Although Huo Wei wasn’t very diligent with serious matters, she loved studying all sorts of strange, useless, and obscure little spells.
For example, back when she was still learning the basics at the Zhuge family, there was a small spell that took up a quarter of a page in the lower left corner of page 624 of the second volume of the Intermediate Incantation Textbook, named “Blood Promise”, which easily won her favor.
The name sounded very similar to Blood Oath, but their functions were completely different.
A Blood Oath was a vow made by two people with their blood, with death as the penalty for breaking it.
A Blood Promise, however, was a promise made using blood. Its introductory line was so romantic that Huo Wei could still recite it word for word even now…
—Where the eyes cannot see, I use blood to find you.
In short, this spell could establish a certain connection between two people’s blood. Normally, if A and B had a Blood Promise, and B went missing, A could use their own blood as a medium to find B. But back then, Huo Wei was too young and lacked solid professional skills, so an error occurred when she tried to cast the spell, causing her to lose the core function of the Blood Promise.
But it wasn’t completely useless, because afterward she discovered that although she couldn’t use blood to find people, she could easily identify which drop of blood belonged to Fu Sang.
This story was actually rather long if told from the beginning.
Zhuge Buhuo always said Fu Sang had a strange temper, spoke harshly, and was hard to get along with. But in Huo Wei’s opinion, the Fu Sang that Zhuge Buhuo encountered was already the much-improved, milder version after more than a decade of socialization in the normal human world.
Because when she first met Fu Sang, he was countless times more difficult to deal with than now.
Huo Wei entered the Zhuge family at the age of 7. She had been able to see things others couldn’t since she was little, and she was very timid, often too scared to sleep.
She was the only child in her family, and everyone doted on her like a pearl in their palm. Her parents and grandparents couldn’t stand to see their precious darling so terrified, so they hired many monks and Taoist masters to perform rituals and exorcise evil spirits, paying a lot of “idiot tax,” but none of it worked much. She still got scared as usual, until her mother finally contacted the Zhuge family through countless connections.
And so Huo Wei became an inner disciple of the Zhuge family, learning the basics of various incantations and formations alongside the other children, while also strengthening her body.
Because her parents had greased the wheels quite a bit before she entered, trying to give Huo Wei a good learning and living environment, she took these classes together with the main-family disciples at the main residence.
Huo Wei had been a social butterfly since childhood, best at making friends. Within a few days, she had become fast friends with that group of main family disciples. Moreover, this girl could never stay still; if she was idle, she had to wander around to see and observe everything.
Zhuge Fu Sang was the surprise she stumbled upon during one of her wanderings.
Or perhaps a shock.
Fu Sang was different from the other main family disciples. He didn’t take classes with the other children. When Huo Wei met him, he was locked up alone in a small courtyard near Yunling Mountain Residence.
The walls of that small courtyard were very high, so high that three of her stacked together couldn’t reach the top.
Children are always curious about unknown things, especially since Huo Wei had a favorite fairy tale in which a princess was trapped in a high tower by a witch, waiting for a prince to rescue her.
Harboring the thought that perhaps a princess also lived behind these four high walls, Huo Wei voluntarily accepted the mission to rescue the princess after discovering a dog hole blocked by a stone in the corner of the wall. Relying on her small size, she squeezed through the hole and into the walled enclosure.
Once inside, she found that there was indeed a house in the middle of the four walls, but the person living inside was not a princess.
The house was neither big nor small, just the right size to be enclosed within the walls, looking like a prison.
She walked around it and found that such a large house only had one small window.
Only one window, and beyond the window was a wall. How much light could that let in?
Was the princess inside afraid of light?
Huo Wei was small and couldn’t see into the window. She laboriously moved some stones over to stand on, and finally managed to reach the window. She thought she could finally see the full view of the mysterious little house and the princess inside, but after eagerly craning her neck, all she saw was a tightly drawn curtain.
Huo Wei was disappointed. She pouted and was about to leave, but as her gaze shifted, she happened to notice a small hole torn in the lower corner of the curtain.
