Midnight.

Flat on her back, staring at her own ceiling, Xiaoxiao Ji had no sleep in her bones—only nerves strung tight like a bowstring in winter air.

Ever since Nana Toki said a wicked ghost would come to this house tonight, sleep had flown like a startled sparrow.

She wanted to force herself down into dreams, to dodge the jump scare later. But the thought alone—some awful thing drifting around her bed once she dozed off—made fear crawl under her skin like ice water.

Had she kicked a whole ghost nest lately? Why did unscientific nightmares keep lining up at her door like shadows at dusk?

She reached from the warm cave of her blankets for her phone to check the time, to set an alarm. A gust skimmed the window like a cold hand across a mirror, and the panes moaned woo-woo, as if a dozen unseen fingers drummed on the glass.

Her hand jerked back into the covers like she’d been shocked.

“…,” Xiaoxiao thought. She could not catch a break.

Knock, knock, knock…

Knock, knock, knock…

She drifted on the mattress, mind blank and buzzing. She almost asked Nana Toki to knock her out to skip the scare. Then a crisp knocking rippled from the front door, clean as a pebble on a drum. Xiaoxiao flinched so hard she curled, hugging her head, diving deeper into her quilt like a rabbit into brush.

A ghost. A ghost really came?

It was clearly her front door being struck, a steady pulse in the dead-still night. Yet under the quilt, she heard it as if the wood was breathing against her ear. It went on nearly a minute. Then a woman’s voice spilled in—urgent, thin.

“Help me! Help me!”

The voice swam closer and farther, tide-like, threaded with crying. In the midnight hush, it was a winter reed whistle, eerie enough to raise gooseflesh.

Xiaoxiao stayed tucked under, too scared to poke out. Her small body shook like a leaf in late autumn.

This was textbook haunted-plot stuff. Where was her ghost sister at a time like this? Hadn’t she promised to shield her? Where was that “person” now?

Tears crowded her eyes from nerves.

Outside, as if the thing beyond the door knew the owner wouldn’t open, the knocking sharpened. It grew into scritch-scritch, like five pale nails raking the door, with the woman’s weeping braided through the scratching like cold rain.

“Help me! Help me!”

Xiaoxiao clamped a pillow over her head, trying to muffle the world the way snow blankets sound. Still the crying seeped in, clear as if whispered into her ear. It went on five, six minutes, then dwindled. The scratching faded too, like fog burning off at dawn.

She shivered under the covers, scared to move, afraid the thing was still rooted outside like a dead tree. Heat finally smothered her, and she dared a peek.

Her gaze slid to the window—and froze. Right outside, a woman’s face was pressed to the glass like a mask. Her skin was corpse-white. One cheek was swollen like waterlogged wood. Yellowed whites brimmed in her eyes. She stared, still as a winter pond.

“Aah—!”

Xiaoxiao shrieked, toppled off the bed, and scooted on her rear across the floor, retreating like a crab from a breaking wave.

“Help me! Help me!”

Thin arms hammered the glass. The window thudded, dull and urgent. Panic pounded in Xiaoxiao’s skull—Run, run, run—but her legs lay limp as wet cotton and would not obey.

The panes trembled, about to give. Inside the room, Nana Toki had been stewing, the way thunder swells behind the hills. She couldn’t stand it another beat.

She reached behind her. Boom.

Glass exploded with a crash like icy stars scattering. Xiaoxiao squeezed her eyes shut on reflex, and a woman’s scream tore the night like a torn sail.

“So damn noisy!”

“It’s the middle of the night. Don’t sleep, but you wail? Like a ghost?”

Dull thuds rolled in, one after another, heavy as drums covered in felt. Hearing that familiar voice, Xiaoxiao pried her eyes open, trembling.

“G-ghost sister…”

“What ghost sister? Call Ling Jiang daddy,” Nana Toki snapped, breath frosty with annoyance, hands never stopping.

Xiaoxiao saw her at the shattered window, floating in the dark like a shadow lantern. Nana Toki swung a Black Great Axe taller than she was, bringing it down again and again on the woman outside, each blow a falling slab of night.

The woman’s screams strung together like a kite tail, unending. Xiaoxiao winced and half-looked away, pity and terror tangled.

“Scream, scream, scream—go on, scream!”

“You couldn’t come earlier? No. You had to wait till I fell asleep!”

“Show up if you must, but you had to play ghost and spook people!”

“I thought you were something. Turns out you’re just fodder.”

System: “…” She is a ghost. There’s no pretending needed.

Also, the System hadn’t expected its host to have morning temper at midnight.

