Chapter 67: Lifting the Clothes

Xiu’s brow twitched violently. “I didn’t mean that. Don’t learn these messy things online.”

Wen Chu held up the phone innocently. “This popped up by itself when I searched for ‘practicing calligraphy’.”

Xiu: …

I should have bought this ghost a kid’s phone if I’d known.

But the phone was already given to Wen Chu. Seeing how the other party held it and couldn’t bear to let go, Xiu couldn’t bring himself to ask for it back. He could only say, “Anyway, I didn’t mean that, and I’m not interested in this kind of thing. You misunderstood. Is there anything else?”

“Alright.” Wen Chu put away the phone. “Nothing else, no more questions.”

He held his small phone and looked at Xiu to confirm, “So this is for me, you won’t take it back? I don’t have money to pay you.”

Xiu had come out in a hurry, only wearing a bath towel.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but after what happened this morning and being blocked at the door by Wen Chu asking restricted questions, Xiu felt his current situation was a bit strange no matter how he looked at it.

He hurriedly walked into the room to get his change of clothes and said, “I won’t take it back, but you’re not allowed to buy things randomly. After I link the family card for you, I can see what you buy.”

After saying this, Xiu grabbed his clothes and closed the bathroom door in front of Wen Chu again.

Looking at the blurry figure at the door, Xiu sighed.

Seems like I need to break the habit of not taking clothes when showering in the future.

Thinking this, he threw the bath towel into the laundry basket and started to change.

Under the bath towel, because of rare usage, the red and swollen area still looked ravaged.

Xiu: …

The thought of a seductive ghost outside eagerly waiting to sleep with him made Xiu want to run away.

.

Five minutes later, Wen Chu waited at the bathroom door for a fully dressed Xiu.

While in a meeting today, Xiu had ordered small cakes for him. Wen Chu sat on the coffee table, eating the small cakes that had been burned into green smoke, while watching Xiu patiently register accounts on major platforms for him with lowered eyes.

Wen Chu pondered. “I don’t have pockets. Holding the phone seems a bit inconvenient.”

Xiu didn’t even lift his head. “It’s okay. I bought you a neck strap.”

“Neck strap?” Wen Chu was puzzled.

Just then, Xiu finished registering the accounts. He unpacked a transparent phone case from the takeout on the table.

The phone case had a long strap and a card slot on the back, the kind used to store idol photo cards.

Xiu attached the strap to the phone, tore a square piece of white paper from the hotel’s suggestion book, and wrote a line on it with a pen:

[If lost and found, please contact: 123xxxxxx]

Followed by his phone number.

“Done.”

After doing all this, Xiu hung the phone around Wen Chu’s neck.

The phone hung down to exactly his chest level, where Wen Chu could touch it as soon as he reached out.

Wen Chu touched the words Xiu wrote with novelty.

Is it because I didn’t tell Xiu my name this time, so there’s no “Reserved for Wen Chu”?

Seeing him examining it, Xiu took the initiative to explain, “To prevent you from losing it because of carelessness. But I added the ID I registered for you to my family sharing, so even if it’s lost, I can check the location to find it.”

“Oh…” Wen Chu seemed to understand but not fully understand these functions.

Anyway, knowing it was Xiu’s preparation to prevent him from losing it was enough.

Xiu always did things like this: carefully and seriously. Even if he didn’t like it, he would be responsible to the end.

Wen Chu finished his small cake, and with the phone hanging around his neck, he rubbed against Xiu. “Xiu, you are so good.”

He was sitting, and Xiu was standing. Wen Chu reached out and could just wrap his arms around Xiu’s waist.

The cold touch on his waist made Xiu shudder all over, and that faint feeling of gestation came from his lower abdomen again.

Before reacting again, Xiu frowned and backed away. “Don’t touch me.”

Wen Chu put down his hand.

Fine, if I can’t touch, I won’t touch.

Anyway, I’ve touched enough today.

Wen Chu looked at his lifespan which had reached 9 days and 2 hours, and couldn’t help feeling a bit puzzled: 【System, is there no change in my lifespan increase this time?】

Before, every time his lifespan increased by five days, he could grow a little bigger.

Now that he had turned into a human form and couldn’t grow bigger, did he have no changes?

