It was clear that something terrible had happened, as the ward was a mess, but why did everyone look like they had only now realized something was wrong? Weren’t they just outside the door? Moreover, the door was open…..
Were these people really human beings? Or were they still trapped in an illusion created by ghosts? Li Xiu stared in surprise and uncertainty at the people pouring into the room. He was so frightened that he was about to lose his mind, and wanted to hide in the corner of the room.
Fortunately, Teacher Xu also recovered at this time. The man’s expression wasn’t good, but he had returned to his original calmness. Raising his hand, he tapped Li Xiu’s forehead and quickly murmured a few faint spells.
Li Xiu felt a chill rush straight into the depths of his forehead through the point of contact with Teacher Xu. He instantly shivered. And in the next second, felt his spirit lighten and was abruptly much more clear-headed.
Li Xiu looked at the time and realized that what had been an extremely long battle for him had only gone on for a minute or two.
Except…..
As if conscious of Li Xiu’s terror, Teacher Xu stood in front of him and explained tiredly: “They shouldn’t have seen anything just now. This is the most common ghostly illusion. Don’t be afraid, that thing is gone.”
*
The commotion in the night ward lasted only a short while.
Not long after Teacher Xu made a phone call, everything returned to normal.
At least, that was how it seemed.
The man gave Li Xiu a set of thick clothing, then took him and the newly conscious Qiao Yang to move to a new location. However, he didn’t find another ward to accommodate Li Xiu. Instead, he took the youth and his disciple directly to the hospital’s parking lot.
Teacher Xu motioned for Li Xiu to follow Qiao Yang into the vehicle.
The car was an ordinary second-hand Honda, and looked as if it was approaching the end of its life. After sitting down, Li Xiu immediately noticed a string of coin trees hanging in the rearview mirror. The red strand wrapped around copper coins was faded, looking quaint and eccentric. A brass bell hung in each corner of the vehicle, but the car shook several times as they boarded, and the bells never made a sound.
Qiao Yang noticed Li Xiu staring at them and whispered an explanation in his ear: “These will only make noise when something evil is close by. The more ferocious the thing is, the louder they will become as it approaches.”
In addition to these, Li Xiu even saw a bronze figure of the president on the console and some 100 yuan bills stuck to the interior of the roof.
Qiao Yang: “Eh, these are all actually good for warding off evil spirits.”
Li Xiu: “Oh.”
It had to be said that the furnishings in the car were things of unreliable magic, but when Li Xiu looked at those strange things, he felt an inexplicable peace of mind.
“Come on, drink some hot water…..”
Before they left, Teacher Xu had filled a thermos full of warm water from the nurse’s station. At this time, he took two paper cups out of nowhere and filled them with water, handing them to Li Xiu and Qiao Yang.
When he took the hot water, Li Xiu realized his fingers were so cold that he couldn’t feel them.
Li Xiu drank the hot water in small sips, and it took him a long while to summon the courage to speak in a soft voice: “Teacher Xu, we drove away that…..Lord Hong. He won’t come back, will he?”
Teacher Xu was silent for a moment upon hearing this question. Then he removed his glasses and wiped them.
He didn’t answer the question directly.
“Were you afraid of what happened just now?” he asked suddenly.
Li Xiu nodded. “…..I was scared.”
In fact, he didn’t need to ask in order to know the answer. The youth’s eyes were very red. He had obviously been terrified before.
It wasn’t like Li Xiu had never been to a haunted house or watched horror movies. If he really had to say, the haunted houses and ghost movies created by people contained more terrifying and gory scenes, but no matter how realistic a haunted house was, or how spooky the plot of a movie was, it couldn’t compare to the fear Li Xiu had just experienced.
Li Xiu felt a sense of powerlessness when recalling the scene that had just occurred.
Looking at Li Xiu’s frightened face, Teacher Xu smiled bitterly.
“It was a bit overwhelming, ah. However, Classmate Li Xiu, you must be bolder from now on. You cannot continue to be scared like this,” the man said in a low voice.
