"Fate's Gifts"
The bloody words in the Dead Man's Book were like mission requirements, marking a location and a deadline for Su Yang.
As long as Su Yang went to that place, he would encounter a spirit!
Whenever Su Yang encountered a spirit, the Dead Man's Book would draw the spirit he had seen into itself in an extraordinarily bizarre manner.
Sometimes Su Yang even felt that the Dead Man's Book could produce those bloody words because it had absorbed those departed souls!
As for why the Dead Man's Book absorbed those spirits, or what purpose absorbing them served, Su Yang had no way of knowing.
But no matter what, Su Yang had always believed that his parents would never do anything to harm him.
His parents must have had their reasons for leaving him the Dead Man's Book.
At the very least, if Su Yang hadn't drunk the bloody words from the Dead Man's Book, he would have died countless times already.
Tick... tick...
The only sound in the old, dim room was the ticking of the clock, and Su Yang's thoughts wandered further and further as its hands turned.
The yellow glow of a streetlamp outside the window shone into Su Yang's room, casting a long, long shadow of him on the wall.
The light outside the window, the solitary shadow within.
If not for that sudden murmuring, this would still have been a night like any other for Su Yang.
A solitary light keeping a solitary shadow company, and nothing more.
Little by little, drowsiness covered his guesses and worries like a great quilt, sending Su Yang back into sleep.
In this dream, there was no eerie, hoarse murmuring. In its place was the happy warmth of three generations living together.
Morning.
A familiar voice startled Su Yang awake.
But this time it was no longer that eerie murmur, but Grandma calling out a reminder.
"Xiao Yang, I've left your food on the table!"
"Make sure you eat it. You need to eat to have the energy to study. I'm going out to sell vegetables!"
Su Yang sat up in bed and groggily answered Grandma through the doorway.
"Okay... got it! Be careful out there, Grandma! Call me if anything happens!"
After Su Yang called back, a creak came from the living room.
Su Yang knew the door had closed. Grandma had gone out.
Rubbing his eyes, he turned to glance at the little alarm clock on his desk. The hour hand was pointing right at six.
"It's only six. Has Grandma gone out already?"
At the thought of Grandma's hunched figure, Su Yang felt a sting in his nose.
After Su Yang's parents disappeared, the family lost its source of income and could only scrape by on a sum of money they had left behind.
Su Yang's family had never been rich or well-off. When his parents were still around, they had only just managed to keep themselves fed and clothed without worry.
Only after his parents disappeared did Su Yang learn how high the cost of living was.
Water and electricity bills, gas bills, vegetables, rice, cooking oil and salt, plus Su Yang's tuition and textbook fees...
In an instant, life had stripped Su Yang of the chance to live without a care.
But there was nothing he could do. He was only a high school student, and there wasn't a single job suited to him.
To avoid eating through their savings, Su Yang's grandmother had no choice but to go out alone and look for ways to earn money.
But what could a woman in her seventies do?
After searching aimlessly through the vast city for three days and being turned away countless times, Su Yang's grandmother ultimately decided to set up a vegetable stall and earn some hard-won money that way.
At an age when she should have been enjoying her twilight years, it was already no easy feat to make money selling vegetables.
Even for selling vegetables, Su Yang had only dared to let Grandma go out after spending an entire afternoon teaching her how to use a payment QR code and how to tell whether a customer's payment had gone through.
Whenever Su Yang thought of his grandmother braving bitter winds and scorching sun, calling out her wares all day in a muddy vegetable market full of strange smells, it felt as though a knife were viciously carving into his heart!
Wiping his damp eyes, Su Yang swallowed all his sorrow.
He quickly got up and dressed. After wolfing down the food on the table, he grabbed his schoolbag and headed out.
It was June, the height of summer.
Even after a night of cooling, a little lingering warmth remained in the morning air.
Su Yang breathed in the fresh air unique to the early morning, and his previously heavy mood lifted a little.
He pulled a plastic bag from his schoolbag. Inside was a pair of filthy gloves.
Before the first school bus arrived at his door, he was going to search every trash bin in the residential complex!
"As long as you're alive, you'll have your day!"
The money he made recycling scrap was meager, but for Su Yang as he was now, it was still an income.
At last, after two hours of work, Su Yang sat down on a bench at the bus stop, thoroughly satisfied.
He put the filthy gloves from his hands into the plastic bag, then put the bag in his schoolbag. Looking at the ten-odd yuan in his lap, Su Yang couldn't help smiling.
The man at the recycling station downstairs also knew about Su Yang's family situation and had given him a little extra money again this time.
Su Yang took out a small notebook and carefully wrote down a few lines.
"The man at the recycling station downstairs: one yuan. Must repay him in the future."
He didn't know when it had started, perhaps after those relatives who had appeared from who knew where came to Grandma asking for money, but Su Yang had developed a habit.
He was in the habit of silently keeping track of kindnesses and grudges in his heart, so that when he had the chance someday, he could repay kindness and settle scores.
"Now I have money for lunch today."
After making the entry, Su Yang carefully put the money he had just earned into his jacket pocket.
Then he took a book out of his schoolbag and began reading attentively at the bus stop.
Among the students from Muyang No. 2 Middle School who were laughing and playing around, Su Yang was something of an odd one out.
If not for the upheaval in his family, Su Yang would have been one of them, enjoying the summer morning.
Sweat and school skirts, cicadas and test papers, cautious yet ardent sidelong glances, a certain special seat in the classroom.
That was probably what summer was like in one's youth, beautiful and innocent.
The school bus approached from the distance and slowly pulled up by the roadside.
The students of Muyang No. 2 Middle School, who had been waiting for a long time, squeezed into the school bus like sardines, making it rock back and forth.
"Hurry, hurry! Lend me yesterday's Chinese homework so I can copy it!"
"Girl, do you think my headband looks good today?"
"So annoying. Our homeroom teacher's class is first period again!"
After boarding, the students of Muyang No. 2 Middle School started chatting again.
Su Yang, however, had no energy to listen to their chatter. Tired after two hours of work, he quietly found a corner on the bus and closed his eyes to rest.
Tonight, he still had to go to the cemetery in the city's northern outskirts! He had to get his rest!
This was the "mission" the Dead Man's Book had given him! Although Su Yang didn't know what the consequences would be if he failed to go, he didn't dare stay away!
Su Yang had his own understanding of the line in the Dead Man's Book: "All of fate's gifts have their prices secretly marked."
The Dead Man's Book had saved him from that eerie murmuring, and the price he paid was that he had to find spirits for the Dead Man's Book! That meant he also had to go to the locations marked by the Dead Man's Book.
The driver glanced at the students on the school bus. After seeing that they were all seated, he flicked a switch on the control panel.
Vroom!
The smell of diesel slowly mingled with the air inside the bus, and the school bus doors slowly closed.
At that moment, a slender figure leaped onto the school bus.
The figure caused quite a few people on the bus to cry out in surprise.
"Why is she taking the bus too?