Chapter 97: Rare Guest (Xiao Xiu) If it’s you, I’m not sure…
"Hey, what a rare guest!" Xie Wuya leaned back on a low bench, one foot propped up on the long table, a steaming cup of tea in his hand, looking quite relaxed. "You've been a bit slacking off lately. I can count on one hand the number of ghosts you've accomplished so far out of the target of 500."
"If you continue like this, I'm afraid you'll still have to work for me when you're in your seventies or eighties." Xie Wuya couldn't help but sneer as he thought of something.
"Your desk is quite empty, too. All those scrolls have been cleared away. Are you finally done with your work and enjoying your tea?" Faced with the sudden sarcasm from his "superior," Chang Xile politely remarked, "Strange."
"That's not the case." Xie Wuya turned his head and raised his chin, indicating, "There are too many scrolls, so we moved them to the warehouse in the back."
"..." Chang Xile blinked and asked, "Then how come you still have time to drink tea?"
"Young man, you've obviously never been exposed to society." Xie Wuya glanced at her silently. "There's no end to overtime work, so you have to enjoy yourself while you can."
Chang Xile chatted with him for a while, then finally remembered why he had come. Putting his hands on the small table in front of him, he asked, "In all these years as Wuchang, have you ever had any selfish thoughts or abused your power?"
Xie Wuya looked up at her, picked up the cup lid with one hand, gently brushed it across the tea surface, and blew on it.
"Can ghosts breathe?" Chang Xile looked at the rippleless tea surface, and after a moment, he suddenly realized, "Oh, you are avoiding my question."
Xie Wuya drank the scalding hot tea expressionlessly and said, "Now that you know, you can leave."
Chang Xile didn't leave, and simply sat on the futon in front of him. She thought for a moment, then asked him, "As a new member of our Wuchang, I think it's necessary to familiarize myself with the various files of the past. Can you take me to have a look?"
Xie Wuya raised his eyebrows and asked, "Are you sure?"
Chang Xile said righteously: "I'm sure."
After Xie Wuya led her to push open the large wooden door, Chang Xile took a few steps back, waved her hand and said, "I've thought about it carefully. My studies have been very heavy recently. My small head may not be able to contain so many stories of the deceased. I'm leaving now."
A pair of cold hands pressed against her back, and with an irrefutable force, Chang Xile was pushed into the door. When she turned around, she only heard Xie Wuya's words through the crack of the door: "I'll let you get up after school tomorrow."
After knocking on the door a few times in vain, Chang Xile looked back at the pile of books, resignedly walked over and started to sort them out.
But the order in which these books were stacked was completely chaotic, and it was unclear who had put them there. One pile was from 300 years ago, and the next was from this year. Occasionally, a book from 1600 years ago would appear among a pile from 1600 years ago, and you wouldn't be able to tell unless you looked closely.
Chang Xile couldn't help but wail out the door, "Can't you in the underworld keep up with the times? Now that the materials on earth are digitized, we can find what we want with just a search!"
"We're short of manpower and can't devote ourselves to scientific research." Although the wooden door was heavy, Xie Wuya's voice still floated in accurately. After a while, the door was opened, and Xie Wuya asked sinisterly, "So whose information are you looking for?"
Chang Xile shuddered at the chill in the voice. She turned back and said without hiding anything: "Yang Junyi."
"Too broad." Xie Wuya entered the library, closed the door, and sat on the floor next to Chang Xile. He casually pulled out a book and flipped through it. "Where's your birth address and date of birth?"
Chang Xile recalled the time Yang Guisi mentioned and repeated it to Xie Wuya.
Xie Wuya thought for a while, then raised his hand. A book that was pressed in the southeast corner struggled out from the pile of books and fell into his hand.
Although the book looked like it was made of wood, Chang Xile inexplicably saw a flattering feeling in it, like that of a puppy. It flipped the pages openly, and Xie Wuya stretched out his index finger to hold it in place.
"Yang Junyi, born on October 2, 2002, died on December 18, 2010." Xie Wuya read it to Chang Xile.
"Did she reincarnate? What did she become in her second life?" Chang Xile came closer to him and wanted to take a closer look, but Xie Wuya closed the book.
"Let me see it." Chang Xile blinked.
"It contains the death dates of living souls. After all, you are a person from the world of the living. If you read it, it will disrupt the cause and effect." Xie Wuya said lightly.
"How could that be?" Chang Xile didn't understand.
"Just because you saved two people who should have died at that moment, do you know how many overtime hours I worked for this?" Xie Wuya's voice was originally filled with death, but after a while, he probably remembered that he was already dead, and his tone became calm again. "In fact, someone as soft-hearted as you should not be recruited to do this."
Chang Xile held her face in her hands. Although she felt sorry for the accident that caused the underworld's cattle and horses to work overtime, she still did not regret saving them. They were able to say their final goodbyes to their families and sincerely thanked Chang Xile, which made her feel that everything she had done was meaningful.
