Edited
The fox spirit’s entire body was trembling at a frequency visible to the naked eye. He was shaking so violently that even Chu He felt that if he kept trembling like this, the next second he would vomit out his own inner core.
But Xiao Hu himself didn’t realize it. His mind was completely blank; he didn’t even notice the Demon Venerable raising his hand and pressing it down toward his crown.
“—Enough,” Chu He suddenly spoke.
His voice was extremely unique. The moment he spoke, it was like a ray of light cleaving through primordial chaos. The fox spirit jolted, a chill flooding his five viscera and six bowels, and in an instant, he woke up!
The Demon Venerable’s hand stopped in mid-air. Chu He said, “Go. Serve the Second Young Master well.”
The fox spirit didn’t even dare to lift his head and look at what the Demon Venerable looked like. When he fled out the door, he nearly crashed into it, but he couldn’t even feel the pain. He stumbled and staggered out, tripping over himself as he ran.
“…” The Demon Venerable turned back and said flatly, “You really aren’t picky about anything.”
Chu He smiled, buttoning up his shirt one button at a time. With that pale, ordinary face of his, yet smiling and fastening buttons like that, the expression held an indescribable quality—one that made it very difficult to look away.
“I can even tolerate you,” he said with a smile. “Naturally, I’m not picky about anything.”
The hem of the Demon Venerable’s gold-embroidered black robe dragged across the carpet with a strange, faint rustling sound. In truth, he didn’t have three heads and six arms as the underworld had long rumored, nor was he ugly or terrifying. If he reined in his demonic aura and disguised himself as a human walking down the street, apart from an aura vastly different from ordinary people, he wouldn’t even attract much attention.
“There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” the Demon Venerable asked with great interest. “That you’re still so hung up on that nine-tailed fox—is it because he was genuinely sharp-tongued, or because to this day you still believe he and Zhou Hui actually had something going on?”
Chu He let out a soft pfft. “Fan Luo, do you think Zhou Hui led the Sixth Division to purge the Hell Path back then because you were also sharp-tongued, or because he suspected you and I had something going on?”
The Demon Venerable Fan Luo thought for a moment, then smiled faintly. “I can’t figure it out. Perhaps it was a bit of both—though if it were me, and my wife ran off with my mortal enemy, that grudge would probably be rather hard to swallow too.”
Chu He picked up the bowl of sweet soup that the fox spirit had brought, walked to the washroom, and casually poured it out. “The relationship between us isn’t what you imagine.”
When he walked, his steps were very steady, his back naturally straight, giving his posture an extremely elegant and dignified air. Fan Luo stood with arms crossed, leaning against the washroom doorway, raising a brow as he stared at his back, his eyes unreadable in the play of light and shadow. Yet Chu He seemed completely oblivious, suddenly adding: “Oh, and tell your subordinate vengeful ghosts not to enter the main residence. Last night one was wandering outside Zhang Shun’s room. My cook saw it and nearly died of fright. I had to get up in the middle of the night and call back her soul for three or four shichen…”
The moment he raised his head, Fan Luo appeared soundlessly behind him, one hand pressing against the exposed side of his neck.
“Continue.”
“…Today I had to splash my little brother with the dirty water of midnight naked running just to cover it up. Tell your subordinate vengeful ghosts not to trouble Zhang Shun. He’s my only brother.”
Fan Luo pressed his lips against the side of his neck, his laughter sounding somewhat muffled: “I just remembered… the first time I saw you.”
“Then you should still remember what I said that time.”
“I remember.” Fan Luo spoke leisurely, as if he found it all terribly amusing: “I was just thinking… if Zhou Hui knew of your current situation, would he be more inclined to slay a demon once more, or to extinguish a Buddha once more?”
A strange expression crossed Chu He’s face. But before he could speak, they heard two knocks on the study door from outside.
“Bro? Bro, are you in there?”
Before Chu He could respond, the Demon Venerable suddenly bit down on the side of his neck!
