Chapter 152.2

“Click!”

Half-asleep, Deng Chen heard the photo studio’s front door open.

He immediately sat up and reached into the chemical tray in front of him where he developed photos, taking out two eyeballs.

He shook them, breathed on them, wiped them with his pajama top, then pressed them back into his eye sockets.

There were still three tiny figures swimming around in the tray. Those were his three good brothers.

Unhurried, he pushed open the room door and walked to the front desk, where he saw Tan Wenbin sitting on the little sofa with one leg crossed over the other.

What Tan Wenbin had was not just a key to the dorm building entrance.

Deng Chen said, “How may I help?”

Tan Wenbin said, “Sorry for disturbing your rest. Here, I need to borrow your eyeballs and have them roll over something for me.”

He handed Deng Chen a painting.

“Please wait a moment.”

Deng Chen took the painting back with him and got to work.

Not long after, he brought out a long photograph.

Tan Wenbin took the photo. As he rotated it in his hands, the person inside the picture holding a candle with their head lowered also began to turn.

Deng Chen said, “I filled in some of the finer details. It may differ somewhat from reality.”

“It’s fine. This is already very good. You did great.”

“He is…”

Tan Wenbin looked a little surprised. “What, do you know it?”

“No, I don’t. Ever since gaining awareness, the four of us have lived in hiding under assumed identities. Our understanding of this world is far inferior to yours.

“But through Little Yuanhou’s painting, I could feel what he was trying to express.

“It is very frightening.”

“What else do you feel?”

“When I was developing this photo, I was afraid it would suddenly lift its head.”

“Go on. Anything else?”

“Little Yuanhou’s painting skill is really excellent.”

“Little Yuanhou isn’t here, so there’s no need to flatter him. Give me something more useful, and when I get back I’ll praise him for you in your voice.”

“It’s the texture of this painting.”

“Texture?”

“It may not exist in reality.”

That should have been a meaningless statement, since this was something seen in a dream.

But Tan Wenbin narrowed his eyes, leaned in closer to Deng Chen, and lowered his voice. “Explain that in more detail. Come on, organize your thoughts.”

He could tell Deng Chen had noticed something. After all, the other man had the eyes of the black python.

It was just that he was poor at putting it into words and couldn’t quite hit the point.

Deng Chen’s eyes rolled a few times. In the end, he simply lifted a hand and smacked the back of his head, knocking both eyeballs out. He handed them to Tan Wenbin.

“I made another imprint inside my eyes. This is what I felt. Please experience it for yourself.”

“How do I use them?”

“Like this.”

Tan Wenbin held one eyeball in each hand and raised them in front of his own eyes.

The gesture looked a lot like when children used to hold marbles in front of their eyes to observe the bizarre, dazzling world through them.

Then he saw it.

Before him was still that figure holding a candle.

But this time, the figure’s body shifted from solid to insubstantial, then from insubstantial back to solid. It really did have a very strange sort of texture.

Tan Wenbin frowned. He felt that when Little Yuanhou had painted this, he had only tried his best to capture the spirit of what he saw in the dream. Little Yuanhou himself might not have perceived it that deeply.

That was normal in the bureau. Finding the physical evidence was only the first step. After that, it had to be handed over to the professional analysis department so the evidence could be made to speak and reveal more information. Deng Chen was that analysis department.

In the end, Tan Wenbin voiced his own impression, a sentence that sounded even more like nonsense than Deng Chen’s:

“This thing feels like it exists in dreams.”

…

At the Bargain Shop Bandit Camp, Lu Yi was both excited and uneasy.

His pay here had already been quite high, better than what he made tutoring, and the shop was on campus, which made things very convenient.

So for some of the easier classes, he skipped them whenever he could, just so he could spend more time watching the store and feel he was earning his pay.

Earlier, right after he entered the shop, Tan Wenbin had walked over, patted him on the shoulder, and told him he’d gotten another raise, and a big one too, a full fifty percent.

The extra duty was that whenever anyone from their little circle called the shop, he had to make a proper record of it and pass the message along promptly.

In truth, he had already been doing that before. He had never thought it was hard or tiring. It was just answering calls and relaying messages. Though for a while there, taking calls had given him an inexplicable pounding in his chest, scaring him enough that he went back to the dorm and set up an altar again.

