Chapter 29: Game
It was just after 9 p.m. when they got home.
Normally at this time, Ren Tianyou would still be out driving, picking up and dropping off passengers.
But what happened today felt strange and unreal to him. Even though he kept telling Li Mu that ghosts didn’t exist and that people should stop believing in superstitions, the scared look on his face showed just how nervous he really was inside.
“Do you think I should ask a shaman to come?”
Leaning against the elevator wall, Ren Tianyou asked anxiously, “I heard running into something unclean is bad for your health.”
“Didn’t you say there were no ghosts?”
“Yeah, I don’t believe it... but still, we should show a little respect,” he said confidently at first, but then his voice dropped a bit. “I heard there’s a very powerful shaman in some village...”
“Huayang Village.”
“Yes, that’s the one! Huayang Village. How did you know?”
“That guy passed away a while ago,” Li Mu replied coldly.
Ren Tianyou looked shocked. “How do you know that?”
“A classmate of mine is his grandson.”
As they were talking, the elevator doors slowly opened. Out in the hallway, Yu Fan was standing there, bored and yawning.
Li Mu pointed at him. “His pervert grandson.”
Yu Fan looked up, utterly bewildered. “I’ve been waiting for you for half an hour. Why are you attacking me as soon as we meet?”
They had agreed at lunchtime to play the spirit-calling game again tonight, so he had brought a backpack with the things they needed.
Ren Tianyou glanced at Yu Fan’s handsome face and immediately lost interest. Even though a real shaman didn’t have to be old, there was no way someone as sunny and good-looking as Yu Fan could be one.
He gave a little nod to greet Yu Fan, then left and went home.
Li Mu followed close behind and opened the door to his place while saying, “I saw a ghost just now.”
“Another one?” Yu Fan was surprised.
He had said before that ghosts were supposed to be super rare. Most people never saw even one in their whole life, but somehow Li Mu had run into several within just one week, as if bad luck was following him around.
“It was the raincoat ghost, the one I saw when you knocked on the bowl,” Li Mu said, kicking off his sneakers and walking into the room in his socks.
“I think that ghost is the one behind the recent murders.”
Yu Fan walked in behind him and asked with doubt, “That doesn’t sound right though.”
“Why not?”
“Let me explain. That ghost Lin Xi you mentioned before, that was just a leftover feeling or thought. Very common kind of ghost.”
“But the mirror ghost in your house, and this raincoat ghost, they’re probably higher-level. Like, ghosts with really strong grudges or obsessions. They lose their sense of self and only follow their final obsession blindly.”
Li Mu didn’t quite understand and looked at him with a blank face.
“It’s like a program, like NPCs in a game, you know? They follow a fixed pattern. For example, if a ghost knocks on your door late at night and you open it, then it will kill you.”
Li Mu thought for a moment. “So maybe this ghost was murdered by someone who knocked on the door at night, and now it’s repeating the same thing?”
“Exactly. That’s why ghosts usually follow a set behavior. If the perpetrator was a man, then the ghost tends to kill men, until it kills the original perpetrator,” Yu Fan said with a shrug.
“That’s also why cases involving torture or cruel deaths get so much attention. If the criminal isn’t caught within a week, the victim’s leftover emotions can turn into a powerful ghost.”
“These days, with all the street cameras and tech, there aren’t many unsolved cases anymore, so strong ghosts have become rare too.”
If the law can’t punish the bad guys… then the ghosts do it themselves?
These ghosts are seriously intense.
But what does that have to do with the mirror ghost in his house?
Li Mu looked down at the small mirror on the table. “Li Mu” in the reflection still looked scared and timid, nothing like someone who would go around killing to complete some grudge.
“That’s just something my grandpa used to say. If I’m wrong, don’t blame me,” Yu Fan said as he stretched, grabbed an apple from the table, wiped it on his clothes, and took a bite without caring if it was dirty.
“If Lin Xi became a vengeful ghost...”
“She’d probably go around looking for boyfriends until she found me?” Yu Fan guessed.
The spooky mood that had just started building instantly disappeared. The two of them even felt like laughing.
But the smile quickly faded from Yu Fan’s face as he got serious again.
“So, for this murder case, aside from the way the victims died, their location, gender, and age don’t really match the pattern of a ghost attack.”
“Why say ‘aside from the way they died’?”
“Because the body being chopped up happened after death, it’s not something that happened while they were alive. That doesn’t have much to do with a ghost’s obsession. Also, ghosts are supposed to be super rare...” He paused, suddenly unsure. “Don’t tell me we’re really that unlucky and it actually is a ghost?”
The idea that ghosts are rare didn’t seem to apply to him and Li Mu.
Trying to change the subject, Yu Fan said awkwardly, “Anyway, for tonight’s spirit game, I was thinking of trying the ‘Chopstick Spirit’.”
“???”
What’s that?
Li Mu had only heard of the “Pen Spirit” game. He looked confused.
Maybe noticing the confusion, Yu Fan explained, “It’s a type of ghost-summoning ritual. Usually, two people do it together, one of them should be a girl.”
“You can play the girl.”
More question marks popped up over Li Mu’s head.
“To make it more believable, you should probably dress up as a girl too.”
I see now. You’re just trying to trick me into wearing women's clothes, huh?
Having figured that out, Li Mu's expression became even colder. “Change it.”
Yu Fan clearly hadn’t expected this idea to get a yes, so he quickly switched games.
“Your bathroom has a bathtub, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Fill the bathtub with cold water, I'll lie down in it, and at exactly twelve o'clock at night, I'll close my eyes and soak for three minutes.”
Sounded kind of normal.
But... there really is a ghost in my house. Are you sure it’s safe to play this here?
Li Mu turned his head to look at the small mirror on the table. From his angle, the “him” in the mirror looked like it was listening curiously. But to Yu Fan, it was just a regular reflection.
So far, the mirror ghost hadn’t done anything truly harmful. It had only done prank-like stuff, like lowering the temperature in the room or flickering the lights to create a spooky atmosphere.
But they didn’t fully understand how these ghost-summoning games worked. What if it accidentally triggered something bad?
Li Mu was starting to regret agreeing to do this at his own place.
“Don’t go scaring Yu Fan, alright?” he warned the mirror.
“If you do, I’ll find your grave, dig up your ashes, and launch them into the sky with fireworks.”
The little ghost in the mirror immediately looked terrified, tearing up and nodding nonstop.
Yu Fan came over, curious, and stared at the mirror, which looked totally normal to him.
“What’s this ghost’s personality like?”
“Pretty nice.”
He joked, “Yeah, right. If this were a different ghost, it’d probably kill you for saying that. Must be a girl ghost, huh?”
But Li Mu didn’t respond to the joke. After a pause, he finally suggested, “Since there’s a ghost in my house, maybe we should go to a hotel with a bathtub instead?”
“No need! It’s only exciting if you really see a ghost during the game.”
Yu Fan was totally pumped. In movies, guys with this much curiosity usually don’t live long.
“I’ll go set up the bathroom.”
He grabbed his backpack and happily ran to Li Mu’s bathroom.
The bathroom in Li Mu’s place had three sections. A sink with a half-body mirror outside, a toilet, and next to the toilet, a big bathtub.
There was no separate shower. Li Mu usually stood inside the tub to wash, so the water wouldn’t spill everywhere and make a mess.
Yu Fan filled the tub with cold water, then placed two white candles on either side of the faucet.
Then he pulled out a mirror with a suction cup from his backpack and stuck it to the wall at the end of the tub.
Now, all that was left... was to wait for midnight.