After leaving the room, Xu Wangchuan hurriedly went looking for Xu Qingming and his wife.
The couple was talking in the small living room. When they saw Xu Wangchuan approaching, they tacitly stopped.
Xu Zhifei looked at Xu Wangchuan, whose forehead was covered in sweat and whose face was deathly pale, and asked with concern, “What’s wrong? What happened that has you in such a panic?”
Xu Wangchuan’s lips trembled.
After a long while, he finally spoke.
“He came out again.”
He did not dare mention the God of Joy’s name and only dared to refer to Him as “He.”
After nervously looking around, he continued, “I saw Him in Xu Muchan’s room just now.”
Xu Zhifei frowned and exchanged a glance with her husband.
She pulled the terrified adopted son down onto the sofa, patted the back of his hand reassuringly, and asked gently, “Are you sure? Could you have mistaken it? Didn’t the master say that He normally wouldn’t manifest? Even if He did, it would only be after midnight…”
Xu Wangchuan kept shaking his head.
The God of Joy appearing at a time when He should not have clearly given him a tremendous fright.
He seemed somewhat dazed, and his ability to organize his thoughts had deteriorated severely. He muttered incoherently, “I saw Him. His head was hidden inside Xu Muchan’s schoolbag…”
At the mention of Xu Muchan, Xu Wangchuan suddenly seemed to have grabbed onto a lifeline.
He said hopefully, “Could He have gone to find Xu Muchan?”
As long as He was not here for him, that would be fine.
“Wangchuan!”
Xu Qingming spoke sternly from the side.
Frowning, he looked at him disapprovingly.
“I heard from your homeroom teacher that your exam rankings have dropped recently, and you often zone out in class. Have you not been resting well at night and started hallucinating?”
The fear on Xu Wangchuan’s face froze.
He stared blankly at Xu Qingming.
After a long while, he said with difficulty, “It wasn’t a hallucination… It really was the God of—”
Seeing that he was actually so panicked that he was about to utter the God of Joy’s name, Xu Qingming interrupted him again in a deep voice.
“If it wasn’t a hallucination, then He deliberately manifested Himself.”
“Could Xu Muchan’s return have affected you? Forget about your exam results. You haven’t been very attentive with your offerings and worship lately either. Perhaps He is displeased and has given you a warning.”
Xu Wangchuan’s eyes trembled.
His teeth clenched tightly together.
Xu Qingming was not wrong.
Recently, he really had not been very attentive with his worship and offerings.
Ever since he had been adopted by Xu Qingming and his wife at the age of seven and brought back to this villa, the couple had taken him to worship a certain statue of a god.
Until he was fifteen, Xu Wangchuan had remained ignorant about it. He had only thought that his adoptive parents were rather superstitious because of their business.
After all, many businesspeople were somewhat superstitious. Even if they did not enshrine statues of gods at home, they would donate large sums of money to temples or spend huge amounts of money hiring masters to inspect their feng shui.
The only thing that had made him feel strange was that the statue worshiped by his family was different from the statues of gods he normally knew.
Ordinary households usually placed their shrines in the main position of the living room, where they could be seen immediately upon entering.
Wealthier families might even set aside a separate, quiet, clean room specifically for worship and offerings.
But the Xu family’s shrine hall was located on the third underground floor.
The entire third basement contained nothing except a redwood shrine more than two meters tall.
In front of the shrine was an altar table for incense, candles, and offerings. A statue of roughly one meter in height stood behind the table, completely covered from head to toe by a piece of red cloth.
When Xu Wangchuan was young, he had once curiously asked his adoptive mother why they covered the statue.
His adoptive mother had told him that it was because the deity they worshiped was a true god, and ordinary mortals in the flesh were not allowed to look directly at a god.
That would be a great act of disrespect.
She had also solemnly warned Xu Wangchuan that he absolutely must not touch the red cloth covering the statue.
Xu Wangchuan had wanted to ask more, but his adoptive mother refused to say anything else. She only told him that he would naturally understand once he grew up.
It was not until he was fifteen that Xu Wangchuan learned that the god worshiped by the Xu family was the God of Joy.
He had never heard of the God of Joy before.
Later, out of curiosity, he searched for information about the God of Joy, only to discover that the God of Joy described online was vastly different from the God of Joy worshiped by his family.
They could almost not be considered the same thing.
