She Likes Me? How Ridiculous, Who Would—

A door nearly two meters tall—anything whose head could float above it was certainly no human.

He Zhuoming fell silent, pressing her lips tightly together. She scooted closer to Lin Qingyun and grabbed his sleeve; the two huddled together, almost clinging to each other as they trembled.

Too frightened to pay attention to anything else, He Zhuoming kept her eyes fixed on the dark shadow hovering over the half-open door, and didn't notice Lin Qingyun's expression.

Had she turned to look at his face, she would have seen not a trace of fear there—he was merely huddling with her out of solidarity, utterly unbothered by the ghost outside.

After all, he was only a puppet. The few drops of blood Lin Qingyun had given him weren't enough to fuel any particularly intense emotions.

But now, because they were pressed so close together, the wooden puppet could hear Xiao He's racing heartbeat, feel the rapid rise and fall of her breath curled against his palm.

A warm, living creature was nestled intimately against him.

This realization stirred something strange and inexplicable in the wooden puppet, so much so that he entirely forgot the monster lurking beyond the door.

He was completely absorbed by He Zhuoming's breathing and heartbeat—an influence with no source he could understand.

Especially the patch of skin on his palm where her breath had left its warmth. It seemed almost ready to tear away from the rest of him and become something separate—moist and itching, as if tender shoots beneath were desperate to burst through the flesh and grow.

The wooden puppet let go, and as he lowered his arm, he pressed his thumb into his own palm.

It wasn't his imagination. The skin his fingertip touched was indeed faintly damp, and beneath it, a small raised bump pulsed.

He Zhuoming tilted her head and gave Lin Qingyun a gentle knock with her own. "It... looks like it's gone?" she whispered very, very quietly.

Lin Qingyun looked up at the upper half of the door. Only the pale glow of moonlight filtered through the paper now—the shadow was gone.

They pressed their heads together, four eyes fixed intently on that half-door.

He Zhuoming's palms were slick with cold sweat, terrified the shadow would suddenly burst through with a blood-soaked ghost face.

Her hair tangled with Lin Qingyun's unkempt locks, and the long earring that had been caught in his hair now snagged in hers too. She didn't notice—until a drop of water landed on top of her head.

She reached up instinctively to touch her scalp, only to find her hand wasn't wet with water but stained with dark red blood.

He Zhuoming's body, which had just started to relax, went rigid again. Voice trembling, she asked, "The—the kitchen doesn't have any windows, right?"

Lin Qingyun stayed silent, lifting his gaze upward: in the chimney directly above the stove, a dark red shadow was writhing its way down.

The chimney was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for half a youth's body, yet the ghost's form was far bulkier and taller than any boy—a mass of boneless flesh and blood stuffed backward into the flue, two hands dangling at the front.

The hands had been severed cleanly at the wrists, blood dripping steadily from the stumps—some falling onto He Zhuoming's hair, some onto Lin Qingyun's upturned face.

"Tang Shuyu... Tang Shuyu... Tang Shuyu..."

The voice, steeped in resentment and malice, poured from the mouth of that mass of flesh. Behind the shadow, a pair of crimson eyes fixed their vicious gaze on the two people below.

He Zhuoming didn't dare look up, afraid she'd get a faceful of it the moment she lifted her head.

She grabbed Lin Qingyun and shouted, "Don't just stand there staring—run! Run, run, run—!"

Extreme terror has a way of unlocking hidden reserves. He Zhuoming, who usually struggled just to climb a slope, found herself hauling Lin Qingyun up onto the pile of junk blocking the door in one bound; the two crashed into the half-papered upper door together, and sure enough, the flimsy paper frame shattered into pieces under their combined weight!

As they tumbled out, Lin Qingyun wrapped his arms around He Zhuoming, turning himself into a cushion for her.

The moment they hit the ground, he heard the crack of bones inside his own body—but even with bones breaking, the pain was faint, distant, barely there.

So he felt nothing, acting as if nothing had happened as he took He Zhuoming by the arm and helped her up.

At the same time, a ghostly shadow clambered up the broken half-door they'd just smashed through.

This time He Zhuoming couldn't avoid it. She looked up, and there in the moonlight was the ghost's face, clear as day: a male ghost.

The upper half of his face was still intact, just pale and corpselike, but the lower half was nothing but white bone strung with bloody tendons. His two arms, severed at the wrists, were now tearing at the remaining doorframe.

His body was too big—the gap He Zhuoming and Lin Qingyun had smashed together wasn't wide enough for him to crawl through. At the same time, he seemed furious, a cold wind howling and black vapors swirling all around.

In the middle of a summer night, the chill seeping through him made He Zhuoming shiver all over.

Thankfully she'd eaten a full dinner. Terrified as she was, she still snapped into action, grabbing Lin Qingyun and bolting for the inn's main hall.

They sprinted all the way back to the lobby. He Zhuoming was about to drag a table over to block the back door when Lin Qingyun pulled her back and continued up the stairs.

