Su Yubai’s tone was as usual. While speaking she drew clothes on the paper figures, and deliberately had her back to Ning Wang, but between the falling long hair, the boy still saw her neck dyed with a faint pink. He couldn’t help his shoulders stiffening, his heartbeat slightly accelerating.
“Can’t we use a puppet or paper figure as a substitute?” Ning Wang asked. He remembered Su Yubai had mentioned this method.
“The situation has changed. The god-wives and Taoist priests Su Shenghai invited can’t really be mediocre people who are completely incompetent. Such simple means must have been tried long ago.
“Puppets, paper figures, carvings, portraits… objects are ultimately only inferior substitutes. The best witchcraft materials are always living people.”
The girl dotted the pupils on the last paper figure and looked back at the boy. Her expression was unprecedentedly serious, her fair face as cold and stern as the sea.
“This ritual is not playing house. The slightest carelessness will fall into the abyss of tragic death, madness, and destruction. Without determination one cannot participate. I’ll remind you one last time. If you’re afraid—”
The boy suddenly smiled lightly. Su Yubai opened her eyes a bit in surprise. She had piled up a lot of vocabulary copied from manga and novels. Could it be that it didn’t sound scary enough?
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Ning Wang hurriedly put on a straight face. “I just suddenly felt… you and my older sister are a bit alike.”
“Ha?” Su Yubai was confused. The president’s older sister couldn’t be the type who crawled in the shadows like her, right? “Forget it. Once you’ve made up your mind, come over. First change clothes.”
Ning Wang nodded and walked forward, stopping in front of a long table covered with miscellaneous items.
The long table was cast from pure white marble. On the tabletop were laid several shirts and jackets, long pants and short socks, as well as thermos cups, backpacks, wallets, phones and other personal miscellaneous items.
These were all relics of Su Chuanshan. After his son died, Su Shenghai had properly preserved all his things in this basement, convenient for visiting distinguished guests to exorcise evil and ward off disaster.
—However, this was probably the first time an outsider intended to wear these clothes.
The girl picked two Dan’ao No. 2 High School uniforms and handed them over. There was a small hole broken on the left chest of the uniform, the school badge completely destroyed, and the color of the clothes was also a bit lighter than those of the two current students. It was probably repeatedly washed after being soaked in dirty blood.
This was the clothes Su Chuanshan was wearing when he had the car accident. The wiper rod somehow rushed into the glass, exactly piercing his heart, and the impact force also strangely twisted and broke his neck.
Ning Wang took the clothes. The feel was ice-cold as if touching the skin of the dead. He took a deep breath, took off his jacket, and changed into the school uniform.
He turned his head and glanced at the standing mirror beside him. The boy in the mirror had a nervous expression, shoulders slightly shrunk because of the too-small clothes, yet there was a faint excitement between his brows and eyes.
An ice-cold soft hand suddenly stuck to his cheek, forcibly turning his line of sight sixty degrees, meeting the girl’s pitch-black pupils with four eyes.
She had somehow changed into a short skirt, pure white pantyhose set off on her plump-lined thighs. There were several cracks on the cuffs and waist of the skirt. Those were the traces scraped open when Miss Red Lips fell from the building and hit the ground. Su Shenghai had spent heavy money to also buy the clothes “she” was wearing when she died.
“Smile,” Su Yubai said softly in her usual tone, then revealed a sweet smile completely unlike her. “Right now we are a couple in the passionate love period.”
“…Okay,” Ning Wang silently clenched his fists. Now was not the time to be shy. “Specifically speaking, what should a couple do?”
“Red Lips—mm, ‘I’ like brewing tea, often bringing newly bought teapots and tea leaves to play at your home, slowly drinking tea for an entire afternoon in the afternoon sunlight.
“It was also on such an afternoon that ‘I’ brought up the matter of marriage to ‘you.'”
The girl said word by word. Su Shenghai had given them quite a bit of information on Red Lips. Now she was thoroughly familiar with this girl’s preferences and experiences.
“So, I brew tea, we drink tea, then I propose to you, you agree, just like that. Understand?”
“Understand,” Ning Wang nodded, then raised a confusion with slight doubt. “But after encountering betrayal, Miss Red Lips should have long had no feelings for Su Chuanshan, right?
“Acting out a happy ending at this point, can it really make her satisfied?”
“From the beginning there’s no need to satisfy ‘Red Lips.’ What we need to do is make ‘Yu Haili’ happy… mm, saying it this way is a bit roundabout,” Su Yubai shook her head and began explaining the fourth law of witchcraft. “Change the way of saying it. What do you think ‘Red Lips’ actually is?”
“Ghost? Spirit?” Ning Wang answered tentatively. “The obsession the dead left in the world?”
“Wrong. After death is nothingness. What the dead can leave is only dry bones—and a story,” Su Yubai raised her hand and made an “X.” “Yu Haili’s life was long, but only two chapters were regarded as a story. Chapter one was sweet romance, chapter two was unforgivable betrayal.
“At the end of chapter two she committed suicide. The betrayer did not receive punishment and still shamelessly indulged in wine and women. This ending is established, but one can completely write interesting follow-ups.”
“Red Lips is chapter three?” Ning Wang vaguely understood the girl’s meaning.
“Correct. Her essence is the continuation of the story, the third part continued by nature picking up the pen.”
The girl nodded. The fourth law of witchcraft, story precedes existence. All witchcraft creations rely on a story.
“In other words, if we pick up the pen and modify chapter two, remove Su Chuanshan’s betrayal, she will have no reason to continue existing. Understand?”
“You’ve explained it very clearly.” Ning Wang answered seriously.
“…Don’t do meaningless flattery,” the girl’s gaze drifted a bit, pretending she was looking at the clock on the wall. “Red Lips still has twenty minutes to appear. Let’s first go over the script.”
“O-okay,” Ning Wang was a bit nervous. “I’ll do my best.”
“Acting that is passable is fine. The judgment conditions of the ritual won’t be too strict,” Su Yubai said seriously. “But if you act too outstandingly and get too into character, Red Lips might really take you as Su Chuanshan, transfer the target before the ritual succeeds, start clinging to you, and whisper to you.
“At that time don’t panic. As long as you don’t admit you are her lover, nothing will happen.
“In short, no matter what happens, you must turn a blind eye and just play the role of a boy immersed in happiness.”
* * *
A quarter of an hour later, Ning Wang left the basement according to Su Yubai’s request, borrowed the basement key from the old man, and silently waited for five minutes in the courtyard.
The time on the phone jumped to exactly 18:34. He took a deep breath, revealed a faint smile, and returned to the basement door.
The door was not locked. But he still casually inserted the key into the lock hole, twisted it to the right, then as if surprised opened his eyes wide.
“Dad, Mom, didn’t you say you had to work overtime?” He pushed the door open and entered. “The door isn’t locked—”
“Chuanshan, it’s me,” the girl’s sweet voice rang out. “The afternoon make-up class was temporarily canceled, so I ran over early.”
Ning Wang looked in the direction of the sound. Su Yubai’s slender figure entered his eyes.
The girl was behind a square table, holding a glass teapot decorated with green leaf patterns, pouring the just-brewed black tea into “her” favorite ceramic teacup.
Hearing his voice, she immediately put down the teapot, and together with Miss Red Lips standing beside her turned around, looking toward her lover with full smiles.
Ning Wang actually could only see one of her eyes, because Red Lips’ head was twisted one hundred twenty degrees, her blood-stained black hair hanging down and sticking to the girl’s other eye.
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