Chapter 45: The Ghost Lantern Gathering (I)

Ten minutes later, Qin Ye sat solemnly at the head of the bed with Wang Chenghao. The acrid smell of burnt joss paper still lingered in the air. Before Qin Ye stood three shadowy spirits, wringing their hands with sycophantic grins. Wang Chenghao, mustering his courage, sat beside him, wanting to make the bed but not daring to move.

“You've changed,” Qin Ye said, pained and earnest. “Back in Qingxi Middle School, you were so imposing and full of swagger. And now?”

Wang Chenghao coughed awkwardly. “Brother Qin… When a man goes through great changes, of course, he changes…”

“Just look at yourself—thick brows, bright eyes, a good six feet tall, definitely above average looks. But now you’re behaving like a timid housewife. That won’t do. To toughen you up, starting tomorrow, you’re in charge of fetching water and buying dinner. Any objections?”

Well, there was a bit of a problem… Something felt off… But Wang Chenghao still nodded.

His boldness had always been reserved for his own kind. Since leaving Qingxi County, he’d barely interacted with any humans. Though he no longer screamed outright when at home, he thought he deserved at least a little time to adjust, didn’t he?

He reckoned the suggestion was for his own good—a bold heart must be trained, after all. Logically, it was flawless. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

“Enough,” Qin Ye said, waving his hand dismissively after settling the matter. He turned to the three spirits before him. “Will you go on your own, or do you need me to send you off?”

“Sir…” One of the spirits, a baby-faced student, scratched his head. “Um… Could you give us a paper effigy or something…?”

“Possession? Still not willing to move on?” Qin Ye shot him a glare, then, feeling something sticky on his face, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “No. Rules are rules.”

“Sir… We died so unjustly… I—I just want to say goodbye to my family.”

Qin Ye’s fingers rubbed together more impatiently. “No rules, no order. When it’s time to go, you must go. Do you realize that in another year or two, you’ll turn into malevolent spirits?”

“Sir…”

“But then again…” Qin Ye’s fingers nearly brushed the spirit’s face as he gestured, “rules are made by men, after all…”

Was there no understanding here?

Couldn’t they grasp the hint from his gesture?

The three spirits were stunned. Was this… a blatant demand for a bribe?

The dark side of society—was there no escape, even in death? This wretched web of connections…

“Sir…” The tallest student cleared his throat. “We… we’re just poor students…”

Without another word, Qin Ye reached for the Ghost-Headed Blade.

“Sir! Please, no!”
“Have mercy! I know Hui University inside and out—I can be your guide, your inside man!”
“Sir, surely there’s room for clemency! How about I sing you lullabies every night?”

Lullabies—seriously?

Qin Ye felt the weight of his job keenly. Since he’d taken up the post, the only wealthy ghost he’d met, Wang Zemin, even had an heir. The rest were either running shabby motels or were penniless students with nothing but the clothes on their backs. There was no way to get rich at this rate!

It wasn’t that he wanted to be upright—it was society forcing him to be incorruptible.

“Sir! We have grievances!” Seeing Qin Ye’s imposing, unyielding demeanor, one of the students finally fell to his knees with a thud, his voice quivering.

“Don’t try to stall. I’ll let you get a head start—thirty-nine meters,” Qin Ye said, hand on his blade. But as he uttered these words, he suddenly paused.

Grievances…

Such a common word, yet it sparked a flash of insight in him.

He sprang to his feet and said to the transfixed Wang Chenghao, “Go fetch a pot of water.”

“…Wait, what?” Wang Chenghao, seeing ghosts worse off than himself, felt oddly comforted.

“Now!”

Wang Chenghao left, grumbling, kettle in hand. Qin Ye locked the door, then turned to the three spirits, fixing them with a deep gaze.

“Interesting,” he said, his smile fading after a few seconds. “How long have you been dead?”

“Three years,” the student answered respectfully.

“Three years… Very interesting indeed.” Qin Ye drummed his fingers on the desk, as if musing aloud. “Anyone who dies a wrongful death, unless a suicidal maniac, should be filled with obsession. But… I see none in you.”

“Yet you remain bound to this dormitory, as open-hearted as ever, no different from when you were alive. So… did you die willingly?”

All three shook their heads at once.

“Not willing, yet without obsession…” Qin Ye’s gaze grew colder as he looked out the window into the darkening campus. “That leaves only one possibility.”

“You died without pain—so suddenly you didn’t even realize you were dead!”

The tall spirit bit his lip, nodding fiercely.

“I didn’t want to die.” The playful foolishness had vanished from him; his lips trembled, his form flickered. “But… there was nothing I could do.”

“We don’t know how we died. There was no pain—it was as if we just fell asleep… I saw my parents come pack up my things… Saw my mother collapse on the bed in tears… I was right beside her, but I couldn’t do a thing!”

