Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 392 Li Hongye's Family
As night fell, the fog that had enveloped the city of Moonlight rapidly dissipated.

As the city lights gradually came on, visibility in the air increased rapidly.

On Jianshe Road, where barbecue stalls are clustered, the air is filled with the pungent smell of smoke and the enticing aroma of cooked food.

Students in school uniforms weaved through the barbecue stalls set up on the sidewalk, hurrying to their evening self-study sessions.

Young men and women gathered in front of the barbecue stall, choosing skewers and sitting down to wait.

The owner, wearing an apron and with a big smile, was turning the skewers up and down around the grill, constantly taking out skewers of barbecued meat dipped in chili.

Mo Li and his two companions moved through the bustling and prosperous Jianshe Road unnoticed.

I only saw two students from the No. 3 Middle School in the distance on the road; they were rushing to evening self-study.

Ran Qing and Long Zongshu tacitly refrained from greeting them, pretending not to see them.

They walked through the bustling street and turned into a dark alley.

Turn right at the end of the alley, and after a few more steps, you'll reach the building where Li Hongye lives.

The old, dilapidated staircase building stood eerily under the night sky, unchanged from when Ran Qing left last time.

Li Hongye's house was dark, gloomy, and deathly silent.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I could hear the sound of a television coming from inside the building.

The three of them quietly stepped into the building and headed upstairs towards Li Hongye.

On the 5th floor, the familiar iron gate of room 501 stood quietly in the shadows.

Ran Qing and the other two walked so lightly that they didn't even trigger the motion-activated lights in the stairwell.

The night sky tonight is exceptionally clear, without a single cloud, and the bright moonlight gently spills over the city streets.

The cold moonlight shone through the ventilation holes in the old stairwell walls, casting pale silhouettes of aspiring figures into the stairwell.

Through this faint light, Ran Qing's keen eyesight, as a spirit medium, allowed him to see almost everything in the dark, down to the smallest detail.

He stared at the large iron gate of 501 and could clearly see that there was a seal on the gap of the gate.

It seems that the unusual disappearance of Li Hongye and her family of three has already attracted the attention of the police.

However, ordinary police investigations cannot uncover disappearances related to the Yin-Yang Dao (a Taoist practice).

Ran Qing quietly removed the seal, took out the key from the canvas bag, and carefully opened the door to Li Hongye's house.

As the iron gate opened, a musty smell, like the smell of windows that hadn't been opened for a long time, wafted out.

Ran Qing and the other two put on shoe covers and carefully entered, without disturbing the neighbors, and naturally did not turn on the lights.

Fortunately, the moonlight was bright tonight, and the pale moonlight shone in through the window, making it possible to vaguely see the general situation inside the room.

So Mo Li and Long Zongshu walked carefully, and were able to find their way.

In the darkness, Ran Qing, her gaze shifting and her eyes cold, slowly surveyed the living room before her.

This was his third time entering Li Hongye's home.

This time, however, my state of mind was completely different from the previous two times.

Stepping into the living room for the first time, facing Li Hongye's kind and friendly parents, he felt uneasy and a little uneasy.

The second time Ran Qing stepped into this living room was after her sixth aunt passed away, when she first summoned the spirit of the deceased. At that time, she was filled with vigilance.

Now, Ran Qing has come to understand many things.

His heart was no longer filled with confusion and unease.

But anger? Not really.

What surged within him was a kind of icy, chilling calm, like the water in a deep underground well.

Ran Qing carefully looked around the living room, and then cautiously went into the kitchen to check.

Wherever he went, he would take out a longan to ask for directions.

With his keen intuition and the ability to sense the spirits of a spirit medium, Longyan couldn't detect any evil presence in the room. The only pervasive feeling in the air was a faint, gloomy, deathly aura.

That was from the clothes worn by the deceased residents of the house.

Ran Qing walked into the innermost master bedroom, pushed open the wooden door, and saw Li Hongye's parents' bedroom.

On the wall above the bed in the bedroom facing the main entrance hangs the couple's wedding photo.

The man, wearing glasses and smiling somewhat reservedly but happily, awkwardly raised his arm so that the bride beside him could take his arm.

The bride, wearing a wedding dress, smiled broadly at the camera.

But that smile was a bit too bright, giving off a very fake feeling.

Ran Qing stared at the honest man in the wedding photo, who looked almost exactly like the old woman he had seen before.

He wore glasses, smiled somewhat reservedly, and had the air of a scholarly gentleman. He was also rather thin.

Ran Qing stared at the wedding photo for a long time.

Mo Li and Long Zongshu stood behind him, not stepping into the room.

Their main purpose in following them was to help Ran Qing protect the Dharma.

However, tonight's summoning of the spirit only summoned an ordinary wandering soul, so there should be no danger.

After looking at the wedding photos, Ran Qing wandered around the house, checking and searching bit by bit.

I opened the bedside table, opened the wardrobe, and even looked under the bed.

Finally, he walked to the wardrobe and took out the most lifeless-looking middle-aged man's clothes.

He then took out candles and incense sticks from his canvas bag, sprinkled incense ash in the corner of the room, and set up a bronze mirror.

Ran Qing was very familiar with the entire process.

Long Zongshu hesitated before saying, "...It's been over a year, is it still possible to recruit him?"

No one can be certain how long a wandering spirit exists.

Many wandering spirits can be summoned back after three to five years, or even seven or eight years, through the art of summoning spirits and asking ghosts.

However, many wandering spirits disappear one or two months after they die.

The wandering souls in Zangke have uncertain lifespans because there is no underworld ghost city, only the special and eerie Wujiang Ghost Realm.

Ran Qing plopped down in the center of the makeshift altar, where incense ash had been scattered around, and said, "There shouldn't be any problem. The deathly aura is still in the room and on the clothes, which means it hasn't completely dissipated."

"but……"

Ran Qing paused abruptly at this point.

However, he didn't continue.

Instead, he simply shut his mouth, took out a small drum, and gently struck it.

As the dull drumbeats echoed in the dark room, Ran Qing's reflection in the mirror showed a cold, pale face, with the two candles in front of the mirror flickering.

A chilling aura suddenly swept through the room.

Ran Qing's lips moved, emitting a strange, hoarse, and inhuman tone.

"The candle flame jumps three times, and the stream in front of the door circles three times..."

Ran Qing's unusually strange tone and voice sounded like the murmur of a vengeful ghost in the dark, making Long Zongshu at the door rub his arms, seemingly feeling somewhat uneasy.

The room was already dimly lit, and now it suddenly became even more eerie and sinister.

Ran Qing's eerie whispers continued to echo in the room.

The eerie chill in the air grew stronger and stronger...

(End of this chapter)