Chapter 129

Wei Zhengdao.

“He’s still not dead?”

If Wei Zhengdao was not dead, Li Zhuiyuan would be quite disappointed.

Because every one of those he had seen who had gained a lifespan beyond the limits of ordinary humans had, without exception, turned into something neither human nor ghost.

The one in the underground palace at Wanzhou, Yuxuzi of Zhengmen Village, and even the “it” speaking to him now were all like that.

The boy had read Wei Zhengdao’s books and liked the style between the lines.

He was a deeply narcissistic man, someone unrestrained by rules, someone who liked to dance madly along the edge of taboo and test it.

Li Zhuiyuan would never admit he admired him, but he could not deny that he appreciated him.

He was willing to dig up Wei Zhengdao’s story bit by bit, to trace the footprints he had left behind, to uncover the course of his life.

But the boy did not want to see him still alive, living on in some lowly, filthy, twisted way.

He ought to be dead. Only a normal death could make him a perfect Wei Zhengdao.

It was the same feeling that Xue, Zheng, and Zeng, the three disciples, had once held toward their master Yuxuzi. The Yuxuzi who had sacrificed himself to seal a demon was the master they truly acknowledged and revered.

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t know whether he’s still alive, yet you want me to go kill him?”

“But I’m still alive…”

“Just because you’re alive doesn’t mean he is.”

“But what if…”

“Don’t you think your ‘what if’ sounds ridiculous?”

“You really have grown up, daring to talk to me like this now…”

“I’m only telling the truth.”

“Is it River walk that gave you that confidence, or the shattered memorial tablets of those two families…”

It knew about the Qin and Liu families.

It was not from the same era as they were.

But since the Water Monkey incident had broken its slumber, opened its eyes, and made it turn over, and since it had indirectly become the local “earth shrine” guarding this place, frightening off other malevolent spirits so that they dared neither approach nor even be born here—

then there was no way it had failed to sense the Qin and Liu family members living in the same village.

Come to think of it, Granny Liu should also have known of its existence.

Only, one had sealed itself away, waiting for time to grind it down completely, while the other had hidden herself from the world, praying only for a little blessing to heal her granddaughter.

There had never really been any reason, or necessity, for conflict between them.

They had not even needed to communicate. Once they sensed each other and knew the other existed, there was no need for anything further.

And besides,

it truly did not want trouble.

Not because it was afraid, but because it was lazy.

Those nearly twenty people taken by the Water Monkey—when it said it would skin them, it skinned them. If it had lifted its eyes just a little higher back then, Li Zhuiyuan and Runsheng probably would have ended up as boiled shrimp on a platter too.

That was why, when Li Zhuiyuan came back, he had been willing to set out an offering for it on the open ground by Big Beard’s house.

Before Li Zhuiyuan could answer, it spoke again:

“If I weren’t ridiculous, how could I have been fooled by him…”

“I’m just a ridiculous fool…”

“A hopeless idiot…”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Do you need me to try comforting you?”

“You can try…”

“Thank you for bringing peace to this whole area.”

“Thank me for cleaning up your mess?”

“You could say that.”

Because of the Little Oriole incident, he had seen another side of this world, and later found those books in his great-grandfather’s basement and formally entered the path.

Li Zhuiyuan had once studied the theory of how unclean things gathered.

To stop River walk, you still had to relight the lamp and admit defeat. Even Granny Liu’s special method of living in seclusion required constant care to avoid karmic entanglement. Back then, while reading those books and studying, with Taigong’s blessings also affecting him, the unclean things nearby had come wave after wave.

During that period, it had felt as though Nantong was full of Dead Sinkers and malevolent spirits everywhere, more than he could even retrieve in time.

So when it said it had been cleaning up his mess, that was not wrong.

Because at that time, he did not understand concealment and knew nothing of karma. He had been like a child holding a real gun.

“Help me kill Wei Zhengdao…”

“If he’s still alive.”

“I told you, you’re very much like him. You also learned from his Black Book…”

“If he’s still alive, the river water will draw you and him closer to each other…”

“Precisely because I’m still alive, I don’t want him to be.”

“I hate him…”

“But I don’t want him to live as ugly a life as mine…”

Hearing that, Li Zhuiyuan suddenly understood what it wanted.

Because in a certain way, its feelings were the same as his own.

It hated Wei Zhengdao, but it did not want the Wei Zhengdao it hated to become fallen and filthy.

Li Zhuiyuan could only sigh inwardly: Wei Zhengdao’s personal charm really was powerful.