His voice caught with sobs. “For three years, we’ve desperately tried to uncover the truth. But…”

“But you can’t leave,” Qin Ye finished. “Earthbound spirits are trapped in the place they died. For three years, your world has been no bigger than this room. That shouldn’t be. You must have obsessions, yet something suppressed them, trapping you here as earthbound spirits?”

This school… there’s something wrong with it.

“What do you remember?” He didn’t expect much—how could they recall any warning signs if they didn’t even know how they died?

But as soon as he finished speaking, all three answered in unison: “Drums and gongs!”

Qin Ye’s eyes narrowed as he glanced at the floor, as if trying to see through it to Old Man Liu’s shriveled face on the ground floor.

Drums and gongs…

“Every night at midnight, someone beats drums and gongs going upstairs, then we hear the erratic footsteps coming down. But… the doors are locked at midnight!”

“Every night… I see four pairs of wet footprints right here! It’s like… like someone stands at the locked door, staring until dawn…”

Too much of a coincidence.

“That was in the spring, three years ago… The first time we heard the gongs, we didn’t think much of it,” the tall spirit recounted, gritting his teeth. “But the next day, I asked around… Not a single other student heard a thing!”

“Only us… We heard it as clear as day. It was like… like a celebration, as if someone was being congratulated on a promotion or getting rich—gongs, drums, firecrackers, suona horns, so loud we couldn’t sleep!”

“At first, we thought it was a prank, but… it wasn’t. We stayed up all night at the door, even installed a peephole! Never saw a soul!”

“Sir… can you imagine? At midnight, the lights on our whole floor go out, and in that maddening silence, the drums and gongs suddenly blare out… No one at the peephole, but you could hear footsteps… right at the door!!”

“We almost lost our minds!” The baby-faced spirit shivered as he recalled, his voice trembling. “A few times, the sounds stopped at the door, and if you lit a candle, you could see someone standing under the door… There really was someone! I could see the shadow under the door! But… there was nothing in the peephole!”

“We reported it. No one believed us! Just as we were about to move out… we remember nothing.”

The three students began to sob.

In the prime of life, dying so inexplicably here, they could only become earthbound spirits, never stepping outside their twenty-square-meter prison. No living soul entered, except for the annual cleaning before the new semester. No one remembered them. They forced themselves to stay cheerful, not daring to scare away anyone who came in.

They wanted to speak.

They wanted to get out.

They wanted to know what had happened.

But they could not.

Qin Ye fell into thoughtful silence for a long time. “You’ve been here three years. Have you ever heard the drums and gongs again?”

“Never, and nobody’s ever talked about anything like this! Otherwise, why would we have stayed here?”

“I see.” Qin Ye pointed across the room. “Go wait over there. Tomorrow, I’ll bring three paper effigies—you can stay in them for a while.”

“Thank you… Thank you, sir!”

He wasn’t being soft-hearted.

Rather… if this was really Hui University’s doing, this was a million-dollar paranormal case!

Wang Chenghao returned with the water. The two of them pored over their university courses, Qin Ye discussing with him which clubs he wanted to join. Soon, it was ten o’clock.

Since the national paranormal broadcast began, the school fell into utter silence after dark. There was no noise from the sports field, no glow from the campus store, no throng of bicycles.

Only the dormitory building remained lit, the streets illuminated by monotonous streetlights. The night wind rustled the trees, sounding like the moans of a great beast.

The dormitory itself was silent. No one dared make a sound in the corridors, as if afraid to wake some dreadful thing; the silence was absolute.

Wang Chenghao had brought his computer, but with no internet, single-player games quickly bored him. He yawned and climbed into bed. Qin Ye, idle and restless, scrolled through his phone for a while, then also went to sleep.

Tap… tap… The joyless, isolated night swallowed one lamp after another. As Qin Ye drifted into dreams, the whole school was plunged into darkness.

Qin Ye slept deeply.

He didn’t know how long had passed before he suddenly awoke.

“Dong—” From the teaching building, a great bell tolled, its deep, sonorous note echoing across the campus.

It was as though the bell struck a forbidden chord among the living—a resonance for the dead alone.

Midnight.

Qin Ye awoke right on time.

He frowned slightly, about to drift off again when, out of nowhere, a blaring cacophony assaulted his ears!

“Boom, boom, boom!!!” First, three muffled drumbeats, followed by a crisp crash of a gong. The next second, suonas blared in unison, firecrackers thundered!

Qin Ye sat up quietly, glanced at Wang Chenghao, who was sleeping like a log.

He looked over at the three spirits on the other bed. They stood paralyzed, bodies shaking, staring around in disbelief.

“It’s here… It’s here!!”

“That’s it… That’s the one!”

“The drums and gongs from three years ago… They’re back!!”