Chilling.
An icy draft seeped through the door crack, sending tremors down Zou Kui's spine. He stood frozen in the narrow shadow outside, teeth clenched, not daring to exhale—as if the slightest sound might shatter the fragile silence. His left hand trembled on the doorknob, knuckles white with tension.
Through that sliver of an opening, his gaze locked onto the hunched figure within.
Was that... Grandpa Li?
It shouldn't be.
By day, the old man moved with the predictable slowness of age, but now—his silhouette was grotesque. Rigid, disjointed, as though strung together by invisible marionette wires, each movement punctuated by sickening creaks. His posture was all wrong—shoulders too high, spine bent at angles no human could maintain.
And he was handling medicine.
Those aged, liver-spotted fingers twisted unnaturally around withered herbs, crumbling them with deliberate, mechanical movements before dusting the mixture with something pallid as bone. A nauseating odor seeped from the room—decaying soil, rust, and something putrid—clinging to the back of Zou Kui's throat.
Scritch-scratch—
The sound of crushed ingredients being ground together.
Murmur-murmur—
Yet beneath it, something worse. A whisper, no—whispers, layered like echoes from a hollow place, threading directly into his skull. They hadn't stopped since he pressed his eye to the door.
Moonlight bled through the window, painting a sickly sheen over the floor.
It was... rearranging the cabinet?
Each motion was agonizingly slow. A bottle lifted, its contents contaminated with that ashen powder. A filthy cloth swiped over the label before being slotted back—exactly where it belonged. But Zou Kui saw. Every touched vial darkened, its contents curdling into something other.
Not organization.
Poison.
The thing set down one bottle with eerie precision.
What now?
Burst in? Demand answers?
Every instinct screamed against it. But the thought of Lou Qi sleeping just meters away—of the kindly old man who'd smiled at them over tea—ignited a reckless fury beneath the fear.
Just as his resolve wavered—
The figure stopped.
Silence.
Not just quiet—void.
Zou Kui's heart seized.
Then—
A wet crack.
The hunched back convulsed. The head—oh God—began to rotate, vertebrae popping like snapped twigs, until—
A face.
Grandpa's face.
And yet not.
Parchment-gray skin, mottled with rot. Eyes void of pupils, clouded like stagnant milk—fixated on the door crack.
On him.
It knew.
The mouth split—stretched—wider than any human mouth could, grinning ear to ear with teeth like rusted nails.
"Hhhhk—"
A sound like lungs drowning in tar.
And the wall behind it—peeling, blackening, as though seared by invisible fire. Claw marks gouged deep into the plaster, spreading like a virus.
RUN.
Zou Kui staggered back—his heel struck a withered flowerpot.
CRASH.
The shattering ceramic detonated in the night.
The thing's shriek wasn't human—it was the sound of rage given form.
Before the last shard hit the floor, it lunged, a blur of greased darkness hurtling toward the door.
Zou Kui scrambled, adrenaline scorching through his veins. He barely dove behind the couch in time, curling into the corner where wall met floor. His pulse hammered in his skull.
THUD.
The doorframe shuddered. Wood splintered.
Then—
Nothing.
Only the creak of hinges as the door inched open.
A foot—wrapped in threadbare cloth shoes—stepped out.
Zou Kui clamped both hands over his mouth. His ribs ached from the vise of his own grip.
But the creature didn't advance.
It had stopped.
Over the spilled soil. The shattered pot.
Its body began to twitch, joints popping in erratic bursts, a machine glitching at the sight of disarray. A growl built in its throat—not hunger, but fury. Pure, rabid outrage at chaos.
With a jerk, it dropped to all fours, spider-like, over the wreckage.
Zou Kui pressed his cheek to the cold tile, eye straining through the gap beneath the sofa.
The head—Jesus—was still backwards, but now craned toward the mess.
Those fingers—blackened nails curled like talons—scrabbled at the shards, not to attack, but to—
Reassemble.
Frantically. Desperately. A grotesque pantomime of tidying. The faster it moved, the more pieces it scattered. Clumsy. Feverish. Unhinged.
And then—Lou Qi's words from days before slithered into his mind:
"Grandpa can't stand messes. Even a crooked photo—he'll get up at midnight to straighten it."
Habits. Rituals.
Rules.
That was it.
It wasn't just mimicking him.
It was bound to him.