The system’s rigid and cold voice came: 【There is a change. For every five days of increased lifespan, one part of your body can become solid. It can be any part, and it is possible to repeat.】

Hearing this, Wen Chu looked down at his hands, then his feet, and then his hair.

Still transparent, no change.

Wen Chu was even more puzzled: 【Then where is solid now?】

System: 【Think for yourself.】

Wen Chu paused.

A place the system found difficult to mention, then only…

Wen Chu raised his hand to lift the hem of his clothes.

His red outfit resembled ancient costume, with a skirt for the lower half, layered and complicated. Wen Chu lifted one layer and there was another.

Xiu was startled by him. Seeing the spectre about to continue lifting his clothes, he hurriedly reached out to stop him. “What are you doing??”

Wen Chu looked up. “Confirming.”

Xiu: ?

Xiu’s ear tips turned red. “Even if you want to lift your clothes, don’t do it in front of me. How improper to lift clothes in front of others.”

Wen Chu muttered, “But I’m a ghost, not a human…”

So what does it matter if I lift the hem of my clothes?

Besides, this is Xiu. What part of me hasn’t Xiu seen?

Xiu, unable to bear it any longer, picked him up by the back of his neck and threw him into the bathroom. “Whether you are human or ghost, you cannot casually lift your clothes in front of others. Whatever you want to confirm, check it in the bathroom before coming out.”

Xiu paused and added, “Come out fully dressed.”

Bang—

The bathroom door was closed again.

Wen Chu was quiet for a while before continuing to lift his clothes to check.

To his great disappointment, it wasn’t the tool he used to mate with Xiu that became solid, but his right knee.

Wen Chu immediately felt cheated by the system: 【You lied to me.】

The system chuckled lightly: 【I didn’t say anything just now.】

Wen Chu choked.

The system indeed didn’t say anything, but usually, when the system avoided answering, it was either embarrassed or guilty. How could he have guessed that this time the other party was holding back bad intentions?

And caused him to be scolded by Xiu.

“Sigh.” Wen Chu sighed while tidying his clothes. “Xiu is unreasonable. Clearly in the last world, Xiu himself didn’t wear clothes properly.”

Only wearing a black robe, daring to run out wearing nothing else underneath.

In the world before that, it was even worse. Xiu didn’t wear clothes from beginning to end. His chest muscles, abdominal muscles, and even the pink scales that opened at a touch were exposed defenselessly.

Wen Chu discovered a blind spot: 【Why is Xiu wearing more and more clothes?】

System: 【…】

Wen Chu complained: 【You cannot deprive Xiu of his freedom not to wear clothes.】

The system went offline coldly, fleeing in panic.

Wen Chu tidied his clothes and didn’t stay in the toilet much longer, flying out directly to find Xiu.

“…What’s wrong?” Xiu noticed Wen Chu looking up and down at his shirt and couldn’t help looking down to check.

Buttons were buttoned neatly, collar was smooth, no mistakes.

“Nothing.” Wen Chu floated past faintly, landing on Xiu’s shoulder, bringing a chill to the blond exorcist. “Just thinking, wearing such troublesome clothes, Xiu, do you find it uncomfortable?”

Xiu was puzzled. “It’s okay?”

He was twenty-four, at a young and vibrant age. Xiu was still in graduate school, and his life was relatively simple. He was quite happy to study outfits.

Wen Chu gave a long “Oh” and stopped talking.

So Xiu really likes to wear a lot?

Then how about the other way around, I wear less?

Xiu didn’t understand this ghost’s messy train of thought all day. Looking at the darkening sky outside the window, he said seriously, “We have to go to Wen Yaozu’s room tonight. If you want to stay in the room and play on your phone now…”

“I don’t want to, I want to be with you.” Wen Chu finally understood why Xiu chose to buy him a phone today.

He clung tightly to Xiu’s neck. “You can’t leave me alone. I’m scared. I’ll cry.”

Xiu: …

If Wen Chu cried, the ones who should be most afraid were the exorcists living nearby.

Waking up to find the ground around them turned into a mountain of blood and a sea of corpses… those who didn’t know would think they had gone to hell in their dreams.

He sighed and agreed. “Okay. Turn on airplane mode or turn off your phone tonight. No causing trouble, no making noise. If I tell you to run, run. Don’t look back. Understood?”

