Chapter 4

When I woke, it was broad daylight.

I snapped fully awake. I was still in the garden, dew clinging to the hem of my dress. Pei Yu was nowhere to be seen.

Fortunately, the system panel showed that last night’s quest was complete.

Apparently this NPC had no intention of hurting me. I could make use of him.

With no one around, I returned to the young lady’s room. The building stood immaculate, its doors and windows already restored. Only the terrifying twins’ cloth remained on the floor, evidence of last night’s troubles.

I picked it up. Sure enough, the system supplied a message:

Item: [Ah Chi’s Sweat Cloth]

[Soaked in the fragrant sweat of a handsome youth. Used in moonlight, it reveals the world’s other side.]

…A loot drop, then.

I wanted to try it, but it was daytime. Instead, I hung it over the folding screen. The red cloth beside the painted maid reclining with a lantern made her look more luridly seductive.

With nothing else to do, I searched the room.

I rummaged through makeup boxes and cupboards. None of the everyday objects seemed unusual, except a hanging painting about two feet long. It showed what looked like a bamboo grove, with a tall, thin man standing among the stalks in a white robe patterned with red flowers.

The instant I touched it, the system provided a caption:

[A Strange Self-Portrait]

No further information.

I was about to study it when hurried footsteps sounded outside, accompanied by someone shouting in a rather shrill voice.

Cautiously, I opened the door a crack. Several people were carrying a crimson coffin across the central courtyard in a hurry.

“Be careful!” The man leading them gestured angrily. “If this spare coffin gets damaged again, the Ancestor may eat us alive!”

The Ancestor?

A spare coffin?

Wait. Wasn’t that the coffin I lay in yesterday?

I couldn’t afford to miss a clue. I hurried out. “Wait!”

“Someone else uses this coffin?”

Seeing me, the man bobbed and bowed. “Miss!”

“It’s the spare coffin. It happened to be handy yesterday, so we let you lie in it a while. But surely it ought to be returned to its owner?”

His face was all smiles, his eyes cold and numb.

The back of my skull prickled. “If it’s a spare, who’s supposed to use it?”

He froze. “I didn’t say anything!”

As though I had flipped some ominous switch, he began repeating the sentence, faster and faster.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I didn’t say anything!”

Suppressing the horror crawling up my spine, I quickly retreated into the room.

Outside, the bright red coffin stood still for a long time. Only when the sun moved west did the procession resume, shouting as it left.

After they were gone, I went back into the courtyard and discovered a fragment of an image where the coffin had stood.

From its cut edges, it was a jigsaw piece.

The young woman in the picture wore thin gauze, with a red ribbon around her neck. She lay peacefully in a coffin, apparently asleep.

The moment I picked it up, the system displayed:

Fourteen Nights (1/14)

Red text. More red text.

Unable to make sense of it, I decided to hide the piece in the young lady’s room. Nowhere felt safe. As I moved the folding screen into a corner, I felt a stare against the back of my head.

I looked around. At some point, the reclining maid on the screen had sat upright. Her plain triangular eyes tilted sharply upward, her face vicious.

Numbly, I unfolded Ah Chi’s cloth and covered the whole screen with it.

The cold, malicious stare remained.

After circling the room, I realized it came from the painting on the wall—

More precisely, the man in it.

His white robe was now entirely red, his narrow eyes bloodshot. He stared fiercely at me without so much as blinking.

I was past caring. I crumpled the painting and tossed it into the corner to keep the haunted screen company.

Before I knew it, dusk had fallen.

Perhaps because of the game’s settings, days in this world were very short. As the ashen moon rose, Xiaozhuzi’s voice sounded outside again. “Which consort will you summon tonight, miss?”

Without a moment’s thought, I shouted myself hoarse.

“Pei Yu! I want Pei Yu!”