Fu Sang had been sick before, but maybe because he’d been out in the cold wind and back and forth all day today, this time he felt particularly bad.
It took him twenty minutes, walking and stopping frequently, to reach his doorstep after climbing six flights of stairs.
He slowly fished the key from his pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned it bit by bit. He pushed the door open and turned on the light.
As the light came on, Fu Sang looked up…and froze.
His place wasn’t big; from the entrance, he could see the whole first floor at a glance.
In the living room, the shirts and coats he hadn’t had time to wash were piled in a corner of the sofa. But now they’d all been messed up, spread out to form a small mountain of clothes.
If he wasn’t mistaken, there was probably a person…or rather a ghost, hidden beneath that mountain.
He changed his shoes and walked over, yanking off the top black coat.
A ghost with disheveled hair was hiding in his clothes. Startled by the sudden light, he blinked in discomfort.
“What’s wrong?” Fu Sang could tell at a glance that the ghost’s state wasn’t right.
“Noth…”
Seeing him, Qi Changying’s blood-red pupils suddenly dilated. Half a second later, the entire ghost vanished like smoke. When he reappeared, he was practically pressed against Fu Sang.
He buried his face in Fu Sang’s neck and inhaled deeply.
“You’re back.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so hot.”
“A slap on the face would be hotter.”
Qi Changying seemed not to hear his cold, harsh words: “It must be very uncomfortable, right?”
“.”
This feeling of all his attacks being gently absorbed really did leave Fu Sang not knowing how to respond.
He was silent for a moment, then could only say stiffly:
“None of your business.”
“I can feel it. It hurts a lot, Fu Sang.”
Qi Changying raised his hand and pressed it against Fu Sang’s forehead. The human’s body was burning hot; the ghost’s palm was very cold.
Fu Sang noticed that Qi Changying’s voice was also a bit hoarse, and he seemed listless when he spoke.
The Crimson Evil had been suppressed by Seven Watch Blood Crying Prison for a thousand years without being harmed in the slightest, what could possibly have made him so weak?
Thinking it over, he understood. If they shared life, death, and pain, then illness might be a double portion too.
“It’s good that you can feel it. I’m deliberately tormenting you, dragging you down to die with me.” Fu Sang’s tone was a bit cold.
“Don’t say the opposite of what you mean.” Qi Changying’s temper was as gentle as ever. He didn’t get angry at the harsh words, instead soothing the one who said them, “You don’t hate me. But it seems like you hate yourself a bit.”
“You know everything, do you?”
“You’re not good to yourself.”
“I’m not good to anyone.”
“Especially not to yourself.”
“Not that bad, I suppose.”
“Then why did you drive out your own soul the night before last and let Miss Xia possess you? Miss Huo said you risked losing your life, and even if you survived, that method would cause great harm to yourself.”
Fu Sang started changing out of his clothes, but the annoying ghost had no sense of propriety at all. Not only was he bothering him by sticking close to him, he also kept asking him all sorts of questions, making it impossible for him to have any peace and quiet.
“Because I won’t die.”
Fu Sang raised his hand and forcefully pushed Qi Changying farther away:
“Haven’t you realized yet? You and I are already bound together. If I’m hurt, you’re hurt. If I die, you die. So even if my soul is dispersed and weakened a hundred times, with Xia Kui’s capabilities, there’s no way she could truly take over my body. Because you’re a seventh-rank Crimson Evil. She’s afraid of you. If she possessed my body and inherited our karma, she’d be instantly obliterated, soul and all.”
As he spoke, Fu Sang narrowed his eyes slightly, “Don’t think you know me well. You’re just a gamble I can use.”
The words were quite heartless, but Qi Changying still didn’t mind at all.
He was just like a soft ball of cotton…no matter how much pressure was applied, whether crushed flat or pierced by a knife, he could always return to his original shape.
“Maybe I don’t know you enough yet, but I’ll keep trying to understand.” Qi Changying smiled, “It doesn’t matter if I’m a gamble or a pawn, as long as I can help Fu Sang. It was you who awakened me and let me see the light of day again. So, by all means, use me. This is my repayment.”
“…”
As if truly at a loss for words, Fu Sang gave a slight roll of his eyes and said no more.
He could never find the slightest sense of accomplishment in chatting with Qi Changying.
So Fu Sang decisively ended the boring conversation. He changed into his pajamas, washed up, and went straight upstairs to collapse into bed.
He’d been out all day with a high fever, and now that he was home, all he wanted was to bury his head and sleep.
If he was lucky, the fever would break by tomorrow morning.
Fu Sang burrowed under the covers, his eyes closed, his consciousness sinking deeper and deeper.
