Watching from the sidelines only makes people hope the fire burns even more fiercely.
My mind suddenly went blank, and I couldn't tell if it was the world, myself, or my mind that was spinning.
“Every day when I come home, I look at the empty house and I really don’t know what to do. We’ve been married for six years and everything has been harmonious. I always thought God had been very good to me, and I thought my happiness would never end… Just an ordinary day, just an ordinary day…” The woman’s hands, which had been covering her cheeks, fell down. She opened them forward and slowly raised her tilted face.
As the elevator descended, she looked up, perhaps wanting to look at the sky and ask questions, but all she could see was the elevator ceiling—a mirror reflecting her face.
Her suffering continues.
Wen Dai was captivated, drawn back to many years ago. Goosebumps covered her arms, a chill rose from her fingertips, her blood and bones were cold, only the fire sealed in her memory was burning hot.
But one cannot drift away in the fog of memories; one's feet are on solid ground, and the sound of the elevator doors opening will awaken her.
Perhaps she just enjoys creating trouble for herself. Wen Dai took two steps toward the woman, grabbed her arm, and pulled her out of the elevator. "I can understand you, but your actions are just desperate measures. It's true that your husband and child are dead, but what's the point of summoning their spirits? Do you know how dangerous it is for ordinary people to descend into the underworld?"
She pulled the woman through the corridor, stopping in front of the room. She raised her eyes and turned to meet Chen Sizhe's gaze. Her lips pursed, and her tone became unusually resolute: "You can say I'm meddling and asking for trouble, go ahead. As I said before, meeting her was fate, and I had the desire to help her. It was destiny."
The corridor lights were a blinding yellow, like gold shoved into light bulbs. Wen Dai's upturned peach blossom eyes seemed to hold fragments of gold, their shimmering brightness carrying her own stubbornness. What a strange person, Chen Sizhe thought.
On one hand, she reveals an eagerness to make money, and on the other hand, she is so soft-hearted that she seems like a saint.
"Understood." He raised his chin again, his fox-like eyes revealing a faint emotion. His shoes tapped slowly on the ground as he naturally followed behind the woman toward Wen Dai's room. He glanced at Wen Dai, who was holding the door open, and said matter-of-factly, "I have always valued cooperation."
The man brushed against her shoulder, and Wen Dai turned her head to glance at his back, pulling her hand back from the door.
What a fickle man.
She turned around. A woman, still trapped in her grief, sat on the living room sofa, while Chen Sizhe went to sit on a single sofa at the other end, his legs crossed in a languid posture. He didn't seem to care about cooperation at all; he appeared more like an observer.
Rolling her eyes inwardly, Wen Dai walked over to the woman and sat down next to her. She took out a pack of tissues from her pocket, held the tissues and handed them to the woman to wipe her tears. "Try to control your emotions. Tell me what happened slowly."
“Three months ago, my husband took my son to visit his grandmother. They were in a car accident on the mountain road and he died on the spot,” the woman said in a trembling voice. Her brief statement triggered a torrent of tears in her eyes. Her tissue was soaked with tears, and she gripped the fabric of her clothes tightly with her other hand, struggling to force the words out of her throat.
"This is a huge blow to me. I handled both their funerals by myself, and some people even said I was the one who caused their deaths; they said I hated my son from the beginning, just because he's not my biological child, and they're convinced I held a grudge, convinced I secretly tampered with the car... But just a short while ago, we were having a great time together at a party, and they all said I was a kind and rare stepmother. I don't understand, I don't get it. I'm the one who lost my husband and child, I'm the one who lost my home, so why do they still want to pin all the blame on me?"
The child clinging to the woman's back had lost the sinister smile he had given Wen Dai earlier. He reached out and placed his hand on the woman's tear-streaked cheeks, but to no avail.
Wen Dai's hand, pressed against her thigh, clenched slightly. She stared intently at the woman, who was panting after venting her emotions, and almost cruelly revealed the reality to her: "Because they are outsiders watching the show, observing from the sidelines, of course they hope the fire will burn more dramatically. They don't care about your relationship with them, they only care about how fresh you can be for them as a change in their boring lives."
The tears gradually dried, and the woman silently slumped onto the sofa, her back hunched and her shoulders slumped, her empty gaze fixed on the coffee table.
