Chapter 18

"I heard from Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe and the others that you were already dead." Zhang Yangxu's gaze still carried some wariness: "That girl Ye Miaozhu cried so sadly. Is she your girlfriend?"

Gu Yunqing shook his head: "My sister. We are a blended family. Her biological father once had some assets, but he lost them all at a casino in Yizhou. Afterward, he abandoned her and her mother and went abroad to hide from his debts; there has been no news of him since."

"Then, my stepmother brought the two sisters and formed a blended family with my father's side. Oh, I hadn't mentioned it to you before: Ye Miaozhu also has a younger sister, just a little girl, still in middle school."

Gu Yunqing briefly introduced his family situation to Zhang Yangxu. Perhaps because of their unfortunate family background, or perhaps because Gu Yunqing himself had a gentle personality and was a "people-pleaser," the two sisters were very fond of this brother who had fallen into their lives. Over the years of getting along, their bond grew even stronger. The older sister, Ye Miaozhu, even specifically applied to the same medical university as him. As graduation approached, the two of them came to the medical station in Gubei Town together for their internship.

And then they came to He Family Village. Damn it.

However, Gu Yunqing talking about these family matters wasn't out of a desire to share, but rather to gain Zhang Yangxu's trust in this way, causing him to further lower his guard.

After all, it's a ghost; it's hard to say if it would take the initiative to make up stories.

Sure enough, after hearing about the complex relationships in Gu Yunqing's family, the wariness in Zhang Yangxu's eyes gradually relaxed. He was no longer as tense as before; instead, he teased with a look that all men understood: "You kid have a good life."

"I have another girlfriend at university," Gu Yunqing said helplessly: "I ask Mr. Zhang to mind your boundaries. Our relationship isn't good enough for you to joke about such things."

"Fine." Zhang Yangxu decisively shut his mouth and changed the subject.

Zhang Yangxu threw several questions at Gu Yunqing in succession: "Everyone else, including Ye Miaozhu, said you were dead, but you're still alive. What's going on?"

"Why are you all wet?"

"You said the Serpent God is about to go mad and time is running out. What's the situation with that?"

Gu Yunqing closed the gate and raised his hand to signal Zhang Yangxu to walk into the He family mansion: "Let's talk as we walk."

"Where to?"

"To find my sister."

The two walked one after the other through the flower beds in the He family courtyard. Near the main gate of the front courtyard, a faint, noisy sound of human voices drifted over. Several hurried footsteps rushed from the main gate to the side courtyard, where the kitchen was located. It seemed the He family's cooks and servants were preparing to start making breakfast.

The He family mansion faced south, with an overall "Hui" character structure. The three-story main building sat in the center, with a stone foundation and bamboo and wood floors, covered at the very top with treasure-blue glazed tiles; it could be considered luxurious in this kind of place.

To the south of the main building was the mansion's main gate, and to the north was a lush garden that also served as a vegetable patch. The kitchen, warehouse, woodshed, and servants' quarters were arranged by category on the east and west sides of the main building, filling the entire "Hui" structure to the brim.

Unlike the old-fashioned Sihe Academy courtyards in the capital circle of Yongzhou, the structure of the He family mansion had more of the southern characteristics of Qinzhou, a kind of special variant of the Hakka earth building, only it was more particular about pomp and circumstance, downplaying the original earth building's function of defending against bandits.

Even in the eyes of Zhang Yangxu, a veteran in the real estate and construction field, this was an excellent architectural design that wouldn't go out of style. This sense of culture would likely be very popular with the pretentious landlords and wealthy merchants.

Gu Yunqing pushed aside the lush flower beds as he walked forward, unlocking his screen with one hand to show a photo to Zhang Yangxu.

In the photo was a slender, fair, and good-looking hand, lightly holding a phone with a bright screen. Zhang Yangxu recognized at a glance that this was Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's hand—the kid was as pretty as a girl—and the screen in Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's hand also displayed a photo. It was a photo of an almanac, showing today's auspicious and inauspicious signs:

【Auspicious:】

【Inauspicious: Traveling, Burial, Funeral, Sacrificial Rites】

"When you were flipping through the almanac to check today's auspicious and inauspicious signs, did you ever think about this question?" Gu Yunqing asked, cold water droplets dripping from the corner of his clothes: "Why is there only 'Inauspicious' on the almanac, and no 'Auspicious'?"

"I thought about it, but I had no clue," Zhang Yangxu replied.

"Because the Serpent God is sick," Gu Yunqing said, zooming in on the photo in his hand.

In the photo, the almanac was nailed to the Serpent God's tongue with a nail. When Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe took the photo, he also captured half of the Serpent God's head. If one looked closely at the background, one could still clearly see the Serpent God's lifelike, soaring posture, as well as a pair of lifeless, rigid eyes.

The Serpent God's statue looked solemn on the outside, but it couldn't withstand close inspection. The He Family Village's ancestral hall had long been in disrepair; even the roof leaked, and the door beams and pillars were damp and moldy in the humid environment. The Serpent God, carved from camphor tree roots, was no exception.

The carving technique of this root carving could be said to be very exquisite, and the processing level was also quite high. The scales on the Serpent God's body were layered one after another, arranged finely and neatly, giving people an unspoken sense of layered beauty.

However, beneath the bright and beautiful exterior, layers of black mold were piled up at the base of the scales, and milky-white fungal hyphae poked out from the gaps in the snake scales, emitting the rotten smell of deteriorating wood—this was Zhang Yangxu's impression of the Serpent God statue when he had entered the ancestral hall with Xie Sining to look at the almanac earlier.

And in this photo of Gu Yunqing's, one could even vaguely see that the Serpent God's head was covered in rotting fungal hyphae, the left eye socket was completely filled with black mold, and fungal spots had also crawled onto the eye socket of the right eye.

"The Serpent God's left eye is already blind," Gu Yunqing said at a very fast speed: "The Serpent God's left eye looks at the auspicious, and the right eye looks at the inauspicious. But ever since it caught the madness 18 years ago, its body collapsed, and one eye went blind. From then on, the almanac could only give taboos and couldn't tell you what is auspicious to do today, because the Serpent God itself can't see it; it has nothing to say."

"So that's how it is..." Zhang Yangxu felt a sense of awe in his heart, but he was also a bit puzzled. He still hadn't lowered his guard and maintained a certain distance from Gu Yunqing, who was leading the way.

Zhang Yangxu asked: "If the truth of the matter is like this, how did you know about this? Also, I witnessed a ghost disguised as you in the ancestral hall earlier, going to read tomorrow's almanac. Why are you still alive? How did you survive?"

On the question of whether Gu Yunqing was dead or alive, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe might have lied, but Zhang Yangxu believed that the fact that "reading tomorrow's almanac is a deadly taboo" itself should be correct and accurate.

"That's a long story," Gu Yunqing sighed as if helplessly, leading Zhang Yangxu through the He family's garden.

The two avoided the cooks and servants who were preparing meals and came to a row of small buildings on the west side of the He family's main building. Gu Yunqing gestured to Zhang Yangxu and then took the lead, slipping into a warehouse with an unlocked door.

【My sister sent me a message; she's hiding inside.】

Zhang Yangxu looked down at the text message Gu Yunqing had sent. After waiting for a long time, he tiptoed forward and cautiously pushed open the door to the warehouse.

The next moment, Zhang Yangxu's body toppled over.

He was dead.

(End of chapter)