A thin veil of Soul Power drifted through the main house like morning mist.

Before stepping in, Yekase had left Infinite Force Perception hanging like a net, and it snagged a trace.

Soul Power... why Soul Power? The doubt caught like a fishbone.

Because it was a resentful “spirit”? That rang hollow like a cracked bell.

She flicked on her phone light. The beam skimmed the living room like a pale blade, and nothing stirred.

Only then did she beckon Liu RuoYuan inside, like waving someone over a still pond.

“Inside’s tidy too... When did the last tenant leave?”

“Half a month ago. A single man. His new home is a psych ward.” The words fell with winter chill.

“Uh...” The joke sank like a stone into a well.

She found the wall switch and pressed it. The click was a dry shell; the dark clung like wet ink.

“...Power’s cut? Let’s see if the kitchen still has water.” Her voice wavered like a reed.

Liu RuoYuan’s legs shook like bamboo in rain. She hugged Yekase’s left arm like a little sister clutching a warm stove. “W-we go together.”

“You said at the door you weren’t scared.”

“Turns out I’m... a little scared.”

Yekase snorted a laugh, bright as a spark. She let Liu RuoYuan hang on, and they inched forward like a two-person crab.

She turned the faucet. The pipe breathed hollow.

“...Water’s cut too.” No blood spilled out. That counted as a win in a night like this.

So the secondhand agent had pinched off water and power, like snuffing a wick. Nothing supernatural there.

Yekase crouched and opened the cabinet. A blue gas cylinder stood like a cold moon, half a meter high, with a hollow behind it fit for a five-year-old.

“Rice Rice.”

“Meow!” The shawl sloughed into a cat like cloud to rain.

Rice Rice hopped from Yekase’s shoulder into the cabinet. She scraped wall and steel with quick paws like dry leaves, then slipped out, bored.

“Nothing left inside. Let’s check elsewhere.” Her words fell light as dust.

The floor plan was a neat rectangle, square as a seal. The front door sat mid-long-side, with a sofa and a TV at center.

Sofa left, TV right, like two lanterns apart. Past the living room lay a dining area and a single window like a gray eye.

On the left, three bedrooms lined up behind the sofa like stacked scrolls. Their widths shifted with door placement.

Right of the living room sat the toilet like a white cave. Right of the dining room lay the kitchen they’d just circled.

They swept all three bedrooms like fishermen drawing a net. Desks, wardrobes, bare bedframes—nothing else rose from the silt.

Back in the living room, Liu RuoYuan slackened like a bow unstrung. She dropped onto a fairly clean sofa like a fallen petal. “Looks like a normal house... scared me half to death.”

Only their phone lights glowed, two small moons. Dust drifted through the beams like plankton, and the whole place kept a grave hush.

Yekase nodded. “Aside from a haze of Soul Power, everything’s normal.” Her tone ran cool as streamwater.

“Most likely, the Soul Power synced faintly with the tenant’s mind, kept them in a self-blind buzz, like weak caffeine.”

“Over time, you grow tired and frail, like a guttering candle. I’ll bring a device another day and clear it.”

This felt like a cheesy science show, she thought, wry as bitter tea.

Yekase sat beside her. The sofa sighed like old wood.

... Click.

“Eek?!” The cry flitted out like a sparrow.

Liu RuoYuan sprang up. She clamped onto Yekase like ivy on an old tree. “W-what was that?”

Yekase didn’t answer. She watched Rice Rice leap onto the coffee table like a shadowed fox.

Rice Rice stared at the front door, tail still as a brushstroke.

Liu RuoYuan followed that gaze like a thread through a needle.

—?!

A shadow stood there, blue as a bruise. It slipped through the half-closed door and into the living room like fog.

Its right hand lifted high. It halted over the doormat where shoes once lined like small boats.

“...The robber just broke in,” Yekase murmured, voice low as midnight rain. “He’s lifting a knife to threaten the couple.”

She squeezed Liu RuoYuan’s hand, warm as a lantern.

Why? Liu RuoYuan’s eyes asked, wide as lakes.

“Soul Power is a kind of Infinite Power born when social beings sync their wills, like two strings humming together.”

“It behaves like Mind Energy but steadier, like stone under water. It can carry thought-speech.”

“Both kinds can cling to places, like incense smoke in beams.”

Here, the Soul Power had lingered twenty-one years, frost that never thawed. Two reasons, she thought.

“First, the instigators synchronized deeply with iron wills, so the Soul Power stayed strong.”

“Second, tenant after tenant fed it unwittingly, like batteries set in a shrine lamp.”

Suddenly the blue shadow moved, springing like a wolf. It lunged toward the sofa where they sat.

—! The air drew tight like a drum skin.

Yekase turned, covered Liu RuoYuan, and pressed her into the sofa’s hollow like snow shielding a seed.

Shunk!

“You got stabbed?!” Liu RuoYuan hissed, voice thin as thread.

Yekase shook her head and shifted aside like a leaf on water.

The shadow’s hand stopped at a certain height, pinned like a moth. Then it lifted again, and fell to the same point.

Shunk. Shunk. Shunk. Steel in meat, dull as rain on clay.

“...The robber was blocked by the man,” Yekase said, steady as a metronome. “He stabbed him again and again, and killed him.”

“H-how could this...” Her breath scattered like spooked birds.

After a dozen thrusts, the shadow lost interest. It went around the sofa like wind around a rock, headed for the far bedroom opposite the kitchen.

It stopped at the doorway and kicked hard, leg snapping like a pole. Thud-thud-thud banged the air, though Yekase had left that door ajar.

After a pause, it seemed to kick in the door. It bent and yanked something up like a netted catch. Then the reverse stabs began.

