Ling Wu had meant to reform this Qin Zheng. As it turned out, the man took neither the carrot nor the stick.
Looked the picture of a well-read gentleman, yet petty to the bone. No wonder he died young!
So she grumbled inwardly, hand already diving for another talisman.
Standing guard like this forever was no plan. She would have to collect him.
Yunshu was still laboring to talk sense into him: "Why won't you see reason! You're a ghost now—you and she can never be together! Or is it her you mean to kill as well!"
Qin Zheng's eyes burned red, his face twisted. "Who says I can't be with her! Even as a ghost, she would rather have me! Funing and I will be husband and wife in death!"
Immovable as stone.
The more Ling Wu heard, the angrier she got. This ghost could burrow into a dead end like no one alive!
Yunshu was angrier still—she wanted to pummel him flat on the spot. "What is wrong with you! You think being ghost-husband-and-wife is so easy! Do the folk down below feed idle souls for free, letting the two of you drift around the living world!"
She planted herself in front of Ling Wu and went on, "And as for Young Master Shen—fine, the man's a philanderer, but he isn't a bad man at heart. Big house, big business. You think life with him would treat Li Funing poorly?"
Something in that stung him. Qin Zheng turned on Yunshu.
Ling Wu, quick-eyed, yanked her behind her back just in time to dodge the blow.
Yunshu howled. "You're sick! Attacking your own people now!"
"I fed you all this time and you can't even kill one mortal. What good are you!" Qin Zheng sneered, dissolved into a mass of black vapor, and came at the pair of them.
Yunshu was a demon, yes—but against an evil ghost this saturated with malice, self-defense was about all she could manage.
Ling Wu couldn't count on her. She drew two yellow talismans and sent two bolts of golden light crashing into Qin Zheng.
Good news: his black vapor was swiftly blasted apart. Bad news: the scattered vapor reformed into several new clumps.
Ling Wu's heart sank. Ghostly winds gusted from every side, cold enough to bite bone.
The clumps split their work—two for her, two for Yunshu.
Yunshu let out a "meowww" and bolted, arms over her head.
"Curse you, Qin Zheng! All those years we looked out for each other, and this is how you repay me!" she yelled as she ran, hoping to wake some scrap of conscience in him.
Fat chance. A ghost set on murder has no conscience.
A clump caught Yunshu square; she dropped onto an open patch of ground not far off.
She wiped blood from the corner of her lip, head swimming. "I—I I I faint at the sight of blood!"
Ai. Useless creature!
Ling Wu dashed over and threw a shield around her with a yellow talisman.
"Stay put. He's mine now." With that, she threw herself back into the fray.
She hurled talismans and chanted nonstop, but the black vapor only kept gathering, thicker and thicker.
Ling Wu wiped sweat from her brow. Was this fellow performing cell division? How did blasting him apart not weaken him one bit!
Had she known, she never would have scattered the vapor in the first place.
Knowing a war of attrition would win her nothing, she put on her most compassionate face. "Will this evil ghost not desist? Must I beat you until body and soul scatter to the winds?"
She pointed at Yunshu. "For Yunshu's sake I'll spare your life. But persist as my enemy, and I will show you no further mercy."
Talisman cultivators like them never ran short of talismans in their bags. She had trump cards to spare.
At her words, Qin Zheng actually went still.
Ling Wu brightened—surely he'd finally taken her meaning.
Instead, the black vapor regathered into one mass and shot straight for Li Funing's chambers.
Ling Wu stood gaping. What in the realms was this move supposed to mean?
The door blew open. Li Funing's maid came over to shut it, muttering, "Where's this ghost wind coming from? Can't let a person have a moment's peace."
Ling Wu's mouth twitched. Count yourself lucky—he merely couldn't stand watching you be idle. The rest of us, he can't stand watching be alive!
When nothing stirred inside for a long while, she remembered Qingchen's parting instruction—that an evil ghost will not harm the one his heart is fixed on—and put her talismans away.