Blood surged forth. At the same time, Chu He grabbed the edge of the sink, letting out a solid, impossible-to-conceal muffled groan.
“Bro?” Zhang Shun called from outside.
—Fan Luo’s canine teeth sank deep into his blood vessel. Because he couldn’t swallow fast enough, a thread of fresh blood trickled down his half-bared, thin back, shockingly vivid against his pale skin. Chu He breathed slightly heavily, raising his head as if to say something, but several times he opened his mouth only to close it again, trembling.
The Demon Venerable bit into that small patch of particularly soft flesh on his neck and said, “Answer him.”
“…” Chu He took a broken, deep breath, then called out in a raised voice: “I’m here! What?”
Zhang Shun’s voice from outside already sounded a bit suspicious: “Xiao Hu had something come up and left early. He said he accidentally disturbed you just now and asked me to apologize to you on his behalf! What are you doing, bro?”
“…I got it!”
“What’s going on? What are you doing? Open the door!”
Fan Luo’s muffled laughter was almost impossible to suppress anymore. Chu He, at the end of his patience, turned his head and snapped: “I said I got it!”
“What are you doing? What’s going on, open the door! Bro!”
“Go to sleep!”
Zhang Shun was clearly stunned. Outside the door, he blinked a few times, then said baffled: “Why so much temper… Are you jerking off or something?”
Though these words were muttered under his breath, they certainly couldn’t escape the ears of the two people inside the room. The Demon Venerable nearly collapsed laughing onto Chu He, clapping one hand against the other as he laughed: “Your little brother is truly a wonder—never mind whether Zhou Hui likes him or not, this Venerable quite likes him, hahaha…”
Chu He panted as he gathered his clothes. The patch of flesh that had just been bitten had already healed automatically, leaving only a red mark like a hickey, surrounded by vivid threads of blood.
The process of directly opening his inner core to let someone draw spiritual power had left him utterly exhausted. Only after a long while did he weakly grab the Demon Venerable’s hand. “Let go.”
His fingers were terrifyingly cold, like ice.
Fan Luo was standing while he was slightly bent over. The Demon Venerable maintained this posture of looking down at him, staring at his restrained profile for a long time before saying softly: “I still miss your true face very much…”
Chu He said: “Let go!”
—Although he had already fallen to the point of having nowhere to go in the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, even unable to recover his true form, that irrepressible aura in his bones could still be vividly revealed from the smallest details.
The Demon Venerable didn’t move. Only after a long moment did he slowly withdraw his hand from beneath the hem of his clothes, from his bare side.
“Very well,” he smiled. “Everything shall be as you wish.”
·
Zhang Shun returned to his bedroom and couldn’t help but imagine the scene of his brother jerking off alone in the study. He found it a bit horrifying.
In his impression, Chu He was a silent, self-disciplined, calm-to-the-point-of-cold person. He was never surprised, never agitated; he rarely experienced great joy or great anger, and seldom showed emotional fluctuations. He never had contact with the opposite sex, and even rejected intimacy from the same sex with thanks-but-no-thanks; the entire person was like a block of ice wrapped in a finely tailored black suit, radiating years of unmelted chill even in the height of summer.
A person like this, placed in ancient times, would be an ascetic monk; placed in the Middle Ages, a Puritan. Zhang Shun had once maliciously suspected whether he had some unspeakable hidden ailment, but one year when the two brothers went to a hot spring together, he had taken the opportunity to look—he didn’t seem abnormal.
Zhang Shun was a bit intimidated by his brother.
He knew that when his father was still alive, he had also been somewhat inexplicably afraid of this adopted son with a different surname.
Chu He was supposedly brought in from outside by his father’s second wife when he remarried. The reason it was “supposedly” was because Zhang Shun had never seen this nominal stepmother of his—at that time he was only five or six years old, sent abroad to live with his grandparents for a while, and when he came back, he heard that his stepmother had died in an accident.
