Returning to the central garden under the apartment building, Qiuyang and Xiaobang were already waiting there.
Li Daonian told the two of them to move their butts so Duoduo and Xu Shuangning could sit down.
He called his two friends aside, keeping his back to Li Duo, and roughly explained what had happened tonight.
"Did you really have to wait until daylight to call her mother over?" Qiuyang asked.
"Duh! The woman is probably fast asleep right now. If we knock on her door now and bring her dead daughter right to her doorstep, wouldn't that be harmful? Scaring her mother half to death and then having the two of them reunite in the netherworld, is that what you want?"
Li Daonian patted the two on their shoulders with a grave and earnest expression:
"Little Qiu, Xiaobang, the first lesson your master is going to teach you today is dealing with ghosts: first avoid the living, always put the living first. Understand?"
Qiuyang was left speechless; this jerk was starting to take advantage of them again. Xiaobang looked bleary-eyed, too weak to engage in banter, with his heavy head drooping as he looked over toward the bench.
Xu Shuangning was lowering her head and whispering softly to a flour hand.
"Why is she wearing pajamas?"
"What on earth is your focus?" Li Daonian narrowed his eyes.
"So, what did you call the two of us here for?" Qiuyang asked.
"It's very important. When it gets bright in a moment, I'll call her mother down, and the two of you block the entrances on both sides of the park. Make sure nobody comes in. Probably won't be anyone coming here anyway, but just in case."
"Damn! What kind of important business is this? It's just being a lookout," Xiaobang complained.
"Team!" Li Daonian's eyes lit up. "We are a team! Understand? Don't go saying such defeatist things."
"Ugh, get lost, get lost, get lost!" With that, Qiuyang plopped down onto the lawn, while Xiaobang leaned against a pillar, curiously watching the bench.
Xiaobang's full name was Xiao Jiebang, but because it rolled off the tongue easily, coupled with the fact that he could play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on the piano, everyone had just called him Xiaobang ever since.
Li Daonian had a particular skill: sweet-talking people. He was especially good at listening. Regardless of gender, people loved talking to him. When he listened to others speak, he would constantly interject with, "Mhm, ah, that's right." This made the other person feel a strong urge to express themselves.
Often, by the time he made a new friend, he would have dug up all the details of their family background, while the other person still didn't even know how many siblings he had.
One evening, Qiuyang and Xiaobang had been smoothly taken in by him.
Xiaobang said his father used to be a construction contractor, but later the developer defaulted on payments, and several fellow workers met with accidents in succession, leaving his family with only a few mu of land in the village after paying off debts. Because of this, his father quit the industry.
In recent years, his mother became a production line manager at a garment factory, and his old man earned some more money working as a chef, saving up a family nest egg. Recently, they were planning to start a winery, and when he went back for summer vacation, he even helped install the fermentation vats. As for how the business would go, its future remained uncertain.
Qiuyang's family background was even more ordinary. His father worked as an electrician, his mother served as customer service in a property management office, and his grandparents sold homegrown vegetables at the weekly market, along with old books and reading glasses bought wholesale.
The two of them had very ordinary family backgrounds, whereas Li Daonian's family seemed somewhat more legendary by comparison.
Therefore, after witnessing the ways of ghosts and deities, they also nurtured the idea of learning a thing or two. With a ready-made teacher right beside them, who was also a buddy and didn't even charge tuition, it was simply fantastic.
Actually, there was one more person in their dorm—Guoyang. Right now, this guy was probably hugging some girl in a hotel, sleeping soundly.
Guoyang's family simply ran a battery factory. Nowadays, his mom and dad traveled all over the country every day, living a very happy life. They gave him four thousand yuan a month in living expenses, and his mom constantly mailed him fruits and snacks.
The most awesome thing was that despite being pampered since childhood, he hadn't turned into a spoiled brat. His photography skills were insanely good, winning national awards. He never dated girls on campus, and only chatted with older girls outside the school. The number of times he slept in the dorm could be counted on one's fingers.
