Chapter 17: Painted Skin Returns

“The ancestors of our line, please bless your unworthy descendants so they may escape the claws of demons and monsters.We apologize for disturbing your rest; please forgive us!”

Xiao Qing bowed respectfully to the ancestral tablets, performing three bows and nine kowtows, then placed three sticks of incense in the censer.

“Brother Xiao, you should offer an incense to the ancestors too—ask them to protect you.”
After finishing, Xiao Qing turned and called to me.

“Th-that’s not appropriate—I’m an outsider; it’s not proper for me to enter your family shrine.”
I shook my head.
Although my family had no ancestral hall, I still understood the basic customs.

“You’re asking shelter from my family and you won’t even greet our ancestors?Isn’t that more rude?
At least offer one stick; we live in modern times—there aren’t so many rigid rules.”
Xiao Qing argued.

She had a point, so I walked over.
I stopped at the doorway and bowed toward the ancestral niche without stepping inside—small shrine, small step, respectful gesture.

“That’ll do.”
Xiao Qing handed me the censer and another stick of incense, then helped me light it.

I didn’t perform the full three-bow nine-kowtow ritual like she did; I simply held the incense respectfully and bowed three times, then placed the stick in the censer.
“Sirs, I’m sorry to disturb you.
I’ve been attacked by a malicious spirit and must take temporary refuge here.
Please forgive any offense.”

I didn’t pray for them to drive away the Painted Skin Ghost.
For one, I wasn’t certain whether souls truly lingered after death—most of what I’d seen that night were malevolent spirits; virtuous souls should have long been reincarnated.
For another, I wasn’t of the Ou family; from the start I hadn’t expected their ancestors to truly intercede for me.
If they chose not to blame me for bringing a ghost to their home, that would already be enough.

Xiao Qing then brought out a bronze basin and burned joss paper for the ancestors.
She didn’t use garish modern offerings but traditional round-outer-square-inner cash-shaped papers, folded ingots, and gold-leafed joss money.

By the time we finished, it was eleven o’clock—midnight was approaching.
Xiao Qing said that from the Midnight Hour the yin qi grows heaviest, and if the Painted Skin were to attack tonight, it would be at this hour.

I sat restlessly on the windowsill, peering outside with mounting dread, yet unable to tear my eyes away—if the ghost came, I wanted to see it.

It wasn’t pitch black outside; streetlights and household lamps still glowed, but their reach was narrow.
Beyond each pool of light was utter darkness, and within those patches of black I felt something stirring.

As the night deepened, house after house shut off their lights and the darkness expanded.
Soon my own home across the street went dark too—apparently my father had finally grown tired of shouting.

Suddenly a streetlight flickered; then another beside it began to strobe.
One by one, the lamps along the road flashed as if the wiring were faulty, then returned to normal a moment later—like an invisible thing walking down the road, making the lights tremble as it passed, and leaving them steady once it moved on.

“It’s here.”
Xiao Qing stood beside me, her expression grave.
“The Painted Skin has arrived.”

“How do you know?”
“Is that the Painted Skin?”
I asked in a panic, and even after all the mental preparation, seeing the evil spirit arrive still made my heart race.

“Ghosts disturb local current and voltage.
There’s a theory that specters are a kind of special electromagnetic field, or at least carry one.
Many exorcists in Europe now like to use electromagnetic detectors to find spirits, and it works well.”
Ou Zhiqin said.

“Normally the Painted Skin should hide perfectly among people, but you stole its skin, so it can’t compact its aura and is disrupting the streetlights; that’s why we can see the effect.”

“Of course that’s my guess.
Even if it’s not a Painted Skin, it’s certainly a dangerous, terrifying spirit—otherwise it wouldn’t make such a commotion just passing by.
Be careful; whoever’s coming means harm.”

After hearing Ou Zhiqin, I became even more convinced it really was the Painted Skin, because the flickering lights were clearly moving toward us, and my skin had begun to itch slightly, as if something were irritating it.

As that wavering aura drew closer, I saw a crimson presence.
The foul qi and killing qi we’d seen before were blackish, but this one was blood-red, and I could even smell iron and blood.

Wherever the blood-qi passed the doorways, the couplets and door gods lit up, their glow blocking the red mist outside.
Although both were red, the couplets’ glow was festive, bright scarlet, while the mist’s red was raw and bloodlike.

Finally, when the red mist drifted to Xiao Qing’s door, I saw the monster’s true form.
A half-bodied fiend floated in the air, emaciated, draped in blood filaments, face green and fanged, staring at me with eyes full of hatred.

“There it is!
The Painted Skin!
It really came for me!”
I recognized it at once—a vicious spirit that had attacked me before—and with that hateful gaze I had no doubt it wouldn’t spare me.

“You can see it?”
Xiao Qing asked tensely, glancing toward the flickering lights at the door; she clearly couldn’t see the Painted Skin directly.

“Yes, right there—huh?”
I pointed, but the spot was empty; the Painted Skin had vanished.

“Smack!”
A sharp thud sounded on the glass in front of me as a bloody handprint slapped the window.
Long bony claws, sharp nails—just like the handprint left on the rooftop gate at school.

“Ah!”
Ou Zhiqin was taken by surprise and fell backward, crawling two steps away in fright; she could see the bloody print and had been startled.

“Smack! Smack! Smack!”
One bloody handprint after another hit the windowpane, dirty blood streaking down the glass.
The window shook violently as if the fiend outside were battering it with all its might.

“This—the glass is going to break!”
I cried in terror.
With such force, the glass should have shattered—unless Xiao Qing’s windows were made of bulletproof glass?

“Don’t panic!Ghosts attack material things the same way—no matter if it’s a steel wall, they can tunnel through it.What actually stops a Painted Skin are talismans and a protective aura!”
Ou Zhiqin shouted.