Chapter 30: Coincidence Upon Coincidence

Although it had been Qi Ran’s own suggestion to have Miss Ah Qiao drift through the wall to spy on the second floor, she still felt a strange sensation when she actually saw Miss Ah Qiao slowly float upward and pass her head through the wooden ceiling.

For some reason, a terribly lame joke suddenly popped into her mind—Miss Ah Qiao had now literally become Miss A piao. [T/N: Apiao is Taiwanese slang for ghost]

“What’s the scene on the second floor?” Watching Miss Ah Qiao’s head completely disappear through the ceiling, Qi Ran asked with some curiosity.

“…It’s quite a spectacle. It’s a real shame you can’t see it.” Miss Ah Qiao clicked her tongue, sounding somewhat regretful.

Qi Ran frowned and asked, “What, is he just as I imagined? A ghost?”

“How should I put this for you?” Miss Ah Qiao weighed her words, thought for a moment, and then spoke slowly. “Have you ever read Journey to the West?”

“Of course I have,” Qi Ran was taken aback, her tone strange. “What, is he actually Sun Wukong, capable of seventy-two transformations?”

“Your imagination is richer than I thought… How could that be? Of course not,” Miss Ah Qiao retorted. “Simply put, the layout of the second floor isn’t much different from the first, but it’s covered everywhere in webs—webs made of mycelium. Just like the Cobweb Cave described in Journey to the West, with countless enormous webs.”

Mycelium?

Qi Ran immediately recalled the young man’s sudden attack on her earlier—the same writhing, crimson mycelium.

She mused, “If there are webs…”

“Then naturally, there should be a spider too,” Miss Ah Qiao finished her unspoken sentence. “But I don’t see the spider anywhere. Maybe it’s hiding, or perhaps it’s in a blind spot from my angle. These countless, messy spiderwebs obscure the view too much. But one thing is certain: that young man you saw earlier—he is human, just not a living one.”

“What do you mean?” Qi Ran was a bit confused.

“Literally. He’s currently sitting on the floor with his back to me. He doesn’t look like a ghost or monster, but rather one of those insiders, similar to Jiang Zhique or Li Siwen. But his body’s current state is pretty much indistinguishable from death. He has no head. The part above his neck is made of mycelium, like he’s wearing a giant mushroom. It looks like some kind of symbiotic system.”

Miss Ah Qiao described it casually.

Listening, Qi Ran involuntarily imagined the scene and shivered.

A head made of mycelium? That sounded like a plot straight out of some excessively gory, low-budget horror film.

“Your earlier guess was correct. The relationship between him and the spider should be that of a ghost and a servile ghost…” Miss Ah Qiao paused. “Wait, that judgment might not be entirely accurate either.”

“Can you explain it in a way that’s easier to understand?” Qi Ran sighed.

“Hush, hush, this is the critical part,” Miss Ah Qiao waved her hand excitedly. “As I said before, you’re really missing out by not seeing this spectacle… The spider has appeared. That young man is actually helping brush its fur. Their relationship isn’t so much a ghost and a servile ghost, but more like a keeper and his pet?”

Just hearing this made Qi Ran shiver again. “So it’s a hairy spider?”

Miss Ah Qiao clicked her tongue. “From its appearance, it kind of looks like a lynx spider. Or perhaps I should say a super-giant albino lynx spider? Just looking at its exterior, it seems so polite. Its several bulbous, round eyes are rather cute… Ugh—I feel like I need to bleach my eyes. The mycelium on his head actually needs to be replaced daily. The spider is spinning silk thread for him right now. The look in its eyes is beyond tender affection. I’m really afraid that in the next second they’ll get all hot and heavy. Let me say this first: if that actually happens, I’m done watching. I’ll only come back up after the commotion stops… What a picture of mutual affection between a man and a spider—just a bit horrifying…”

Qi Ran sighed heavily. She discovered that Miss Ah Qiao seemed to have a very enthusiastic passion for gossip. At this moment, her speaking speed and the topics she jumped between were as rapid as a frog having an epileptic fit, zipping wildly from one thing to another. One had to use every ounce of effort just to barely keep up with the rhythm of her words.

To gather information more efficiently, she had to interrupt: “The top priority is to first check if there’s anything on the second floor that looks like an exit.”