Moreover, when he first saw a ghost, he actually dared to go up and touch it, then said, "I knew it!"
At the time, Li Daonian had found it hilarious that there were still people in this world who believed in ghosts.
Whenever he caught ghosts, Guoyang would tag along not to learn the craft, but purely out of curiosity about what ghosts looked like.
"Give me one," Li Daonian asked Xiaobang, who was smoking.
In the distance, Xu Shuangning had stopped talking; Duoduo was probably leaning against her to rest.
Li Daonian had originally thought he would have to wait until seven or eight o'clock before going to look for Duoduo's mother. At twenty past six, when he had smoked another cigarette and looked up at Building Number 3, he found that the lights in apartment 604 were already on.
Was she waking up this early?
He glanced around and noticed that many households had their lights on. Through the window shadows, he could tell some people were busy in the kitchen.
Have you ever seen Pingsha City at four in the morning? Li Daonian hadn't stayed up the whole night in a long time, nor had he ever woken up this early.
Usually, he was used to going to sleep at one in the morning and sleeping until ten in the morning, to the point that he had long forgotten what the morning smelled like.
On an October morning, the sky was dim, the sun hadn't come out yet, and it was somewhat chilly. The last time he had woken up this early must have been in high school. He stubbed out his cigarette and prepared to go upstairs.
"Do the two of us need to tag along?" Qiuyang asked, squatting on the ground.
"No need, too many people will scare her. I can manage alone."
He walked over to Xu Shuangning again, nodded at her, and then leaned down to say, "Duoduo, big brother is going to go find your mom right now, and I'll bring her down in a moment. Sit tight and don't run around, okay?"
"Okay, I definitely won't run around. I just fell asleep, big brother, hurry up!"
Li Daonian smiled, stood up, and walked toward Building Number 3.
Arriving in front of door 604, he gently knocked three times.
"Thump, thump, thump!"
Two seconds later, Li Daonian heard the shuffling of slippers: "Who is it? So early?"
It was the voice of a middle-aged woman, and at that moment she was peering out through the peephole.
Li Daonian immediately put on a polite smile: "Sister, hello, I have an urgent matter to see you about."
"Who are you looking for? Did you get the wrong apartment?"
"It's about your daughter."
"Bang!" The door was flung open.
Standing behind the door was a middle-aged woman with messy hair, wearing a thick cotton pajama set. Her face was somewhat dark, and wrinkles gathered at the corners of her eyes: "Are you Wang Jia's teacher?"
Li Daonian caught a whiff of stir-fried shredded potatoes. On the dining table behind the woman, a girl in a school uniform was holding chopsticks and curiously looking toward the doorway. For a split second, he thought he had come to the wrong door.
"It's about Li Duo," he said in a low voice.
The woman's face froze instantly, her pupils widening in a panic: "What did you say?"
Li Daonian pulled the woman outside the door and said in a hushed voice, "Sister, I'll be blunt. You might not believe it, but I catch ghosts, and I ran into your daughter's soul."
The woman shook her head and said with a stern face, "She's already dead and gone. Are you some kind of scammer?"
Li Daonian patiently explained, "She's waiting for you downstairs right now. If she doesn't get to see you, she probably will never find peace. Even for the sake of the bond between you two, please go see her."
A hint of anger laced the woman's voice: "Stop playing such sick jokes!"
"I have no reason to lie to you, sister. Someone entrusted me with this last night, right over at Building Number 1. You used to live there, didn't you?"
The woman looked at him cautiously, noncommittal.
"I ran into your daughter, and she insisted on seeing you. Originally, she didn't want to disturb you, but it'll only take half an hour of your time. She's currently staying at the park downstairs with my friends," Li Daonian said with a serious and sincere expression.
"I still have to drop my kid off at school," the woman said after a few seconds of silence.
"You can go after you drop her off, but please believe me and make sure to follow me down afterward."
Though half-doubting, she still opened the door and let Li Daonian in: "Have a seat on the sofa and rest for a moment."