Chapter 23: The Coffin Guard

“One wonton soup, one spring roll, please.”

Qi Xin looked at the menu on the wall and said, “How much in total?”

“Twelve—just sit anywhere. You’re getting out of school so late, girl?” The older woman wiping tables moved with brisk, fiery efficiency. Her accent sounded faintly familiar to Qi Xin, but she couldn’t place it.

She nodded, choosing a seat near the shop’s outer edge. “We had cleaning duty at school, so I left a bit late.”

“Why didn’t you get your parents to pick you up? It’s so late, it’s dangerous for a girl to go home alone.”

Qi Xin nodded but didn’t continue that conversation. She pulled a ten-yuan and a five-yuan note from her schoolbag, placing them on the counter. The older woman paused, putting away the payment QR code she’d taken out. She seemed surprised a high school student would still pay with crumpled paper bills. Recovering, she opened the cash drawer and made three yuan change.

“Could you please find the change in coins?” Qi Xin asked softly.

“It’s just three yuan, no trouble at all.” The woman briskly opened the drawer again and swapped the bills for three one-yuan coins.

Qi Xin took the coins, thanked her, pocketed two, and held the remaining one in her palm. The hard, solid feeling gave her a small measure of ease—coins were more reassuring to her than paper money. If offered a crisp twenty-yuan bill or twenty separate coins, she would definitely choose the coins. They made her feel “wealthy”.

Back in middle school, she’d once had a cell phone. It was just a button-press phone, but it could text and make calls. That phone was eventually confiscated because her uncle’s daughter—her cousin, whom she found rather unpleasant with her foul mouth—threatened suicide and ran away from home in her senior year of high school. The reason was that her uncle had checked her phone and discovered she was in an online relationship with a forty-year-old unemployed man. The entire household was thrown into chaos. Her aunt sobbed, practically wanting to grab a knife and kill the man. Her uncle, who had never involved himself in raising his child, scolded his wife for not paying more attention. Qi Xin’s mother had originally been watching the drama unfold from the sidelines with amusement. But as she watched, she suddenly worried that her own daughter might do something equally disgraceful, and so she confiscated Qi Xin’s phone.

Honestly, it didn’t make much difference, Qi Xin thought. Aside from contacting her mother, she never really needed that button phone anyway. Her best friend, Lian Hui, on the other hand, got quite indignant on her behalf upon hearing this, shouting about “suffocating family environments” and “a child’s right to choose”. Qi Xin cringed inwardly whenever she thought of those terms. In her view, they had nothing to do with her. It was like a Northeastern guy with a gold chain, holding a beer in one hand and a skewer of lamb in the other, launching into a high-spirited discussion about skin color equality. It wasn’t that one was unworthy of the other, it was just… bizarrely incongruous.

She rarely told Lian Hui about her home situation, but after being friends for so long, even the most obtuse person could probably guess. So Lian Hui rarely invited her to places that required spending money. Qi Xin knew Lian Hui would love to have a friend to go to anime conventions with, but that fifty-yuan entry ticket was simply too heavy a burden for her.

Sometimes, she felt Lian Hui was doing herself a disservice by being her friend. Qi Xin honestly didn’t feel whatever this “friendship” was supposed to be. The only reason she spent the most time with Lian Hui was because Lian Hui was always the one who initiated contact. If Lian Hui one day stopped reaching out, then the relationship would simply… end.

Maybe my personality really is just terrible? Qi Xin thought with a touch of self-deprecation.

The older woman brought over her wonton soup and spring roll. Qi Xin thanked her, snapped apart the disposable chopsticks, and ate slowly, bite by bite, in no hurry. There was no urgent need to rush home anyway.

Outside the door, the street was faintly lit by dim yellow streetlamps. The darkness further down the road melted into a shapeless blob. Blurry halos enveloped the trees, like a mosaic filter. In the distant background, skyscrapers and low buildings intersected, their lights flickering, clustered together yet not interfering with one another.

