“All six reincarnated?”
Nervous leaned toward the screen as if getting close enough would make the line of red text admit it was wrong on its own.
“One soul can’t reincarnate six times,” he said.
“It could be six souls,” Lin Yuqing said.
“They look the same, have the same name, and died the same way?”
“If you can even turn taking someone else’s death into a customer-service hotline, what’s impossible?”
Nervous had no answer.
Standing behind her, Xie Bi’an calmly closed all six case-closure records.
“Check the living person first.”
“Which living person?”
“Chen Guochang said his wife waits for him to come home for dinner every day.” Xie Bi’an tapped the case address. “The dead can remember wrong, and the living can lie, but houses usually aren’t good at either.”
He tossed a thin wooden plaque to Nervous.
The front was carved with the words “FIELD INVESTIGATION.” On the back, a string of red numbers counted down from forty-four.
“Be back within forty-four minutes.”
Lin Yuqing asked, “What if we’re late?”
Nervous gripped his mourning staff. “The mortal world might mistake us for living people.”
“Wouldn’t that be convenient?”
“If the mortal world recognizes you as alive, that doesn’t mean the underworld will.” Xie Bi’an said, “Having two identities at once usually doesn’t make a person any more whole.”
“What happens?”
“If you’re lucky, both sides come to take you back. If you’re unlucky, both sides only take half.”
Lin Yuqing looked at him, unable to tell whether he was joking.
She was about to ask another question, but Xie Bi’an had already turned and walked back into the darkness, leaving behind only one sentence: “A training supervisor is responsible for teaching, not working overtime for a new recruit.”
Nervous said quietly, “Seventh Lord wasn’t like this before.”
“He used to be more responsible?”
“He didn’t train new recruits before.”
Nervous raised his mourning staff and drew a crooked doorframe in the air.
When the first stroke landed, one row of office lights went dark. When the second fell, damp nighttime seeped through the doorframe. Before the third stroke was complete, the wooden plaque lit up with red text.
> Field assignment started: 43 minutes, 59 seconds
“Wasn’t it forty-four minutes?” Lin Yuqing asked.
“Drawing the door counts.”
“Can’t you draw faster?”
“When I’m nervous, my straight lines bend.”
They stepped through the doorframe and landed in a cramped living room.
The first thing to reach them was the sweet-and-salty smell of braised pork, with a layer of lingering incense beneath it.
An electronic clock on the wall showed 2:21 a.m. An old electric fan swung from side to side, making a click every time it turned.
A gray-haired woman sat beside the table in dark blue pajamas, placing stir-fried cabbage into the empty bowl across from her.
There were two place settings on the table.
“Guochang, dinner’s ready,” the woman said.
No one answered.
She waited a while, then seemed to remember something and stood up to walk into the kitchen. Half a minute later, she returned with the same plate of cabbage and sat back down in the same spot.
“Guochang, dinner’s ready.”
Her tone, her movements, even the spot where her chopsticks touched the rim of the bowl were exactly the same as before.
Lin Yuqing looked at Nervous.
“She can’t see us,” Nervous said. “Normal living people can’t see field-assignment underworld agents.”
“She does this all the time?”
“Looks like a memory loop. When a living person keeps thinking about the same thing, the house leaves behind a residual echo.”
The woman stood up for the third time.
Only then did Lin Yuqing notice the black-and-white photograph on the short cabinet behind her. Chen Guochang looked a little younger in the picture than he had sounded on the phone. He wore an ill-fitting suit, his lips pressed together awkwardly. The incense burner in front of the frame was full of ash, but most of the photograph was covered by a dish towel.
The woman came back with the dish and froze for a long time when she saw the photograph.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
No one answered.
She reached out and pulled the dish towel higher, covering the face completely. Then she turned toward the empty seat.
“Guochang, dinner’s ready.”
Lin Yuqing suddenly understood. Chen Guochang wasn’t unwilling to accept his death.
At least, not entirely.
Someone forgot every day that he was dead, and every day waited for him to come home all over again.
Nervous crouched down and ran two fingers over the crack between the tiles. He brought his fingertips to his nose, his expression growing increasingly grim.
“There’s no soul-retrieval trace.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Soul Retrieval Division’s records say Chen Guochang died in this house and was taken away here. But whenever an underworld agent comes to reap a soul, it always leaves a mark.”
“Could someone have cleaned it up?”
“A soul-retrieval trace isn’t dust.” Nervous checked the doorframe and windowsill again. “Unless the death location in the records is fake.”
Lin Yuqing walked toward the dining table.
Every dish Chen Guochang had mentioned on the phone was there: braised pork and stir-fried cabbage. Two white porcelain bowls were filled with rice. One had gone completely cold, its grains dry and hard on the surface.
The only thing missing from the table was salt.
The woman tasted the food and frowned.
“I forgot the salt again.”
She smiled at the empty seat.
“Guochang, could you go buy some at the end of the alley?”
Lin Yuqing’s finger touched the bowl of cold rice.
The light in the living room suddenly dimmed.
The electronic clock ran backward, stopping at 2:07 a.m. seven days earlier.
Chen Guochang appeared across from the dining table. He wasn’t a complete figure, more like an old visual echo trapped inside the bowl. The old man picked up his keys and complained that after cooking for decades, his wife still couldn’t remember to season the food.
“Wait for me.” He slipped on his slippers. “I’m going to buy salt.”
The door closed.
The woman sat at the table and waited.
One minute, two minutes, five minutes.
Three knocks suddenly sounded from outside the door.
The woman didn’t react.
Three more knocks.
She lowered her head and stirred the rice in her bowl as if she hadn’t heard a thing.
At the third round of knocking, a dark red handprint slowly surfaced in the center of the door. Its five fingers were long and slender, unlike Chen Guochang’s hand.
Nervous took a step back.
“That’s a soul-reaping seal.”
“Didn’t you say there was no soul-retrieval trace here?”
“That’s why it shouldn’t be here.”
Chen Guochang’s voice came from outside the door.
“Xiulan, open the door.”
The woman still didn’t look up.
“I’m home.”
The dark red handprint began to twist, as if something outside were wrenching the entire door open.
Lin Yuqing tried to take another step closer, but the residual echo before her suddenly shattered.
Someone grabbed her hand.
It wasn’t Nervous.
The woman beside the table had clasped Lin Yuqing’s wrist, her palm warm.
A living person shouldn’t have been able to touch her.
The woman tilted her face up and looked at Lin Yuqing from far too close. Her eyes, cloudy moments ago, were now clear, not a trace of mist in them.
“You’re not Guochang,” she said.
The countdown on the wooden plaque suddenly dropped by ten minutes.
> Time remaining: 26 minutes, 14 seconds
The woman’s grip tightened and tightened.
“Are you here to take me away?”