But Huo Weiwei was dead.
I sighed, then flicked my hand, scattering a handful of tortoiseshell powder and rootless water.
The evil spirits vanished at once. Only then could the nine men finally lift the body, though they did so reluctantly.
Zhang Yan was still acting tough. “Aren’t you supposed to be so powerful? Look at you now, letting us pick you up like a good girl. Huo Weiwei, you’re nothing special after all.”
I shook my head and turned to leave.
When Hu Xin saw me go, he hurried after me. “Master An! I just saw the money from selling the body hit my account! Can I still buy a ticket and get out of here right now?”
What a heartless excuse for a father. His daughter was dead, and he didn’t feel the slightest grief.
But perhaps he didn’t know…
Someone who died within the past twenty-four hours could still hear the living.
His daughter heard every word her “wonderful” father said.
Huo Weiwei was consumed by resentment.
This wasn’t over.
No one was getting away.
At that, Hu Xin’s face went deathly pale. He dropped to his knees in front of me. “Master An! This… this has nothing to do with me! If you’re going after anyone, go after the Zhang family! Please, save me!”
“Come to think of it… we’re even distantly related! I’m… the younger brother of the maternal uncle of your cousin’s aunt’s niece’s daughter-in-law’s mother’s cousin!”
There was a way to handle this, actually.
I looked at him and said calmly, “It’s simple. Return the money to the Zhang family. Get Huo Weiwei’s body back. I’ll help you lay her spirit to rest. Do you agree?”
Just then, the Zhang family and their security team were walking past.
Hearing me, Zhang Yan burst out laughing. “You agreed to sell us the body to do what we wanted with it. Now you want to take it back?”
“Sure. Give us the money back—with interest.”
Master Lü gave a cold laugh. “I’ve seen this sort of thing plenty of times. Once it goes into the cremator, it’ll all be ashes.”
“Hmph!”
Hu Xin hesitated. “Maybe we should… just do what they say and try cremating her?”
I knew he was beyond saving.
I only shook my head and walked away.
As I passed the funeral home staff, I gave each of them an old bronze coin.
“Keep it on you. Don’t go outside tonight. What happens after that… is up to fate.”
Zhang Yan stood nearby, grinning.
He was clearly fishing for a reaction.
“Who would’ve guessed? You look so innocent… but scamming people is your real talent. You’re such a good actress, why not come work as a creative strategist at my dad’s company?”
“…Forget it.”
Zhang Yan’s father had dull, sunken eyes, their rims bloodshot.
The signs of the family’s decline were so obvious that the Zhang family was bound to face a great calamity within two months. At best, they’d lose everything; at worst, the family would be torn apart, with the dead left unburied and their home destroyed.
I wondered what kind of background the feng shui master they’d hired had if he couldn’t even see such blatant killing energy.
Master Lü narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at me with a faint smile.
His fair, delicate face irritated me.
“A man who helps evildoers harm people,” I said.
Master Lü replied, “I can explain. Little Miss An, would you like to hear?”
I offered one last warning. “Once the body is put in cold storage, don’t turn it over or let the moonlight fall on it for seven double-hours. Otherwise, the consequences won’t stop at a few pregnancy spirits.”
Zhang Yan scoffed.
“You really know how to put on a show.”
When I got home, I leaned my head back in the bathtub and closed my eyes to rest.
I needed to save my strength. I had the college entrance exam tomorrow.
Even though I’d passed the art aptitude test and the school’s own exam, my academic scores still mattered a lot.
Huo Weiwei’s death had surprised me. And yet, it hadn’t surprised me that much.
It wasn’t that I was coldhearted. Everyone had their own fate.
Wealth, glory, suffering, enough food and warm clothes… all of it came in a fixed measure.
If you used unnatural means to enjoy it ahead of time, you’d certainly have to pay the price somewhere else.
Man follows the earth.
The earth follows heaven.
Heaven follows the Way.
The Way follows nature.
All things have their own laws.
To force things… is useless.
But… Huo Weiwei shouldn’t have died like this.
She was foolish, but not bad at heart. She’d just been deceived and kept in the dark by her own father. And now she’d died unjustly in a septic tank.
She’d also been an exceptionally clean girl. I wanted to know how she’d died.
