Xu Liang

Xu Liang

"Little Daoist, this is the place."

The old woman led Xia Fan to the front of her home.

By the light of the oil lamp inside, Xia Fan glanced at Ruqiu, who was hiding behind Old Madam Tian. Her face indeed bore obvious fear and weakness.

"Do not come inside until I notify you," he instructed, then entered the house and slid the bolt into place.

This was one of the most common styles of residence in the county. The main hall was the largest room, roughly ten square meters in size, with a doorway on each side—one leading to the kitchen, the other to the bedroom. There was also a narrow door in the kitchen that led directly to the latrine and rear courtyard.

Xia Fan took a minute to make a rough circuit of the house. After confirming there was no one else inside, he opened the bedroom window.

Li, who had long since taken her position, silently slipped into the house.

At that moment, she looked like a wanderer of the martial world. Though she wore ordinary cloth garments, the conical hat and rain cape gave her a full air of chivalry. Add a longsword at her waist, and she would have been the very picture of a sect swordswoman.

As for the Fox Demon's traits, they were completely hidden beneath her clothing. Judging by her manner alone, she was basically no different from a human.

"How is it? Does it fit?"

"It's a little tight around the chest, but it doesn't affect my movements," Li replied.

Clothes that perfectly matched your figure... really would be hard to find. Xia Fan cleared his throat. "What do we do next?"

"Wait." She walked to the bedside and sat down. "Only by witnessing the anomaly with our own eyes can we make an accurate judgment."

"No need to put out the lamp?"

"No." Li looked at him as if he were a fool. "How are you supposed to observe them if you put it out?"

"I thought... ghosts were afraid of light." Xia Fan replied awkwardly. Old habits really did harm people...

"If they feared light, then there would be no need for Sorcery Art practitioners to deal with Evil Spirits." The Fox Demon let out a snort of laughter. "Even Mei, which are most affected by light, would not flee at the sight of it, much less the others. Besides, I don't think that old woman encountered a ghost."

"Why not?"

"Ghosts are among the hardest Evil Spirits to deal with. They usually appear in the form of corpses; skulking around is not their style. And once they appear, they tend to stir up a bloody storm. It's unlikely they would have let the two people in this house live until now."

Xia Fan found that he had vaguely begun to understand the Fox Demon's temperament—although she never passed up an opportunity to mock humans, she took anything she agreed to do seriously. Even when explaining things, she could patiently begin with the basics rather than dismissing everything in a single sentence.

"How exactly are these Evil Spirits classified?"

"According to my master, the classifications should have been passed down by word of mouth over hundreds and thousands of years. The Bureau of Military Affairs merely refined them further, adding the four categories Chimei and Wangliang before Yao, Demon, Ghost, and Guai—each corresponds one-to-one, but the former refers to weaker Evil Spirits. Of course, folk names come in all shapes and sizes. Any form of address is normal."

"So that was why you said the Mei and Demon in Great Desolation Evil Night had no essential difference..." Xia Fan realized.

"But this classification is not without its flaws," Li snorted. "First, there is no logic at all in classifying Yao as Evil Spirits. It is purely the selfish desire of humans. If we truly classified by kind, you should belong among them too. Second, it cannot encompass every abnormal thing, such as certain Spirit Monsters..."

She suddenly stopped, lifting her head toward the ceiling.

"What is it?"

"Shh—" She gestured for silence. "Listen."

Xia Fan could not help holding his breath and looked upward along her gaze. Under the oil lamp's illumination, only one side of the overhead beam reflected a dim gleam; the rest remained hidden in darkness. Combined with the broad shadows cast by the tiled roof, the details he could make out were extremely limited.

Then, amid the silence, he heard a faint tap, tap.

At first, Xia Fan had to focus intently to hear it. But once he had heard it, the sound gradually became clearer, seeming distant one moment and near the next. At times, it even seemed to come from right beside him.

He realized that everything Old Madam Tian had said was true. This was neither a psychological effect nor an illusion. There really was something extra in the room!

At times it paced along the beams; at others, it swept across the wardrobe. Those tiny yet distinct footsteps were proof.

Even after being tempered by Great Desolation Evil Night, Xia Fan still felt goosebumps rise across his back.

Because no matter how he looked, he could not find the source of the sound.

No wonder Tian's Wife had been tormented into sleeplessness night after night—anyone who could sleep soundly in the face of such an eerie situation possessed extraordinary nerves.

But if it was merely invisible, it was not as though he could not deal with it!

Xia Fan removed the wooden sword from his back and gripped it steadily in his hand.

He waited for the instant the evil thing revealed itself.

Half an hour later, the oil lamp suddenly flickered. A wooden cup on the low table beside the bed was struck over with a clang, dropping straight toward the floor—

At nearly the same instant, Xia Fan made his move.

With his focus sharpened, his five senses, strengthened by qi, clearly caught every detail of the cup's fall. It first tipped to the left, then was pushed outward. If something was there, it had to be behind the wooden cup, moving from right to left!

