Pen Fairy

(Brain storage area)

During the Qingming Festival, rain fell in endless streams; travelers on the road felt their souls breaking.

A fine drizzle drifted down from the sky, light and delicate as cow hair. It was as though it had draped the earth in a sheer veil as thin as cicada wings, revealing a hazy, mysterious beauty. Or perhaps Heaven had deliberately sent this rain to carry people's profound longing and boundless sorrow for this special festival.

On the streets, the occasional car rolled slowly past. Its taillights gave off a faint yet steadfast red glow through the misty rain, like twinkling stars in the night sky, bringing a trace of life to the oppressive atmosphere. The world beyond the windows had been washed especially clean by the rain, but those inside were perhaps too immersed in their own thoughts to appreciate the beautiful scenery.

"Boss, I'm taking shelter from the rain." A young man in an exceptionally long trench coat walked into a milk tea shop.

"One coconut jelly milk tea, please." Lin Yiyi sat down after paying his respects to his ancestors.

"Hey, hey, look at this Raiden Shogun and this Yae Miko. They're way too accurate!"

"Wow, it's practically the Narukami incarnate!"

"Compared to them, Youyu falls a little short, but she's still amazing!"

"Jiang Yehua is still better suited to cosplaying Lumine. That smug look suits her."

Hearing the younger crowd around him discussing people he knew, the young man suddenly remembered the previous convention. Jiang Yehua and Youyu had filmed some material there.

He had also sent Youyu some footage of Raiden Shogun and Yae Miko.

Thinking of this, he opened Douyin, only to discover that Youyu had posted a new cosplay video and tagged both him and Jiang Yehua.

One line in the caption read: "A friend of the Shogun and Miko, @Yu."

The likes quickly surpassed one million, and Lin Yiyi even saw Jiang Yehua leave a rare comment below it:

"@Yu Why didn't you send it to me? (crying.jpg)"

After that, his direct messages exploded.

"Streamer, could you promote your two Narukami teachers' Douyin accounts?"

"Streamer, why don't you post videos?"

"Streamer, are you that Taoist big brother who was with them last time?"

He usually only browsed Douyin and never posted videos, but some fans of Youyu or Jiang Yehua who had met him recognized Lin Yiyi.

Faced with the mountain of DMs, the young man simply typed up a text image and posted it himself.

"Don't read DMs. One unified reply:"

"1. Raiden Ei and Yae Miko are my friends."

"2. Neither of them uses social media for now."

"3. This account will post content featuring other cosplayers in the future."

"4. I know Jiang Yehua and Youyu. Mad?"

He then tagged Jiang Yehua and Youyu's accounts.

The fourth point was purely meant to disgust the netizens. Without even thinking about it, he knew his likes, comments, and DMs would probably explode afterward.

"Glug, glug—" After finishing his milk tea, he remained in the shop until noon, quietly waiting for the rain to stop.

"Ding-a-ling—"

The door to the milk tea shop gently rattled, signaling that a customer had entered. Lin Yiyi noticed a bespectacled boy pushing the door open.

The boy looked like a deflated ball, with rainwater clinging to his body. He casually ordered a milk tea, sat down, and said nothing. Lin Yiyi gave him a brief look and noticed a few abrasions on his face. It looked like he had just been in a fight—and had been on the receiving end.

Besides that, based on his years of experience, Lin Yiyi could tell that the boy seemed to have encountered something unclean.

The boy impatiently tapped out messages on his phone. His brows alternated between knitting tightly and relaxing, as if something was troubling him.

After finishing his milk tea, he hurriedly left again.

Unable to let an evil spirit harm the living, Lin Yiyi put on his denim hat and followed him.

"This is so damn annoying. She insisted on playing that stupid Pen Fairy game, and now she's still lying in a hospital bed, unable to get up."

"I didn't even do anything. Why am I the one getting blamed?"

Lin Yiyi followed behind the boy without drawing attention to himself, his face full of helplessness.

"It's already 2024. How can anyone still think Pen Fairy isn't real?"

The young man shook his head, then called out to the boy.

The other boy spun around, confusion in his eyes. "Who are you?"

Lin Yiyi asked, "From the sound of it, you ran into something evil?"

"You were following me?"

"I just happened to come down from the building next door."

"You have a way to deal with it?"

"That depends on whether you believe me."

Lin Yiyi paused before continuing, "It's easy to summon an immortal, but hard to send one away. You messed around like this—if you people don't suffer for it, who will?"

"If you trust me, take me to see the one lying in the hospital unable to wake up."

The boy hesitated for a long time before finally nodding. "All right."

They took a taxi to the hospital, leaving Lin Yiyi with complicated feelings.

This place again—First People's Hospital, where Xu Nian's mother had passed away.

"This is it." The boy pointed at a hospital room.

When Lin Yiyi pushed the door open, a towering wave of resentment rushed straight at his face.

Frowning, he formed a hand seal. The resentment immediately dispersed considerably.

"Who are you?" A muffled voice sounded. Only then did Lin Yiyi notice several boys standing beside the sole hospital bed, seemingly around the same age as the boy at the door.

Lin Yiyi glanced at the girl lying in the bed. Her eyes were tightly shut, an IV drip feeding into her arm, and her face was deathly pale. If not for the steady waveforms still appearing on the ECG monitor beside her, Lin Yiyi might truly have thought she had already died.

"Just a Taoist," Lin Yiyi said without elaborating, looking at the girl in the bed. "When did you summon the Pen Fairy?"

The boys looked at one another. Then the boy from before sighed. "Last night."

"After school, Fang Yaya told us she wanted to play Pen Fairy. None of us believed in that stuff, so we went along with her and fooled around for a bit."

"But we didn't expect to actually summon a ghost."

"It was chaotic then. We all felt dizzy and disoriented, and instinctively ran out of the classroom. We ran fast, leaving only Tian Heng and Fang Yaya behind."

Unlike the people Lin Yiyi had encountered before, Liu Chao was fairly reasonable and explained things right away.

"When we went back, Fang Yaya had already fainted, but Tian Heng was still there."

"That bastard must have done something bad to Fang Yaya while we weren't around!"

"Who's Tian Heng?"

"He's... that piece of trash at the door! You still dare show up here, motherfucker?"

"I didn't do any of that!"

"Enough. Quiet down."

After Liu Chao noticed Tian Heng at the door, he was about to go over and beat him up, but Lin Yiyi stopped him.

"The urgent matter is waking the victim," Lin Yiyi said, shaking his head as he stepped forward to take her pulse. "She's fairly stable. There's no danger to her life for now."

After thinking it over, Lin Yiyi said to Liu Chao and the others, "Take me to your school tonight."

"It's easy to summon an immortal but hard to send one away. I'll see if I can send it back. If not, I'll have to use some special measures."

After exchanging WeChat with Liu Chao, he took Tian Heng out of the hospital. Afraid the two groups would start fighting again, he called a taxi and sent Tian Heng home.

"If you have nothing to do this afternoon, go to class. I can stay here and watch her."

"Hey, what kind of look is that? Do I look so unfathomable that I seem like some villain who commits all sorts of evil?"

Back in the hospital room, Lin Yiyi was covered in black lines. "All right, go home. We'll contact each other this afternoon."

Then, after confirming there were no cameras in the room, he opened the Teyvat app once again.

Since he was going to slay demons and exorcise evil, he naturally had to call in professionals!

His gaze immediately landed on that green character portrait.