Forgotten, Yet a Puppet's

He Zhuoming muttered, "Qingyun said that child might be a ghost."

Xu Feixian replied faintly, "Possible."

She released He Zhuoming's hand, and as she lowered her arm, her fingers trembled slightly without her consent. She carefully tucked her hand behind her back to keep it from being noticed, all while keeping her face calm but her heart tense as she watched He Zhuoming's expression.

He Zhuoming's expression didn't change—Xu Feixian couldn't help but worry that she hadn't even realized she'd written on her palm.

It wasn't that Xu Feixian thought He Zhuoming was stupid; it was just that He Zhuoming usually was a bit of an airheaded sweetheart.

He Zhuoming looked straight at her pale face and asked in confusion, "Feixian, why is there so much sweat on your forehead?"

Xu Feixian: "...Burning camphor wood to ward off evil spirits. The smoke got to me."

He Zhuoming bought it and nodded. "I see. So you're suffering from internal injuries now, right? Get some good rest. I'll come find you tomorrow to hang out."

Seeing that He Zhuoming was about to leave, Xu Feixian was sure she hadn't picked up on the hint at all, and her eyelids twitched with anxiety.

She grabbed He Zhuoming's wrist. "I—"

She only wanted to keep He Zhuoming from leaving with that suspicious 'Lin Qingyun,' but she hadn't thought of an excuse yet, so after the 'I,' she stuck.

He Zhuoming stopped and looked at her with confusion.

Xu Feixian swallowed. "I... I'm leaving here tomorrow."

"Ah!" He Zhuoming was shocked. "Why?"

Xu Feixian: "Because the Heroes' Gathering is already over."

He Zhuoming's eyes widened in disbelief. "What about the Day of Divine Celebration?"

Xu Feixian said, "That's over too."

He Zhuoming immediately started calculating the days in her head, but her mental arithmetic was slow, so the math lagged a beat.

Before she could figure it out, Xu Feixian explained, "It's been two days since you came looking for me to spend the night. This is the third day."

He Zhuoming finally got the numbers straight, but her focus drifted elsewhere. "I've only eaten one meal in three days!"

Xu Feixian: "..."

Just then, Tang Shuyu, who had been leaning against the doorframe like an ornament, suddenly straightened up and stepped across the threshold.

The door was plastered with an unusual number of exorcism talismans, and the threshold had some too, but when Tang Shuyu crossed it, none of the talismans reacted at all.

He walked over to stand beside He Zhuoming and said in a tone as casual as if he were discussing dinner, "Xiao He, we should go. It's getting late, and disturbing a sick person's rest isn't good."

He Zhuoming glanced at Xu Feixian's less-than-pleasant complexion and thought Tang Shuyu had a point.

She turned to him and said, "Go wait outside for me. I'll have a quick word with Feixian, then I'll come out."

Tang Shuyu looked puzzled. "Why should I go out? You talk; I'll just stand here. It's not like I'm covering your mouth."

He Zhuoming pushed him by the shoulders and shoved him out the door, saying with a serious expression, "It's a girls' secret talk. You're not allowed to eavesdrop!"

If Tang Shuyu had insisted on staying, He Zhuoming wouldn't have been able to move him. But He Zhuoming looked so serious that Tang Shuyu thought it over and decided that stubbornly staying would definitely make her unhappy.

In the past, Tang Shuyu wouldn't have thought about such subtle things. But after spending time with He Zhuoming, he'd gradually learned to read her moods—especially after that painful failure last time. Even though he spent his idle hours cursing the main body on the surface, he wasn't actually thinking about the main body at all.

He was just thinking about how to fix his last mistake the next time he saw Xiao He.

Still, Tang Shuyu was quite confused about why he couldn't stay, and even a little displeased. He was about to say something when He Zhuoming shut both doors right in his face.

The room was suddenly left with just He Zhuoming and Xu Feixian. He Zhuoming turned and trotted over to Xu Feixian, asking, "What did you write on my hand just now? There were too many strokes; I couldn't understand it."

Xu Feixian: "...You didn't understand it, but you still sent Lin Qingyun away?"

He Zhuoming scratched her head. "You didn't say it out loud—you wrote on my hand instead. Wasn't that because you didn't want Lin Qingyun to hear?"

Xu Feixian was so stunned that she was silent for a moment—probably because she had never had any expectations for He Zhuoming's brain, so when she suddenly showed a flash of cleverness, Xu Feixian's first reaction wasn't admiration but worry that He Zhuoming had been body-snatched.