But just as he was about to fully fall asleep, a series of noises reached his ears.
He knew that sound too well…it came from a ghost that should have died a thousand years ago and the damn chain on his feet.
Fu Sang endured for a long time, but finally couldn’t take it anymore. He decided to have the Ghost Blood Whip bind that damn thing up and hang it from the ceiling all night. But before he could even make a move, something cold and cool pressed against his forehead.
Fu Sang opened his eyes.
In the dim light of dusk, Qi Changying knelt by his bed, with a face that looked nothing like a human’s and bearing an expression nothing like a ghost’s. He was looking down, pressing a piece of cloth soaked in cold water against his forehead.
So Fu Sang temporarily abandoned the plan of hanging him from the ceiling.
Instead, he asked: “What are you doing?”
“You have a fever. This method should help you feel better.” Qi Changying explained.
“Do I need you to teach me?”
“No. But I think you need it right now. It’s just that the clothes you have here are strange, they dissolve as soon as they touch water, so I took the liberty of using something else instead. I hope you don’t mind.”
“?” Fu Sang thought for a moment and, too lazy to reach out and see for himself what it really was, asked directly:
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not very familiar with the things you have here.”
“Where did you get it?”
“In the room with the silver mirror and white chair. I got the cloth from where you hang your clothes.”
“?” After thinking of his description for a moment, Fu Sang suddenly had a bad feeling: “What is it?”
“It’s white, made of thin fabric, and not very big. When folded in half twice, it’s just the right size, so I used it.”
“.”
Fu Sang closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He grabbed the thing off his forehead and shook it open.
Then, he paused for about five seconds.
He crumpled it into a ball and, with what little strength he had left, hurled it at Qi Changying:
“Get Out!!!”
After driving off the annoying ghost, Fu Sang curled up in his pillow and blanket, his breath searing hot.
This illness was expected. After all, driving his soul out with the exorcism talisman did cause irreversible damage to his spirit. Even with the Crimson Evil as a guarantee, briefly sharing his body with a ghost would leave him in a weakened state for a while. Not to mention the almost seamless winter swim in the lake after returning to his body.
But Fu Sang had never cared much about injury or illness. As long as it didn’t interfere with his real business, he let it be, and didn’t bother treating it.
If it got too bad, he’d just sleep. Sleep was like a system reboot for humans. No matter how terrible you felt, a good rest could fix a lot of it.
But this time, Fu Sang didn’t sleep very soundly.
He had many fragmented dreams.
However, the protagonist of these dreams wasn’t him, nor was it Su Li.
It was Xia Kui.
Perhaps Xia Kui’s arrival and departure had left traces in his body, and he was too weak right now, so even though Xia Kui was gone, he was still invaded by the fragments of her memories.
Unlike last time, in this dream, Xia Kui’s mood was remarkably peaceful.
This peacefulness was different from the closed-off, lifeless state of her teenage years. If back then she was a deep, secluded, and silent pool hidden in the mountains, this time she was like a clear lake that sometimes rippled with the wind under the sun.
But the irony was that these were all memories from after her death.
Xia Kui’s past played out like a fast-forwarded movie, frame after frame flashing by without stopping. But it was enough for Fu Sang to get a general understanding of the situation.
In the beginning, when Wei Luyuan first awakened her, they had shared a period of quiet time. As for when that period became stained with blood, it could be traced back to the root of this tragedy…the man named Yuan Bo.
Even a ghost revived by Qiyueban’s sacrifice ritual couldn’t stay in the sun for too long. Plus, being dead made it inconvenient for her to show her face, so Xia Kui usually only went out at night or in the evenings. But despite that, they still couldn’t avoid accidents.
For example, one day when Xia Kui and Wei Luyuan were out for a walk, they happened to run into Yuan Bo.
After all, he was her former lover. Yuan Bo recognized Xia Kui from a distance with just one glance and followed them all the way home.
In his shock and fear, he even called Wei Luyuan out, interrogating and threatening her.
Xia Kui’s situation couldn’t be known by too many people. Wei Luyuan didn’t want these troubles to plague her anymore, and she couldn’t lose her a second time.
So, as her emotions neared their breaking point, she chose a path of no return…
She settled old and new scores together and killed Yuan Bo.
She hadn’t originally planned to let Xia Kui know, but she couldn’t hide it from a ghost whose senses were far keener than an ordinary person’s.
Ghosts can do much more than humans. For example, they can erase traces of people or objects without anyone knowing, or disrupt electronic devices so they can’t function or record properly.
Xia Kui and Wei Luyuan handled Yuan Bo’s problem together, turning his death into a missing persons case with very few leads.
But some things in this world, once done, can’t be undone. Once Pandora’s box is opened, it can never be closed again.
