Xu Qingming was also greatly alarmed. Remembering that there had already been a problem when the incense was lit, he could not help frowning as he stared fixedly at Xu Wangchuan.
“What is going on? What did you do to offend the deity?”
The virgin boy who served the deity was chosen and approved by the deity himself. Moreover, Xu Wangchuan’s relationship with the God of Joy was even closer. If Xu Wangchuan had not done something behind everyone’s backs to anger the deity, there was absolutely no reason for such a mishap to occur today.
Xu Wangchuan’s lips moved, but because he felt guilty, he did not dare defend himself.
Seeing how guilty his adopted son looked, Xu Qingming suppressed his anger and glared coldly at him.
Seeing this, the chief officiant could only have Xu Wangchuan step aside and let Xu Muchan complete the final part of the deity-worshiping ritual alone.
After the ritual ended, Xu Qingming called Xu Wangchuan into the study to talk. Xu Muchan could not hear what they discussed, but it was obvious that Xu Qingming was extremely angry. When Xu Wangchuan came out, he looked completely dejected, like an eggplant beaten down by frost.
Xu Qingming, meanwhile, turned around and spoke to Xu Muchan in a kindly tone.
“Muchan, since the deity has taken a liking to you, from now on, I’ll temporarily leave the matter of worshiping the deity every five days to you.”
The deity those people had invited was his older brother. Thinking that he could now openly worship his brother, Xu Muchan naturally agreed.
Standing to the side, Xu Wangchuan quickly raised his head and shot him a cold, sinister look.
After the ritual, Xu Muchan returned to school as usual.
The moment Wei Yao saw him, he came over and kicked the leg of his chair from across the aisle.
“Hey, why haven’t you come for two days? You were only locked in the equipment room for a little while, and it scared you so badly that you had to take time off to rest?”
Xu Muchan originally did not want to bother with him, but then remembered that this guy was rather troublesome, so he still answered, “Something came up at home.”
Wei Yao had absolutely no sense of boundaries and leaned his head over again.
“What happened?”
This time, Xu Muchan really ignored him. He turned around, took out his voice recorder, and put on his earphones.
Wei Yao clicked his tongue and turned away, bored. He pulled out his textbook and began the morning reading session.
But after reading for a while, sleepiness overcame him again. He held the textbook upright in front of his face as a shield, then lay down on the desk and fell asleep.
It was still morning reading time. Xu Muchan wore his earphones and listened to the textbook while quietly reciting the material.
But as he listened, the poems playing through his earphones suddenly became mixed with a little static.
The noise was like an echo, hidden within the mechanical female voice reciting the poems. It was extremely indistinct, yet somehow had a very strong presence.
Xu Muchan’s recitation paused. He tilted his head and listened carefully.
The mechanical female voice was reciting:
“Moreover, whether one’s life is long or short follows the transformations of nature, and ultimately everything must come to an end. As the ancients said: ‘Life and death are matters of great importance.’…”
Another voice was also murmuring:
“Little brother, little brother, come play, play, play, play, play…”
Like an audio recording stuck in place, the final word kept repeating and stretching out, twisting into strange white noise.
Xu Muchan frowned and removed his earphones.
Yet once the sound of the poetry recitation disappeared, the murmuring voice became even clearer, as though it were coming from his right.
His right?
Xu Muchan turned his face slightly toward Wei Yao’s direction, but he did not hear Wei Yao’s voice.
During morning reading, the classroom was filled with the sounds of students reading at various volumes, which interfered somewhat with Xu Muchan’s hearing. He carefully distinguished the sounds for a moment before finally confirming that the voice was indeed coming from Wei Yao’s seat.
And he had heard it before.
It had only been some indistinct muttering then, more like white noise. But now, those vague murmurs had suddenly become clear enough for him to understand what they were saying.
Judging from what Xu Muchan had heard, he had a feeling this was not a good thing.
Thinking that Wei Yao had previously testified on his behalf to the homeroom teacher and saved him quite a bit of trouble, Xu Muchan decided he could warn Wei Yao after class.
Whether Wei Yao believed him or not was no longer his concern.
Just as he was about to put his earphones back on, a loud crash suddenly came from beside him.
Wei Yao suddenly shot up from his seat. The books and miscellaneous items on his desk, along with the chair beneath him, were all knocked onto the floor.
Wei Yao’s expression was terrified, his eyes staring blankly ahead without focusing.
The noisy classroom suddenly fell silent, then quickly became noisy again.
Wen Dajiang, sitting diagonally in front of him, crumpled a piece of paper into a ball and threw it at Wei Yao, grinning.
“Old Wei, did sleeping make you stupid?”
The paper ball snapped Wei Yao awake. As soon as his eyes focused, he saw Wen Dajiang’s irritatingly smug grin.
He immediately became furious.
“Wen Dajiang, are you looking for a beating?!”
Wen Dajiang wore an expression that seemed to say, How can you bite Lu Dongbin and fail to recognize a good person?
“Class hasn’t ended yet. Don’t yell like that. Be careful or you’ll get Teacher Wan over here.”
Only then did Wei Yao realize that morning reading was still in progress.
He hurriedly picked up the things scattered on the floor and righted his chair before sitting back down.
The joking smile he had shared with Wen Dajiang earlier disappeared, and his face turned deathly pale.
He had actually had that dream again.
Remembering what had happened in the dream, Wei Yao felt his scalp and back tighten repeatedly.
Fortunately, the classroom was full of people. He looked around and gained some sense of security before gradually relaxing again.
