The window of the room was half open. Cold wind poured in, scattering the gray-white smoke.
The cold air had sobered Fu Sang up considerably. He sat on the table by the window, a cigarette between his fingers, smoking while waiting for the physical reaction to slowly subside.
It wasn’t actually impossible to deal with it himself, but whenever Fu Sang thought about how this reaction had come about, he lost any desire to deal with it.
He closed his eyes, turned his face to the side, and took a deep drag on his cigarette.
Out of sight, out of mind.
He looked at the culprit in the room.
The ghost’s long hair looked a little messy. He was sitting there quietly, and it was unknown what he was thinking or whether he had noticed that reaction on Fu Sang that absolutely shouldn’t have appeared just now.
It was best if he hadn’t noticed.
If he had, then he might as well refine the ghost on the spot.
Fu Sang thought bitterly.
To Fu Sang, Qi Changying was a pet.
He himself often emphasized this point.
The identity he had given him was no different from the dog at Huo Wei’s house or the eighteen cats at Da Shuangxi’s home.
Fu Sang despised all living beings. In his eyes, every species in the world, including other humans, was a level beneath him.
Just as a person could never marry a ragdoll cat or a golden retriever, Fu Sang could never develop feelings beyond pity for an existence beneath him, much less experience sexual desire toward them.
Just thinking about such a thing made him feel a little disgusted.
As for the current situation…
If Qi Changying hadn’t rubbed against him, he wouldn’t have ended up like this.
That was simply how men came from the factory. They would have a reaction even when they woke up, let alone after receiving some stimulation.
Even if what had been rubbing against him just now had been a pillow, he would have reacted.
So it was all Qi Changying’s fault.
There was nothing wrong with him.
By the time he had thought it through, the cigarette had reached its end, and the issue that had made him sit here smoking in the middle of the night had more or less subsided.
He could sleep now.
Fu Sang pressed the cigarette butt into the ashtray, closed the window, climbed down from the table, formed a hand seal, and put Qi Changying back into the nail. Then he pulled up the blanket, got into bed, and closed his eyes.
But the ghost was particularly restless today.
Not long after he lay down, a slight chill slipped into the warm blanket. The ghost pressed against his back, reaching an arm over him and tentatively finding his wrist, gently holding it.
Fu Sang originally wanted to pull away, but after thinking about it, he decided to forget it.
Seeing that he hadn’t refused, Qi Changying became emboldened and moved a little closer, his arm almost draped across Fu Sang’s waist.
Fu Sang finally couldn’t stand it anymore. He turned over to face Qi Changying, grabbed his chin, and asked, “What exactly are you trying to do?”
Naturally, Qi Changying couldn’t hear him.
But perhaps he understood what Fu Sang meant from his body language. Qi Changying pulled Fu Sang’s hand down, gently took his fingertip into his mouth, then released it after a moment and pressed his lips against it again.
After that, he wrote something across Fu Sang’s palm with his fingertip for a while, his touch a little cool and a little ticklish:
[I want to make sure you’re always here]
After losing his four senses, his soul was like being locked inside an endless black prison, with touch as his only connection to the world.
Qi Changying was a ghost and didn’t need to sleep. This meant that he had to remain awake at all times to face all of this, waiting endlessly and alone inside the prison of his lost senses.
The only way he could confirm that he wasn’t alone and hadn’t been abandoned was Fu Sang.
So he didn’t really want to return to the magical artifact, nor did he sit quietly beneath the bed as he usually did.
Instead, he tentatively moved close to Fu Sang, held his wrist, and felt his warmth and pulse.
He thought that, for Fu Sang, this probably wasn’t a very excessive or difficult request to fulfill.
In fact, Fu Sang wasn’t particularly opposed to it. This dependence even improved his mood quite a bit.
So he put aside his earlier displeasure and indulged Qi Changying’s increasing demands.
A cold wave had hit recently, and even Qianzhou, located in the southwest, couldn’t escape it.
It was very cold outside, but the heating in the room was more than enough.
Fu Sang had set the air conditioner to thirty degrees. After lying under the blanket for a long time, he even felt a little stuffy and hot, but the faintly cool temperature belonging to Qi Changying as an underworld spirit balanced it out nicely.