Her curiosity, which had just died down, flared up again. She carefully shifted her feet, trying to peer through the small hole to see what was inside. But as soon as she brought her eye close, before she could see anything, she heard a sudden loud crash…
Someone inside had thrown something, hitting the window glass hard through the curtain.
Huo Wei was startled and almost slipped, barely managing to hold onto the windowsill to steady herself.
The next moment, the person inside yanked the curtain open. Huo Wei froze, and when she looked up again, she met a cold, expressionless face.
It was a boy about her age, with very long hair that almost covered his brows and eyes. The color of his eyes was unusual…his right eye was a normal brown-black, but his left was a dark red. It was strange, but very beautiful.
Huo Wei stared fixedly at those eyes, a little dazed.
“Scram.”
Later, she heard that person say to her.
Seeing that Huo Wei didn’t react, he suddenly seemed to fly into a rage. He grabbed a few books at random and slammed them hard against the glass:
“Get lost!! Go die!! Go die!!!”
This did scare Huo Wei, so that day, she turned and ran.
But she didn’t give up on her newly discovered new friend. After mentally preparing herself, she secretly ran to that small courtyard every few days.
The second time she went, the curtain of the little house was only half-drawn, and she could finally see what it looked like inside.
It wasn’t a princess’s or prince’s castle, just an ordinary little room.
She saw the boy sitting with his back to the window at the other end of the room, and also saw that his right foot was actually shackled with a cuff, connected to a long iron chain whose end was fastened to the very center of the ceiling.
Huo Wei knew that criminals who had done bad things were locked up like this.
So, was he a criminal?
But he was so young…how could he be a criminal?
Apart from the first time when the boy told her to scram, he ignored her completely the next few times. Even when she kept trying to talk to him, he treated her like air and wouldn’t even glance at her.
If it had been anyone else, they probably would have taken the hint and stopped coming after having their warm face pressed against a cold rear a few times.
But Huo Wei was no ordinary person.
She wasn’t just a social butterfly; she was also a stubborn mule who refused to admit defeat.
This boy wouldn’t talk to her? Fine. She was determined to talk to him anyway. Not only that, but she also brought him all sorts of little snacks, letting him feel her full friendliness and sincerity.
Through countless sleepless, frustrating nights, Huo Wei would lie in her little bed, clenching her fists and encouraging herself, growing braver with every setback.
She was determined to befriend him, no matter what!
She refused to believe there was anyone in the world who couldn’t become her friend!!
This process lasted about a year before Huo Wei finally had her first conversation with the boy and learned his name…Zhuge Fu Sang.
She also learned that he was the disciple of Zhuge Lin, the eccentric old man with the worst temper in the Zhuge family.
All of this felt like it happened in a previous life, but even now, Huo Wei still considered Fu Sang the most difficult person she had ever met in her life.
But she didn’t regret insisting on getting to know him and becoming close to him.
Fu Sang was like a sea urchin…maybe that wasn’t an accurate description, but as long as you pried open his spiky shell, the filling inside was pretty delicious.
That was also the reason why her friendship with him had lasted so many years.
Although he had a foul mouth and a bad heart, he was still quite good to his friends. If Huo Wei dragged him into doing something, even if he complained and insulted her non-stop, he could still get it done satisfactorily most of the time.
For example, when Huo Wei discovered that wonderful and interesting little spell called Blood Promise and insisted on trying it out, Fu Sang neither respected nor understood it, but in the end, he still cooperated and let himself be her test subject.
“Look at you, all gloomy and miserable every day, living on the fringes of society, a complete high-risk individual. If I ever lose track of you…whether you put others in danger or get yourself into danger…I can find you with a drop of blood, bring you to justice, or rescue you in time. Just thinking about it is wonderful!”
If she remembered correctly, she was 15 that year. She had held the book up to Fu Sang, pestering him to cooperate with her on this spell.
By then, Fu Sang had already been kicked out of the main family. After living in the mountains for over a decade, he was forced to start integrating into normal society, and it was a difficult journey.
Huo Wei had her family enroll him in school so he could attend classes normally. He agreed to this, but refused any more help beyond that. He took the few hundred yuan severance pay his master had given him and found a dark, cramped basement near the school to live in, stubborn as a mule.