Online sources say that the God of Joy is a term from traditional Chinese Five Elements theory, appearing in the systems of Bazi astrology and Qimen Dunjia. It is a technical term in Bazi astrology.
There is also a legend that during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, there was a Huizhou merchant named Cheng Shangfu. He once gave a woman named Aiji to Ge Cheng. Ge Cheng firmly refused to sleep with Aiji. Ten days later, after finding out where she lived, he prepared a dowry and sent her back to her family, then arranged a suitable marriage for her.
Aiji did not understand. A Taoist nun comforted her, saying, “Ge Cheng is not a human. He is a god.”
Later, when Aiji got married, Ge Cheng even sent two lanterns as a wedding gift to add to the joy. Afterward, Aiji gave birth to a pair of twins, a boy and a girl. From then on, every Spring Festival or Lantern Festival, she would bring a group of children to pay respects to the God of Joy.
Later, whenever people held wedding celebrations, many of them would go buy lanterns and worship Ge Xian.
Worship him as a living person; worship his grave after his death.
Thus, Ge Cheng became the God of Joy.
But the God of Joy worshiped by the Xu family was clearly unrelated to any of these legends. Sometimes, Xu Wangchuan even secretly suspected that it was actually some kind of evil deity, similar to the little ghosts or Black Bodhisattvas worshiped in Southeast Asia.
Yet his adoptive parents were extremely certain that the God of Joy would bless the Xu family with prosperity, fortune, and freedom from disasters and misfortune, so they had to worship devoutly every five days.
When Xu Wangchuan was young, the husband and wife would take him to worship together. Now that Xu Wangchuan had grown up, the duty of worshiping the God of Joy every fifth day had been completely handed over to him.
Xu Wangchuan had worshiped the god ever since he was a child and had long since become accustomed to it. He never felt that there was anything wrong with worshiping alone.
But two months ago, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month, after he had gone to the basement as usual to worship the God of Joy, the corner of his eye caught sight of a pair of hands slowly lifting the red cloth covering the deity’s statue as he was leaving.
Those hands were as white as A4 paper. The fingers were long and curved, with four or five joints. They had clearly gone beyond the boundaries of what was human.
Xu Wangchuan had been badly startled at the time and whipped around, only to see the red cloth properly covering the statue’s head.
For some unknown reason, however, the red cloth had slipped backward slightly, exposing the area below the chest. From the front, it looked almost like a red bridal veil.
At the time, Xu Wangchuan thought he had hallucinated because he had stayed up too late and had not gotten enough sleep. He did not pay much attention to it. He stepped forward, pulled the fallen red cloth back into place, and left.
Originally, this had been nothing more than an insignificant incident. But after Xu Wangchuan dreamed of those strange hands lifting the red cloth several nights in a row, and even heard a voice calling his name from the basement when he got up in the middle of the night, the situation began to feel different.
Terrified, he told his adoptive parents about what had happened in the basement and about his recurring nightmares. His adoptive parents suspected that he had offended the God of Joy, so they even invited a master to come take a look.
The master, however, reassured him at the time, saying that the God of Joy was very pleased with him and had therefore deliberately manifested before him.
Seeing that Xu Wangchuan was still frightened, the master added that gods and mortals did not communicate with each other. The God of Joy would only manifest after midnight, so as long as Xu Wangchuan went to sleep before midnight, he could avoid the deity.
Even if he accidentally encountered it, he did not need to be afraid. He simply had to avoid looking at it, avoid listening, and not respond. If he pretended that everything was normal, the god would not turn its attention toward him.
After that, Xu Wangchuan followed the master’s instructions and went to bed early every night. Sure enough, he stopped having nightmares.
Sometimes, he would still hear the sound of someone calling from the basement after waking in the middle of the night. Occasionally, there would even be strange dragging footsteps in the hallway outside his door. But he never investigated. Everything remained peaceful until now.
Until today, when he suddenly saw the God of Joy covered with red cloth inside Xu Muchan’s bag.
It was as though that eerie voice was ringing in his ears again. Xu Wangchuan’s body shuddered, but when he met his adoptive father’s stern gaze, he ultimately did not continue speaking. Instead, he lowered his head obediently and said, “Maybe I’ve been under a lot of pressure from my studies lately. I really have been a little anxious and haven’t been sleeping well, so I must have been careless while worshiping. Next time, I’ll apologize to Him when I worship. I won’t make the same mistake again.”
