WBICDPH Chapter 24 Part 1

Chapter 24: Snow and Savage Winds

“What does this mean? Miss Liu won’t be in danger, right? Could she have been taken by a ghost cultivator? Is the ghost behind this something even she can’t handle? Could it be a red-clad vengeful spirit? No, that can’t be right. With Miss Liu’s level of cultivation, even if she ran into a red-clad ghost, she wouldn’t just vanish without a sound.”

Han Ao rattled off a whole string of anxious speculation, while Lin Jin stared at the six characters within the seal, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” he said.

“…”

After a brief silence, Han Ao suddenly slapped his palm against his hand.

“I’ve got it!”

Lin Jin raised an eyebrow and glanced sideways at him.
“Let’s hear it.”

Han Ao’s face turned grave as he tremblingly announced his conclusion.

“This case is backed by a Ghost King! We’re done for, Lin-lin! We have to save Miss Liu! Hurry, hurry, hurry, set off the signal fireworks and call Yanyu Mountain for reinforcements!!”

As he spoke, he immediately reached for his storage pouch. Lin Jin realized he was dead serious and truly about to fire the signal fireworks, so he quickly grabbed Han Ao’s hand to stop him.

“Calm down! There is no Ghost King here. If there really were one, Zhongyun City would already be hell on earth. Please, setting off fireworks to call for help over a third-tier mission is seriously embarrassing. We’d be laughed at for a hundred years! Do you want to completely trash your ‘Chosen One’ reputation or what?”

“But Miss Liu is in danger!”

Han Ao couldn’t calm down at all and could only uselessly do frantic high-knee steps in place.

“Miss Liu is not in danger. If she had truly encountered something she couldn’t handle, she wouldn’t have left us just these six characters.”

Lin Jin stared at the floating words and raised a hand to dismiss them.

“‘Manting Spring, white-clad woman.’ This is the information she wanted to give us. We need to think about what it means.”

“What’s there to think about?” Han Ao said anxiously, slapping his thigh.
“Didn’t the madam just parade all the girls in front of us earlier? Where in that building is there a woman wearing white? There isn’t even a scrap of white cloth!”

Han Ao meant it as nothing more than a casual complaint, but Lin Jin’s eyes widened slightly when he heard it.

He grabbed Han Ao by the shoulders and shook him hard.

“That’s brilliant, Brother Han. At this point, who can even tell you apart from Einstein?!”

“…Huh?”

“Exactly. Inside Manting Spring, from the madam to the courtesans to the servants who do odd jobs, not a single person is dressed in anything resembling plain white.”

It was as though the fog in his mind had been pierced by Han Ao’s offhand remark. What had once been vague was now gradually revealing its true shape.

Lin Jin lifted his gaze to the still brightly lit pleasure house, the warm glow of its lanterns reflected in his eyes.

Han Ao still didn’t quite get it. He scratched his head.

“But so what? In TV dramas, courtesans rarely wear white anyway. Places like this are always colorful, aren’t they?”

“That’s generally true, but special circumstances require special analysis. Do you remember how Cuetang reacted when she first saw Miss Liu?”

Lin Jin looked at Han Ao expectantly, but Han Ao honestly shook his head.

“Don’t remember. Didn’t see it.”

“Fair enough.”

Han Ao had been standing behind Cuetang at the time and had knocked her out with a chop to the neck. There really was no reason for him to remember.

Lin Jin didn’t dwell on it and continued explaining.

“When Cuetang saw Miss Liu, she was first confused, then panicked, but she instinctively suppressed her emotions, as if she didn’t want us to notice anything was wrong. And when Miss Liu appeared in front of her, she was wearing white. So what was Cuetang panicking about? Was she afraid that Miss Liu happened to match the ghost’s criteria for choosing victims, and that this would expose the ghost right in front of us?”

“Now that you mention it, I remember!” Han Ao followed his train of thought.
“That Miss Shuang’er from this morning was also dressed in plain white!”

But soon he hit another dead end.

“Even so, that still doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t Cuetang want us to discover the ghost?”

“What if she’s working with the ghost in the first place?” Lin Jin said.

“You mean Cuetang and the ghost cultivator are working together to abduct girls from the pleasure house? But that doesn’t quite add up either. If that were the case, why have only six girls gone missing over the years, seven including Shuang’er? If it were just the ghost acting alone, it’d make sense that girls might occasionally be taken when they mistakenly wore white. But if it’s one person and one ghost working together, and Cuetang really wanted to help the ghost harm people, why not just coax all the girls into wearing white?”

Han Ao had voiced exactly what puzzled Lin Jin. Lin Jin nodded and added another point.

“And judging by how the madam punished Cuetang, the madam should also know what Cuetang has been doing. She was clearly angry, yet she still helped cover it up. Why? If it were anyone else, wouldn’t she have already hired exorcists and reported Cuetang to the authorities?”

Han Ao’s brain was starting to short-circuit. He let out a heavy sigh.

“Yeah. When you put it like that, everyone involved in this case seems incredibly suspicious.”

“Exactly. I imagine Miss Liu is also trying to uncover the true reason behind all this, which is why she chose to put herself at risk and personally approach the ghost to probe the truth.”

Lin Jin handed Liu Fuxin’s seal to Han Ao and told him to hold onto it. Han Ao obediently accepted it and asked,

“So what do we do now? Just wait around here? That doesn’t seem right.”

“We need to follow this lead and investigate who this white-clad woman is who caused the ghost to develop such a deep obsession. We can also try to find Miss Liu’s whereabouts. But the ghost cultivator’s movements are far too strange. The moment I take out my artifacts, they tell me there’s ghostly energy everywhere, but I can’t find the source at all. And the bell Miss Liu gave me has completely stopped working.”

Lin Jin lifted the small bell and shook it. The once-deafeningly noisy bell was now utterly silent. He switched to his own soul-tracing banner. Just as he said, the black flag spun wildly in his hand, unable to point in any specific direction.

“I told you when you bought those artifacts, you should’ve spent more money and gotten better ones! You were being cheap and bought a crappy flag!” Han Ao stomped his foot in frustration.