Miss Ah Qiao paused, then asked, “Why do you think the exit is on the second floor?”

Qi Ran hesitated, uncertain. “That young man didn’t want us to leave this shop, and he didn’t want us to go to the second floor. So I deduced the exit might be on the second floor.”

“What if he just didn’t want you to see this spider?” Miss Ah Qiao shrugged. “If I were him, I definitely wouldn’t want any outsider to know what I currently look like. It means his identity would be directly stripped from ‘human’ to a ‘ghost’ that could be listed in a bounty.”

Qi Ran frowned. “You don’t think the exit is on the second floor? Then where could it be?”

“Using your earlier logic to explain: what things did he warn you about, or hint that you absolutely must not do?” Miss Ah Qiao asked.

Qi Ran said quietly, “Do not open the first two coffins at the head. Do not go up to the second floor.”

“The first two coffins might contain ghost birth infants, so they must not be opened. Not going to the second floor is because he doesn’t want you to see the spider up there…” Miss Ah Qiao spread her hands. “Don’t you remember? If you and Jiang Zhique hadn’t initially planned to examine those coffins, he would never have appeared to talk to you at all.”

Qi Ran was a bit speechless. “Are you saying that treating him as an imaginary enemy was just me being overly self-important?”

Miss Ah Qiao sighed and rubbed her temple. “It’s not exactly being self-important… Because if things had progressed normally, he wouldn’t have appeared. He would have just waited for you to choose to uncover that mirror and walk to your own doom while you were examining the things on the first floor.”

“But he took the initiative to show himself first,” Qi Ran said, frowning. “There’s a logical bug here.”

Miss Ah Qiao laughed. “I have a guess about this point… Put yourself in his shoes. You are hiding this secret about the spider. Sometimes, strange people inexplicably enter this shop. You don’t want to risk fighting those people, so you choose to hide first and wait for them to look at that mirror. If someone wants to go to the second floor or open the coffins, then you speak up and deceive them into looking at that mirror. You’ve tried this trick several times, and it worked every time without fail, giving you a long period of peace and quiet.”

She paused, then continued: “But today, two very young girls suddenly came in. From the very first moment they entered, they were talking in this mysterious, murmuring way. And the girl leading them even put on an expression that said, ‘I know someone is listening to me right now, and I’m saying this for you to hear,’ looking completely sure of herself…”

“That note—wasn’t it written to me by him? He knew I was coming from the very beginning; he was the one who invited me!” Qi Ran said, completely dumbfounded.

“Let me teach you some common knowledge, though many people don’t know this,” Miss Ah Qiao said softly. “Actually, ghosts aren’t as complicated as you imagine. Many times, the scene itself, the ghosts within the scene, and the objects within the scene—the three might very well have no connection at all. It’s not like in horror films where all three are always born and thrive together.”

Qi Ran quickly understood her meaning and said thoughtfully, “You’re saying this shop, the mirror and coffins on the first floor, and the spider on the second floor—these three things are unrelated. The spider on the second floor is just living here, that’s all. It can’t control these coffins or the spider, or even that mirror? The thing that invited Jiang Zhique and me into this place was just the shop itself?”

Miss Ah Qiao drifted down from the ceiling, looking down at the coffins on the first floor. She chuckled softly. Her pale, bloodless face actually showed a hint of a charming smile. “Maybe it was the shop itself, maybe it was these failed ghost infants. Who knows? In any case, you came in. You were very nervous, but I reckon that spider on the second floor was even more nervous than you. After all, that bluffing you did as soon as you entered looked quite convincing.”

Qi Ran recalled the scene right after they’d entered and suddenly realized: “That young man told me there was a sublease notice posted on the door. Is that because, to him, that piece of paper was only a sublease notice? When he entered this shop, the words ‘Please Enter’ weren’t there?”

Miss Ah Qiao nodded. “Very likely so.”

Qi Ran was speechless. She suddenly felt a bit of sympathy for the young man on the second floor. No wonder his lies had been full of holes—because he had also been improvising on the spot, completely unsure of her situation.

“I don’t need to concern myself with what’s happening on the second floor. That spider probably can’t leave the second floor. They pose no threat to me,” After pondering for a moment, she quickly made a judgment. “It’s enough that I figure out the first floor.”