When afternoon classes began, Li Xiu was still a little worried that Fang Qian’an would run to the room again and disturb class.

Fortunately, after the prince had experienced a full politics class, he didn’t seem to want to continue torturing himself. The empty desk that had been dragged into the classroom temporarily was still placed sideways next to Li Xiu’s seat, but its owner didn’t appear again.

Li Xiu inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.

Without Fang Qian’an’s interference, Li Xiu’s life seemed to have gotten back on track.

Suffering from a low-grade fever, Li Xiu mustered up the energy to survive the four afternoon classes. His mind was occupied by papers and test questions, and no longer had room to hold those nonsense supernatural stories.

The so-called “ghosts” he encountered in the complex at noon must have been due to his nerves in the dark. Could it have been a hallucination caused by the constant influence of the guy next to him who had a ghost phobia?

However…..

Although he thought this way, Li Xiu still found it hard to keep calm once he was distracted from studying.

It felt like leaving home and forgetting that the gas stove was still on from cooking porridge. Obviously, his consciousness had forgotten everything on the surface, but subconsciously, there was still uneasiness and panic.

“That’s enough.”

As the school bell rang, Li Xiu rubbed his temples and shoulders.

All day today, his shoulders had felt so heavy. His poor physical condition and even worse mood made Li Xiu not want to stay at school any longer. As soon as school was over, Li Xiu uncharacteristically picked up his book bag and walked right out.

In the hallway, Li Xiu met the math teacher face to face.

The forty-something female teacher with glasses was considered a harsh and difficult person by many students, but Li Xiu had a good relationship with this teacher surnamed Chen. He could sense that Teacher Chen was actually a very nice person. Even in a school like Qiming, she still tried to get those pampered princelings to study seriously.

When they ran into each other, Teacher Chen was holding a thick lesson plan with a cell phone between her shoulder and ear, chatting with the person on the other end as she walked.

“En, right…..I took his place in both of his afternoon classes…..they say everything is still in his office, but he’s missing and hasn’t asked for leave…..I don’t know what’s going on…..anyway, I’m pretty much exhausted…..”

Seeing that the other party was still on the phone, Li Xiu just nodded politely in greeting.

Just as he was about to leave, Teacher Chen stopped him as if she had just thought of something.

“Teacher Chen?”

“Li Xiu, I heard that you went to see your Teacher Ouyang this morning?” the math teacher asked him, distracted by her phone.

Li Xiu went blank for a moment, then nodded. “En, that’s right. He said he would help me with some questions, but I left when the Academics Affairs Office called for me at the beginning of third period.”

“So, ah, how was your Teacher Ouyang at that time?”

“How was he?” Li Xiu was somewhat at a loss.

The teacher frowned unconsciously, and continued to ask with some awkwardness: “Just like…..um…..if there was something wrong with his mood…..” 

Something wrong?

Li Xiu instantly thought of Ouyang’s ashen face when he left and those abrupt questions.

[Li Xiu, what did you see just now?]

After a lengthy silence, Li Xiu lowered his eyes and shook his head slightly.

“There wasn’t. Teacher Ouyang told me to leave when he saw I had something to do.”

Li Xiu’s voice was without fluctuations.

The math teacher paid no attention to Li Xiu’s slight awkwardness. It could be seen that she had thought of it just now and asked Li Xiu casually. After hearing Li Xiu’s reply, she turned her head slightly and said into the phone: “…..En, a student said there was nothing unusual.”

After saying this, she forced a smile and waved to Li Xiu. “It’s fine, Li Xiu. You should go home first. Don’t stay outside, it’s been getting dark early recently, so it’s safer to go home early.”

As her words fell, Teacher Chen continued to hold the lesson plan and walked in the opposite direction of Li Xiu.

Li Xiu stood there for a moment, then shuffled out of school.

Ouyang had vanished suddenly and didn’t attend his classes in the afternoon…..this was his guess based on the few words Teacher Chen had inadvertently leaked just now.

Although he knew that as an adult male, Ouyang would theoretically be fine, Li Xiu couldn’t help but keep replaying that seemingly normal scene in the dark office.

He felt inexplicably uneasy.

The chill continued to seep down his shoulders, penetrating his whole body once more. Li Xiu automatically wrapped himself tightly in his school uniform, still feeling cold.

Although he really wanted to go right home to take a hot shower and lie in bed, there was still the uncooked rice from his gege’s meal that had been messed up in his school bag before.

Li Xiu’s brow furrowed. Without delay, he took a detour as usual and went to the small park he normally frequented.

This park was close to the Old Quarter, and had been around a long time. There was no landscaping at all in the park, let alone entertainment structures. The trash cans had long been defective, and the bald grass was covered in garbage, making it look neglected. It was precisely because of this that although the streets at dusk were still bustling with people coming and going, Li Xiu felt the emptiness of the surrounding area when he turned into the park.

The trees and bushes that hadn’t been pruned in who knows how long cast large shadows under the setting sun, making the illumination in the park seem much darker than elsewhere. When passing by the dilapidated children’s play corner, he could see the swings swaying in the wind. The rusted metal parts made a creak, creak sound as they swayed, making the atmosphere all around feel lonely and desolate.

Li Xiu didn’t waste any time. Once he entered the park, he went directly to the artificial pond.

The water in the pond had turned a little green, and there were more fish than usual.

Perhaps because he regularly fed the fish a lot of uncooked rice, the fish were used to Li Xiu. As soon as he walked to the side of the pond, layers of ripples formed in the thick green water as a dense shoal of fish gathered in front of him. 