Xia Fan swung his sword at the spot he had predicted—judging by the rhythm of the tapping, it could not possibly evade this strike!

Smack!

The violent impact nearly tore the hilt from his grasp. The wooden sword landed on the tabletop with almost no resistance, and the recoil left Xia Fan's palm numb. Apart from leaving a dent in the low table, his strike achieved nothing.

The tap, tap continued, sounding as though it were mocking him.

"Ha ha ha ha..." This time, someone truly was laughing.

Li clutched her stomach and laughed for a long while, only stopping when her amusement twisted into pain—clearly, the laughter had pulled at her wound.

"Little Daoist, a-are you all right?" A puzzled voice came from outside.

"I'm fine... I'm catching a ghost!" Xia Fan shook his numb hand and glared at Li irritably. "Was one missed strike really that funny?"

Li nodded solemnly. "Watching you chop at air with such complete concentration really was quite interesting."

"Air? It clearly knocked over the cup—" Xia Fan frowned halfway through. "Wait, you know that thing's exact location?"

"Yes, and no."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that as long as you cannot see it, you can never know its exact location."

If he could not see it... he could not know. But if he did not even know its location, how was he supposed to see it? Xia Fan looked utterly baffled.

"The key lies in finding a way to see it." Li curled her lips into a smile. "I already know what we're looking for."

"All right. What is it?"

"Guai, or rather... a Liang." The Fox Demon answered, "It is also the category with the most branches among Evil Spirits. As the saying goes, there are strange things in every shape and form, nothing is too bizarre. If I'm not mistaken, it should be a Xu Liang, of Kan, the same zodiacal kind as me."

Xia Fan immediately committed this knowledge to memory, even if he could not yet understand what it meant. "Do we need Sorcery Art to see this... Xu Liang you mentioned?"

"I don't know. Some Sorcery Arts might work, but my master never taught me any." Li paused. "However, before Sorcery Art practitioners existed, people had already found ways to see Xu Liang."

"What kind of method?"

"You'll find out soon enough—but before that, I need a large stack of window paper. The more, the better."

At nine or ten at night, gathering a large amount of window paper was no easy matter. Xia Fan and Old Madam Tian went to great lengths before borrowing or buying five or six rolls of oiled paper from the neighbors.

Li quickly joined them end to end, pasting them into three "paper strips." These strips were stuck horizontally between the two walls, dividing the room into several sections. Then she lit more than ten candles—the entire reserve of Old Madam Tian's household—and placed them throughout the room.

"That should do it." After finishing these preparations, Li clapped her hands.

"Are you sure?" Xia Fan asked doubtfully. "It just feels like the room has several banners made of window paper hanging in it."

"When it comes to anomalies, more complicated does not mean more effective." The Fox Demon removed her conical hat and sat cross-legged before the paper. "Xu Liang is the manifestation of qi. The reason you cannot see it is because you rely too much on your eyes."

"But didn't you say earlier that putting out the lamps would make observation even harder?"

"Indeed. Because darkness will not make you abandon your eyes. Instead, it will make you focus even more on sight, naturally making the effect worse."

Xia Fan thought about it and found that she had a point. "Then what is the purpose of this paper?"

"Things seen through window paper become blurrier, which in turn weakens the images entering your eyes. This forces you to realize that your eyes are no longer reliable, allowing you to sense things that are usually difficult to observe directly. Finding reality through illusion—that is the principle."

But all that did was deceive his own brain... could it possibly affect external objects too? Just as he was half believing and half doubting, a black shadow suddenly leaped onto the paper.

Yet aside from him and the Fox Demon, there should have been nothing else in this room!

Through the oiled paper, Xia Fan could see hazy candlelight and the shadow of the bedframe cast by the light. But the walls, windows, and anything a little farther away had completely vanished behind the paper, as though it were an endlessly vast expanse. And at the crest of the bedframe's outline, the black shadow slowly advanced, twisting its body—all of it like a crude shadow play, with the darkness as its stage.

"I see it," Xia Fan whispered.

"You have not truly seen it yet. Before a Xu Liang is perceived, it can appear in any possible location. Even the world it inhabits may differ from ours. At the moment it knocked over the cup, its true body was not necessarily near the cup. In my master's words, we cannot understand a Xu Liang's movements because we are bound by the rules of Heaven and Earth."

Bound by rules? Xia Fan could not help repeating the words in his heart. "Can Liang transcend the rules?"

"The closer one gets to Chaos, the harder it is to measure it by common sense. Isn't that precisely how anomalies manifest?" Li spread her hands. "But once this Xu Liang is perceived, it will again be bound by Heaven and Earth, becoming a tangible entity that can be touched. It is time to see what it truly looks like."

"How?"

"Just walk over."

Xia Fan nodded and slowly went around the paper banner, looking toward Tian's Wife's bedframe—

There was a cat on it. An utterly ordinary Li Hua Cat. As if sensing something, it turned its head toward Xia Fan, opened its mouth, and let out a soft cry.

"Meow—ow."