They had already pieced together the link between the Red Robed Wraith and Uncle Li while Lu Ming and Xuduo made a stop‑and‑go return to Wang Yan’s villa, like lanterns flickering in wind.

Usually, when he met a harmful remnant spirit, Lu Ming smashed it to soul‑dust, clean as winter steel under frost.

But this was his first time facing a red‑robed grade wraith; her grudge ran deep as a cold well, her obsession rooted like old pines, and he wasn’t sure he could end her.

So he remembered a folk method his master once murmured, a candle‑light trick for nights thick with fog.

Listen to the ghost’s heart; help finish what it couldn’t in life, or dissolve what curdled after death, and a bridge might grow where daggers once crossed.

His master had warned it was only a remedy of chance; whether it works is one question, whether the obsession can be cleared is another, like rain that may or may not fall.

There was no precedent, yet Lu Ming could try, because hope is a thin reed that still sings over dark water.

It was the only path he could see to avoid making the Red Robed Wraith an enemy and perhaps turn blade into ally, winter into spring.

He knew her strength like counting thunderheads; even if he untied her knot and kept her close, storms could still gather later.

Risk walks with reward like shadow with flame; if he held the reins tight, carrying a Red Robed Wraith beside him wasn’t impossible.

If handled steady, she might become a hidden card on his long road of cultivation, a mountain folded inside his sleeve.

So the two people and one ghost went by fits and starts, pausing like herons by a river, and in the end Lu Ming’s dogged patience and city‑wall thick face barely won the wraith’s trust.

With that thin trust, he peeled back the villa’s veil and found the deeper tie between the red‑robed woman and Uncle Li, a knot buried under moss.

Her name in life was Li Kexin, the adopted daughter Uncle Li brought home from an orphanage, once a worker in Wang Yan’s villa, quiet as snowfall.

Later she resigned for reasons lost like footprints in drifting sand; when asked, the now‑wraith wore confusion like mist and remembered nothing.

With no other thread, Lu Ming brought Li Kexin and Xuduo back to Wang Yan’s villa to question its mistress, hoping a spark would catch in dry reeds.

The answer he got blew sideways like a sudden north wind.

“Li Kexin? Didn’t she go abroad to study?”

Wang Yan, fresh from a brush with death, looked genuinely puzzled, her brows like wings caught mid‑beat.

“She went abroad?” Lu Ming’s surprise rose like smoke from damp wood.

Wang Yan’s reply was nothing he’d rehearsed; her tone, her face, her timing rang clear as a bell in winter air.

“Yeah, four or five years now. People talked about it here for ages. Why bring her up?”

Before Uncle Li ran staffing, Wang Yan handled it herself, a household ledger neat as rice lines.

Later it got heavy, and Uncle Li took over; so when Lu Ming asked about old names and faces, she could recall a fair bit, like shells brought up from tide pools.

“Nothing much,” Lu Ming said, glancing at Li Kexin drifting behind him like a red petal in wind. “Uncle Li spat the name while we fought. Figured I’d ask what you know.”

“Know is too strong. She only worked here for a while.” Wang Yan’s smile went bitter, like cold tea steeped too long.

It was a coincidence, she said: when she first bought the house, shorthanded, she posted ads, and a group came—Li Kexin among them, Uncle Li too, fate braided tight as twine.

“You said a group?” Lu Ming’s attention tightened like bowstring.

“Yes, a group.” Wang Yan’s face paled a shade, as if a cloud passed the sun. “Li Yan—she was the one chained in Uncle Li’s room—came with Kexin to apply, and was the first to resign.”

“All the staff from that batch were from the same orphanage as Kexin, a flock moving as one.”

“I always found it strange. My pay beat many companies outside, yet they quit cleanly, like swallows leaving eaves. Looking back, the chill runs down my bones.”

What the Red Robed Wraith and Uncle Li had done inside this ordinary villa left shadows on Wang Yan’s heart, long as twilight.

Lu Ming couldn’t spare comfort; his thoughts clung to Li Kexin’s past like ivy to stone.

If Kexin came from the same orphanage as the staff, then nine times out of ten her death braided with that group, like roots tangled underground.

Even if not direct, the tie ran indirect, a cold current under the surface.

A black light flickered in Lu Ming’s eyes, suspicion blooming like night lotus.

“Can you give me their names?” He needed proof for the shape forming like frost on glass.

“I can, but they’re all dead. What’s the point?” Wang Yan glanced back at the villa, fear pooling like ink.

“There’s a secret art among Spirit Exorcists,” Lu Ming said, truth half‑wrapped, voice steady as a temple bell. “Names can touch the lingering will of the dead and draw out what matters.”

“I think your haunting ties to them like vines to a ruined wall.”

Already rattled, Wang Yan let the floodgates open and handed every scrap she knew to Lu Ming, words falling like grains from a torn sack.

Lu Ming listened in place, and kept stealing glances at Li Kexin floating beside him, her stare fixed on Wang Yan like frost on a windowpane.

If he hadn’t warned her not to strike, he believed she’d have moved like a blade in moonlight.

“How did those people get along with Li Kexin?” he asked, voice calm over a restless river.

“Still… okay, I guess.” Wang Yan fumbled, the topic circling back to Kexin like a kite tugged by wind.

“I never saw them working side by side. Kexin was always quiet, alone, a crane in sparse reeds.”

“I did see Chef Zhang talk to her a few times, but Kexin ignored him, like rain ignoring stone.”

“You mean Zhang Yun?” Lu Ming asked. The temp chef who cooked and left, no footprints in mud.

“Lu Ming…” Xuduo tugged his sleeve, anxiety a sparrow fluttering in her chest. “Do you feel the temperature dropping?”

Born with extreme yin, Xuduo saw what others missed; the moment Zhang Yun’s name left his lips, she sensed Li Kexin tilt off‑balance, a needle on black ice.

Even with her warning, it came too late, like thunder after the strike.

The lowered head rose slowly, revealing flawless features shaded by a spill of black hair, beauty cold as jade under moon.

Around them, yin gathered thick as storm clouds, pooling like ink in a basin.

“Li—” Lu Ming tried to stop the Red Robed Wraith, but a blood‑red flash flared from her eyes, a blade of light slicing fog.

His vision burned; pain bit like pepper in rain, and he stumbled back several steps before his sight returned, breath ragged.

“What’s happening?” The words tasted like iron, and he found himself alone, cut off like an island in white sea.

White mist flooded the villa grounds, dense and unreadable, a wall of cotton that swallowed edges.

A shape walked toward him from inside the veil, familiar as a nightmare: blood‑stained red robe, raven hair flowing, a beauty carved for winter.

In the blank mist, she was eerie as a midnight bell; Lu Ming’s hands and feet iced over, and a blade‑cold climbed his spine like a slick serpent.

He wanted to move, but the yin pressed in like invisible iron hands, clamping him still; even his voice froze, a river locked under glass.

So this was the true strength of a Red Robed Wraith, a storm with no shore.

Breath wouldn’t help; it felt like sinking into a bottomless sea, the light above a lost coin.

He fixed his gaze on the woman, and his hidden feelings trilled with each red drip falling from her dress, tick… tick… a drum under skin.

Closer… closer… the distance counted like beads sliding: three meters, two, one.

Just as she was about to reach him, she vanished, snuffed like a candle in wind; the fog shifted silently, a curtain moved by unseen hands.

His vision swam, a boat on sudden current; when it settled, he stood before a huge black gate, iron ribs like a beast’s jaw.

It was Wang Yan’s villa gate, looming in mist like a dark monument.