Chapter 13 : Revisiting an Old Place

The midnight cicadas chirped, carrying a hint of moisture.
Bai Ling tugged at the shoulder strap of her lace bra, the discomfort of the thin strap digging into her skin making her frown slightly.

The moonlight plated the dilapidated, vermilion-painted courtyard wall with a layer of silver.
A broken upturned eave held half a spiderweb, and dew dripped from a tile end onto her feet.

“This is insane…”

She whispered to the moth-eaten door.

She didn’t know why she had chosen to leave the beauty salon at midnight and come to this desolate, mountainous place instead of going back to school, back to the dorm for a good night’s sleep, and treating all of today’s experiences as a long dream.

Stepping over the broken tiles scattered on the ground, she was suddenly amused by her own naive thoughts.

‘Go back? Could she go back?’

Her three roommates had watched her turn into a snake demon with their own eyes.
She had probably already lost her place to live in human society.

‘I should just take a quick look here and then go back to that beauty salon.’
‘Guan Qing said she wanted me to work to pay off my debt, but she also provided me with a place to stay.’

Whether human or demon, one always had to find a place to belong.

The remnants of the courtyard gate swayed in the night wind.
The faded character for “double happiness” on the door was mostly peeled off, and the remaining half of the character “happiness” had been eaten by moths into a hollowed-out skeleton.

Bai Ling unconsciously caressed her wrist.
Beneath the cool touch, her pulse throbbed.
In a daze, she saw her younger self holding a red silk lantern, the peonies on the silk surface made translucent by the candlelight.

The moonlight stretched her shadow long.
As the hem of her clothes brushed against the wild grass, her heart suddenly skipped a beat.
The scales under her left collarbone immediately pierced her skin, and a cold sensation spread along her ribs.
The moonlight refracted off the surface of the scales, creating a shimmering light.

Demonic energy boiled in her veins.
The sudden drop in her heart rate brought a slight sense of dizziness.
The scales had already covered her skin.

When she walked out of the shadows, the slender tail extending from her tailbone had already swept aside the lush weeds.

On the collapsed corridor pillar in front of her, the characters of a couplet were still faintly visible.

‘A first bow to heaven and earth to form a good marriage; a second cup of nuptial wine to share this life together.’

This was the place where she had attended a wedding banquet with Xu Zhi, and it was also the place where she had drunk the nuptial wine with him.

Bai Ling suddenly laughed, the sound echoing in the empty courtyard.

The images from a history documentary she had once watched flooded her mind.
A professor pushed up his reading glasses and explained the Rites of Zhou.
On the screen, a bronze gourd-shaped wine vessel was covered in a greenish-blue patina.

It was a ritual that originated in the Zhou Dynasty.
During a wedding, a gourd would be split into two ladles to be used as wine cups.
After the bride and groom drank the wine from the cups, the two cups would be put back together and would never be opened again.

It had evolved into the modern-day tradition of the bride and groom drinking a toast from each other’s cup.

She squatted down and picked up half a piece of celadon porcelain.
Dried rouge clung to the broken edge, like the remnant of someone’s hastily wiped lips.

“So we really did drink nuptial wine…”

she muttered to herself, her fingertips tracing the edge of the porcelain shard.

Demonic energy overflowed uncontrollably.
A silver light snaked along the surface of the porcelain, eventually grinding the shard into a fine powder.

The night wind suddenly blew a gust of moist air towards the remnants of the wedding tent, revealing half of a faded and incomplete painting of frolicking infants underneath: children with topknots were playing with wine gourds.
The position of one child’s tear mole was exactly the same as hers.

When she looked up again, the tear mole had disappeared.
It was just an illusion created by the overlapping of past memories and reality.

The wild grass bent in the evening wind.
The hooting of an owl was accompanied by the chirping of cicadas.
A figure suddenly appeared behind Bai Ling.

