Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Jiang Haoyan was the last one up. He quickly shut the door and slid the bolt into place, then peered out through the crack for a while before letting out a breath of relief.

“Those paper figures didn’t come up the stairs.”

At that, Lu Lingzhu immediately collapsed onto the floor.

“Oh man, I’m exhausted.”

I sat on the floor too, gasping for breath while lifting my head to take in the room.

The sight startled me.

The room was completely empty, without a single piece of furniture. In the very center, there was only a recliner, where an old woman sat rocking back and forth. Beside her feet sat a pot of tea, wisps of steam curling from it.

She didn’t react at all when she heard us come in. She just lay there with her eyes closed, her fingers tapping rhythmically against the armrest.

“No telling who’ll win this time.”

“The tea’s gone cold. Top me up.”

The few of us froze where we were, not daring to move. The old woman sat up in dissatisfaction and opened her eyes.

“Where is everyone? Top up my tea!”

I took a step forward, just about to speak, when the old woman turned her head again and shouted impatiently, “Where are you? Wuyang, where did you run off to?”

Wuyang? Wei Wuyang was here?

I froze. The next second, an eight- or nine-year-old boy hurried out of the inner room carrying a kettle. His eyes swept casually over us, and in an instant, he sucked in a cold breath and stiffened where he stood.

Confused, the old woman followed his gaze and glanced toward where we were standing.

“Wuyang, what are you looking at?”

“N-nothing.”

The little boy turned his head away and stopped looking at us. Instead, he walked over, crouched beside the old woman’s feet, lifted the teapot lid, and began pouring water.

Lu Lingzhu and I looked at each other, both shocked and bewildered.

Wasn’t this little boy Xiao Lei, the one from the village during the day? He was Wei Wuyang?

And this old woman-why did it seem like she couldn’t see us?

After pouring the tea, Wei Wuyang coughed several times in an exaggeratedly deliberate way.

“I’m going back to my room to sleep.”

The old woman frowned.

“Then go if you’re going. Why are you telling me?”

“Don’t come disturb me.”

I caught on and tugged Lu Lingzhu. The few of us moved as quietly as we could, following behind Wei Wuyang back to his room.

Once the door closed, Wei Wuyang immediately rushed to the table by the window, picked up a writing brush, and in one fluid motion wrote out a long string of Tian script. Then he pasted that sheet of paper to the back of the door. Only then did he let out a breath and turn to us with a stern face.

“You living people shouldn’t have come here.”

Lu Lingzhu looked at him curiously.

“Aren’t you Xiao Lei? How are you also Wei Wuyang? What the heck is this place? What’s going on?”

“Xiao Lei?”

Wei Wuyang waved a hand.

“That’s a stand-in I made and left in the mortal world.”

“This place isn’t somewhere you can stay. Leave now while you still can. Once day breaks, you won’t be able to leave at all.”

With that, he came over to grab my hand. I quickly raised my wrist for him to see.

“Master Wei, do you know how to expel ghosts?”

The moment his gaze swept over the lizard claw on my wrist, Wei Wuyang’s pupils shrank sharply. He let go in terror and stumbled back several steps, hitting the desk behind him with a thud.

The old woman’s furious scolding came through the crack in the door.

“If you make any more noise, get out!”

Wei Wuyang’s face was ashen.

“This is a parasitic Suixi Egg. You ran into my senior brother?”

“No wonder the villagers treated you like that.”

“A Suixi Egg has to hatch inside a human body. The Suixi inside will keep gnawing away at your vital essence. By the time it fully breaks out of its shell, your body will be nothing but a layer of skin.”