Zhou Jiayu faintly sensed something from Lin Zhushui’s words and was just about to speak when someone nearby let out a groan. Looking over carefully, he saw that Shen Yiqiong had woken up as well.

“Who am I? Where am I?” Shen Yiqiong leaned against the wall, clutching his head.

“You’re awake, Yiqiong,” Zhou Jiayu said. “What did you dream about?”

Shen Yiqiong’s eyes were dazed. When he saw Zhou Jiayu, he muttered, “Why are you so pale again? Weren’t you tanned like me before?”

Zhou Jiayu: “…” Shen Yiqiong, isn’t your dream a little too much?

As he took stock of their surroundings, Zhou Jiayu noticed they were still in the original tunnel. The old oil lamps and earthen walls were gone, replaced by the feel of modern construction.

Not far from them was the narrow gap the workers had squeezed into. Zhou Jiayu asked, “Sir, were we caught in something like a nightmare?”

Little Paper in his arms was clinging to the gap, trying to peek inside. Its body was flat by nature and could easily squeeze through, but Zhou Jiayu was worried it might encounter danger inside, so he wasn’t going to let it in.

“Mm,” Lin Zhushui replied. “This tunnel wasn’t properly cleared. Right beneath our feet is a pit of corpses. After construction began, the energy from the pit started leaking out, causing hallucinations.”

Zhou Jiayu felt a jolt in his heart. “Hallucinations? What kind?”

“In the hallucination,” Lin Zhushui said, “you see what you most desire. It lures you into that narrow gap.”

Hearing this, Zhou Jiayu froze for two seconds, then his eyes widened. In that moment, he suddenly realized what Lin Zhushui’s earlier words had meant.

“Sir…” Zhou Jiayu was about to speak when he noticed the others were slowly waking up as well. It didn’t seem right to discuss this here.

Lin Jue woke with an unsettled expression and stayed silent, staring blankly at the ground.

Yu Xiaomian and Yu He woke up soon after. The moment Yu He opened his eyes, he immediately thanked Lin Zhushui for his help.

Lin Zhushui shook his head, saying nothing.

Only then did Zhou Jiayu notice that all of them had talismans stuck to their chests—likely to ensure that even though they entered the illusion, they wouldn’t be seduced by it like the workers who wandered into the gap.

“Dig deeper,” Lin Zhushui said. “Better to resume work as soon as possible.”

Yu He nodded, saying he’d inform the foreman to continue digging tomorrow and asked if any special preparations were needed.

“I’ll be there,” Lin Zhushui said. “The corpses must have undergone some changes.”

Yu He agreed.

It seemed like they’d accomplished nothing that night—just had a strange dream. But Lin Zhushui had said that everyone saw what they most longed for in the illusion. Zhou Jiayu’s heart wouldn’t stop racing. Was Lin Zhushui hinting at something? Or was Zhou Jiayu just overthinking? What if he confessed and it turned out to be a misunderstanding—would they even remain as master and disciple? His mind was a tangled mess.

Of everyone, Shen Yiqiong was in the best mood. Whatever he had dreamed of left him so delighted that he practically bounced as he walked, humming a little tune.

Yu Xiaomian asked, “Why are you so happy?”

“Because I fulfilled my dream,” Shen Yiqiong grinned—but refused to reveal what it was.

Connecting this to his earlier muttering, Zhou Jiayu strongly suspected that in Shen Yiqiong’s dream, all of them had turned dark-skinned.

Lin Jue remained quiet the whole way back, not saying a word until they neared the hotel. Only then did some of the gloom fade from her brows.

Seeing her like this, no one dared ask. It wasn’t until dinner at the hotel that Zhou Jiayu cautiously asked if she was okay.

“I’m fine,” Lin Jue replied. “I just dreamed of an old acquaintance.”

Her expression made it clear that this ‘old acquaintance’ had once meant a great deal to her, but Zhou Jiayu knew better than to pry into such private matters and quickly changed the subject.

Yu He soon confirmed that the digging would resume the next afternoon, using machines to unearth the bones Lin Zhushui had mentioned.

That night, Zhou Jiayu couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, replaying Lin Zhushui’s “I saw you too” over and over.

“Am I overthinking? Or did he really mean that?” With no one to confide in, Zhou Jiayu decided to talk to Ji Ba.

Ji Ba lay lazily on its turtle shell, looking sluggish. “Hmm… do you still remember what I told you when you first came here?”

“What was it?” Zhou Jiayu asked.

“You really forgot? That was important!” Ji Ba tilted its head seriously. “You came here to save Lin Zhushui’s life.”