“I told you before, didn’t I? The more afraid a person is, the more unstable their soul will be.” As the man spoke, he raised the thermos and shook it, causing the remaining hot water to gurgle.
“According to common sense, it is difficult for the soul to escape the body. But if a ghost continues to frighten a person, it will cause the soul to become unstable, and the Yang fire in the heat and shoulders will naturally weaken. When the Yang fire weakens, a person’s heart and soul will become increasingly unstable and more easily frightened…..a vicious cycle is formed, and the individual will eventually be possessed by the ghost.”
“Ah?”
“You see, a great many people develop mental problems. When they are sent to the hospital for examination, these people first have nervous breakdowns and trouble sleeping, ah. But if they aren’t careful, they will immediately suffer from serious mental issues. Of course, some of these people must have pathological mental illnesses, but there are also some who are inseparable from the supernatural.”
As he listened to Teacher Xu’s words, Li Xiu’s eyes widened incrementally.
“Teacher Xu, you mean…..”
“I think ‘that thing’ is deliberately trying to terrify you and abscond with your soul.” At this point, Teacher Xu’s expression became even more grave.
He fixed his eyes on Li Xiu and asked solemnly, “This is not the first time, nor the second. Your ‘gege’ is too obsessed with you and intends to take you away. Classmate Li Xiu, ah, answer me honestly, have you ever made a wish to that thing?”
Li Xiu was about to shake his head when he heard Teacher Xu speak again.
“…..Perhaps you didn’t even realize it. When you offered raw rice to your gege, what was on your mind?”
This time, Li Xiu hesitated.
Words of denial were already on his lips, but now they stuck in his throat and he couldn’t say a single word.
Had he really never made a wish to his gege?
It was as if a questioning voice continuously spoke from the bottom of his heart.
When he was bullied by that group of people at school, he never asked for anything. Where was there anyone who would help him?
When his grandmother was ill, didn’t he wish that he wasn’t an orphan, and that some relative would come and relieve his burdens?
“I-I may…..have actually made a wish.” Li Xiu’s stuttering voice shook.
“Grandmother always told me he was my gege, so sometimes I wished I really had a gege whose protection I could hide under. So that I could focus on studying and not worry about all those things…..”
Wet tears appeared on Li Xiu’s cheeks without him noticing.
“But. I didn’t mean it.”
When Teacher Xu glimpsed the look on Li Xiu’s face at this moment, a look of understanding immediately appeared in his eyes.
Teacher Xu repeatedly comforted the youth in front of him: “Don’t let this weigh on you. That thing, Lord Hong, is very cunning. Even if you were an eminent monk with no wishes or desires, if you are near such a thing for a long period of time, many wild fancies will arise in your mind. Classmate Li Xiu, you’re just an ordinary student who wants to have a complete family and study well. This is very normal, so there is nothing to blame yourself for at all.”
But Li Xiu’s tears didn’t stop. He’d never thought that the wish he had unconsciously made in his heart would eventually lead to such bitter consequences.
In fact, Teacher Xu had been attempting to comfort him and didn’t speak very straightforwardly, but Li Xiu wasn’t a fool. On the contrary, he was intelligent enough that even though just a few words were spoken, he could guess that — it was his desire to have family that would protect him which had released Lord Hong.
Li Xiu wept for a while before raising his elbow and desperately wiping away his tears with his sleeve. Taking several deep breaths, he forced himself to get a grip.
He knew that crying wouldn’t accomplish anything.
“Is there really no other way?” Li Xiu asked hoarsely. “Isn’t there someone like Lin Zhengying,[1] who can suppress demons? There must be a capable master like him somewhere in the world…..”
Hearing Lin Zhengying’s name, Teacher Xu was slightly startled, and his expression froze.
“Ah, actually, Teacher Xu may be more capable than Lin Zhengying.”
At this moment, Qiao Yang hurriedly explained on behalf of Teacher Xu: “You should watch less of those Hong Kong ghost movies. Lin Zhengying and all that are all fictitious. In reality, he may not be as capable as my teacher.”
