With a "crunch".
The ward door opened.
An elderly man with a tired look on his face walked out of the ward, and was immediately greeted by a tall young man.
"Teacher. How's that student? Did he say anything—"
"Shhh."
Teacher Xu put his hand in front of his lips and made a gesture to keep quiet. He looked back at the closed ward door and shook his head slightly.
Then he turned and walked towards the end of the corridor.
There was a small window at the end of the corridor.
Xu Qinghe stood in front of the window, looking at the bustling street scene outside for a while, and then he sighed to the young man beside him:
"Qiao Yang...that kid must have been targeted by that thing."
The young man called Qiao Yang's expression immediately became serious.
He knew better than anyone that his teacher rarely spoke in such a serious tone.
"I've already asked Li Xiu. When Grandma Qi tricked him into offering food to Mr. Hong at home, he didn't notice anything unusual and always thought it was just the elders messing around."
"How is this possible?" Qiao Yang frowned, suspicion flashing in his eyes. "Could that kid be lying? That old woman brought home... but 'Red Lord'. That creature was so ferocious. An old woman bringing a kid to offer food to the hungry ghosts is simply courting death. How could nothing have happened in his family over the years?!"
Teacher Xu smiled bitterly and raised his hand to signal Qiao Yang not to continue.
"That's why I said this, it's really hard to deal with."
The man took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Li Xiu said that Grandma Qi always told him to treat that creature as a relative and to call it 'brother.'"
Recalling the strange and complicated expression on Li Xiu's face when she mentioned "brother" in the ward, Teacher Xu's heart sank a little bit.
"That Seventh Grandma is probably going crazy." Qiao Yang tried to hold back, but couldn't help but curse. "The Xiao family has worshipped this evil spirit for over a hundred years, but it still hasn't gotten rid of its viciousness. It wiped out an entire family. And she thinks she can just bring it home and offer some rice. She thinks she's just raising a lowly little ghost from Southeast Asia, and she calls it 'brother' and treats it as family? How can someone's mind get so confused when they get old..."
"I'm afraid that Master Hong will actually respond to Xiu's call of 'brother'."
Qiao Yang never expected Teacher Xu to say that. He was stunned: "How is that possible?"
"How is that impossible?"
Teacher Xu put on his glasses and asked back.
"Qiming has been safe and sound for so long, how come it just happened that Li Xiu started getting into trouble after being bullied? Didn't you notice that all those guys who have gone missing up to now were the ones who bullied Li Xiu?"
"Ah? Teacher, you—"
"I asked Li Xiu's homeroom teacher and his classmates," Teacher Xu sighed. "Students like him don't have a good time at Qiming. The missing Wang Rongfa and the deceased Song Cheng were both arrogant and domineering in school. Oh, and that male teacher named Ouyang wasn't right either. I guess he also wanted to attack Li Xiu, but ended up being killed. Qiao Yang, what do you think this kind of thing is like?"
"Like, like what?"
Qiao Yang didn't react.
Teacher Xu gave him a look of disapproval and whispered, "Isn't this just like when the younger siblings get bullied, and the older one goes to help them?"
Qiao Yang was speechless: "Ah? Wait, but, those students are missing, missing, dead-"
"That's an evil spirit, it's not a human."
Teacher Xu's voice became extremely serious.
"So it can't tell the difference between right and wrong. If Li Xiu was bullied, if it were a living big brother, no matter how arrogant he was, he would at most go to the house and beat up those bullies, but when it attacked..."
"It's the dead."
This time Qiao Yang finally responded.
Teacher Xu nodded.
"Yes, you see, this is the most terrifying thing."
Qiao Yang's eyes flickered. He carefully looked at the teacher beside him and spoke tentatively: "Well, teacher, if that's the case, will everything be fine once that thing calms down? Now those students who bullied Li Xiu seem to be dead-"
Before he could finish his words, Qiao Yang felt a pain on his forehead. The usually gentle Teacher Xu was furious this time. He slapped the young man in front of him on the forehead and cursed him several times.
"What do you mean it's okay? Huh? They're all human lives! Human lives!" The veins on the man's forehead popped out. "Besides, it can't be that simple. I've told you so many times, you can't use human thinking to speculate on those things. That Hong Daren, it seems like he really has fulfilled Li Xiu's wishes and become a 'brother'. What do you think he will do?"
"…" Qiao Yang covered his head and didn't dare to say a word.
"It will only think of ways to kill that student, take him away, and drag him to its other world! A complete family, you know? A thing like Red Lord wouldn't think of saying that humans and ghosts are different. It just thinks that since we are a family, we must be complete. If one person is alive and the other is dead, how can we call them a family? However, the dead can't become alive, but the living can become dead!"
Teacher Xu spoke word by word, his expression becoming increasingly grim. "The worst thing is not just that Master Hong wants to take Li Xiu away. The most frightening thing is that she not only wants to take Li Xiu away, but she also wants to make sure Li Xiu isn't alone."
"ah?"
"Li Xiu said he was tricked into going to school in that world. Well, the classmates he met this time were all paper dolls, so he was able to tell them apart. So, what if Master Hong feels that paper dolls aren't enough and wants to bring all his classmates over to keep him company? If you have classmates, don't you also have teachers for the classes?"
