively and even opened the notes app on her phone to start writing things down.
Ya Ya stared curiously at the phone. Very politely, she did not reach out to touch it and only asked softly, “Mommy, what’s this glowing box?”
“It’s a phone. Children can’t look at it for too long. It’s bad for your eyes…” Halfway through, Liang Ming Yue suddenly realized that made no sense and laughed self-deprecatingly. “Never mind. Mommy will teach you how to use it later.”
After all, Ya Ya was still a little ghost girl. No matter how long she stared at a phone, it could not damage her eyes.
“Don’t let her get addicted to it. A ghost’s desires are stronger than a human’s and harder to control. Unless they’ve undergone systematic cultivation, they’re especially prone to addiction… I remember there are some soul-cultivation methods that let you abandon the physical body and use the soul as the sole core, eventually returning to simplicity and regaining a physical body. Using that route might make reviving Ya Ya easier.”
Qin Shu thought for a moment, rummaged through the storage space Zuo Zhe had left behind, and picked out several cultivation manuals from the neatly organized collection Pei Zhao had arranged. He did not hand them to Liang Ming Yue immediately.
“I’m not a professional. Before letting a child cultivate, we should ask around and get opinions from Zhao Zhao and the others… Right, right, Teacher Xu is a ghost cultivator. He should have plenty of experience, and he’s also good at teaching children.”
By this point, Qin Shu had already arranged all of Ya Ya’s basic needs with startling clarity. Xu Min was a yao cultivator the child was more familiar with, his true form was fluffy and pleasant to pet, and he could also serve as the most reliable bodyguard and tutor. The more Qin Shu thought about it, the more suitable he seemed.
Pei Zhao was still asleep upstairs. Qin Shu did not want to disturb his rare stretch of peaceful sleep, so he immediately called Xu Min. “Teacher Xu, where did you run off to?”
“…Your basement,” Xu Min answered weakly.
“Huh? I actually didn’t sense you.”
Qin Shu raised an eyebrow, put away his phone, and headed toward the basement. The moment he went down the stairs, he saw a huge mass of snow-white fluff curled beside the warm red boiler, folded into the shape of a furry sausage.
“Are you hurt? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Xu Min’s feeble voice drifted from inside the fur. “Internal injuries. I can only regulate my own qi and recover slowly, so saying anything wouldn’t help. Do you have any pills that replenish the soul? Give me a few…”
“Of course I do. See? Saying something was useful after all.” Qin Shu helplessly took out a small porcelain bottle and tossed it into the furry mass. “Daoist Lord Sifang’s Soul-Returning Pills. Eat them all. And it isn’t just this bottle. There’s a whole big box. It’s all yours.”
The sickly fox opened his mouth wide, obediently swallowed the entire porcelain bottle, casually chewed twice, then gulped the whole thing down.
The powerful medicinal effect erupted inside him, making Xu Min spring up as though someone had punched him. He stared in disbelief while grooming his less-than-sleek fur and only reacted after a moment. “Mm-mm… Huh?! You mean something this good, and I get to take a whole big box home?!”
“Of course. The battle’s over, so naturally we divide the spoils. My family’s rule is that as long as you contributed, everything gets split evenly.”
As Qin Shu spoke, he quietly took out his phone and swiftly photographed the naked astonishment on the fox’s face. Only then did he hand Xu Min his share of the spoils, smiling. “Teacher Xu, you worked hard. I wasn’t there to help, but I know exactly what you did. Rescuing Ya Ya and getting her safely out of the Dragon Palace was no simple thing.”
“Don’t even mention it. That sleeping palace was like a lion’s den, full of killing formations everywhere, and it smelled awful! There were tons of guard puppets too. They didn’t care about any identity plaques at all. Even if we could sneak inside, they still chopped at anyone they saw. If Big Brother Liu and Student Pei hadn’t helped, I really would’ve died in there!”
Xu Min looked deeply shaken and clearly did not want to remember it a second time. He opened the wooden box, used his nimble paw to grab several more pills, stuffed them all into his mouth, and mumbled around them, “At least, at least the little girl grew up in that awful place without turning crooked. She’s a feisty little thing, afraid of nothing, and feels just like her mom when she was young… Ah, especially cute.”
“You’re a fan of Sister Ming Yue too?” Qin Shu narrowed his eyes.
“Ahem. Yes.” Xu Min suddenly looked a little embarrassed. “Don’t get the wrong idea. Jiangcheng has always been dangerous, and I don’t dare run around outside. There aren’t many entertainment options when you stay home all the time either… I just like watching crime-investigation variety shows.”
