Chapter 12 : Old Dreams

The moon hung high in the night sky, its disk so large it seemed about to fall into the ancient well in the courtyard.

A silver gauze-like light enveloped the quaint courtyard.
The wind rustled through the treetops, bringing with it the fine sound of leaves rubbing together.
Thirty-six twin-lotus lamps illuminated the corridor.
Vermilion lanterns swayed under the eaves, their madder-red candlelight dyeing the blue brick ground the color of blood.

The courtyard was bustling with people.
The laughter of children and the crisp clinking of bowls and chopsticks at the feast intertwined.

Little children chased each other among the tables laden with food and wine.
A child following behind fell to the ground, rubbing his red nose and crying.

“A-Lin, don’t cry. Here’s a candy for you.”

A boy with an indistinct face panted as he opened his palm, revealing a candy.

The candy’s wrapper was soaked with his hand sweat.
It looked like he had been clutching it for a long, long time, unwilling to eat it.

A young girl in a Suzhou-embroidered wedding dress sat upright in the center of the courtyard, her charming red lips visible beneath her veil.

Two children ran laughing into an empty room.
Moonlight squeezed through the cracks of the wooden window lattice, which was carved with lotus flowers.
Two strange cups were placed on the pearwood offering table.

They were two cups with a bronze-like luster, looking like a gourd split in half.

The two cups were tied together with a red silk ribbon.
The clear liquid in the cups exuded a delicate fragrance.

“Blind Xu, I’m thirsty.”

“This looks like water!”

The boy with the indistinct face stood on his tiptoes and took the two cups from the wooden table.

“Wow! It’s so spicy…”

The two children choked until their faces were red, but they looked at each other and giggled foolishly.

The copper bell on the eaves was suddenly rung by the wind.
A wedding matron in an embroidered skirt hurried past, holding a silver basin.
The hem of her skirt brushed against the gilt-bronze mandarin duck mirror hanging by the door.
The mirror reflected the swaying pearl hairpin on the bride’s head—the pearls trembled as much as her tightly clasped fingers.

Bai Ling’s eyes shot open.
The pendulum of the old-fashioned grandfather clock was ticking.
As the hour hand pointed to 12, it chimed twelve times in succession.

The smell of agarwood in the room was so strong it made one dizzy.
The black cat she had seen once at the entrance of the alley was squatting on a wooden cabinet, its amber pupils reflecting Bai Ling’s dazed expression.

The gourd cup wrapped in red silk on the curio cabinet was engraved with a winding lotus pattern, exactly the same as the pattern in her dream.

A blurry, familiar memory instantly flooded her mind.

It was when she was a child.
Xu Zhi had led her on a random run, and they had accidentally stumbled into a wedding banquet in the suburbs.
The rest of her memories were blurry, but these few fragments from the dream were clear, so clear that she couldn’t tell if it was a dream or a real memory.

“Awake?”

Guan Qing leaned against the door, the smoke rings she blew hitting the copper door knocker and shattering into a green mist that filled the room, which was piled high with medicinal herbs.

The jade mouthpiece of her old-fashioned pipe knocked against the doorframe, making a dull sound like a temple’s wooden fish.

“Someone brought this for you.”

With a wave of her hand, a wooden box floated through the green mist and in front of Bai Ling.

Bai Ling seemed to have become somewhat immune to these things that were beyond her worldview.

“What is this?”

“I don’t know. See for yourself.”

Bai Ling opened the wooden box.
Two things lay quietly on the red velvet lining: a note and an ID card.

The corners of the ID card were still warm, as if it had just been taken out of the printing machine.

Bai Ling held the box in a daze.
In the ID photo, the girl’s black hair cascaded down like a waterfall.
The black character for “female” on the white background in the gender column made her dizzy.

“At least it doesn’t say ‘female demon’ in the gender column.”

She forced a smile and teased herself, her fingernails unconsciously picking at the edge of the wooden box.

The handwriting on the note was smudged, exuding a strong gardenia fragrance, as if it had been soaked in perfume.

“Who sent this?”

“I don’t know.”
Guan Qing leaned against the door, looking at the bright moon outside the window.
“That woman had a gardenia scent.”

“Thank you. I’ll pay you back.”

Bai Ling struggled to get up from the bed.

“I’m not short on money. You have to work here to pay off your debt.”