It was quiet; the champagne on the coffee table was still, or rather, it was moving quietly.
The silence was abruptly broken by Chen Sizhe: "Who taught you to summon spirits from the underworld?"
Getting back to the main point, the woman moved her lips and took a long time to give an answer: "I went to the temple to worship Buddha. When I came out, I met an old man. I didn't say anything, but he could see everything... He told me that if I needed it, he could teach me how to summon spirits in the underworld. He saw that I was all alone and said that it would be good to use this method to chat with the spirits below and relieve my loneliness."
"What a heartless old bastard!" Frustrated by his own actions, Wen Dai slapped her thigh and asked, her brows furrowed, "You know where that person usually sits, right?"
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, her fingers flying across the screen to find a WeChat QR code, which she then handed over. "Let's add each other on WeChat. I'll help you with your flame problem today, and I might need your cooperation later. It would be best if you could arrange to meet that old man; I need to deal with this scoundrel. My name is Wen Dai, Wen as in 'Hearing, hearing,' and Dai as in 'The beauties of the six palaces pale in comparison.' The man next to you is Chen Sizhe." She gestured with her chin towards Chen Sizhe, who was sitting to her side.
The woman gently added her on WeChat, slowly typing out a nickname. Her eyes were already red when she looked up, and she said in a low, hoarse voice, "Yang Qing, the green of the color 'qing'."
She put her phone away, glanced nervously at Wen Dai, and hesitated for a long time before carefully asking, "How are you going to deal with my flames? After you're done, will Hao Hao leave me?"
Seeing the reluctance and hesitation in Yang Qingduan's eyes, Wen Dai glanced at "Haohao" who had gotten off Yang Qing. The boy was sitting on the armrest of the sofa to Yang Qing's right, his entire upper body pressed against his thighs, tilting his head and quietly staring at Yang Qing.
Reason prevented Wen Dai from devising a compromise, her throat constricted as she pondered her words. However, Chen Sizhe bluntly shattered Yang Qing's hopes: "Yes, he will leave sooner or later. Humans and ghosts are different. He has always been by your side... Although the impact won't be significant, the bond between you is a problem. You can live your life as usual, and chat with him when you're bored; but this world is not the world he belongs in. He needs to be reborn. You can't let him remain a lonely ghost forever, even if he wants to."
Yang Qing's eyes, now dimmed from being surrounded by red, returned to their dimness from their chance encounter in the elevator. He sat there forlornly, as if his tongue had been cut out.
This sight touched Wen Dai somewhat. Rationally, she couldn't refute Chen Sizhe's words, but she offered comforting words: "Actually, you can't say for sure. If Hao Hao's obsession is to stay by your side, then you can ignore it and let him stay with you. When your lifespan is over, you can go to the mortal world together."
She glanced at Chen Sizhe, who was about to continue pouring cold water on her, but he closed his lips again.
Yang Qing remained silent, her neck tilted to the side, her mouth sealed shut, and her eyes, which seemed frozen, took a long time to regain their light. She clenched her hands tightly and said resolutely, "Then you guys help me deal with it. I can't keep dragging Hao Hao along."
The process was quite quick. Wen Dai threw the pillows on the sofa to the ground, made Yang Qing kneel facing the sky outside the window, and Chen Sizhe stepped forward to seal the loose spot on Yang Qing's back. He then moved his hands from the top of her head to her shoulders, rekindling the poor flame.
Hao Hao, who had been pulled aside by the immortals behind Wen Dai, stared blankly. He raised his head, his dark eyes meeting Wen Dai's lowered gaze, and his voice, still childlike and undeveloped, asked, "Sister, am I leaving my mother?"
Innocence always evokes a sense of tenderness. Wen Dai crouched down to be at eye level with the child, her hand raised and hovering in front of Hao Hao's face. Gradually, the boy's appearance at the time of his death suddenly appeared on his face now—a mutilated face with scars left by fire, one eye blind, embedded with shards of glass.
A sense of relief, a pathetic relief, welled up inside her. Wen Dai was relieved that the boy was dead; living wouldn't have made him any better, and one less death wouldn't lessen Yang Qing's pain. Her subsequent prayers and lamentations were nothing but her own delusion.