Xu Qingming nodded in satisfaction when he heard this, and his voice softened considerably. “It’s nothing serious. The deity protects the home and keeps the household safe. It’s not some ghost or evil spirit. Don’t make such a fuss.”
Xu Wangchuan forced a smile and said, “I understand, Dad. I’ll go back to my room, wash my face, and calm down.”
Xu Qingming watched his back disappear into the distance. The false smile on his face immediately faded. His brows drew tightly together as he turned and whispered to Xu Zhifei, “Looking at Wangchuan’s reaction, he was clearly frightened badly. It doesn’t look like he was hallucinating.”
“Could it be because Muchan has come back, and He…?”
Xu Qingming clearly had some reservations and did not finish the sentence.
Xu Zhifei hesitated. “So many years have passed… And besides, don’t we have Wangchuan now? Muchan doesn’t even need to worship the god. How could he have any effect?”
Xu Qingming’s eyes flickered. He sighed and said, “I’m just worried that this child Muchan was born to be a bane to our Xu family. Ever since he came out of the womb, he was different from ordinary children. Talking to himself at home all the time was one thing, but later he even ran to the shrine and lifted the red cloth… If he hadn’t lifted that red cloth, how could the business have suddenly run into trouble?”
“Later, sending him away was something we had no choice but to do. If the master hadn’t said that I would never have any more children in this lifetime, I wouldn’t have been unwilling to entrust such a huge family business to an outsider, and I wouldn’t have thought of bringing him back.”
Xu Zhifei gave him an annoyed look and said unhappily, “He isn’t your flesh and blood, of course you don’t feel sorry for him. You only remember that the business plummeted after Muchan lifted the red cloth. Why don’t you remember that we also had Muchan to thank for the good business we had before?”
When the past was brought up, Xu Qingming’s expression became unnatural for a moment. In the end, he did not argue any further with his sulking wife. Instead, he said, “I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with Muchan coming back. Maybe Wangchuan simply wasn’t sincere enough when he worshiped the god, and that’s why he went through this. Once he goes and apologizes, it should be fine.”
Seeing that he had taken the initiative to back down, Xu Zhifei did not say anything more.
Although the husband and wife were sitting on the same sofa, each of them was weighed down by a multitude of worries.
At eight o’clock, Xu Wangchuan came knocking on the door and said that they were about to leave, telling Xu Muchan to get ready.
Xu Muchan opened the door and let him in, then turned around and rummaged through the wardrobe, preparing to change clothes.
Xu Zhifei had prepared quite a lot of clothes for him. The wardrobe felt packed when he reached inside, and all the garments were made of fine, pleasant-feeling fabrics. However, since Xu Muchan could not see, he naturally had no way to choose. Fortunately, Xu Zhifei had taken his blindness into consideration and thoughtfully paired the clothes and pants into matching sets before hanging them up, making them convenient to take.
Xu Muchan casually took out one set and asked Xu Wangchuan, “Is this one okay?”
Xu Wangchuan said it was fine, so Xu Muchan went to the bathroom to change.
When he came back out after changing, Xu Wangchuan’s eyes flickered.
They say that clothes make the man, and the saddle makes the horse. The timid country boy had transformed after putting on designer clothing, unexpectedly taking on some of the dignified bearing of a young master of the Xu family.
Xu Wangchuan’s gaze lingered over the boy’s exceptionally handsome facial features. He was rather unwilling to admit that Xu Muchan had a very attractive face.
Blood was blood, after all. Xu Zhifei was a beauty, while Xu Qingming had a dignified and refined appearance. Xu Muchan had inherited all the best features of both parents, surpassing them both.
He was tall and slender, appearing to be around 180 centimeters. His skin was snow-white and delicate, his brows and eyes beautiful, and the lines of his features were even more three-dimensional and refined than Xu Zhifei’s. Combined with his untrimmed black hair reaching his shoulders, someone who did not know him might even mistake him for a girl at first glance.
However, a pair of lifeless, hollow blind eyes greatly reduced the impact of his appearance. Perhaps because he could not see, Xu Muchan always carried himself timidly and timidly, making him seem excessively honest and far too easy to bully.
The corners of Xu Wangchuan’s lips lifted slightly. He did not remind him that his new clothes should be paired with more suitable shoes. Instead, he reached out, placed a hand on his shoulder, and pushed him toward the door.
“This outfit really suits you. Let’s go. Mom and Dad are already waiting in the garage.”