Chapter 9: You Have a Home in Jiangzhou?

"You motherf—!" Mingyang's face twisted in an instant. He stepped forward half a pace, clearly furious, and jabbed a finger at his friend. "What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I'm talking nonsense?" His friend was just as heated, glaring back. "Mingyang, you believe a dead man over your own brother?!"

Mingyang seized him by the collar, face dark, eyes narrowed to slits. "Who the hell did you just call dead?"

"Say it again. I dare you."

The friend had grown up with Mingyang since they were kids. Twenty years of friendship, thick as blood—they'd never once come to blows over anything.

But today, over some thing that was neither human nor ghost, Mingyang was actually talking to him like this!

Disappointment and fury tangled together, and the friend exploded.

He grabbed Mingyang's collar right back, chin lifted, teeth clenched. "So what if I did?"

"Gu Yuan is a dead man—so what?!"

Mingyang bit down hard on his back teeth, eyes vicious, and—bang—slammed a fist right into his friend's face!

The taste of blood burst through his mouth. The friend spat, then seized Mingyang's collar with his other hand. "Fuck your mother!"

No holding back—he swung right back!

Mingyang was knocked flat. The friend hauled him up by the collar and hit him again. "Today I'm gonna knock some goddamn sense into you!"

"Sense? What sense?" Mingyang rolled over and fought back, sucked in a breath, pulled his fist back and drove it straight down. "Who the hell do you think you are!"

Once they started, they completely forgot about friendship.

They went for killing blows.

People around rushed to break it up.

It took forever to pull the two apart from where they were tangled on the ground. Both their faces looked terrible.

Mingyang clenched his fists, struggling, glaring death at the people around him. "All of you let me go, goddammit!"

The friend's hands were shaking with rage. "You don't believe it, huh? Fine. Fine!"

He pulled out his phone, found Gu Yuan on WeChat, and threw the phone at Mingyang. "Look for yourself, you bastard!"

Mingyang glared at him. "Look at what?!"

He cursed back, then instinctively looked down.

Then he saw that his friend also had Gu Yuan as a WeChat friend. Mingyang froze for a moment, broke free, and fished out his own phone.

He put both phones side by side to compare.

The WeChat profile pictures were the same.

The WeChat accounts were the same.

The only difference was the Moments content.

On the friend's phone, Gu Yuan's last Moments post was an obituary:

[Gu Yuan: Thank you to all the kind classmates who helped Auntie look for Xiaoyuan. Xiaoyuan has been found. He's gone.]

Mingyang's face changed drastically. He scrolled back and forth through Gu Yuan's Moments.

It was Gu Yuan's WeChat, no mistake.

There were even photos of him from when he was alive.

But... how was that possible?

"Impossible," Mingyang trembled as he scrolled, the air in his chest growing thinner and thinner, his voice turning hoarse. "Impossible... how could this be...?"

"He was clearly—clearly chatting with me every night..."

He was clearly a living, breathing person—how, how could he be dead?

"Impossible... impossible..." Tears the size of beans splashed onto the phone screen. Mingyang's vision blurred with tears, his voice utterly helpless. "How could this be?"

Watching Mingyang in this miserable state, most of the friend's anger dissipated, replaced by a pang of heartache.

Mingyang was different from them. Maybe because his parents had a good relationship, he'd grown up steeped in that example, so he valued feelings deeply.

Mingyang had been good-looking since childhood, knew how to dress, had a cheerful personality—plenty of guys and girls alike had crushes on him during his school days.

But Mingyang always turned them down. He always said if he was going to date someone, it'd be someone he could be with for a lifetime.

Maybe... Mingyang really did want to spend his whole life with Gu Yuan.

"He really is dead," the friend sighed, forcing himself to explain. "He died in sophomore year."

The friend tried hard to recall.

"I remember it was... somewhere in that no-man's land at Mo'ai Mountain."

"That day fog rolled into the mountain, and it rained. Gu Yuan's entire convoy died in there."

In his memory, Senior Gu Yuan always seemed gentle and soft-spoken, greeting everyone with a smile.

Good grades, capable, and he loved extreme sports—plenty of adoring younger girls at school.

When Gu Yuan first went missing, the whole school was talking about it.

They said a group of sophomore seniors had gone exploring in the no-man's land and lost contact for a week. Students even organized search parties on their own.

Until a month later, police reported that Gu Yuan and his group of seven were all dead. No survivors.

Police investigated for a long time and finally ruled out murder, determining it was an accident.

The school principal was even forced out over it.

Mingyang stared blankly at his friend. "Mountain climbing?"

"Yeah," the friend nodded. "Hypothermia, most likely."

Mingyang's breath caught. His scalp went numb instantly.

When he'd dreamed of Gu Yuan back then, it was also in the mountains.

In the dream, he'd been freezing cold, and then he met Gu Yuan...