Even something that had hated him obsessively for nearly a thousand years still wanted his image to remain whole and flawless.

“If I meet him, I will kill him. But not to help you. In fact, it will have nothing to do with you.”

“Thank you…”

Li Zhuiyuan turned around and looked behind him.

A man stood there, but his face kept changing.

At first it was the faces of the village uncles and aunties, then madness, laughter, coldness, idiocy…

It had chosen to suppress itself beneath the peach grove because it knew it was a calamity. Most of the time, it might even forget who it was.

But it still remembered Wei Zhengdao.

“As thanks, I can become one of the waves before you are proclaimed Dragon King…”

“A wave can be arranged like that?”

When he asked that, Li Zhuiyuan already had the answer in his heart.

It probably… could be arranged that way.

Wasn’t his going ahead to find the waves early and eliminate the Dead Sinkers and malevolent spirits in advance itself a kind of clever exploitation within the rules?

The Heavenly Dao was merciless because it only wanted a result.

If you had the ability to kill a great malevolent spirit, even if you did it by persuading it until it willingly killed itself, then that was still your eloquence, your ability.

Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva could persuade a ghost king to turn back and submit under him; that too was a great Buddhist divine power.

Even the dishes Yin Meng cooked could be so delicious to malevolent spirits that they exploded.

The line of thinking could actually be opened up further and further.

The one beneath this peach grove really did qualify to become a wave, and a huge one at that in the later stage. Once he crossed it, he truly would not be far from becoming Dragon King.

Using his own “question-setter” way of thinking, it was like saying that once he finished all the earlier questions, there would be a big bonus question reserved for him at the end.

Li Zhuiyuan suddenly realized that he had once again stripped away another layer of mystery from River walk, making it even more dull and mechanical.

It said, “What he was best at back then was stripping the treacherous river water and the mysterious Heavenly Dao until they became utterly boring…”

Li Zhuiyuan: “…”

The man began to retreat, stepping back out of the crowd and down from the open ground.

Li Zhuiyuan chased after him and stopped at the edge, watching as the man walked step by step toward the pond in this dream. In reality, this place was already a peach grove.

When the man’s body was about to sink into the pond, it suddenly stopped, turned around, and looked at Li Zhuiyuan.

At that moment, its face became its original one.

Its temples were streaked with white. It looked both weathered and young, perfectly matching the era’s aesthetic for men—gentle, free-spirited, and romantic.

Only its gaze seemed especially deep, tinged with a trace of confusion:

“Other than the one I gave you, have you read any of Wei Zhengdao’s other books…”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “If I ever get the chance, I really do want to read more of Wei Zhengdao’s books.”

“All his books were written on Buddha-skin paper—that is, human skin. Do you know why…”

“Why?”

It raised a hand, pinched the flesh at the side of its face, and tugged lightly outward.

Pop!

The skin of its face split open, and beneath it appeared a woman’s face. That face was still writhing, as though impatient to break through.

It did not care. It was already used to it.

“He once suspected that endless blasphemy toward the Heavenly Dao would eventually bring about the Heavenly Dao’s true disgust…”

“And then?”

“Be careful that the Heavenly Dao itself does not peel off the human skin you wear…”

It sank into the pond.

The dream also began to darken, a sign that it was ending.

The villagers who had been watching the funeral troupe’s performance, including Pan’er and Lei’er and the others, were no longer cheering. The sound system began lowering in volume. Little Oriole stopped singing and dancing as well and set down the microphone in her hand.

The performance in this dream was coming to an end.

Li Zhuiyuan turned and walked back, pushing through the crowd until he stood again at the very center.

The sky was growing darker and darker.

Everyone’s faces were gradually swallowed by shadow.

Little Oriole reached out a hand toward Li Zhuiyuan, wanting to touch this delicate boy, so obviously different from the other village children, just as she had that afternoon more than a year ago.

Her hand came to rest on the boy’s face.

“Do you still want to keep singing?”

Little Oriole hesitated for a moment, but in the end she nodded.

“Thank you for your hard work. Help me take care of my Taigong.”

Li Zhuiyuan raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.

Snap.

In an instant, the sky brightened again.

Within the dream, everyone’s faces became clear once more. The cheers rose again from low to loud, and the surroundings that ought to have fallen into silence returned to clamor.

“Strike up the music and keep dancing.”

…

In this world, there is no such thing as taking advantage without paying a price. The wages Taigong gave Little Oriole were clearly far from enough to pay for all she had given here.

So last night, Li Zhuiyuan had made up the difference.

