When she reached Qingchen's room, he was sitting on the couch fully robed, eyes clear—looking for all the world like he'd been awake for quite a while.
Ling Wu carried in a plate piled with almond crisps and some tea. The moment she set it down, she waved him over.
"Almond crisps are best fresh out of the oven. Come, Master~"
Truthfully, she couldn't hold back any longer—her mouth had been watering the whole walk over.
Qingchen laughed despite himself and sat down beside her, picking up a pastry and taking a bite with such elegance you'd think he was savoring some rare delicacy.
"Well? Does Master like it?" Ling Wu was eager for the verdict.
Qingchen nodded. "Not bad."
Master's approval made her happy too.
She knew it—no one could refuse an almond crisp. A pity it wasn't the season for osmanthus wine, or she'd have had Master taste that as well.
Mortal wine burned going down, but osmanthus wine was different—light and refreshing, and it didn't get you drunk easily.
Qingchen ate exactly one piece. The rest all went into Ling Wu's stomach.
He wasn't the least bit surprised.
After all, Ling Wu's appetite was famous.
"Once you've finished, we'll head out."
Fed and watered—time for proper business. Ling Wu caught his meaning, and the two of them left the inn, one after the other.
Demons and ghosts weren't the same. Most ghosts could only stir at night—even Shen Qingyu the other day would never have taken form in daylight without the two of them present. Demons were simpler: day or night, once they'd taken human form, they could come and go as they pleased.
The streets were as lively as yesterday. A few of the familiar vendors, seeing that the person at Ling Wu's side had changed, couldn't help whispering.
Loud enough to be whispering directly into her ear.
Honestly, these mortals! Gossipier than she was! What was this about 'a different man every day'—today one, tomorrow another? They had no idea what the actual relationships were, and they just ran their mouths.
Ling Wu seethed and wanted to go have words. But with Master present, she reined it in.
She gave them a polite smile and said, cool as frost: "Enjoy your sharp tongues while you can. Be careful, or someone might pull them out after you die!"
That was no idle threat. Those who sinned with their tongues in life generally got a taste of the tongue-pulling punishment after death—a small lesson to make things right for the people they'd slandered.
Perhaps properly frightened, the vendors traded looks and scuttled back to their stalls to keep hawking.
Qingchen gave Ling Wu an approving glance.
Good. Ah-Wu had developed a spine.
For the whole walk, she didn't sense a whiff of demonic aura. She didn't even know that azure-robed lord's name—all she could do was pin her hopes on Master.
And right now he kept drifting toward the thickest crowds. He must have noticed something.
"Can Master sense any demonic aura?" she asked, one arm out shielding him from the jostling passersby.
Qingchen arched a brow and shook his head. "No."
No? Then why walk so fast! Why dive into the thickest crowd!
To keep mortals from bumping into him, her arm was aching from holding it up. She looked like a court eunuch clearing the way.
Hearing that answer now, she was nearly foaming at the mouth.
"Doesn't Ah-Wu love a good spectacle? I wanted to see one too."
Ling Wu looked left and right. Everyone was just haggling with the vendors—voices a bit loud, drawing onlookers.
That was not her kind of spectacle.
She wanted to explain that this spectacle and that spectacle were different things, but worried she'd fumble the delivery and Master wouldn't follow.
Just then, a passing crowd broke her train of thought.
A steward, trailed by a pack of servants, hurried toward the notice board at the center of the street, several sheets of paper covered in writing in his hand.
He looked rushed, like he was on urgent business.
Curious, Ling Wu watched as the steward posted the papers and announced to the gathering crowd: "By our master's command: any man of talent or strange skill who can resolve the trouble now plaguing the Shen household will be richly rewarded. Silver and a manor—take your pick."
Having caught the gist, Ling Wu wanted to know what the notice actually said.
Qingchen was reading too, so the two of them drifted over.
With Master there, Ling Wu reached the front row without the slightest effort.
The notice read: strange occurrences had plagued the Shen residence of late. At night the servants kept hearing eerie sounds, and several maids had crossed paths with a ghostly figure on the way back to their quarters—frightened speechless, found collapsed only the next morning, and by then, driven mad.
Stranger still: the young master of the Shen family, once the picture of health, had grown weaker by the day, as though something were siphoning his vitality away.