“Then this is even easier. Do you take side jobs? I want to hire you as Ya Ya’s early-education tutor, and as her bodyguard on the side.” Qin Shu rummaged through the jade slips in his storage space, selected several, and tossed them to the fox. “Pick a cultivation method that suits her. No rush, though. She has a lot to learn first. Basic life skills, reading starting from pinyin, and math too. Otherwise she won’t even understand the cultivation manuals.”
Xu Min froze, stretched out a paw to gather the jade slips, and examined them one by one. “Hiss. You’ve got a point. If she really wants to step onto the path of cultivation, her math has to be good. This girl’s especially smart. I can teach her, but…”
“If you have conditions or want compensation, just say so.” Qin Shu smiled. “My family has too many treasures we can’t use. We just robbed the Dragon Palace treasury. We can’t even spend all the money.”
Xu Min hesitated, looked like he wanted to speak, then spent a long time struggling to organize his words before finally saying weakly, “Our family doesn’t lack treasures either. But, well… preschool tutoring takes a lot of time. After winter break, I still have to clock in at No. 2 High School every day. Then I won’t have time for other… other things. If I take the tutoring job, can that online psychological counseling… be suspended?”
Qin Shu froze too, then suddenly understood and could not help laughing. “Seriously, Teacher Xu? Are you really that afraid of Pei Zhao? You two have talked several times lately, haven’t you? He’s never once said anything bad about you to me. He seems pretty satisfied.”
“This is instinctive fear. I can’t change it, Student Qin. I-I’m a ghost…” Xu Min answered quietly. “Ghosts being afraid of him is only natural.”
Hearing this, Qin Shu slowly raised an eyebrow. “Oh? But you shouldn’t be afraid of Ao Wang, or Ao Run… and you’re not especially afraid of Dragon Mother either, at least nowhere near as badly as you fear Pei Zhao. Right?”
“…Mm. N-not that afraid.”
“So you aren’t afraid of Pei Zhao because he’s a dragon.” Qin Shu once again confirmed his suspicion, then fell into thought. “His other identity is pretty impressive too, isn’t it? Something like… mm, the boss of all the ghosts in Jiangcheng?”
“Ahaha, more or less… We normally use the respectful title Ghost King. ‘Ghost boss’ sounds a little too… too crude.” Xu Min’s voice grew softer and softer as he buried his muzzle in his fur. “Don’t let him hear it and get unhappy.”
“Ghost King,” Qin Shu repeated softly. He murmured the words again, tasting the implications hidden behind them. “Of course. No wonder. That makes perfect sense.”
Before Xu Min could speak, Qin Shu asked curiously, “Are there any other Ghost Kings in Jiangcheng?”
Xu Min weakly shook his head. “One mountain can’t hold two tigers. In Jiangcheng and the four surrounding provinces, among those still remaining in this world… he’s the only one.”
Still remaining in this world. What a clever and suggestive choice of words.
Qin Shu’s expression did not change. He grabbed the fox by the scruff and hauled Xu Min’s desperately hiding head back out. “As far as I know, the title Ghost King comes from the fact that they each possess a domain under their control. So is No. 2 High School his ghost domain?”
“I-it seems like it?” Xu Min answered softly.
“What do you mean, it seems like it?”
“Because No. 2 High School is too unusual… It clearly has independent rules, and violating them means certain death, but only evil spirits and dead souls are restricted from entering and leaving. Humans and yao cultivators can come and go freely.” Xu Min swallowed. “Even ghosts like me wearing human skin get treated as humans. It really doesn’t resemble an ordinary ghost domain. Whether it actually is one or not, there’s never been a definite conclusion in our circles.”
“No definite conclusion in your circles means you people have investigated No. 2 High School before, right? Our school’s pretty famous?” Qin Shu asked thoughtfully.
“It’s more than just famous. Right now, the only territory where no large-scale casualty incidents involving ghosts or monsters have ever occurred is Jiangcheng and the surrounding region.” Xu Min let out a long breath. “The fact that it’s the only place of peace is exactly what makes it terrifying. It can only mean there’s something there even more frightening than ghosts, along with rules that are even harder to distinguish… Student Qin, can you put me down first?”
“No. Tell me more. Anything you want. Speak freely.” Qin Shu pinched his scruff and even tightened his grip a little. “As long as you don’t violate your agreement by disclosing the contents of your private online sessions without permission, you can say anything else. I promise I can stop Zhao Zhao. I absolutely won’t let him beat you to death.”
“Let me think… Actually, quite a few curious cultivators came to investigate. They relied on their high cultivation and abundance of magical treasures, thinking that no matter what happened they’d still have a way out. But after all these years, there still aren’t any clues. Either they found nothing at all and got beaten half to death by a mob of ghosts, or they simply died.”