He lay with his back to Qi Changying, allowing Qi Changying to press against him from behind and gently gather him into his arms.
He had gotten up very early today and had gone through too many things over the course of the day. Now that he had closed his eyes, sleepiness immediately spread over him like a tide.
Perhaps because what one thought about during the day appeared in one’s dreams at night, his dream was fragmented and scattered, yet somehow he couldn’t get around Qi Changying.
He even experienced the night before closing his eyes all over again in his dream, once again pondering in his mind the rationality of having a reaction after being rubbed against by his pet.
He really cared about this matter.
At the end of the dream, Fu Sang was also sitting by the window smoking. He watched the gray-white smoke drift out from the tobacco before being scattered by the cool air outside the window.
While he was lost in thought, he heard Qi Changying, who was sitting beside the bed, say:
“Don’t be angry anymore.”
Fu Sang instinctively raised his eyes to look at him, only to see his gray-white eyes curve slightly, a faint smile at the corners of his lips as he called out to him:
“Ah Li.”
In that instant, every other part of the dream scattered completely, leaving only that “Ah Li” in Fu Sang’s mind.
His intense disgust and rapidly growing anger made him wake up instantly.
When he opened his eyes, he was lying flat in the middle of the large bed. Qi Changying had his arms around his waist, his head buried in the crook of his neck and his body pressed very close to him. But he was light and almost weightless, so he wasn’t disturbing.
Fu Sang’s rational mind knew that the dream was his own dream, and anything Qi Changying had done in the dream had nothing to do with the Qi Changying in reality.
But that “Ah Li” made an evil fire erupt all over his head, and he was determined to take it out on him and make him bear the consequences.
Fu Sang immediately shoved Qi Changying away.
He wanted to lose his temper, but then realized that no matter what he said, Qi Changying couldn’t hear him now, which made him even more annoyed.
He grabbed Qi Changying by the neck and bit his face.
He didn’t know whether Qi Changying had actually sensed his anger, but Qi Changying chuckled and leaned over to kiss him.
Because he couldn’t see anything, he kissed Fu Sang’s eyes. He tentatively moved downward, brushing past his cheek and the corner of his lips before finally finding his lips.
This time, he kissed very proactively. He didn’t stop at simply pressing their lips together, but put what he had learned into practice, gently sucking on Fu Sang’s lips.
Fu Sang grabbed his jaw and took the initiative, kissing him thoroughly without the slightest courtesy before releasing him. Then, with his fingertip, he wrote heavily across Qi Changying’s chest:
[Ah Li?]
Qi Changying froze for a moment, not knowing why he had brought this up.
But he still took Fu Sang’s hand and wrote stroke by stroke:
[Fu Sang]
The melancholy that the dream had brought Fu Sang finally loosened by the tiniest bit.
After calming down, he ran his hands through his hair twice, then felt that there was something wrong with him, getting worked up early in the morning over such a trivial matter.
He released Qi Changying, threw off the blanket, and got out of bed to wash up.
Once the cool, refreshing mint toothpaste was in his mouth, Fu Sang’s mind finally became completely clear.
He raised his eyes and looked at the person in the mirror.
His overly long, messy hair, naturally different-colored eyes, heavy dark circles under his eyes… For more than twenty years, he had seen this face every day.
Then he couldn’t help but wonder…
What did Su Li look like?
Reincarnation, rebirth, past life and present life…one’s appearance would indeed bear some resemblance, but it was impossible for it to be exactly the same. Just like, even if past and present lives had the same soul, the people and events one encountered while growing up would be different, so their personalities could be worlds apart.
Some people believed that as long as the soul was the same, no matter how many times a person reincarnated, they were still that same person.
But Nether Path spirit masters generally didn’t see it that way.
According to the Nether Path’s method of calculation, once the love, hatred, causes, and effects of one lifetime had been settled, that lifetime ended cleanly. After walking the path of reincarnation, everything began anew, and everything from the previous life no longer counted.
Then…
Not knowing what he had thought of, Fu Sang stopped what he was doing and slowly furrowed his brows.