That was also why, from maintaining the Walking the shade state, his mental exhaustion was a bit heavy.

He woke late in the morning, his head still foggy.

Even so, lying in bed, the first thing he did after opening his eyes was turn his head to look beside the bed, at the desk, at the chair by the door.

The objects were all there, but the girl was not.

Fortunately, though things had changed, the girl had not flown far away.

He got out of bed, washed up, and went downstairs.

Lin Shuyou had bought quite a few drinks yesterday as gifts. Since they were his own family’s goods, he simply opened a box, took out a bottle, and drained an entire can before breakfast.

The sugar made the boy’s head feel a little better.

“Little Yuanhou, you’re awake. Come eat breakfast.”

“Grandma, where are Taigong and the others?”

“There’s a factory boss over east whose father passed away. He’s planning a big funeral, so he needs a lot of tables, chairs, bowls, and chopsticks. Everything in the house was taken over there.

Your Taigong took Runsheng, Zhuangzhuang, and that classmate to deliver the goods.”

“Oh, got it.”

Probably the thing Taigong loved most was taking the family mules out to make deliveries.

In the past it had been one mule, then two, now three. It gave Taigong the sense of being a landlord rebuilding his household fortune from scratch.

Breakfast was porridge and pickles. Cui Guiying peeled two salted eggs for Li Zhuiyuan.

“Little Yuanhou, your Taigong and the others probably won’t be back for dinner tonight either. Go eat at your grandparents’ place tonight, all right?”

“Sure.”

“Mm, good, good. Hurry and drink your porridge before it gets cold.”

While he was eating, Yin Meng came back.

“Morning, Brother Little Yuan.”

Cui Guiying only smiled when she heard that form of address. She assumed it was just a playful way young people talked to one another, then turned and went to the kitchen to clean up.

Li Zhuiyuan asked, “Where did you go wandering?”

“Just took a walk, got some fresh air, and caught some snakes, insects, rats, and ants on the way.”

Yin Meng lifted up a fertilizer sack. Fortunately, she knew Li Zhuiyuan was eating breakfast, so she did not open it.

“Very elegant hobby.”

“There really are a lot of snakes in Nantong. Easy to catch too, just mostly Water Snakes. They’re not as venomous as the ones in the mountains back home.”

“Do you want to go home?”

“Not really. I don’t have any family left there either.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

That Yin Changsheng was, in all likelihood, still alive, though probably not in the state of an immortal ascended being.

Or rather, from the perspective of the ancients, that kind of state was no different from becoming an immortal.

The image of immortals as ethereal transcendent beings had itself only formed through generations of artistic embellishment.

“My ancestral land? To be honest, I really do want to go see it someday. At the very least, I could go there and pay respects to my grandfather.”

If Yin Meng wanted to go back and honor her ancestors now, she would not even be able to find the graves.

“We’ll go. And it won’t take too long.”

Li Zhuiyuan finished breakfast.

Yin Meng got up to help clean, but Li Zhuiyuan had already taken the bowls and chopsticks into the kitchen first.

That afternoon, Tan Wenbin called through Aunt Zhang’s corner store, and Yin Meng went to answer it.

After receiving the tables, chairs, bowls, and chopsticks, that factory boss had also invited Li Sanjiang to conduct a Sitting vigil. They would probably be busy until late at night before coming back.

Tan Wenbin asked whether Li Zhuiyuan wanted to come over too and join the excitement.

Li Zhuiyuan declined, and Yin Meng did not go either.

That afternoon, Li Zhuiyuan sat in the rattan chair on the second-floor terrace, feeling the breeze and looking at the scenery.

Yin Meng, meanwhile, returned to her old trade. The boards had already been prepared in advance. Following the drawings, she started making a coffin.

Although the spread of cremation had gradually turned coffin shops into a sunset industry, at least for now, as long as you could make one and the price was right, there was no worry about selling it in the village.

Older people were deeply fixated on such things. Some, even after being cremated, still wanted their urn buried inside a coffin.

When Shitou and Huzi learned that Brother Yuanzi had come back, they came in a group to visit him. They even brought some snacks, stickers, and the like as little gifts. None of it was worth much, but no one had come empty-handed, and each had brought the best, newest thing they could manage.

Back then, they had really been poor.

It was not that their families were that destitute, but because the four uncles had all left the children with Li Weihan and Cui Guiying. Afraid someone else might take advantage of them, they rarely gave the children anything, and pocket money only came during New Year.