Qin Shu tilted his head. “Simply died? How?”
Xu Min shuddered and curled his previously stretched-out body back into itself. Only his head was still being held up by Qin Shu, trembling as it hung outside the fur.
“Ah, nobody knows. Lots of people met their end at No. 2 High School. They died silently, without a trace. Their relatives and friends waited outside to support them and tried to investigate what happened, but they couldn’t summon their souls, couldn’t find their bodies, and not even their bones remained. With nowhere else to turn, they could only question the school guards and administrators and pull every bit of surveillance footage they could find. But the school staff had no idea any outsider had ever gone inside… and the outsiders never appeared on the cameras either, as though those people had never existed.”
“They didn’t even appear on the cameras? Interesting. I bet they had no manners and no respect for rules. They probably thought having cultivation meant they could do whatever they wanted.”
Far from being frightened, Qin Shu discussed it with great interest. “Think about it, Teacher Xu. No. 2 High School is a school, a high school, a place for teaching and educating people, packed with hundreds upon hundreds of defenseless teachers and students. If some random cultivator started throwing spells around inside the school and fighting ghosts, and some unlucky students happened to get caught up in it… one incident could kill a whole crowd.
“Even if they didn’t start fights or destroy things, any spell or magical treasure that affects the soul can easily damage students’ mental states. If this caused something to go wrong for those students during the college entrance exam, do you think those cultivators would honestly take responsibility for their futures? I don’t.”
“…That makes sense! In all the years I’ve worked at No. 2 High School, I’ve been diligent, conscientious, and extremely well behaved. My academic credentials aren’t bad either, and my professional standards are absolutely guaranteed. There isn’t a school doctor at No. 2 High who can beat our Xu family for reliability!”
Xu Min perked up at once and grew more animated the longer he spoke. “Those ignorant humans outside even secretly gave our school a nickname. Such an unlucky thing to call it. What was it again… ‘Hell on Earth, No One Comes Back.’ Tch. I leave work on time every day. Our Xu family even opened a teahouse beside No. 2 High. Even if that Ghost King really is watching us, what can he possibly do to me… Ack!”
Before he could finish speaking, Xu Min’s whole body went rigid. Qin Shu suddenly felt something wrong with the texture in his hand, weighed the stiff fox body a little, and discovered the fellow had actually died.
Well, not completely died… His soul had simply been scared straight out of his body and had hidden beneath the table. Only nine enormous translucent tails failed to fit under it and remained exposed outside, trembling madly.
“I really won’t do anything to you,” Pei Zhao said gloomily as he walked soundlessly down the stairs, a faint trace of lazy sleepiness still lingering between his brows.
Speechless, Qin Shu tossed the fox corpse onto the table and pulled Pei Zhao into his arms for a hug. “Sleep enough? It’s still early.”
“More or less finished digesting.” Pei Zhao lazily let himself be held and tilted his head toward the tails under the table. “I’ve never seen such a spineless nine-tailed fox.”
Xu Min stiffened. He forced himself to try pulling all his tails under the table, but they were simply too large and fluffy. After struggling for ages, he still failed… and only shook harder.
So the two of them simply stood beside the mass of tails and began pointing and commenting as though he did not exist.
“Nine tails. Does that mean he originally had nine lives?”
“Mm. His luck was bad too. Judging from how intact his soul is, he probably died nine times all at once.” The corner of Pei Zhao’s mouth lifted faintly.
“Hahahaha. No wonder he’s so timid. Being a little cowardly is understandable.” Qin Shu paused, then rubbed his chin. “Come to think of it, I never noticed he had nine tails before. How did he hide them?”
“Xu Zi Ru spent so long working under you that if he wanted to skim a little extra money, he had to rack his brains figuring out how to hide things from your eyes… Over time, naturally, his ability to conceal things became unparalleled.” Pei Zhao raised an eyebrow. “He’d deliberately let you see the most obvious first layer, then secretly hide another two or three beneath it. A psychological trick. Very useful.”
“That makes so much sense! Looks like I’ll have to do more targeted training from now on.”
“You’re not going to ask me?”
“Mm?”
“About me. About No. 2 High School.”
Qin Shu narrowed his eyes. “Hm? And now you suddenly feel like telling me?”
Pei Zhao slowly looked away. “I can’t exactly let Xu Min talk nonsense and smear me as some violent, tyrannical local emperor…”
“I-I didn’t smear you!”
“Well, look at that. You’re alive after all?” Qin Shu could not help laughing again.
“N-no, I’m not alive. I’m dead. I’m really dead…”