He looked at himself in the mirror, toothbrush in his mouth, and stood there for a long time without moving.
When he came back to his senses, he quickly spat out the foam, rinsed his face with clean water, and was about to leave.
But just as he opened the bedroom door, he paused, apparently hesitating for a moment.
Then he turned back into the room, went to the bedside, and patted Qi Changying on the shoulder, indicating that he should come with him.
Qi Changying quickly understood what he meant. He took his hand and stood up. After thinking for a moment, he wrapped both arms around Fu Sang’s shoulders from behind and lightly hung onto his back.
With him along, Fu Sang went directly to wake up Huo Wei and Chen Wuyue.
Chen Wuyue opened her door very quickly. She was probably already awake for quite some time and looked full of energy and vitality.
Huo Wei, by comparison, was in a much more miserable state. When she opened the door, she could not even open her eyes. Her eye mask was pushed up onto her forehead. When she squinted and saw that it was Fu Sang standing outside, the words “Are you crazy?” immediately appeared on her face. She yawned and asked in a dragged out voice, “What?”
“The owner of Chuanning Bookstore and the traveling university student had no connection. Other than their gender, they had nothing in common. The two cases were thousands of miles apart. There seemed to be no possibility of revenge killings, and we couldn’t find the killer’s motive either. It didn’t look like a serial killing carried out with a purpose, criteria, or preference, right?”
Fu Sang first confirmed.
“Right.” They had already discussed this point very clearly yesterday.
Chen Wuyue nodded. “Do you have a new idea?”
Hearing this question, Fu Sang turned to look at her and asked:
“What if this hatred crossed past lives and the present life?”
As soon as he said this, the corridor fell silent for a long time.
After a moment, Huo Wei seemed to suddenly wake up.
Chen Wuyue’s eyes also widened.
That’s right.
Since the killer in the case was not an ordinary person, they could not use an ordinary person’s way of thinking to deduce the motive behind the killer’s actions.
The two people who seemed to have no connection at all in this life might have had an extremely close connection in their previous life. It was just that their causes and effects of love and hatred, as well as their identities and memories, had already vanished when their lives came to an end. But the demon that was entangled with them had to use an almost infinitely long life, carrying memories related to them, to drag their love and hatred out to an infinite length as well.
As a civil servant of the Spirit Supervision Bureau, Chen Wuyue often traveled between the inner and outer worlds to investigate cases, handle cases, and resolve commissions. Occasionally, she could also see legends of devoted demons and spirits waiting for the humans they deeply loved for hundreds or thousands of years.
Then, if love were changed into hatred, what was impossible about it?
There was some potential to this line of investigation.
It was just a pity that matters like past lives and present lives, reincarnation, fate, karma, and so on… were not what spirit path spirit masters were good at.
She looked at Huo Wei, then at Fu Sang.
“Perhaps, does your Nether Path have a way to verify this guess?”
“Ah… I’m a terrible student when it comes to this stuff…” Huo Wei smiled awkwardly and pointed at Fu Sang.
“But he definitely has a way!”
Indeed.
Although Fu Sang had never systematically studied his family’s orthodox process and skills for exorcizing and guiding ghosts to the afterlife, he had read a lot of strange and unorthodox spells from ancient books.
“I need the birth dates and eight characters of the two dead people, their corpses, and Yu Du.”
“Umm… the birth dates and eight characters are easy enough. Liu Cairui’s corpse isn’t too difficult either, but the Chuanning case is too old. The person has already been buried for several months. Getting the corpse again isn’t very realistic.”
“It doesn’t matter. One corpse is enough.”
“Okay, then I’ll apply to the higher-ups in a while. Besides that, what is Yu Du’s role…?”
“He has eaten the Gu demon’s molt, so he has the Gu demon’s karma on him. He doesn’t need to be there himself. Some blood will do.”
That was easy enough.
Chen Wuyue readily nodded.
“Okay, leave it to me. I’ll have both the person and the matter settled for you by noon at the latest.”
When Chen Wuyue said before noon, she would not be a minute late.
