Chapter 94: CH 94

Unlike how Yan Yu had a handsomeness that was closer to the devil’s, Xun Chuan was like that of an arrogant beauty: haughty, wild and untamed. Even if he was a ghost now, there was still a bit of that spirited look alive in him.

A button was undone at his collar, showing off a long neck and following down, a lean body paired with a skinny waist. His pale white skin was covered in an air of death, but there was also an unspeakable and unexplainable seductive beauty to him. Almost as if he was a ghost so seductive one would not be able to stop themselves from walking towards him, towards their own death.

Xun Chuan’s fingers interlaced into Yan Yu’s hair at the back of his head, bringing along a cold touch straight to the back of his brain and sending shivers all the way down his spine. Slowly coming closer and closer, Xun Chuan brought with him a faint scent of blood. And yet at this time, Yan Yu suddenly turned his head, and that ice cold kiss was dropped onto his cheek instead.

Xun Chuan coldly lifted up his eyes, his grip tightened up frighteningly, but he was caught off his guard when Yan Yu suddenly whipped up a spell with his fingers in defense. Being forced to back away, the shape of his body momentarily collapsed into a cloud of blackness, reforming back only a few steps away.

Yan Yu could admit to himself that he was not as brave and as loving as Ning Caichen1. He waved away the golden light from his fingertips and raised his eyes to meet Xun Chuan’s questioning ones. Smiling back in response, he then stood up to go find out what was happening upstairs. 

He would have never expected that once he opened the door, he would be preceded by Qian Da-shen2, who had hastily thrown on a jacket and was huffing all the way up the stairs, stomping as she yelled, 

“You *** slutty whore, you think this is it? Just can’t let people go to sleep huh. I’m going to rip your legs off of you!”

There were a few families living on the third floor, and they evidently heard those noises as well. Everyone moved to open their doors and gathered together to gossip, with mocking laughter ringing out nonstop. Qian Da-shen was a notorious and obnoxious woman who would hound you down for the smallest of infractions against her. Xiao-Su, that kind of woman with that small body would never be able to win against her, so there would definitely be a show to watch.

Yan Yu was one of those who would enjoy watching this drama, so he left a tiny sliver of a gap by the door and leaned up against the wall to silently listen for the racket upstairs. At that moment, an ice cold body slowly snuck up against his back and rested his chin on his shoulder.

Before he died, Xun Chuan loved doing this the most.

Yan Yu had his full concentration on the scene upstairs, so when he felt the weight on his shoulders, it was almost instinctive in the way he squeezed Xun Chuan’s cheeks. The latter slightly narrowed his eyes, but snuggled up against his neck.

The touch was ice cold, so very unlike a human being, snapping Yan Yu back to his senses. His breathing froze for a brief moment, and then he slowly retracted his hand, silently dropping it beside his body.

The sharp shrieks from Qian Da-sheng rang throughout the halls, but the movements inside Xiao-Su’s room did not sound to be stopping anytime soon. When Qian Da-sheng didn’t hear anything back, it sounded like she became mad enough to just kick the door open with a bang. She was a woman quite used to doing hard labour, and adding in the fact that this building was quite old, this kick easily popped open the door.

The door slammed against the wall, sounding out a loud boom.

The eyes of everyone who was listening in on the scene lit up and visual scenes popped up in their minds, as they simply must be fighting upstairs. They all clustered around the stairway and angled up their necks to try and catch a glimpse of something. 

No one expected the terrified scream to come out of Xiao-Su’s room, and following that, Qian Da-sheng came running down, faster than as if she needed to go to the washroom, and so frantic that one of her slippers had fallen off, 

“Not not not….. not good! She’s dead! Oh my mother! That slut is lying under the bed, bleeding all over like a river, and even rotten enough to attract flies!”

Because the fourth floor was not a lucky number3, there were only two tenants living on the floor. One of them had already moved away last month, leaving Xiao-Su as the only remaining resident. As someone who normally only left her door at night, living her days as if night and day were reversed, her relationship with the neighbours was nearly nonexistent. Dead for half a month or so at home, and her body’s only been found now.

The police came very quickly to lock down the crime scene and after the medical examiner examined the body, the crime scene investigators started to pack up. As they left, they carried Xiao-Su’s dead body with them. Yan Yu was among the crowd of onlookers watching the spectacle, and as the body passed by, he stroked two fingers across his eyes. Peering through the black body bag, he could see a rotten female corpse dressed in red, and an evilish aura silently wafting over.

This kind of deteriorating scent had already appeared about a few days ago in the stairway, and the landlady had been so out of her mind that she had tried bribing and forcing Yan Yu to help clean up the hallway. Because a landfill was nearby, people didn’t think much of it, and no one could have ever thought that the cause was really the stench of a corpse rotting away.

Qian Da-sheng was invited back to the police station for investigation, and the residents downstairs that had been watching and listening also completed a very quick interview as witnesses. The entire affair finally ended just before midnight, but just as the policemen left, the landlady became overwhelmed by the building residents.

“Yuan-jie, this place is filled with too much bad energy! We’ve all heard the noise coming from Xiao-Su’s apartment, so how could she be dead?! It couldn’t be ghosts could it?! No no no, this can not be, I have to move.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, this is too terrifying. I’ve always felt that this place was too dark and filled with bad energy. Xiao-Su died so pitifully, it wouldn’t be her ghost crying out for injustice and haunting this place would it? Just thinking about it gives me the goosebumps. I better go back to my mother’s for a few days.”

