The Old Ghost's Nighttime Howls

Once that thought arose, there was no suppressing it. Xiao Yan stopped and said to Xun'er, "Xun'er, let's call it a day. I just remembered something urgent I need to take care of."

Xun'er could sense that Brother Xiao Yan had a lot on his mind. Though curious, she did not press him, merely nodding obediently. "All right. If you have something to do, Brother Xiao Yan, go ahead."

After parting with Xun'er, Xiao Yan all but jogged back to the Xiao Clan, heading straight for Xiao Yi's little courtyard. When he had moved, he had deliberately chosen somewhere far away from Xiao Yi, so it took him quite a while to get there.

Xiao Yan pushed open the half-closed courtyard gate. Sure enough, Xiao Yi's room was completely quiet. He rushed to the bedside in a few strides and found Xiao Yi sprawled on the bed, his blanket kicked down to his waist and a suspicious glimmer of moisture at the corner of his mouth. He was sleeping soundly.

Anxious, Xiao Yan threw all caution aside, reached out, and yanked the blanket clean off Xiao Yi! The sudden contact with the icy air made Xiao Yi shudder involuntarily.

Xiao Yi opened his eyes groggily and blinked in confusion. Then he recognized the solemn-faced Xiao Yan standing beside his bed, and what little drowsiness remained was instantly replaced by alarm and annoyance. He jolted upright, rubbing his bleary eyes.

"Xiao Yan! What the hell has gotten into you this early in the morning?! Just because I happened to... ahem, gave you a little 'massage' while helping you drive out that ghost last time, you have to be this petty? Pulling off my blanket in freezing weather to get revenge?"

Seeing Xiao Yi looking so bleary-eyed and thoroughly unwilling, Xiao Yan was too anxious to bother with their usual pleasantries and banter. He took a deep breath, lowered his voice, and spoke with a seriousness he had never shown before.

"Stop sleeping. Something terrible has happened! At the market today, I saw... a disabled child begging. That child's legs and feet were twisted in a horribly unnatural way. I suspect... I suspect someone deliberately mutilated the child to make them beg!"

Xiao Yi had still been bleary-eyed and full of resentment at being woken, but upon hearing words like "deliberate mutilation," "human traffickers," and "children," his gaze suddenly sharpened. His usual flippant, carefree air vanished without a trace, replaced by a rare severity and cold intensity. He jumped out of bed and, in a few swift movements, changed back into his ghost-catching gear, even picking up a dark jar.

"There's no time to lose. Every minute we delay, those children's chances of surviving shrink. We have to hurry!"

Xiao Yan looked at his absurd outfit, particularly that dark jar, which was clearly a wine jar hauled out of the cellar, and felt a headache coming on. But Xiao Yi's serious expression did not seem feigned, and his anxiety only intensified. He hastily asked, "Do you already have a plan? What should we do?"

Xiao Yi shook his head with a smile. "We? Just the two of us? Xiao Yan, you're joking, right? Two kids charging in would just be throwing our lives away. Even if we take ten thousand steps back and assume we could win, we still might not be able to save the children."

Without waiting for Xiao Yan to answer, he continued, "I remember that old ghost was supposedly some 'Venerable Yao' when he was alive, right? If he was Venerable Yao, refining a few pills to heal injuries and cure illnesses should be nothing to him. If any children really have suffered that kind of cruelty, he might be a huge help."

Watching Xiao Yi's fluid succession of movements and hearing those words, Xiao Yan was momentarily stunned. He had imagined all sorts of possible reactions from Xiao Yi: shock, anger, perhaps his usual round of boasting about his abilities before agreeing to help. Never had he expected Xiao Yi's response to be so direct, so... professional?

Meanwhile, in Xiao Yan's old courtyard, snow had buried the bustle that once filled it. All that remained was the rustling of wind through the branches and the intermittent, barely audible sobbing, like a trapped spirit pouring out its endless desolation.