“Save?” Zhou Jiayu sat up abruptly. “Is something going to happen to him?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. His fate changes depending on whether you’re here or not,” Ji Ba said. “Fate is full of variables. Even meeting one more person can change destiny. You and Lin Zhushui—one yin, one yang—are a perfect match.”

Zhou Jiayu’s heart leapt with joy. “So you’re saying that if I’m with him, he might escape disaster? Does he like me?”

Ji Ba muttered, “Wow, you’re scary. I’m just a bird who’s never even dated. How would I know what Lin Zhushui thinks? But don’t rush this. If you misinterpret him, that’d be super awkward.”

Zhou Jiayu: “…” Ji Ba made a good point. His excitement deflated, and he flopped onto the bed like a dried salted fish.

Seeing him like this, Ji Ba comforted him, “Don’t be too pessimistic. Lin Zhushui’s had many disciples—have you ever seen him treat any of them the way he treats you?”

Zhou Jiayu wondered: is that encouragement or discouragement? Should I confess? What if I get kicked out? But what if it works and I really get to be with Lin Zhushui?

The more he thought about it, the more irritated he became. Giving up on sleep, he got up and went to the balcony to smoke—only to find Lin Jue sitting on the balcony next door, drinking something. She smiled when she saw him. “Yo, still awake?”

“Yeah,” Zhou Jiayu said. “Can’t sleep.”

She made a small sound, not asking why.

This was the first time Zhou Jiayu had seen Lin Jue looking this weary. She was always bright and lively, like a sunflower. Seeing her like this made him ache inside.

“Shibo, bad mood?” he asked gently.

“Not too bad,” Lin Jue replied. “Want to have a drink together?”

He thought for a moment and agreed. He was feeling a little down himself, and drinking with someone familiar might ease the gloom.

A beer half-fills the glass; then a shot of whiskey is dropped into it—a “Depth Charge.” Zhou Jiayu had been to bars but never drunk like this. Clearly this was meant to get drunk fast, and judging by the empty bottles around Lin Jue, she’d already had more than a few.

Zhou Jiayu was worried but didn’t know how to voice it.

Lin Jue noticed and smiled faintly. “I’m thirty-five this year, you know.”

Zhou Jiayu was surprised. “Really? Just by looks, I’d have thought you were Mr. Lin’s younger sister.”

“Such a sweet mouth. Adorable,” Lin Jue laughed. “I left home at twenty-four to travel and met the love of my life. We were together for six years. Then he left me.”

Tipsy, she recounted her love story. “Feelings have limits. When you pour too much into one person, there’s less left for the next. You miss the one you truly loved, and everyone after gets compared. It’s unfair to them. And to myself.”

Zhou Jiayu had no experience with love, so he could only listen silently, sipping the strong liquor.

“But some things can’t be perfect both ways,” Lin Jue said softly. “What did you dream about?”

“I…” Zhou Jiayu hesitated, lowering his voice.

She chuckled, her eyes reddening. “I know what you dreamed. Good for you. Really good…” She downed her drink. “I dreamed I was getting married. Wearing the custom white wedding dress. He asked if I’d marry him. I said yes.”

Zhou Jiayu felt a pang in his heart. “Shibo…”

“But it was only a dream,” she sighed. “Just a dream.”

She spoke little, but each word was like a knife, cutting deep. She drank, told her story, every sentence bleeding old wounds.

“So,” Lin Jue smiled with tear-reddened eyes, “don’t hesitate so much. Be brave. Heaven favors the bold.”

Zhou Jiayu quietly agreed.

That night, they drank for a long time. Zhou Jiayu couldn’t even remember how he made it back to his room.

The next morning, his head was blank as he sat dazed on the bed, until someone knocked at the door.

“Zhou Jiayu, are you still alive?” came Shen Yiqiong’s voice as he thumped the door, sounding ready to break it down.

“I’m alive…” Zhou Jiayu groaned, clutching his pounding head. The worst part of a hangover was the headache. He felt like he was floating as he walked to open the door.

Seeing his pale face, Shen Yiqiong gasped. “What happened to you? You look awful!” He sniffed. “And you stink of alcohol… whoa, where were you partying last night?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Zhou Jiayu muttered.

“True,” Shen Yiqiong said. “With your constitution, you’d probably drop dead after midnight snacks. But if you didn’t go partying, why do you reek of booze?”

“It’s nothing.” Thinking of Lin Jue’s fragile appearance the night before, Zhou Jiayu decided to cover for her. “I just went for a casual drink.”

“Well, hurry up then,” Shen Yiqiong said. “Everyone else has gone to the site to watch the digging. You’re the only one left.”

Zhou Jiayu nodded.