Qin Zheng hadn't struck with killing force after all; Yunshu recovered after sitting for a bit.
She patted her chest, shaken, and marveled at her own luck.
Ling Wu rolled her eyes. "And who was it, on the way here, who swore up and down that this scholar would never raise a hand against you?"
Yunshu had made it sound so fine: she'd shared his hard times for so long, there was real feeling between them; he was a man who treasured loyalty—he'd never touch her.
If that were true, how had he become an evil ghost!
No man of true feeling talks about being ghost-husband-and-wife with the woman he loves. Li Funing must have run through eight lifetimes of bad luck to meet him!
At this point neither of them dared act rashly, so the two retreated to their home base.
The roof of Li Funing's chambers.
Ling Wu quietly opened a peephole in the roof and peered down into the room.
Yunshu—lecturing her all the while about the immorality of spying—scrambled eagerly over to watch too.
The girl had learned "mouth says no, body says yes" down to its essence.
Li Funing sat before her dressing mirror, weeping quietly. She'd already sent the little maid away; the room held one woman and one ghost.
Head bowed, she drew a wooden comb through her long hair, stroke by stroke, mouth turned down, sorrow wrapping about her like a shawl. "Had I known this would befall you—I should never, that day, have urged you to the capital."
"They're right. It was all my doing. I ruined you."
Qin Zheng's body trembled. He reached to wipe her tears—and found tears of his own falling.
"If you knew I was marrying him, you would surely blame me." Her shoulders shuddered; the tears came faster. "I thought I could wait for you. But you went, and you never came back. And in this whole city, no one dares marry me now. You know my father—greedy and grasping, always. He found the connections to wed me to a prefect past sixty years of age."
"If Shen Ci had not appeared, that would have been my whole life, I suppose."
At the rawest of it, Li Funing covered her face and wept outright.
Were it not for him, she would have become that prefect's sixteenth concubine. Never mind the treatment—given the man's notorious violence in the marriage bed, she doubted she'd have survived a month.
"He saved me. He saved me. I'm sorry, Qin Zheng. I'm sorry..."
Beside her, Qin Zheng wept himself into a ruin.
And yet he seemed to be learning the truth of it just now too—shock flickering in his eyes.
"Everyone said it was him—that he came with chest after chest of silver to force you into the marriage. I never thought... never thought it was someone else forcing you..."
Their grief was so wretched that the two spies on the roof felt their chests tighten.
"This Shen Ci is plainly a great good man! Without him, Miss Li would have married that old geezer!" Ling Wu's opinion of Shen Ci shifted a degree.
Yunshu didn't buy it. "But his estate is full of girls he abducted!"
"And how do you know he abducted them? Did any of those girls weep day and night? Did a single one pine to run away?"
Yunshu thought it over and shook her head. "No. They live quite freely, in fact."
Those women didn't cry or make scenes—on the contrary, they were far happier than before they'd been brought in, as if they'd found a home.
Shen Ci never restricted their movements either. They gathered in threes and fives to amuse themselves, without one trace of the forcibly taken about them.
"Then you've misjudged the man." Ling Wu jabbed a finger at Qin Zheng. "And here's your example."
"Shen Ci saved Li Funing—and this one bit the hand, claiming Shen Ci meant to force her into marriage."
"But he truly didn't know the reasons!" Yunshu still wanted to plead Qin Zheng's case.
Ling Wu was speechless. Forget being a cat—Yunshu ought to be a dog. Qin Zheng's most loyal dog!
In the room, the weeping faded. Qin Zheng looked hollowed out, eyes vacant, not knowing where to turn.
None of this was Shen Ci's fault. He had picked the wrong man to kill from the very start—and he could hardly bear it.
Li Funing dabbed her tears with a handkerchief—and her gaze suddenly settled on the rabbit lantern on her dressing table.
"If only we could go on living in the past..."
Qin Zheng looked at the lantern, eyes lowered, his expression unreadable.