"Xiao Duan, Xiao Duan?" I rushed into the bedroom and reached out to help Duan Youlian.

But Teacher Liu stopped me and said, "Her mood is unstable now, her Yin energy is especially heavy. If an ordinary person touches her... Ah, forget it. How can your righteous energy be even more exuberant? You"d better not touch her. I"m afraid she"ll cry."

After that, Teacher Liu helped the frail Xiao Duan get up and had her sit on the bed frame.

I didn"t know how Teacher Liu did it, but Xiao Duan came around very quickly. She shook her head wildly and said, "I won"t memorize questions, I won"t take a test, I won"t cut my nails, I want to be reborn!" While shaking her head, she saw Xiao Ning, and immediately pleaded, "Ning-tianshi, you can transcend me."

Xiao Ning looked uneasy. "If you were an ordinary fierce ghost and had freed yourself of your worldly ties, it would be pretty easy to transcend you. But you"re a living corpse. Compared to Teacher Liu, a ghost who has existed since the Republic by possessing human skin, you"re even harder to transcend. Your entire corpse still exists. Your soul won"t leave your body. There"s nothing I can do."

"Would cremation work?" I asked.

"Absolutely not!" said Teacher Liu, looking horrified. "Last time you put me on the windowsill to dry I nearly died. If you cremate her, either her soul will dissolve in the crematorium, or it"ll lose its support. Then it"ll be even more difficult to transcend."

I had just now accepted the fact that I had been hired by a ghost school. It really was a little hard on me to make me remember so many facts about transcending ghosts and monsters. Rather than trying to understand, it was better to ask outright. "So how can we get Xiao Duan to leave her body?"

I looked at Xiao Duan"s form. Apart from her raincoat constantly dripping water, she seemed normal, without any traces of decay.

"If the soul stays in the body and can"t pa.s.s on, it means there is still an obsession," Teacher Liu said with a sigh. "Like me, for example, though I can feel my obsession gradually disappearing. With Teacher Shen"s help, one day I will leave. If Xiao Duan wants to free herself, she needs to understand her own mind."

I comforted Xiao Duan: "Xiao Duan, I won"t make you take tests for now. Can you think why you"re trapped in your body?"

Hearing I wouldn"t make her take tests, Duan Youlian"s mood gradually stabilized. She thought for a long time, her expression puzzled. "I... I have nothing to regret. The ones who hurt me died a long time ago. Why am I still here?"

"Actually, all the students I can keep confined to the school have resolved their grudges," said Teacher Liu. "Otherwise, even I couldn"t completely confine them. There"s only Xiao Duan who can still cut cla.s.s. I really don"t understand it."

"You"re the one confining the students to the school?" I absolutely hadn"t expected the refined Teacher Liu to be so powerful.

"Well, it"s not entirely my power," Teacher Liu said, proudly adjusting the b.u.t.tons of his Zhongshan suit. He explained, "I"ve existed since the Republican period. Every owner who could awaken me had hatred in their hearts. I used their resentment to help them realize their wishes, then consumed their life energy, in this way becoming more and more powerful. But Princ.i.p.al Zhang is different. Her heart is set entirely on helping the school"s students. I don"t know why I would be awakened by her feelings. It"s Princ.i.p.al Zhang"s will added to my power that keeps the students contained. After they"ve fulfilled the object of their obsession, they remain inside the school, not harming innocent people."

"So that"s it," Ning Tiance said suddenly. "No wonder I felt your Yin energy was extremely heavy, your strength enormous, and yet you couldn"t exert much power. It was the holder"s will limiting your power."

"That"s part of it," said Teacher Liu, scratching his head sheepishly. "More importantly, it"s that Teacher Shen is too powerful. The first time I saw him I mistakenly thought he was the Celestial Master Princ.i.p.al Zhang had invited. I wanted to warn him to mind his own business. I"ve had dealings with Celestial Masters over the years, my impression of them wasn"t good at all. Who knew that Teacher Shen... Ah, if not for Teacher Shen, I"d never have thought that one day I would have my life saved by a Celestial Master."

"When did Xiao Ning save you... Forget it, that"s not the point. If Xiao Duan doesn"t know why she"s trapped in her body, would Princ.i.p.al Zhang know?"

My head really was a mess now. There was too much information. The two people next to me still had the same familiar appearance. To thoroughly understand the truth, I would have to overturn all my previous perceptions of the real world, entirely destroy my previous world view and build a completely new, entirely opposing world view. It was very difficult to do all at once. Rather than getting tangled up in all of this in a girls" dorm room in an old dormitory building at an abandoned school, it was better to focus on one thing.

Whether the students were ghosts or not, for a teacher the important things were a student skipping cla.s.s, refusing to take tests, and wanting to quit school. I needed to find an informed party who understood the background.

After settling on a decision, I ignored Teacher Liu and Xiao Ning, who were becoming increasingly pleased with each other the more they spoke, and took out my phone to send Princ.i.p.al Zhang a message: Princ.i.p.al, we found Duan Youlian. There"s a difficulty we need your help with. You said I could see you after I found Xiao Duan, which means that you are located close to us. Could you tell me where you are?

Princ.i.p.al Zhang replied very quickly: It"s good that you found Duan Youlian. I"m at H City"s Fourth Hospital, Inpatient Area, the Department of Neurology, Room 902. It"s not convenient to visit in the middle of the night, but I trust Teacher Liu and Student Duan will have a way. Come over here. The school bus will be waiting for you outside the school.

Princ.i.p.al Zhang have been referring to the new Fourth Hospital. I showed the text message to Xiao Ning and Teacher Liu.

"It"s good to take the school bus." Teacher Liu rubbed his hands. "I"m not used to taking human buses, and there"s Xiao Duan. If corpse water gets onto a bus, it"ll be very hard to clean away. The driver and the pa.s.sengers may become sick and die."

I was a little worried on hearing this. "How did Xiao Duan get from the school to the Farther Sh.o.r.e Estate?"

I"d heard that ghosts could choose not be seen by humans, but a living corpse had a physical body, visible to the naked eye. Since she couldn"t take a bus, had Xiao Duan run all the way to my house wrapped up in her raincoat? And Teacher Liu had said he"d been worried about Xiao Duan and followed her all the way back to school. Had there really been a notebook tumbling along chasing after a girl in a raincoat?

"I called the bus," said Teacher Liu. "Fortunately there haven"t been many people taking the bus recently. Master Qi has been fairly idle. Usually the bus is full. If there had been no seats, I would have had to float."

"So ghosts can"t teleport. Or is it only ghosts like you who are attached to some physical object who are subject to that restriction?" I asked, holding to an att.i.tude of academic inquiry.

"Not just the ones who are attached. All ghosts have to move to cross distances," Xiao Ning explained. "Those who are attached to something will control humans to help them move. Those who aren"t can slowly float."

"At what speed? How long would it take to get from China to the United States?"

Xiao Ning paused. "I... haven"t looked into that. The average ghost wouldn"t go so far."

I could only turn to ask the experienced Teacher Liu, who had lived since... no, who had been dead since the Republican period.

Teacher Liu was also at a loss. "The ghosts I know all seem to be entrenched in a certain location. If they really floated around all over the place, they would already have been captured by the Heibai Wuchang[1]. There are also ghosts who can possess bodies or objects and travel by various means of transportation, but it would have to be a plane at night. Otherwise, it"s very hard to maintain possession when encountering the sun."

"And if it"s an international flight? There are time differences. If it"s night on one side and noon on the other, will they be harmed by the sun?"

[1]黑白无常 - a pair of spirits that escort the dead to the underworld.