At dusk, the setting sun fell through the Xiao family villa’s gray windows, lending the dark, gloomy house a strange red light.

In the deepest part of the villa, in what seemed to be the most ordinary housekeeping room, there was now an odd-looking copper brazier on the floor. Talisman paper continued to burn in the basin with a crackling sound, and the flames engulfing the paper had a strange green hue, entirely unlike normal fire.

Slender tongues of fire swayed continuously in the brazier, like aquatic plants drifting in the waves deep underwater.

But whenever flames were about to cross the edge of the copper basin, they seemed to be blocked by something invisible and could only crawl along the sides, engulfing more talisman paper.

The men guarding the brazier wore imposing expressions, each of them staring intently at the flames as if facing a formidable foe. Once the talisman paper burned down more and the green flames became stronger, they would fill the basin with stacks of talisman paper tied like green bricks.

There was clearly no breeze in the room, but everyone could feel a slight airflow around them, bringing with it a deep chill.

Teacher Xu had his back to everyone as he stood before the locked storage room that Li Xiu and Fang Qian’an had found strange before.

His eyes were closed, his hands clasped together as he continuously murmured low, faint scriptures in a soft voice.

Shasha—

Shashasha—

But as Teacher Xu chanted, an extremely distinct and restless scratching sound came from the storage room that had not been opened in over a decade.

It seemed as if some kind of whimpering sound similar to a wail could be faintly heard.

Suddenly, the flames surged inside the copper basin, and the talismans drawn with cinnabar were thrown in wildly as if they were free money. When they entered the copper basin, it was like snow meeting fire, and they instantly turned into snow white paper ash.

Watching the scene in front of them, everyone in the room had beads of sweat as big as soybeans on their foreheads.

The stalemate lasted over ten seconds before the flames in the basin gradually faded away.

Click.

The heavy old iron lock suddenly made a crisp sound as the door was shaken.

Immediately after, the entire room fell into a dead silence.

The scratching sound vanished.

The chill also went away.

It was only at this moment that Teach Xu took a sharp breath and stopped chanting. His whole body shook, and he staggered back from the door.

He clutched his chest and said to the others: “Okay, it’s good.”

If Li Xiu were here, he would be shocked to see the current Teacher Xu. The gentle, affable man of just a few hours ago now looked as if he had lost too much blood. He had become weak and haggard, with an ashen face.

The disciples jumped up and rushed forward to support the shaky Teacher Xu.

“Teacher!”

“Master Xu, is it done?”

“Are you okay…..”

Teacher Xu raised his hand and gestured weakly for his disciples to quiet down.

He leaned against the wall and paused for a while to stare at it before he gradually recovered. When he spoke, his voice was as calm and gentle as ever: “There is nothing else. It’s been taken care of.”

Someone looked at Teacher Xu’s current miserable appearance and couldn’t help but curse angrily.

“Those pig-brained people at Qiming Secondary School were fine before, but in the end, they didn’t care about their good students and made it like this. I’m not even talking about the dead person, but that they exhausted Master Xu, making you waste your practice like this—”

“I told you I’m fine. And this accident can’t be entirely blamed on the school.” Teacher Xu sighed helplessly, catching his breath. He paused for a moment before adding, “The Xiao family has been raising it since the late Qing Dynasty. How many of their own children’s lives have been lost in the last hundreds of years…..with such an evil spirit, how can it be said that the seal will never loosen and it will always be safe?”

As Teacher Xu finished speaking, everyone present suddenly remembered the origins of the “thing” in the Xiao family villa, and their faces were all filled with a gloom that was difficult to rid themselves of.

At this time, it was Teacher Xu who first spoke to comfort them: “Don’t be too nervous. After all, it’s only in this form now. After all these years, hasn’t so much money, manpower, and material resources been spent just to neutralize its ferocity? We must still believe in the government and the people. In terms of actions, we must always be ready to confront it, and in terms of mentality, we must relax our minds and deal with it calmly…..”

Upon hearing Teacher Xu’s words, the group of people gradually relaxed.

However, just as they were packing their things and were about to leave the Xiao Family Haunted House, someone happened to bring up the past.

“…..But the people of the Xiao family were really cruel. They had a good little boy, their own child, who they raised by their side for several years, right? Even dogs can develop feelings, and they actually had the heart to offer a person as a living sacrifice…..”

