Cold.
That was Chen Yu's first sensation after regaining consciousness. Not the kind of cold you felt when you forgot to wear a coat in winter, but the damp chill that seeped outward from between your bones, as if someone had stuffed him into a broken refrigerator and then dumped a basin of water inside.
He opened his eyes.
Above him was a dilapidated roof. Most of the tiles were missing, revealing a gray, hazy sky. The rain had just stopped, and leftover droplets trickled down the broken rafters, landing right on his forehead.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Chen Yu lay on the ground, staring at the droplet for three seconds before a question slowly surfaced in his mind.
Wasn't I waiting for the bus?
He tried moving his fingers. They moved. He tried moving his toes. They moved too. He tried to remember why he was lying here—the bus, the headlights, the screech of tires, and then darkness.
So he should have been in a hospital.
But hospital ceilings didn't look like this. Hospital ceilings were white, with fluorescent lights and the smell of disinfectant. What he was looking at now was blackened wood, moss-covered brick walls, and a clay deity statue missing half its face.
Chen Yu slowly sat up.
He looked down at himself.
Then he froze.
He was wearing a blue-gray long robe. The fabric was coarse, the sleeves wide, and a cloth belt was tied around his waist. On his feet were black cloth shoes, their soles stained with mud. His hands—he raised them in front of his eyes—were a size smaller than he remembered, with much paler skin and finer knuckles.
He touched his face. The contours had changed. His chin was sharper, his cheekbones higher, and the lines of his brow more defined.
He touched the top of his head. His hair was longer, tied behind his head and secured with a wooden hairpin.
Chen Yu was silent for a long time.
He looked around. This was a ruined temple, not very large—about the size of a single room. The clay deity statue sat atop an altar at the very center, with several burned-out incense sticks scattered in front of it. Dead leaves and broken bricks were piled in the corners, and the air smelled of damp, rotting wood.
Three things lay beside him.
An oil-paper umbrella, its surface pale yellow and its edges somewhat worn but still intact. A wooden book chest, square and solid, with a coarse hemp-rope strap. And a brass oil lamp.
Chen Yu picked up the brass lamp.
It was that lamp. The oxidized green copper, the rough engraving, the cloaked figure, holy flame, and angels. The beat-up lamp he'd bought in Bruges for fifty euros.
He stared at the lamp for ten seconds.
Then he set it down, took a deep breath, and said to himself in an extremely calm voice, “Okay.”
Just one word. Okay.
Not “This is impossible,” not “I’m dreaming,” and not “Oh my God, I’ve been transported to another world.” Just “Okay.”
Because Chen Yu had one particular trait—his speed of accepting anything was abnormally fast. Getting his wallet stolen? Okay. Spraining his ankle? Okay. Getting food poisoning? Okay. Getting hit by a bus, waking up, and discovering he’d become a scholar in ancient clothing lying in a ruined temple? Okay.
It wasn't as though his previous life had anything worth clinging to.
He stood up, dusted himself off, slung the book chest over his back, tucked the oil-paper umbrella under his arm, and stuffed the brass lamp into the book chest. Then he walked to the temple entrance and glanced outside.
Outside was a black pine forest, its needles soaked from the rain, with mist rising from the muddy ground between the trees. The sky was very dark, making it impossible to tell whether it was evening or merely overcast. A dirt road was faintly visible in the distance, but he couldn't see where it led.
Chen Yu withdrew his gaze and decided not to go outside yet.
It was dark, he didn't know the road, and the place was creepy. Three reasons—enough to make anyone with basic survival instincts choose to stay put.
He returned to the temple and sat in a corner against the wall, placing the book chest beside him as a cushion. Then he closed his eyes, planning to get some sleep and figure things out at daybreak.
He didn't fall asleep.
Because he heard a sound.
A very faint sound. It was as if something was walking across the fallen leaves outside the temple, its footsteps soft and scattered, carrying the deliberate caution of someone trying very hard not to make a sound.
Chen Yu didn't move. With his eyes half-closed, he looked toward the temple entrance through the gaps between his lashes.
A figure appeared in the doorway.
No, not a person.
It was a girl. She looked fifteen or sixteen, wearing a white dress, with long hair hanging loose and bare feet. Her skin was unnaturally pale, the sort of white that came from never seeing sunlight. She stood outside the threshold and peered inside, moving like a cat that wanted to sneak a bite of food but was afraid of being caught.
Chen Yu noticed that her feet weren't touching the ground.
More precisely, they hovered about two finger-widths above it.
