Courtyard House: Time Traveler Not Yet a Ghost

The curtain of darkness hung low, like a deep, dark silk ribbon slowly unfurling, and the whole world seemed to be under a spell, quiet and mysterious, enveloping the city in silence. In the courtyard at No. 95 Nanluoguxiang, the last oil lamp was extinguished, with only the occasional barking of dogs and the whistling of the wind blowing through the eaves in the distance.

Inside the main room of the east courtyard, the deaf old woman, unusually, did not go to sleep early. She sat on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), by the dim light of a kerosene lamp, stroking a small, well-worn bronze Buddha statue in her hand. Several indistinct Japanese characters were engraved on the back of the statue. Her eyes flickered with a complex light in the dim lamplight—warness, ruthlessness, and a hint of deep-seated fear.

"He Damin... he actually came back." She murmured to herself, her voice hoarse like an owl's. "Eight years. What on earth did he do in the mountains? That kid who looked so intimidating back then, now..."

She recalled the face she'd seen at the military control commission earlier that day. It was terrifyingly calm, a calmness unlike that of someone who had been missing for eight years, returning to find their property seized. She'd seen countless people, especially men. From the Eight Great Hutongs to this courtyard house, what kind of men hadn't she met? But He Damin's gaze—not anger, not resentment, not even calculation—was a kind of…condescension. Like a person looking down at an ant.

This made her instinctively feel danger.

"No, we need to prepare early." A fierce glint flashed in the deaf old woman's eyes. She rose shakily and walked to an old camphor wood chest in the corner of the room. With difficulty, she lifted the lid and rummaged through layers of old clothes. Her fingers touched a cold iron box. She took it out, unlocked it, and inside were several yellowed letters, a small wooden plaque engraved with Japanese characters, and a few blurry black and white photographs.

She picked up the top photograph. It showed a young woman in a kimono standing under a cherry blossom tree, her face beautiful, but her eyes cold. That was her, Haruno Hanako, forty years ago.

"Long Xiaoni..." she murmured her Chinese name, a twisted smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, "I've played the role of an old woman my whole life, and pretended to be deaf for half my life, that's enough. If I just hold on for a few more years, once that batch of goods is shipped out, I can..."

She suddenly stopped talking, and her ears twitched slightly.

There seems to be a gust of wind in the courtyard?

No, it wasn't the sound of the wind. It was extremely faint, almost imperceptible, but the deaf old woman's intuition, honed by years of espionage experience, sent chills down her spine.

She turned around abruptly, intending to blow out the oil lamp, but as soon as she raised her hand, she froze.

The oil lamp flame was still flickering, but there was someone else in the room at some point.

No, it can't be said to be one person.

It was a phantom, semi-transparent, enveloped in a faint purple halo, hovering three feet above the ground. Its outline was that of He Damin, whom they had seen during the day, but now his eyes were even more profound, as if they contained the entire starry sky, or an endless abyss. The phantom had no physical form, yet it exuded a chilling pressure that sent shivers down one's spine.

"You..." The deaf old woman's throat felt constricted, and she could only manage a hoarse, gasping sound. She wanted to scream, to shout, but found that she couldn't make a sound at all, and she couldn't even move her fingers. Only her eyes could move, and they were filled with utter terror.

"Haruno Hanako, or should I call you Long Xiaoni?" the illusory figure spoke, its voice ringing directly in her mind, cold and clear, carrying a strange echo. "Or perhaps, 'Night Owl'?"

Upon hearing those three titles, especially the last one—the code name—the deaf old woman's pupils suddenly shrank to pinpoints. That was her code name from her training in the Kwantung Army's intelligence department; apart from a handful of her former contacts, no one knew it!

"Don't be surprised." He Damin's soul clone—or rather, a wisp of divine thought manifested by his Nascent Soul power—floated closer, its ethereal eyes staring directly at the deaf old woman's cloudy eyes. "You shouldn't have touched anyone from my He family, and you certainly shouldn't have set your sights on my nephew and niece."

As soon as he finished speaking, the illusory "finger" gently touched the deaf old woman's forehead.

Without feeling any touch, the deaf old woman felt a cold torrent rush into her brain! Her past memories were as if they were being brutally turned over by an invisible hand. Scene after scene, incident after incident, whether she wanted to hide them, forget them, or bury them deep in the darkest corner of her heart, all of them were uncontrollably reproduced and ruthlessly read and copied by that force.

Forty years of infiltration

He Damin's consciousness was like the most cunning predator, traversing and seizing within the long river of the deaf old woman's memories.

He saw Tokyo in 1910. A six-year-old girl was taken to a secluded mansion and given the code name "Hanako". Day after day, she underwent rigorous training—Chinese language, various Chinese dialects, etiquette, tea ceremony, needlework, as well as how to please men, how to poison, how to pass on intelligence, and how to keep quiet under the harshest torture.

In 1919, fifteen-year-old Haruno Hanako, posing as Long Xiaoni, an "orphan of a returned overseas Chinese," was secretly sent to Beiping with a "family inheritance." Her mission: to remain undercover for a long time, establish a base, gather intelligence, develop a network of contacts, and prepare for possible future actions by the empire.