But after thinking it over, he figured it was probably just due to poor sleep lately.

Tan Wenbin’s demand that he accept the raise was impossible to refuse, so Lu Yi accepted in the end.

He had a feeling that ever since he started making offerings to that fellow townsman of his, his luck had been getting better and better.

Lu Yi pressed his palms together, waved them in front of himself, and muttered:

“Red Sausage Ghost, bless me. Red Sausage Ghost, bless me!”

He was in the middle of worshipping thin air when he saw Yin Meng and Runsheng walking out side by side.

Yin Meng asked him, “Do you have a lot of classes today?”

Lu Yi shook his head. “Finals are coming up, so there aren’t many classes left. I can watch the shop all day today. When there aren’t any customers, I can review for finals.”

“Then thanks for the hard work. I’m taking Runsheng out to buy clothes.”

“Haha, sure.”

Lu Yi smiled and nodded, though he found it a little odd. He knew Yin Meng liked going out shopping, but Runsheng actually didn’t like going out much. All Runsheng liked was moving stock around in the store.

Still, what did other people’s business have to do with him?

Lu Yi picked up the phone and pressed the button. He was planning to call home and ask his parents to send him some more red sausage.

As soon as Runsheng and Yin Meng stepped out of the shop and down the stairs, Runsheng let out a sigh despite himself.

Back in his hometown, he would rather deliver goods for Elder Li ten times in one day, or go haul bricks at the brickyard, than accompany Yin Meng shopping.

“Didn’t you just buy clothes?”

“That was only a few things. Yesterday only one top and one pair of pants really fit. I’ll have to return the rest later.”

“That’s enough. There’s no need to buy new clothes before the old ones are too worn to patch.”

“If I don’t go out, how is that hand supposed to get a chance to deliver clues?”

“You could ask Zheng Jiayi to go shopping with you.”

“If I ask her out right now, I’m afraid she’ll get dragged into it.”

Runsheng nodded. He accepted that reason and kept walking forward with Yin Meng.

Yin Meng was in a good mood. She raised a hand and said, “Hey, why do you look so unhappy? If someone had taken me out to buy new clothes when I was little, I would’ve been thrilled to death.”

Runsheng said, “That would have been a human trafficker.”

Yin Meng rolled her eyes at him. “When you were little, didn’t you ever want to wear new clothes and show off in front of the other kids?”

Runsheng said, “Grandpa and I retrieved corpses from the water. I smelled bad. No children wanted to play with me.”

Yin Meng’s tone immediately turned subdued. “Same here. The kids on the street were all told by their parents not to play with me because my family ran a coffin shop, and that it was bad luck.

“When I was little, even if Grandpa bought me toys or dolls, I had no one to show them off to. Heh.”

As she spoke, Yin Meng lowered her head and sniffed hard twice.

Hearing that, Runsheng froze for a moment. In the end, he could only quicken his pace and move ahead of her, then turn back and urge her on:

“Come on. Let’s go buy new clothes.”

Yin Meng reached up and wiped away tears that did not exist, putting on an expression of tears turning into laughter as she smiled and said:

“Okay! Let’s go!”

Tan Wenbin had driven off in the little pickup, so the two of them could only walk to the school gate.

Yin Meng said, “I’ll go hail a taxi.”

Runsheng said, “We’re taking the bus.”

Yin Meng said, “When I was little, whenever I saw other families taking taxis, I was so jealous. Too bad… hahaha!”

Halfway through saying it, Yin Meng herself could no longer keep a straight face and burst out laughing.

Then she jabbed Runsheng with her elbow and asked, “Didn’t you notice I was pretending to be pitiful just now?”

Runsheng said, “I noticed.”

Yin Meng said, “Then why did you still obediently come out with me to buy clothes?”

Runsheng said, “The regrets of childhood aren’t fake.”

Yin Meng stopped short, planted a hand on her waist, and said resentfully:

“I could whip you for ruining the good mood I was in when I came out today!”

…

Lin Shuyou arrived at Jinling University. During dinner yesterday, the Zhou brothers had mentioned their department, and the fact that they performed lion dances and were fairly well-known on campus.

After asking around, Lin Shuyou found their dorm room, but their roommate told him the two of them had gone out early in the morning.