Old Chairman Zhang became a widower for the second time, and from then on completely gave up on the idea of remarrying, raising the two children alone. At that time, although Zhang Shun was still young, under the subtle influence of the people around him, he already knew that Chu He was an adopted son, and one who might threaten his status as heir—children don’t understand what inheritance rights mean, but the instinct to protect one’s food is innate; egged on by those around him, he had indeed made things difficult for Chu He, this cheap older brother.
When Old Chairman Zhang found out, he flew into a rage. He cleared out and replaced the people around Zhang Shun, and called him in for a scolding: “Chu He is your older brother! Since you’ve called him brother once, you must treat him as your blood brother for this lifetime!”
Zhang Shun was at his most rebellious age and immediately talked back: “I don’t have this cheap brother. I don’t acknowledge him! If you want to acknowledge him, go ahead!”
Old Chairman Zhang, in his fury, brought out the family discipline—a round of belt-whipping that made Zhang Shun bawl his eyes out, unable to get out of bed for half a month. And that wasn’t all. From then on, whenever the old chairman caught Zhang Shun, he would lecture him endlessly, making Zhang Shun more and more displeased with Chu He every time he saw him, yet not daring to pull any more dirty tricks.
Everyone said Old Chairman Zhang was biased toward the adopted son, making his biological son so afraid that he was submissive to his older brother.
Only Zhang Shun knew that wasn’t the case.
He still remembered that deep night right after he had been beaten. He woke up groggily from pain and thirst, but heard light conversation coming from beside the bed. He immediately pretended to still be asleep, not moving a muscle, secretly cracking his eyes open to a slit. He saw the teenaged Chu He sitting in an armchair, while Old Chairman Zhang stood on the floor, body bent forward, his expression actually… humble.
He had never imagined his own father could be associated with the word “humble,” but in that moment, the first word that floated up in young Zhang Shun’s heart was indeed this one.
“…A-Shun is still young. His pranks are limited. For you to beat him at the drop of a hat instead makes me look particularly intolerant…”
“Y-yes, I understand. Next time I definitely won’t—”
The bedroom fell silent for a moment. Zhang Shun, afraid of being discovered, immediately closed his eyes and lay perfectly still, letting out light, steady breathing.
“There won’t be a next time,” Chu He stood up and walked out. “—He was born with Buddha’s Bone. And you think you can beat him?”
Old Chairman Zhang stood behind him, cold sweat soaking through his undergarments layer after layer. He only saw Chu He reach the doorway before pointing at Zhang Shun on the bed without turning his head, saying: “He’s thirsty. Give him some water.”
…
Everything from that deep night was so vivid in Zhang Shun’s childhood memory that later it became so clear it almost seemed fake. For many years afterward, he couldn’t determine whether that was a real conversation that had actually happened, or a hallucination produced by pain and high fever. He only knew that his father truly never laid a finger on him again after that, and that Chu He, in front of him, had always been respectful to his father, never again showing that condescending, commanding attitude.
But from that time on, a faint, vague feeling had grown in his heart—his father was afraid of Chu He.
This feeling was difficult to describe, even harder to prove, and even saying it out loud seemed utterly absurd. Yet although Zhang Shun had never run to ask his father for confirmation, nor mentioned it to anyone, this faint guess and feeling had remained deeply rooted in his heart all these years, never disappearing.
Perhaps because Xiao Hu had left that night, and Zhang Shun was sleeping alone, in his daze he tossed and turned through many dreams. One of them was from when he was little, when he had played a dirty trick on Chu He—late at night, using the excuse that he was lost in the mansion, he lured him to the warehouse, turned off the power, and locked him inside for the whole night. In reality, he himself had snuck back to his bedroom to sleep, and Chu He was locked up until the next morning when the servants discovered and released him. But in the dream, it was as if he had drifted back to that dark warehouse, quietly watching his brother in the darkness.
Chu He sat facing him sideways, legs crossed, seated upon a brilliantly radiant lotus flower. His face was serene and peaceful, emanating a soft halo like white jade. Around him were crowded with ghostly shadows, real and unreal, all prostrated in worship on the ground. In the distance, countless vengeful souls were dragging long wails as they surged forth from the vast night.
