They followed Wang Yan to the dining hall, candlelight fluttering like moth wings over the long table. Out of nowhere, Uncle Li stepped from the shadow like a blade from a sheath and said, “Madam, an outsider girl is here—she says you invited her, a Spirit Exorcist.”

“I invited a Spirit Exorcist?” Her brows lifted like a ripple on a still pond, surprise quick and cool. Then her gaze settled, calm as a reed in wind. “She must’ve seen my job post online. I didn’t expect another one to come.”

That would be fine on any other night, rain against tile and all. But she’d already hired Lu Ming; another hand might muddy the water like silt in a stream.

“Don’t worry about me,” Lu Ming said, smile warm as winter sunlight through paper screens. “More hands mean quicker work. Please bring her in.”

His smile felt gentle as a brazier’s glow, and Wang Yan’s guarded heart loosened like frost under dawn. She nodded with soft relief.

“I’ll bring the girl in then.” Uncle Li flowed away like a shadow sliding behind a pillar, and the hall fell quiet, two lanterns in a sea of dusk: Wang Yan and Lu Ming.

“Does Uncle Li always appear and vanish like mist?” Lu Ming asked around a bite, voice light, eyes wary as a hunter in brush.

“It’s odd,” Wang Yan said, raising a teacup that steamed like morning fog. “He used to limp like a creaking axle. Lately he’s much better, said a skilled doctor fixed him. I worry he’s old and easy to trick, a leaf in a fast current. But he’s been fine these days—just stronger, keeps to his room like a turtle in its shell, and he dislikes bright light like an owl at noon.”

“Can you tell me more?” Lu Ming set down his knife and fork, heartbeat tight as a bowstring. His gut stirred like a pond touched by unseen rain, something about Uncle Li off by a hair.

“This—”

“Ah!” A scream ripped the air from the corridor, sharp as ice snapping on a river. It carried through the villa like a cracked bell.

Trouble, like thunder rolling over bare hills.

Lu Ming shoved back his chair, the legs rasping like a blade on stone, and sprinted toward the sound. Wang Yan hesitated, a reed quivering in sudden wind, then followed close.

The cry came from the corridor, a tunnel of dim candles flickering like fireflies. As Lu Ming reached it, a stench rolled out, thick as swamp rot after rain. It wasn’t common rot; it carried that ghostly taint like grave-cold clinging to bone, and it made his skin crawl like ants under bark.

A woman sat collapsed on the floor, back to him, small as a fallen sparrow. Wang Yan had said she was the Spirit Exorcist from the ad, a colleague, a fellow traveler in night. Why would a colleague shake like a leaf in a storm?

“What happened?” Lu Ming knelt, lifting her carefully, voice steady as a lantern flame.

She pointed at a wall down the corridor, hand trembling like a reed in gale. “Inside… inside… there’s a ghost!”

Inside? Lu Ming’s gaze cut toward the wall like lightning finding a tree. His face cooled, stone under frost. That was the wall that had felt wrong earlier, a drum with a hollow note.

“Miss, are you alright?” Wang Yan hurried up, concern spreading like ink in water.

The woman clutched Lu Ming’s arm with cold fingers, a drowning grip in dark water. She kept muttering like a prayer-bead mantra, “A ghost… the ghost inside wants to eat me…”

“Where’s Uncle Li?” Wang Yan turned, worry flashing like a startled swallow. “He went to get her.”

Lu Ming’s eyes caught a sliver at his feet, a paper strip still smoldering like a dying firefly—an unfinished Talisman. This was the kind you used to repel spirits, rare as snow in summer. Even he had only a few. Where did she get it?

“What did you see?” He tried to pry her hand off, but her grip locked tight as iron vines. He let her cling, and his voice stayed low, river-smooth.

“A ghost… a ghost… there’s a man-eating ghost inside…”

“Enough.” Irritation rose in him like heat from a kiln, and his tone hardened like iced steel.

She flinched, chin shrinking like a turtle. “Y-you’re so mean…”

“...” The silence hung like a blade.

“Tell me what you saw,” he said again, softer now, a breeze over reeds.

“I saw a ghost, and it wanted to eat me!” Her voice trembled like a candle’s wick, yet it held.

“...” He exhaled, ash over coals.

“I can see ghosts too,” he said, flat as a slate stone. “If you’re a Spirit Exorcist, why’re you so spineless, like a rabbit under hawk-shadow?”