Guan Qing’s pipe gleamed in the moonlight.
The residual scent of gardenia, mixed with the smell of angelica from the medicine cabinet, lingered between them.
“Are you planning to leave just like that?”

“Your clothes are torn, you stink, and you’re not even wearing a bra. Is this your first day as a human? Your boobs will sag!”

Bai Ling looked down at her chest.
Two dark patches of sweat had soaked through her tattered T-shirt, which was stained with the smell of rotting food.

She suddenly arched her back and crossed her arms in front of her, her flushed cheeks steaming.
Her movements were as stiff as a manipulated marionette.

Guan Qing suddenly let out a chuckle, blowing a smoke ring at Bai Ling’s reddened ear.
“Don’t cross your arms. It makes it more obvious.”

“Go take a shower!”
Her fingertip hooked open a drawer of the chest of drawers and pulled out a beige, lace-trimmed bra.
“Do you know how much it hurts when the underwire digs into your ribs? Congratulations, you’ll soon get to experience it firsthand.”

Bai Ling turned her flushed face away.
The note lying at the bottom of the wooden box was printed with the moonlight.

The note read: “Identity information can be tampered with, but memories cannot.”

“The memories of the three who were attacked have been erased.”

Lu Qingyu trotted up behind Xu Zhi.
“Fortunately, they had a protective artifact on them and weren’t corroded by demonic energy. But according to them, another companion is missing.”

Xu Zhi tapped the frosted cast-iron railing with his finger and looked at the lake surface, his scalp tingling a little.

The entire lake surface had been frozen into a huge sheet of ice.
The logistics team members were trying all sorts of ways to melt this sheet of ice that had suddenly appeared in the late-summer heat.

This sheet of ice had lowered the nearby temperature by twenty-one degrees!

Only half of the demon, which was suspected to be a Skin-Painter, was frozen in the ice, like a fish bone that had been gnawed by a giant beast.

Its fingertips, reaching towards the sky, were condensed with blood beads, reflecting a small ruby-like light in the moonlight, like a drowning person reaching for help.

The Demon Suppression Division would block the memories of all civilians involved in demonic incidents.
They used hypnotic techniques to make them forget seeing the demons.
Although there would be side effects like headaches that lasted for a few hours, the existence of demons had to be concealed from the general public.

Five minutes ago, they had suddenly detected two completely different demonic energies erupting here.
When they rushed over, all that was left was this mess.

“Is this case closed?”

Lu Qingtian shivered from the bone-chilling cold, goosebumps rising on his skin.

“The main body of this beast has been frozen in the lake. The demonic energy detection results also show that its demonic energy has completely dissipated. It should be a closed case.”

Zhou Xuan sneezed while holding his tablet.
“But the other demonic energy, its fluctuation frequency is consistent with the unidentified demonic energy we encountered in Rongcheng. Could it be the same type?”

“I think it’s the same one.”

Gu Xiyan’s face was pale as she looked at the completely destroyed lakeside path.
“In Rongcheng, it killed the red-clothed ghost. Now, it’s made such a big scene and killed this thing that’s suspected to be a Skin-Painter. What does it want?”

Xu Zhi lowered his head in thought.
He felt that this matter wouldn’t end so simply.

“What about its demonic energy? Have you tracked its location?”

He looked at the frost-covered wolf’s tail grass, suddenly remembering that night in Rongcheng when the white figure looked at him, the moonlight dyeing her black hair silver.

“It’s very strange. After it appeared here, it reached the night market street in the north of the city within two minutes, and then completely disappeared.”

Zhou Xuan tapped his tablet, and a map of Lin’an appeared on the screen.
A blue light spot, representing the demon’s movement trajectory, drew a line on the screen.

Lu Qingtian suddenly sneezed loudly.
The young man’s vigorous hot breath condensed into a white cloud in the cold fog.
“The night market street in the north of the city is more than forty kilometers away from here. Two minutes? Did it take a rocket?”

“Did it capture anything?”

Xu Zhi pointed to the completely corroded surveillance camera.

“Nothing of value.”

Zhou Xuan nimbly pulled up the footage captured by the surveillance camera on his tablet.
The footage only showed the back of a figure in a floral dress standing by the lake, followed by a burst of static as the surveillance was destroyed.

Xu Zhi suddenly saw something shining deep in the frost-covered wolf’s tail grass, under the iron pole where the surveillance camera was mounted.

It was a jade pendant, so familiar it made his heart pound.