He quickly washed up, but the dizziness from the hangover still lingered. Face pale, he headed downstairs, only to see Lin Jue standing at the entrance, talking to Lin Zhushui.

Some people’s alcohol tolerance really was a mystery. Lin Jue had drunk at least three times as much as Zhou Jiayu the night before, yet today she looked completely refreshed—glowing, even—as if her drinks had been spiked with goji berries for health.

“Yo, Guan’er,” she greeted him cheerfully. “You’re up?”

“Mm…” Zhou Jiayu replied weakly.

“Tsk, your alcohol tolerance really is a problem. You need more practice,” Lin Jue teased.

Hearing this, Shen Yiqiong blinked. “Eh? You two drank together last night?”

“Yep,” Lin Jue answered.

“Why didn’t you invite me?” Shen Yiqiong complained.

“Because I don’t want to drink with children,” Lin Jue said.

Shen Yiqiong immediately protested that he was already an adult, perfectly capable of handling smoking, drinking, perming, and tattoos.

They bickered all the way to the cars. After they got in, Zhou Jiayu’s phone suddenly buzzed. He picked it up and saw a WeChat message.

Looking at the sender’s name, Zhou Jiayu took a moment to remember who it was—the airport security guy he’d met before. Back then, Little Paper had mischievously patted the man, causing a misunderstanding that Zhou Jiayu was interested in him.

To be fair, the man was rather sharp; he had immediately guessed Zhou Jiayu’s orientation.

“You’re in C City now?” the message said.

Zhou Jiayu was surprised he knew his location but replied with a simple “Mm.”

“Free for tea tonight?” A very obvious invitation. Zhou Jiayu had never been with anyone, but he knew what this meant. They were all adults, after all.

“Sorry. I already like someone,” Zhou Jiayu replied bluntly, unwilling to entertain the matter further.

“You two are together?” came the next message.

Zhou Jiayu didn’t reply.

“Not yet, right?” The man took Zhou Jiayu’s silence as a sign. “If you’re not together yet, it’s unrequited love. I still have a chance.”

Zhou Jiayu sighed helplessly. Once again, he felt like a novice in the world of relationships—totally outmatched. Since he couldn’t think of a polite way to end this, he decided to simply delete the contact. After all, they’d only met once; without WeChat, they’d have no further connection.

Just as he was about to delete the contact, another message came through.

It was a photo.

In the photo, the man had lifted his shirt, revealing toned eight-pack abs and long legs. He wore only a pair of tight bullet briefs, his skin a beautiful bronze shade, exuding an undeniable allure.

Zhou Jiayu was so startled that he fumbled and dropped his phone. As luck would have it, Lin Jue was sitting right beside him. Before he could react, she picked up his phone—and saw the photo.

Zhou Jiayu: “…”

Lin Jue: “…”

For a moment, the air turned absolutely still. Cold sweat beaded on Zhou Jiayu’s forehead.

Lin Jue handed the phone back with a meaningful smile. “Nice abs on that guy. When did you meet him?”

“…At the airport,” Zhou Jiayu muttered, gripping the phone with sweaty hands. “At the security checkpoint. Little Paper touched him… so…”

As he spoke, his gaze flicked nervously toward Lin Zhushui in the passenger seat ahead, but Lin Zhushui’s back was to them—Zhou Jiayu couldn’t see his expression.

“Ohh,” Lin Jue said knowingly.

“I was going to delete him,” Zhou Jiayu explained softly. “My hand slipped…”

“Mm-hmm.”

His voice grew quieter and quieter, his face filled with awkward defeat.

“Alright, relax.” Lin Jue chuckled at his expression. “We know what you’re like, right? Besides, you’re single. Romance is freedom. It’s normal to meet someone you’re interested in. Good things are meant to be chased; hesitate and you lose out.”

Zhou Jiayu kept his head down, not noticing that when Lin Jue finished speaking, Lin Zhushui—who had been slightly leaning back—slowly straightened in his seat. Whenever Lin Zhushui sat like that, it usually meant he was thinking about something important…

The rest of the drive was eerily silent.

After getting out and heading into the tunnel, Shen Yiqiong noticed Zhou Jiayu’s glum state and asked in confusion, “Hey, you were fine when we left. Why so down now?”

“I’m fine,” Zhou Jiayu lied. “Just hungover.”

Hearing this, Shen Yiqiong let it go—everyone knew how bad Zhou Jiayu’s alcohol tolerance was.

Inside the tunnel, the machines had already started digging in the direction Lin Zhushui had indicated. Layer after layer of earth was removed until, after some time, someone called out, “We’ve found something!”

