August, Wangling Kingdom, Yunsui City.

Today, thick fog shrouded the city, and after midday, autumn rain began to drift down. The fine, dense raindrops struck people’s faces, bringing both itchiness and cold. There were already a few pedestrians on the streets, and now there were even fewer. All the market stalls had been packed away, and most of the shops along the street had half-closed their doors to prevent rain from drifting inside, conducting business with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude.

At dusk, a white-robed man quietly appeared on South Gate Street. The man was very handsome, carrying a sword wrapped in soft leather on his back. Holding a lantern in one hand and an umbrella in the other, he entered the city through the rain and mist, walking unhurriedly through the empty streets until he reached the largest establishment on Guihua Street – the Hongcai Inn.

The inn had no business today. The owner had retreated to the back hall to hold his child and coax his wife, leaving only a young shop assistant to watch the front. The assistant appeared to be only seventeen or eighteen years old, somewhat thin. When Yan Qige entered, he was lying on a table, sleeping. Hearing the commotion, he raised his head with squinting eyes. When he saw the person pushing through the door, he was somewhat stunned. After rubbing his eyes, he quickly jumped up to greet the guest.

“Oh, young master, are you here for a meal or lodging?”

“One upper room, facing the street.” Yan Qige tossed over an ingot of silver, then headed straight upstairs.

In the Tianzi room on the second floor’s left side facing the street, the assistant quickly brought hot tea and hot water, wearing a beaming smile as he inquired about where Yan Qige had come from and where he was going, whether he was visiting relatives and friends or traveling for pleasure.

Yan Qige didn’t respond at all, only carefully hanging the lantern beside a folding screen. The assistant, his enthusiasm undiminished, eagerly ran over and said with a smile: “Young master, it’s not yet dark – why light this lantern? If you find the daylight too dim and want more brightness, shall I light some lamps for you?”

As he spoke, the young assistant reached out to take the lantern. Yan Qige glanced over sideways, and the assistant’s hand immediately stopped, as if his soul had left his body, standing there in a daze.

“No need. You may go.”

Hearing this, the assistant seemed to wake up as if from a trance, scratching his head as he turned to leave, muttering: “Eh, what just happened to me?”

The assistant’s footsteps gradually faded on the second floor. Yan Qige stood before the screen, staring at the single bean-sized flame in the lantern. After a moment, he began curving his fingers beside his lips, chanting an incantation. The originally dim yellow flame in the lantern brightened somewhat, emitting a pale pink radiance.

Seeing this, Yan Qige curved up one corner of his lips, turned, and moved to the window, pushing open the wooden window facing the street. Yunsui City in the fine rain was quite charming – the pink walls and slate tiles stretched out continuously like an ink painting. The half of the riverbank facing east was shrouded in river mist like a fairyland. On Guihua Mountain to the north of the city, osmanthus flowers were in full bloom, their fragrance carried by the rain, creating an intoxicating aroma. This was truly the misty rain scenery of Jiangnan.

At the very same moment, a pair of eyes was watching this carved wooden window from somewhere in the darkness. The owner of those eyes revealed an almost imperceptible smile at the corner of their mouth, then quietly merged into the darkness, transforming into a barely noticeable gray shadow that swiftly disappeared across the slate-azure rooftops.

North Gate Street in Yunsui City – the second-to-last grand entrance at the end of the street was the Yunsui City yamen. A group of bamboo spirits had been in the back garden of the county magistrate’s residence for a very long time, though exactly how long was no longer clearly remembered. The county officials in the residence had come and gone in waves, and each time a new official arrived, they would renovate the interior of the residence. Fortunately, these magistrates all loved the purple bamboo growing in the back garden, so even when everything else in the garden was changed, the bamboo spirits remained the same.

