Chapter 85: Haggling Over Price

On the morning of June 10, Shi Yurou rose early, washed up, shed her pajamas, and donned a plain long dress, her demeanor growing quieter, like a red plum dusted with snow.

No wonder they say: to look elegant, wear mourning.

Though the will prevented a grand funeral for her father, the most basic rites of wearing sackcloth and ashes were still necessary.

After changing, Shi Yurou went to the vanity, combed her long black hair smooth, coiled it into a bun, pinned it with a silver pear blossom hairpin, applied light makeup, and painted a subtle everyday look.

Having finished her grooming, Shi Yurou tidied the vanity, opened her bedroom door, and went to wake her brother.

While Ji Yunying was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, Shi Yurou leaned by the window, gazing down at the lush green forest below.

She and her brother rarely lived here; they studied in Yundu City and knew little of this estate. Only yesterday, after Lan Shiwen reminded her, did she realize that the ornamental groves surrounding Chuyun Manor consisted entirely of paper mulberry trees, along with the gradually replaced rattan chairs and bark paper in the study…

One after another, these connected events left her heart unsettled for a long time.

Suddenly, a swift flash cut across the sky, like a stone dropped into water, disturbing the girl’s already tangled nerves—a shadow too fast for the eye to catch burst from the deep forest and lunged straight at Shi Yurou’s shoulder, thudding her to the floor.

“Ah!”

Shi Yurou screamed instinctively as she fell, but the shadow atop her dissolved into a wisp of mist, its gray-white wings fading away to reveal a man with a demon’s face.

“...Master Yeyao?” Shi Yurou froze, confusion and fear rising together: “How did you get here... why?”

“Not just me,” Ning Zhe said, grabbing Shi Yurou’s left hand: “Your father came too.”

Ning Zhe pulled a folding knife from his pocket and sliced through the red cord tied around her wrist—the string of four copper coins slipped into his hand.

Ning Zhe cut the cord again, returned two coins to Shi Yurou, and kept the other two; the man collapsed atop her transformed into a gray-winged peregrine falcon, its talons gripping the red cord threaded with two coins, then flapped away from the small building.

From his appearance to his departure, Shi Yurou remained dazed; what had just happened was beyond comprehension for an ordinary college girl who had never encountered the supernatural.

Just as typhoons and earthquakes do not wait for you to complete all safety measures before striking, the arrival of the supernatural does not change based on whether you understand it or not.

Whether you understand or not, the ghost is there. The rules are there. Survival or death—simple as that.

In the brief time after Ning Zhe hurriedly left, an indescribable sense of ‘otherness’ began spreading through the manor.

It was a deeply unnatural feeling, like seeing a blank sheet of paper hung on a gallery wall, or an empty classroom with no students, or a swimming pool whose water had deepened into a trench... as if nothing had changed, yet something irreparable had already occurred.

“Sis! Did you unplug the router? Why’s the internet suddenly gone...”

Shi Yurou turned to see Ji Yunying walking out of the hallway, one hand holding an electric toothbrush, the other a phone. He always scrolled short videos while brushing his teeth or using the toilet, but just now, no matter how many times he refreshed, the screen showed “no network.”

“Weird, even mobile data doesn’t work...” Ji Yunying walked up to Shi Yurou, who was still on the floor, confused: “Uh... why are you sitting on the ground?”

But Shi Yurou seemed not to hear him at all; Ji Yunying saw his sister’s body stiffen with shock, her shoulders and ankles trembling uncontrollably, her usually alluring face now twisted with raw terror. “Yunying, run—run now...” Shi Yurou bit her lip, trembling, raising both hands to point behind him: “B-behind...”

Ji Yunying turned his head—and met a pair of hollow eye sockets devoid of eyeballs.

It was a face both siblings knew too well—their father’s face. His shrunken, parched skin clung tightly to his bones, his pale lips split open by some insect or other creature, revealing a crimson gum. The eye sockets weren’t empty—they had eyes, but both orbs had shriveled and fallen away, replaced by two gnarled, root-like optic nerves dangling from his cheekbones.

“How could this...”

Ji Yunying’s electric toothbrush still buzzed, his phone screen looping a short video of a dance student in a short skirt twirling gracefully, cheerful drum music blaring from the speaker—yet the noisy tune only deepened the silence of the small house buried in the forest.

Shi Yurou’s lips moved slightly, but no sound came out; terror had paralyzed her. She dared not look at her father’s monstrous face, her rigid gaze slowly lowering—from his neck, speckled with age spots, to his grotesquely swollen belly, then to his claw-like, withered hands.

In the old man’s left hand rested a small cloth pouch tied tightly with a thin string.

Shi Yurou froze—suddenly, without reason, she remembered the child statue in the study; the child’s hand had held just such a small cloth pouch.

“...God of Wealth?” A word surfaced in her mind.

But the God of Wealth seemed not to notice them; its hollow eyes gazed far away—toward Yunmeng Marsh.

Also the direction the peregrine falcon had flown.

=9+book_bar

The God of Wealth stared silently in the direction Ning Zhe had left, then finally lowered its head, its hollow gaze fixing on Ji Yunying, the closest to it, and slowly raised one hand toward him.

Instantly, a chilling dread crawled up Ji Yunying’s spine to the crown of his head.

The God of Wealth turned to Shi Yurou, lying collapsed on the floor, its hollow eyes seeming to pierce through her chest and inspect the beating heart within.

Both stood frozen, not daring to move. Then the God of Wealth nodded, clenched its hand into a fist, and turned to descend the stairs.

It descended without a sound, as if floating rather than walking on legs. Only when the unnatural otherness finally faded did the siblings regain their senses, walking to the second-floor balcony railing to look down.

There, the God of Wealth still held the small cloth pouch tied with a thin string, drifting toward the main gate of Chuyun Manor in a bizarre, gliding motion.

“He’s gone...” Ji Yunying exhaled, collapsing onto the balcony as if his soul had been drained.

Shi Yurou’s tense nerves eased slightly; she turned to look at Ji Yunying beside her and suddenly asked: “Yunying, your string of coins...”

Ji Yunying looked down—his left hand still bore the red cord he’d worn since childhood, but two of the four copper coins once threaded on it were gone.

Shi Yurou opened her hand: a severed red cord lay clenched in her palm, its two copper coins also missing.

(End of Chapter)