Lin Shuyou noticed that in the corner of the dorm, a big sheet of pink star-pattern wallpaper had just been pasted onto the wall.

If Li Zhuiyuan or Tan Wenbin had been there, they definitely would have gone over and peeled it back to see what it was covering up, and then they would have discovered the charred black marks on the wall.

But Lin Shuyou only thought that putting up wallpaper like that in a boys’ dorm room was kind of sissy.

Then he left.

Next, by asking students he met along the way, he actually managed to track down a clue. From the campus residential area, he made his way to a rather secluded riverbank beside the school.

And he really did find the Zhou brothers there.

Zhou Cheng and Zhou Feng were speaking to a freshly buried mound of earth. Then the two of them turned and left with red eyes.

After they were gone, Lin Shuyou walked over to the mound, took a trident out of his bag, and prepared to dig and see what was buried there. After all, this was probably an extremely important clue.

He had only turned up the soil twice when he heard footsteps behind him.

He shifted sideways, turned back, and saw the Zhou brothers returning. One of them was holding paper money, while the other carried candles.

The expressions on the brothers’ faces were extremely ugly. Their eyes, already red from crying, had now turned red with rage.

Lin Shuyou said, “I’m sorry. Please, let me explain.”

Zhou Cheng said, “Fine, I’ll listen to your—”

Zhou Feng threw down the candles in his hand, lunged forward with a quick step, and launched a flying kick straight at Lin Shuyou.

Lin Shuyou sidestepped to avoid it, then reflexively lifted his leg and drove a knee into Zhou Feng’s waist.

It was an instinctive response from a trained martial artist. Yesterday, during the stage performance, the lion costume on him had restricted him a great deal.

Because of that hit, the direction of Zhou Feng’s flying kick changed, and both his legs plunged directly into the soft dirt pit where the lion head had just been buried.

Seeing this, Zhou Cheng raised his fists and charged in as well.

The three of them instantly got into a fierce brawl.

…

In the dorm room, Li Zhuiyuan had set up a divination array for himself.

He sat in the middle of its markings, lit three candles, and began to chant an incantation while deducing calculations. He was trying to calculate himself.

Halfway through, he stopped at once.

Calculating oneself was taboo. There was no way he would make that mistake again. He was only trying to use this method to determine whether someone else was calculating him.

He sensed nothing.

That meant the other side might be using a more sophisticated method, or at least a more complete setup. Considering the background of that hand, this was not surprising.

After wiping away the array, Li Zhuiyuan turned the bronze mirror and activated the isolation array in the dorm room.

Then he crouched by the bed, dragged out the large bundle stored underneath it, returned to the desk, and unwrapped it.

This Evil Book had burned last time, and when he opened it now, there was not the slightest sign of restoration.

Li Zhuiyuan spread it open, skipped past the charred pages, and picked one that was merely yellowed and curled from smoke.

After adjusting his paint palette, he picked up a brush and began painting on that page. He did not hurry to draw the candle-bearing bowed figure. Instead, he first painted the burning lion from last night’s dream.

When the lion was only half-finished, the Evil Book completed the remaining half on its own.

Then the whole painting gradually faded, and a line of text emerged:

“The lion spirit entrusted a dream, burning itself to give warning.”

There was nothing wrong with the lion spirit’s warning itself. What was problematic was the form it took.

Li Zhuiyuan had painted it first not because he wanted an answer, but because he wanted to test whether this Evil Book still worked.

The facts proved that the book was still crippled in body but unbent in spirit.

Li Zhuiyuan picked up the brush again. This time he painted the bowed figure holding the candle.

The boy suspected the Evil Book recognized this thing.

Because if that hand wanted to lay a trap for him, it certainly could not command beings directly tied to its own faction. It would also have to find a relatively objective third-party evil thing.

Only that way could it better make its actions logically consistent with the Heavenly Dao.

Moreover, this thing had to possess enough of an advantage in power to defeat him. Even if it could not kill him outright, it had to at least cripple or grievously injure him and force him, with no other choice, to light the lamp a second time and admit defeat.

So this thing was most likely no obscure nobody.

To him, the Evil Book was like a living encyclopedia. It might actually know who this thing was.