Liu Cairui’s corpse was still at the Public Security Bureau and could not be moved easily, so after getting the application approved, Chen Wuyue directly took Fu Sang and Huo Wei there.
The corpse was kept in the autopsy room. It looked like an autopsy had already been performed, because there were scars from incisions and subsequent sutures on the body.
“Since the higher-ups have given the go-ahead, do whatever you need to do. I don’t understand you people who deal with metaphysics. Just one thing: don’t ruin the corpse. The corpse has to be returned to the family. If you go too far, we won’t be able to explain it. Later, we’ll have to file a complaint about you together with the family.”
The forensic doctor responsible for the case had to fulfill the responsibility of supervising and accompanying them. He moved a chair over and sat beside them as he gave his instructions.
“I’ll try.”
Fu Sang stood beside the autopsy table, picked through the tools provided by the forensic doctor, and selected a knife of a reasonably suitable size.
He held the knife in his hand and lowered his eyes to examine Liu Cairui.
Compared with when he had first seen the corpse yesterday, there was no change in it. The skin was excessively pale, with blackish-purple blood vessels showing through. The only difference was that his eyes, which had originally been wide open, had been closed, and his expression no longer looked so ferocious.
“This is how you return the corpse?” Fu Sang raised his brows slightly and asked.
If they returned him all pale and purple like this, anyone with eyes could tell that this was not an ordinary murder case. How were they supposed to explain the actual cause of death to the family?
“Of course not. Their Spirit Supervision Bureau provides a professional makeup artist. It will be handled properly then,” the forensic doctor answered.
In other words, someone would take care of the aftermath.
Fu Sang nodded. “Then I won’t be polite.”
“?” The forensic doctor felt that something was wrong with those words. So he hurriedly sat up straight, widened his eyes, and seriously supervised him to make sure he did not do anything excessive.
Fu Sang ignored his eyes, which had gone from the size of mung beans to the size of soybeans.
He twirled the knife around his fingers once, then dipped a little cinnabar onto the handle and wrote the deceased’s eight characters in the middle of his chest and abdomen.
Then he turned the knife around. Starting from the first character, the tip of the knife slowly moved downward, forcibly cutting the entire column of characters in half.
After finishing this, he took a blank talisman paper, folded it three times, pried open the deceased’s mouth, and put the talisman paper inside.
The bookstore owner’s birth date and eight characters had already been written on a talisman paper and placed beside him. Fu Sang picked it up between two fingers, flicked open a lighter, and used the flame to ignite the corner of the talisman paper.
His lips moved slightly as he recited almost soundlessly, an incantation that the others could not understand.
Blood-colored smoke slowly drifted out of the flames.
Fu Sang made a vague grabbing motion at the smoke and slapped it onto the corpse’s face.
The corpse’s eyes suddenly opened wide!
Then the next handful was slapped onto his throat.
The quiet room was suddenly filled with difficult whimpering sounds, like a dry machine forcibly running itself with the last of its electricity, sending chills down one’s spine.
Afterward, Fu Sang placed the talisman paper that was almost completely burned on the deceased’s abdomen, letting it turn into a pile of ashes over the cinnabar and wounds.
The blood Yu Du had given him was in a syringe. Fu Sang pushed all the blood inside into the corpse’s mouth, letting it soak through the talisman paper, and then lit another fire.
The flames burned inside the corpse’s mouth, yet they did not destroy anything, not even a fragile piece of paper.
Fu Sang then equipped the ghost blood whip on his hand.
Although only four copper rings and four blood threads remained, this did not greatly affect the magical artifact’s everyday use.
After making a simple hand seal, he raised his hand, letting the blood threads and copper coins hang above the deceased’s face.
There was clearly no wind in the room, yet the copper coins gently swayed, making a tinkling sound.
After that, the fire in the corpse’s mouth quickly went out.
Seeing this, Fu Sang pulled the completely undamaged talisman paper out of his mouth and unfolded it.
At some point, several more lines of writing had appeared on it. Fu Sang glanced over them, then looked at Chen Wuyue.
“Record it.”
“Speak,” Chen Wuyue clicked her pen open, ready to write down.
