"I heard Ning Zhe and the others say you were dead." Zhang Yangxu's eyes still held a trace of wariness. "Ye Miaozhu was crying so hard. Is she your girlfriend?"
Gu Yunqing shook his head. "She's my sister. We're a blended family. Her biological father used to have some assets, but he gambled them all away at casinos in Yizhou. Then he left her and her mother behind and went abroad to dodge his debts. No one's heard from him since."
"After that, my stepmother brought her two daughters and joined our family with my dad. Oh, I never told you before, but Ye Miaozhu has a younger sister too. She's just a kid, still in middle school."
Gu Yunqing briefly explained his family situation to Zhang Yangxu. Perhaps because of their unhappy family backgrounds, or perhaps because Gu Yunqing was simply gentle and kind to everyone, the two sisters had taken to their unexpected brother. After several years together, their bond had grown stronger. His older sister, Ye Miaozhu, had even applied to the same medical university as him, and now, with graduation approaching, the two of them had come to Ancient Tablet Town to intern at the local clinic.
Then they'd ended up in He Family Village. Damn it.
But Gu Yunqing wasn't talking about his family because he felt like sharing. He wanted to earn Zhang Yangxu's trust and make him lower his guard.
After all, you could never be sure a Ghost would go out of its way to make up a story.
Sure enough, after hearing about Gu Yunqing's complicated family ties, the wariness in Zhang Yangxu's eyes gradually eased. He was no longer as tense as before, and instead teased him with the knowing look of one man to another. "You've got it pretty good, kid."
"I have a girlfriend at university," Gu Yunqing said helplessly. "Director Zhang, please mind your boundaries. We're not close enough for you to joke about something like that."
"Fair enough." Zhang Yangxu promptly shut up and changed the subject.
Zhang Yangxu fired several questions at Gu Yunqing in quick succession:
"Everyone else, including Ye Miaozhu, says you're dead, but you're still alive. What happened?"
"Why are you soaked?"
"You said the Snake God was about to go berserk and that there wasn't much time left. What's going on?"
Gu Yunqing closed the door and gestured for Zhang Yangxu to follow him into the He Manor. "Let's talk while we walk."
"Where are we going?"
"To find my sister."
They walked one behind the other through the flowerbeds in the He Family Courtyard. Faint, noisy voices drifted from the front gate, and several hurried sets of footsteps passed from the gate to the side courtyard, where the kitchen was. It looked like the maids and servants of the He Manor were starting to prepare breakfast.
The He Manor faced south, with a central courtyard layout shaped like the character "回." The three-story main building stood in the center, with a stone foundation and bamboo-and-wood construction. A roof of deep blue Glazed Tiles covered the top. For a place like this, it was quite luxurious.
The main gate stood to the south of the main building, while a lush garden that doubled as a vegetable patch lay to the north. The kitchen, storerooms, woodshed, servants' quarters, and other buildings were arranged on either side of the main house, filling every part of the "回" layout.
Unlike the old-fashioned Siheyuan of the Capital Circle in Yongzhou, the He Manor's design showed more of Qinzhou's southern character. It was a distinctive variation on the Hakka Tulou, only more ostentatious and less focused on the original tulou's function of defending against bandits.
Even in the eyes of Zhang Yangxu, a veteran of the real estate and construction industries, it was an excellent design that had stood the test of time. Its sense of culture would probably appeal to wealthy landowners who liked to put on airs of refinement.
Gu Yunqing pushed through the lush flowerbeds as he walked, unlocking his phone with one hand and showing Zhang Yangxu a photo.
The picture showed a long, slender, fair hand holding a phone with its screen lit up. Zhang Yangxu recognized Ning Zhe's hand at a glance. The kid was pretty enough to look like a girl. The screen in Ning Zhe's hand showed another photo.
It was a picture of an Almanac, displaying the day's auspicious and inauspicious activities:
[Suitable:]
[Taboo: Traveling, burial, funeral rites, sacrifices]
"When you opened the Almanac to check the day's auspicious and inauspicious activities, did you ever wonder about something?" Gu Yunqing asked. Cold drops of water dripped from the hem of his clothes. "Why does the Almanac only list taboos, without anything suitable?"
"I did, but I couldn't figure it out," Zhang Yangxu replied.
"Because the Snake God is sick." As he spoke, Gu Yunqing zoomed in on the photo.
In the picture, the Almanac had been nailed to the Snake God's tongue. When Ning Zhe took the photo, he had captured half of the Snake God's head as well. Looking closely at the background, one could still make out the lifelike sweep of the Snake God's pose and its lifeless, expressionless eyes.
The Snake God statue looked solemn, but it couldn't withstand close scrutiny. The Ancestral Hall in He Family Village had long fallen into disrepair; even the roof leaked, and moisture had left the beams and pillars damp and moldy. The Snake God, carved from a camphor tree root, was no exception.
The root carving was exceptionally skillful, and its level of workmanship was impressive. The scales covering the Snake God were layered one atop another in a precise, orderly pattern, giving them an unmistakable sense of depth and beauty.
But beneath the polished exterior, black mold had built up around the bases of the scales, and milky-white fungal threads crept from between them, giving off the rotten smell of decaying wood. That was what Zhang Yangxu had noticed earlier, when he and Xie Sining entered the Ancestral Hall to look through the Almanac.
In Gu Yunqing's photo, one could even make out, through the blur, fungal growth spreading across the Snake God's head. Black mold completely filled its left eye socket, while mold had crept into the right one as well.
"The Snake God's left eye is blind," Gu Yunqing said rapidly.
"The Snake God's left eye sees good fortune, and its right eye sees misfortune. But ever since it went mad eighteen years ago, its body has deteriorated, and one of its eyes has gone blind. Since then, the Almanac has only been able to list taboos. It can't tell you what's suitable to do that day, because the Snake God can't see either. It has no answer to give."
"So that's what happened..." Zhang Yangxu was shaken, but still had some doubts. He hadn't let his guard down, and kept a certain distance from Gu Yunqing, who was leading the way.
"If that's the truth, how did you find out?" Zhang Yangxu asked. "And earlier, I saw a Ghost pretending to be you in the Ancestral Hall, looking through tomorrow's Almanac. Why are you still alive? How did you survive?"
Ning Zhe might have lied about whether Gu Yunqing was dead, but Zhang Yangxu believed that "looking through tomorrow's Almanac is a death taboo" was true.
"That's a long story." Gu Yunqing sighed as if resigned, leading Zhang Yangxu through the garden of the He Manor.
They avoided the maids and servants preparing food and reached a row of small buildings on the west side of the He Manor's main house. Gu Yunqing gestured to Zhang Yangxu, then took the lead and slipped into a storeroom whose door wasn't fully latched.
[My sister messaged me. She's hiding in there.]
Zhang Yangxu looked down at the text Gu Yunqing had sent him. After waiting for a long while, he crept forward and carefully pushed open the storeroom door.
The next moment, Zhang Yangxu's body tipped over.
He was dead.
Before you continue