Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 12: The Invisible Friend (Part 4)

Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 12: The Invisible Friend (Part 4)

Qiming Elementary School…..

It was the last class of Friday, and outside the windows a torrential rain had begun to fall again. The teacher at the front finished assigning homework and reminded the students not to run through the hallways in their rush to get home, to come to the office and borrow an umbrella if they hadn’t brought one, and to wait patiently in the classroom if their parents hadn’t arrived yet, safety above all else.

A low rumble of thunder rolled in from somewhere beyond the sky, and the more timid children flinched. The teacher hurried around to shut every window tight, leaving only the door to the corridor standing wide open. The air was thick with the smell of rain.

The bell rang, and the students cheered and filed out of the classroom one by one.

Su Xiaoyu absentmindedly worked on her homework for a while. When she noticed only a handful of people remained in the room, she turned and stole a glance at the seat beside her.

“Jiang Hao, how are you getting home?” she murmured, mostly to herself. “I’m going to wait until the rain lets up a bit, then walk back with my umbrella. I want to finish my homework first.”

She continued in a low, unhurried voice. “Sun Yang and the others all transferred schools. Only Xiao Fei didn’t, but he hasn’t been in class for a long time either I heard he’s sick. His dad comes by every so often to pick up his worksheets and test papers.”

She thought she was being inconspicuous, but when she glanced up, the homeroom teacher was standing right beside her, expression grave.

Su Xiaoyu startled and instinctively rose to her feet, bracing for a scolding. “Ms. Xu…”

“Xiaoyu,” the teacher asked. “Who are you talking to? Jiang Hao again?”

Su Xiaoyu shook her head quickly.

Ms. Xu reached out and pressed a hand to her forehead her temperature seemed normal. Her gaze drifted to the empty seat beside her, and a chill crept up from somewhere deep inside.

The fluorescent light overhead flickered suddenly, making the atmosphere feel even more unsettling.

Noticing the teacher’s paleness, Su Xiaoyu called out in concern, “Ms. Xu?”

The teacher didn’t come back to herself. Ever since those children had transferred away, a quiet suspicion had taken root in her mind that the parents’ fear wasn’t only about the social fallout affecting their children. Perhaps… perhaps something far more frightening was still to come.

Another crack of thunder exploded outside. Both of them shuddered at the same time.

Su Xiaoyu’s eyes went wide as she looked toward the doorway. Chen Jiu had appeared there at some point, standing without a sound, a black umbrella in hand. Her complexion was fair, and in that moment, she looked startlingly eerie.

Today’s unusual circumstances had finally given her a chance to walk through the school gates without fuss.

“You came!” Su Xiaoyu exclaimed, her face lighting up.

“The rain is too heavy. I came to walk you home,” Chen Jiu said, and glanced over at Ms. Xu.

The two women had met once before, so the teacher didn’t press her with questions she simply gave Chen Jiu a polite nod.

Su Xiaoyu’s parents were away most of the year, and her grandmother was in poor health. She usually walked to and from school with other children in the neighborhood, and on days of extreme weather like this, if there was truly no one to help, Ms. Xu had planned to walk her home herself. So the sight of Chen Jiu brought the teacher some measure of relief as well.

Su Xiaoyu cheerfully packed up her school bag. Ms. Xu turned to check on the students in the back rows who were still doing their homework, worried that some of them might be in a similar situation.

Chen Jiu took a step into the classroom and immediately sensed something: an energy field that existed entirely apart from the rest of the school. A strange, rippling disturbance emanated outward from Jiang Hao’s seat, spreading slowly in all directions, forming a boundary invisible to the naked eye.

The moment she drew near, Jiang Hao stirred.

Su Xiaoyu noticed the abnormality at her deskmate’s seat. Her pencil case slipped from her hands and clattered to the floor. She stared at Jiang Hao in shock, then turned back to look at Chen Jiu, her mind so full of questions it felt ready to overflow.

“Why won’t you leave?” Chen Jiu asked quietly.

At that, Jiang Hao seemed to recover something like awareness. He turned his head to look at her.

His hair, the hem of his clothes, the cuffs of his trousers, he was soaked through completely. Water dripped from him steadily, pooling on the floor. His face was slowly wrinkling, puffing white, swelling.

His lips parted and closed. In a murmur, he asked, “Why didn’t you save me?”

Why… didn’t you save me?

Sun Yang jolted awake screaming from that same bone-chilling vision, his throat raw, his entire body drenched in cold sweat. His heart felt as though a fist had clamped around it suffocating and aching.

This was the longest he had slept since the school year began a full five hours. But even so, he had not escaped the nightmare.

His lips were cracked, yet he stubbornly refused to drink. After getting up, he swept everything within reach off the furniture in a frenzy smashing whatever could be smashed. He was using rage to hold the fear at bay.

Sun Bo heard the commotion and pushed open his son’s bedroom door to find exactly this scene. Before he could get a word out, Sun Yang lunged forward like a charging bull, ripped the soul-settling talisman from where it hung, and tore it to shreds.

Sun Bo’s face went dark.

It was at that moment he finally understood that he could no longer afford to be soft. He had to take his son back to Wanshi Zhai.

Outside Qiming Elementary School.

The rain had finally eased. Chen Jiu walked slowly back, carrying Su Xiaoyu on her back the girl was half-asleep and barely conscious.

“Boss…” Su Xiaoyu murmured, her mind hazy, already forgetting what she had just witnessed. She called out groggily from where she lay against Chen Jiu’s back.