Zhou Jiayu looked and saw bones being unearthed—hidden in the soil was an intact skeleton. Judging by the clothing, the person had likely lived during the Republic of China era. But this wasn’t the strangest part—the bones were covered in large patches of purple mold, resembling some kind of fungus.

“What is that?” Zhou Jiayu asked. He’d never seen such purple stuff before.

“Looks like a kind of carnivorous fungus,” Lin Jue said thoughtfully, as if recalling something. “It releases hallucinogens to lure prey close. I remember this species isn’t solitary—it usually coexists with other toxic plants. On its own, it can’t kill.”

The fungus caused hallucinations but wasn’t lethal—it normally thrived alongside poisonous plants.

“Keep digging,” Lin Zhushui said, casually setting fire to the fungus to destroy it.

The excavation continued, and soon a vast burial site emerged before them. Countless bones were piled haphazardly, showing how crudely they’d been dumped. It seemed the perpetrators had dug a single massive pit and tossed all the bodies in without even basic sanitation.

Almost every corpse was covered with that unsettling purple fungus.

After all the remains were unearthed, Lin Zhushui instructed the workers to scatter a special powder—lime mixed with other substances—over them. As the powder settled, the fungus quickly blackened and dissolved.

Yu He watched the scene and muttered, “Such a sin…”

They dug deep, but no more bodies surfaced. Zhou Jiayu roughly counted—there had to be at least a thousand corpses, most likely civilians who’d suffocated during the tunnel disaster years ago.

“These people went way too far,” Yu Xiaomian said. “Just dumping them in the tunnel like this? And no one ever found out?”

“No one discovering this is perfectly normal,” Lin Jue sighed. “After something like this happened in the tunnel, who would ever want to come down here again? Everyone’s been avoiding it ever since.”

That made sense. If it weren’t for the subway project, these remains probably never would’ve been unearthed.

After all the skeletons were dug out, Lin Zhushui instructed the workers to carefully excavate along the gap in the wall—but this time, he specifically told them not to use machinery. Everything had to be done by hand, and each shovel was to dig only shallowly, scraping the soil bit by bit.

Zhou Jiayu had been wondering what lay behind that gap for some time, and now he finally got to see. The workers carefully dug away the earth, and soon the contents of the gap gradually emerged.

Embedded in the soil not far from the crack were several living people. Their bodies were entirely buried in the dirt, with only their faces exposed. Strange little red flowers had sprouted all over their skin. Judging by their clothes, these were the missing workers who had vanished after the tunnel work had started.

Once they were fully unearthed, everyone was shocked to realize that the small red flowers had actually grown out from within their bodies—breaking through their flesh and blooming directly on their skin.

Lin Zhushui checked them over and confirmed that they were still alive.

Yu He let out a long sigh of relief, grateful that it hadn’t turned into a major disaster. He then asked how to wake them.

“Take them to the hospital first. Have the flowers carefully removed one by one—the roots aren’t very deep yet. After surgery, they’ll need daily herbal medicine, but they should be fine,” Lin Zhushui said.

“These flowers… are they carnivorous?” Zhou Jiayu asked, recalling what Lin Jue had mentioned earlier.

“Mm,” Lin Zhushui replied. “They absorb nutrients from the body and nourish the fungi in the soil.”

“But why are there such plants here in the first place?” Zhou Jiayu frowned.

“Who knows,” Lin Jue said casually. “Maybe they were accidentally brought in… or maybe—” her tone stayed light, but her words were chilling—“someone planted them here on purpose.”

At that, the group fell silent.

“Let’s get to the hospital first. The rest we’ll deal with later,” Lin Zhushui concluded.

All six workers who’d gone missing in the past two weeks were found. One was in serious condition, but fortunately, the flowers had kept their hosts alive to maintain their own food source—so none were in immediate danger.

After the flowers were removed and taken away, the purple mold remaining in the soil visibly began to die off. The entire pit of buried bones turned an unsettling black color.

“Rebury these remains somewhere else,” Lin Zhushui said finally. “And if possible, reroute the subway line away from here.”

Yu He nodded, though his expression showed helplessness. Clearly, he didn’t believe those in charge would change their plans.

Sure enough, a year later the subway line was completed as planned. But urban legends soon sprang up again—whisperings that on a certain city’s subway line, if you took the very last train at night, you might see a few extra passengers in Republic-era clothing sitting silently in the car…

__

Author’s note:

Zhou Jiayu: Sir, I didn’t, I really didn’t…

Lin Zhushui: Come here.

Zhou Jiayu, all aggrieved, shuffled over to stand before Lin Zhushui.

Lin Zhushui leaned in and gave him a bite: “Leaving a mark. So no one else dares take you away.”