Qiao Yang’s face was actually still a bit pasty as he tried his best to defend Teacher Xu, and he poured some more hot water for himself.
Unfortunately, Li Xiu’s hesitance was obvious when he heard that last sentence.
Before he could respond, Qiao Yang quickly spoke again.
“This difficulty is just because of the thing that’s harassing you! It’s so strange, and extremely vicious! I swear I’ve never seen anything so vicious. And it’s also so bizarre, not afraid of true fire or cinnabar. It could also get into my body and drain my spirit. How could ordinary evil spirits do this…..even when that thing was with the Xiao family back then, it could only take over the body, not like it is now.
As he spoke, Qiao Yang’s voice was deeply confused.
“I don’t get it, what the hell is that thing? Classmate Xiu, what did you offer it? Why is it so powerful?”
Just as Qiao Yang muttered this, Teacher Xu’s cell phone suddenly rang.
“Teacher Xu?”
“What happened?”
Xu Qinghe couldn’t control his emotions for a moment, and the atmosphere in the vehicle became tense. The other two people in the car fixed their eyes on Teacher Xu. There was a hint of panic in his voice.
But at this time, even for a person as tranquil as Teacher Xu, there was no way for him to bolster his spirits and pretend like nothing had happened.
After all, the person who sent the call was a fellow disciple.
And the phone was playing a video on repeat of surveillance taken from a funeral home.
The blurry lens faced a mausoleum.
Teacher Xu knew at a glance that this was where Grandmother Li’s body was resting. Li Xiu had still been hospitalized at that time, so his grandmother’s funeral affairs had all been arranged by Teacher Xu. And at this time, his grandmother’s coffin lid was being pushed away bit by bit without anyone touching it.
Immediately after, the gray-faced old woman sat straight up in her coffin.
Her eyes were gray and cloudy.
When the mortician had arranged her appearance, he’d spread a thick layer of powder over her face, which looked particularly pale under the surveillance camera.
The body of the long-dead old lady twitched slightly, and then she climbed stiffly out of the coffin.
It could be seen clearly through the lens that when she stood on the ground, her heels were raised high.
The old woman walked stiffly out the door just like this and vanished from the security camera’s viewing range.
If not for the rapidly jumping timeline on the surveillance video, the scene before them would have been like a deliberately terrifying scene from a horror movie.
But Teacher Xu in front of the screen knew better than everyone else that this wasn’t a horror scene at all, but real life.
Li Xiu’s grandmother’s body had been reanimated.
The usually calm and gentle Teacher Xu finally cursed when he saw this scene. “What a pig brain I have, why didn’t I think of that?!”
Why hadn’t Li Yu’s ashes been found? The reason was very simple.
Before Grandmother Qi died, perhaps under her own will or perhaps having been bewitched by the ghost, she had hidden the ashes within her own body — indeed, she had eaten Li Yu’s ashes.
“No wonder it became so fierce—”
After a brief gaffe, Teacher Xu instantly figured everything out.
The original reason Lord Hong could move around in the outside world was simply because the ashes acted as his carrier. And now, it had a physical body.
“For evil spirits like this one, once they have a physical body, it is equivalent to manifesting a form. And once they have a form, they are difficult to disperse with immaterial exorcism spells and the like—”
As he thought of this, a layer of cold sweat broke out on Teacher Xu’s back.
“This won’t work, Li Xiu, I can’t let you stay here anymore. That ghost gege of yours is so obsessed with you that it won’t let you go easily. That thing will inevitably come back for you again.”
As he spoke, Teacher Xu hurriedly tightened the thermos top, started the car, and began to take Li Xiu away.
From Teacher Xu’s murmured words, Li Xiu also realized how urgent the situation was.
The frightened youth’s face was ashen.
“Fang Qian’an.”
At this moment, another pale-faced boy appeared in Li Qiu’s mind.