After all, in the world she was familiar with, body possession was a common thing.

He Zhuoming had no idea what Xu Feixian was imagining and urged her, "If you have something to say, hurry up and say it. Look how pale you are. Get it over with and go rest so you can recover your strength."

She assumed that whatever Xu Feixian didn't want Tang Shuyu to hear was probably the gossip they'd been chatting about earlier.

Xu Feixian came back to herself and pressed her lips together, but she didn't answer He Zhuoming right away.

She walked around He Zhuoming, her gaze fixed on the closed door. Tang Shuyu hadn't gone far outside; his silhouette was still faintly visible, a blurry outline cast on the door panel.

He Zhuoming followed her gaze, asking, "What are you looking at?"

Xu Feixian thought for a moment, then walked to the table and took out paper and brush—speaking out loud was too risky, so she decided to write it down instead.

He Zhuoming was baffled and went over to peek at what she was writing. Xu Feixian dipped the brush tip in ink, but just as it was about to touch the paper, she paused.

She blanked for a moment, and a drop of ink fell from the brush tip onto the paper, spreading into a blot of black. Xu Feixian stared at the ink stain, blinking slowly, and murmured to herself, "I... what was I going to write?"

He Zhuoming answered honestly, "I don't know."

Xu Feixian suddenly forgot what she wanted to tell He Zhuoming—and when He Zhuoming asked what she had written on her hand, Xu Feixian couldn't remember that either.

He Zhuoming looked at her worriedly and mumbled, "Could it be some kind of aftereffect? Like, you heard a strange voice in the hidden chamber, and it did some damage to your brain?"

What He Zhuoming said sounded unreliable, but when Xu Feixian thought about it, it actually made sense. She had completely forgotten what she'd heard in the hidden chamber that day, but subconsciously she felt it was dangerous content, and that forgetting it was actually a good thing.

Xu Feixian frowned and put down the brush, hesitating for a long time before saying, "Forget it. When I remember, I'll tell you."

Her nerves weren't as taut as before. As she tidied up, she glanced at He Zhuoming a few times and noticed her two crooked braids, so she couldn't help asking, "Did you braid your hair yourself?"

He Zhuoming touched her hair and smiled sheepishly. "Qingyun braided it for me. Hehe."

Xu Feixian critiqued without mercy: "It's ugly."

He Zhuoming didn't mind and kept grinning foolishly. "I'm not good at braiding hair either."

Xu Feixian didn't much like the 'Lin Qingyun' He Zhuoming was so close to. She couldn't say why, but just hearing He Zhuoming mention him gave her a subtle, uncomfortable feeling.

But clearly He Zhuoming liked him, so Xu Feixian only commented on the braiding skills and then wisely shut up.

He Zhuoming said goodbye and left—as Xu Feixian closed the door, she noticed that the exorcism talismans on the door had faded in color.

Puzzled, she tore one off and examined it closely, only to find that the talisman had lost all its spiritual power and turned into a scrap of waste paper.

But no ghost or demon had appeared. Why would the talismans become waste paper?

Xu Feixian gripped the faded talisman, feeling bewildered. At the same time, she felt something wrong in her throat—she broke into violent coughing, and blood speckled out between the coughs.

*

When He Zhuoming stepped outside, she looked up and saw Tang Shuyu waiting in the courtyard below the steps.

The last time she'd been in this courtyard, it had been wrecked by the wandering souls, but now it was restored to perfect condition, with no sign that a fight had ever happened.

There was also a new well in the courtyard, with a crabapple tree growing beside it, covered in huge red blossoms that fell in scattered petals around the well's edge.

Tang Shuyu stood by the well, hands clasped behind his back, looking down into it.

He Zhuoming was curious what he was looking at and trotted over to peek too—but before she could lean her head in, Tang Shuyu pressed his index finger against her forehead and pushed her back.

Tang Shuyu smiled. "What are you doing?"

He Zhuoming shot back, "What are you looking at?"

Tang Shuyu: "The well water~"

He Zhuoming was puzzled. "What's there to see in well water? Why can't I take a look?"

Tang Shuyu said, "Xiao He, don't go near the well. It's dangerous. Whether you fall in or get pushed in, you'll easily become a water ghost!"

He Zhuoming shivered and gave up on leaning over, instead grabbing Tang Shuyu's sleeve and grumbling, "Fine, fine, I won't look... But stop trying to scare me with ghosts and stuff."

She didn't lean her head over, so she naturally couldn't see that there were indeed two wandering souls stuffed tightly at the bottom of the well, writhing and crawling in agony.