Now their grandparents were helping out at Li Sanjiang’s place, and the family was no longer running the village school. Instead, these younger brothers now had a bit more spending money on hand.

At the very least, their parents now had the time and energy to be worn down by their pestering.

Li Zhuiyuan accepted their gifts, then, just as before, led them to Aunt Zhang’s corner store.

Shitou and Huzi cheered wildly with their hands in the air the whole way, constantly calling to other kids and showing off.

“Look, this is my Brother Yuanzi!”

“My Brother Yuanzi is back!”

“Brother Yuanzi is taking us to Aunt Zhang’s place to buy stuff, hmph!”

They had more or less expected this on the way over.

Children, after all, always feel an unusual affection and anticipation toward someone willing and happy to spend money on them. Though, really, adults are much the same.

Back when everyone used to mooch meals at Grandpa and Grandma’s place, they had only managed to fill their bellies. Brother Yuanzi’s arrival from Beijing had truly added a beautiful stretch of memory to their childhood.

And Brother Yuanzi was generous. Grandma would secretly stuff him a little pocket money, but every time he got some, he would take everyone out to spend it together.

Actually, it had never been much money. Even though Li Lan regularly sent money over, Cui Guiying could not possibly stuff too much into a child’s hands.

But all the beautiful things in childhood get magnified. When they grew up later, they would still talk about them again and again, because… sometimes adulthood really was pretty dull.

Seeing Li Zhuiyuan arrive with the Li family children, Aunt Zhang smiled too.

Li Zhuiyuan let the boys and girls pick what they wanted, and he would pay.

There was nothing expensive sold in the corner store anyway, and these little brothers and sisters also had enough sense not to take too much.

Most of the boys picked a certain brand of instant noodles that came with Water Margin cards inside. You could collect the cards or use them to play card-flipping games.

The girls were not interested in that, but after some persuasion and bargaining from the boys, they also picked that kind of instant noodles and handed the cards over to their brothers.

A bag of those noodles was actually pretty expensive for a child. After taking one, even when Li Zhuiyuan actively told them to pick a little more, none of them reached out again.

In the end, Li Zhuiyuan had Aunt Zhang put some extra snacks into a bag, along with hair clips and ribbon bows the girls would like, and told them to divide them among themselves, which set off another round of cheering.

After paying, Shitou and Huzi could not wait to tear open their bags, pull out the cards, and compare which Water Margin hero each of them had gotten. Then they immediately called over other children from the village, and in groups of three or five, they gathered together and started playing cards.

First they would stick a card to the wall and let it fall. Whoever’s flew the farthest got to pick it up and use it to strike at the other cards. If you flipped one over, then that card belonged to you.

Whoever had the most cards was the village “rich man,” the object of every child’s envy.

Some children had already lost all their cards and could only stand there silently, opening the seasoning packets and dumping them into the instant noodle bags, shaking them hard, then crunching away at them dry while watching the others keep playing.

Shitou even pulled out some of his own stock and said he could lend them to Brother Yuanzi so Brother Yuanzi could join in too.

Li Zhuiyuan declined.

Although he was only a little older than they were, he had kept up his Breathing techniques basics, and his control over strength was already considerable. If he joined a game like that, he would become “rich” very quickly.

Aunt Zhang leaned on the counter with both elbows and watched the children in the corner playing with great enthusiasm. She could not help smiling.

“I really don’t know what’s so fun about a game like that.”

Li Zhuiyuan gave Aunt Zhang a shy smile and did not answer.

What was fun might not have been the cards, but the feeling of a group of little friends gathering together and focusing on the same thing.

That feeling could not be replaced. As for the cards, even if they were not these Water Margin cards…

Li Zhuiyuan’s gaze drifted to the cigarette display behind Aunt Zhang. Even if you replaced the Water Margin cards with cigarette boxes, the children would still have had a great time.

After leaving Aunt Zhang’s corner store, they went back to Taigong’s house and found Cuicui there.

She had brought her homework and said she wanted help with some questions.

Cuicui’s grades were very good. Li Zhuiyuan knew it was only an excuse for coming over to play with him.

After he helped her with two problems, Cuicui started doing her homework on her own. Li Zhuiyuan sat on a stool, looking out at the distant scenery, savoring it carefully, feeling it carefully, trying hard to remember it.

A while back, in Professor Zhu’s political theory class at university, Professor Zhu had used the example of Jiangsu mobilizing the masses over several decades to dredge rivers in order to explain a theory.

Li Zhuiyuan had personally lived through that example.

