The goodbye to Qì Hán was gentle and warm on this sunless day, as if it were night again. They walked for a while side by side. They really needed it after staying curled in one place for so long.
The town was awake again. People going to work. A few shops opening just now. The gentle wind made their hair dry slowly but surely.
Chóng Fēi was much better now. He walked like he owned the road—not loudly, but the way he carried himself as he led Lìngxiāo to the place where they had to go first to take a carriage, since the prison realm came after passing a mountain path.
They might actually get late.
It didn't matter much, though. The kids were probably really patient. He hoped getting late wouldn't bring any new problems, even without Chóng Féng's absence.
While walking, Chóng Fēi talked about many serious things—about the rules and how they would step by step manage things.
His voice was in a much gentler tone than his usual one. Perhaps this rule-changing actually mattered to him too much that it made their bond much better than the hair-clipping or slapping they were doing.
And right now, his own mind was a mess.
Everything moving all at once in him, unable to even place it together. But more like doing mathematics of life without the typical formulas.
Formulas solve once placed properly. But what if there is no formula—only information and no place to organize it?
It just becomes another busy world into headspace.
He didn't understand why Chóng Fēi kept repeating that things needed to be finished within a month, and then Lìngxiāo should just..leave. He didn't say it directly, but in many smart or clumsy ways—as if he would die by that ghost.
He wondered if he was being that way because of the desperation for freedom or something else. Maybe freedom. But then, that same suspicion came back again. But after seeing so many things, it was hard to suspect him—though his way of analyzing always moved in all possible roads.
And that case? The case was far from getting solved within this month. He had nothing to do but wait for Wàng Wùjī's help. It was also internal work, so he wouldn't share it with Chóng Fēi.
And on top of all concern was Chóng Fēi's eye. The needle sessions. One is about an valuable organ. Another is life itself—even suffering because it would not even kill him properly.
"I would try my best to solve the case as quickly as possible, Gōngzǐ."
"I understand."
"I hope so."
That was all he could answer when topics came over the case. The very case he came here for felt like nothing but confusion now, since the time he started to place one thing on another.
If the ghost was a groom who was possessive and trying to tell him something, then it should have tried to talk to him again.
But it didn't.
He didn't feel it the whole day after healing Chóng Fēi. But each time he felt it, it acted differently. First, the message felt like saying his child was killed and he was told to find the killer.
But the pattern at the temple belonged to a female ghost—if looked closely.
Even the rumors had a male ghost who came as a groom and killed whoever wore a wedding red robe and took a lantern. He even saw it a few times as male. And now it suddenly seemed silent, leaving no clue for him to find by himself..
All he felt properly was only that moth curse's energy and the ghost of the mummy exorcist's unnatural spiders at the mountain.
As things aside—why did the moth curse have to be here? If it was about taking his soul, why didn't she attack at all? Or was she..aiming for Chóng Fēi instead—because though he wasn't raised by his uncle, nor was he going to be twenty after a month?
He already was twenty.
But still, he was that sweet soul curses searched for. Perfect age. Or was it even aiming to punish Lìngxiāo instead—by stealing souls from all of the humans who were once connected to him?
There were too many questions too soon, and Lìngxiāo wanted to stop his mind from running too fast, to keep it separate from his head. His head felt heavy from last night to run it as usual. The thin veins of his eyes felt like throbbing and the middle of his skull throbbed when he tried to think more and more out of the obsession to solve things.
While thinking those, he didn't realize when they were already on the carriage, sitting at the same spots where they had sat the last time—the carriage was different, but they had chosen the same spots for themselves.
As they moved, Chóng Fēi leaned against the seat, arms crossed and eyes shut for a moment. His lashes seemed tangled to each other a little from moisture and his non-stop rubbing. Perhaps his sleep wasn't done yet. He was pushing himself after not listening to him to not drink this much.
Lìngxiāo tried to rest too. But he couldn't. Nor could he release the pressure by sharing—there was no situation to do so, and he didn't like to pressure anyone else by telling his concerns.
He just carried them himself.
But he still did a few things he had never done before, because the situations made him do them.
The robe matter could be taken a little lighter here. The rule-changing was something he was still processing. Even more processing was Chóng Fēi's shift of behavior—just slightly—towards him after this. And then asking a personal question to that man Qì Hán. But it was related to Chóng Fēi too, so he couldn't help it.
On top of all was Chóng Fēi's behavior after getting drunk. That song. Those words. He didn't know how he would fully recover from it to get back to his even more guarded self. That professional one. Even he must be feeling suspicious to Chóng Fēi—that he asks him about last night whenever he thinks perhaps he did something, and he has to lie again and again. Not because it was embarrassing that way.
It felt like a wound.
And wounds shouldn't be opened this many times. He himself got so shaken that he ended up sleeping while sitting on the floor because of who knows what he did without his proper head. And him—personally, Lìngxiāo would struggle to accept it because once he used to be a part of his little innocent daily life.
And now they met again.
He felt like it would be cruel if he wasn't an actual great friend instead of only a cultivation partner. He was strangely distant—someone who just humbly spoke and listened but shared nothing, and also..couldn't hide a few judgments.
It was only three things he got from him: that story, the song, and a small bunch of unfiltered words from last night.
The last two he never asked for.
Somehow he seemed to find no space now to think in that way: I just fear of dying before finding the truth I am searching for.
He did say that about dying after learning things. But listening to others fight for themselves made him ask himself more firmly: if they can, why can I not?
Also..dying from saving lives and dying alone while a lot of lives behind him are also dying while living is a totally different thing.
So yes, he feared finishing life by themselves. For young people most of the time who had been at his age or at his current age.
And somehow..unfortunately Chóng Fēi seemed to be in this race from since when, who knows.
And he couldn't slip it out of his mind. Here he was trying to save his eye, his clan, his town, and him by the needle treatment—and he just said..anything?
It was unacceptable. A lot painful.
Especially because this guy used to scold even if anyone threw any dark playful jokes about dying—since this little boy...
It only passed guilt and responsibility which perhaps he didn't deserve to have. But somehow he did—for too much understanding.
**
He exhaled slower and deeper while thinking those, his forehead at his palm, his hat hiding his gentle yet composed stressed face as he took a nap on the surface.
A really fragile one.
Just thoughts molding behind his eyelids. The rest was the soft sound of air and the light tremble of the wooden wheel as the carriage carried him.
He had no idea for how long he was curled near the window side.
Then a light poke of a cold metal at his forearm came.
'What??'
His heart jumped at the touch. He sat straight immediately, settling his hat again. His vision looked bluish, which made him blink twice.
And as they were—it was Chóng Fēi who poked him by the edge of his covered sword. Maybe because of the way he jumps by touch—or would will jump too if he calls.
So his head tilted a little while his arms were crossed as were his legs, looking at Lìngxiāo like he was the sleepy, troublesome one here—though it wasn't that sharp gaze. Just the usual way his eyes kept composure, the tilt of his chin flipped the whole look that way as the way he wished to deliver his expressions.
"Yes..Gōngzǐ..?" His voice was quieter than he intended.
"We have reached our destination." Chóng Fēi answered.
Lìngxiāo just nodded once. "I see, Gōngzǐ."
Chóng Fēi watched him a second longer. Then didn't wait for any of them before coming out of the carriage.