Chapter 72: Joyful Wedding, Mourning Cry 3 Part 2
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Before the shop owner could finish his sentence, Yan Shixun had already stepped onto the windowsill, pushed off with a powerful kick, and agilely leaped downward. His hair fluttered in the wind as he left a fading silhouette through the glass.
He quickly disappeared outside the window.
The shop owner, frightened to the core, felt his heart racing. He hurriedly moved, almost rolling in fear, and rushed to the window. He clung to the window frame, desperately stretching his neck to peer downward.
However, he witnessed Yan Shixun landing gracefully on the narrow rain canopy of the second floor, effortlessly dissipating the impact force. He then used this momentum to change direction and leaped outward, avoiding a landing in the garbage pile below.
The candle in Yan Shixun’s hand continued to burn, emitting black smoke, unaffected by the strong wind when he leaped down.
After glancing a few times at the pit in the trash heap that had been dug out earlier, Yan Shixun quickly followed the direction indicated by the black smoke from the candle, taking brisk strides.
The owner stared blankly and leaned against the windowsill, unable to recover his senses for a long time.
“He probably thought that jumping out of the window was the shortest way.”
Beside him, Ye Li strolled to the edge of the window, lowered his gaze, and looked down. His slender, dark eyes filled with amusement. “Quite adorable.”
However, for some reason, even though the person next to him was smiling, the owner felt as if he was being suffocated and struggled to breathe.
The owner quickly stepped back several paces, finding refuge in the farthest corner. It was only there that he began to feel some relief, as he sensed his breathing returning to normal.
Is this sir accompanying Mr. Yan? He seems just as formidable as Mr. Yan.
The owner, still trembling, stole a glance at Ye Li’s departing figure. In his heart, he secretly thought, but because there were two masters he considered formidable nearby, he felt a bit more at ease. It seemed like he would definitely be able to recover his “Hua’er” without any worries.
Once Yan Shixun’s figure disappeared from his view, blocked by nearby buildings, Ye Li finally shifted his gaze slightly. He glanced at the owner, who had retreated not far away.
A cold snort escaped from Ye Li’s throat, and his deep, magnetic voice was icy enough to almost chill one’s soul.
“Are you really without karma, Yang Guang?”
He asked in this manner.
The owner’s body suddenly stiffened, his pupils contracted. The expression in his eyes as he looked at Ye Li was filled with incredulous fear. He stammered, “You… What do you know…”
……
Following the trail of black candle smoke, Yan Shixun turned several corners and quickly arrived at the location the candle had directed him to.
However, instead of finding Yang Hua, he encountered another young man.
This young man was dressed in stylish, fashionable clothing, and his hair was styled with curls, enhancing his already high level of attractiveness. He looked like someone who could be mistaken for a celebrity while walking down the street, giving the impression that he belonged in luxurious and bustling places.
But now, he lay in the narrow alley, looking disheveled. His once handsome clothes were smeared with moss and dirt. The fabric at his elbow had been torn, with blood seeping through, staining his clothes and the wall. Even the white cuffs had caught a bit of ash.
It seemed that this person was the other one who had fought with Yang Duo in the house.
Yan Shixun looked around, but there was no sign of Yang Duo, who had come here following the candle’s guidance.
The candle was no longer emitting black smoke, as if it believed that its task, guided by the spell, had come to an end and no longer needed to indicate direction.
Occasional passersby only thought that the person lying on the roadside had fainted after a fight and chose to avoid getting involved.
Yan Shixun raised an eyebrow in annoyance, extinguished the candle, and looked down at the man. “Although I’d love to leave you here, it seems like I’m the only one to rescue you, huh?”
The young man had a pale face with black lips, completely unconscious and unresponsive to Yan Shixun.
Tsk.
It would be better to have that guy Ye Li follow and help. He could find someone to do the hard labor. He had little to do with this person, and he didn’t want to bring him back.
Yan Shixun sighed, bent over, grabbed the man’s coat collar, and dragged him across the rough, stony road toward the home of the breakfast shop owner.
This would save him some effort.
Yan Shixun thought about this emotionlessly, his slender fingers skillfully calculating. Occasionally, he drew lines of varying lengths on his thigh, calculating Yang Duo’s whereabouts on the spot.
The hexagram indicated that Yang Duo was missing, but another person closely related to Yang Duo had returned home.
Yan Shixun stopped in his tracks.
Closely related person…siblings, it was Yang Hua.
After the owner of the breakfast shop returned home, Yang Duo, who had originally taken full control of Yang Hua’s body and appeared outside, seemed to have sensed it. Due to her husband’s anxiety and worry, she wanted to return home out of telepathic connection. She forcibly broke free from Yang Duo’s control and came home on her own.
When Yan Shixun dragged the unconscious stranger back to the breakfast shop owner’s home, he saw a woman lying at the entrance from afar.
