Gu Mo called me first, and of course he sounded very serious.
"Where is it? What has it done? Can it be destroyed? Can you communicate with it?"
Gu Mo fired off a string of questions in one breath.
My heart sank. "You know... what's going on?"
"Yeah. I heard the voice. Pretty arrogant, huh!" Gu Mo let out a breath. "Nangong saw it too. It really was born..."
"Yeah..." My voice caught.
"Mm. Minqing, a new spirit has appeared." Gu Mo spoke slowly and firmly. "A spirit that was incredibly powerful from the moment it was born. But I suppose that's no surprise. This place was abnormal to begin with."
It suddenly struck me that Gu Mo was probably very nervous right now.
He rambled on. "Ye Zi even said there wouldn't be any spirits in Minqing. What a load of crap. Ah, but he's dead now and turned into a ghost, so it's only natural for things to go wrong. No one can predict everything. Anyway, we've got trouble now. Hey, what's going on? You've met her, right? How is she? Can you communicate with her? Is she hostile toward men, or what?"
"How do you know it's a woman?" I asked, puzzled. I couldn't help thinking of the phone call from earlier that night. Gu Mo had said a lot about men and women.
Gu Mo gave a couple of snorts. "Ye Zi said there wouldn't be any spirits in Minqing, but later Ling—oh, Wu Ling—said a spirit connected to women would be born in Minqing. She seemed to have some basis for it and sounded pretty certain. Right, Nangong? I was already gone by then..."
Nangong Yao's voice was close by. He must have been right next to Gu Mo.
"Yes, that came up in conversation