Zhang Shun floated blankly in mid-air until Chu He opened his eyes and looked at him, asking softly: “Dreaming?”
Zhang Shun didn’t know what to say, so he nodded.
“The Zhang family made its fortune from the dead,” Chu He said lightly. “That day when you locked me here, I conveniently delivered the souls of this place.”
Zhang Shun’s pupils dilated slightly. His brother brushed his forehead and said: “Go back to sleep.”
Zhang Shun sank again into a jumble of dreams. Then the scene before his eyes changed, becoming a white hospital room, where the emaciated Old Chairman Zhang was breathing with difficulty on the hospital bed.
“A-Shun…” He gripped his only son’s hand tightly. “I have already left—the family business to you, your older brother… From now on you must, must rely on him to take care of you. You must treat him as—as your blood, blood brother…”
Every word was like grinding against blood-soaked gravel. The light of life in his father’s eyes grew dimmer and dimmer.
“You must listen, listen to him well… Safe and smooth sailing, you must be… safe and smooth sailing your whole life…”
His father’s hand loosened and fell away. He closed his eyes.
Zhang Shun’s entire body trembled. He wanted to cry but couldn’t. It was as if a lump of sour, astringent blood was stuck in his throat, even his saliva tasting of scorching, bloody iron.
A hand gently patted his shoulder.
“Don’t be afraid,” Chu He appeared behind him at some unknown time, saying softly, “He has gone to be reincarnated.”
Zhang Shun choked and asked: “You—how do you, how do you know? How do you…”
Chu He sighed lightly, “I just know.”
Zhang Shun’s breath was blocked, his eye sockets red, his temples throbbing as if being drilled by an awl. He clenched his teeth tightly to hold back his sobs, turning his head to look at his father on the hospital bed, wanting to see him one last time.
—And then he saw his father’s eyes open at some unknown time, two lines of bloody tears slowly trickling down.
“Zhang Shun…” He heard his father’s ghostly call, “Zhang Shun, come here, Zhang Shun…”
Come here…
Zhang Shun, come here…
Zhang Shun jolted awake from the dream: “Dad!”
Then he realized he had had a nightmare. The bedroom was pitch black and quiet. The clock hand pointed to two in the morning.
He let out a breath, forcing himself to ignore the grief and melancholy in his heart, getting up to pour himself a glass of water from the nightstand.
But then, his entire body froze—
Under the moonlight, beside the bed, at some unknown time, a person was standing there soundlessly!
To call it a person might not even be accurate. What he saw was a gray-white figure, long hair covering its face, withered branch-like arms hanging at its sides, inch-long nails curling with sharp edges, dripping with black water.
Zhang Shun’s entire body was rattling like an electric shock: “Y-y-y-y-you are, what kind of person are you?”
That “person” raised its head. In that instant, Zhang Shun saw that its entire lower jaw had rotted away, its decayed tongue flopping down onto its chest with a splat.
“AHHHHHHHHH—!!”
In the upstairs bedroom, Chu He instantly leaped up from the bed, strode out the door in arrow steps, grabbed the railing, and vaulted over.
The butler who had heard the commotion had just hurriedly thrown on his clothes when he saw the Eldest Young Master descend from the heavens, landing with a thunderous crash, not even pausing for a beat, instantly getting up and directly bursting through Zhang Shun’s door!
“AHHHHHHHHH—!” Zhang Shun screamed as he crashed headlong into him: “Bro! Bro! There’s a ghost! There’s a ghost!”
Chu He snapped on the light with a click, frowning: “What kind of madness are you acting up in the middle of the night?”
The vengeful ghost had melted away like a snowman under the sun the instant Chu He entered the room. When the butler and servants who had heard the commotion rushed in, all they saw was a neatly arranged bedroom with messy bedsheets, the Second Young Master screaming like a madman, and the Eldest Young Master—whom he was clutching like a lifeline—who hadn’t even had time to put on his shoes.