She chose the Eight Great Hutongs. Using the funds she brought, she took over a struggling brothel, renaming it "Yihongyuan." The young Long Xiaoni was both the behind-the-scenes boss and personally trained the girls. She had a ruthless eye, specializing in buying or abducting beautiful young girls from human traffickers and nurturing them from a young age. Music, chess, calligraphy, and painting were merely the surface; the core was observing people's expressions, extracting information, and even simple assassination techniques. The White Widow—real name Bai Yulan—was the most outstanding among them, cultivated by her into the most beautiful courtesan in the Eight Great Hutongs, and also her sharpest weapon.

The scene shifts. He Damin sees Yi Zhonghai. Back then, he was young, one of the henchmen hired by the brothel to keep watch. He was skilled, ruthless, but simple-minded and easily controlled. Long Xiaoni saw his usefulness and lack of offspring, and after a "reward," she personally served him a bowl of tonic soup. The soup contained a special drug that would render any man infertile for life. From then on, Yi Zhonghai was devoted to her, becoming her right-hand man outside the brothel, helping her with shady dealings, including transporting "goods," threatening disobedient girls, and even silencing witnesses.

The story moves to 1937, before the full-scale War of Resistance against Japan. Long Xiaoni receives her first activation order after years of dormancy: to utilize existing resources to infiltrate and corrupt influential Chinese people in Beiping (Beijing) as much as possible, especially those who might be inclined towards resistance or pose a future obstacle to the empire. The methods are unlimited—money, sex, incriminating evidence.

Several faces appeared in his memory. He Damin identified them one by one: the deputy district head surnamed Li was someone who, during a "carefully arranged" banquet, was drugged and had intimate relations with the widow, and photos were taken; the future steel mill director, Yang Weiming, was someone who, while "relaxing" at a brothel, was tricked into revealing his complaints about the current situation and some secrets about his family, leaving him with enough leverage to ruin his political life. Both of these men later, to varying degrees, passed on some insignificant but verifiable intelligence to the deaf old woman, or did her some favors when she needed them. They didn't even know who they were serving, only believing it was "Boss Long," who held their secrets.

Targeting Nanluoguxiang

Memories continued to surge. In 1939, Long Xiaoni felt the political situation was turbulent and that the brothel, Yihong Courtyard, was too conspicuous, so she began looking for a more secluded long-term place to stay. She bought the entire courtyard house, had the cook, He Daqing, rent the middle courtyard from her, and later sold it back to He Daqing. She also arranged for Yi Zhonghai to live in the middle courtyard, while she herself lived in the back courtyard. Originally, the east wing was damaged, leaving only two dilapidated rooms, which she didn't like. However, she sold it to He Damin, who also built a toilet. She liked the toilet in the east wing, so she wouldn't have to use the public toilet outside in winter. It was also independent and quiet, with a back door. The landlord, He Damin, wasn't home; only her cook brother, He Daqing, was there. She originally planned to take things slowly and find a time to drive He Damin away.

But in the autumn of 1940, an unexpected event disrupted her plans. Intelligence from the organization indicated that Wang Hongxia, a nursing student at a church hospital in Beiping, might be a courier for the underground Communist Party. Long Xiaoni acted immediately. She first approached Wang Hongxia posing as a "distant cousin," expressing her admiration for her hard work in her studies and offering to sponsor her. She left her address in Nanluoguxiang, saying it was her own residence, and that Wang Hongxia could come to her if she encountered any difficulties. At the same time, she secretly leaked Wang Hongxia's whereabouts and characteristics to the detective team.

Sure enough, not long after, Wang Hongxia was spotted by the detectives while delivering intelligence and was shot. According to the plan, she should have escaped to Nanluoguxiang to seek help from her "aunt," so Long Xiaoni could then rescue her, show her kindness, and develop her into another pawn. However, an unexpected event occurred—He Damin happened to be home that night! He heard the commotion, discovered Wang Hongxia hiding in the woodshed, and quickly took her away from the courtyard to a cave in the Yanshan Mountains for treatment.

Long Xiaoni was shocked and furious when she missed her target. She immediately realized that He Damin was probably not a simple man and might hinder her plans. However, He Damin's whereabouts were uncertain at the time, so she dared not act rashly. She simply buried her fear deep in her heart and accelerated her scheme to take over the east courtyard.

The tragedy of the He family

The memories became dark and cruel.

In late 1942, He Damin suddenly handed a large sum of gold to He Daqing, solemnly instructing him on its storage location, and then announced that he wanted to learn cooking in Tianjin. Long Xiaoni, through a secret investigation into He Daqing's use of the gold to buy a house, learned of this, and greed and murderous intent arose simultaneously. That sum of gold, and the east wing of the house—she wanted it all!

In the spring of 1944, her sister-in-law was about to give birth. Long Xiaoni knew her opportunity had arrived. Using the excuse of neighborly relations, she had Yi Zhonghai's wife, an older woman, prepare chicken soup and send it over. The soup contained a large amount of traditional Chinese medicine to promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis—angelica, safflower, and peach kernels—in dosages far exceeding the normal range. For an ordinary person, this might only result in heavier menstrual flow, but for a pregnant woman about to give birth, it was a death sentence!