Could it be that Gu Yuan really was dead?

But why... would he come looking for him?

Mingyang stood there dazed, but the friend seemed to have thought of something and spoke up. "Lu Yiyan, is there any way you can help Yangyang?"

He looked at Lu Yiyan. "When someone's haunted by a ghost like this, isn't it usually looking for a substitute?"

Lu Yiyan nodded. "Most likely, yes."

"What substitute?!" Mingyang retorted loudly without thinking. He clenched his fists, holding in something, though he didn't know who he was holding it in for. "So what if he's dead?"

"He would never hurt me!"

Mingyang and Gu Yuan had been together for five years.

He knew exactly how Gu Yuan had treated him these five years.

The man was gentle and strong. No matter when, as long as Mingyang needed him, the man would sense it immediately and comfort him.

The other man had never asked anything of him.

How could someone like that possibly hurt him?

"You've really lost it!" The friend spoke in disbelief. "He's dead! He's a ghost! Can you snap out of it?!"

Mingyang's breathing was rapid. He stood up. "So what if he's a ghost?"

So what if he's a ghost?

So what if he's dead?

Gu Yuan was his boyfriend.

As long as they hadn't broken up, Gu Yuan would always be!

Mingyang rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. "If he wanted to hurt me, he would've done it already!"

"It's been five years. Aren't I still perfectly fine?"

Everyone around who heard this thought Mingyang had gone crazy.

Mingyang was in an online relationship with a man who'd been dead for six years!

Which meant he'd been messaging and calling a dead man every single day!

And now he was even defending the dead man?!

He was completely bewitched!

Lu Yiyan studied Mingyang for a long while, then suddenly spoke. "Since you say he won't hurt you,"

"Then let me look into why he's clinging to you."

Mingyang raised his eyes and looked at Lu Yiyan. "How?"

"Character divination," Lu Yiyan said. "Type a character into your phone. Don't show anyone."

Mingyang opened his phone immediately.

He was holding something in, wanting to prove to everyone that Gu Yuan wouldn't hurt him.

Of course... he also wanted to prove it to himself.

He couldn't believe that his lover had gotten together with him just to take his life.

What they had wasn't just Mingyang's one-sided wish.

Mingyang first typed the character "Gu" into his notes.

Then he thought it was a bit too easy to guess, so he deleted it and typed "Hao."

After agonizing for ages, he deleted "Hao" too.

He went back and forth between several characters, and finally settled on one. He typed it.

Mingyang let out a breath, gripped his phone, then looked up at Lu Yiyan. "Done."

Lu Yiyan lowered his eyes, raised his left hand, and pinched his fingers, muttering something under his breath.

He tapped back and forth along his finger joints a few times, then stopped.

Then Lu Yiyan sent Mingyang a message.

It had only a few words:

[Yan: The character has eleven strokes—death.]

The moment Mingyang saw that line, his scalp exploded!

His grip went slack, and the phone fell to the ground.

He staggered back half a step, staring blankly at Lu Yiyan, forgetting even to breathe.

The people around him were making noise, but aside from his own increasingly violent heartbeat, he seemed unable to hear anything at all.

"What is it? What happened?" The others grew anxious, looking at Lu Yiyan.

Lu Yiyan said nothing, just tilted his chin toward the phone.

A few people bent down and picked up Mingyang's phone.

They first checked the message Lu Yiyan had sent Mingyang, then opened the notes to see the "character" Mingyang had written.

A single large character appeared—"Qing."

Exactly, precisely, eleven strokes.

The people around looked as if they'd seen a ghost. Their minds went "buzz," and they forgot to breathe.

This... how was this possible?

Out of all those characters, how had Mingyang written this one?!

And it just happened to be eleven strokes?

Lu Yiyan asked, "What character is it?"

The friend answered immediately. "Qing. As in qinggan—feelings."

Hearing this, Lu Yiyan pressed his lips together, his expression not looking good. "'Qing' is yin wood, connected to the ghost path."

"When the heart is chaotic, a life is lost."

Simply put—his heart was too chaotic, he'd developed feelings for a ghost, and he was going to lose his life.

"Eleven strokes belongs to the number of lone calamity."

"Beneath 'Qing' hides 'Sheng'—life—but the yin energy is heavy, and he's unwilling to save himself," Lu Yiyan looked at Mingyang and said, "Within three days, you will die by accident."

Mingyang just stared blankly at Lu Yiyan, listening to him word by word, ears buzzing, his body almost soaked through with sweat...

Three days...

Was he going to die?

Gu Yuan really... wanted to kill him?

Just as he was thinking this, the phone on the ground suddenly began to vibrate.

"Zzzz—zzz——"

Mingyang froze for a long time, then slowly lowered his head.

On the phone screen, a video call was popping up. The contact name had only two characters—Gu Yuan.