Huo Wei was genuinely afraid he might die in that crappy place. So she had no choice but to visit him often, bringing him food and supplies, talking to him, keeping him company, and teaching him how to be an ordinary person.
“Get lost.” At the time, Fu Sang was sitting by the table, making magical artifacts under the dim light of a desk lamp, and couldn’t be bothered with her.
Huo Wei was already used to his bad attitude and didn’t mind. She just smiled and placed a small dish next to Fu Sang’s hand:
“I’m not in a hurry. You do your thing, and when you have a moment, just give me some blood. I’ll handle the rest! Just put it in here, don’t forget!”
Fu Sang glanced at the dish but didn’t say anything.
For spirit masters, blood could do as much as one’s birth chart. Using blood as a medium to casually cast curses and the like to harm others for profit was a simple matter.
As the saying goes, “Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or adjust your hat under a plum tree”… it was an unwritten rule among spirit masters to avoid items or matters related to blood when dealing with each other to prevent suspicion. But Huo Wei dared to ask Fu Sang for it.
And Fu Sang dared to give it.
So, before long, after Huo Wei had gone out for a walk and came back, there was already a pool of dark red blood in the small white dish.
“I didn’t need that much!”
“Take enough at once. Don’t bother me again.”
Unfortunately, no matter how much blood she had, or how many times she tried, this spell was never quite a success.
Huo Wei couldn’t locate people through blood. At most, all she could do was detect the faint trace of Fu Sang’s blood and their Blood Promise connection within it.
She had thought this little spell between them would never have a chance to be used.
But now, Fu Sang’s aura had appeared where it absolutely should not have been, and Huo Wei recognized it almost instantly.
“His blood… are you sure it’s his…?”
Zhuge Buhuo was startled by Huo Wei’s words.
“I’ve known him for nearly twenty years. How could I not recognize his blood?”
“…??? May I ask, is that something you can do just by knowing someone for a long time???”
Zhuge Buhuo really thought this girl was sometimes quite ridiculous, but now was clearly not the time to dwell on such things.
“That kid hasn’t already ended up in a ghost’s stomach, has he?” Zhuge Buhuo swallowed hard and voiced his guess.
“Bullshit! You think San You is as useless as you?!”
“What the hell are you even comparing me to?!”
“Do you know that there are ten of your brother between you and him?!”
“What does this have to do with my brother again??!”
“…Big Brother, Big Sister, can you two stop arguing.”
Zhuge Buyi had a headache. He weakly inserted a piece of good news from the side:
“Something else is coming out.”
These words were more effective. The two fell silent and looked behind Wu Renmei and the half-headed little ghost.
Huo Wei had sharper eyes. She noticed what seemed to be a dark, hollow-looking thing on the ground behind Wu Renmei, as though a crack had opened up in the ground, but she had no idea what was underneath.
As Zhuge Buyi had said, a furry head poked out from below, and soon nimbly leaped up onto the ground…
It was a particularly slender little black cat.
“It, it has it too.” Huo Wei stammered.
“Has what??” Zhuge Buhuo stared at the black cat, feeling it was definitely not ordinary. He also had a terrifying guess that he didn’t dare think about too deeply, so he could only latch onto Huo Wei’s words and ask first.
“It has San You’s blood! The cat has San You’s blood on it too!!”
“Holy crap, did Zhuge Fu Sang explode or something? How is his blood everywhere?!”
“Can you stop saying such unlucky things, please??”
“I fucking…”
Zhuge Buhuo was about to jump and curse, but stopped abruptly.
Everyone’s heart tightened for a moment.
Because a terrifying and oppressive presence had suddenly appeared in the cave.
Goosebumps crawled all over their bodies, and the urge to turn and run instantly seized them…this was a spirit master’s instinct when encountering a specific kind of danger.
It meant that an extremely powerful spirit was about to appear here, one so strong they couldn’t possibly handle it.
But it only lasted a moment.
Because Huo Wei and Zhuge Buyi quickly recognized who the ghostly aura belonged to, and their fear turned to relief. Only Zhuge Buhuo kept exclaiming “holy crap,” and was in complete despair.
