"Most of our Mana was sucked away by the phone, so we've only managed to see the Black and White Soul Hooking Plate. We still haven't found our weapons," Bai Qi said, sounding a little dejected. "What's important is that only you can unlock your phone. The moment we touch it, it automatically shuts down, cutting off all contact and information."
"How..."
She wanted to ask, 'How is that possible?' But too many impossible things had happened in the last two days. Clearly, nothing in this world was truly impossible.
"We've already tried," Mr. Hei said, shaking his head to show it was hopeless.
For some reason, if Bai Qi had said it, Xin Huohuo might have had her doubts. But coming from Mr. Hei, she inexplicably believed him completely.
'But... they tried? When did they try?' She racked her brain, and then a scene flashed through her mind out of nowhere: her phone shutting down and restarting, over and over again...
Suddenly, it hit her!
She would never have connected the little black cat and white dog with the two deities before her. But she had found the two little fluffballs on the day of the crash—the timing was a perfect match. Then there was the color coordination between the pets and the gods, not to mention their unusual habits and countless other little details... The answer seemed obvious.
"That's right. We possessed the stray animals you picked up." It was as if Mr. Hei had a Mind Reading Technique; he voiced Xin Huohuo's thoughts exactly.
"Little Seven? Little Eight?" she blurted out.
"It's Seventh Lord and Eighth Lord," Bai Qi corrected.
"Why them?"
'My adorable, pitiful pets! Why couldn't things just be simple? I'd just fallen in love with them, started treating them like family. And it turns out... the shell is fine, but the core is two divine ghost-emissaries!'
'Could this whole mess get any more insane?'
"It was just a coincidence." Mr. Hei was frustrated too, though you couldn't tell from his face. "At the scene of the crash, they were the only two soulless bodies available. We had no other choice."
"It's also because they had just died, so a trace of their consciousness remained, and you gave them their last bit of warmth," Bai Qi added. "You know how pets like cats and dogs imprint on an owner. They latched onto you, so even if we wanted to switch to different bodies, we couldn't. During the day, we can only hide inside those two."
This was the conclusion he and Mr. Hei had reached after puzzling over it for days. Otherwise, there was no way to explain why they always returned to her automatically, like Earth-bound Spirits, completely unable to escape.
"So, what do we do now?" Xin Huohuo asked after a long, stunned silence, resigning herself to her fate.
The corner of Mr. Hei's eye twitched uncontrollably.
'It was like Xin Huohuo was just a copy-paste of Bai Qi,' he thought. 'They both come to me for everything, without using their own brains at all. Even their questions and their tone are exactly the same.'
'Dragging one idiot along was exhausting enough. Now that this disaster has struck, do I have to drag two?'
'So mentally exhausting. Truly.'
"What I meant to ask was, why is a ghost following me? I'm talking about the mummified corpse. We have no history, no grudge. Why is it trying to scare me?" Thankfully, Xin Huohuo was a little smarter than "Dopey Bai." Seeing the utterly defeated look on Mr. Hei's face, she quickly clarified.
"Every grievance has its source, and every debt its owner. But often, they don't want to harm you. They want to tell you something, or ask for your help." Mr. Hei thought for a moment before continuing, "We detected resentful energy in that building, and you ran into strange things when you delivered the food. I think you should go check out Apartment 1207 tomorrow, during the day. And then, call the police."
Xin Huohuo froze.
'Is this... am I officially a part-time ghost emissary now?'
"This part's easy. We'll just summon the spirit and question it, then we'll know what's going on," Bai Qi added reassuringly.
So the three of them worked together once more. Xin Huohuo unlocked her phone, then held hands with Bai Qi to open the photo album. Mr. Hei pulled the "person" out for questioning. And then, they heard an incredibly tragic story.
The man who became the mummified corpse had been a sixty-five-year-old man living alone. His daughter was overseas and his son was in another major city in the country; he was lucky to get a call from them once a month or two. Afraid of missing a call from his children, he waited day and night, never turning his phone off and always keeping it on the charger. He had been in good health, but then he suffered a sudden stroke while he was home alone. The cruelest part was that the stroke didn't kill him—it left him paralyzed and unable to speak.
He lay at home, lonely and in despair, unable to move. No one heard his desperate cries for help. His children never checked in, and with the distant neighborly relations of modern society, he slowly starved to death in his own home.
Because his death had been so long and painful, and his obsession with waiting for his children's call was so strong, he didn't even realize he had died. His spirit remained in a terrible state of hunger and thirst. Eventually, he found he could move again, but he seemed to be trapped in a space he couldn't escape.
In reality, he had only gained "freedom" when his spirit left his body. Due to his resentment, his physical form hadn't decayed in the humid summer. Instead, it had become a desiccated corpse, which was the form his spirit now took. On the day of the Ghost Festival, when the gates of the underworld open, he happened to see a promotional flyer from Xin Huohuo's restaurant—one of those colorful slips of paper slid under the door—and that's why he kept calling to order delivery.
The first time he spoke to Xin Huohuo on the phone, he heard the voices of the Black and White Impermanence possessing the cat and dog, and he hung up out of instinctual fear.
The second time he ordered delivery, his spirit was inadvertently pulled from the space that trapped him because the phone was imbued with the Mana of the Black and White Soul Hooking Plate. He was then captured in a photo by Xin Huohuo as she was taking a selfie.
The third time, he was released when Xin Huohuo accidentally opened her photo album in the restaurant's back kitchen. However, he was immediately sucked back into the phone, all without Xin Huohuo's knowledge.
'So this is what they mean by "play stupid games, win stupid prizes,"' Xin Huohuo thought. 'If I hadn't been taking selfies in that flickering hallway for no good reason, none of this would have happened. At most, the old man's spirit would have been drawn out of his apartment by the Soul Hooking Plate to wander around outside. He definitely wouldn't have ended up following me.'
"Then why didn't he follow me into my apartment after being sucked into the phone? Why did he stay outside?" Xin Huohuo still had questions.
The thought of the spirit trying to squeeze in through the air vent still made her skin crawl.
"The world is full of strange and wondrous things," Bai Qi said, a look of surprise on his face. "Your apartment, despite being gloomy and never seeing the sun, is actually built on a point of Extreme Yang. That's why wandering spirits don't dare enter. He couldn't get too far from the phone, so he had no choice but to linger outside. But the power of the Soul Hooking Plate is immense, and it compelled him to return."
"Also, after entering the Soul Hooking Plate, he gradually realized that he was already dead," Mr. Hei added. "He kept trying to talk to you because he wants you to find his body so he can be laid to rest. And most importantly... he wants you to notify his children."
"I'll figure something out tomorrow." A chill ran down Xin Huohuo's spine, and her limbs felt numb. At the same time, her heart ached with pity for the old man.
'To slowly starve to death, in this day and age?!' But it wasn't unheard of. She'd seen it in the news before—two children, abandoned for years, had also starved to death in their home.
'From a superstitious point of view, how much resentment must that have created? No wonder it had attracted even the Black and White Impermanence.'
"It's already morning," Mr. Hei said, glancing at the air vent.
A faint, greyish light was filtering in. Dawn was breaking.
"From now on, it's Seventh Lord and Eighth Lord. Got it?" Bai Qi tossed out one last remark.
Before Xin Huohuo could reply, their tall, striking figures vanished. All that remained was the phone, lying quietly on the coffee table.
It looked so ordinary, yet in reality, it was so terrifying.