Later, he asked other students from other provinces, and found that similar large-scale grassroots projects had taken place all across the country.

One classmate from Inner Mongolia had said that from the time he was young, he had gone with his parents to press down grass and stabilize the sand.

Those students who had never lived near wasteland or desert did not understand what that meant. The classmate from Inner Mongolia tried hard to explain but still could not make it clear. In the end, Professor Zhu himself carefully explained the principle to everyone.

The old professor’s knowledge was extensive, and he did not mind at all when his political theory classes drifted off-topic.

Li Zhuiyuan had gained a great deal from that class. Of course, what he gained was not about desert control.

His emotional state resembled a desert, and the desert’s greatest problem—or at least the most direct one in need of treatment—was not actually lack of water, but the fact that it could hold neither water nor sand.

It was like how, every time he manipulated a Dead Sinker or malevolent spirit, their extreme emotional awareness entered his heart, yet he could only experience and observe it like watching fireworks. Once it was over… it was over.

Because he could not keep any of it.

First you had to fix the sand in place so it would not shift in great waves and bury everything. Then you had to plant certain grasses and trees to serve as the earliest foundation. Only after that, step by step, could you slowly turn the desert into an oasis.

His hometown, this village, the rice fields here, and the people here—these were the dry grass he used to hold down the sand.

Ah Li and Taigong were the first seeds he had planted in this circle of sand. After that, he had gradually planted Runsheng, Binbin, Mengmeng, one after another.

He had not understood the principles of sand stabilization before, because he had never studied them. But through practice and groping, this was in fact exactly what he had been doing. Now that he knew the principle, things became much clearer.

With them by his side, this barren desert of his would gradually become an oasis in the future.

Li Lan also had a desert, but like an amateur, her method was naïve. She hoped to plant a single tree called “son” and have it grow strong in the desert, so that it could one day shade and shelter her.

So she really was a foolish mother.

Li Zhuiyuan raised both hands and pressed his temples, chanting silently in his heart:

Don’t think like that. Don’t think like that. Thinking like that makes it easy for the illness to flare up.

Sigh,

Li Lan really was a stumbling block on the road to his recovery.

Cuicui would write for a while, then lift her head and look at Li Zhuiyuan sitting beside her.

The boy was looking at the scenery, while the boy himself was scenery in other people’s eyes.

After finishing her homework, Cuicui chatted with Li Zhuiyuan for a while about school. It was easy to tell she was trying her best to make the things she found interesting sound as interesting as possible.

She also told him that the family who had asked her grandmother to write funeral couplets that morning had made a special trip by bicycle to thank them, and had even brought relatives from the village to place another order.

Because when the couplets they had taken before were burned together with the cardboard boxes and paper effigies as funeral offerings, the couplets had crackled loudly the moment they caught fire, and then blue smoke had risen up!

All their relatives and friends praised them, saying that this was proof their filial devotion had moved their departed ancestors, and that those ancestors would surely bless the whole family with peace.

When Li Zhuiyuan heard that, he was briefly stunned, then quickly understood.

He had never expected the couplets he wrote to have that effect, but it was perfectly normal that they did.

Cuicui went home.

For dinner, Li Zhuiyuan took Yin Meng to eat at his grandparents’ house.

All four of his uncles and their wives were there too. Grandma Cui Guiying had prepared enough dishes for two tables.

The two old folks had only dared to arrange this secret reunion meal because Li Sanjiang was not at home. If he had been there, he surely would have scolded them rotten.

But sometimes parents were just like that. One side was willing to give, the other willing to accept, and both seemed to think it was only natural.

Li Weihan drank a bit too much. With reddened eyes, he said to Li Zhuiyuan,

“Little Yuanhou, your grandma and I haven’t been able to help you much. But when you grow up, you must be good to your Taigong. Your Taigong really does treat you well.”

Li Weihan said that Li Sanjiang had personally gone to hurry people for the final payment and had even pushed people at home to speed up the paper-craft work. Though he had already long since stepped back from frontline labor, these past days he had started making paper offerings again.

Because he had to send money to his great-grandson in college. He could not let the boy be looked down on by his classmates just because he had no money in his pocket.

In truth, Li Sanjiang did not need to earn this money, because Li Lan sent over living expenses every month.

But Li Sanjiang would not allow Li Weihan to pass that money on to Li Zhuiyuan. He said the boy was the one she herself had not wanted, so the boy should not use her money either. Otherwise, when the boy saw her later, he would not even have the confidence to refuse giving her a pleasant face.