Old Master Shen and his wife had hired a whole parade of Daoists and monks to perform rites, all to no effect.
Their only son, doted on beyond measure—and now they were at their wits' end, hence the public notice.
And the Shen family was no small name in Yulin City: wealthy merchants, generous to a fault, famous for their charity and their spotless reputation.
For misfortune to land on a household like that, the whole crowd clucked in sympathy.
"Just days ago I saw Young Master Shen pitting crickets against Young Master Xie—and now, barely any time has passed, and his body's failing," said one man.
At that, Ling Wu's face brightened. Crickets? Was that the young lord with the demonic aura that day? She kept listening to the chatter around her.
An auntie sighed. "With the Shen and Li families' wedding so nearly at hand, and now this! Poor Miss Li, what a fate she's been dealt."
"I'd say it's not a poor fate she's got—it's her curse that did it," another man cut in, voice thick with displeasure. "The scholar who secretly pledged himself to Miss Li was perfectly healthy before, yet he fell off a cliff on the road to the exams. Now Young Master Shen's taken ill too. How is Miss Li not a jinx?"
Mortals were always spooked by such talk. As the man finished, the crowd traded uneasy glances.
Ling Wu got the picture fast: when fortune smiled, no woman got credit; when disaster struck, it all landed on the woman's head. What utter nonsense!
She rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out, and couldn't help jabbing back: "Some men are simply born short-lived. For a man fated to die young, receiving a woman's true heart before he goes—that's the greatest blessing heaven could grant him!"
"Besides, the exams were for his own sake. The scholar died chasing his own future—what business is that of Miss Li's?" She narrowed her eyes and fixed the man who'd spoken with a smile that never reached her eyes. "The way I see it, it's the scholar who jinxed Miss Li. If not for him, would she have all this mess at her back—strangers chewing over her name? Don't you all agree?"
When she finished, the crowd went silent.
The man she'd called out looked uglier than ever.
He opened his mouth to argue—and his gaze collided with Qingchen's. That look made his blood run cold.
He didn't dare look at the pair again. Muttering something about his own shallowness, he scurried off.
The auntie was the first to recover, and she took Ling Wu's hand warmly. "You're new here, aren't you, missy? That face I haven't seen before."
"Everything you said just now—right in this old heart of mine!" she praised. "I lost my parents young, and my husband passed of illness just a few years later. Now it's just me and my daughter, the two of us leaning on each other. And all these years, heaven knows how many times people have cursed me for it."
"They all said I cursed my husbands and my household—that anyone who got close to me would die for it. You're the first person I've ever heard say a man could curse a person too."
In a few short phrases she'd poured out half a lifetime's bitterness, and Ling Wu's heart ached for her.
She squeezed the auntie's hand back. "Life and death, the wheel of rebirth—it's all fixed by fate. There's no such thing as cursing. None at all."
Every life was written by the Star of Destiny. What these mortals were thinking, blaming back and forth like that—she'd never understand.
The auntie kept her hand and chattered on for a good while—probably because so few people were willing to come near her, the words came pouring out.
Qingchen stood by and listened, never once interrupting. As the auntie's fate unspooled, a thread of compassion surfaced on his face—and with that otherworldly bearing of his, from a distance he looked for all the world like a bodhisattva come to ferry souls across.
Once she'd finished, Ling Wu asked about the Shen family.
From the auntie's description, she confirmed it: that azure-robed lord was Young Master Shen himself.
And with that, everything fell into place.
The ghost at the Shen residence was no ghost at all. It was a demon.
Watching the auntie go, Ling Wu blinked and turned to Qingchen. "Master, shall we go catch the demon at the Shen residence now?"
"No hurry. First, come with me to the Li residence."
Ling Wu didn't follow. "What's at the Li residence?"
Don't tell her Master wanted a look at what Miss Li looked like. Since when did he take an interest in a mortal?
Qingchen said nothing—just formed a hand seal and carried them off to the Li residence.
When they arrived, she understood.
There was a ghost here too.
She could sense it clearly: the ghost's presence was right there in Miss Li's chambers.
A demon at the Shen residence. A ghost at the Li residence.
You had to admit, the two of them made quite a matched pair.
"Master, shall we catch the ghost first?"