“Understood!” Wen Chu agreed crisply.

Xiu was still worried; last night’s events truly left him with lingering fears.

He checked the Five Emperors Coins on Wen Chu’s wrist and the Soul-Nourishing Jade in his body repeatedly, and ate the dinner delivered by the hotel with Wen Chu.

Just like that, it was midnight.

Wen Chu was hugging his phone watching videos. He had muted it, so Xiu didn’t know exactly what he was watching.

The pointer jumped to twelve o’clock. Wen Chu and Xiu stopped their movements at the same time.

“Go?” Wen Chu asked.

Xiu nodded, and Wen Chu consciously flew to Xiu’s shoulder and lay down.

Xiu pushed open the room door.

Perhaps because she was injured by Xiu last night, even though they still stayed in Room 444 tonight, the female ghost did not come to disturb them again.

The corridor was quiet. The hotel lights illuminated the corridor brightly, without any of last night’s gloominess.

Wen Chu watched Xiu close the room door, take out another card from his pocket, and open the door next door.

Beep—

The door lock sounded, and the door opened in response.

Wen Chu was dumbfounded and asked in Xiu’s ear with a breathy voice, “Where did you get the room card?”

Xiu chuckled lightly. “This was originally my room. Isn’t it only natural for me to get a replacement card?”

As for his and Wen Yaozu’s room cards—they were probably swapped by the other party using some substitution spell.

Xiu slipped into the room and quickly closed the door.

Just after entering, Wen Chu and Xiu froze at the entrance.

Inside the room, the path from the door to the bedroom was covered with yellow talismans. Densely packed, the blood-red cinnabar characters looked like pairs of eyes staring at them in the dark.

Xiu leaned in to take a look.

“They are all exorcism talismans.”

To deal with ordinary spectres, no matter how useless one was, throwing a handful of exorcism talismans would scatter their souls.

Wen Yaozu pasting nearly tens of thousands of exorcism talismans here was obviously not just to drive away spectres, but because he had a guilty conscience.

Thinking this, Xiu glanced at Wen Chu on his back.

Wen Chu breathed normally, lying silently on his back as agreed, curiously observing the furnishings of the room that should have belonged to them.

He didn’t seem affected by the exorcism talismans at all.

Xiu thought of the female spectre who couldn’t be transcended. Like Wen Chu, any means of dealing with spectres were ineffective against them.

A flash of inspiration crossed his mind, but it was immediately interrupted by Wen Yaozu’s terrified voice from inside the room.

“Don’t come over! It’s none of my business!! It’s been so many years! I didn’t know anything at all!!”

Startled and afraid of alerting the enemy, Xiu used an invisibility talisman before continuing inside.

Walking into the bedroom, they finally saw Wen Yaozu clearly.

Wen Yaozu was lying on the bed, his eyes open but unfocused, shouting with a pale face. After a while, he scrambled up again, kneeling on the bed and kowtowing repeatedly towards the front.

Xiu and Wen Chu, who happened to be standing by the bed, were caught off guard by Wen Yaozu’s grand gesture.

Wen Yaozu chanted while kowtowing, “We have changed our surname to Wen for many years and have nothing to do with you. The events of that year had nothing to do with me either. If you want to find someone, go find the people who harmed you back then! I know nothing. I wasn’t even born when you died. I am innocent!!”

“…What is he doing?” Wen Chu finally couldn’t help asking.

“Looks like he’s entangled by a vengeful spirit.”

Xiu half-narrowed his eyes, looking at the scratch mark left by the female ghost on Wen Yaozu’s neck. At this moment, the scratch mark was emitting an ominous black aura.

“Strange. Normally, only a spectre with extremely deep resentment can cling to the murderer who killed her after death.” Xiu muttered to himself. “Wasn’t An Ya killed by her superior? She and Wen Yaozu should have met for the first time at the conference venue.”

Wen Chu didn’t know either; he was more confused than Xiu.

But his goal was clear. Sharp-eyed, he saw the bone flute exposed from Wen Yaozu’s neck while he was kneeling and kowtowing.

“Bone flute.” Wen Chu signaled Xiu to look. “He hung it around his neck.”

“En, I’ll get it.”

Xiu came for this too. He didn’t hesitate anymore, using a talisman as a blade to directly cut the black thread tying the bone flute around Wen Yaozu’s neck.

