I sat beside the brazier, lighting cigarettes one after another. My eyes never left Zhang Yidan. His condition worried me most of all. After suffering such a terrible tragedy, I feared he would lose his will to live, so I planned to suggest leaving once he was in better shape.
Yu Xiaoxue sat not far from me, her eyes somewhat vacant. The pretty young girl was now haggard beyond words. I guessed she had reached her limit; if we weren't in such a perilous situation, she probably would have fallen asleep at once.
The rooster crowed. The sky gradually turned the pale white of a fish's belly. I glanced back at it. The stars had faded away, and this long night had finally come to an end.
Daybreak strengthened the yang energy, making the spirits lose interest in the cigarette smoke. One after another, they left the doorway, probably hiding in some place heavy with yin energy.
I felt it was time to suggest leaving. "We..."
"Xia Yitian... Brother Tian..." Zhang Yidan interrupted me.
Zhang Yidan was a rough sort of man who refused to submit to anyone. He called most of his elders by name without the slightest deference. Now, he had gone from using my name to calling me "Brother," forcing me to take a deep breath.
He wouldn't have called me that if it wasn't important. I said, "Yidan, tell me."
"Brother, your sister-in-law died horribly... Granny said she couldn't avenge this grudge, and neither could I. But she had something else to say. I've thought it over for the past two days, and I still didn't dare tell you." He looked at me. The tear tracks beneath his eyes seemed impossible to wipe away, hanging on his face.
I didn't know what to say. I stared at him silently. A flicker returned to Yu Xiaoxue's eyes, and her drowsiness vanished as well.
"Granny said she sent you a letter before she came back injured, advising you not to return. I asked her why she still had to tell you about something so dangerous. She said she could have chosen not to warn you, but after more than a century of cause and effect cycling around, retribution never misses its mark. Even if she said nothing, you would eventually find out through some other channel.
"If you managed to hold yourself back and didn't return, that would have been best. The matter might have held for another ten or several decades. But if you couldn't resist and came back, you could avenge the grudge, but the karmic debt would also become deeply entangled. What comes afterward would be a narrow escape from death, and there would be no turning back. Heh... but in the end, you still came back." Zhang Yidan shook his head and looked at me sympathetically.
Looking at his strange expression, I felt something uncanny fall into place. It was as though he were speaking the words my grandmother had wanted to say.
Creak... creak-creak...
A chilling sound of wooden boards rubbing together came from my grandmother's coffin. The coffin, which hadn't been nailed shut, slowly and heavily began to open!
I stood there dumbstruck. Yu Xiaoxue fainted on the spot, while a trace of self-mockery showed in Zhang Yidan's eerie gaze.
Bang.
A red sleeve reached out from the coffin, then drooped limply and struck the edge of the coffin.
From within the sleeve, an exceedingly pale hand slowly emerged, scraping several claw marks into the coffin.
My eyes bulged like bronze bells from terror. My entire body was paralyzed, and Sister-in-Law practically dragged me away. Before I could react, a thunderous boom rang out, and the coffin lid was blasted open by tremendous force!
When I came to my senses, the owner of those claws had already sprung up and was facing away from me.
She wore red clothes, her hair hanging loose over her shoulders. Her skin was as white as snow, but she wasn't very tall. The moment I saw her, the thought that my grandmother had risen as a corpse demon vanished.
Still, she absolutely wasn't human. No human could lie down and spring upright without bending their legs.
I could feel just how awful my expression must have been.
The little girl seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. She turned around, and her eyeballs—so black that not a trace of white remained—fixed on me. Then she revealed a terrifying smile. It was like snow falling in the seventh month, making one's blood run cold.
Red meant either great joy or great misfortune. Red clothes and black pupils were the symbols of a fierce ghost.
I remembered her. She was the fierce ghost who had sat on my grandmother's shoulder in my dream!
Back then, she had waved at me, while Sister-in-Law had sensed the danger and pulled me back, refusing to let me approach.
After looking me over, she turned her head and swept her gaze toward the unconscious Yu Xiaoxue, finally stopping on Zhang Yidan.
Zhang Yidan's complexion was hardly any better than mine. His legs were trembling nonstop, yet he still stood firmly in place.
The red-clad fierce ghost let out a gloomy, sinister laugh. Then, in the blink of an eye, she appeared before Zhang Yidan and seized him by the throat!
Zhang Yidan struggled, clawing wildly with both hands, but he couldn't catch so much as a strand of the little girl's hair. Whenever he touched her body, his hands passed straight through. Her hand, however, remained as solid as flesh, sinking deeply into his throat!
The fierce ghost girl laughed, utterly pleased with herself.
Before long, Zhang Yidan's eyes rolled back, and his tongue lolled out.
"Stop!!" I roared. I didn't know where my courage came from, but I lunged forward to tear the fierce ghost away. Even Sister-in-Law couldn't hold me back.
Just as I was about to grab the fierce ghost, her eyes suddenly snapped toward me. Her scarlet mouth split open, unleashing a roar like mountains collapsing and seas surging!
My head spun, and I was blasted backward, slamming into the wall. My stomach churned, and I couldn't stop myself from vomiting a large mouthful of blood.
When the fierce ghost saw me spit blood, she froze for a moment, as though she had noticed something wrong. Her grip loosened, and Zhang Yidan's body went limp as he collapsed to the ground, his life or death unknown.
Even I hadn't expected the blood to form a thin mist before my eyes and scatter rapidly through the air. A fierce yin wind suddenly spiraled up like a tornado.
Then the blood transformed into a crimson shadow, taking the shape of a woman!