Xu Zhi’s thumb repeatedly rubbed the crack on the edge of the jade pendant.
The rough texture felt like sandpaper scraping against his skin.

‘I never thought I’d come back here.’

He whispered to himself.

The moonlight pierced through the broken upturned eaves, casting a spiderweb-like pattern of shadows on the blue stone slabs.

Here, these ruins were the site of the fox demon’s wedding banquet that he and Bai Ling had once stumbled into.

The memories of six years ago surged in his mind, and the scene gradually overlapped with the ruins in front of him.

The laughter of children seemed to still echo in his ears.
He could even see the red silk lanterns illuminating the melon seed shells scattered on the ground, making them look like scattered gold foil.

Back then, he had held Bai Ling’s hand and squeezed through the guests, watching the bride’s embroidered shoes gently step over the threshold, the gold-thread peonies shimmering in the candlelight.

How could he have known about the sinister demonic energy back then?

He had only thought it was a lively mountain wedding banquet, until the man he later called Master split the bride’s veil with a bronze sword, revealing her pale white fangs.

Later he learned that it was indeed a mountain wedding banquet, but it was a wedding banquet for fox demons.

The people who had been bewitched and had come as guests were all sacrifices for her wedding ceremony.

“Crack!”

A crisp sound of a tile shattering suddenly came from under his feet.

Xu Zhi looked down.
It was a shattered tile end.
The beast head carved on it still had a sword mark.

It was a mark left by his Master when he had slain the demon back then.

The moonlight flowed over the sword mark.
In a daze, it actually reflected the image of Bai Ling squatting by the threshold, picking up wedding candies.

When he grinned foolishly at him, his canine teeth shone with a honey-colored light.

He still remembered the sight of the fox demon perched on the moon.

He was so scared that he grabbed Bai Ling’s wrist and ran for his life, but the deadly moonlight kept chasing them.

If his Master hadn’t happened to pass by and save them, they might have died here long ago.

After that, his Master had sealed this memory of Bai Ling’s, and he had been taken away by his mother to Rongcheng.

Xu Zhi had also followed his Master, learned his skills, and joined the Demon Suppression Division, becoming the youngest Demon Suppression Envoy in the history of the Lin’an Demon Suppression Division.

Xu Zhi shook his head, dispelling the memories that had filled his mind.

He didn’t know why this jade pendant, which he had once given to Bai Ling, would appear at the scene of a demonic attack.
According to the three girls who were attacked, the owner of this jade pendant should be a girl.

He just felt restless, as if a fire was burning inside him.

‘He seemed to have really lost something, something very, very important.’

‘It was something important enough to affect his life.’

But he had never lost anything.
It was always Bai Ling who was forgetful.

When they were young, he would always be dropping things in front, and Xu Zhi would always be picking them up behind him.

That fool could even lose his own house key.
If Xu Zhi hadn’t been with him, he would have been squatting at his doorstep crying.

The residual demonic energy fluctuations at the scene of the demonic attack were clearly identical to the white demon, suspected to be a snake demon, that he had encountered in Rongcheng.
The tear mole under its golden pupils that day had overlapped with the figure of someone squatting under a bridge pier, counting the shimmering ripples in his memory—

So he had returned here.
His intuition told him that he might find the answer here.

The night wind swept through the broken walls with withered leaves.
A rotten wooden window suddenly creaked and swayed.

Xu Zhi’s long saber was unsheathed in response.
As the blade cut through the moonlight, his nose was only filled with the faint scent of osmanthus.

There was no demonic energy, no ambush, only the jade pendant flickering in the darkness, like the screen of Bai Ling’s electronic device when he was playing games under the covers back then.

The red string he had personally tied around Bai Ling’s neck six years ago was now wrapped around his own wrist.

He carried his saber and turned past the gatehouse that was blocking the moonlight.
The wild grass bent in the evening wind.
The hooting of an owl was accompanied by the chirping of cicadas.

In the ruins, a white figure bathed in the moonlight.