Chapter 67

On the way here, Xun Ruosu had told Xue Tong that it wouldn’t be easy to bind herself to the dam. The array was difficult to unravel, which meant an enormous amount of preparatory work. Not only would a stranger frequently coming and going here arouse suspicion, but they couldn’t even get up to the sluice gate.

Xue Tong spoke as she pried open the picture frame with both hands and took out the slightly yellowed photograph inside.

The frame was cheap, which made its seal somewhat imperfect. In a place filled with moisture, photos would fade after just half a year, but yellowed edges at the corners meant it had been at least a year.

“Besides that,” Xue Tong continued, “when she went to get the keys, she asked the staff here. Because of the heavy rainfall during plum rain season, the reservoir could overflow at any moment and require emergency gate opening. That’s why there were at least four people on duty these past few days, including their director… but they couldn’t find the director. They suspect he’s still in the dormitory.”

“You’re this director, aren’t you?”

The man was advanced in years and held multiple identities. After finishing work here, he rushed off to the next job. Xue Tong grew increasingly impressed by the old man’s stamina—from the hospital to Highway 302, where he’d spent an entire day bustling about, and now here. She herself found it troublesome and mentally draining, yet this old fellow was remarkably resilient.

“I knew I couldn’t fool the Wheel King.” The masked man let out a low chuckle.

His voice was far from pleasant, a turbid and hoarse rasp. In the quiet, you could make out his words clearly, but once other noises mixed in, it all became muddled.

His soaked clothes had formed a small puddle on the ground. The masked man’s wretched and ferocious appearance would have been perfect for starring in a ghost film, carrying its own eerie atmosphere. Yet right now, Xue Tong wished he really were a ghost. She could deal with a ghost, but she couldn’t touch a living soul.

Bound by the rules, Xue Tong couldn’t kill him even if she drove a knife into him.

Once the masked man finished laughing, Xue Tong spoke. “Since you know Xun Jian, you should know she had a short life. Most of the Zhong Family’s younger generation never even saw her, and even fewer would dare boldly proclaim her a genius. The Xun Family has a long history, though, and few people could speak of Xun Jian so casually. You’re an undying one, so the top two or three names on the genealogy fit the bill.”

The range had narrowed considerably, but the masked man remained unhurried. He seemed to be waiting for something.

Just then, a “scritch-scratch” sound of claws raking against wood came from outside the door. Xue Tong’s eyelid twitched. She was all too familiar with that noise. In the early years after adopting Wuchang, the creature had no sense of security. Whenever someone left its sight, it would scratch at the door. These days, though, after hanging around with Xue Tong for so long, its clingy nature had been twisted straight into outright filial impiety.

When she opened the door, the creature crouched outside wasn’t Wuchang, but it was similar enough. It was a pitch-black cat, completely soaked through. Unlike ordinary cats, however, this one wasn’t afraid of wind, rain, or even lightning strikes. In its mouth, it carried a package—though who had given it the task and sent it on this thousand-mile errand, she couldn’t say.

Aunt Fang had made this cat by gathering the fur Wuchang shed through the four seasons; Xue Tong had given them out as gifts, one to each person in the Nine Halls. In terms of bloodline, they were something like Wuchang’s children—Xue Tong’s grandchildren.

Xun Ruosu’s room was unlit, so the cat had overlooked it. When someone finally answered its call and it saw only Xue Tong, the cat snorted in evident disappointment.

Xue Tong: “…Tear it apart, then.”

The thing in the cat’s mouth was wrapped in oilpaper and hadn’t gotten wet. Xue Tong shooed it next door to stand guard over Xun Ruosu, then unwrapped the package. Inside was a photocopy of the genealogy, along with a note: “Found the thing for you.” It was signed—Li Jinhuan.

She hadn’t replied to the group message earlier, but the Second Hall Master was a woman of action. She’d found exactly what Xue Tong wanted most right now, and so quickly.

It wasn’t until he saw the genealogy that a crack finally appeared in the masked man’s composure. He kept his face covered, even cropping it out of photographs—he wanted to live forever in darkness, never seeing the light of day.

But snatching the genealogy back from Xue Tong was utterly impossible.

The Zhong Family’s bloodline had never been broken, and their genealogy was meticulously compiled. It was kept only in the main house, enshrined before the memorial tablets of successive family heads. Even when Xun Ruosu had written her own father’s name on it, she’d done so before the ancestral tablets and voluntarily renounced inheriting that branch, vowing never to touch the Zhong Family’s core arts.

From childhood, Xun Ruosu had learned Sky-Gazing Divination and the Xun Family’s rather useless talismans and incantations. Her father wore glasses and lived an utterly ordinary life. When he encountered a ghost on the road, he would scream for help and let his companions handle it. Beyond tutoring Xun Ruosu in her studies, he’d never said a single word to her that crossed any lines.

It wasn’t until Xun Ruosu was thirteen—watching helplessly as her father sacrificed his flesh and blood to slay a malicious ghost—that she realized he belonged to their world. Afterward, she’d learned fragments of his heroic deeds from others’ mouths. Apart from the genes she carried, Xun Ruosu had no connection to the Zhong Family whatsoever.

The ancestral tablets had gazed upon her for a long while before finally deciding to let her off the hook. That branch of her father’s line came to an end then and there. The Zhong Family hadn’t died out, and her father didn’t have to crawl out of his grave to die a second time.