Everyone was chattering their mouths off nonstop, but they all circled around one theme: it was time to move. Some didn’t even want their deposit back and immediately packed up to stay at a motel that day. The landlady was crying without tears and tried to urge everyone to stay, but no one paid her any mind. So when she lifted her eyes, when she found Yan Yu leaning by the door with his arms crossed, she immediately flew over.

The older aged landlady tearfully wailed out, 

“Xiao-Yan hup–“

Yan Yu raised his hands to block her, 

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“Don’t worry, I won’t move.”

The landlady immediately cheered up, finally about to actually cry with emotional tears. She was just about to say something when she heard Yan Yu say, 

“Lower the rent.”

Yan Yu said, 

“If you don’t lower the rent, I’m going to move as well.”

The door softly closed and following the isolation of the noise outside, he was left with a couple hundred bucks in his pockets after finally paying his rent. This could be considered a good accidental surprise. He took a look around him, but he didn’t find a hint of Xun Chuan’s shadow anywhere. Thinking that the other must have left, he turned off the light to go to bed.

Following time ticking away, just as it reached exactly 12 o’clock at midnight, just as darkness was at its most prominent, the spot on the pillow beside Yan Yu’s head slightly pressed down. The thin blanket on his body was lifted by an invisible force and then slowly dropped back down.

Yan Yu seemed to be dreaming about something, not even being at peace in his sleep. His hand laying by his side was tightening, and it was only after a long while that it relaxed — when a figure that brought a coldness with him, using a very familiar posture, snuggled up in his embrace.

The female police thought that he was possibly mentally insane, negating the point of him being so handsome. She put aside her thoughts of asking him out, and disinterestedly said a few more words before leaving.

Red clothes at night, and “yin” energy settling into the soul4. The woman wore red clothes and died in an enormously unjustified way, which could only mean that she was either going to be a malicious ghost or an evil spirit.

Yan Yu raised his head up and took another look at the woman dressed in red by the corner before turning around and walking into his apartment. He grabbed the golden money sword from the drawers and slipped it into his sleeves. The remaining eight talismans he had were also pasted in the four cardinal directions, to ward out ghosts and any negative energy.

Outside a breeze of “yin” energy blew by. The garbage and cardboard in the stairway were flipping and flapping through the air nonstop, and cans were rolling around and around, rattling against the walls and then to the doors. Clinking and clanking, as if someone was kicking them for fun. A can finally rolled all the way to Yan Yu’s doorstep, where it spun around in a circle before slowly rolling to a stop.

“Dok dok dok–“

Knocking sounds suddenly rang out outside.

“Anyone here?”

Yan Yu said, 

“Two months later, the ghost door5 will open. This is the best chance for you to reincarnate.”

Malicious ghosts could not stay on the human plane for long, and in the end, they would have to go to their own place of dwelling. As Yan Yu knew how to cast spells, that meant others would too. Some of these Shu-shis would search all over, testing for ghostly airs, and take down these spirits to increase their understanding and level themselves up.

Notes:

*1 a character from a novel that is a collection of stories called Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio and Ning Caichen is from Nie Xiaoqian’s story, but he may be more well known as a character in the movie (in particular (for me at least) A Chinese Ghost Story, played by Leslie Cheung, who you may or may not know…  Anyway, a very brief summary of his story is basically a love story between him and a female ghost. In it, he is a character who is seen as innocent, kind, someone who loves for the sake of the person and deeply, someone who is also on the straight and narrow for justice, without any kind of fakeness, basically a perfect “good” character but like the loving kind?

In the movie, he’s studious and like those who study for the exams in the ancient eras, but he can be shy and scared (of ghosts haha) but he would become brave and overcome obstacles for love and actually does run away with his lover who he does not realize is a ghost, but even once he does find out, he tries his hardest to save his lover anyway. This is a terrible summary, but basically think of him as like a perfect “good” main character of a novel, one that isn’t like the greatest at things, but one you would want to keep reading and believing in him kind of character.

*2 Da-shen: a title for a middle aged woman, kind of “auntie” kind of feeling

*3 When spoken the number 4 has a tone that sounds like death, so like how the number 13 in western countries is unlucky, 4 is an unlucky number.

*4 This line is a reference to an oral ghost tale about a guy who cheats on his wife and his wife finds out. They argue and the guy leaves in anger. He comes back drunk and basically commits domestic violence against the wife who then wants to divorce but is denied.

One day the wife has enough and when the husband is asleep, she grabs a butcher’s knife to kill her husband, but he somehow wakes up and beats the wife almost half dead. So after that she bears with all the beatings with resentment growing in her. One day the guy comes back and finds the wife wearing an all red nightdress, with a weight strapped around her feet and her tongue sticking all weirdly elongated out. She had hung herself up on the beam across their house which made the husband freak out. Instead of doing anything of common sense, he secretly buried her within a random hill of bones (usually for like john does, etc. basically bodies tossed randomly into a hill, without any respect or funeral) in the village they live in. But since then he kept waking up from nightmares and his mentality started deteriorating.

He finally can’t stand it and takes this problem to a more respected guy from a neighbouring village and the guy says he can’t help him and says the phrase “red clothes at night, yin energy settles into the soul (by the weight)” -> referencing the way she died. Not long after, the husband dies in a very terrible way and their home turns into a ghost house as every night their house will have a man screaming out in pain (which is rationalized as the guy being beaten after death by the wife).

*5 Kind of like Halloween when it’s said ghosts will appear, this is the door for the dead, kind of like a passage between the living world and the dead world.

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