Xu Shuangning panted, akimbo, and looked at Li Daonian. Seeing his relaxed expression, she cast a skeptical look at the red circle.
Was a ghost really trapped inside?
To her, the red string loop looked completely ordinary—she couldn't see any ghostly shadows at all.
"Next, we make her visible and talk to her," Li Daonian said.
After a great deal of coaxing and bluffing just now, he had finally managed to lure this ghost close and trap her with the red string.
This red string had been mailed from home just a couple of days ago. When the semester started, he had brought a ten-meter coil of red string packed in his suitcase.
However, after using it all up over the past two months of the semester, he had no choice but to ask his old man to mail him some more from home.
This red string was made by soaking white yarn in blood. During the New Year, when pigs, ducks, cattle, fish, and sheep were slaughtered, the blood was collected and mixed together, along with a bit of melted wax and garlic juice. The white yarn was soaked in this mixture for seven days.
Then it was taken out and hung in the courtyard to dry. Thus the red string was made; it could trap ghosts, ward off wandering souls, and avert disaster.
Li Daonian didn't know the underlying principle, but since it wasn't scientific anyway, delving into it was completely pointless. As long as it worked, that was all that mattered.
If he were forced to give an explanation, it might be that blood was the essence of living things, rich in *yang* energy, which counteracted *yin* energy—though that was just his wild guess.
As for the step of soaking it in garlic juice, that was his own original invention. Hearing that Western vampires were afraid of garlic, he had a flash of inspiration and added garlic juice when soaking the red string.
"No wonder there's a hint of garlic smell," Xu Shuangning said, taking a deep breath.
"It also helps mask the smell of blood," Li Daonian explained. He suddenly felt like a genius; when it came to catching ghosts, one really had to figure things out step by step on one's own.
As a rogue practitioner without so many written rules, he could only grope his way through the principles and guidelines himself, keeping what worked and discarding what didn't.
After resting for a moment, Li Daonian pulled out a bag of flour. "Xu Shuangning, are you going to stay? I'm about to make the ghost visible."
"Huh?" She was a bit flustered. "Can she really be made visible? You make it sound so real."
Right now, she was a mix of terrified and curious. She didn't know whether ghosts actually existed or not, yet she was intensely curious about what they looked like.
"Of course it's real!" he replied calmly.
"Then what does she look like?" she continued to ask.
"What does she look like... um..." Li Daonian drew out his tone. "She looks like a ghost."
"You mean fangs, bleeding facial features, and a pale white face?" Xu Shuangning asked weakly.
"Hahaha, no way. She just looks like a human did in life, though sometimes they're naked, and most of the time they're wearing clothes," he said. "You can stay and watch; there's nothing taboo about it, but you should mentally prepare yourself since this is your seeing a ghost for the first time."
Seeing her lost in thought and knowing the inner struggle she was going through, Li Daonian waved his hand dismissively. "Hey, stop crying. Big Brother will give you some candy right now, okay? I'll take you out for burgers later."
Seeing him acting crazy again—half-real and half-fake—her curiosity only grew. She swallowed hard and whispered, "Maybe I should stay?"
"Alright." He nodded solemnly. "Anyway, I'll have to coax her in a moment, and I can see you're pretty good at coaxing kids."
"Coaxing kids?"
"To banish a ghost, you have to understand their obsession and help them let it go. This ghost is a little girl, so of course she needs to be coaxed."
"Okay." She mentally prepared herself. "Then... will she hurt people?"
"They do have the ability to hurt people—those are fierce ghosts, the hardest kind to reason with. Judging by her, she was probably a stubborn mule in life," Li Daonian explained patiently to Xu Shuangning:
"But today it's just a little girl, so we just need to coax her. As long as you stand outside the red circle, she can't hurt us."
"Mm." She nodded, feeling increasingly nervous.
"Get ready, here we go." Li Daonian furrowed his brow and spoke in a deep voice.
Xu Shuangning watched his every move intently. First, he opened the bag of flour and scattered a handful of it all over the ground outside the red circle, then solemnly pinched up a large handful of flour. The scene that followed made her burst out laughing.
Li Daonian, who had been completely solemn just a moment ago with a serious expression, sword-like eyebrows, and the demeanor of a master, suddenly burst into giggles right after grabbing that handful of flour.