The current county magistrate of Yunsui City was surnamed Wang. He had been in office for over three years since taking up his post in Yunsui City. This Magistrate Wang had no other hobbies in daily life – he simply loved to sleep. Honestly, if the city were peaceful and uneventful, sleeping more wouldn’t be a major problem. But this magistrate not only slept, he also loved to snore. And not only did he snore, but the sound was extraordinarily loud – even the big dog in the back alley outside the magistrate’s residence could hear it, frightening it into barking as it ran toward the front street.

For a full six months, Yunsui City had no cases-no no scandalous stories of elopement or love suicides, no red or white affairs like weddings or funerals, not even minor incidents like theft or burglary. So the magistrate spent entire days dozing in the back hall, disturbing the bamboo spirits in the back garden with his racket.

The bamboo spirits had once considered picking a time to frighten him, but Huayi, the eldest among the bamboo spirits, felt this would be improper. Though the magistrate annoyed them, he was still fairly upright and honest as an official, treating the common people much better than the previous magistrates. If they frightened him into some ailment, they would be committing a sin deserving heavenly punishment. And if the magistrate invited Taoist priests to perform rituals, they might discover the problem with this bamboo grove and cut them all down, creating many troubles. So this matter was dropped. Later, all the spirits grew accustomed to the snoring sound – if they didn’t hear it on any given day, they knew a case had occurred in Yunsui City and he was handling official business.

The weather had been poor recently. As the saying goes, rainy days are perfect for sleeping, but unexpectedly, the magistrate had not produced his midday snoring for several consecutive days.

“Why do you think the magistrate hasn’t been snoring these past few days? It makes me uncomfortable,” one bamboo spirit said lazily while tending to her branches and leaves.

“Exactly, exactly! It’s made me feel like something’s missing these past few days, as if I’ve lost part of my soul,” another bamboo spirit chimed in, swaying her branches.

“That’s what you get for not paying attention, usually – such a big event happening in the city and you don’t even know about it.” Huayi, being the eldest, always spoke with an air of authority.

“What did you hear? Tell us quickly.”

“I also heard it from a little maid in the residence. It seems several murder cases have occurred in the city recently. The big drum outside the county yamen has nearly been beaten to pieces, and the city’s residents are all living in fear, afraid they’ll be the next to die.”

“Could it be a major bandit committing murder and robbery?”

“This…”

“No, those people all had their throats cut, their vital blood drained through cultivation techniques that harvest and absorb essence.” Suddenly, a voice with three parts of lazy sleepiness interrupted. All the spirits gathered in the bamboo grove were slightly startled.

Following the sound upward, they saw atop the bamboo grove tips, lightly moistened by fine rain, a woman in azure robes who had slightly bent a purple bamboo branch, using the bamboo tip as a bed. She lay on her side with her hand supporting her temple, eyes closed in sleep. Her silky azure hair flowed down from the bamboo tip along with her gauzy garments, creating a scene so beautiful against the rain-washed emerald bamboo leaves that it seemed ready to be captured in a painting.

Seeing the woman in the bamboo, Huayi’s eyes revealed several parts of joy. She casually hooked a bamboo stalk to borrow momentum and leaped up, making two light bounds through the bamboo grove before landing on a bamboo pole opposite Yusang, her snow-white robes making her exceptionally beautiful.

“A hundred years without meeting – Sister Huayi, I trust you’ve been well.” Yusang slowly opened her eyes, revealing beneath her long, curled lashes a pair of autumn-water-like eyes. Within her ink-black pupils was a trace of silver-gray that neither humans nor spirits possessed – once anyone saw these eyes, they could never forget them.

Night fell, and the fine rain continued endlessly. Because of the recent bizarre and brutal murder cases, the city’s streets and alleys had emptied of people early.

Yuntian Street lay between South and North Main Streets. On ordinary nights, this area was always crowded with night market vendors, their calls and hawking ceaseless, while the pleasure quarters at the end of the street hung red lanterns high, brimming with spring atmosphere. But now it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The fine rain fell to earth and turned to vapor, making everything hazy and dreamlike, adding several parts of eeriness to the scene.