CH 105

As Yan Yu walked back downstairs, his footsteps faintly echoed down the stairway. There were bugs flying around in the faint yellow glow of the lights of the stairway, and the weather was so humid, it was hard to breathe. It did not help that there was a pungent smell spreading throughout the building from the nearby landfill either.

Leaning against the railing as he lit up a cigarette, Yan Yu stared at the broken and cracked wall in front of him. He suddenly felt that he wasn’t living quite like a human and that this was quite good, yet he also felt that he really couldn’t live like this anymore.

The cigarette in his hand burned all the way to the last dregs and he extinguished it on the railing. He walked back to his apartment and pushed open the door, not expecting Xun Chuan to be standing right behind the door. Their eyes met, and it was uncertain who scared whom first.

After the initial shock, Xun Chuan moved aside to let Yan Yu in and then floated back onto the bed. His legs swung back and forth as Yan Yu, not speaking a word, changed his shoes at the entryway before sitting down by the desk.  After a long period of silence, Yan Yu pulled the fourth drawer open.

Xun Chuan stopped his movements, desperately wanting to look, but then thought that he shouldn’t be looking.

There was a fire brazier1 used to burn talismans underneath the desk. Yan Yu pulled it out and then threw in the stack of papers he took from the fourth drawer. An orange flame lit up, illuminating his face and bringing that much more of a tenderness to him as the flames reflected off their light.

Xun Chuan couldn’t help himself and asked, 

“What are you burning?”

With his eyes reflecting the light from the fire, Yan Yu calmly said, 

“Something that will cause you misfortune.”

If he had never divined this reading, then he would have never broken up with Xun Chuan. Without breaking up, Xun Chuan would have never gone to X City for him, and perhaps he would have not died then. Sometimes, there were things hidden beneath it all; everything belonged to fate.

Xun Chuan soundlessly floated over, and as he did so, the “yin” energy surrounding his body weakened the flames. They shivered nonstop, as if they would be extinguished in the next second. Yan Yu waved his hand and the fire regained its luminescence, burning even brighter, and the papers quickly turned into ash.

After the papers were all gone, Yan Yu poured a cup of water over the basin, extinguishing the last of the flames. He asked Xun Chuan, 

“Hate me?”

Originally thought to be words that would tear out his heart and soul, but now they were spoken with such calmness.

Upon hearing this, Xun Chuan knew that Su Qing must have told him something. He uncomfortably pushed around the corner of the desk, and his eyes looked down at the fire brazier, 

“No I don’t. You could have just directly told it to my face……”

But the moment he said these words, he realized that there wasn’t much meaning to them. If Yan Yu had honestly spoken to him about this, he himself may have never believed it. He’d probably have felt that Yan Yu wasn’t even willing to give an acceptable excuse to break up. As fortune telling, this kind of thing, it was too unbelievable.

Xun Chuan did not even know that when humans died, they could turn into ghosts because of their deep, deep unfulfilled desires.

Yan Yu patted his pockets, wanting to have a smoke, but then he realized he was out. Xun Chuan pulled the lighter out of Yan Yu’s hand, threw it aside with a bang, and then sat on top of Yan Yu’s legs, sitting face to face with him.

The clown originally had his eye on Su Qing, but now that he had an even more suitable male body, he immediately focused all his attacks towards Yan Yu, focusing his attention on stealing his body.

Aggressive ghosts were much stronger than malicious ghosts.2 In a match with Xun Chuan, Yan Yu could barely draw a tie. For him to face up with an aggressive ghost, it was entirely impossible. At this time, he could only feel his entire body become frozen by the clown’s resentment, unable to move even a single twitch.

“Jie Jie Jie Jie……”

When the clown was near him, his hands were like flowing liquid. Following the red thread attached to him, he slowly invaded into Yan Yu’s body. Seeing this happen right before her eyes, Su Qing became frantic and wanted to try and do something, but she had no way to help. It was at this time, a sudden thick black cloud of resentment appeared and tightly wrapped around the clown’s neck. It forcibly pulled the clown back, forcing him to leave Yan Yu.

The clown’s body immediately turned into a pool of swirling liquid in response and in a quick moment escaped out of the resentment’s hold. At the same time, its sharp nails pinched onto that cloud as he bit down ruthlessly, chewing loudly and swallowing up that resentment into its body.

A human shape started to form behind him, a shadow that looked to be of Xun Chuan. He grabbed the golden money sword dropped by Yan Yu through the air and without caring about his quickly corroding hands, he aimed at the head of the clown and viciously stabbed down—–

“Ci La—-“

Click here to bypass all the footnotes!

Notes:

*1 fire brazier: used for a lot of things and has many implications/historical aspects, but in the case of spiritual things, it’s used for things like joss paper burning, for people to step over as a way to get rid of back luck/air (apparently originating from the tradition of marriage with the woman doing so, so that she only brings good luck to her “new” family), or just to bolster spirits and ward off spirits, etc. 

Luck in this case is less of a by chance and instead more of a “badness”/”negativity” someone or something could give you, kind of like if someone encounters bad things all day, their “bad luck” may transfer to you or like if you went to a graveyard and a lot of death news were passed your way, you might have leeched onto some “bad energy”

*2 aggressive vs malicious ghosts: it’s a bit hard to come up names on my own as you may have seen my very literal translations here haha, but the difference between what I’m labelling as “malicious” and “aggressive” ghosts is that “malicious” ghosts are those with resentment and hatred towards the world or a deep burning unfulfilled desire to do something (like get revenge) and so they have some power to do evil, but that is based on their level of resentment which causes them to be unable to reincarnate unless it’s been “pacified”, if you will – although debatable at some characteristics. 

“Aggressive” ghosts on the other hand can be considered as literally just the evilest of evil. They are of those “malicious” ghosts that have much much stronger power and are usually unable to reincarnate at all because their level of resentment is too much and sometimes to the point where they don’t care about their unfulfilled desires like they are not bound by them as regular “malicious” ghosts are, and instead limited just by their “spirit” body and their level of power which they then try to do more evil or swallow up more ghosts/humans to grow in power to keep doing even more. Hopefully this makes a bit of a distinction there.