White-Bodied Lesser Wraith

White-Bodied Lesser Wraith

In his sleep.

Time suddenly rewound.

Warm sunlight bathed Old Street. Willow fluff drifted through the air, while elderly people sat in twos and threes, chatting in the sun.

Wu Xian squatted in front of the guesthouse, surrounded by a few older children.

They were playing Card Flipping.

The game used round cards printed with characters from games or anime. Cards that were out of print and no longer available were usually worth more. The players took turns slapping their own cards against their opponent's. Whoever managed to flip a card won it.

They had been playing for over an hour.

After Wu Xian spotted them, the two Child Wraiths started moving too. Their hands began slapping wildly at his body, each little palm print sending a chill of pain into him.

Wu Xian froze.

"Qi Zhiyong once said that the more powerful a malevolent spirit is, the more restrictions it faces. These little things must be so weak that they can sneak into rooms without making a sound. They might even be lower-ranked than Wandering Wraiths."

Qi Zhiyong was the most exhausted of them all.

"Okay! Okay!"

Ha!

Wu Xian bit down hard on his tongue. The sharp pain jolted him out of the dream.

"How dare something like this attack me in broad daylight?"

Wu Xian sneered and raised the Copper Coin Sword, ready to cut them down. But just as he was about to kill one of the little wraiths, he stopped.

"Something's not right!"

Wu Xian scanned everyone's faces and saw that he seemed to be the only one with palm prints on his face. Everyone else was completely clean, as if he alone had been attacked by the Child Wraiths last night.

Black eyes stared at Wu Xian without a hint of emotion.

Smack!

The last card flipped over.

He'd let these little things live for now and see what happened next.

But inside the quilt, Wu Xian saw two more pale old faces.

"Shit!"

Wu Xian got up from the floor and went to the bathroom to check himself in the mirror.

"These little wraiths are too weak."

Wu Xian immediately realized what the key issue was.

There was one difference between today and yesterday: no Living Person was staying in the marked room. The Breaking Door Wraith had made a wasted trip.

As soon as he stepped out, he looked toward Room 408. Yue Mei's door had been kicked open, and the room looked as if it had been ransacked ten times over. Everything had been smashed. No items or statues remained inside.

Three Child Wraiths shoved at Wu Xian. Every touch brought a stabbing pain.

Wu Xian had looked like he was about to die from the very first day.

The more Qi Zhiyong thought about it, the more suspicious Wu Xian seemed. His gaze made Wu Xian feel a little guilty.

"Give it back. Give back what you took from us!"

Going by what had happened yesterday.

Dream-Wu Xian sensed something was off. Why were they demanding what he had taken, instead of the Round Cards he had won?

Wu Xian seized his chance, flung off the quilt, and raised his sword with a murderous look.

The oppressive, endless night was nearly over. With half an hour until dawn, the dazed Child Wraiths fled Wu Xian's room one after another.

Five children grabbed him and began to play dirty, shoving him from all sides.

The two Child Wraiths were no different. Their little hands had touched something long and scorching hot.

More than thirty small bruises had appeared on his body. They had all been left by the Child Wraiths. They felt ice-cold to the touch, and pressing on them brought a sharp pain.

The two Child Wraiths let out silent, piercing screams.

I haven't even done anything. Why are they this scared?

He looked over everyone's faces again and again, finally settling on Wu Xian's dark circles.

The first thing Wu Xian saw when he woke was six eyes.

"Let's play."

He looked around and saw new muddy handprints outside Shi Ji's door. This time, though, Wu Xian only looked. He didn't do anything else.

Fortunately, the handprints only caused pain. They didn't affect Wu Xian's movements.

"Give it back! Give it back!"

The Child Wraiths asked weakly, "P-play what?"

The sight was frightening enough that Wu Xian quickly burrowed under the quilt. It wasn't because he was scared; he needed the quilt to buy himself time to think about how to respond.

But he had wasted away and somehow survived until now, often providing important clues. And the person Qi Zhiyong had offended most was, by sheer coincidence, Wu Xian.

Rummaging around under someone else's quilt could lead to touching something he shouldn't.