If He Zhuoming had looked, she would have recognized them as the same ghosts who had come to set up the confusion formation earlier. The sound of ghostly wailing poured endlessly from the well's mouth, and the ghosts were trying to climb out.

The crabapple tree by the well acted like an invisible barrier. Every time they painstakingly crawled a short distance up the smooth well wall, the petals falling from the treetop pierced through their bodies like sharp swords and pushed them back down.

And so it repeated, endlessly.

He Zhuoming's cultivation had improved, but she seemed to have no natural sensitivity to ghosts and spirits, and she still couldn't hear the ghostly cries.

Tang Shuyu covered her ears with both hands, squeezing her head as he led her away—He Zhuoming stumbled along, trying to shake his hands off, but when she flung her head, her two crooked braids whipped straight into Tang Shuyu's face.

They made two crisp sounds, like two slaps.

He Zhuoming was startled, and Tang Shuyu froze—He Zhuoming tilted her head to look at him, and his eyes were rounder than usual, red marks slowly surfacing on both cheeks.

She stared at Tang Shuyu's eyes a little longer, feeling like there was some change in him.

The truth was, the eyeballs he'd dug out weren't very agile, and because they were gradually withering, their luster had grown a bit murky.

But the moonlight was hazy, and He Zhuoming was slow to notice, so she didn't catch it. Once she snapped out of it, she laughed, reached out, and touched the red marks on Tang Shuyu's face—his slapped cheek wasn't even as warm as He Zhuoming's palm.

He Zhuoming: "Are you okay? Does it hurt? I didn't mean to—"

As she spoke, she laughed again, eyes curving, showing two neat rows of white teeth.

She liked to use filler words when she talked, partly because of her hometown dialect and partly because her elders always spoke to her in a soft, cooing voice, so she'd picked up the habit over time.

Filler words softened her tone anyway, and since He Zhuoming was genuinely embarrassed, her words came out even softer, almost in a coaxing, playful tone.

Tang Shuyu came to his senses and blinked slowly, as if unused to it.

It didn't actually hurt, and he should have said it was fine, but with He Zhuoming stroking his face—he lowered his thick lashes and murmured winsomely, "It hurts a lot."

He Zhuoming stood on her tiptoes and blew on his cheek. The soft, cool breath brushed across his skin, and suddenly Tang Shuyu's empty chest echoed with a thump.

As if something inside was beating.

But how could there be anything in a puppet's chest?

Theoretically, there shouldn't be, because it was just a piece of wood. In truth, the main body was also just a piece of rotting wood, which was why they were so unmoved by the countless prayers gathered at their ears. Sharing the karmic burden was only to let themselves live a little longer—that was all.

But now Tang Shuyu felt his chest burning hot, and within that heat was pain and an itch.

He walked side by side with He Zhuoming down a secluded corridor, and in the air drifted the sound of music from afar—the procession of the wandering gods hadn't finished yet.

Once the procession ended, the other True Deities would return to their own domains, and at that point—he knew very well—that would be his end.

After seeing off the other True Deities, the main body would no longer need to worry about the risk of karmic overflow being exposed. The first thing it would do was reclaim all the puppets it didn't like.

As for the karma...

With the main body's cleverness, it would find some other way to disperse it.

As they walked, He Zhuoming hopped twice and tilted her head to listen to the breeze, then said to Tang Shuyu, "We have something like this back home too. People carry statues of gods in procession, and it's really lively."

"When I get home and finish my high school entrance exams, I'll take you to check it out."

He Zhuoming hadn't considered whether Tang Shuyu could go. In her eyes, since she could cross over, Tang Shuyu could surely cross over too.

Tang Shuyu gazed at her—when she talked about home, her smile grew even brighter, and her eyes sparkled like two stars.

The moonlight cast a hazy glow on her. Her hair was tied into two crooked braids, and because her hair wasn't long enough and the braids were tied too tightly, the ends of both braids stuck out at angles.

Tang Shuyu looked at her, and another thump echoed in his chest.

He Zhuoming looked up to meet his gaze and asked, "So, have you thought about what I asked you last time—whether you want to leave the Pear Garden and come with me? Didn't you say you'd give me your answer after the Day of Divine Celebration ended?"

When their eyes met, the thumping in his chest came one after another, beating so hard it almost hurt.

The puppet knew very well that he had never discussed this topic with Xiao He. That promise was between He Zhuoming and Tang Shuyu—no, it was between He Zhuoming and 'Lin Qingyun.'