With a cheerful smile plastered on his face, he cooed: "Little darling, don't be scared. It's raining and a bit chilly, so Big Brother is going to sprinkle some water on you. Yep, today is the Water-Splurting Festival—do you know about the Water-Splurting Festival? Hit me—splash, hehe."
"Swish!"
A handful of flour was tossed toward the red circle.
Xu Shuangning instantly gasped.
Inside that red circle, the flour had actually outlined the figure of a little girl!
"Swish!"
Another handful of flour.
The little girl's form became even clearer. Her fists were clenched tight as she wailed at the top of her lungs:
"Wuwuahhhh, it's cold, Mommy it's cold, wuwuahhhhh!"
Xu Shuangning's heart skipped a beat. She was way too familiar with this crying; wasn't this the voice of the little girl that had been tormenting her for days?
As the flour was continuously scattered, more and more of it landed on the little girl, and a white little figure was thus sketched into existence.
She stopped crying at Li Daonian alone, instead letting out her wails so they echoed through the entire bedroom.
Terrified out of her wits, Xu Shuangning backed away repeatedly. To have a human figure appear so vividly right before one's eyes would shatter anyone's worldview.
Li Daonian smiled helplessly and glanced at her. He had seen this scenario many times; what gave him a headache now was how to coax this ghost.
"Hey now, darling baby, open your eyes and see if you can see Big Brother." He stepped forward and smoothed down the little girl's hair, but ended up with a hand full of flour, feeling a chill against his palm.
As some of the flour was brushed away, a chunk of the little girl's head vanished, looking utterly comical.
So he tossed another handful of flour to patch that spot back up.
The little girl raised her head with a tearful expression because she could actually feel a pair of hands petting her.
After a ghost dies and wanders the mortal world for years, they are formless and shadowless, having lost their five senses and blocked out all ambient noise, drifting solely on the obsession in their hearts—which was why they remained indifferent to ordinary people's shouts.
Earlier, by smoking a cigarette to determine her position and speaking in a tone familiar to her from her life, he had managed to touch her heart just a little, but she had still only been crying to herself.
Now, with her form revealed and tactile sensation restored, she pulled herself out of the dazed ghost state just enough to summon a shred of human intelligence, raising her head to look up at him with wide, darting eyes.
While humans are afraid of ghosts, ghosts aren't necessarily any better off when meeting humans.
"You... uh wuwuwu, can you see me?" the little girl sobbed and asked.
She had no idea how many years she had been dead. As a ghost, she couldn't touch anything and could only run around blindly following her instincts. Only now, having taken form and being spoken to face-to-face, was a sliver of her human sentience awakened.
Consequently, her eyes were filled with confusion and helplessness.
"That's right, I can see you," Li Daonian said, leaning down and speaking warmly. "Darling, what's your name?"
"I, wuwu, my name is Li Duo," the little girl said shyly, twisting the hem of her clothes. "Where's Mommy? I want to find Mommy."
"Your name is Duoduo," Li Daonian said with a broad smile, taking her small hand in his. "Why have you been crying all this time?"
Xu Shuangning, who had retreated five meters away, watched the two of them start chatting. Her guard and fear gradually subsided, and she slowly crept closer.
This little girl named Duoduo wore little sleeve-protectors on her arms, her hair buns bobbed up and down, and tears streamed down along with her cries.
The tears ran down her face, washing away her nose and dripping onto the ground.
*Drip, drop.*
*Drip, drop.*
A moment later, her mouth was washed away by the tears as well.
"Wuwuwu." Without a mouth, she could only emit muffled whimpering sounds.
The little girl looked pitiful, and she must have been a lovely, cute girl in life.
Feeling that this scene was somewhat amusing, Li Daonian turned to grab more flour from the table so he could fix her mouth.
Before he could even turn back around, a handful of flour went *poof* right into his face.
"Spit, spit, spit, spit! Cough, cough, cough!"
Squinting his eyes, Li Daonian bent over, wiped the flour all over his face, and coughed. "You, you, what are you doing?!"
"Oh, sorry, sorry."
Xu Shuangning, holding the bag of flour, smiled apologetically.