The Xiao Clan members had long since regarded this area as forbidden ground, and every mention of it brought fear to their faces. At night, the sound of an "old ghost" weeping would drift out, sometimes sobbing as though recounting his sorrows, sometimes resembling furious roars, making people's hair stand on end.

Recalling Xiao Yi's recent heroic feat of "beating the ghost," the clan members believed the rumors all the more firmly. They warned their younger family members to stay away from that ill-omened place, terrified that something unclean might cling to them. Since the matter involved Xiao Yan, the servants had been instructed to say nothing to Xiao Zhan, and all tacitly kept silent to spare the clan head any worry.

The so-called "ghostly weeping" was, naturally, Yao Chen's doing. Xiao Yi's bout of "sending him on" had severely damaged his primordial spirit, and with his hopes of revenge dwindling, he could only hide inside the ring night after night. As he desperately absorbed moonlight and the energy of heaven and earth, the weakness deep within his soul and his sky-high fury drove him to let out uncontrollable, low groans and roars.

Xiao Yan tightened his collar. Though he did not believe a word of Xiao Yi's nonsense, his steps involuntarily quickened. The two walked one behind the other through the snow-covered Xiao Clan Courtyard, where the howling wind swept up loose snow and flung it painfully against their faces.

The closer they came to his former little courtyard, the faster Xiao Yan's heart beat. It was not entirely because of the rumors about the "old ghost's nighttime howls." More than anything, it was his instinctive fear of unknown danger and his profound unease over Xiao Yi's unreliable behavior.

"Say, Xiao Yi, are you sure that... that 'old ghost' of yours will actually help? What if he turns on us instead? And what exactly is in that jar? It isn't something even more sinister, is it?"

Xiao Yan lowered his voice, his words laden with doubt. He truly could not place his hopes of saving people in a "ghost" he could neither see nor touch, especially when this was a "ghost" he himself had "abandoned."

Holding his precious jar, Xiao Yi walked ahead. At those words, he merely curled his lip disdainfully and replied without looking back.

"What do you know? That was then, this is now. He's the one who needs something from me... no, we're the ones asking him for help. The point is, that old ghost can barely save his own skin right now. How would he have time to hold those old sesame seeds and rotten grains against us? Relax. When has Master Xiao ever dropped the ball?"

Xiao Yi spoke breezily, as though everything were under control. That inexplicable confidence left Xiao Yan momentarily speechless, with no outlet but inward grumbling about this reckless fellow.

At last, the little courtyard appeared before them, looking especially eerie and desolate beneath the moonlight. Its gate stood half-closed, like a silent, gaping maw waiting to swallow everything. Even from some distance away, Xiao Yan seemed able to smell the faint scorched odor in the air and sense a barely perceptible chill.

Xiao Yan could not help swallowing, and his steps slowed. The courtyard was utterly still, save for the rustling of cold wind through dead branches. In the silent night, the sound was exceptionally clear, like the whispers of ghosts.

Xiao Yi, however, acted as though nothing were wrong. He strode up to the courtyard gate and kicked the wooden door open.

As the gate swung open, a stronger smell of dampness and decay rushed into their faces. Inside, the courtyard was a complete mess. The once-level ground was now overgrown with withered yellow weeds half a person's height, leaning every which way amid the snow.

In one corner of the courtyard, a scorched black circle roughly two or three meters across stood out starkly. The ground within it looked as though it had been burned by raging flames, with not a blade of grass growing there, sharply contrasting with the surrounding snow and weeds. At the very center of that charred circle lay an ancient-looking Black Ring, its face giving off a barely perceptible, eerie glimmer in the reflected light of the snow.

Xiao Yan recognized the ring at a glance. It was the very one he had worn all that time before throwing it away here! His heart tightened, and he wanted to ask Xiao Yi what they should do next. Their target was right before them, after all, but how to "invite" this "old ghost" out to help remained a towering problem.