They had played too long and nearly forgotten the actual business at hand.
With the Shen-Li wedding drawing near, Yunshu asked Ling Wu when they would go to the Li residence.
She wanted to see the scholar one last time—talk him into turning back while there was still a path, and reincarnating early.
Ling Wu left everything to Master's judgment. These days her head held nothing but the Heart-Clearing Mantras waiting to be copied back home; she had no appetite for anything else.
Yunshu could do nothing to help there.
At last, two nights before the wedding, Ling Wu took Yunshu to the Li residence.
She hadn't brought Master along, on the grounds that a trifle like this didn't warrant his involvement.
Right now the two of them sat side by side on the roof of Miss Li's chambers, admiring the moon.
Really, it was because the room below was empty.
"Why would Miss Li go out this late? A young woman alone—isn't she afraid of running into bad sorts?" Ling Wu wondered aloud.
Yunshu propped her chin. "Once she becomes a Shen bride, I suppose she'll never be able to visit the scholar's grave again. No more pouring out her grief."
"Loving even in death?"
"Honestly, I only know bits and pieces of what was between them. The scholar is the one I know well." With a sigh, she told Ling Wu the scholar's story.
The scholar was named Qin Zheng. Orphaned young, raised in poverty, every meal a matter of his neighbors' charity.
No money for school—but he loved learning, so he eavesdropped outside the schoolhouse every day.
The teacher had a kind heart. Seeing the boy was a good seedling, he adopted him without a second word.
Qin Zheng did not waste the teacher's nurturing: he passed the county exam and became a licentiate on his first try. A step short of top of the list, but a licentiate could aim for the provincial exam. Next time, he was certain, he'd take the provincial crown.
But no one's road runs smooth. That next exam stretched into six years of next exams, and he never even touched the threshold of the provincial degree.
Then, of all times, his teacher died. Qin Zheng crumbled, reduced to eking out silver by copying books.
That was the year he met Shen Ci.
The Shen Ci of that time was still a good man. Hearing that Qin Zheng lived by copying books, he swept a hand over the problem: every book Qin Zheng copied, good or bad, the Shen family bookshop would buy—at ten percent above market rate.
Qin Zheng was endlessly grateful. With steady income like that, the days ahead would be far easier.
Later, Shen Ci even sent him fine xuan paper and brushes. Qin Zheng very nearly knelt on the spot.
To the Shen family, this was pocket change, and Shen Ci didn't think twice about it. But Qin Zheng was a proud scholar—he kept an account of every coin, saying he would repay the Shen family once he had money.
Shen Ci just smiled and let it stand.
In time, with the Shens' help behind him, Qin Zheng set up a little stall in the city and earned his living writing letters home for the illiterate.
Shen Ci passed by one day and sighed at his boundless energy—copying books wasn't enough, he had to write letters too?
Qin Zheng neither confirmed nor denied it, and teased him instead: born rich, you've never known another man's hunger.
Anyone else saying that would have made Shen Ci angry. But with Qin Zheng, it was somehow different.
All these years, Shen Ci had no true friend. People either fawned on him for the Shen money, or sneered at a merchant house and turned up their noses.
Qin Zheng was the only person who neither flattered nor scorned him.
"I've told you a hundred times—come be my study companion at the estate. You'd get a taste of the good life too." Shen Ci arched a brow.
"Easy to go from splendor to thrift? Then what about the rest of my days?"
"Then just stay at my estate for good. My house is big enough. You think it can't support one of you?"
Qin Zheng declined again, politely.
"Enough of that. Qin has two hands and two feet. I can feed myself."
Shen Ci waved a hand, bored. What a block of wood, he thought.
Anyone else offered such a windfall would have clung to it like a burr. This one refused him, over and over.
Yunshu was one of those anyone-elses. She could have happily traded places with Qin Zheng on the spot and lived soft.
Alas, by the time she could take human form, things between Qin Zheng and Shen Ci had already rotted beyond recognition.
Had she transformed into Qin Zheng and shown up at the Li residence, she'd have been beaten to death before she got through the gate.
After that, Qin Zheng's days went back to bare bones. Cut off from the Shens, his copied books fetched hardly a coin.
And out of deference to the Shen name, most shops refused his books at all.
Before long, even his little stall got smashed by local thugs, over grievances invented out of thin air.
Had she not been tricked off to the flower house, Yunshu could at least have helped him with her meager demon powers. But at the time, she had no room in her head for him at all.
Everything that happened to Qin Zheng afterward, she'd learned by nosing up and down the streets.
The falling-out between the two men was all because of a woman. And that woman was Miss Li herself—Li Funing.
What the three of them had was a knot no one could untangle.
The Shen household said Shen Ci had poured a heart's worth of love down a drain, and raised a wolf in return.
Qin Zheng said Shen Ci had pressed him step by step, determined to snatch what was his—refusing even to let the woman he loved remember him after death.
Yunshu would have liked to hear Li Funing's side of it. Qin Zheng never gave her the chance—only, with festering hate, made her swear she would kill Shen Ci for him.
And so, in a muddle, she'd turned up at the Shen residence. The man was still alive; the ones coming for her got there first.
Having heard it all, Ling Wu despaired of her. "Of all the things you should have found out, you found out none of them!"
"Muddle-headed as you are, no wonder they sold you to a flower house!"
Yunshu sniffed. "Takes one to know one."
On the muddle scale, Ling Wu was plainly the greater talent.
Ling Wu was about to retort when footsteps cut her off. She and Yunshu traded a look, vanished together, and turned toward the courtyard gate.
The one coming was Miss Li herself, eyes swollen from crying, a trace of chill clinging to her.
Mud along her shoe edges—she had walked a long way.
And behind her drifted the ghost of Qin Zheng.
In the moonlight his face was corpse-pale. Again and again he reached out to touch Li Funing, and again and again his hand passed clean through her.
He had actually forgotten that he was nothing now but a vengeful ghost.
He meant to follow her inside—Ling Wu's talisman cut off his path.
When he looked up and found Yunshu there too, he froze for a heartbeat, then brightened.
He floated over to her, urgent. "Did you kill him? Did you kill Shen Ci?"
Ling Wu answered instead: "Your mortal body is dead. You are one stray wisp of a ghost now. Instead of reincarnating as you ought, you linger in the world of the living to harm others. Do you know how heavy your sins are?"
Qin Zheng stared at her fixedly, then asked, "Who is she?"
He thought back to what had just happened, and his face went cold. "Don't tell me you brought someone along specifically to collect me?"
Yunshu, at her wits' end and afraid he'd provoke Ling Wu, tried to persuade him: "Just reincarnate in peace! Even without Shen Ci, some other man would have married Miss Li! You're dead—it was never going to be you again, no matter what. Why cling like this!"
Ling Wu thought their reasoning was impeccable. Any ghost who heard it would surely see the light—and then she wouldn't even have to lift a finger; he'd trot down to reincarnation on his own.
Who knew this fellow's enlightenment was so low. Far from agreeing, his expression only turned colder, his vicious glare roving between her and Yunshu, black vapor surging up around his body.
"What would the likes of you understand! Funing is mine! She is MINE! She said she would marry no one but me—Shen Ci must have threatened her! I will kill him!"
With that, he lunged at Ling Wu.
The ambush startled her badly; she scrambled to raise a crystalline shield with her talisman.
Dammit all—no sense of honor, this evil ghost!