She stared blankly at the scene outside. After a moment, she let out a soft sigh.

…

“…Zhique, what do you think the host’s angle is?”

After a long, deathly silence, Qi Ran stared at the dozens of coffins, which still lacked any trace of a living soul’s presence. She whispered to the equally motionless Jiang Zhique beside her, her voice like the buzz of a mosquito.

“Never seen anything like it. But we should be patient and cautious. The enemy moves, we move,” Jiang Zhique replied in an equally low voice.

“Maybe we should first try retreating a step? Try calling Li Siwen and ask him to come?” Qi Ran was getting cold feet. Although her temper could sometimes be stubborn as a mule, she never tried to act tough or maintain face in pointless situations like this. “I think this might be a bit beyond our ability to solve.”

Jiang Zhique shook her head minutely. “Unless the host permits it, we can’t reach him. The Ghost Fog can block many things, including cell phone signals.”

“The college entrance exams should really adopt this stuff. Feels more convenient than a signal jammer,” Qi Ran instinctively quipped. The more nervous she got, the stronger her urge to say something. “So your listening device isn’t working right now either? Why not bring out those giant pythons of yours to put on a show? I think first impressions and presence are pretty important in a standoff. Lose the fight, but don’t lose the image.”

She deliberately said this for the hidden shop owner’s ears, meaning to flaunt their strength.

Hearing this, Jiang Zhique’s body suddenly stiffened. After a brief pause, she whispered, “I haven’t fully refined the Torch Dragon Pattern yet… it doesn’t obey my commands.”

“It’s fine. If the host really wants to make a move, it surely can’t just watch you die.” Qi Ran was momentarily taken aback, but pressed on, forcing a confident tone.

After a while longer, the shop was still silent. As time dragged on, Qi Ran’s bravado deflated like a punctured balloon. Tired of the suspense, she adopted a “smash the pot just because it’s cracked” attitude and wasn’t quite as scared anymore. “We can’t just keep this stalemate forever. How about checking out those coffins?”

Jiang Zhique also seemed to have had enough of this battle of patience. Steeling her heart, she nodded and walked forward, moving through the orderly rows of coffins, heading straight for the two at the very front.

“Welcome, welcome, young ladies.”

An unfamiliar male voice spoke. Qi Ran looked up towards the staircase. Because of the angle, the mid-stair landing obscured the man’s upper body. From his voice, he sounded quite young, cultured. He was probably between twenty and twenty-five. But his attire was distinctly unmodern: loose, light-gray pleated trousers, dark brown low-heeled leather oxfords… He looked more like a young man chasing Western trends back in the seventies or eighties.

Qi Ran felt a bit calmer. If the opponent was a physical person, there was nothing to be too afraid of.

“I advise you both not to go any further. If you disturb the two elders, even I won’t be able to calm them down,” the young man sighed softly. “Why don’t we just stay in our current positions and chat?”

Qi Ran pulled back the step she was about to take. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?” The young man chuckled lightly. “What are you referring to? Tailing the Young Miss of the Xie Family? You should be grateful it’s not fifty years ago. With the Old Master’s temper back then, such a ‘misunderstanding’ wouldn’t leave anyone in a laughing mood.”

Qi Ran paused. From this man’s tone, he didn’t sound like a stranger to the “Old Master Xie of fifty years ago”. He didn’t seem as young as his voice suggested.

Could he truly be someone from the last century?

“Qi Xin is my older sister,” she said quietly. “We were just worried about her safety, so we followed her.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie, she thought.

The young man paused. The humor in his voice grew more apparent. “Young Miss, you have quite the sense of humor. How could I possibly fail to recognize the bloodline of the Xie Family?”

Qi Ran’s brows furrowed deeply. For some reason, she suddenly felt a surge of annoyance toward the young man standing on the staircase. She said bluntly, “You can feel free to let her come in right now and see. Let’s see if she recognizes me.”