The pure white bone flute fell into Xiu’s hand, bringing a familiar chill.

Xiu frowned slightly.

He felt something moving in his lower abdomen again.

Worried it was a trap set by Wen Yaozu, Xiu immediately used spiritual power to scan his whole body again, but still found nothing wrong.

Unable to find the reason for a moment, Xiu could only put aside his doubts temporarily, holding the bone flute and saying, “Let’s go first.”

He waited for a while but didn’t get a response from Wen Chu. Turning his head, he discovered that Wen Chu had somehow leaned half of his body out from behind him.

The beautiful spectre’s long white hair hung down, staring straight at the bone flute, saying as if possessed, “Bone…”

A light sentence, amidst Wen Yaozu’s continuous begging for mercy and in this room full of talismans, seemed incredibly eerie.

The white-haired spectre had silently arrived at a position extremely close to him.

Close enough to dig out his heart with a reach of his hand.

Xiu broke out in a cold sweat, quickly activating the Five Emperors Coins on Wen Chu’s wrist. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

Wen Chu’s eyes gradually cleared. He looked at the sweating Xiu strangely. “Aren’t we leaving?”

He only remembered that Xiu got the bone flute. It was the first time he was so close to the bone flute, so he looked at it a bit more. Why was Xiu looking at him with eyes like looking at a monster now?

Xiu glanced at Wen Chu’s increasingly red clothes, tactfully not pointing out the other party’s abnormality at this time. Instead, he put the bone flute in his pocket and silently increased the spiritual power transmitted to Wen Chu.

“Go.”

This place was too eerie, and the reaction of the spectre on his back was so strange. Even if he wanted to search carefully, Xiu didn’t feel safe keeping the other party here.

Xiu lifted his foot to leave, but Wen Chu looked thoughtfully at Wen Yaozu, who was still kowtowing.

“There seems to be something in his closet.”

Xiu’s steps paused again.

He looked at Wen Chu vigilantly. “How do you know?”

Under the golden light of the Five Emperors Coins on his wrist, Wen Chu’s glamorous and beautiful face was dyed with a few eerie colors, and his round eyes also showed confusion. “Don’t know. Intuition.”

Xiu clenched the yellow talisman in his hand, and his tassel earring also emitted blue light.

He barely managed to hook his lips, feeling only a chill behind his back.

The coldness from the spectre, and his cold sweat.

Although he hoped this white-haired boy was really just an innocent little pitiful ghost, all the weirdness before his eyes reminded Xiu—this ghost was hiding some secret.

It might even be closely related to the Wen family and the Old School exorcists.

He had let his guard down too easily against the other party, actually impulsively bringing such a time bomb to find Wen Yaozu.

Even this quickly dropped vigilance was extremely inconsistent with his formerly cautious and indifferent character.

Fortunately, he left something on the other party.

Xiu softened his voice, trying not to sound so vigilant. “Okay, I’ll go get it. You come down first and stand by the side to prevent danger.”

Wen Chu didn’t suspect anything, nodded, and obediently jumped off Xiu’s back.

He really just felt that there was something familiar in Wen Yaozu’s closet too.

Seeing the spectre really went down, Xiu slowly breathed a sigh of relief, approaching Wen Yaozu’s closet step by step.

Wen Yaozu was still kowtowing continuously. Wen Chu stood by the bed watching him curiously.

And with every step Xiu took, he thought of a possibility.

Were there talismans on the door when they went out? The impact of the talismans in Wen Yaozu’s room was too great, so much so that he completely lost the impression of talismans in his own room.

Is he in the real world now, or in this white-haired spectre’s illusion?

Taking another step forward, is it a closet or a rooftop?

No wonder Xiu overthought. What Wen Chu said sounded too much like the bewitchment of countless spectres he had seen in illusions, luring people into the abyss.

Instructions with a purpose. when people walked over with hope, they could only feel the weightlessness of rapid falling.

And then—

Buzz—Buzz—

The phone rang abruptly. Xiu stopped one step before the closet, turning around almost reflexively with the talisman between his fingers.

Then he met a pair of innocent azure eyes.

Wen Chu looked at the suddenly turned Xiu with confusion, showing him his obediently turned-off phone.

“I turned it off.” Wen Chu said. “It’s your phone ringing.”