The others could only let out a sigh after hearing this.

“In the end, he wasn’t born in this house, but was brought here from a mistress outside.”

“Ai, what could that mistress have been after? The Xiao family are no good…..”

“Stop talking.” Teacher Xu interrupted the disciples’ chatter with a frown.

Standing in the front garden of the Xiao family villa, the man suddenly turned his head and looked at the villa’s second floor.

A gust of wind blew by. In front of the broken window, a woman’s swollen, gray-white face was pressed against the glass, staring straight at the people downstairs. Her clouded eyes overflowed with pain and despair.

Teacher Xu gave her a mild glance and then turned back, walking toward the outside world.

Just like the noble lady back then could casually abuse the illegitimate child brought back by her husband, the seemingly kind and gentle man also responded to the ghost’s plea with unusual indifference.

For more than ten years, she had been trapped in that house, repeating the scene of her demise over and over again, from death to final decay.

*

At the same moment, in the shantytown on the other side of the city, Li Xiu was frowning as he tried his utmost to decipher his grandmother’s mumbling.

“Grandmother, what are you talking about? What did you do wrong?”

When Li Xiu was a child, he once heard his grandmother say she had given a name to his “gege” under the bed.

If “gege” was still alive…..

His name would have been Li Yu. 

But since some unknown time, his grandmother rarely called his “gege” by name.

It was not until tonight that Li Xiu heard the name “Xiao Yu” ^[1] from his grandmother again. Different from when he was young, when his grandmother would hold Li Xiu in her arms and gently speak to him about the origin of the name “Li Yu,” there was now only endless fear when the name fell from his grandmother’s mouth.

Li Xiu looked at his grandmother in front of him, who was obviously incognizant, and the expression on his face gradually became grave.

To be honest, if not for what happened in the Xiao Family Haunted House, Li Xiu might have regarded his grandmother’s babbling as the gibberish of an old person suffering from dementia.

After all, a significant feature of Alzheimer’s disease was that the elderly would have various persecutory delusions. But after experiencing so many things that were difficult to explain scientifically, Li Xiu couldn’t help but feel somewhat frightened.

Li Xiu suppressed his uneasiness and coaxed his grandmother softly: “Grandmother, please tell me carefully. What went wrong?”

His grandmother stared at Li Xiu vacantly, her dry lips pressed together.

As if because of sheer terror, her voice was reduced to a few mumbles as she replied.

Li Xiu couldn’t hear it clearly, so he could only lean forward slightly to get closer.

And at this moment, a crisp sound came from the kitchen.

Crash.

Li Xiu was startled.

When he rushed to the kitchen, what he saw froze Li Xiu in place.

The kitchen could only be described as a disaster.

Pots and pans were scattered everywhere, the faucet was on with water spilling all over the floor, and all the fresh and old food had been taken out of the refrigerator and spread everywhere.

Every ingredient was topped with rice.

What shocked Li Xiu the most was that the jar that had been used to store incense ash was now completely broken.

The slop on the ground had completely soaked the scattered incense ash, making it impossible to collect again.

As for the crisp sound Li Xiu heard before, it had come from a broken bowl.

The bowl that was used for “gege’s” food.

It was unknown where his grandmother had put it before, but now it had been smashed to pieces.

Li Xiu stood there and took more than ten deep breaths before he was able to just barely calm down.

“Grandmother, what were you trying to do before? The kitchen…..is such a mess.”

His grandmother had calmed down by now.

Hearing Li Xiu’s question, she raised her head listlessly.

“Li Xiu, you’re back, ah?” said the old woman, her eyes filled with confusion.

“Why did school end so early today?” After a pause, she smiled. “Have you made any friends there?”

A drop of saliva flowed down from his grandmother’s mouth as she spoke.

And Li Xiu stood stiffly in the kitchen, his heart sinking little by little.

Li Xiu didn’t continue to ask his grandmother what she had or hadn’t done.

Taking a deep breath, he turned around and began to skillfully clean up the kitchen.

By the time he finished cleaning everything up, it was very late. Fortunately, not too many things were wasted. The only things that couldn’t be returned to their original places were the small jar containing incense ash that his grandmother cherished, and the bowl for bringing rice to his gege…..