But this time, he did not dare fall asleep anymore. He could only casually open his Chinese textbook and mechanically begin reading.
After morning reading, quite a few students went to eat breakfast.
Xu Muchan had already eaten at home, so he remained in his seat without moving.
Wei Yao, however, had no appetite after being frightened by the nightmare. Listlessly, he lay on his desk with his face resting on his arms, facing Xu Muchan’s direction.
Just then, Xu Muchan happened to turn his head.
Wei Yao met his unfocused eyes and suddenly sat upright, turning his face away.
But he quickly realized that the student sitting beside him was a little blind kid who could not see anything.
So he turned back around confidently and stared at Xu Muchan.
To his surprise, Xu Muchan was still facing his direction, completely motionless.
Wei Yao became nervous again. He coughed and struck first.
“You got something to say?”
Xu Muchan said, “For your safety, you’d better find someone to take a look. The things following you seem to be getting worse…”
Wei Yao: ???
He burst out laughing and leaned his upper body across the aisle toward Xu Muchan.
“Little blind guy, trying to scare me with the same trick again?”
He still remembered how this little blind guy had used the same trick to frighten him once in the equipment room.
Of course, Young Master Wei would never admit that he really had been a little frightened at the time.
He leaned back against his chair, looking smug.
“Trying to scare your Brother Yao? You’re still too green.”
Xu Muchan could not be bothered to listen to his endless chatter, so he went straight for Young Master Wei’s weak spot.
“You’ve been having nightmares for several days, haven’t you? If you don’t take it seriously yourself, it’ll be too late even for the gods to save you.”
After saying this, he turned his head, put his earphones back on, and continued listening to the textbook.
Wei Yao had helped him once, and he had helped Wei Yao once.
They were even now.
Wei Yao lowered his crossed leg and frowned as he studied Xu Muchan.
Xu Muchan wore his earphones and listened with complete concentration. His expression was calm, and he was utterly unaware that he had just thrown a bomb that had left Young Master Wei shaken to the core.
Three minutes later, Wei Yao could no longer sit still. He dragged his chair over to Xu Muchan’s desk, removed his earphones, and asked with his thick brows knitted together,
“How did you know I was having nightmares? And before, you mentioned my brother… How did you know I used to have a brother?”
His gaze was like an X-ray, as if he wanted to scan Xu Muchan from head to toe.
Xu Muchan held out his hand for his earphones to be returned and calmly dropped another bombshell.
“I heard it. And you don’t have just one older brother. You should have five.”
Chapter 15
Wei Yao was indeed stunned.
He widened his eyes and stared at Xu Muchan for a while before suddenly laughing.
“There has to be a limit to making up stories, right? How could my parents possibly have had five children before me? Do you think family planning was just for show?”
Seeing that he did not believe him, Xu Muchan said nothing more.
Before putting his earphones back on, he only added one sentence:
“No matter what they ask you to do, you’d better not respond.”
Some things that were not human would be able to see you once you responded to them.
Wei Yao clearly did not take Xu Muchan’s words too seriously.
Before Xu Muchan mentioned “five older brothers,” he had actually been somewhat skeptical of what Xu Muchan said.
But after that, he felt that Xu Muchan was probably just making up stories to fool him.
Having children was not like giving birth to a litter. His mother would have to be crazy to give birth to six children.
If his older brother had not died young, there might not even have been a him afterward.
When Wei Yao went home from school that evening, he even told his parents about it as a joke.
“That little blind guy actually tried to scare me. I’ll scare him back at school tomorrow.”
As he spoke, he buried his head in his late-night snack, failing to notice that his parents’ expressions had changed slightly.
The couple exchanged a glance, their expressions somewhat solemn.
But when their son raised his head, they simultaneously adjusted their expressions.
Bai Shanshan looked at her son affectionately and said with a smile, “Looks like you really like this new classmate. You two get along pretty well?”
Their son was cheerful and had plenty of friends. But although he was usually surrounded by people, there were actually very few whom he truly considered friends and would mention to his parents.
Aside from Wen Dajiang and the other childhood friends he had grown up with, there was now the new transfer student in his class.
Wei Yao scratched his face.
“I wouldn’t say I really like him. I just think he’s pretty interesting.”
Bai Shanshan saw through him but did not say so. She poured him a glass of milk and continued chatting casually.
“If you two weren’t close, why would you tell him about things at home? Even Dajiang doesn’t know that you used to have an older brother.”
His older brother, who had died young, was not a taboo topic in the Wei family.
Especially when Wei Yao had been young and hot-blooded. Before high school, he had done everything exciting he could think of, including street racing and fighting, and had nearly gotten into serious trouble several times.
Mrs. Bai was an extremely gentle mother. She never used physical punishment to discipline her son, but whenever he did dangerous things, she would bring up her eldest son who had died young, hoping Wei Yao would think of his parents before doing anything reckless.
She did not want to experience the pain of losing a child a second time.
After hearing this so many times, Wei Yao gradually took it to heart. He really had become much more well-behaved than before and had not gotten into trouble again.
Speaking of this, Wei Yao also found it somewhat strange.
“I think it’s weird too. I never told him anything about Big Brother. Yet that day in the equipment room, he suddenly said there was someone beside me and even said it was my brother. And then there was today. I fell asleep during morning reading and had a nightmare. He probably wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to scare me, so he said it again. But that’s way too ridiculous. Who’d believe him? He probably just made it up and happened to get lucky.”
Wei Yao gulped down a large glass of milk, wiped his mouth, and prepared to go back to his room to sleep.
“I’m going to bed. Good night, Mom and Dad.”