The old butler’s heart was instantly filled with emotion: Although not blood-related, and although the Eldest Young Master usually treated people coldly and indifferently, at the critical moment you could still see the difference! …
The Eldest Young Master who had been “seen as different” had absolutely no leisurely interest in brotherly affection. He directly waved his hand to send the butler and servants away. Once only the two of them remained in the room, he poured a glass of water and forced Zhang Shun to drink it, then pushed him onto the bed and said: “It’s fine. Sleep.”
“Th-th-th-th-there’s a ghost!” Zhang Shun desperately grabbed his brother’s hand: “There really is a ghost!”
“…” Chu He said: “You were really dreaming. Sleep.”
“I’m not lying to you! It was a white ghost, nails this long, tongue this long…”
Chu He impatiently tried to pull his hand away to leave, but Zhang Shun wouldn’t let go. In their tugging, the corner of his eye suddenly caught a black shadow in the corner of the room. Looking closely, he saw a man in black robes standing there, one cheek covered in bloody patterns, looking down at him from above.
“…” Zhang Shun’s teeth were chattering: “…Bro, why is there a person over there?”
Chu He turned back and exchanged a look with the Demon Venerable for a moment, then said coldly: “There’s no one.”
Zhang Shun couldn’t even make the slightest sound anymore. His face was pale green, swaying on the verge of collapse. That he hadn’t fainted by this point could only be credited to his strong mental fortitude. “Th-th-th-th-there really is!!”
Chu He repeated word by word: “There really isn’t.”
The Demon Venerable finally shifted his gaze, the corner of his mouth curving into an arc that could hardly be called a smile. Then, just as he had appeared, his tall figure instantly vanished into thin air, as if he had never come at all.
Chu He turned back and lightly tapped Zhang Shun between the brows, saying softly: “Sleep. When you wake up, you’ll have forgotten.”
His fingertip seemed to carry a scorching warmth. Zhang Shun only felt his spirit relax, the extreme fear and tension receding like a tide—this was probably the first time in Second Young Master Zhang’s life that he found his older brother so agreeable, and even his brother’s plain face suddenly held much unspeakable charm.
Second Young Master Zhang rarely acted like a proper younger brother, tugging at his brother and pleading: “I… I’m still scared. Can I sleep in your room tonight?”
Chu He’s expression was a bit strange.
“Please, bro,” the Second Young Master was on the verge of tears: “Or I’ll go out to a hotel right now—wait, what if that filthy thing still fucking follows me?!”
“…Come over,” Chu He finally sighed.
Zhang Shun didn’t want to spend one more second in his own room. He swiftly rolled up his quilt and pillow and followed his brother upstairs. Unexpectedly, his brother’s bedroom wasn’t as simple and dull as he had imagined. Although there weren’t many things, and almost no decorations, the room was extremely messy, as if a hurricane had just swept through. Pillows and half the bedsheets were on the floor, and discarded formal wear shirts and pants were scattered at the bathroom door.
Going by Zhang Shun’s usual temper, he would definitely have made a few sarcastic remarks at this point, but tonight he was so well-behaved he didn’t dare say one extra word. He immediately tucked his tail between his legs and lay down obediently in a stiff plank position, only begging one thing: “Can we not turn off the lights?”
So Chu He left on a warm yellow bedside lamp and silently lay down beside his brother.
“Bro,” Zhang Shun still couldn’t help but turn his head, “Tomorrow I’ll go invite a master to take a look, what do you think—”
But his brother had already closed his eyes.
—Zhang Shun’s gaze fixed on the side of his brother’s neck and didn’t move for a long while.
His elder brother, who had always been so silent, cold, and difficult to approach, had a very conspicuous mark on the side of his neck. Though it was almost concealed beneath the white collar of his pajamas, from this angle it was glaringly obvious.
It was a hickey.
“…Impossible,” Zhang Shun thought, his final thought before losing consciousness one of utter disbelief, mixed with a faint, indescribable, complicated feeling.
“—Who the fuck has the guts? If they dare let this young master find out…”
“Are they looking for death? Who on earth could it be…”