“Nie Su. Nie as in “ear-double’ Nie, Su as in “plain” Su. Female. Jiazi, Xinwei, Renshen, Bingwu.”
*** Jiazi, Xinwei, Renshen, and Bingwu are the four pillars of the person’s birth chart in the Chinese sexagenary calendar, representing her birth year, month, day, and hour respectively.
“Got it.”
“Mm.”
Fu Sang stuffed the talisman paper back into the corpse’s mouth and closed his mouth and eyes.
At the same time, the teeth-grinding sound from the corpse’s throat also stopped.
“There really is a third person.” Fu Sang took off his gloves.
“The line of cause and effect between Liu Cairui and the bookstore owner is very faint. Their relationship is separated by roughly two or three lives, which means that when we count back to their fourth life, that’s the life when they met. But the cause-and-effect line on the Gu demon’s side is very strong… You wouldn’t understand even if I explained it. I’ll put it simply: including this time, the Gu demon killed these people in each of their last four lives.”
“?” Huo Wei’s mouth dropped open.
“So vindictive? It chased them down and killed the two of them for four lifetimes? Who are you supposed to reason with in a situation like that?”
Fu Sang nodded.
Then he asked, “There’s one good news and one bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
Chen Wuyue: “The bad news.”
“Let’s hear the good news first.”
“…”
It looked democratic, but in fact, there had been no choice at all.
“The cause-and-effect lines of the three parties matched up. There is indeed a fourth party.” Fu Sang announced a piece of good news.
“And the bad news?” Chen Wuyue cooperatively followed up.
“The spell can only find the name, gender, and birth date and eight characters of the third person from the life when these three people met. There are three or four lives between them, so their cause-and-effect line is too faint. It isn’t enough to support the spell in tracing them to the present.”
That was indeed bad news.
With only a name, gender, and birth date and eight characters, finding a person who currently existed would already take some effort, let alone finding the current incarnation of this person four lives later.
“Born in the Jiazi year… 1984, 1924. After a person dies and reincarnates, the length of the time in between is uncertain, so we might even have to trace it back to 1864…” Huo Wei counted on her fingers.
“No need.” After briefly calculating it in his mind, Fu Sang interrupted her:
“The year and month pillars can overlap, but the day pillar cannot. The day pillars of 1984 and 1864 aren’t Renshen. This birth chart is from 1924.”
“1924… That was the year Huangpu Military Academy had just been established…” Chen Wuyue had already started to get a headache.
“There’s no way the existing records can be traced that far. So what you’re saying now is that we need to find a person from the Republican period, then trace forward four lifetimes to see where she is now?”
Fu Sang thought for a moment and nodded.
“Although it sounds unbelievable, unfortunately, that’s exactly how it is. But you don’t need to trace forward four lifetimes. You only need to find this person’s descendants and draw a tube of blood from one of them for me. That will be enough.”
“That’s not much simpler either. I’ll try my best… I know a few demon spirits in the inner world who know this Gu demon. I’ll go ask them. Maybe they happen to know the love and hatred between the Gu demon and these three humans, and happen to know this woman born in 1924, and happen to be able to get in touch with her descendants?”
It sounded like Chen Wuyue was already about to go crazy.
But just when she felt that the road ahead was completely dark, Huo Wei suddenly raised her hand like a deity descending to the mortal world.
“…Wait, wait, wait, there’s no need to make it so complicated!”
She sat up as if waking from a dying dream and stared at Fu Sang with wide eyes.
“Do you remember that the Zhuge family has an archive room that is never open to outsiders? I know the daughter of the previous generation’s archive manager. I once gave her answers during an exam… Ah, that’s not important. Anyway, when we were chatting before, she told me that there was a magical artifact in the Zhuge family’s archive room called the Seven-Life Wheel, passed down from their ancestors’ generation.”
“Anyway, within seven lifetimes, if you put the name and birth date and eight characters of the person you’re looking for into it, it can calculate whether that person is currently alive, and if they’re alive, what their current birth date and eight characters are… Doesn’t that perfectly match our needs?”
Fu Sang really didn’t know about this.
He thought for a moment.
“Then what are the chances that we can enter this archive room that isn’t open to outsiders and use this magical artifact?”