Listening to Teacher Xu's words, Qiao Yang's face gradually turned pale.
Although it sounds ridiculous, but thinking about the things he has come across over the years, Qiao Yang has to admit that what Teacher Xu said is not nonsense.
If this matter is not handled properly, the thing that wiped out the entire Xiao family and was barely sealed with the efforts of all the masters of metaphysics in the country may take away all the students of Qiming.
Simply, just to keep my most beloved "brother" company.
…
The silence between the master and the disciple grew heavy.
After a long time, Qiao Yang rubbed his face and asked with all his strength.
"So what do we do now?" The young man's eyes flashed with unconcealed worry. "...We've been searching that student's house for so long. He said Li Yu's urn was under the bed in his room. But we've almost dug through the floorboards under the bed, and we still can't find the urn."
Theoretically speaking, it is not difficult to deal with evil spirits like Lord Hong, whose main body is sealed and only some payloads are left outside.
As long as the ashes that were stolen by the Seventh Grandma and were contaminated with the breath of Lord Hong are found and burned with the Purple Vermilion True Fire, Lord Hong will no longer have anything to possess and will naturally be unable to cause trouble again.
But just as Qiao Yang said, after discovering something was wrong, Teacher Xu sent people to Li Xiu's house to retrieve Li Yu's ashes, but found that the ashes that had been placed under the bed for more than ten years had mysteriously disappeared.
And Li Xiu didn't look like he was lying.
"There's no other way. We still have to find a way."
Teacher Xu said in a deep voice.
As he spoke, he turned his head and took a deep look at the seemingly ordinary ward at the other end of the corridor. The skinny boy whom the evil spirit regarded as "family" was in that ward.
Teacher Xu inexplicably thought of the question that Li Xiu suddenly called out to him and asked before he left the ward.
"Teacher Xu."
"Um?"
"Will it let me go?"
…
Teacher Xu did not directly answer Li Xiu's question at that time.
He told Li Xiu to have a good rest, not to think too much, and to take good care of her health.
But in fact, the older man knew the answer to Li Xiu's question better than anyone else.
No, it won't let you go.
[That thing will definitely come back to you.]
*
In the ward.
Li Xiu sat on the hospital bed. After Teacher Xu left, he stared at the tightly closed door for a while, then shuddered. Perhaps it was because he was too weak, or perhaps it was because he had suffered a major blow in life, but Li Xiu always felt cold recently.
Li Xiu used the remote control to turn up the temperature of the air conditioner a little bit and covered herself with a blanket.
Li Xiu had learned a lot from Teacher Xu today, and her mind was a bit confused. To calm herself, she simply picked up the practice test papers Teacher Chen had sent her and worked through half a dozen in one sitting. The intense mental work had left the already weak Li Xiu feeling groggy. Before she knew it, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
When he woke up with a start, he realized that he had slept until night without realizing it.
The ward was silent, and the night was dark outside the half-open window.
The needle that was stuck in the back of my hand before going to bed has been removed and the IV drip has been withdrawn.
The gel pens and exercise books were neatly placed on the bedside table, and Li Xiu was covered with a soft quilt. Li Xiu half-sat on the bed and thought for a while, vaguely remembering that a nurse seemed to have entered the ward while he was asleep.
She seemed to call herself a few times, but Li Xiu was sleeping soundly at the time and did not wake up.
Li Xiu glanced at her phone.
The sudden lighting of the screen made his eyes sting a little. The time on it was three o'clock in the morning.
In fact, before looking at the time, Li Xiu had already guessed that it was probably this time.
Since being hospitalized, Li Xiu wakes up inexplicably at three o'clock in the morning almost every night.
The same is true today.
Maybe I was just too nervous.
While comforting himself, Li Xiu gritted his teeth and fell back onto the hospital bed.
So cold...
Li Xiu unconsciously opened Fang Qianan's dialog box in the mobile phone communication software. From the records, it can be seen that Fang Qianan has been sending a constant stream of nonsense, and Li Xiu only occasionally replied with a sentence or two.
It's not like I didn't think Fang Qianan's nonsense was meaningless before.
But at this moment, Li Xiu looked at Fang Qianan's nonsense for a long time.
Teacher Xu hadn't elaborated on this before, but after waking up, Li Xiu probably guessed that the "candle" used to illuminate the other world was actually closely related to a person's lifeblood. In order to save him, Fang Qianan burned the entire candle.
Therefore, after being rescued, Fang Qianan's condition was much worse than his. Although he was said to have recovered now, Li Xiu had never received any news from Fang Qianan since that day.
That idiot...
Are you really okay now?
Li Xiu couldn't hide her worry. She tapped the send message box several times, but ultimately failed to send any message.
It's too late.
He thought, let's wait until tomorrow. As he thought about this, Li Xiu huddled down deeper into his blankets. The corners of his eyes felt slightly hot, and he touched the pillowcase, finding it damp. Perhaps he'd accidentally cried again in his dream.
The hospital was eerily quiet late at night.