The old, poorly maintained staircase groaned under their feet. He Zhuoming, half-worried the steps would collapse beneath them, shouted, "The door's not closed!"

Lin Qingyun ignored her, tugging her all the way to their room and pushing her inside—He Zhuoming spun in place from the shove, turned back to face Lin Qingyun, and grabbed his arm, dizzy and confused: "Wait! Wait! We—"

Before she could finish, Lin Qingyun clamped a hand over her mouth.

In her panic, He Zhuoming gasped instinctively, inhaling a strange, woody scent.

It smelled a bit like one of those street trees, with a damp, woody fragrance.

She tilted her face up to look at Lin Qingyun—even at a moment like this, he was still smiling. His appearance was a mess, the long beaded chain on his left earlobe tangled backward into his unkempt hair.

With his free hand, he pressed an index finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.

He Zhuoming didn't understand why, but she understood the gesture well enough. She nodded quickly, covered her own mouth, and whispered in a barely audible puff of air, "I won't make a sound."

Lin Qingyun smiled. The hand that had just touched his own lips now brushed gently against He Zhuoming's cheek.

Xiao He's face was hot and clammy, skin rising and falling with each breath.

Lin Qingyun opened his mouth, forcing the words out syllable by painful syllable: "Quiet. Stay. In. The. Room."

With that, he pushed He Zhuoming deeper into the room and shut the door.

The room key was still in the wooden puppet's hand. Quick as a flash, he locked the door from the outside, then turned—just as the male ghost drifted silently in from the back door.

Their eyes met. The ghost wept tears of blood from his resentful eyes, but the wooden puppet simply smiled at him. Right in front of the ghost, he opened his mouth wide and swallowed the room key.

A cold wind sent the lobby's tables and chairs tumbling, the wooden stairs banging and rattling—the ghost and the wooden puppet grappled and fought, two nonhuman beings evenly matched, both equally immune to spells. Neither could attack the other with magic, so they tore at each other like wild beasts, rolling from upstairs to downstairs, scattering specks of blood across the corridor and the steps.

The moonlight dimmed steadily, and a bright, pale blue began to glow at the edge of the sky.

The inn's front door, which had been tightly shut, suddenly opened on its own. A young man walked in, dressed in red with a jade ring at his waist, a light, cheerful smile on his face—on his shoulder perched a flower-carrying swallow, puffing its chest proudly as it glanced around.

Lin Qingyun reached out his hand. The swallow landed on his palm and transformed into a pitch-black longsword. The blade swept across the male ghost's neck, casual and unremarkable, and in the same stroke, it cleared all the yin energy hanging over the entire inn.

Warmth, the kind peculiar to summer nights, began to seep back, settling over the inn once more.

The bloodstains scattered across the lobby floor, the stairs, and the hallway all dissipated into wisps of black smoke.

Lin Qingyun lowered his gaze to the wooden puppet lying on the ground—after the fierce struggle, its human form had been badly damaged.

Torn skin revealed the tangled roots beneath, and the severed limbs oozed a tree's sap. But its face had been well protected, not a single scratch—just stained with some black ghost blood.

Their eyes met, and Lin Qingyun's smile widened.

He crouched down and tidied the puppet's ragged collar, his tone gentle: "You did very well. You did a good job protecting Xiao He."

The wooden puppet stared at Lin Qingyun's face. After a moment, it slowly curved its lips upward, trying to mimic him, to mirror his smile exactly.

But before it could complete the expression, Lin Qingyun's palm covered its face. He pressed down hard—smiling with his mouth, but the force in his hand was clearly meant to crush.

Still, the wooden puppet was wood, not human. It had little need for breath, so its head merely got pressed in a bit, but it didn't die.

Lin Qingyun's tone remained gentle. "But don't smile at me. Seeing a puppet wearing my face and mimicking my expression is a bit disgusting."

He slowly closed his fingers, feeling the wooden puppet's head crumble beneath his palm—a faint voice slipped through the gaps between his fingers.

The wooden puppet: "Xiao He. Likes me."

Lin Qingyun: "?"

This time, he was genuinely surprised. Partly because the wooden puppet had spoken, and partly because of what it had said.

He let go, revealing the crushed head beneath.

The head was now unrecognizable, nothing but a pile of shattered wood shavings. A few strands of refined blood seeped from the puppet's body, then, drawn by some attraction, drifted close to Lin Qingyun's wrist and sank into his skin.

Returning along with that refined blood was a single day—the brief time the wooden puppet had spent with He Zhuoming.

Lin Qingyun's upturned lips gradually fell. He looked down at the pile of splinters—among the wood chips, a few strands of entangled hair were caught.

Those were from when the wooden puppet and He Zhuoming had hidden together in the kitchen, when the earring had accidentally snagged some of He Zhuoming's hair.

Lin Qingyun stared at those few strands with an expressionless face. When his eyes weren't smiling, they looked sharp and sinister.