Wait, bringing rice?

Standing in the kitchen, Li Xiu abruptly realized where the feeling of wrongness in his mind was coming from.

Today, his grandmother…..hadn’t urged him to bring food to his gege.

Li Xiu stood still for a moment. His throat was dry and his stomach felt a little tight.

He felt a sort of strange uneasiness.

Standing at the door to the kitchen, he looked toward the living room.

After experiencing such inexplicable panic in the afternoon, his grandmother seemed to have forgotten her gaffe. At this time, she had already rolled up her sleeves and was seated on the sofa, watching TV intently.

“……”

Li Xiu looked at his grandmother’s tranquil profile, and after a long while, slowly exhaled a deep breath from his chest.

He said nothing more, and only turned back to the kitchen, filled the rice bucket with rice, and placed some in an ordinary bowl.

There was no incense ash to use, so Li Xiu didn’t bother mixing the ash with the uncooked rice this time.

Gege won’t mind, right? Li Xiu said to himself.

Of course, the premise was that “gege” actually existed.

After setting the bowl under the bed as usual, Li Xiu sat tiredly in the dusty, dilapidated room for a while.

He thought again about what Teacher Xu had said that afternoon. However, his mood at this time was very complicated.

Looking unconsciously at the jagged shadows of the junk in the room that had fallen to the floor, Li Xiu said to himself, “If Grandmother really has Alzheimer’s, she’ll probably have to be sent to a nursing home, right?”

“Grandmother’s other relatives don’t seem too reliable. She can only rely on me to support her. Without a university degree, with my body, it will be impossible to support her for the rest of her life…..”

“But if I go to university, I won’t be able to take care of her. It’s too dangerous to leave Grandmother home alone.”

“I don’t know how much it would cost to send her to a nursing home…..I don’t think I’ll have that much money…..”

As he received no response, Li Xiu’s voice continued to grow softer.

It seemed that even he himself realized how ridiculous and weak he was at this moment.

“Besides, Grandmother will forget me soon, won’t she?”

In the silent, deserted room, the thin boy bent his knees and buried his face in his arms.

A faintly choked whisper sounded. “If that’s the case, I…..I’ll be alone.”

The room remained silent.

Although he didn’t want to admit it, Li Xiu found that he had been listening carefully for movement under the bed.

He waited for a long time, but it seemed that even the mice were unwilling to visit this shabby room tonight.

This kind of silence caused Li Xiu to return to his senses.

He was dumbfounded by his thoughts at that moment.

It turned out that his modern worldview had been shaken by what had happened in that haunted house.

Li Xiu let out a sigh, returning to his bedroom with a wry smile.

Just as Teacher Xu said, the only thing he should do now, and the only thing he could do now, was to study.

Li Xiu gritted his teeth as he told this to himself.

Then, all in one go, he made up for all of the homework he had missed due to the uneasiness of the past few days.

When Li Xiu pulled himself out of his happy studying, he found that early morning had come without him realizing it.

Li Xiu stretched with a yawn.

Just as he was about to get in bed, his cell phone rang at this inopportune time.

The caller ID was Fang Qian’an.

Li Xiu stared blankly at the name on the screen for a few seconds before pressing the button to connect.

“Fang Qian’an?”

“What are you doing?”

The youth narrowed his eyes at Fang Qian’an’s inane and lackadaisical question.

He was really not in the mood to deal with Fang Qian’an, and his answer was perfunctory.

“I’m sleeping.”

But Fang Qian’an’s response was completely beyond Li Xiu’s expectations: “Isn’t the light still on in your window? Are you just going to bed?”

Li Xiu sobered up at once when he heard these words.

He jumped up and rushed to the window, then opened the curtains and looked down.

With the faint light of the table lamp in the window, Li Xiu lowered his head to see the tall boy standing downstairs at his home.

Noticing Li Xiu when he leaned forward, he held up his cell phone with a smile and waved in Li Xiu’s direction.

“Hey, you’re still up so late?”

At first glance, Fang Qian’an still looked a bit handsome now.

Of course, only on the premise that you ignored the fresh blood on the former school bully’s head and face, as well as the layers of horrible bruises covering it.

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[1] This is the 小 xiao, different from the character used for the Xiao family. ⮐

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Chapter 34 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 36