“Yes, you have to say goodbye to your mother for now.” Wen Dai emphasized the word “for now.” She looked at Hao Hao and said gently, “You can think of your mother as still traveling in this world, and you will go down to live with your father first. You will also go to school in the other place. Let me think… maybe when you have established yourself and started a family in the other place, you can reunite with your mother.”
After dealing with Yang Qing's yang energy problem, Chen Sizhe walked over to her side. He overheard their conversation clearly, and Yang Qing, who was standing not far away, began to wipe away her tears and sob again.
A child who dies unexpectedly at a young age, with his father by his side, usually doesn't harbor resentment; he hasn't yet been consumed by the world. Wen Dai glanced at Yang Qing, who had her back to her, then withdrew her gaze from her trembling shoulders, silently casting a spell that caused Hao Hao in front of her to slowly dissipate.
Children without resentment don't need to be prayed for; she simply sends them back home.
After crying, Yang Qing's breathing became intermittent. She took a few deep breaths, turned around, and looked at Wen Dai, who was getting up from the ground, and Chen Sizhe beside her. She wearily raised her hand holding the phone and said, "How much? I'll transfer it to you."
“No need to pay. If you want to pay, give him his share. I won’t take the money. I just wanted to help you.” Wen Dai pointed to Chen Sizhe next to her, her brows furrowing with a hint of weariness.
Yang Qing was exceptionally resolute. She shook her head as she transferred five thousand yuan to Wen Dai on her phone. "The money is a must. Just because you are kind-hearted doesn't mean I can accept it without feeling guilty. Besides, I'm not short of money myself. Right now, the last thing I lack is money." Her tone remained somber in the latter half of the sentence.
"I just added you as a friend. My WeChat limit is 5,000 yuan. Ms. Wen, could you give me your phone number and I'll transfer the money to you via Alipay? Or, Mr. Chen, could you add me on WeChat as well and I'll transfer some money to you as well?"
Chen Sizhe, hands in his pockets, remained unmoved. He glanced at Yang Qing, who was eager to give him money, and frowned, saying, "No need, it's just a small favor. Five thousand is more than enough. If you really think you have too much money, use it to dress yourself up and buy yourself some nice things."
For some reason, the ordinary words brought tears to Yang Qing's eyes and made her lips purse. Her knees buckled and she was about to kneel down. The keen senses that had been trained by the Duolan family a few months ago came in handy. Wen Dai instinctively rushed forward to support Yang Qing, who was about to kneel down. She asked, puzzled, "No, what are you doing? This is really a small matter. I still have the talisman to give you."
“I am deeply moved and truly grateful to you all. It is my blessing to have met you. Everyone I met at the temple was eager to take my money.” Yang Qing’s voice choked up again, making one wonder if her eyes were connected to some lake.
"It's just that it's free. There are fewer people who don't charge, but there are some. Besides, I usually charge for taking orders, and I make quite a bit. I'm still quite greedy. I'm not taking your money because we met by chance, and I feel it's fate. Besides, it's not a troublesome thing. Like he said, it's just a small favor." Wen Dai pointed with her bent elbow at Chen Sizhe, who was standing there awkwardly. She held Yang Qing's arm, careful not to let Yang Qing kneel down when she wasn't looking.
Because Yang Qing's current behavior was far from calm, Wen Dai and Chen Sizhe personally escorted her back to her room. As they took the elevator back, Wen Dai recalled the corner of the presidential suite she had glimpsed earlier and sighed, "Well, she really is rich. I can't even imagine how much she spends for one night."
Standing beside her, Chen Sizhe glanced at her sideways, then slowly looked back up, saying decisively, "You shouldn't be short of money."
"...Where did you get the idea that I'm not short of money? What family isn't short of money and lives in a dilapidated old apartment in Feng'an District like me?" Wen Dai looked at Chen Sizhe. She believed that her every move indicated her identity—a pauper; although she really had nothing to do with those three words.
The elevator doors slowly opened, and they walked out side by side. Their voices rang out clearly in the empty corridor. Chen Sizhe, as if seeing right through them, said, "Who would be so short of money as to buy themselves a dress worth over 100,000 yuan? If you were really short of money, it would be understandable if you didn't charge Qian Yan and Qian Tong, but you couldn't possibly not charge Yang Qing a penny. You just have money but are reluctant to spend it."
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