The first two pages of the genealogy, of course, listed the Zhong Family’s venerable ancestors. Back then, in the feudal dynasty, clans prided themselves on having large broods, bolstered by merits that ensured their descendants wouldn’t starve. The first page alone listed more than twenty names—not all from principal wives, naturally—and in the end, only eight survived. Beyond the main house, there were seven collateral branches.

Xue Tong had impressions of all these people; some she’d even worked with. Unfortunately, too much time had passed, and she’d forgotten most details. The genealogy jogged her memory, bringing them all back.

Before their falling out, Xue Tong had personally performed exorcism on every one of them before they entered reincarnation. Not a single one was missing from her recollections.

Xue Tong had indeed severed ties with the Zhong Family upon discovering they’d violated the rules. But she’d discovered it too late. The Zhong Family knew all the loopholes in the Heavenly Dao and how to deceive Xue Tong. She now even suspected her realization hadn’t just been late—it was far too late. By the time she’d noticed, they’d practically turned into immortals.

Even Xun Jian’s secret mischief had taken her several generations to uncover.

Meanwhile, in the room next door, Xun Ruosu slowly opened her eyes.

She’d slept in fits and starts this time. It had been little more than half an hour since her last moment of wakefulness. The rest wasn’t sufficient, but at least it had been comfortable. For Xun Ruosu, that was already more than enough after so long.

The black cat lay beside her pillow, its eyes gleaming mysteriously in the darkness. It stared at her unblinkingly, as if afraid she might stop breathing in her sleep. One paw was even tucked under her eyelid.

The cat moved with perfect silence, and Xun Ruosu hadn’t known it was there beforehand. Opening her eyes to those two deep gazes gave her quite a start.

The cat had been drenched from the rain all the way here. It must have dried itself off before curling up next to her on the bed.

If it showed even a fraction of this devotion toward Xue Tong, she would buy it and Wuchang a villa stuffed to the brim with the finest canned cat food.

Xun Ruosu reached out to stroke the little creature’s head. The black cat nuzzled against her hand from several angles. But she hadn’t woken from its presence. Outside the window stood a figure, and when lightning flashed, it cast a gray-black silhouette onto the curtain.

Judging by the silhouette, the figure was short and slender—not a dwarf, but a child.

Xun Ruosu opened the door for her.

Standing in the rain was indeed a child, holding a small sky-blue umbrella. She looked no older than seven or eight. Her clothes were streaked with dust, scorch marks, and bloodstains, yet her face remained utterly calm.

In addition, Xun Ruosu spotted two guides at the girl’s side. They were rendered in bold ink strokes without shadows. She’d noticed something amiss when the lightning struck earlier. Then the girl before her blew a breath, and the guides turned into palm-sized paper figures—door god talismans, the kind sold by roadsides during holidays.

“Come in,” Xun Ruosu said. She didn’t ask the girl’s name.

This child was likely a survivor of the Highway 302 traffic accident. She still carried the scent of flames on her.

The girl offered no word of thanks. She remained utterly silent until Xun Ruosu fetched a towel and dried the water from her hair. Only then did her eyes flicker slightly as she looked Xun Ruosu up and down.

After drying her hair, Xun Ruosu pulled a bag of small steamed buns from her pocket. “Hungry?”

The girl shook her head, and Xun Ruosu laughed at that. “You really do look like me when I was little—sulky, stubborn, never saying what you want.”

With that, Xun Ruosu unwrapped a bun and fed it to her. “You’ll definitely like the taste.”

The outside was soft bun skin, the inside pure cream with just a hint of sugar—lightly sweet. The little girl finished it quickly. Xun Ruosu handed her a second one, along with a cup of water.

“I’m Qin Yu,” the little girl said—the first words she’d spoken. Then she pointed at Xun Ruosu. “I’m you.”

Xun Ruosu had known it from the very first glance. This was her other half—an innate intuition, like chopping off your own hand, tossing it a hundred thousand miles away, and recognizing it ten years later. She knew it was part of herself.

“Someone wants to kill me,” Qin Yu said next.

Her voice was soft, devoid of excess emotion, yet not cold. Xun Ruosu switched on the bedside lamp and propped her chin in her hand, studying the girl intently.

The child’s features were identical to Xun Ruosu’s at that age, but the impression they gave was different. Xun Ruosu had always been carefree about most things, able to pick up or set down anything with ease, which made her features more vivid and expressive. The little girl, however, carried many burdens in her heart. She even pitied a mosquito that had flown into a lamp during summer.

The only two words Xun Ruosu could use to describe her impression were “profound calm.”

At such a young age, she didn’t see worrying over all living beings as a burden or a torment. She simply loved everything with calm serenity, gazing even at that lamp-smashing mosquito with deep affection. Xun Ruosu tried putting herself in the girl’s place… and felt something distinctly off.

“The person who wants to kill you is right in the next room,” Xun Ruosu said as she knocked on the wall. “He’s chased you down and tried to kill you several times already. Do you know why?”

Qin Yu shook her head. “I came here this time just to see you—and to ask him why he wants me dead.”

The dormitory’s soundproofing was only so-so. It could block normal conversation, but when Xun Ruosu snatched a hammer from the table and pounded out three loud thuds—thud thud thud—even Xue Tong, if she were stone deaf, would have sensed the earthquake-like commotion.

Xue Tong arrived in short order, clutching the genealogy in her hand. The masked man trailed right behind her. For the moment, he was still banking on her to shield him from the heavenly thunder. Even if his true identity came to light, he couldn’t risk making a run for it.