When the other man said nothing, Bo Yi did not ask again. He returned to the rear courtyard.
"Three souls... drifting..."
The familiar operatic singing still drifted eerily through the rear courtyard. "Return~ to the~ watery realm..."
Bo Yi deftly climbed the same tree as before and looked into the courtyard. The woman in the opera costume still stood in its center with her back to them, slowly pacing and singing beneath the eerie red lantern light.
"Drip..."
"Drip..."
Her red embroidered shoes, covered in brown grime, stepped across the flagstones. Dark red blood dripped to the ground with every movement, leaving long bloody trails behind her.
"Hmm? So you went out in the middle of the night... just to listen to opera?"
At some point, "Master Kang" had silently climbed the tree as well. He stood on a slender branch beside Bo Yi as though he weighed nothing.
"Shh." Bo Yi held a finger to his lips, signaling for him not to interrupt, his gaze fixed on the woman in the opera costume.
He kept feeling that there was something... awkward about the way she sang.
Just then, "Seven spirits... wandering..." Her long flowing sleeve suddenly lashed out, and the tips of her blood-soaked shoes slowly turned toward Bo Yi and his companion. "Enter~ the~ underworld..."
"!" Bo Yi's eyes widened.
The woman's once hugely swollen belly was now flat. Without that bulge, her already loose opera costume looked even emptier. Bo Yi finally understood what had struck him as awkward-the woman's right hand had not moved at all. Cradled in that arm was a swaddling blanket.
An empty swaddling blanket.
The outer cotton fabric was covered in yellowish-brown and reddish-black grime, making its original pattern impossible to discern. The soft white cotton lining had yellowed completely. Yet it