As the breakfast shop owner had described, Yang Hua, who was once considered beautiful, had indeed lost her spirit and looked emaciated. From a distance, Yang Hua’s frail and almost skeletal body resembled a skeleton lying in the darkness of the shadowy entrance, swallowed by the pitch-black doorway.
Her eyes were tightly closed, eye sockets sunken and dark, lips bluish-black without any color, her face waxen yellow. Even if one didn’t look closely, her chest hardly rose and fell, almost making her appear lifeless.
“Yang Guang.”
Yan Shixun didn’t approach or try to pick up Yang Hua recklessly. Instead, he stopped a few meters away and shouted the name of the breakfast shop owner.
After deliberately focusing his energy in his lower abdomen and injecting it into the meridians, his voice became incredibly penetrating, instantly reaching the ears of the breakfast shop owner on the fourth floor, even though he was downstairs.
Your wife is downstairs. Come down and bring her up.”
Soon, the iron gate “clanged” open, followed by a flurry of hurried footsteps.
The breakfast shop owner rushed downstairs, and upon seeing his wife lying on the ground, he was both surprised and worried. With a trembling voice, he cried out, “Hua’er, what’s happened to you?”
“Take her upstairs and put her in the bedroom first; I’ll follow,” Yan Shixun’s voice was calm. “She’s exhausted right now. Because she’s been possessed by a ghost, she has a heavy yin energy and weak yang energy. Other people with strong yang energy might hurt her if they get too close.”
“Don’t just stand there crying; if you leave your wife on the ground in the cold, there could be trouble.”
Yan Shixun’s composed voice managed to calm down the owner of the breakfast shop. He wiped away his tears and carried his wife upstairs.
After waiting for a while and hearing the creaking sound of the iron gate coming from upstairs, Yan Shixun finally started to walk toward the staircase, holding the stranger in his arms.
However, in the moment he stepped over the threshold, Yan Shixun suddenly looked up, his eyes sharpening as he gazed into the darkness in the corner of the staircase.
In the dimness, a woman in a red wedding dress with disheveled hair, pale skin, and eyes as dark as coal stood there. Her lips were as red as blood. She stood in the darkness. Her red embroidered shoes peeked out from under her skirt, floating in the air.
Without uttering a word, the woman in red looked at Yan Shixun and the person he was holding with a gaze filled with resentment and hatred.
“Yang Duo?” Yan Shixun was not startled but calmly asked, “Since you’re already dead, why are you clinging to the living? Why don’t you leave?”
The woman in red, with eyes entirely black without whites, cast a hateful glance at Yan Shixun.
But when Yan Shixun blinked and looked again, there was nothing in the darkness. There were only eyes that had gradually adjusted to the dimness after walking from a well-lit area to a dark one. What he saw was a red plastic coat hanger thrown into the corner, with a piece of torn fabric hanging on it, resembling a woman’s skirt.
It seemed like it was all just an illusion.
Yan Shixun paused for a moment but continued to ascend the staircase unaffected.
The old and worn-out building, the narrow and dimly lit staircase, and the newspapers pasted on the windows had long turned yellow with age, with some peeling off and making a “rustling” sound in the breeze. In the corners where light couldn’t reach, discarded items appeared like twisted human figures, clinging to the walls, silently watching everything with glass-bead-like eyes…
……
When Lu Xingxing woke up, he felt as if his entire body had been run over by a truck. Every bone in his body protested with a creaking sound, and his muscles ached as if they had been stewed in vinegar and then returned to him.
He let out a painful groan, managed to sit up with difficulty, and covered his eyes with his hand, attempting to use his aching brain to recall what had just happened.
He remembered hearing about the deeds of Master Uncle Li Chengyun from his master and grandmaster. His master and grandmaster had praised that disciple of Li Chengyun’s incessantly.
Out of frustration, he had decided to find that disciple himself and challenge him to see if he was as good as his master claimed. He couldn’t understand why his master scolded him every day but nodded in approval for Li Chengyun’s disciple.
After painstakingly calculating the approximate address of that person, he had come here secretly. Unexpectedly, the person lived in a complex and labyrinthine old urban area with mixed inhabitants. He had walked for a long time without finding the place, feeling like he had entered a maze from which he couldn’t escape.
As a result, he got lost in the old urban area. Even though he opened the map for navigation, it was only semi-functional due to the abundance of small alleys and lanes here. It led him into dead ends repeatedly, rendering it practically useless.
However, just at that moment, he suddenly sensed a strong presence of spiritual energy nearby. So, he rushed toward it, only to come face to face with a woman exuding a strong ghostly aura at the door of a house.
He couldn’t stand the thought that his master had said he hadn’t officially become a master yet, and might end up being chased by the ghost when he went to catch one. His blood boiled, and he pulled out the yellow talisman he always carried in his pocket and charged at the woman. They ended up fighting.