After dinner, Li Zhuiyuan refused Li Weihan’s offer to walk him back. Grandpa had had too much to drink.

Yin Meng took a flashlight, and together she and Li Zhuiyuan walked home under the moon.

After they got home, quite a while passed before Taigong, Zhuangzhuang, and the others came back.

Today’s Sitting vigil had been lively. The factory boss had been willing to spend money, and Taigong had opened the altar and performed the rites with great flourish, conducting a splendid salvation ritual for the boss’s father.

Lin Shuyou had also thrown himself enthusiastically into it, giving a performance of the Officers of the Command Banner.

However, since everyone knew he got foul-tempered once his face was painted, they had not let him do the full painted-face version, and instead found him a mask to wear.

The local people had never seen Officers of the Command Banner before, so everyone gathered around to watch. On top of that, Lin Shuyou had excellent physical skill. Not only did he capture the spirit and form, he also performed many difficult movements.

Combined with Taigong’s altar-opening rites, it could be called a cross-regional folk custom exchange performance.

The factory boss had been delighted and stuffed them another extra red envelope before they left.

Taigong split it with Lin Shuyou. At first Lin Shuyou refused, but Taigong smacked him on the head several times with his knuckles and said it was not just for him alone, so he should take what was his.

Before bed, Li Zhuiyuan went into Taigong’s room and chatted with him for a while.

Li Sanjiang did not really have much left to say, but he was reluctant to let this time together end, so he simply started telling Li Zhuiyuan stories.

He began again with his days as a Corpse Retriever in Shanghai. As he talked, he got to one particular night when he had thought he was carrying a corpse on his back, only to find that the man had not yet breathed his last. Blood was still flowing from him, as if he had been shot, and it seemed there were people chasing after him too. So Li Sanjiang had run five or six li in one breath with the man on his back…

And then came the sound of snoring.

Taigong’s storytelling had lulled himself to sleep.

He had surely drunk quite a bit during the daytime Sitting vigil feast.

Li Zhuiyuan first emptied and rinsed out the drink can Taigong used as an ashtray, then put it back on the bedside cabinet and tucked the blanket around him.

On his way out, he glanced at the tiles on the floor of Taigong’s room, and his mind could not help recalling how Taigong had drawn a Luck-Shifting Ritual array there for him before.

And every time Taigong drew that luck-shifting array, it looked different.

Li Zhuiyuan bit his lip, and a smile appeared on his face.

He tried to make an effort, to laugh out loud for once, but still failed.

The boy was not discouraged. He felt that perhaps, at this moment, a simple knowing smile was enough.

After all, normal people did not suddenly burst into loud laughter just because they recalled something amusing.

As he left Taigong’s room and prepared to return to his own, a slow yin wind drifted toward him.

Only this time, the yin wind was rather faint.

Li Zhuiyuan looked down below. Outside the open yard, Little Oriole was standing there.

At first, Li Zhuiyuan thought Little Oriole probably did not want to sing tonight and had only come to say good night to him.

But when he looked more closely, he saw her body repeatedly leaning forward toward the yard, then shrinking back, then leaning forward again, then falling back again.

That meant she still wanted to come sing and perform tonight.

The reason she had not come straight up and into the house as she had last night was because an Officer of the Command Banner was sleeping on the first floor.

And when she had come yesterday, she had also chosen the two time periods when Lin Shuyou was not around.

Li Zhuiyuan rubbed his brow and let out a sigh.

He had only just recovered today after spending the whole day resting his head.

Little Oriole seemed to notice Li Zhuiyuan. She lifted her head and looked at the boy standing on the second floor, her body accelerating its forward-and-backward sway.

It was as though she were urging him, and also pleading.

Li Zhuiyuan really could not refuse her.

Last night had counted as compensation for the wages owed before. Then tonight would have to count as an advance on future wages.

He would only head back to school the day after tomorrow, so tomorrow night he would most likely have to set up the stage for Little Oriole again.

A headache was a headache. With Little Oriole in this house, she was like one of those household guardian spirits people keep in the northeast.

Besides, it was not as though he had never asked her for help before. Last time he had even used her as a telephone pole to apologize to Ah Li.

Li Zhuiyuan went downstairs. Grandpa Shan had already gone home. In the corner of the first floor, three coffins were set out, one each for Runsheng, Binbin, and Lin Shuyou.

No wonder Yin Meng had hurried to make another new coffin today, and after finishing it had not rushed to paint it. So that was the reason: after seeing that Runsheng and Tan Wenbin both had coffins last night, Lin Shuyou had wanted one too.

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