Shunk. Shunk. Shunk. Shu—

Suddenly it halted. The figure trembled twice like a reed in gust, then pitched forward and lay still like a felled tree.

The replay cut off there, a candle pinched out.

...

“Huff... huff... huff...” Liu RuoYuan panted like a winter runner. Her arms didn’t release Yekase.

She held tighter, knots in wet rope. “So the sounds the tenants heard were real,” she murmured. “A nightly reenactment... What’s the last part mean?”

“It’s simple,” Yekase said, gentle as tea steam. “The mother lured the robber to the opposite bedroom to save her daughter hiding in the kitchen.”

“She braced the door with her body like a beam. He kicked it open, dragged her out, and killed her.”

“Then the daughter slipped out and drove the kitchen knife into his back.” The words carried a blade’s chill.

“So he fell forward... Then this replay is the killer’s grudge?” The guess fluttered like a moth.

“No.” Yekase shook her head, calm as a lake.

“Soul Power rises from two hearts in resonance, like twin bells. Here, both its quality and quantity are top tier.”

Yekase patted her back, steady as falling rain.

Liu RuoYuan remembered being four or five. Afraid of the dark, sleepless as a caged bird, with her big brother beside her, patting like this, wordless.

Now she was grown. Yekase’s hand was smaller, still warm as spring clay.

And the girl in the story? She was five too, a sapling in a storm.

“...This is the couple’s shared will to protect their daughter at the last breath,” Yekase said. “They couldn’t fight with Soul Power.”

“So it stayed behind as a recording that plays each night, like tide against rock.”

“Is that... their hatred for the robber?” The word tasted of iron.

“Maybe some. But if hate led, we wouldn’t be untouched now.” Yekase’s small smile showed a moon edge.

“Didn’t you notice? The robber falls, and the recording stops.” Her eyes softened like dusk.

“Because the father, stabbed first, let go only after he knew his daughter was safe.”

...

Liu RuoYuan’s face pressed into Yekase’s shoulder, hot as fever. A wet patch spread on the cloth like spilled tea.

“I could have used Flash Energy at the door to neutralize it,” Yekase said softly. “But maybe someone wanted to tell us something.”

“Now that we’ve seen it, we’ll clear it later. Nightly clicks and shunks will grind anyone down.” Humor flickered like a firefly.

Yekase checked her phone. 12:03. The digits felt like ice.

“Tomorrow at this time, we come again.”

“We’re coming back?!” Her protest leaped like a trout.

“Straight to the kitchen. If the tape records the robber, it should record the daughter.” Her tone honed like a whetstone.

“I want to see who she is.”

“It’s so blurry. Can we even tell?” Her doubt drifted like fog.

“Only one way to know.” The answer clicked like a latch.

The source is their cognition, she thought. Compared to a stranger robber, the daily daughter might be clearer, a face by lamplight.

Besides, when the blade sank into the robber’s back, a name flashed in Yekase’s mind like lightning. A candidate.

A five-year-old with that force and nerve, a hawk hatchling.

A silent approach that erased footfalls, like snow on pine.

A knife that slid in, turned, and dragged out to open the wound, clean as a butcher’s cut.

And that age. All of it rang familiar, a tune from home. The name sat on her tongue like a seed.

But that would be too neat. Until she saw the girl’s image, she wouldn’t speak without iron proof.

“Let’s go. You’re not sleeping here, are you?” The tease waved like a bamboo fan.

Liu RuoYuan shook her head like a rattle-drum, eyes red as cherries. If you’re this scared, you shouldn’t have come, Yekase thought, wry as rain.

They left with one cat, three shadows under a lidded night. The buses were done, streets dark as a dry well.

Liu RuoYuan wanted a taxi, money flowing like water. Yekase had earned enough to buy a place, yet thrift pinched like an old habit.

She spoke a line of Celestial Speech for flight and hugged Liu RuoYuan as they rose like kites—

...

—then settled back to earth like a deflated lantern.

“What are you doing?” The question had thorns.

Yekase turned her head, embarrassed as a child. “I, uh, ran Infinite Force Perception too long.”

“So?” The word cut like ice.

“Now I can’t see.” The admission fell like snow.

“Huh?” Liu RuoYuan seized Yekase’s head and turned it, firm as a potter’s hands.

She saw unfocused red pupils, twin coals gone dim. Sweat slid down Yekase’s brow like cold rain.

“It’ll pass if we wait!” Yekase blurted, flustered as a sparrow. “Way better than last time! I even had a fever then.”

... Silence pooled like ink.

Only silence answered, deep as a well.

In the black, Yekase felt doom perch on her shoulder like a crow.

“Great,” Liu RuoYuan said, a cold smile like frost on glass. “So you cherish your body so carefully outside.”

“Uh, not really—” Her words stumbled like pebbles.

“So you like not seeing?” The question slid like a blade.

“How’d you get that from this?!” Panic fluttered like a moth.

Liu RuoYuan let go and stepped aside, quiet as a cat. Yekase lost her last tether to the world and froze on the sidewalk like a statue.

“Tell me,” Liu RuoYuan breathed at her ear, warm as tea steam. “Do you prefer wrecking your body, or prefer not seeing?”

The darkness sharpened touch like a whetstone. Yekase trembled head to toe, a leaf in night wind.

Right now, Liu RuoYuan was a thousand times scarier than that house shadow, a tiger behind silk.

If she chose the first... no, never that. She’d be leashed at home like a pet.

Last time Liu RuoYuan and Jiang Bailu hit it off too well. Give her a chance and she’d go Jiang Bailu-level cruel.

“...Then... not seeing, I guess...” The surrender slipped out like a white flag.