Night dropped like a lacquered lid as Liu RuoYuan swung by home to pick up Yekase for Murder House No. 1.

I saw the last three places this afternoon, ran myself flat like a spent kite.

How’d they look?

Liu RuoYuan shook her head, a willow in a crosswind. One near the subway, but too far from school; the other two were worse, leaks or an organization base next door.

Uh… then we shelve it. If it won’t work, we buy a normal place.

Wait, what counts as normal? A murder house is still a house, just with a few extras drifting like cold mist.

Hand in hand, Liu RuoYuan led Yekase into Bieqiao Alley for the second time, feet whispering like leaves.

The round courtyard gate was as they’d left it, a moonstone wheel that opened at a touch, and they stepped in without hesitation like wading into a dark pond.

The Soul Power projection had shown around midnight, a tide turning on the hour, but last night’s timing was too neat, like a trap closing with velvet jaws.

They didn’t know if it auto‑played at time, or if two people on the couch, mirroring the scene, pulled the string like a bell rope.

Yekase ran the first eight tenants through common sense like beads on an abacus and came up with a few steady threads.

First, they’d all heard those puffs and creaks from last night’s projection, a house breathing like an old tree, yet no one reported seeing a ghost.

Maybe the Soul Power field was weak, a pond with barely a ripple, and only resonated with her senses to paint a picture the eye could catch.

Second, tenants heard the noises far more often than two people sitting here at midnight, a drumbeat against the window instead of a single chime.

By the end, their minds were threadbare like winter quilts, and they’d hide in bedrooms to sleep early, not sit bold on the couch to await ghosts.

So the projection likely auto‑played, like a music box that winds itself when the clock strikes twelve and the house inhales.

Third, it looped the event of that night yet never pulled tenants into the current, a river seen, not stepped into.

That might be because the source of the Soul Power field—the murdered couple—held softer, cooler grief, and Infinite Power mirrors the user’s heart like still water.

With those three points, tonight looked safe as a lantern in drizzle, just faint and faithful.

They’d squat in the kitchen, tucked behind the gas cylinder like cats behind a screen, and wait for a tiny shadow to bloom.

Then they’d see her face, and check if she matched the guess blooming in Yekase’s chest like a red stamp.

…

…But one thing felt off, like a pebble in a shoe.

The projection showed the robber from door‑breach to death, his path a straight line through the living room and inner dining room, a knife carving through air.

No other room was used, and the family of three kept to one bedroom and the kitchen, like birds in overlapping nests.

Yet Soul Power mist lay in every corner of the house, like dew on grass no foot had pressed.

The two outer bedrooms and the bathroom had no visitors for the whole event, yet a thin haze still drifted there like candle smoke.

Was it simple diffusion, a scent wandering because doors stood open, or was there a hidden spring?

A new possibility struck Yekase like a cold drop from the eaves.

What if some tenants came with cloudy motives, not lusting after the victims’ daughter, but chasing Infinite Power, gambling on rumor like casting lots?

What if they left traces, like fingerprints pressed into wet clay?

…A‑Yuan, what time is it?

Eleven. We’ve got plenty of sand in the glass.

Yekase nodded, a reed bending and not breaking. Celestial Speech. Dancing Light.

In her own sight, a tape‑ball of Sorcery streamlines tangled and rose, a comet of thread into the air—that was the true body of the light.

Whoa, that’s bright as noon. Why didn’t we use it last night?

We didn’t know the lay of the water, and I worried a big light would scare the ghost back into the reeds. Take this light in your hand and just hold it.

Check the bathroom and the two outer bedrooms, lantern‑bearer style like a temple fair.

Go with me.

Okay, okay, I’ll go with you, like a shadow stitched to your heel.

Yekase reached into the empty air, and her hand fell into a warm, slightly larger palm, two boats tied to the same pier.

They stepped into the outermost bedroom, breath hushed like moth wings.

See anything odd?

Don’t start, you’ll spook me like a hare under hawk‑shadow.

Like an unnatural square recess in the floor, or furniture that’s a hair off, like a painting hung crooked?

Liu RuoYuan checked every inch, careful as a tailor, then remembered Yekase couldn’t see and said, It looks clean.

Did you check under the bed frame? Yekase pushed the search along like chess.

The crossbars are removed. It’s wide open like a stage.

Mm… next room then, like turning a page.

No hits? Yekase’s brows knit like a tight knot. By last night’s map, the long couch marked the border, and outside that were this bedroom and the bathroom.

The bathroom’s guts are all pipes, hard to alter, so if someone hid something, it’d be here, like a stowaway under the eaves.

They backed out of the room, heels tapping like rain.

—Ah!

Liu RuoYuan shouted right in her ear, a firecracker under a quiet eave.

The hell?!

Yekase jolted like a startled sparrow, gasping. What did you see?

The floor color! The bedroom floor isn’t the same as the living room’s, like two boards from different forests.