Xiu lowered his eyes, looking at the caller ID.

【Yuan Le】

He answered the phone while turning back to the direction of the closet, observing Wen Chu standing behind him with his peripheral vision at the same time.

“Hello?”

“Hello??” As soon as the call connected, Yuan Le’s voice came. “I just finished eating with Li Yi and the others. Let me tell you, that An Ya’s superior, Chen Sheng, is actually the son of the driver for Wen Yaozu’s family.”

Spectre’s illusions always had unreasonable places, and what Yuan Le said was information that the white-haired spectre simply couldn’t fabricate.

Xiu gave an “En”, hesitated no more, and pretending to be distracted by the phone call, yanked open the closet door.

A small shrine was revealed.

The shrine glowed with a faint red light in the dark, and in the center, an ancient old book was enshrined.

Wen Chu floated over at some point, pointing at the book. “That’s the thing.”

Xiu was startled into a cold sweat by him again, but this time he could be sure the other party had no bad intentions. Xiu reached out directly and took the book down.

The moment the book was taken down, the candle flame went out.

Wen Chu seriously read out the vertically arranged characters on the book cover: “Wen, Family, Genealogy?”

Just then, Yuan Le’s voice came from the phone.

“And, thanks to Zhang Ming, we directly retrieved An Ya’s previous identity information. Her name was indeed An Ya, with no history of name change from childhood to adulthood, and no relatives named Wen within five generations.”

“But, her great-great-great-grandmother once changed her name.”

Xiu’s brow twitched.

Yuan Le said, “Her great-great-great-grandmother once had the surname Wen, and took her husband’s surname after marriage.”

Having got the book, Wen Chu consciously climbed back onto Xiu’s back.

Xiu slowly turned around carrying Wen Chu.

Only to see Wen Yaozu, who had been kowtowing towards the front, had actually turned around too, continuously kowtowing in their direction.

.

Back in the room again, looking at the brightly lit room, Xiu slowly let out a breath.

Wen Chu had no idea how ups and downs the process of getting things just now was in Xiu’s eyes. He was curiously fiddling with the “Wen Family Genealogy”.

Good news, got the bone flute without danger, and had an unexpected harvest.

Bad news, this “unexpected harvest” seemed related to his life experience.

Will it make him drop his disguise directly?

Wen Chu opened it uneasily to take a look, sighing in relief seeing only text and no photos inside.

Turning his head, Wen Chu saw Xiu staring at him thoughtfully.

“What?” Wen Chu felt creepy being stared at.

Xiu looked at him, finally shook his head, saying nothing but, “Nothing. Look at the bone flute. Wen Yaozu will definitely go crazy when he wakes up tomorrow morning and sees the flute gone. It’s better to finish studying it and return it early.”

Hearing this, a surge of reluctance welled up from the bottom of Wen Chu’s heart, blurting out subconsciously, “Why return it to him? It’s not his thing.”

Xiu raised an eyebrow at him. “How are you sure it’s not Wen Yaozu’s thing? Shouldn’t this be some magical artifact passed down in Wen Yaozu’s family?”

Wen Chu stopped talking guiltily.

He couldn’t say he could see his past in that bone flute.

Fortunately, Xiu didn’t mean to pursue it.

He took out the bone flute from his pocket, carefully examining the delicate bone under the light, and frowned.

Wen Chu floated over to join the fun. “What’s wrong?”

Xiu lowered his eyes. “Nothing, just that this seems to be a human bone.”

He wasn’t a professional forensic doctor and couldn’t judge where this bone came from, but having dealt with dead people and spectres for so long, Xiu could still distinguish whether it was human or animal bone.

Wen Chu gave a plain “Oh”.

Just human bone, not a big problem.

Just as Wen Chu was struggling with how to mention to Xiu to let him touch the bone to see memories, he suddenly paused.

“Wait.” Wen Chu remembered an extremely important thing.

“What’s wrong?” Xiu looked at him.

Wen Chu: “Where is that female spectre?”

Xiu was stunned, then his expression became serious too.

In his hand, on the white bone, a dark red blood energy flashed.

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Author’s Note:
Xiu’s perspective: Horror movie
Wen Chu’s perspective: Large-scale sadomasochistic romance drama “A Ghost Story”