Chapter 33: The Appearance of Cold Moon

Dongfang had run into the Room of Light quite a while ago, and the booming crash of the door slamming shut was still ringing in his ears. Yet his feet were nailed to the floor; he couldn’t move them.

It wasn’t because of her final cry, but because in the second before the door closed, he had caught an expression on her face—she was covering her mouth, tears streaming down in heavy drops, yet the corners of her mouth were curled upward. It was as if something was using her face to forcefully vent something.

He drew a sharp breath.

Could it be… there’s another soul living inside Dongfang’s body? The moment this thought popped into his head, it opened the floodgates; he couldn’t stop it. The more he thought about it, the more things seemed to line up.

Suddenly, he straightened up and scoffed to himself: “Gods and ghosts, who believes that stuff? To be reasonable, if it were last night, I might have been scared. Now? Heh… I’m already a Future Warrior, what am I afraid of? What a joke!”

The moment the words left his mouth, the door on the left side of the living room popped open with a bang, startling him into a high-pitched yelp of “Mom!” as he nearly jumped into the air.

From inside the room poured a vast expanse of silvery-white light. Jiang Xiaoyu was startled at first, but realizing it was just the room’s ordinary incandescent lighting, his heart settled down quite a bit.

“Guess the wind blew the door open since the window wasn’t shut,” he muttered as he walked over.

Just as he reached the doorway, he spotted a sticky note pasted to the frame with a set of rules: This is an empty room. You may live here, but do not sleep on the bed, or you will be possessed by an unknown supernatural force. The unknown force will slowly devour your supernatural power, and you will never heal. Signed—Wang Tingsheng, History Teacher.

Jiang Xiaoyu gave a cheerful chuckle: “Another guy trying to scam the principal. Honestly, the principal’s money is way too easy to make. Since he loves these rule-based ghost stories so much, and since I happen to have glasses, I might as well go in for a stroll, make up some ambiguous rule, and fleece him for another sum.”

Having made up his mind, he stepped right inside.

The moment he entered, the door behind him slammed shut with a bang. An icy wind howled inside the enclosed room, blowing so hard he couldn’t even keep his eyes open.

“Such strong wind! Are all the windows wide open? That won’t do; if rain gets in later, the house will get damp.”

He braved the wind, circled to the foot of the bed, and looked toward the window—it was just a small casement window, and only cracked open by a sliver.

He was stunned on the spot: “Just a sliver, and it creates a wind this strong? No wonder everyone wants a north-south transparent apartment; with this draft, you wouldn’t even need a fan in the summer. Whooshing right through, how refreshing.”

Thinking this, he reached out to close the window. But the moment his hand went out, he suddenly noticed another sticky note pasted to the window frame, stained with blood.

[Rules: Do not close the window! I only closed it by a fraction of a crack, and my right arm was severed by an unknown aberration. Preliminary estimate: SSS-rank aberration. Signed: Chen 군 (Chen Jun), PE Teacher.]

When Jiang Xiaoyu saw that, he burst out laughing: “Chen Jun? The PE teacher? The Sports Squad is full of his people. This teacher sure knows how to make up stories, daring to use this kind of crap to fool the principal. But hey… one’s willing to beat and the other’s willing to take it, right?”

What he couldn’t see was that right behind him, a female ghost in a red bridal dress was floating silently out of the mirror, drifting toward his back. Her fingernails were three inches long and stained blood-red, inching closer and closer to the back of his neck.

Right then, the glasses on Jiang Xiaoyu’s bridge shattered without warning.

He let out a yelp of “Ouch,” his body dropping a notch as his hands instinctively went to catch the falling fragments. Because of that sudden movement, the blood-red hand brushed right past the top of his head, grabbing empty air.

The female ghost was fit to be tied.

“My glasses!” Jiang Xiaoyu wailed from the floor, his hands groping wildly about.

After groping for a long time and finding nothing, he sighed and stood up. But losing his balance, his shoulder gave a sharp clack as it slammed into the casement window, slamming it shut.

The female ghost in red stared at the closed window, dumbfounded for a second before her entire face twisted into a snarl: “I spent over a dozen years opening a tiny crack in the array, and you just shut it?! I’m going to kill you!” Before the words finished, she transformed into a red blur and lunged straight at Jiang Xiaoyu.