In such a semi-abandoned park, it was natural that the fish in the pond were not cute koi or goldfish — even if they were once beautiful, they had gone wild and their colors had faded. Nowadays, most of the fish in the pond were mottled and dull in color, and the harsh water conditions had caused many fish to develop bulging blisters and tumors between their scales. Only the big eyeballs on the fishes’ heads somewhat revealed their ancestors’ origins as ornamental fish.

But…..

Had these fish been so disgusting before?

Li Xiu habitually tossed the uncooked rice from his school bag into the water. There were sudden splashing sounds in the water as all the fish swarmed in, opening their big mouths and frantically grabbing those small white grains.

They fought fiercely. Li Xiu only looked into the water and frowned over the fishes’ disgusting deformed bodies.

He recalled that when he started feeding these fish, hadn’t they been a little darker at most? But now they looked somewhat…..disfigured.

As he was thinking, Li Xiu suddenly sensed many prying eyes.

He reflexively looked in the direction the gazes were coming from — only to meet the empty eyes of the fish.

It was at this moment that Li Xiu realized that the fish here had protruding eyeballs that looked very much like human eyes falling out of their sockets. And that the fat, swollen heads of the strange fish suddenly looked less like fish and more like faces that were swollen, blackened, and deformed after soaking in water.

And now, those faces were crowded together in layers, staring directly at Li Xiu from beneath the turbid water.

“Wu—” 

Li Xiu gasped and backed away again and again.

He accidentally stepped on the slippery bricks by the shoreline, and he nearly fell down and slid into the water through the mud.

“Careful!”

Fortunately, somebody suddenly tugged him hard from behind at the critical moment. This allowed Li Xiu to stabilize himself and avoid falling into the water while suffering from a fever.

“Where did this reckless child come from? What would you do if you fell in the water—”

There was a rough-voiced yell that sounded like it was criticizing someone.

Li Xiu shuddered as if being awakened from a half-dream, and his mind instantly became clearer.

An old woman who looked to be in her fifties or sixties stood beside him with raised eyebrows, uttering profanities. She looked familiar, but Li Xiu couldn’t remember actually seeing her before. 

“S-sorry…..thank you!”

Although the other party seemed to have a bad temper and a bad tone, Li Xiu could only take a deep breath and thank her repeatedly.

He couldn’t help but look at the mud on the shore, where his footprints still remained.

And he himself didn’t know how he had come to be so close to the pond. He clearly always stood on the steps and threw rice into the water randomly, but this time, he had drawn closer and closer to the water as if possessed.

And there was still something wrong with those fish…..

Li Xiu’s breathing was a little heavy, his heartbeat frighteningly fast.

He couldn’t help but take another look at the pond, but those fish had long since returned to the bottom and disappeared. All Li Xiu could see were the remaining ripples on the surface of the water.

Li Xiu blinked his eyes, suddenly unsure of what he had just seen.

Did the fish really have human faces? 

“Hey, what are you looking at here? Do you just want to try falling into the water?!”

The old woman suddenly reached out and tugged Li Xiu roughly. Before Li Xiu could react, she dragged the youth with the disabled leg all the way back to the park trail.

“I….I don’t….I just wanted to….”

“Wanted to what? You shouldn’t come to a place like this at all.” The old woman interrupted Li Xiu promptly and rudely, pushing him toward the park exit. 

“It’s too dangerous here, don’t come back again.”

“Ah?”

Only then did Li Xiu realize that the old woman had an armband on her arm. However, the red armband was faded, and the yellow characters on it were already so mottled that it was difficult to see what they were.

Was this…..a park keeper?

Li Xiu had been coming here for so long, yet he had never met a park keeper. He was a little puzzled when he was driven away by the other party this time.

However, Li Xiu was not the type of rebellious youth who enjoyed confrontation. He had nearly fallen into the water just now, and when he was scolded by the old woman, he shrunk his neck and turned around very obediently, moving to leave the park as he was told.

Just as Li Xiu was about to step out of the park, he heard the old woman yell from a distance behind him again: “Hey, young man!”

Li Xiu turned his head and found that the old woman with the red armband was still standing on the park trail, watching him.

“What?”

“Kid, please don’t do such a dangerous thing again.”

The old woman’s face was somewhat gray, and perhaps due to the distance, her voice sounded muffled.

“Oh. I understand. I was just careless today.”

Li Xiu thought at first that the old woman was talking about him feeding the fish by the water, and just as he was about to explain that he wasn’t usually so absent-minded, he heard what the old woman said next.

“Making food offerings is not something a tiny child like you should do. The things crawling out of the Hungry Ghost Path are all ferocious, not to mention the one you’re carrying now…..”

“What?”

Li Xiu’s eyes opened wide in astonishment.

Before he could figure out what the other’s bizarre words meant, the old woman went silent and looked directly at Li Xiu, her face becoming increasingly pale. 

She had still seemed fierce just now, like the kind of stubborn old woman who would fight for a seat on the bus. Now she looked incredibly frightened, as if she was looking at something terrifying.

“Evil…..such evil…..”

From a distance, Li Xiu could guess the old woman’s panicked whispers from her mouth movements. Then, the other party turned around quickly and left with haste.

Li Xiu chased after her for a few steps, but when he was standing on the park trail again, the old woman was nowhere to be found.

Gurgle…..

Something in the pond suddenly seemed to move, emitting a watery sound.

The park seemed to be even quieter than before.

But Li Xiu found that he no longer dared to look in the direction of the pond.

…..He didn’t know what he would see.

_________

The Author Has Something to Say:

What would he see?

He would see…..

Gege: Hey, Wife!

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Chapter 15 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 17