Chen Yu's mind raced for a moment. Ancient clothes, ruined temple, pine forest, mist, girl in white, feet not touching the ground. He reached a conclusion.
The conclusion made his heart beat two times faster, but that was all.
The girl seemed to confirm that someone was inside the temple, and a nervous expression appeared on her face. She pulled a thin little booklet from her sleeve, opened it, brought it close to her eyes, and moved her lips soundlessly a few times, as if reciting something under her breath.
Then she took a deep breath—assuming ghosts needed to breathe—straightened her back, put on a seductive expression, and floated into the temple.
“Young master—” she drawled, trying to create an alluring, mournful atmosphere. “The night is deep and the dew is heavy. This humble girl happened to be passing through. Might I stay the night?”
The line was pretty good. Her tone was on point too. The problem was that while saying it, she was still clutching the little booklet, its cover facing outward. Four large characters were written on it:
The Art of Being a Female Ghost.
Chen Yu saw it.
He said nothing. Not because he was afraid, but because he suddenly found the scene rather interesting.
When the girl saw that he didn't respond, she lowered her head and turned another page. Then she looked up and changed her pose—leaning sideways against the doorframe, one hand brushing back her hair as her eyes rippled seductively.
“Could it be that you're waiting for someone, young master?” she asked in a low, breathy voice. “Why don't you… let this humble girl keep you company?”
After saying that, she secretly glanced at the booklet in her hand to make sure she hadn't read it wrong.
Right at that moment, Chen Yu stood up to stretch. He yawned, took two steps to the side, and happened to avoid the direction the girl was floating toward.
The girl missed.
She frowned and turned another page.
“Young master, look how beautiful the moonlight is—” She pointed toward the window.
Outside, dark clouds filled the sky. There was no moon.
Chen Yu walked to the window and glanced outside, then casually shut it because the wind was too cold.
The girl's hand froze in midair.
She bit her lip, quickly flipped to the next page, and suddenly floated toward Chen Yu with both hands outstretched. According to the booklet, this step was called “gently caress the scholar's cheek and captivate his mind with yin energy.”
Chen Yu bent down to pick up the oil-paper umbrella that had fallen on the ground.
The girl's hands swept over the top of his head and touched nothing.
She looked down at her hands, then at Chen Yu crouching on the ground. The seductive expression on her face finally collapsed.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted angrily, her voice shifting from mournful to exasperated. “I've gotten this far! How come you haven't reacted at all?”
Chen Yu raised his head and looked at the little ghost girl, whose face had turned green with rage—well, her face had been bluish-white to begin with—and finally spoke his first words.
“You're holding that book upside down.”
The girl looked down.
The Art of Being a Female Ghost was indeed upside down. She had been reading it backward the entire time.
The temple fell silent for three seconds.
Then the girl let out a scream, hurled the booklet to the ground, and lunged at Chen Yu. This time it wasn't seduction. It was pure humiliation-fueled rage. She opened her mouth, revealing two small fangs, and went straight for Chen Yu's face—
“I don't care anymore! I'll just drain you!”
Chen Yu was knocked onto his back, the back of his head smacking against the book chest and making his vision go black for a moment. The girl straddled him, pinning his shoulders with both hands. Her face came within an inch of his, her lips slightly parted as an icy breath washed over him.
Just then, the temple doors were blasted open by a violent wind.
Not pushed open—blown open. The door panel flew straight into the clay deity statue, shattering the other half of its face as well.
A woman stood in the doorway.
Unlike the little ghost girl, this woman looked to be around thirty. She wore a dark-red dress, her hair black as a waterfall, her features beautiful. But her eyes were completely black—no whites, no pupils, just two pure-black holes.
“Little thing.” Her voice sounded as if it had risen from the bottom of a well, cold and heavy. “You've been floating around all night. Aren't you tired?”
The little ghost girl's face instantly turned whiter than the woman's dress. She jumped off Chen Yu and retreated several steps, her voice trembling. “S-Sister Ruyan…”
The female ghost Ruyan ignored her. Her gaze swept over Chen Yu, and the corners of her lips curved upward. “And you brought a living person? Perfect. I'll take you both.”
She tossed her head, and a sky full of black hair lashed outward.
Chen Yu felt a tremendous force slam into his chest. He flew backward like he'd been hit by a car—huh? Again? Yes, he was already very familiar with this sensation—and his back crashed into the wall as brick dust pattered down. The little ghost girl was also swept away by the yin wind stirred up by the black hair, tumbling into another corner of the temple.
Ruyan slowly walked into the temple. With every step she took, the temperature around her dropped another degree. Her hair drifted like living things, several strands stretching out from the ends like tentacles and creeping toward Chen Yu and the little ghost girl.