“Ms. Xu called your grandmother,” Chen Jiu said. “I told her we’d stop at my shop first. Keep sleeping.”

Su Xiaoyu made a small sound of acknowledgment and promptly sank back into sleep.

Back in the classroom just now, the “Jiang Hao” presence had barely grazed the outermost layer of Chen Jiu’s first talisman before dissipating. That made it clear the soul itself was not here. Someone was nourishing Jiang Hao’s three souls and six spirits with their own blood and life force and the body was most likely still preserved, intact.

Who would exhaust their own lifespan without reservation to sustain him? That part was easy enough to guess. But the method was not something an ordinary person could access there had to be a rogue practitioner involved, pulling strings somewhere in the middle.

Back at Wanshi Zhai, Chen Jiu settled the sleeping Su Xiaoyu and called Chen Xiaoxuan over to keep her company. The dark cat’s yang energy was abundant more than enough to dispel whatever trace of foul aura the little girl had picked up.

There were countless methods for nourishing a ghost with one’s own blood. Chen Jiu didn’t feel like having extra thought on it, so she typed a quick query into her sect’s group chat, sent it, and didn’t look again.

Deep in the night, Su Xiaoyu still hadn’t woken. This sleep seemed unusually sound she barely even shifted.

Chen Jiu shook her head, decided to keep the girl overnight, tidied the surface of the desk, and got up to close up for the night. The rolling shutter was almost fully down when a hand shot underneath it, and a man’s voice cried out in desperation: “Master Chen! Help! Please!”

The world was silent around them. Even the rain falling on the street was no more than a soft, barely audible hiss.

Chen Jiu looked at the boy, whose complexion was an ashen gray. “What happened to the talisman I gave him?”

“He… after he woke up, he suddenly went berserk and tore it off.” Sun Bo’s voice was drained. “I got angry and snapped at him, and then he just suddenly coughed up blood and passed out.”

Chen Jiu pressed two fingers to Sun Yang’s pulse. As she expected barely there, nearly exhausted, as if the last of his oil was burning out. He was close to being consumed entirely. The soul-settling talisman had been protecting his spirit and heart pulse, slowing the pace at which the malevolent force could erode him but this boy had gone and torn off his own protection in a moment of madness. Truly his own undoing.

“Is there still hope for my son?” Sun Bo asked, his face crumpling, legs so weak beneath him he could barely hold himself in his seat.

Chen Jiu didn’t answer. In silence, she administered a series of needles. Sun Yang’s color gradually improved, and the deathly look receded from his face.

“Take him to a hospital.” Chen Jiu looked at Sun Bo. “Then take me to Jiang Hao’s parents. We need to move quickly.”

“The hospital?” Sun Bo looked as though he had misheard. With his hands and feet still unsteady, he tried several times before managing to stand, appearing as if the suggestion had snapped him back to reality. “Right right, yes, the hospital.”

He had placed so much faith in Chen Jiu that whenever something went wrong with his son, his first instinct was to come to Wanshi Zhai, not a medical clinic.

The two of them gathered what they needed and prepared to head out.

“Boss…” Su Xiaoyu stirred awake, yawning, and looked from Chen Jiu to Sun Bo with bleary confusion. She rubbed her eyes. “Uncle Sun what are you doing here?”

Sun Bo looked equally startled. “Xiaoyu?”

Su Xiaoyu got up and walked over to where Sun Yang lay unconscious, her expression growing more puzzled. Hadn’t Sun Yang transferred schools? Why was he here? And he seemed very, very ill.

“Xiaoyu, watch the shop for me while I’m out. If you’re hungry, help yourself to whatever you can find.” Chen Jiu instructed. “Once I’ve taken care of things, I’ll take you home.”

Su Xiaoyu nodded. She looked at Sun Bo, then at Sun Yang and noticed something on Sun Yang’s wrist a handprint, bruised a deep bluish-black, as though someone had grabbed him and dragged him with tremendous force.

Worried, she pointed at it and looked up at Sun Bo. “Uncle, did you hit Sun Yang at home? Teachers say you’re not supposed to use physical punishment.”

Sun Bo’s mind caught on something and in an instant, every hair on his body stood on end.

Su Xiaoyu’s voice was innocent and matter-of-fact. “Teacher said children’s bones are very fragile. Grabbing them by the hands and feet like that can sprain them very easily.”

Cold sweat beaded on Sun Bo’s forehead. He looked over at Chen Jiu in alarm.

Chen Jiu gave a single nod a quiet confirmation. “Before, it was only in Sun Yang’s dreams. But tonight, Jiang Hao may have truly been here.”

Sun Bo couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see Jiang Hao, and he couldn’t see the marks Jiang Hao had left behind. All he could ever see was his own son screaming at the empty air, losing his mind.

He broke. He covered his face with both hands, overwhelmed with remorse for his own cowardice and his son’s.

He had failed to raise his child well. He had allowed Sun Yang to become someone capable of such cruelty. He had never taught his son that when you do something wrong, you bear the consequences, you face them, you own them instead of doing exactly what Sun Yang was doing now running away.

And it hadn’t only been Sun Yang. All the parents, though none of them knew exactly what had happened, had collectively decided that their children bore no responsibility. Not one of them had been willing to spare even a thought of sympathy for the dying Jiang Hao. So they had arranged the transfers as quickly as possible, and moved on.

And yet, as it turned out, the reckoning they had fled had found after alll.