“Holy crap what is that? Holy crap what the hell is that? Vermillion Nightmare? Red Wrath? Holy crap I’ve never seen this before holy crap…”
A wisp of grey-black smoke emerged from the ground fissure. Soon, a red-robed ghost took form from within the smoke. Zhuge Buhuo stared at the face, feeling strangely that this ghost looked familiar, as if he’d seen it somewhere before.
Before he could figure it out, a fourth thing popped out of the hole…
A young man climbed out of the fissure. Once out, he noticed there was light in the cave. He squinted, ran his fingers through his hair a couple of times, swept a glance over the group, and said lazily:
“Everyone’s here? That saves trouble.”
With that, he kicked the black cat away, then bent down and grabbed Wu Renshuai by the scruff of his neck to toss the little ghost blocking his way aside, and walked forward to see who the girl kneeling with her back to him was.
After getting a clear look, he raised an eyebrow slightly.
“San You!!!”
Huo Wei didn’t care what kind of demons and ghosts were in the cave. She directly ran over, grabbed Fu Sang by the shoulders, and shook him hard:
“You’re okay, you’re okay! Thank god, you bastard! Why is your blood on that little ghost? I thought he had eaten you, I thought you were dead and gone, you know?!”
“Thanks for the blessing. I’ll try harder next time.”
Fu Sang replied coldly, then turned to give Shou Mo a look, speaking succinctly:
“Search.”
Shou Mo looked at him, but didn’t transform or say anything. Instead, he leaped over in a few bounds and sat down beside Wu Renmei.
Guessing his intention, Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly, his gaze at Wu Renmei carrying a hint of contemplation.
“Fu Sang.”
While Fu Sang was thinking, Qi Changying suddenly called his name.
Fu Sang ignored him, so he came over on his own, bent down to loop his arms around his shoulders, buried his face in and took a deep sniff, his tone a little coaxing, “Can you treat the wound? You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
Fu Sang didn’t speak.
He looked down and happened to catch a glimpse of a deep black wound on Qi Changying’s palm, in the same spot as his own.
“What the hell kind of bunch did you bring with you???”
After a long moment of shock, Zhuge Buhuo finally broke down.
He pointed at Wu Renshuai:
“Where did this half-headed little ghost come from?”
Then at Shou Mo:
“This isn’t an ordinary cat, is it? This is a cat demon, right?!”
Finally at Qi Changying:
“And what is this? Why is it so terrifying?? Is it a Vermillion Nightmare or Red Wrath??? It’s fake, right!”
“It’s a Crimson Evil.”
Huo Wei said quietly from the side, kindly casting a Spirit-Communication for him.
Perhaps seeing Zhuge Buhuo’s bewildered expression, and to prevent him from questioning repeatedly, Zhuge Buyi also nodded:
“It’s a Crimson Evil.”
“?” Zhuge Buhuo was suddenly plunged in a very disjointed feeling.
He had seen many underworld spirits that had committed countless murders and atrocities, most of which couldn’t even reach fifth-rank Vermilion Nightmare.
It was a very logical train of thought…if low-rank spirits were already so troublesome to deal with, high-rank ones would naturally be even more difficult. Therefore, he had always firmly believed the legend that seventh-rank Crimson Evil could destroy the Nether Path.
Now, the ghostly aura he was sensing was indeed very pure and dangerous, but that clingy thing stuck to someone’s back…was that really a Crimson Evil?
No way? That was way too intimate, right?
Was this the kind of relationship a spirit and a spirit master were supposed to have?
Had Zhuge Fusang gotten together with a Crimson Evil???
Perhaps noticing Zhuge Buhuo’s stare, Qi Changying looked at him and asked amiably, “What’s wrong?”
“?”
Was this thing talking to him?
And in such a nice tone too.
It seemed to have a better temper than himself, was steadier than Huo Wei, and was kinder than Fu Sang.
So Zhuge Buhuo was confused again.
Huo Wei kindly relayed for him: “He wants to ask what you are.”
“Me?” Qi Changying lowered his head and buried his face in Fu Sang’s neck, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly, like a faint smile:
“I’m his ghost.”