At exactly midnight,
I lit the incense that summoned spirits.
A little while later, I began to hear water dripping. The room was still dark, the curtains stirring in the breeze, and patches of moonlight spilling across the floor.
Then I heard someone softly calling from outside.
“An Lan…”
“An Lan…”
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t look, either.
I lived on the nineteenth floor.
How could anyone be outside my window?
But the voice grew more and more urgent, edged with anxiety.
I lightly tapped the incense stick, careful not to summon the wrong ghost.
I threw on an extra layer and stood up.
“I’m here.”
“An Lan… I’m so bored… Come play with me, okay?”
“I’m not here to play. I have something to ask you.”
“An Lan… I died so horribly… Look at me…” The voice drew out the words.
“I won’t look.”
“Tell me, how did you die? Who did you meet that night?”
“How did I… die…”
The voice suddenly grew urgent.
It was taut with tension, like a wire pulled to its limit.
Then it turned shrill and sharp.
“I was tricked. Zhang Yan’s mother tricked me. She told me to look at her. After that, I… I can’t remember anything.”
Just as I’d suspected. I’d investigated beforehand. Zhang Yan’s mother was a doctor with a master’s degree in applied psychology.
To some extent, she had an unusually strong ability to hypnotize people.
Huo Weiwei seemed to remember something truly horrifying.
“After I jumped in… It stank so bad… I heard Zhang Yan say, ‘What if they find out?’ His father said, ‘There are some catfish in the septic tank. Just buy a few and put them in. By the time summer vacation starts after the exams, they’ll have eaten the body clean. Once the fish grow big, we can sell them.’”
“Besides, his family’s sanitation company is responsible for cleaning this area. No one will find out.”
“I hate them… An Lan, I hate them so much…”
“You were right. They wouldn’t accept me. But… An Lan, do you know? I didn’t go alone. When I left… my father was still waiting outside.”
As the memories grew clearer, Huo Weiwei’s remnant soul twisted into a more and more grotesque expression.
Her voice grew increasingly terrifying.
The remnant soul was slipping out of control.
The room began to grow colder.
Something was trying to force its way in.
I pressed the switch on the small custom bronze gong beside me.
“DIIIIING!”
The little boy on the music box brought his mallet down.
A clear, resonant note rang out.
Then—“DIIIIING!”
A piece of music…finished. I changed into my pajamas. Outside, everything had gone quiet.
The baleful energy was associated with Earth. The bronze gong was associated with Metal.
When the gong was struck, its sound spread from the edges toward the center, forming layers of sound waves that drove away evil energy.
Its effect was comparable to a coin used to ward off evil.
Once everything had settled down, I stepped out onto the balcony. I turned to face the right direction and went to the pot of daffodils. Fresh red drops of blood dotted the leaves.
I grabbed a handful of incense ash and sprinkled it over them.
“Sizzle, sizzle…”
The drops of blood seemed to burn, like pieces of meat roasting over a fire. They slowly disappeared.
Just then, the window of the apartment next door opened. Someone stuck his head out.
It was that fake master—Master Lü.
He’d changed into loungewear. Looking closely, he might not even be much older than me.
He asked eagerly, “What a coincidence, Miss An!”
“What do you mean, ‘what a coincidence’?”
He’d only rented this place today, after all.
A ghost had arrived.
“Mm.”
“Why didn’t you shoot it with sandalwood ash?”
“No need.”
“This time it’s someone I know. She still has years of life left. If she hasn’t done anything evil yet, I can’t collect her soul.”
Master Lü chuckled. “So you’re planning to wait until she causes trouble before collecting it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I think we’re pretty fated to meet. How about we add each other on WeChat?”
“No. My fate with anyone never lasts more than nine years.”
In the dead of night, I was sleeping soundly when my phone rang like it was calling for my life.
It was Hu Xin again. This was already his third call that night.
This time, he said shakily, “Master An! Something’s happened! Something terrible!”
It turned out that after bringing Huo Weiwei’s body back, they’d planned to cremate her that very night to avoid complications.
The route to the crematorium passed through a long corridor. But halfway there, the gurney suddenly wouldn’t move. The two crematorium workers were bewildered. One went to get help, while the other stayed behind to wait.
But when the first one came back…the one who’d been waiting had disappeared.