She couldn't help but ask, "If you knew someone around you was about to die, would you be able to just sit there and wait for death?"
"Have you heard of the butterfly effect?" Xie Wuya did not answer the question directly. As the saying goes, teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, he turned to find another angle to convince her that she had studied some modern knowledge over the years, so he chose an explanation that Chang Xile might accept.
"Could the flapping of a butterfly's wings in South America cause a tornado in Texas, USA?" Chang Xile said uncertainly.
Xie Wuya nodded: "At a certain point in time, a person who should not exist is still alive. How many people's destinies will be changed? Can you imagine?"
Chang Xile actually understands some of it.
"But what do you mean by 'shouldn't have existed'?" Chang Xile remained unconvinced. She slammed her hands on the pile of books in front of her, like a child irritated by a recurring theorem in class. "You're talking about destiny, is it about being born and dying at a certain time? But who wrote this booklet? Who stipulated it? Who says that if the time to die is written in the book, then we must die on time? If destiny is a grand stage play written by someone called Heaven, then aren't the characters in the play allowed to rebel and buy themselves a little more time?"
Xie Wuya instinctively raised his hand to cover Chang Xile's mouth. He stared at her wide, round eyes and suddenly realized how petite she was. His hand could almost cover most of her face. If he had moved his palm down three inches, tightened his grip, her life might have been lost in his hands.
He glanced around warily, but quickly came to his senses. Fortunately, this library was completely isolated from the outside world. Xie Wuya loosened his hand again and said, "You really should practice keeping your mouth shut. Don't you know that walls have ears?"
After Chang Xile finished speaking, she calmed down a bit. She knew that Xie Wuya was just a cog in this big drama. What could be changed by talking to him?
"Then I can't know when I will die?" Chang Xile asked without thinking.
Xie Wuya had no expression, but sat further away from Chang Xile: "What will you do after you find out?"
He originally thought that Chang Xile would shout something like "I won't die obediently, man can conquer nature!", but she just held her face with her hands and sighed leisurely: "It's better for me not to know."
"Why?" Xie Wuya asked.
"I'm afraid of death," Chang Xile said. "If I were told I would die at a specific time in the future, I would definitely live a very tormented life before I die."
Xie Wuya glanced at the book in his hand and said calmly, "After you die, you can stay in the underworld and work like me, isn't that good?"
Chang Xile said in a very exaggerated tone, "No way—"
To get an idea of the treatment for working in the underworld, just look at Xie Wuya.
"Besides, I'm really afraid of pain. If someone as young as me dies suddenly, it will definitely not be a natural death. It will be very painful no matter how I think about it." Chang Xile shuddered. As she spoke, her eyes flickered, and she suddenly pounced forward and tried to snatch the book from Xie Wuya's hand, but he dodged her as if he had foreseen it.
"You really are avoiding me like a flood or a beast." Chang Xile glanced at Xie Wuya with resentment. She had long noticed that the man in front of her said he was her master, but in fact he was quite disgusted with her in his words and deeds, and would brush away even a little bit of his clothes that touched her.
"You're a living person. If you run into me, you'll either be unlucky or sick." Xie Wuya finally explained. He thought of how he had covered Chang Xile's mouth in a hurry just now, and warned, "You'd better take a hot bath when you go back to get rid of the cold."
"Okay, Master, so you really can't tell me what Yang Junyi's next life will be?" Chang Xile asked.
"No, at least not now." Xie Wuya stood up grimly and made a gesture of invitation to Chang Xile, "It's almost dawn, you should go back to class."
"Xiao Xie, you are really stingy." Chang Xile stood up dejectedly without even using the honorific.
Before she could open the door, Xie Wuya stopped her again. He looked at Chang Xile and suddenly said, "Didn't you ask me if I had ever had any selfish thoughts or abused my power over the years?"
"Hey, I'm just asking." Chang Xile waved his hand, trying to brush off the somewhat rude topic, and said perfunctorily, "Of course, this kind of thing wouldn't happen to someone as ruthless as you."
“Yes.”
"I didn't, you don't need to say anything..." Chang Xile withdrew her hand that was about to push the door open. She turned her head with some difficulty and asked, "What?"
"I can only tell you one thing." Xie Wuya's face was divided into two parts by the flickering candlelight. One side was as pale as paint, and the other side was hidden in the darkness. "If you really want to defy your so-called fate, it's best not to be discovered."
Chang Xile subconsciously asked, "Who discovered it?"
Xie Wuya shook his head, as if he was afraid to even say His name.
He pushed open the door and without saying anything, pushed Chang Xile back to the world of the living.
However, the teacher surnamed Xie was merciful enough to answer another question from his last disciple in the empty classroom.
Even though there was no one in front of him, there was no one else who could hear this answer.
"If it's you." He was thinking about something and answered with difficulty, "I don't know either."
A light breeze blew across the book he had just placed beside him, and the pages flipped open, finally stopping at a certain page:
[Chang Xile, a native of Yangcheng, was born on October 21, 2002 and died on December 23, 2024]
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