“At least eighty percent!” At the mention of this, Huo Wei suddenly became excited.
“I’ll tell you why it’s eighty percent! The previous archive manager was Zhuge Heng’s daughter, Zhuge Mingyun. Zhuge Mingyun also had a daughter, the sister who told me about the Seven-Life Wheel. Her name is Zhuge Qianyi. Zhuge Qianyi took over the position of archive manager from her mother last year, so now the archive room is in her hands. Although I haven’t been in touch with her for a long time, it doesn’t matter. We can still walk this connection beautifully. Why? Because Zhuge Qianyi’s maternal aunt, Zhuge Mingya, had two sons. Guess who they are? Buyi and Buhuo!”
“Although Buyi is studying in Shanghu, Buhuo is idle every day at the Zhuge family, like a pancake. You just have to ask him to coax his younger sister Qianyi a little, wear her down with soft and hard tactics, and have her make an exception for us. Wouldn’t that solve it?”
It did indeed sound quite feasible.
Fu Sang nodded and gave Huo Wei a thumbs-up in approval, immediately reaching into his pocket to look for Zhuge Buhuo’s phone number.
While he was making the call, the forensic doctor seized the opportunity to ask:
“You’ve confused me. How come everyone in your family, including the grandpa, mother, daughter, son, all have the same surname?”
“That’s just how big families are. Their family either marries wives from outside or has sons-in-law marry into the family. Any child born who can see ghosts takes the surname Zhuge, and if they can’t see them, they change to the other parent’s surname. They treat their family’s abilities and surname too importantly. Speechless, right?”
Huo Wei chatted with the forensic doctor in just a few sentences, but before they could say much, Fu Sang came back after finishing his call. His opening line sounded strangely familiar.
“There’s one good news and one bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
Having learned from the previous lesson, Chen Wuyue said, “The good news.”
But Fu Sang said, “I’ll say the bad news first.”
“?”
“Zhuge Qianyi ran away a week ago and still hasn’t been found.”
“Ran away?!” Huo Wei was shocked. “What do you mean, ran away?!”
“Wasn’t I speaking Chinese?” Fu Sang raised his brows slightly.
“She ran away from home. Taking advantage of the dark and windy night, she packed her luggage and ran out of the Xuangu Mountain Range. Her family has been looking for her for a week and still hasn’t found her.”
“Why? Isn’t she the family head’s granddaughter? What reason would she have to run away?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Buhuo didn’t say?”
“No.”
“You didn’t ask either? Such a huge piece of gossip, and you weren’t curious?”
“?”
“…Then what about the good news?” Chen Wuyue asked, rubbing her forehead.
Back to the main topic:
“The good news is that Zhuge Qianyi ran away, Zhuge Mingyun fell ill, and now Zhuge Mingya is managing the archive room. And where there is merit, even ghosts can be made to grind a mill. Zhuge Buhuo agreed to find an excuse to send his own mother away tonight and run the Life Wheel for us.”
That was indeed good news.
Chen Wuyue finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The case finally had new progress. Now they only needed to wait for Zhuge Buhuo to send over the information.
With this, the waiting time in the afternoon became free. Fu Sang and Huo Wei returned to the original hotel and could finally change out of those clothes that, apart from looking good, were useless for anything else.
With that, the mission of this outfit had come to an end. But no matter what, Huo Wei refused to let him throw it away. She insisted on packing it together with the accessories and stuffing it into his suitcase. Fu Sang refused, so she carried it back herself, saying she wanted to keep it for Fu Sang. It was unclear whether she wanted to keep it so the clothes could give birth to little clothes or something.
After Huo Wei left carrying the clothes, the world finally became quiet for once.
Fu Sang lowered his hand and tapped the Snake Bone Nail hanging from his waist. Qi Changying almost instantly emerged from the nail, reached out and tentatively touched his face, then leaned over and kissed the corner of his lips.
Fu Sang did not dodge. As if soothing him, he kissed him for a moment, but did not become too absorbed in it. He soon let go of Qi Changying, ending the kiss.
