Chapter 10: The Vicious Ghost

The hotel was not far from the school, only a ten-minute drive. Since it was already very late and filming would resume the next morning, Lu Xi urged Tan Xueci to go up and get some sleep.

Lu Xi and the other staff members stayed on the lower floors, while Tan Xueci’s room was on the sixteenth floor.

Tan Xueci rode the elevator up alone, his heart in his throat the entire way. He instinctively clutched the talisman bag again.

Once, when he had taken an elevator at night, the doors opened to reveal a woman in white. Her long black hair hung down, obscuring her face, leaving only a pair of lifeless, pitch-black eyes visible. She had stood at the entrance, staring at him, unmoving.

Tan Xueci had frantically mashed the elevator buttons, but the door refused to close while the overhead lights flickered. Every time the lights went out, his breath hitched, terrified that she would be pressed against his face when they flickered back on. She had seemed to want to enter but was deterred by something, eventually drifting away like a white shadow.

Thinking about it still made him break into a cold sweat.

However, tonight was exceptionally smooth. Aside from the ghost infant, he encountered no other incidents from the moment he left the school until he entered his room.

Tan Xueci finally let out a sigh of relief. He set down his small backpack and took out He Xunye’s memorial tablet.

The production crew had booked luxury suites on the top floor for the leads and Zhai Fang. Although Tan Xueci played the third lead, he was treated like a “piece of dough”—easy to knead and squeeze into whatever corner was available—so he was given a standard double room.

There was a small table in the room against the wall opposite the bed. Tan Xueci placed the tablet and the incense burner on it, honestly lit three sticks of incense, and bowed respectfully.

He truly felt that Mr. He had saved him tonight. Besides, it was the He family who had arranged the ghost marriage after He Xunye was already dead. It wasn’t as if He Xunye had actively chosen to marry him; in a way, Mr. He was also a victim.

Come to think of it, Mr. He was only twenty-eight when he died. How did he die?

After bowing, Tan Xueci rubbed his eyes and went to shower. He then walked over to the bed, his wet slippers making squelching noises, but he froze just as he was about to climb in.

During his days at the He residence, he had been so sick and delirious that he didn’t have the energy to care about the tablet or the portrait. Even if they had been placed under his covers, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything. But now…

Tan Xueci’s fingers curled. He swallowed nervously. Who could sleep peacefully with a pitch-black memorial tablet staring at them?

He crawled off the bed, carefully turned the tablet to face the wall, and then stared at its “back.”

Tan Xueci: “…”

That… that seems a bit disrespectful.

He turned the tablet back around, rubbed his eyes, and meekly gathered his pillow, blanket, and his little lamb plushie to sleep on the sofa, leaving the large bed for He Xunye.

The hotel sofa wasn’t big, but Tan Xueci was thin enough that he could manage if he curled his legs. At least the sofa was in the corner; he wouldn’t have to face the tablet directly, which otherwise gave him the feeling of being watched.

The black shadow following him watched him run back and forth in silence. Once Tan Xueci was curled up on the sofa with his lamb, the shadow moved to stand beside him.

Tan Xueci wasn’t sleepy yet. Since no one had ever enforced a bedtime for him, he was used to staying up late. He took out his phone. His manager had saved several preschool and primary school lesson videos for him to self-study.

He hid under the covers. Because the sofa was too short, he had to kneel and lie flat, burying half his face in the lamb’s belly. His snowy-white cheeks were pressed into soft mounds of flesh, leaving only his eyes visible, his long lashes casting fine shadows.

He didn’t realize this posture made his hips curve upward. Even under the blanket, the slenderness of the boy’s waist was evident.

The black shadow naturally “mounted” him, pressing down on his body. A bone-chilling cold began to spread from beneath the covers. Tan Xueci shivered uncontrollably, suddenly feeling a sharp drop in temperature.

His eyes went wide. He poked his head out from the blanket, looking around warily, but saw nothing. He wrapped himself tighter, changed his position, and curled into a ball on his side.

The shadow’s cold hands slid from the boy’s hip bones up to his lower abdomen. It lay down with him, hugging his waist from behind, holding him in a seamless embrace.

Why is it so cold tonight?

Tan Xueci turned his head in confusion but only felt his own blanket. His health was poor, and his body temperature was lower than a normal person’s; his hands and feet were perpetually icy, and the blanket never seemed to warm up.

But he was a living person. Having been under the covers for over half an hour, it was impossible for there to be no warmth at all. Yet, everything he touched felt like ice.

Unable to figure it out, he tried his best to ignore the anomalies and continued his “lesson.”

As he turned, he accidentally tilted his phone, and a pop-up message appeared on the screen asking if he wanted to “jump” to a new link.

Tan Xueci: O.o

He clicked “Jump.”

His lashes lowered as he bit his finger. In the pitch-black bedroom, only his small face was illuminated by the bright glow of the screen.