At the same time, given the situation he currently faced, the one who had set a trap for Uncle Qin back then might not be the same one setting a trap for him now, but the standard of their scheming should be about the same.

After all, anyone who dared use dirty tricks against the Dragon King’s clan could not be some ordinary sort.

And in terms of absolute strength, the hand that set the trap for Uncle Qin would only have been stronger than the one facing him now, because Uncle Qin had begun his river walk as an adult. He had been prepared.

Li Zhuiyuan remembered that Uncle Qin had once used the word “they” to describe the ones who plotted against him. Did that mean there had been more than one hand plotting against Uncle Qin?

Under such difficult circumstances, Uncle Qin had still managed to survive after his forced river walk failure, return alive to light the lamp and admit defeat, and could even stand and walk again now. That was enough to show how powerful Uncle Qin was.

And that gave Li Zhuiyuan a reminder as well: the other side might simply be treating him as just another ordinary river walker from the Qin and Liu families. They would go all out even when hunting a rabbit with the strength of a lion, but they probably would not bring out the very last things in their arsenal.

And that was where his opportunity lay.

Setting aside the old lady’s support, if he went up against that hand directly, the disparity in strength would certainly be extreme.

But fortunately, he was in the middle of a river walk.

Just yesterday, Professor Zhu had pointed out a new way for him to understand and observe river water, and now he was already using it.

There was both unity and struggle between him and the river water. Right now was precisely the time for their unity to take effect.

“I don’t know what your real purpose toward me is, but at least for now, no matter what I may think in my heart, I truly am willing to eliminate evil and uphold the Dao, to act in the way a righteous person should.

“No matter how much the two of us fight in wit and cunning, that is a matter between us. It is an internal contradiction between the two of us. What does it have to do with some third hand?

“Look, that hand is imitating you. It is desecrating you. What does it think it is?

“If you can tolerate that, I can’t.

“My guess is that before, you had no choice and could only inflict a bit of karmic punishment.

“That’s fine.

“This time I’ll help connect the lines for you. The two of us can pull off something big together.”

Li Zhuiyuan had no idea whether saying these things was useful. In any case, while his hand was busy painting, his mouth had nothing better to do.

When he got to the feet, he could no longer continue.

The brush tip touched the page, but the page no longer revealed anything.

It seemed the book had learned its lesson from being burned last time. This time, it actually refused to let him finish drawing.

And beside the nearly completed painting, several lines of text began to appear faintly.

Visible one moment and hidden the next, they were impossible to read no matter how good one’s eyesight was.

Because the Evil Book’s intention was clear: it already knew who this thing was, but it simply would not tell him.

It was trying to hold the upper hand over him.

Li Zhuiyuan lifted the brush and wrote beside it:

“Tell me the answer, and after this is over, I will grant you one request, so long as it does not violate the standards of the righteous path.”

The words Li Zhuiyuan had written faded away, replaced by a short line:

[You’re trying to trick a book.]

Obviously, after several rounds of contact, the man and the book had come to understand each other quite well.

The Evil Book knew that Li Zhuiyuan would never make any deal with it.

There was not the slightest embarrassment on Li Zhuiyuan’s face at being exposed. Instead, he dipped the brush in ink again and began writing line after line on the page. After each line, the Evil Book immediately gave a response:

“The Yin-Yang Parting Fire Evil-Slaying Array.”

[At least give me something to patch up my ink-starved pages.]

“The Dissolution of Evil, Yin-Slashing, Dragon-Hewing Array.”

[Please, just take pity on me. Bestow a little junk on me, anything at all.]

“The Eight Wastes Thunder Pool Demon-Subduing Array.”

[You really are a man with a heart of stone. Have you no mercy at all?]

“The Azure Dragon Crimson Blood Heavenly Punishment Array.”

[My life is so bitter, truly so bitter.]

Li Zhuiyuan dipped the brush in red pigment and jabbed it onto the page.

A red dot immediately appeared on the paper.

The boy’s gaze turned icy. Once this matter was over and the brush left the page, he would set about destroying this book.

He believed the Evil Book could sense his truest emotions through the brush tip.

The best threat was the most truthful statement.

He did not wait deliberately for long before lifting the brush.

The red dot began to spin and formed words at the fastest possible speed:

[It is a Dream Ghost!]

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