He unconsciously tightened his grip on Qiao Yang’s sleeve beside him and said quickly: “F-for example, if Lord Hong has become powerful like this, won’t he look for Fang Qian’an too? In the beginning, it was him who took me away……”
Teacher Xu froze when he heard Li Xiu’s question.
*
*
Knock knock knock.
In the Fang family’s duplex manor at the top of the building, Aunt Su carefully knocked on the closed door while holding a tray.
But after she knocked for a long time, the owner of the room still failed to open the door.
“Xiao Fang, ah…..”
As Aunt Su stared at the motionless door, her expression changed. In the end, she couldn’t suppress the worry in her heart and called through the door: “If you’re angry, then just be angry, but you still need to eat. You haven’t eaten in several days. You’ll encounter problems if you keep starving yourself!”
She kept knocking on the door like this for a while, and in the end, it slowly opened.
A boy appeared behind the door.
“Stop knocking, I’m not angry.” Fang Qian’an rubbed his hair and said tiredly to the woman outside the door, “I just accidentally fell asleep.”
“Aiyo, Qian’an, did you do that?”
Before Aunt Su could relax, her eyes met the bright red bloodstains on the boy’s clothes and she asked in a fluster: “Aiyo, Qian’an, did you do that?”
Given this reminder by her, Fang Qian’an lowered his head and looked at the hem of his clothes. After staring blankly for a moment, he replied firmly: “…..I just happened to get a nosebleed. It’s no big deal. Hasn’t this been the case for a long time?”
After hearing his explanation, Aunt Su untensed a bit and muttered: “Not changing clothes even after a nosebleed, you almost scared me to death!”
Fang Qian’an did have such a problem. He often had nosebleeds ever since childhood, which was said to be due to fragile blood veins in the nasal passage. But Aunt Su also knew that if he hadn’t been beaten as a child, Fang Qian’an wouldn’t have such a problem.
When she smelled the faint scent of blood on the boy, a trace of being unable to bear it flashed in her eyes.
“Then no matter what, this is the time to replenish your body. You just came out of the hospital. Eat a little something, don’t be stubborn out of anger,” she advised.
“Aunt Su, take it away. I just don’t have an appetite, I’m not being obstinate,” Fang Qian’an said word by word with no expression on his face. It was clearly an extremely handsome face, but right now it looked like he was wearing a plastic mask.
And the originally comfortable and luxurious room behind him was already a mess.
Everything in the room that could be smashed was smashed, even a sofa and a solid wood desk that couldn’t be moved by two people. The corkwood boards on the walls also seemed to have been scratched by a wild beast, revealing the cement behind them. There were traces of violence everywhere, and not a single piece of furniture in the entire room was left intact.
Aunt Su looked at the room over Fang Qian’an’s shoulder, and her expression became increasingly bitter.
Who would have known that everywhere she looked was as tragic as a battlefield in Iraq? It turned out to be because Fang Qian’an had asked Fang Chengke for his cell phone, but to no avail.
In fact, for so many years, Aunt Su’s heart had been partial to Fang Qian’an.
She could see very clearly that Fang Qian’an’s father was a complete scumbag, regardless of his wealth.
However…..
After what happened a few days ago, even Aunt Su, who had taken care of the boy for so long, inevitably had an unexplainable fear of him…..
Whose family’s child went crazy and required specialized medical staff to sedate him?
Moreover, several tall, robust security guards rushed forward and almost couldn’t hold Fang Qian’an down.
It should be known that Fang Qian’an hadn’t eaten in several days at that time.
The most important thing was…..
Aunt Su had been hiding in the corner of the room when she caught sight of those eyes.
Fang Qian’an’s eyes seemed to have two pupils squeezed into the same socket.
Aunt Su didn’t know if she had seen it wrong, but when she went home, she had nightmares all night long and was even more frightened.