“A newly awakened little ghost girl and a living scholar,” Ruyan said, tilting her head. “Looks like luck is on my side tonight.”
Chen Yu leaned against the wall, a trace of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. His chest hurt terribly, and his ribs felt as if they were scraping against one another every time he breathed. He braced a hand against the ground and tried to stand, only to press his palm onto something—
The book chest had broken apart in the impact, and its contents had rolled all over the floor. His hand had landed directly on the brass oil lamp.
He wiped the blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. One drop landed right on the body of the brass oil lamp.
The designs on the lamp lit up.
It wasn't a reflection. It wasn't his imagination. The flame engraved in the cloaked figure's hands was truly glowing. Faint golden light seeped from the carved lines, like something that had slept for a very long time finally being awakened.
Chen Yu felt it.
A warm force surged into him from his palm and spread through his entire body along his arm. It wasn't qi or internal energy, but something he had never experienced before and yet found inexplicably familiar—like the first ray of sunlight in winter, like a torch suddenly flaring to life in the darkness.
He knew.
He had no idea why he knew, but he simply did. He knew what the lamp could do, what he could do, and what he was supposed to say.
Ruyan's black hair had already wrapped around the little ghost girl's ankles. The little ghost girl screamed and shrank backward in terror. Several other strands of black hair were closing in on Chen Yu.
Chen Yu tightened his grip on the brass lamp and stood up.
He took a deep breath and said something in a tone even he found a little embarrassingly chuunibyou.
“I say—let there be light.”
And there was light.
Not candlelight, not moonlight, but pure, scorching, unquestionable platinum-white radiance. Light burst from the wick of the brass oil lamp in every direction, instantly filling the entire ruined temple and burning every shadow in every corner clean away.
Ruyan let out a terrible scream. Her black hair curled, charred, and disintegrated in the radiance like burning spider silk. Her skin began to crack, dark-red light shining through the fissures like a clay figure split open by fire.
The little ghost girl screamed too, but her reaction was much faster than Ruyan's. She flipped and floated toward the oil-paper umbrella on the ground, opened it, and curled herself beneath it like a snail hiding in its shell. A faint halo spread across the umbrella's surface, barely shielding her from the burning holy light.
Ruyan staggered backward. For the first time, fear appeared in her completely black eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could—
“Bold female ghost!”
A loud shout came from outside the temple. A short, thin figure charged into the ruined temple, holding a yellow talisman paper crackling with lightning high in one hand. It was a Taoist, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, wearing a blue Taoist robe and a crooked topknot tied on his head.
His eyes were very bright, bright as if two stars had been placed inside them.
“I am Wu Wei, disciple of the Celestial Talisman Sect!” he shouted with booming confidence, thrusting the talisman forward at the same time. “Thunder talisman, arise!”
A brilliant blue bolt of lightning exploded from the talisman and struck Ruyan with pinpoint accuracy.
Ruyan's scream became sharp and brief under the combined assault of lightning and holy light. Her body began disintegrating from the edges inward, like a sheet of paper burned through by fire. At last, her entire form turned into a cloud of black smoke that scattered across the ground, leaving behind only three things—
A mass of jet-black hair, spread across the ground like a puddle of ink.
A dark-purple bead the size of a thumb, glowing faintly amid the ashes.
And a small pile of gray-white ash.
The temple fell silent.
The holy light gradually receded. The brass oil lamp's glow dimmed, then went out completely. Chen Yu stood where he was, gripping the lamp, feeling as if all the strength had been drained from his body. His knees went weak, and he dropped straight to the ground.
Little Taoist Wu Wei put away his talisman paper and warily surveyed the surroundings. Only after confirming that there were no other threats did he turn his attention to Chen Yu.
“Are you all right?” He came over, crouched down, and looked Chen Yu over. “Was that light just now yours? Which sect are you from? I've never seen magic like that before.”
Chen Yu leaned against the wall and took several breaths as he looked at the excited young Taoist.
He thought for a moment and decided to answer the simplest question first.
“I'm fine.”
Then he looked at the oil-paper umbrella in the corner. Its surface trembled faintly, and soft sobbing came from beneath it.
Chen Yu looked again at the pile of ash and the dark-purple bead on the ground.
Then he looked at the brass oil lamp in his hand.
Finally, he raised his head and gazed at the gray, hazy sky beyond the ruined temple's broken roof. In an extremely calm voice, he said,
“So this isn't a hospital, right?”
Wu Wei blinked. “What kind of hall?”