Apart from skin like white jade, everything about the woman was hazy with blood: a blood-red phoenix crown, a blood-red bridal robe, blood-red shoes...
When the fierce ghost saw the woman with her back to me, her expression wilted like an eggplant struck by frost. She retreated again and again, finally dropping to her knees in terror and kowtowing without pause.
Sister-in-Law!?
I couldn't speak. My ears rang loudly. I reached out, wanting to grab her, but no matter what I did, I couldn't touch her.
I didn't even see Sister-in-Law move. The fierce ghost girl was suddenly lifted as if by an invisible hand, squeezed like a little chick caught between fingers!
Wave after wave of miserable shrieks rang out. In midair, the fierce ghost twisted like cotton candy, apparently suffering unbearable pain and on the verge of having her soul scattered!
She cast me a pleading look, as though the domineering presence she'd shown before had never existed.
Since this female ghost could sit on my grandmother's shoulder, I figured she must have a close connection with my grandmother. After hesitating, I pleaded for her. "Excuse me... can you hear me? Could you... let her go for now?"
"You couldn't even deal with this little ghost, and now you want me to let her go? Do you know that attack just now cost you ten years of life?" Sister-in-Law continued tormenting the fierce ghost girl without even turning her head.
I was struck dumb. Ten years of life? Was she serious?
"Cough, cough... Still, let her go. I want to ask her about something." I coughed several times to hide my embarrassment. I knew perfectly well that she was my Sister-in-Law, yet she'd thoroughly chewed me out. It was a truly unpleasant feeling.
Was she really my Sister-in-Law? Why did she feel so different from what I'd imagined? She was acting so high and mighty now. But then again, she'd gone more than twenty years without speaking to me. It made sense that she would have some resentment.
The fierce ghost girl sent me a grateful look. Though I found her terrifying no matter how I looked at her, I still decided to trust her once.
"She can't even speak human language. Let's see how you plan to question her!"
I decided to let her go. Sister-in-Law seemed furious; she gave a cold snort before finally stopping.
"Are you a ghost raised by my grandmother?" I asked the fierce ghost girl. After thinking it over, this was the only possibility. I wasn't completely ignorant about my grandmother's affairs, after all. Raising little ghosts was the subject she had written about in the greatest detail in her books.
Sure enough, the fierce ghost girl hurriedly nodded. This method of communicating through nods and shakes of the head made Sister-in-Law snort unhappily.
I looked at the empty coffin and ignored Sister-in-Law's little temper. Then I asked, "Is my grandmother dead?"
This time, the fierce ghost girl nodded with a desolate expression.
I sighed. When I had seen that my grandmother's corpse wasn't in the coffin, I had still held on to a sliver of hope. Now even the little ghost she had raised had confirmed it. The matter was settled.
After steadying my breathing, I slowly stood up. I actually wanted to see what Sister-in-Law looked like. After all, she had been my wife for more than twenty years. It would be absurd if I had never even seen her face.
As a result, Sister-in-Law simply ignored me. She turned around, deliberately keeping her back to me no matter what.
Fortunately, Yu Xiaoxue and Zhang Yidan were both unconscious. Otherwise, I would have been mortified. But that wasn't enough to stop me. I ignored her in turn and went to check whether Zhang Yidan was dead.
The fierce ghost girl began chattering with Sister-in-Law in the empty space, though I had no idea what she was saying. This was ghost speech. Without burning incense and performing rituals, there was no way to understand it. To me, it sounded like gusts of yin wind blowing past my ears.
This was the legendary "ghost blowing wind." If an ordinary person sometimes felt wind brush past their ear at night, it was actually a ghost familiar from life speaking to them.
Sister-in-Law didn't say a word, and I knew the little ghost's words had affected her. That was why she had decided to keep listening.
Seeing that I wasn't curious, Sister-in-Law said coldly, "She says my grandmother put her inside the coffin, intending for her to kill whoever opened it at the crucial moment. She never expected that person to be you. She knows now that she was wrong and is willing to become a little ghost raised by you. She asks me what you plan to do with her."
I didn't answer. I went to Zhang Yidan's side and reached out to check his breathing and the pulse in his neck. He was still alive, though only barely. Anger rose in my heart.
"If she can be killed, kill her. If she can be destroyed, destroy her." I said it calmly. I couldn't keep a ghost that was beyond my control and had even attacked the important people around me. Besides, I felt that having one terrifyingly powerful ghost wife was already more than enough for me to handle.
The fierce ghost girl had followed my grandmother for who knew how many years, so of course she understood human speech. She immediately kowtowed to me. Gust after gust of yin wind blew past, as if she were desperately begging and making countless promises.
Thinking about it, having this little fierce ghost around would indeed be useful for self-defense. I had also read many of my grandmother's books on raising little ghosts and knew that she could do many things humans couldn't.
Besides, it seemed impossible to summon Sister-in-Law, this mighty deity, whenever I wanted. If every appearance cost me ten years of life like just now, I couldn't afford it. At this rate, I didn't have many ten-year periods left.
"Very well. A little ghost of this level isn't much use anyway. Let her vanish completely." I hadn't expected Sister-in-Law to be so ruthless. The fierce yin wind instantly whipped up, and the fierce ghost girl shrieked wildly like a chick caught in someone's grip.
My heart sank. Sister-in-Law, you really are ruthless. I had only wanted to tame the little fierce ghost; I hadn't actually intended to destroy her.
But look at you now. You really went all out. If the little fierce ghost had been kept at my grandmother's side all those years, then she and Sister-in-Law had surely seen each other constantly. Couldn't she leave at least a little room for old feelings?
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