NOVEL NEXT 018 Blaze-eyed Serpent God
“I heard from Ning Zhe and the others that you were dead,” Zhang Yangxu said, his gaze still cautious. “Ye Miaozhu, that girl, was heartbroken. Is she your girlfriend?”
Gu Yunqing shook his head. “She’s my sister. We’re from a blended family. Her biological father once had some assets, but he lost everything gambling at a casino in Yizhou. After that, he abandoned her and her mother and went abroad to hide from creditors, and they haven’t heard from him since.”
“Then, my stepmother remarried my father, and they formed a new family with her two daughters. Oh, I haven’t told you before, but Ye Miaozhu has a younger sister, a little girl still in middle school.”
Gu Yunqing briefly explained his family situation to Zhang Yangxu. Perhaps because of his family’s misfortune, or perhaps due to Gu Yunqing’s naturally gentle personality, he was quite well-liked by the two sisters. Over the years, their bond had grown stronger. His older sister, Ye Miaozhu, even applied to the same medical university as him. As graduation approached, the two of them came to the medical center in Gubei Town for their internship together.
And then they arrived in Hejia Village… damn.
However, Gu Yunqing wasn’t sharing these personal details out of a desire to talk about himself. He was trying to gain Zhang Yangxu’s trust and lower his guard.
After all, a ghost… it’s hard to say if it would willingly fabricate a story.
Sure enough, after hearing about Gu Yunqing’s complicated family relations, Zhang Yangxu’s vigilance gradually relaxed. He no longer seemed as tense as before. Instead, he teased with a look that only men understood, “Kid, you’ve got it good.”
“I have another girlfriend at university,” Gu Yunqing sighed. “Please, Mr. Zhang, be mindful of your boundaries. Our relationship isn’t close enough for jokes like that.”
“Alright.” Zhang Yangxu decisively shut up and changed the subject.
He asked a series of questions:
“Everyone, including Ye Miaozhu, said you were dead, but here you are alive. What’s going on?”
“Why are you all wet?”
“You said the Serpent God was about to go mad, that there’s not much time left. What’s that about?”
Gu Yunqing closed the door and raised his hand, signaling Zhang Yangxu to follow him inside the He Family mansion. “Let’s talk while walking.”
“Where to?”
“To find my sister.”
The two of them walked through the flowerbed in the He Family courtyard. From the front gate, distant voices and hurried footsteps could be heard as they passed by the kitchen area in the side yard. It seemed the cooks were starting to prepare breakfast.
The He Family mansion faced south, built in a “回” (hui) shape with three stories in the center. The stone foundation supported a bamboo and wood structure, with cobalt blue glazed tiles covering the roof. It was considered luxurious in this area.
The mansion’s main gate was to the south, and to the north, a lush garden and vegetable plot. The kitchen, storerooms, woodshed, and servant quarters were lined up on the east and west sides of the main building, filling out the entire “回” shape.
Unlike the traditional northern-style courtyard houses of the capital, this mansion was built with southern features unique to Qinzhao, a special variant of the Hakka Tulou, designed for display rather than defense.
Even Zhang Yangxu, a veteran in real estate and architecture, thought this was an excellent, timeless design. The cultural feel of it would likely appeal to wealthy landowners who prized elegance.
As Gu Yunqing parted the thick flowers and walked ahead, he unlocked his phone and showed Zhang Yangxu a picture.
It was a slender, pale hand holding a phone with a lit screen. Zhang Yangxu immediately recognized it as Ning Zhe’s hand. The kid looked delicate, almost like a girl. On the phone screen, there was another photo.
It was a page from the almanac showing the day’s good and bad omens:
[Auspicious:]
[Taboo:] Travel, Burial, Mourning, Sacrifices
“When you were flipping through the almanac to check today’s omens, did you ever think about this?” Gu Yunqing asked, water droplets dripping from his clothes. “Why does the almanac only list ‘Taboo’ and not ‘Auspicious’?”
“I thought about it, but couldn’t figure it out,” Zhang Yangxu replied.
“Because the Serpent God is sick,” Gu Yunqing explained, zooming in on the photo.
In the picture, the almanac was pinned to the Serpent God’s tongue by a nail. When Ning Zhe took the photo, he also captured part of the Serpent God’s head. Upon closer inspection, the image showed the lifeless, stylized serpent with hollow, lifeless eyes.
The statue of the Serpent God appeared majestic, but up close, it was clearly deteriorating. The He Family’s ancestral hall had fallen into disrepair, with leaking roofs and damp, moldy beams. The root-carved Serpent God statue was no exception.
The craftsmanship of the root carving was exquisite, and the scales on the serpent’s body were arranged neatly and intricately, creating a sense of layered beauty.
But beneath its glossy surface, dark mold had accumulated around the base of the scales, and milky fungal threads poked out from the gaps in the scales, giving off the stench of decaying wood. This was Zhang Yangxu’s impression of the statue when he and Xie Sining went through the almanac in the ancestral hall earlier.
In Gu Yunqing’s photo, the Serpent God’s head was covered in rotting fungal threads. The left eye socket was completely filled with black mold, and the right eye was also being overtaken by the same fungi.
“The Serpent God’s left eye is blind,” Gu Yunqing spoke quickly. “The left eye sees the good, the right sees the bad. But after it fell ill 18 years ago, its body deteriorated, and one eye went blind. Since then, the almanac has only listed what to avoid. It can no longer tell you what is good for today because the Serpent God can’t see anymore. It has no answers to give.”
“I see…” Zhang Yangxu felt a chill but remained somewhat doubtful. His guard wasn’t fully down, and he kept a distance from Gu Yunqing as they continued walking.
Zhang Yangxu asked, “If that’s the case, how do you know all this? Also, when I was in the ancestral hall, I saw a ghost pretending to be you, flipping through tomorrow’s almanac. Why are you still alive? How did you survive?”
Ning Zhe may have lied about Gu Yunqing being dead, but Zhang Yangxu believed that “flipping through tomorrow’s almanac is an omen of death” was indisputable.
“That’s a long story,” Gu Yunqing sighed as if reluctantly, leading Zhang Yangxu through the He Family’s garden.
They bypassed the cooks and servants preparing meals and reached a row of small buildings to the west of the main house. Gu Yunqing gestured for Zhang Yangxu to follow and snuck into a storage room with an unlocked door.
[My sister just texted me. She’s hiding inside.]
Zhang Yangxu looked down at the message from Gu Yunqing, waited for a long time, then cautiously approached and gently pushed open the door.
The next moment, Zhang Yangxu’s body collapsed.
He was dead.