Even in a high-rise apartment in the city where space was at a premium, living alone in nearly a hundred square meters could feel desolate at times. Zhang Yue’s home occupied two floors, adding up to more than three hundred square meters in all. Every room felt cavernous and immense, but it was sparsely furnished throughout. The two bedrooms on the ground floor didn’t even have beds left in them—just empty rooms with stark white walls.
The piercing wail of the suona drifted down from upstairs, its blasts interspersed with eerie howls and occasional bursts of laughter. This house held more than just Zhang Yue.
Xun Ruosu glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall. The date marked there was from two months earlier: Day of the Age Breaker. Avoid major undertakings. Suitable for: starting work, digging earth, planting, sacrifices, executions… It was the sort of cheap calendar you might buy three for five yuan at a roadside stall—the printing sloppy, with “travel” misspelled as “execution.”
She and Xue Tong halted at the foot of the stairs, not venturing higher. Upstairs, the visitors were on the verge of departing.
Xun Ruosu tilted her head and caught sight of an elderly figure’s back—frail in age but vigorous in posture. His hair was grizzled, hanging just past his jowls, and he wore a tan corduroy jacket. His hands were clasped behind him, one gripping a suona.
Standing beside the old man was a young fellow of seventeen or eighteen, sporting a buzz cut and a school uniform. “Grandpa, take it easy,” he said. “These stairs are narrow—let me help you down.”
Zhang Yue stood facing the grandfather and grandson pair.
There was a clear divide between ghosts and the living. Zhang Yue’s frame was still gaunt, but his complexion had improved—no longer ashen, with a bit of a tan, rosy cheeks, and healthy lips. He waved farewell to his guests. The old man paused at the door, turning back with evident concern. “Your father’s death anniversary is almost here. Don’t forget to burn some paper money and offerings. Break the old customs, and you’ll invite trouble from the wrong sort of spirits.”
Zhang Yue nodded. “Rest easy, Master. I haven’t forgotten.”
“That’s good… The Li family at the east end of the village is holding their head-seven ceremony in a couple of days. They’ve asked me to play. I want to bring you along—blend into the crowd and keep it low. You’ll get your full share of the pay.”
The old man clearly took good care of Zhang Yue.
A sudden gust of wind whipped up around Xun Ruosu, turning the surroundings into hazy phantoms. Xue Tong’s voice filtered through. “Every memory that appears in the lamp vessel matters deeply to its owner. Unimportant bits get skipped over… Odd, though—why hasn’t the resentment tried to stop us yet?”
By all logic, the resentment should have struck the moment they set foot inside the lamp vessel, manifesting in endless forms and ruses to bar their way.
In the mortal realm, it was no match for Xun Ruosu. But within the lamp vessel—the final dreamscape of the dead—the resentment and obsession were fused to its host, everywhere and invincible.
They had been standing at the base of the stairs only a heartbeat before; now they were in the second-floor study. Zhang Yue teetered on a wobbly stool, straining to reach the dusty textbooks on the top shelf. One leg of the stool buckled, draining the color from his face. He plastered himself to the bookshelf like a lizard, and a sheet of faded yellow paper fluttered down from directly overhead.
The yellow paper wafted lightly on the air currents, lingering for long moments before settling face down. Its back bore the address of the Xun Family Old Residence. Xun Ruosu suspected the front side held Zhang Yue’s birth chart.
“Can I pick it up?” Xun Ruosu asked, habitually deferring to Xue Tong in strange places.
Xue Tong nodded. “Normal interactions are fine, so long as outsiders don’t rampage and provoke the lamp vessel’s defenses.”
Xue Tong had swept in earlier with the poise of a Daoist grandmaster. Now she slumped bonelessly against the wall, contentedly devouring an apple she’d snatched from the Bodhisattva’s altar in the downstairs living room.
That had to count as some form of sacrilege, didn’t it?
That was an offering to Bodhisattva!
Xun Ruosu paid her no mind. She stooped and retrieved the yellow paper from the floor.
The characters scrawled on it in ink brush had endured unblemished for years. The instant Xun Ruosu’s eyes fell on Zhang Yue’s birth chart, the black strokes writhed toward her fingertips. The paper burst into black flames. Xue Tong’s brows furrowed, and her half-eaten apple morphed into a golden swastika Buddha seal that hurtled toward the inky traces.
Xun Ruosu was no pushover despite appearances. She raised a hand to block the onrushing seal. In the split second before the black miasma dragged her under, Xue Tong heard her murmur, “So the little ghost has been shadowing me all along. It’s my karma.”
The yellow paper listed Zhang Yue’s birth details: thirteen years prior, the third day of the sixth lunar month.
The soul traverses the reincarnation wheel path in seven days after death, lingers amid reincarnation on the eighth, and takes root on the ninth.
Nine days ago marked Xun Ruosu’s birthday—and the anniversary of her father’s death.
Thirteen years before, the Xun family had vacated their old residence. Everyone assumed the family of three had relocated to the city—a move they had indeed made, though not as three.
Xue Tong found herself alone in the study. Xun Ruosu had vanished right before her eyes, and the yellow paper had reconstituted itself, drifting to the floor only to be scooped up once more by Zhang Yue.
A lamp vessel typically housed just a single layer of obsession. Xue Tong’s name had graced the ledgers of the Tenth Hall for centuries, yet even she could count instances of a secondary small Sumeru nested within on one hand.
One obsession per soul—unless the little ghost bore multiple souls, layering the obsessions. Xue Tong had faced such a thing once before, back before the founding of the republic in the warlord-splintered era. A Maoshan Daoist had required exorcism; she’d tangled with three Sumeru layers and barely emerged intact.