Nana Toki swung until the Red Robed Wraith beneath the axe blurred into smoke, a smear that looked ready to vanish if you breathed on it. She planted the Black Great Axe in the floor with a thunk, then fisted the wraith’s collar and hauled her up.

“Talk! Where’d you come from? Were a man and a woman chasing you?”

The woman looked dazed in Nana Toki’s grip, as if the wind had blown her soul loose. Nana threw questions like pebbles on water; no ripples came back. The woman only stared into Nana Toki’s eyes, swollen face full of lost fog.

My god. She was a wraith, a Red Robed Wraith in blood-stained finery. How was this lingering ghost so fierce, like iron under silk?

The Red Robed Wraith felt her ghost-life tilt. She couldn’t even beat a non-wraith spirit. What was she even doing? Might as well die again.

A disgrace among Red Robed Wraiths.

“Classmate Ji?”

While Nana Toki weighed dragging the wraith off to find the Protagonist Lord, a man and a woman finally showed up at the fence, late as rain after dust.

Nana Toki squinted at them over the wrecked window. Well, if it wasn’t the fashionably late Protagonist Lord and his heroine.

“What are you doing here?”

Through the broken frame, Lu Ming glimpsed Xiaoxiao crumpled on the floor. He froze. Then he saw Nana Toki, all rogue grin, dangling a Red Robed Wraith by the collar like a street tough.

“You… she… this…”

His gaze slid from dazed to stunned. He pointed at Nana Toki, then at the Red Robed Wraith, words snagging like thorns.

A mere residual spirit had pinned a Red Robed Wraith and scrubbed her across the ground?

Lu Ming felt his past half-life go chalk-dry. He knew how strong that Red Robed Wraith was. Without Xuduo’s Talismans and the treasure his master lent him, he might not have even wounded her.

Even battered, she was still a Red Robed Wraith.

She wasn’t supposed to lose to a remnant-level ghost. What on earth was this woman?

“What do you mean ‘you’? Can’t even catch a ghost? If I were you, I’d be too ashamed to show my face.”

Nana Toki rolled her eyes at Lu Ming and tossed the wraith at him. “If there’s nothing else, take this thing and beat it. Don’t make me clean up your mess.”

“…,” Lu Ming said, quietly catching the limp wraith.

“Um…” He glanced at the yellow Talismans pasted around the window and seemed ready to say more.

“No dates. Never loved you. You bother me again, I’ll clean you and that noisy wraith up together.”

Shouldering the Black Great Axe, Nana Toki floated back into Xiaoxiao’s house after sending Lu Ming a look sharp as a knife point.

“…”

“Who was that spirit just now?” Xuduo waited until Nana Toki fully slipped inside Xiaoxiao’s place. Then she spoke softly at Lu Ming’s side, nerves fluttering like moth wings. “She looked strong. Will she hurt people?”

“No clue.”

Lu Ming frowned, tying a red cord threaded with copper coins around the wraith’s wrists. He turned and told Xuduo, voice low, “Don’t dig into that one. She’s… odd. Our priority is figuring out this wraith’s tie to Old Li.”

Xuduo nodded like a reed in current, half-understanding. Curiosity tugged her anyway. She stole another look—and collided face-first with Nana Toki, who was just drawing the curtain.

Nana Toki hadn’t expected the heroine to take interest. After a blink of surprise, she curved a smile—strange, meaningful, like a crescent blade.

Xuduo jolted, cold sweat beading down her spine.

“What is it?” Lu Ming followed her gaze. The curtain had already fallen. He saw nothing but the night caught in fabric.

“Let’s go back to the villa and check on Wang Yan and Old Li.”

Lu Ming rubbed his temple and shifted his eyes back to the Red Robed Wraith in his grip. “Ghosts cling to people for reasons. I’m afraid Old Li is sitting on a pile of secrets.”

“Mm.”

Still rattled by Nana Toki, Xuduo bobbed a hurried nod and moved to leave with Lu Ming.

But the man leading didn’t hurry off. He drifted closer to a patch of wall where yellow Talismans fluttered like dead leaves.

“What is it, Lu Ming?”

Unease prickled under Xuduo’s skin as the Red Robed Wraith stared from behind, quiet as a snake in grass. She edged nearer to Lu Ming.

“Nothing. I’m just curious about these Talismans.”

The script Nana Toki had pasted around Xiaoxiao’s place was nothing Lu Ming had seen. As someone who wrote Talismans, curiosity itched like a gnat.

Forget it. I’ll ask her next time.

He knew they couldn’t linger. He gave the drawn curtain a long look, then led Xuduo and the Red Robed Wraith away into the night.