劍問蒼天 - 第156章 夜探 - 翰墨軒

Xiaowan nodded, then seemed to recall something and turned to Wild Wolf Daoist. "Daoist, perhaps you had better not come with us. Grandfather and I are going back only because Father's spirit tablet is there and we cannot bear to leave it untended."

Wild Wolf Daoist, meeting Xiaowan's bright, glistening eyes, opened his mouth as though to say something, then suddenly shut it again. After a long while he mumbled, "Let us go together."

Xiaowan was a little surprised, but she smiled all the same. "Is that so? Heh, Daoist, you really are a good man."

Wild Wolf Daoist said nothing, while beside him Zhou Yixuan gave two cold chuckles, heavy with meaning.

********

The three of them waited in that secluded alley. At first a few distant figures could still be vaguely made out, but as the sky grew late even those few disappeared—most likely, one supposed, because this was a mortuary, a dwelling of the dead.

When night finally fell over He Yin City, which had clamored all day, the people cloaked in dread of the beast-demon calamity had survived yet another day. Weary folk in every corner of the city drifted into sleep, carrying their fears and their blank uncertainty about the future—and who among them had time to spare for the affairs of others?

There was no moon in the night sky; heavy black clouds pressed down, and He Yin City lay in gloom. Only far off at the horizon did one or two faint stars glimmer, facing one another across the dark. A night wind blew softly, carrying a hint of chill and damp, giving out a thin, faint moan as it slipped across the rooftops of the city.

Zhou Yixuan and the other two came noiselessly to the mortuary door at the end of the alley. In the dim light the dilapidated door and walls could still be vaguely discerned, and a cold wind whistled, as though a ghostly draft were blowing steadily out from within. Zhou Yixuan shrank his neck as if chilled; behind him, Wild Wolf Daoist felt his own scalp prickle. But he stole a glance at his side, and saw Xiaowan's graceful figure standing right beside him, her face likewise tense as she gazed into the darkness—and the little urge to retreat that had stirred in his heart vanished without a trace.

Zhou Yixuan gazed into the darkness for a long while, as though pondering something. At length he turned, took several yellow paper talismans from his robe—faintly visible upon them were crooked, obscure drawings, though in the dim light one could not tell what they were—and handed two to Xiaowan. After a moment's hesitation he reached out and handed two to Wild Wolf Daoist as well, saying in a low voice, "Keep the larger of these two talismans close against your body; it will ward off ghostly energy. Hold the smaller one in your hand, and if anything goes wrong, recite the incantation at once and fling it out—then you may flee through the earth."

That done, Zhou Yixuan softly taught the two of them the incantation. Xiaowan had likely known it long before; she nodded, looking at ease. But Wild Wolf Daoist's head swam as he listened. These strange incantations of Zhou Yixuan's were like nothing he had ever heard—not only awkward on the tongue, but winding and twisting this way and that, fiendishly hard to remember. Wild Wolf Daoist almost suspected that if trouble truly came, he would be dead at Mr. Ghost's hands before he ever finished reciting them.

Be that as it may, though he did not know whether this charlatan Zhou Yixuan's magic would prove efficacious this time, Wild Wolf Daoist nonetheless set himself to memorize it in earnest. It took him the time of a cup of tea before he finally managed to commit that utterly intractable incantation to memory.