That Daoist’s circumstances had been extraordinarily tangled. In life, he made his living invading haunted manors to butcher malicious ghosts. Ghosts slain were ghosts slain—even absent his hand, exhausted merits would draw heaven’s lightning. Yet butchery demanded mercilessness; spare so much as a wisp of soul, and karma bound them. Powerless against him while he lived, the ghosts hounded him relentlessly after death.
But Zhang Yue had only been thirteen. The chances of him even encountering a ghost, much less slaying one, were vanishingly small. Malicious ghosts were rarer than killers; you couldn’t stumble across one no matter how you tried.
Xue Tong watched Zhang Yue pocket the yellow paper from the floor. The scene around her shifted once again.
Xun Ruosu had her own karma to unravel, but exorcising Zhang Yue was Xue Tong’s duty. Work came before pleasure—otherwise, it would be Xun Ruosu watching her make a fool of herself.
Deep within the Sumeru realm beneath the lamp vessel, Xun Ruosu found herself back at the Xun Family Old Estate—the one from thirteen years ago.
Back then, the old estate was still lived-in, kept tidy from top to bottom. The courtyard featured a rectangular goldfish pond, no deeper than half a meter, planted with bowl lotuses in red, green, and white. A few fantail dragon-eye goldfish glided through the water in silence.
The twenty-fifth of the fifth lunar month—the southern clime already oppressively humid after a morning rain. The young Xun Ruosu dragged a stool into the courtyard, her childish features pinched in concentration. She clutched three copper coins in one hand, with a copy of Divination Made Easy open across her knees.
Rice was steaming in the kitchen, its fragrance wafting on the breeze into the yard. The girl, utterly absorbed until then, lost her focus and let one coin slip unnoticed from her grasp.
At that moment, the chime of a bicycle bell rang from beyond the gate. Xun Ruosu’s face lit up with delight. She leaped off the stool, crying “Daddy!” as she raced to answer the door.
These scenes from her own past felt profoundly unreal in the reliving.
The man who entered was in his early thirties, handsome and bookish, a pair of thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. In his left hand swung a cake; his right clutched a bag of snacks.
He pressed a finger to his lips and shoved the snacks into his daughter’s arms. “Quick—stash these in your room. Don’t let your mom spot them.”
“Ruosu, is that your dad?” came a voice from the kitchen.
The man gave Xun Ruosu a nudge from behind. “Scram. I’ll deal with your mom.”
Little Xun Ruosu scurried off to her room with the treats. “It’s me,” the man called back. “Brought cake for Ruosu.”
Xun Ruosu still remembered that cake. Over a decade ago in Clear Canal County, animal-derived cream was scarce; the cake was crude, the batter heavy, the icing cloyingly thick and strewn with flavorless silver dragées. Yet it was the last cake of her life.
Black shadows unfurled from beneath Xun Ruosu’s feet, coalescing into a solid humanoid silhouette. The air grew heavy, as if choked with spreading ink.
That fleeting warmth shattered beneath a sudden onslaught of wind and rain. The thirteen-year-old Xun Ruosu, rice bowl in hand, sensed the shift instantly. Her father yanked her into the shadowed corner by the wall and ordered her to stay put. Her mother had snatched a peachwood chopstick from the table and stormed outside.
The girl wasn’t short for her age, and the corner sat near the window. By craning her neck, she could peer out clearly.
The air hung thick with the reek of blood, so dense each breath burned her lungs.
A man in bloodstained robes stood in the courtyard, his skin deathly pale. He dragged a fresh corpse by one hand—the chest cavity torn open, heart ripped out while still beating.
It was Xun Ruosu’s first encounter with a malicious ghost—one that had already taken a life. And yet she felt no terror, only pity: for the ghost, the corpse, every lonesome thing adrift in that yard.
For as long as she could remember, unclean spirits had called at their door every few days—begging divinations or exorcisms. But this ghost sought neither.
His eyes swept to the table, zeroing in on the corner where little Xun Ruosu peeked. They locked gazes for a moment before the ghost bared its teeth in a rictus grin. “I want her. I want to eat her.”
“…Tch. This malicious ghost isn’t picky. Xun family innards black as tar, flesh sour and rotten to boot.”
Xun Ruosu whipped around at the cool voice—one she’d heard just the previous night, now achingly familiar. Xue Tong lounged nearby, wreathed in killing intent. Xun Ruosu shot back, “Have you tried it?”
“Just a guess.” A tongue of black flame danced in Xue Tong’s palm. “This is the flame that kindled the Soul-Guiding Lamp—harvested from the old man. Zhang Yue must have recognized you as his daughter from a past life. The resentment pulled back; it didn’t hinder me.”
He’d feared Xun Ruosu might come to harm and dispatched Xue Tong to her aid.
“I thought reincarnation would grant him a fresh start—a new life as someone’s son, father, even grandfather,” Xun Ruosu said softly. “Never imagined I’d drag him down again. He couldn’t even make it to thirteen this time.”
“From birth, that malicious ghost dogged him, twisting his fate into a Heavenly Lone Star. When he fought for you, he’d already steeled himself to pay the price,” Xue Tong replied with a shrug. “Though it’s also the debt he owed you.”
Xun Ruosu turned a sharp gaze on her. “And how do you know that?”
“He’s a Zhong by birth. What man abandons his family’s legacy to marry into the Xun unless he’s paying off a debt?” Xue Tong grinned. “The Zhong main and branch lines are sturdy stock, hoarding merits enough for generations to live to eighty in wealth and comfort. By contrast, the Xun family might as well beg for scraps.”