Li Xiu hid under the covers, loneliness slowly rising like the rising tide. He wanted to sleep a little longer, but after lying in bed for a long time, he couldn't fall asleep. He could only stare blankly at the closed ward door with his eyes open.
The lights in the inpatient hallway were always on, and from Li Xiu's perspective, she could clearly see the faint light leaking into the room through the crack in the door. When assigning him a ward, perhaps taking into account everything he had been through, Teacher Xu specifically arranged for him to be in a room closest to the nurses' station.
In the next few days, this became Li Xiu's greatest psychological comfort.
…though he still didn't sleep well at night.
Li Xiu should have felt reassured knowing that someone was watching over him just across the wall. However, even he himself didn't know why he was inexplicably breaking out in a cold sweat while lying in bed.
Li Xiu's heart was beating wildly uncontrollably, his throat was tight and dry, and there was a faint smell of blood in his breath.
He grabbed the quilt tightly, and a voice in his heart kept chattering.
Something is not right.
He thought.
What is it...
Everything was clearly the same as before, the most difficult times were clearly over, and he was lying in a room just across the wall from the nurses' station...
Li Xiu was breathing heavily, with cold sweat running down his back.
"call..."
"call..."
…
At this moment, his eyes fixed on the door - the light leaking from the gap in the door dimmed slightly, and a figure flashed past his door.
Li Xiu subconsciously held his breath.
But soon, familiar and hurried footsteps passed by the door of his ward.
Ah, that shadow is the night nurse. It must be that symptoms have appeared in other wards and they are calling for a nurse.
Li Xiu realized this belatedly.
He slowly breathed a sigh of relief.
But the next second, he froze again.
"call..."
Breathing sound.
Li Xiu finally realized why he always felt that something was wrong.
It's the breathing sound that's wrong.
He had clearly held his breath because of nervousness just now, but he still heard the turbid and heavy breathing sound.
During the seven days in the hospital, this voice had been lingering around him, overlapping with his every breath, so before he only vaguely felt that something was wrong but could not find the reason.
The accumulated sense of uneasiness made him wake up involuntarily every night.
Until just now, he finally heard the breathing sound in the ward that shouldn't exist, which belonged to another existence.
...a voice came from under his bed.
Li Xiu clutched her quilt tightly. At that moment, the air in the ward seemed to freeze.
However, through the mattress of the hospital bed, the breathing sound suddenly became unusually loud and clear.
Li Xiu tried hard to hold his breath so that he could hear more clearly, but holding his breath in extreme tension only made him more dizzy.
Who is it?
No, I should say...what's under his bed?
Li Xiu covered her mouth and her body trembled uncontrollably.
The intense fear made him unable to move, but it was like an invisible whip that kept whipping him. The instinct for survival made him subconsciously want to find out what was under the bed.
"call..."
Is it an illusion?
Or did he have some kind of panic attack?
Li Xiu tried hard to calm herself down.
However, the faint breathing sound became closer, at least that's how it sounded to Li Xiu. And this time, the breathing sound Li Xiu heard seemed to be coming from the head of the bed.
There was clearly only a narrow gap, but why was there something breathing there?
Li Xiu is now curled up in the quilt.
He didn't even dare to stick his head out.
Because he always felt that as long as he lifted the quilt, he would see something he never wanted to face in his life.
Li Xiu's heart was beating so fast that it seemed like it would burst out of his chest in the next second. He bit his lips tightly, and then, trembling, pressed the camera mode on his phone.
He pushed the phone with his fingertips, pushing the upper half of the phone out along the gap between the quilt and the bed.
Then, he hid under the quilt, tiptoed, and pressed the camera button on his phone.
The phone successfully took several photos.
Li Xiu suppressed his fear and slowly pulled the phone back from outside the quilt.
When checking the photos he had just taken, Li Xiu was shaking so much that he could hardly hold the phone.
However, when he saw the photo for the first time, Li Xiu did not recognize what it was - he did not see the female or male ghost lying on his quilt, nor did he see the paper masks that had occupied his nightmares.
In fact, there was only a blur of black and red on the screen.
The center of the screen was completely black, with only a smear of crimson in the four corners. This continued for several consecutive pictures. It was as if there was something wrong with the camera on this old phone.
All the pictures are so blurry.
Li Xiu stared blankly at the screen of her mobile phone.
That flash of inspiration came suddenly.
It was at that moment that Li Xiu finally realized what he was seeing.
No, there was nothing wrong with his phone.
It was that thing that was too close.
It was so close that Li Xiu's phone couldn't adjust the focus at all, so the photo he took was just a black and red mass.
The black one is the pupil of that thing.
The red color is the white of its eyes which are filled with blood.
*
"A Xiu."
Li Xiu heard an old and familiar voice.
"A Xiu, why didn't you bring food to your brother today?"
Li Xiu's grandmother, who had passed away a week ago, was still urging her in her ear as usual.
But my grandmother's voice would not have been so vague when she was alive.
A faint stench of corpse mixed with the smell of disinfectant came from the air.
No matter how tightly Li Xiu wrapped herself in the quilt, she couldn't block out the smell.
…That's not grandma.