Wu Xian shook his head. "Looks like I'll have to cause some trouble after all."

As everyone knew.

Wu Xian bet that it couldn't!

The Copper Coin Sword!

It heated up in the presence of ghosts and could cut down malevolent spirits!

"Ha!!!"

If that was the case, a new question arose: could the great wraith communicate with these Child Wraiths?

As Wu Xian gradually came to his senses, the children's voices grew more menacing. The whole environment darkened, turning gloomy and deep, while the buildings warped and twisted.

If one failed attempt to kill someone brought out Child Wraiths, what would happen after two attempts? Three? Would the blessed land grow more difficult because they kept escaping?

It probably would.

Wu Xian stood with his hands on his hips, laughing wildly. He got up and picked up the cards, ready to leave. In the waking world, he wore a satisfied smile too. This was the kind of joy he had longed for since childhood but had never had the chance to experience.

Desolate moonlight spilled into the room. Three pale little figures stood by Wu Xian's window.

The survivors staying at the guesthouse were the same people as last night.

His ferocious appearance made the Child Wraiths tremble all over. They cowered in the corner, their faces full of fear, looking hurt and helpless.

Then he suddenly felt a chill.

A plastic bag full of cards sat beside Wu Xian. The children had almost no cards left.

Wu Xian opened the door and walked into the corridor with practiced ease.

In strange voices, both aged and childlike, they shouted.

Dawn broke, and the doors opened.

Perhaps that was why the great wraith had changed its approach, releasing the Child Wraiths itself to test which of the remaining rooms held a Living Person!

To guard against the great wraith, Wu Xian had stayed tense all night, only to encounter a bunch of White-Bodied Lesser Wraiths. Now, no matter how hard he thought, he couldn't figure out why he hadn't been attacked last night.

This proved that Yu Yinghua's handprint mark hadn't marked a person. It had marked a room or a door. That meant anyone who left a marked room would be safe.

"Looks like my guess was right."

But the dark circles under everyone's eyes showed that nobody had slept well last night.

"Number Reading, nervous exhaustion. Interested?"

"If you don't give it back, then die!"

The three little figures had the bodies of young children but the faces of old men. Their deeply wrinkled faces were horrifying, and their pitch-black eyes, without any whites, gleamed with a chilling malice.

Could someone have set him up?

The clues about the handprints and the attacks had all come from Wu Xian, too.

Perhaps the great wraith was judging whether there was anyone in a room by how many Child Wraiths it lost!

So Wu Xian put away the Copper Coin Sword and gave them a gentle smile.

Then I don't need to be afraid of you!

Strange...

"Ahhh!"

A sudden scream interrupted Qi Zhiyong's thoughts.

Child Ghost: Yijian Zhi — Yijian Ding Zhi, Volume Thirteen: Li Yu Fights a Ghost

The Daoist priest Wuwei ordered Li Yu to escort the new prefect to the western side of the city. After traveling more than ten li, Li Yu heard that they were still some distance away, so he turned back home. Suddenly, over a hundred children, all around four or five years old, came out from the roadside. They shouted and rushed at him, surrounding and attacking him. At first, Li Yu was not afraid. He fought back, and each time he threw a punch, more than ten of them fell to the ground. But as soon as they fell, they got back up. After scattering, they would gather again. This happened several times. One leapt onto his shoulder, snatched his headcloth, and tugged at his hair. Li Yu grew increasingly desperate. He could not break free, so he fought as he pressed onward. An old man in a cloth robe and straw sandals appeared from nowhere and cried out sternly, "This official regularly recites the Lotus Sutra. If you harm him, won't that bring trouble upon me?" He shouted at the children to retreat, and they scattered. The old man vanished as well. When Li Yu returned to his gate, he could not walk. The gatekeeper helped him home. He arrived unconscious and did not wake. His sons lifted his clothes to examine him and found his body covered in blue marks. They summoned his soul where he had been attacked and called a monk to recite the sutra. It was more than half a year before he could walk outside with a cane. It was suspected that the old man had been Tudishen. The year was the twenty-eighth of Shaoxing.