The black shadow held him a bit tighter, slowly leaning in until its chin rested on Tan Xueci’s shoulder. Resting on the warm, white shoulder beneath the boy’s pajamas, it watched the phone with him.

Tan Xueci held the old phone, waiting expectantly for the loading circle. Finally, a video site loaded, followed by a burst of exciting background music.

“…I have been reborn. Reborn on the rainy night I was abandoned by that scumbag. In this life, I will take back everything that belongs to me. First, I’ll kick the scumbag to the curb and accept the marriage alliance with his uncle…”

Tan Xueci: “…”

He listened, dazed, for three or four minutes until the episode ended. Biting his lip, he waited for it to jump to the next one. He didn’t know how many episodes he watched, but just as the male and female leads were about to meet in the heavy rain, the phone signal suddenly died.

The screen began to stutter. The faces of the leads twisted and deformed in a ghastly white strobe. In the video’s heavy downpour, the heroine’s red dress swayed, accompanied by a sticky, watery sound that felt blood-red and cold.

Tan Xueci’s scalp tingled. Just as he was about to close the video, he felt his palm grow wet. He looked down and saw a bright red liquid flowing down the gaps of his pale fingers.

Blood was leaking out of the phone!

Tan Xueci immediately threw the phone away. His whole body was shaking. He tried to turn on the lamp, but the switch next to the sofa wouldn’t work. The hotel curtains, however, blew open as if by a sudden wind.

He had a very bad premonition. He slowly lifted his head and saw a ghostly white face pressed against the window outside, smiling at him. The figure tapped on the glass, its blackened mouth opening as if to say:

“I. Want. To. Come. In.”

Tan Xueci scrambled to a sitting position in terror. He huddled in the corner of the sofa, clutching the talisman bag at his chest, his voice trembling as he murmured, “Mr. He? Mr. He?”

He had just offered incense; surely Mr. He wouldn’t ignore him.

Tan Xueci had encountered these “dirty things” almost every day for over a decade. Compared to the things inside, he was less afraid of the ones outside the window because not every ghost had the ability to enter. He had heard that such things required an invitation; without an open door, an open window, or their belongings inside, they couldn’t get in.

Under the covers, he incoherently repeated “Mr. He” many times. When he finally looked up again, he saw the ghost staring behind him. Its previously malicious expression was replaced by a look of profound terror. It turned to flee, but—BANG!—the back of its head was slammed into the glass. Its eyes bulged.

Half of its brain began to leak down the glass, a slimy, bloody mess with large white maggots squirming through the brain matter.

Tan Xueci’s stomach churned.

The ghost let out a series of hoarse, wheezing gasps. Its blood-red eyeballs, held by thin threads of flesh, were squeezed out of their sockets, yet it couldn’t break free.

This ghost had been killed in a car accident; the driver hadn’t stopped and had run over its head, crushing it. It had been lingering nearby for a long time. Seeing the overwhelming Yin energy gathered at the hotel—which, to a ghost, looked like a massive black cloud looming over the building—it couldn’t resist following Tan Xueci.

As the saying goes, “a ghost after a hundred years, a malevolent spirit after a thousand.” While it didn’t strictly take that long, becoming a “Vicious Ghost” far more powerful than a standard spirit was difficult. This dense Yin energy was a top-tier supplement. If it could swallow Tan Xueci, even the lowliest ghost could become a Vicious Ghost on the spot, perhaps even a Ghost King.

Blinded by greed, it had come for him. It planned to wait for him to fall asleep and perform a “ghost pressing,” but since he wouldn’t sleep, it decided to frighten him first. This human looked timid and weak; a human eaten in a state of terror always tasted better.

With its half-crushed brain, it hadn’t even stopped to wonder why there was such heavy Yin energy here yet no other spirits were approaching.

Not until the bone-chilling cold manifested behind it and a pale, skeletal ghostly hand snapped its neck, plucking its wobbling head right off. Only then did it realize what was beside Tan Xueci.

It was something more powerful… no, it was a Vicious Ghost of a magnitude it couldn’t even fathom.

The “protection from evil” people spoke of wasn’t happening here; this was a total haunting by a supreme malicious entity.

Tan Xueci watched the ghost’s head be plucked off. He shrank back, embedding himself right into the embrace of the Vicious Ghost behind him.

He didn’t dare look at his phone again. He ducked under the covers and forced himself to fall asleep. After about half an hour, his breathing finally evened out and his brow relaxed.

Tan Xueci’s face was mostly covered by the blanket, but the fabric was slowly pulled down, inch by inch, until his entire face was exposed, his lashes damp from the stifling heat.

A ghastly white finger brushed across his cheek. After a long silence, a cold, gravelly voice whispered in the darkness, sounding intimate as it pressed against him:

“You’ve stopped calling me ‘husband.’ How naughty.”