Check the second bedroom first, or we’re chasing a mirage on the water.

Liu RuoYuan checked again, careful as a gardener. No, the second bedroom matches the living room. Only that first one is paler, like it was replaced later.

Replaced… a second replacement… and what does that whisper?

Right, I thought of something else.

What?

Eight sets of tenants in twenty‑one years, a string of lanterns across time, and all of them ended up with nervous exhaustion.

It’s neurasthenia.

…But the listing never said anyone died inside, like the wind skipping a verse.

Mm… huh?

That was a blind spot, a knot in the wood—Yekase had never considered the house actually killing someone, a shadow with teeth.

And last night, didn’t her back prove the Soul Power projection couldn’t hurt, like wind passing through reeds?

Couldn’t hurt… really?

A Gunblade appeared in Yekase’s arms, heavy as a rain‑soaked log and familiar as a heartbeat.

Compared to Cloudlong City, the makeshift leather sheath was gone, replaced by a boxy mechanical scabbard, a steel lunchbox around a thunderbolt.

How’s that saying go? No ghost had laid a finger on me—

Bang!

The scabbard kicked in her arms with a dull report, sparks spitting along the seam like a ring of fire, and the whole Gunblade launched like a loosed arrow.

The hilt shot straight back—if a grown man stood there, it would have kissed his brow like a hammer to a bell.

Wha—

Liu RuoYuan flinched, a fish under net‑shadow, then saw Yekase snatch the Gunblade on its rebound off the wall, turn, and hew at empty air.

Two Flash Energy rounds cracked after, stamping coin‑sized dents in the door like cold bites.

What are you doing?!

You don’t see it? Yekase shouldered the Gunblade, a shield of iron light, and stood before Liu RuoYuan like a pine before a shrine.

A shadow. A shadow that belongs to someone else, like ink without its brush.

After Liu RuoYuan’s prompt, a detail surfaced like a koi breaking water. Last night, that knife over the couch hit her back only after meeting another body.

Someone stood there twenty‑one years ago, a cut in time, and blocked it—there’s no proof the Soul Power projection can’t harm people.

So… across eight sets of tenants, did someone die here, like a candle snuffed between drafts? Did a seller hide a second stain with new flooring to save the price?

If that’s all, we could say someone just stood between couch and door, and the robber’s shadow stabbed true like a hunting heron.

But they wouldn’t replace floors in other rooms for a living room stain, yet leave only that first bedroom odd, like a white hair in black fur.

And… Yekase now saw another shadow, a wedge of night pressed against the world.

So everything lines up. The hidden second casualty happened in that odd‑floored room, a thorn under the rug, and the projection chases away ordinary tenants like wind chills birds.

But when a stubborn one comes to dig to the root, you stop playing, and you bite, house lord.

Her right thumb slid to a discreet toggle on the cylinder‑shaped gun housing, the move neat as a locksmith’s flick.

Click.

Deep etchings along the blade, styled like the Blade Armor, filled with Infinite Power from the cylinder, veins flooding with ember light.

A soft hum rose like a hive waking, and metallic red lit the steel like sunrise on armor.

Am I right, master of the house?

Whether the shadow could answer didn’t matter—she dipped low like a cat under a fence and slipped into its pocket, Gunblade flashing.

All right, let’s run a test—Evolution, continuous blade!

Energized, the sword gleamed like a lighthouse saying I’m cutting here, yet Yekase’s speed dragged a ghost across steel, and the arc swerved at the last breath.

It left a U‑shaped trail in the gloom, a fishhook in night water.

A feint—

Bang!

The unseen shadow reacted like any trained man, spine folding like a bow, dodging the bullet she fired after reversing the Gunblade to her side.

His hands and upper body pressed to the floor like roots to loam, legs whipping up in a Rabbit Kicks the Eagle, a spring snapping.

But Yekase knew that low road by heart, a map inked on her bones, and slid aside, the Gunblade rising by her cheek like a sheathed katana.

The tip dipped, then rose, a swallow skimming, and she flicked at his legs mid‑air like cutting reeds by the pond.

Then she pulled the trigger again, a thunderclap trapped inside steel.

It was a shot from an impossible angle, a swallow darting against the wind—the barrel sits on the spine, and an up‑slash can’t bring the muzzle to bear first.

Got impatient?

Liu RuoYuan was a complete outsider in battle, eyes like a tourist’s, and missed the slip—but the shadow pounced on the opening like a fox on a hare.

The blade, now a red afterimage, fell like a descending guillotine and cut both legs clean, a winter branch snapping.

…What?

What just happened, like lightning without thunder?

His shins, severed from the whole, thinned into blue smoke and faded like dew, and in a blink he stood whole again, baffled.

She pulled the trigger… then what?

No bullet left the muzzle. Instead, the blade suddenly surged, a tide sprinting up the shore.

You didn’t think my work only had one attack mode, did you?