“But I’m not a Spirit Exorcist.” Her answer fell like a stone into a quiet pond, ripples widening.

“What?” The word bit cold as sleet.

If she wasn’t, why come to a haunted villa like a moth flying into a brazier?

“I came because someone told me to. I don’t know anything else,” she said, eyes fogged like glass in winter.

“...” His doubts coiled like smoke.

“If you’re not a Spirit Exorcist, how can you see ghosts?” He frowned, a cloud over sun.

“I don’t know why. A weird monk said I’m Extreme Yin, like a well that never sees day. I attract evil things. He said if I came here today, I’d meet someone who could fix it.”

She didn’t sound like she was lying, her words clean as a spring. Lu Ming opened his Yin-Yang Eyes; sight sharpened like night-blooming flowers catching star-gleam. She truly carried the rare Extreme Yin constitution, a cold moon sealed in flesh. The road ahead twisted like a mountain path in fog.

A haunted house, then a woman of Extreme Yin. It felt like walking into a net, each step a silken thread tightening.

“Stay here and don’t wander,” he said, voice low as thunder rolled far away. “I’ll check ahead.”

Wang Yan had been gone too long, her absence a hole in the night.

“I-I’ll go with you…” Fear shook her words like wind through chimes. No one sane would stay alone in this gloom; the villa breathed like a mausoleum.

“I’m Xuduo. What’s your name?” Her whisper chased him like a timid firefly, trying to warm the dark.

“Lu Ming.” His answer was bare as steel; his focus swept the corridor like a hunter’s gaze.

“Eh, Lu Ming, why’re you here at this villa?” she said, curiosity pecking like a sparrow. “Do you know the owner?”

“You can really see ghosts, right?” Her questions spilled like beads from a broken string. “And what’s a Spirit Exorcist, anyway?”

She kept chattering, her voice pattering like rain on paper windows, and Lu Ming’s face darkened like a stormed-over sky.

“Ask one more question,” he said, turning with eyes cold as moonlight on a blade, “and I’ll leave you here to find your own way out.”

Xuduo’s hands flew to her chest, heart thumping like a trapped bird. She nodded fast, like a chick pecking grain.

“Fine, I won’t ask… no need to be so fierce,” she muttered, lips pouting like a plum blossom in frost.

“What was that?”

“N-nothing…”

Silence settled like snow, and Lu Ming let his attention spread, thin and sharp as silk thread.

He finally noticed a detail, small as a thorn but set deep. No electric lights glowed anywhere. The whole villa breathed by candlelight, flames wavering like will-o’-wisps, even in the corridors.

Afraid of light, or something else? The thought drifted like a leaf in slow water.

Maybe the owner liked this antique gloom, a taste for shadows over glass glare. Wang Yan, on the surface, showed nothing false, her face a calm mirror.

Whoosh— A thin wind slipped down the hallway, chill as a ghost’s breath across the nape. Cold climbed his spine like frost ivy.

For the first time on the job, his nerves tensed like drumskin before war. The yin in that wind had weight, heavy as wet grave soil.

Could it be a Red Robed Wraith? His master had said only those in blood-red shrouds held their own yin arts, storm coiled in silk. He’d never faced one; he knew his limits like a fisherman knows depth. If he met that kind, it’d be a slaughter, one-sided as a butcher’s block.

He drifted along the villa like a shadow, then slipped into a closed room. The door yielded with a creak, thin as a dying cricket. A new stink poured out, different from the ghost-reek, thick as mold on a wet carcass, threaded with the iron tang of blood.

What was that?

He had no light, only darkness pooled like ink. Two black lumps sat bound to chairs, silhouettes crooked as dead crows on a line.

Wang Yan hadn’t shown this room, a hidden pocket cut into the house like a secret hollow in a tree. The space was small, but clutter stacked like a junkyard shrine, broken shapes and old smells.

He moved closer, step by step, breath held thin as spider silk. He stopped before the two shapes and bent to see.

“Xuduo?!” The name cracked from him like ice under boot.

The air froze, the room closing like a fist of winter. Cold shot up from his soles to his crown, a spear of frost through marrow.

If this face was Xuduo, tied and limp as a puppet with cut strings—then who was the Xuduo breathing at his shoulder like a shadow in red dusk?