Yao Shen turns around to look at Xin Hulei.
"You can see her too?" Yao Shen asks, looking from between the disfigured woman to Xin Hulei.
The woman is still looking expectantly at Yao Shen, her gaze unwavering. "Who are you talking to?" she asks, wringing her hands.
Yao Shen's brain comes to a screeching halt.
What is going on?
He hears the amused exhalation of Xin Hulei's breath. "I can see her but she can't see me."
"Why?" Yao Shen grumbles. "How come I'm the only one who gets to see and be seen by everyone?"
An amused smile plays at the corners of Xin Hulei's lips. "A longstanding feud."
[Congratulations Host, for growing 55% closer to the Demon King. Sixth reward unlocked: Exorcism.]
Yao Shen is too confused by everything going on to pay any attention to the System's words. It would be great if things would slow down and he could catch his breath.
The woman moves towards him, her desperation growing. "Please, you have to help me, I've been trying to reach him for so long."
"I..." Yao Shen looks up at Xin Hulei dazedly, looking for some insight into how to act.
Xin Hulei shrugs. "It's up to you."
Yao Shen lets out a frustrated sigh. He shouldn't have expected Xin Hulei to be any help. He's more the type to silently eat his melon seeds from the sidelines while pretending to be above it all.
"What do you need my help with?" Yao Shen finally asks the girl, trying to avert his eyes from the grisly sight of her jaw.
She smiles in relief and to his horror, Yao Shen has a perfect view of the exposed sinew moving around her peeled off lips and the side of her cheek.
"Did you see the man I was with at the restaurant?" she asks, her croaky voice wheezing a little as it passes through the hole in her face.
Yao Shen nods, wrapping an arm around his stomach in an attempt to hold all its contents inside.
He doesn't want to be rude to the poor woman, who clearly isn't alive anymore -- because no one would, with a hole like that in their faces.
Her grisly appearance keeps sending conflicting danger signs to his brain. Probing at an ancient, animal instinct to run at the sight of death.
Ironic, considering that he used to be a Ghost King. Allegedly.
"I need you to give him a message for me," she says, her voice wavers as if she's on the verge of tears. "He doesn't know what happened to me. He thinks I disappeared just as he asked me to marry him."
"Uh, from the start, please," Yao Shen asks, his head throbbing.
---
The woman tells him everything about her miserable fate.
Her name is Sun Yi and she and the man in the restaurant, Gong Tao, had been going out for two years before he asked her to marry him.
Sun Yi was an orphan, who hadn't been to her old home in her parent's village in a long time since their death. However, once Gong Tao asked her to marry him, she felt that her grief had made her unfilial all these years, and that she had selfishly neglected to take care of her parents' graves.
Without telling Gong Tao anything, she went back to her parent's village, to pay her respects, give them the good news about her engagement, and ask their forgiveness for all the years of neglect.
Sun Yi didn't think she would ever be happy again after her beloved parents' sudden and cruel death, and it was only with Gong Tao that she could finally see the sun after a long and bitter winter.
Unfortunately, on her way back from her parents' village she suffered a fatal car accident, when a truck carrying steal beams in front of her had a flat tire and one of the steal beams came free from its bindings.
Sun Yi died instantly on impact. The cause of her terrible wound obvious.
Her car was badly damaged in the ensuing crash and her cellphone was destroyed. The police could only identify her with the help of some of her parents' old neighbors, since the accident happened not too far away from the village.
They told the police that Sun Yi's parents were dead, and that she was unmarried. A few villagers pooled resources together, to have her buried next to her parents.
Gong Tao was never informed about her sudden death.
---
"I can't stand the idea of him thinking I ran away and abandoned him," Sun Yi pleads, her expression twisted in grief. "Please you have to tell him that I didn't want to leave him. Tell him I died loving him, happy about the future we were going to build together."
Yao Shen's throat clicks painfully. "How will he believe me?"
It's clear she hadn't considered this possibility. She thinks for a moment before saying, "December 13, the day we first met. He knew I wanted to get married on that day, tell him that, and he'll believe the message came from me."
Yao Shen nods, still a little disconcerted. Sun Yi's relief is almost visible, she smiles widely, and it illuminates her from the inside. Suddenly, Yao Shen can barely see her violent wound.
"That restaurant, you'll find him there every Wednesday. We always went together, it was our favourite place to eat out." Her smile grows nostalgic and heavy. "He still goes there alone, after all this time."
"Maybe he's waiting for you," Yao Shen says, his heart heavy with the weight of Sun Yi's and Gong Tao's tragic story.
"Maybe," she says, voice watery even though her eyes are dry.
Yao Shen is about to ask her something else when Gao Wu approaches them with a paper bag in hand. "There you are! I was looking for the two of you." His smile falters at the sight of Yao Shen's reddened eyes. "What happened?"
Xin Hulei grips Yao Shen by the shoulder and pulls him towards Gao Wu. "Just life and death and all things under the heavens."
---
Their night is effectively over after that. Sun Yi disappears after Gao Wu shows up, but Yao Shen is no longer feeling like enjoying himself in the night market.
Which is a pity because he was looking forward to having some candied hawthorn.
He feels bad for Gao Wu, and even worse for not having any plausible explanation for his sudden change of mood.
They're making their way back to the car when Xin Hulei leans towards Yao Shen and whispers in his ear. "He's the one doing this."
Yao Shen gives Gao Wu's broad back an uncertain look. For his part Gao Wu continues walking in front of them, the paper bag dangling pitifully from his long fingers.
"He couldn't even see her!" Yao Shen whispers back.
"Somehow, whenever he's upset ghosts show up around him." Xin Hulei's eyes flash briefly with a spark of almost childish curiosity. "I have no idea why, but I intend to find out."
"Oh," it's all Yao Shen says.
He understands now why Xin Hulei was so adamant about tagging along.
Clenching his jaw, he quickens his pace, determined to put some distance between himself between the two of them.