But once more, Aunt Su looked at Fang Qian’an and felt some pity. “Qian’an, this really isn’t necessary.” After swallowing her saliva, Aunt Su persuaded, “Didn’t I just give you my cell phone? Mr. Fang is also afraid that if you don’t get enough rest, your body will never recover. When the time comes, just be polite to your dad and ask him to return the phone to you…..”
Fang Qian’an could only scoff when he heard this. “Ha, didn’t he just want to take away my phone? And if he really wanted me to rest well, why did he take me out of the hospital in such a hurry?”
As soon as Teacher Xu left, Fang Qian’an was escorted back to the Fang family manor by his father, who said that the conditions for recovery would be better at home.
“He just didn’t want to wait and let them declare me a ‘mental patient.’”
There was no warmth in Fang Qian’an’s tone when speaking about his father.
Aunt Su’s heart tightened in a panic, and she just wanted to end the topic quickly. “Ah? How can you say that—”
But Fang Qian’an continued speaking regardless.
“It’s just like how he treated my mom back then. He was glad when she died, wasn’t he? Since I was a minor, custody rights belonged to the old man, and he could spend my mom’s money however he liked. Now that she’s dead, he’s terrified that I’ll take my mom’s inheritance. Doesn’t he just want to control me too?”
How could they be said to be father and son?
Fang Qian’an’s supposition really was possible.
Aunt Su’s white hair dampened with sweat, and she really didn’t dare to say anything more. She hurriedly placed the tray at Fang Qian’an’s door and made an excuse before leaving quickly.
Fang Qian’an gazed in the direction she had left, his eyes full of indifference.
With a click, he closed the door again.
He proceeded to ignore the tray at the door.
How many days had he gone without eating?
Fang Qian’an couldn’t really remember. But just as he’d told Aunt Su before, he really had no appetite.
Picking his way through the mess of furniture fragments, Fang Qian’an made his way to the bed which only had a mattress left and fell down with a plop.
The tall boy fazed at the ceiling and muttered faintly: “Fuck, I don’t know what’s going on with that weakling right now…..he should come to me if he has a conscience…..”
It was fine when he was in the hospital. Although Fang Chengke managed him strictly, he was still able to get some news about the other boy through Teacher Xu’s visits.
But now he was completely trapped here.
How irritating.
He wanted to find A-Xiu.
If he’d known earlier, he would have killed his old man…..
An intense, violent feeling spread throughout Fang Qian’an’s heart.
He would pull out the spine…..
Wouldn’t the old man’s blood spray everywhere?
At such an old age, the skin shouldn’t have much elasticity after it was peeled off.
And he had been sleeping around for so many years, so he was very unclean…..
Fang Qian’an didn’t notice that his eyes were quivering abnormally.
He absent-mindedly chewed on his knuckles until blood gushed out from the deep tooth marks.
But even the sweet taste of blood couldn’t slake the thirsty, restless feeling constantly surging within him.
There seemed to be an unseen fire burning inside his body.
“A-Xiu…..”
As a last resort, Fang Qian’an shut his eyes and began to use that method to calm himself.
He sketched Li Xiu’s appearance bit by bit in his mind.
He had embraced the boy tightly that night.
Because the bed was very narrow and Li Xiu was cold after falling asleep, he had accidentally pulled him into an embrace.
Fang Qian’an even remembered the scent unique to Li Xiu he’d smelled in the darkness.
That was not at all the smell of cheap shower gel. Rather, it was the fragrance of sweet, warm blood under that snow-white skin.
[Hungry…..]
Fang Qian’an realized to some extent that there was something wrong with his mind.
Normal people wouldn’t think about their same-sex friend and get hungry and hard, right?
But he was too busy to worry about it too much.
There was only Li Xiu…..only his A-Xiu could calm him down.
Without knowing it, Fang Qian’an’s breathing calmed and he fell asleep.
A pool of dark blood gradually spread around his waist.
[1] Lin Zhengying is a Chinese actor who played a Taoist priest in many 80’s and 90’s movies. ⮐
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Neon Dragonfly Translations 
Thank You for the new chapter (Ő‿Ő♥)
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