Suddenly, he let out a derisive snort, as if he'd just heard a very funny joke. "Low-level puppets are just low-level, huh. Being shameless like that, like a dog that can't stop eating shit—saying stuff like 'Xiao He likes you,' such filthy words. How disgusting, yuck~"

"How ridiculous. Who would fall for a piece of wood? Just go die."

He twisted his wrist, forcing out the few drops of blood that had just soaked into his skin, then fed them to the flower-carrying swallow.

*

He Zhuoming clutched her wooden sword, pressing her ear as close to the door as possible, straining to hear what was happening outside.

Minutes ago, there had been the howling of wind, the shrieking of ghosts, and a clattering racket—but now, suddenly, silence.

A knot of anxiety tightened in He Zhuoming's stomach: Is it over? Who won? Qingyun, or the ghost?

It should be Qingyun, right—he's the male lead... but he also said he couldn't beat that ghost. Is the male ghost really stronger than that bizarre idol in the village?

He Zhuoming thought and thought, thinking until her head throbbed, until she even wanted to throw up. She hadn't realized she'd been crying for quite a while, but she obediently stayed quiet, never once trying to charge out with her wooden sword.

The silence outside was broken by footsteps, growing closer.

Each step felt like it landed directly on He Zhuoming's stomach—the louder the steps, the stronger the nausea churning in her gut. But she held back the urge to vomit and held her breath, desperately trying to remember whether these footsteps sounded like Lin Qingyun's.

...She couldn't tell.

The instant the lock clicked open, He Zhuoming's head buzzed with tension, her whole body so wound up she felt sick—then Lin Qingyun appeared before her, a familiar smile on his face: "Xiao He, you—"

He Zhuoming let out a retching sound and vomited, cutting off Lin Qingyun's words.

He had no choice but to steady her first. The moment he grabbed her arm, he felt her go limp, leaning her weight against him.

Her face was deathly pale, slightly puffy, and a ring of pomegranate-red had bloomed around her eyes from crying so long.

Lin Qingyun couldn't help but touch her cheek—cold, damp, rising and falling with each ragged breath.

Lin Qingyun: "Poor thing. How did you get so scared?"

He Zhuoming asked, her voice weak: "Did you win?"

Lin Qingyun answered, "I won."

He Zhuoming relaxed, dropped the wooden sword, and collapsed onto the bed.

Lin Qingyun walked over to the bedside and squatted down, grinning. "Xiao He was so brave yesterday. Even while running away, you remembered to drag me along. I'm so touched, oh."

He Zhuoming didn't respond—Lin Qingyun leaned in a little closer and realized she'd already fallen asleep.

He reached out, pinched her cheek, and twisted. He Zhuoming didn't react at all, sleeping as if she'd died.

Lin Qingyun's smile collapsed instantly.

He poked her cheek, staring at her with a fixed, cold gaze. "You don't sleep when you should, and the moment I start talking, you fall asleep. How can you have so much sleep every single day?"

"If you'd just eaten your dinner and gone straight to bed last night instead of wandering around with strangers, how would you have ended up meeting a reanimated corpse?"

The male ghost was none other than the black-clad bladesman who had attacked Lin Qingyun earlier.

He truly loathed Lin Qingyun. After dying, when he encountered the wooden puppet carrying Lin Qingyun's aura, he immediately reanimated as a vengeful spirit, willing to give up even his next life just to exact revenge on Lin Qingyun.

Lin Qingyun thought it over, sighed, and the fingers poking He Zhuoming's cheek abruptly grew gentler. "Xiao He, you really are unlucky. He was only here to take revenge on me, you know—if you hadn't dragged me along and had just run off on your own, nothing would have happened at all."

"A soft heart gets bitten by dogs, eh."

He Zhuoming slept until hunger woke her. When she opened her eyes and saw that the room was still dark with the gloom of night, she thought she was still in that nightmarish evening and bolted upright in bed, terrified.

A sudden snap of fingers right in front of her eyes—He Zhuoming froze, then slowly lifted her head to look at the one who'd snapped: it was Lin Qingyun.

His hair was neat again, the long beaded chain on his left ear no longer tangled. That delicate, handsome face wore a soft smile, eyes curving into crescents.

His clothes were clean too.

He Zhuoming stared at him, dazed. When Lin Qingyun stopped snapping his fingers, he just smiled at her, tilting his head.

After a long moment, He Zhuoming spoke: "Did you change your clothes?"

Lin Qingyun: "Mm, new clothes. Want some?"

He Zhuoming: "I'm hungry. I want to eat first."

There was already food laid out in the room. As He Zhuoming wolfed it down, Lin Qingyun told her she'd slept through an entire day.

He propped his chin on his hands, arms resting on the table. "I kept worrying you'd died. Every half hour, I'd check if you were still breathing."

He Zhuoming was deeply moved. "Thank you for caring about me."