I have received every manner of clue in my long life as an exorcist. But this… this is the strangest yet : he thought .
"Not five… not eleven… just seven colours on a key," Lìngxiāo murmured to himself, his ever-present smile turning thoughtful as he tilted his head.
The blood of the dead crow was still wet on his fingers, glittering darkly as he lifted the find for a better look. A six-headed star, wrought in silver. The central prong was green, the others a spectrum of grey, lotus-green, blue, white, gold, and lavender.
"Someone is trying to tell me a story," he whispered. He stood, cleaning the key carefully with a scrap of fabric from his sleeve.
"It looks like a curse-seal key," Mò Qīn offered, shifting to get more comfortable around Lìngxiāo's neck. The little serpent's voice was a hushed, wary thing in the heavy air.
Lìngxiāo's smile shifted—a silent agreement. He gave a single nod. "It does. But why would a guǐ hand its hunter the means to unbind its own prison?"
Mò Qīn coiled closer, red eyes fixed on the silver. "To my knowledge, it could be the curse itself, weaving an illusion. Or… a neighbouring spirit, trying to unseal something worse."
The temple grounds held their breath. Then—a sound. Slow, wet footsteps, deliberate on the stone path.
A whisper brushed Lìngxiāo's ear, sibilant as a secret, chilling as a warning: burning knife wearing red~
His eyes narrowed. He scanned the shadows without moving a muscle. Then his gaze snapped downward.
The eviscerated crow was gone. Vanished, as if ripped away.
Mò Qīn tightened silently around his throat. "It's playing with us. Unlike the others it butchered."
"It won't attack," Lìngxiāo said, his voice soft as silk over a blade's edge. "Not now that it knows what I am. So, of course… it will play."
Mò Qīn's sigh died in a gasp. Over Lìngxiāo's shoulder, a figure had materialised—pale face, eyes black pits, mouth dripping crimson, hands rising toward his neck.
"Behind you!"
Lìngxiāo was already moving. A spin, a flick of his wrist—a talisman, paper igniting mid-air, flew from his fingers. His red robes, his hair, the sway of his lantern, all flared with the motion.
The shadow dissolved. The talisman struck a gnarled tree and faded to ash. The air filled with a hissing chuckle and a single, whispered word:
Perfect.
"Perfect?" Mò Qīn echoed, bewildered.
"Perfect," Lìngxiāo repeated, softer. His gaze swept the empty courtyard. Nothing. A flicker of frustration darkened his smile. Then his voice lifted, gentle yet clear as a challenge thrown at the dark: "If you wish to test me, give me a true sign. If you wish to wrap me in the old white shrouds of your temple… then open the door."
Silence.
Mò Qīn blinked. "It won't answer. These beings only know how to twist and turn."
"Wait," Lìngxiāo breathed. "I know them better than they know themselves."
He felt the weight of a gaze from above. He looked up.
A shape—black, too fast, too dark—fled across the temple rooftop.
But from its wake, something fluttered down: a veil of sheer, gossamer red, settling slowly over Lìngxiāo's head.
His dark, smiling lips parted in silent surprise. His eyes, beneath the translucent fabric, were pools of thoughtful, morbid curiosity.
It's marking me, he realised. It's clever. It won't show itself fully, because it knows I have every element to end it.
"A red veil?" Mò Qīn hissed, peering at him. "Marriage rites? Is it making you its groom?"
Lìngxiāo reached up, his touch light. The fabric was ancient, thin, yet meticulously preserved. "It is a Red Robe Ghost. Of course its theatre is one of marriage." He said it plainly, as if noting the weather. His smile returned, thoughtful and calm.
"But I've never heard of one gifting the veil."
"We cannot presume to know all its rules," Lìngxiāo said, tucking the key safely into his robe.
A sudden, groaning crack split the silence.
The temple's great door swung inward—just as he had demanded.
Dust sighed across the threshold. A few frayed red threads skittered in the draft. The wind itself seemed to shiver.
"It listens to you," Mò Qīn murmured, a thread of teasing in his awe as he stared into the consuming dark within.
Lìngxiāo stepped inside. The ancient floorboards protested under his boots. He raised his lantern, a tiny sun defying the void.
SLAM.
The door shut sharply behind them, sealing itself.
Mò Qīn flinched, looking back at the sealed exit, at the faded dragon carving now glaring at them. Lìngxiāo felt nothing at all.
"This place…also smells of blood. Old blood. Nostalgic," Lìngxiāo whispered, the words muffled by the veil. His eyes were fixed on an archway leading to an inner chamber.
Something felt profoundly wrong there. The impression of a corpse sprawled just beyond sight, glaring, making wet, choking sounds—a throat cut, a knife buried in a chest.
"Do you hear it?" Lìngxiāo asked, his head tilting just slightly toward Mò Qīn. His smile darkened by a shade.
Mò Qīn strained, ears twitching. The sound was faint, yet razor-sharp. "A struggle," he breathed. He could feel a solid, waiting presence in the dark ahead—a coiled tension waiting to spring.
Lìngxiāo nodded, his gaze still locked on the deeper blackness, now faintly silhouetted by the red moonlight bleeding through a high window. A burning, unseen gaze held him.
Then, a new sound froze them both.
A whistle.
Poo-poo-po-pooooo~ po-poo po poo-pooo~
Slow, wet, dragging footsteps echoed behind them. The whistle faded.
"Behind," Lìngxiāo whispered, not turning.
Mò Qīn didn't move. A sudden turn could draw the very attention they needed to avoid. They were here not just to capture, but to understand.
He gave the barest nod. Yes. Something stood there. Indistinct, but the cut of its robes was oddly new. And on the floor… fresh blood, spreading.
Lìngxiāo swallowed, a thoughtful, hard motion. His smile deepened, edged with a dark excitement. To catch this ghost was to perhaps shed another's skin—to be seen not as the smiling killer, but simply as himself. He catalogued the clues: Nostalgic blood. Headless crow. Six-headed key. Sounds of stabbing. The veil.
A new sound. A dry, single shhhhkkk of friction.
The entity they had sensed ahead was now being pulled, dragged roughly across the floor into another room.
Dham!
A door closed. Silence rushed back in, thicker than before.
The body was gone. The presence behind them remained, a cold pressure, but the entire temple was so saturated with negative energy it was impossible to pinpoint.
"Hm?" Lìngxiāo hummed, a question.
Mò Qīn shook his head minutely. No, it's gone from behind. "It's toying with us! I'll scorch it with holy water!"
A faint, silent chuckle shook Lìngxiāo's shoulders. "It's playing with me. You're merely a spectator stuck in its game."
"How can you say that, Dàozǔ! We are one!" Mò Qīn insisted, squeezing possessively.
"Fine. Then focus," Lìngxiāo said, and stepped toward the room where the body had vanished.
A hissed fragment of memory, not a living voice, echoed from the walls: "Hide the body!… Silence its struggles, or they will hear!"
Lìngxiāo halted at the threshold. The negative energy here was a palpable fog. An echo of a past murder? Or something more immediate?
To his right stood the old statues of the Five Gods. In this marriage temple, the God of Love stood central. Their painted red clay was cracked and dusty. And in the palm of the Earth God's statue—where a violet gem should have rested—there was only a hollow emptiness.
The temple's heart has been stolen, too.
He took a testing step forward. Thoughtful. Deliberate.
The floor gave way.
Stone panels snapped open beneath his feet like a maw, revealing a pit of glinting, sharpened spikes below.
"Dàozǔ, it's a trap!" Mò Qīn screamed.