Wei Luyuan could retrieve Xia Kui’s soul, restore her flesh and blood and lifespan, but she couldn’t give her an identity, a reason to live in the sunlight, and she could never turn her into a real human.
A human and a ghost will always walk different paths.
Paper can never wrap fire. As long as Xia Kui existed, she could never be a completely traceless shadow, especially since she was already so beautiful and noticeable. Unless she was locked away forever in a room less than sixty square meters. But clearly, Wei Luyuan couldn’t bear to do that.
The cracks grew deeper and deeper. To maintain the illusion of peace on the surface, they had to keep patching things up.
The second person also came to them on his own. He said he had “fallen in love at first sight” with Xia Kui, and was obsessed with clinging to her and moving himself with his devotion. He wouldn’t leave no matter what, and would wait downstairs for her late into the night, day after day.
At the time, Xia Kui was very anxious because she knew that if this person kept pestering her, things would eventually go seriously wrong.
Sure enough, at some point, the man disappeared from her life.
It should have been a good thing, maybe he’d finally realized he was overestimating himself and chose to step out of their lives.
But not long after, Wei Luyuan suddenly showed her a post on some social platform: [I searched for my crush to win them over, but found out they’ve been dead for a long time. What do I do?]
Xia Kui immediately had a bad feeling.
Wei Luyuan held her shoulders and told her that this matter and this person had to be dealt with quickly.
Because if ghosts really existed in this world, then there must also be people who counteract them, like Taoist priests, or heavenly masters.
So Wei Luyuan asked Xia Kui to find a way to lure that person out. She would take care of it and send him to keep Yuan Bo company.
They lived together as one human and one ghost for almost four years. Troublesome people and incidents kept appearing, and Wei Luyuan killed more and more people. At first, she was terrified and had nightmares. But later, she discovered that the resentment and blood energy of the dead could make Xia Kui less pale and frail, so she killed more and more decisively, and one freezer after another was brought into the house.
But her rental apartment had limited space. Eventually, there was no more room for bodies, just as there would inevitably come a day when everything was exposed.
And that day finally arrived.
In that empty rental room with its shattered window, with only one person, one ghost, and six corpses, that night, Xia Kui leaned against Wei Luyuan, holding her, and they cried together for a long time.
In their not-so-long lives, the two of them had been entangled for half a lifetime, in life and in death.
They both knew this symbiotic state of entanglement would eventually come to an end, but when that day truly came, it still hurt to let go.
Wei Luyuan told Xia Kui that she was the one who had wronged her.
While she was alive, she had hurt her. Her cowardice and withdrawal had indirectly caused her death, and she had also presumptuously dragged her back to the human world to suffer more torment and pain.
But fortunately, it was all about to end.
Wei Luyuan couldn’t clean up this mess. Besides that Taoist, someone else was watching her from the shadows, and she could feel it.
She also knew that killing must be repaid with death. She said she wasn’t afraid, but she couldn’t bear to drag Xia Kui down with her.
But Xia Kui smiled through her tears and told her it was okay.
Because Xiao Yuan was one of the few sweet things in her life. So no matter the cost or the outcome, she was willing to face it with her.
If living was a kind of suffering, then let death be a rebirth.
Fu Sang was a night owl who liked to stay up late and sleep until the afternoon, so he rarely saw the city’s early mornings, and had never witnessed a sunrise with his own eyes.
But through Xia Kui’s eyes in her memories, he saw the early morning of Jingcheng waking up, the clear sky and thin mist, and the sun slowly rising at the end of the city.
As the first ray of sunlight pierced through the mist, Xia Kui held Wei Luyuan’s hand, and together they leaped into the wind.
Xia Kui was like a delicate, beautiful flower. The people passing through this world were countless and varied, but no one was willing to stop and smell her fragrance. From the time she blossomed into a young woman, she had always been sized up and appraised. Passersby schemed to possess her, only to pin her to their chests to adorn their own lives.
She wasn’t a particularly fortunate person, but neither could it be said that luck never favored her, because in her brief life, someone had truly understood her soul.
Xia Kui had once wondered how to describe her relationship with Wei Luyuan.
Were they friends, sisters, soulmates, kindred spirits, or another version of each other?
None of them seemed quite right.
It was not until the very end of life that the answer and the ending came together.
She shattered into ten thousand pieces with the wind; humans and ghosts ultimately walk different paths, and even death could not synchronize.
Fortunately, at the last moment of consciousness, Xia Kui finally made out the last words Xiao Yuan had left her.
So, they were close friends, sisters, soulmates, kindred spirits, and another version of herself in the world.
It was that she loved her.
It had nothing to do with lust.