Qi Changying was obedient enough. When told to stop, he stopped, but he did not leave. He went around to Fu Sang’s back and wrapped his arms around his shoulders.
Since he wasn’t really in the way, Fu Sang ignored him and took out his computer from his bag. He opened two documents. One contained the Seven Watch Blood Crying Prison, while the other was his own thesis. He switched back and forth between the two documents, researching and writing at the same time, practically racing against time.
Later that evening, Chen Wuyue moved her luggage into the same hotel and onto the same floor, into the room opposite Fu Sang’s.
The three people who should originally have gone their separate ways were once again tied together because of the appearance of new clues.
Fu Sang still felt that communicating with Chen Wuyue was very convenient and worry-free, and this person’s efficiency at handling matters was also extremely high. That was enough to make him tolerate Chen Wuyue’s sense of justice. Therefore, after the two sides reached a consensus, Chen Wuyue officially became their teammate until this case was completely closed.
When it got a little later, Huo Wei became hungry and pulled Chen Wuyue to Fu Sang’s room, wanting to ask whether he would order takeout or go out to eat together.
She knocked on the door from outside. Before long, the footsteps inside grew closer. Fu Sang pulled the door open from inside. Huo Wei looked up and, before greeting him, froze for a moment.
Because there wasn’t only one Fu Sang who had come to open the door. There was also a ghost hanging behind him.
This wasn’t unusual when it came to him. Huo Wei had long since become accustomed to seeing it. What really made her stunned were the black incantations that had appeared on Qi Changying’s face, layered over the Ten-Thousand-Deaths-Without-Reincarnation rune.
She hadn’t been clear-headed that morning, and Qi Changying had stayed inside the nail without showing himself throughout the afternoon, so she had only noticed it now.
Those incantations gave her a bad feeling, so she frowned and asked, “What’s that on the young general’s face?”
“A curse.”
“You drew it on him???” How heartless?
“?” Fu Sang raised his brows slightly. “The Gu demon and the female ghost put it on him.”
“??? Then why didn’t you tell us when we had our little meeting yesterday?”
“Not necessary.”
“How is it not necessary! I’m his friend too! How could you not let his friend know when something this serious happened?!”
Fu Sang found those words rather interesting.
“After knowing, what could you do?”
“…”
This question left Huo Wei speechless.
Fine. She had to admit that there really wasn’t much point. After all, she didn’t have the ability to undo it for him. She could only worry along with them for nothing.
“…So what will happen?” Although she had been ruthlessly mocked, Huo Wei was still worried and couldn’t help asking.
“He has lost his four senses. He can’t die. He’s already completely dead, with no possibility of dying any further.” Fu Sang’s tone was indifferent.
“Huh?… Wait, no, now that you put it that way, I just realized, aren’t ghosts already ghosts? Can they still be cursed?” It was simply unheard of.
“It was originally cast on me. He acted on his own and somehow transferred it onto himself.”
“Ah… He really loves you.” Huo Wei took a deep breath and sighed sincerely.
“?” Fu Sang seemed quite taken aback by her words, and he frowned at her.
“Are you sick?”
“It’s a fact…” She originally wanted to say whatever came to mind, but for the sake of her own life, Huo Wei swallowed the original version of her words and tried to patch them up.
“…A pet loving its owner is love too. Why are you getting anxious?”
Fu Sang looked as though he found it dumbfounding.
He skipped over the topic.
“What did you come here for?”
“Oh, we just came to ask you about dinner…”
Huo Wei had only gotten halfway through her sentence when Fu Sang’s computer suddenly made the sound of a new email notification, interrupting her.
Fu Sang raised his brows slightly and went over to take a look. A moment later, he said concisely:
“Zhuge Buhuo found the person.”
“Really!” Huo Wei immediately forgot all about dinner and asked curiously, “What’s the situation? What kind of person? Where are they now?!”
“They are just over one year old.” Fu Sang scrolled the mouse.
“Born in…”
Perhaps because he was somewhat surprised, Fu Sang’s movement paused slightly before he finished.
“Subei.”
“Subei?! Isn’t that…”
“Mm.”
…The northwestern border pass from a thousand years ago, their original destination for this journey.