Hearing someone speak, Jiang Xiaoyu assumed Dongfang was still worked up over the TV show and shouting threats from somewhere. So he turned around and said, “Dongfang, stop obsessing over it, it’s just a TV sh—”

Before the word “show” could leave his lips, his lips suddenly met something soft.

He had kissed someone.

The female ghost in red widened her eyes in shock. At such close range, she finally saw this person’s face clearly.

Suddenly, two lines of blood tears welled up in her eye sockets. Those blood-red claws stopped their attack, wrapping tightly around his neck instead.

A piercing wail pierced through the entire room. The ornaments on the table, the lamp by the bed—everything that could shatter exploded in the exact same instant. The fragments suspended themselves mid-air, gleaming with tiny specks of starlight.

Then the tables, chairs, and bed began to crack, piece by piece. The fissures spread faster and faster, until with a deafening BOOM, it sounded as if the air in the entire room had shattered.

Chapter 33: Lengyue Appears

“Husband? Husband! Is that you?”

The woman in red cradled Jiang Xiaoyu’s face, looking at him over and over again, then abruptly pulled him into a tight embrace. The force behind it suggested she was terrified that if she relaxed her grip even a bit, he would vanish again.

The moment the barrier shattered, the hairpins, dangling ornaments, and jade combs in the washroom flew out one by one from in front of the mirror, circling her in mid-air like a group of long-lost children finally finding their mother.

She gently pushed away Jiang Xiaoyu, who stood with his arms spread wide and body stiff as a board, not daring to move an inch. Her red lips lightly brushed against his lips once more: “Husband, thank you for helping me break the Spirit-Binding Suppression. Since you’re not dead, I no longer wish to be a ghost; I’m going to cleanse myself of all this filthy ghost-qi right now.”

As her words fell, the twelve pieces of jewelry melted into her body one by one. Her silhouette grew fainter and fainter, until only a gentle voice drifted back and forth through the air: “Husband, wait for me, I’ll be right back. When we meet again, I’ll still be your most cherished, beloved little Lengyue.”

Jiang Xiaoyu’s head felt as though someone had set off an explosion inside it—ringing incessantly. He kept his hands in an eagle-wing pose, not daring to move an absolute muscle.

“My god… there really is another soul inside Dongfang’s body, and it’s Lengyue. They share a body, Light and Dark as one, Light and Dark as one…” It all clicked for him now. She was Wanxing—Dongfang Yueli’s divine consciousness.

He immediately started explaining to the empty air.

“Dongfang, it was an accident, totally an accident. I didn’t mean to kiss you. My glasses broke, I heard you talking, and I wanted to find you to get another pair of glasses. Who knew you were standing right behind me? I turned around too fast, and that’s how we kissed. I swear I had no impure thoughts, my hands were spread wide, completely spread wide, just like an eagle in flight.”

No response. He breathed a sigh of relief, assuming Dongfang had run off. But a second later, a cold sweat broke out all over again—how was he supposed to explain a thing like this? Even if Dongfang came at him with a sword, she wouldn’t be in the wrong.

Just then, a ripple stirred in the center of the room, and that gentle voice drifted out from within once more: “Hehe… when my husband kissed me, the person on his mind was actually the older sister. Are you sure the person you love most isn’t Lengyue? Husband… you died, and I died too. After death, I turned into a fierce ghost and kept wrecking the illusion universe. Now that I know you’re not dead, I wouldn’t dare cause any more trouble, lest you scold me for being wasteful later. I’m going into seclusion, and I’ll come find you tomorrow.”

Jiang Xiaoyu’s mouth twitched, and he let out a cold “Mhm.” Then he jammed both hands into his pockets, walked slowly toward the door, opened it, and slowly strolled out.

The next second, a flurry of frantic footsteps echoed in the living room, followed by the heavy front door of 1314 being violently thrown open and slammed shut with a vicious crash.

Dongfang cautiously opened her own door and poked her head out. She wiped her reddened eye sockets and swept her gaze across the living room—nobody there. She turned, closed her door, buried her face in the cushions, and began to cry softly once again.