However, the woman seemed unusually strong that the talismans his master had given him had no effect. He got injured and could only escape in a sorry state, jumping off the building in desperation. Yet, the woman continued to pursue him relentlessly, causing him to get injured repeatedly.
In his last conscious moment before losing consciousness, all he remembered was the woman suddenly stopping her menacing pursuit in front of him and looking back.
After that, he had no recollection of what happened.
Lu Xingxing rubbed his face and chuckled bitterly.
Master, you were right when you said that when catching ghosts, you might end up being chased by one…
“Are you awake? If you are, get up. Is lying on the ground so comfortable for you?”
A magnetic voice, laced with teasing, came from above.
Lu Xingxing, puzzled, lowered the hand covering his eyes and saw a man sitting casually on the sofa next to him.
The man was dressed in a simple black short-sleeved shirt and boots, with one long leg casually crossed over the other, lazily propping his perfect jawline with his palm as he looked at him.
That unmistakable, arrogantly handsome face was none other than Yan Shixun, who he had seen on that variety show before!
Lu Xingxing’s eyes narrowed. His face was filled with astonishment and anger.
Yan Shixun raised an eyebrow, “I exerted myself to drag you back, and now I have a white wolf with a disdainful look on my hands? What’s with that expression? Do you think I saved you by mistake? If so, I can drag you back right now.”
Note: white wolf refers to traitor or ungrateful people.
With that, Yan Shixun got up from the sofa, as if he were about to drag Lu Xingxing away again.
“Wait a minute!” Lu Xingxing took a defensive stance, pointing at Yan Shixun, “Aren’t you from the show? How did you end up here?”
Lu Xingxing looked around and realized he was in the same place where he had trembled in fear before the evil spirit. He became even more vigilant and tried to get up by pushing on the ground with his hands, “Do you know there are ghosts here? You dared to come here? You’ve got some nerve.”
But as soon as he finished speaking, he found himself sitting on the ground again because his arms lacked the strength to support him.
Yan Shixun looked somewhat surprised, “Not many people think I shouldn’t appear where there are ghosts. And judging by your tone, you’ve seen that variety show, haven’t you?”
“Don’t worry, you don’t need to worry about ghosts for now. Worry more about yourself,” Yan Shixun raised his hand and pointed to Lu Xingxing’s arm, “I used a spell to stop the bleeding and neutralize the poison to prevent infection. You’ll have to bandage it up yourself. Can you manage that?”
Upon hearing this, Lu Xingxing instinctively lowered his head and indeed saw that his injured arm was no longer bleeding.
“You saved me?” Lu Xingxing felt a bit dazed. “You can even perform hemostasis spells? Are you really as amazing as you appear on TV?”
“You haven’t even graduated (fully become an exorcist master), have you? Next time you encounter an evil spirit, don’t rush in recklessly. Go back and find your master or your sect. It’s better than losing your life.”
Seeing that Lu Xingxing had awakened and was speaking coherently with no apparent issues, it seemed that the influence of the malevolent spirit had not been too severe. Yan Shixun shifted his attention away from him and left with a piece of advice before walking to the other side.
The owner was silently shedding tears in a state of despair as he crouched just outside the bedroom.
His wife, Yang Hua, had already fallen into a deep sleep in the bedroom after Yan Shixun had recited a calming spell for her. During this time, her sleep deprivation and the intrusion of the malevolent spirit had drained all her vitality, leaving her as cold and withered as a corpse. She slept deeply now.
Just moments ago, Yan Shixun had also taken the opportunity to exorcise the evil spirit that had possessed Yang Hua while she was in her dreams. This had relieved her of some of her suffering, but her frail body was unable to withstand it.
“I’ve drawn exorcism talismans on the walls of your house with cinnabar. Remember not to splash water on them or rub them off. As long as the exorcism talismans are still there, Yang Duo won’t be able to approach your wife.”
Sitting down in front of the owner, Yan Shixun said, “However, this is only a temporary solution. We also need to appease the grievances of the deceased and fulfill their requests for her to stop disturbing your wife. Only then can you both return to your normal life.”
“I will go back to the village you mentioned. Since Yang Duo’s remains are buried there, the solution can only be found there.”
The owner was trembling all over, only able to nod repeatedly while expressing his gratitude to Yan Shixun, “Thank you, Mr. Yan, thank you…”
However, suddenly, the owner’s gaze inadvertently swept past Yan Shixun’s back, and he froze on the spot, his eyes wide open.
Sensing something was wrong, Yan Shixun immediately turned around to look.
He saw a pale, bluish woman’s face pressed against the window just outside, gazing inside the house with a resentful look. However, the entire room was covered with bright red talismans drawn all over the white walls.
A faint smile curved up on Yan Shixun’s lips.
“Yang Duo, I will go to find you.”
Author’s note:
Others: Running for their lives from ghosts.
Brother Yan: Excitedly chasing after ghosts.
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