Smoke and Fire [GL] - Chapter 2

Yi An was carried by Si Yin up to the second floor, but when Si Yin let go, she didn’t say anything, and Yi An plopped right onto the floor.

“I… heck…” Yi An rubbed her butt and staggered to her feet, aggrieved, “Seriously, what are you doing taking me away so fast? Luo Yao and Tan Tan are still behind us!”

Si Yin crossed her arms, leaning against the wall with a cool expression.

Yi An hadn’t intended to listen to her explanation anyway. While rubbing her own butt, she took out the key she had managed to grab before being hauled away and went into the hallway to match it with the room numbers.

Halfway through opening a door, she suddenly had a crazy thought, or perhaps deliberately wanted to annoy Si Yin, and turned her head with a chuckle: “Si Yin~ You wouldn’t be planning to stay in the same room as me, would you~”

As expected, Si Yin’s expression instantly changed from “stupid mortal” to “are you an idiot?”

“Thanks for the thought, but I only love Luo Yao.” Yi An gave her a wink, then quickly retreated.

Having successfully thrown a massive taunt, Yi An’s mood instantly improved. She barely looked at the interior furnishings, happily plopped down on the bed, and waited for Luo Yao.

What kind of international joke was this? Her room would forever belong to the beautiful sister, thank you very much!

Sharing a room with Si Yin?

Yi An could only scoff twice: In her next life.

The room was dimly lit. She lay there, her consciousness starting to blur, when the door she’d left ajar was pushed open with a “creak.” A figure seemed to call her name faintly by her ear. Without thinking, she stuck to them: “Luo Yao, why were you so slow~”

But she waited a long time, and the other person didn’t reply.

“Yi An…” the person called out softly again.

Yi An’s brain couldn’t process it for a moment. Just as she was about to say something, a pair of soft, warm hands pressed down on her from behind without warning.

Yi An was jolted violently, snapping out of her semi-dreamlike state.

“What are you doing? You’re almost pressed up against the mirror.” In the dim light, Luo Yao’s eyebrows and eyes were close by, looking a little worried.

She hadn’t realized it until Luo Yao mentioned it. The mirror in this B&B was positioned directly opposite the bed—the kind where you could meet your own gaze just by opening your eyes.

“This B&B has some feng shui issues. Don’t worry, we’ll only be staying for two days,” Luo Yao said, noticing her thoughts, and spoke with an appeasing tone.

She took out a very exquisite long box from her luggage, pulled out an incense stick, and lowered her eyes to light it. It gave off a tranquil, sandalwood scent mixed with floral notes, exactly the same fragrance as the one on her body.

Yi An stared at her blankly. She always particularly loved watching Luo Yao light the calming incense, for some reason, it always made her think of a fairy from a myth.

“Sweet dreams.”

The fairy smiled at her and said.

Yi An was woken up by a sound of footsteps.

She wriggled a few times under the quilt, wrapping herself into a little silkworm cocoon, and mumbled drowsily: “Luo Yao… clock me in for the 8 AM class, I’m not going…”

“8 AM? It’s already 9 AM,” Luo Yao rubbed her hair and chuckled.

“…Hmm?” Yi An struggled to sit up, then checked her phone: 5:50 AM.

Yi An: “…”

W-well, it seemed she’d been tricked.

The tricked Yi An lay back down with a look of despair, only to unintentionally notice that Luo Yao was fully dressed, and it seemed to be the same black trench coat from yesterday.

…She couldn’t have stayed up the whole time, could she??

This thought inexplicably popped into Yi An’s mind.

And this thought reached its peak after she saw Si Yin and Tan Tan, because those two were completely listless. Tan Tan was frantically applying concealer to her dark circles.

“You three…” Yi An considered her words, “Did you pull an all-nighter gaming??”

Si Yin first paused, then slumped when she heard the second half of the sentence, her face full of black lines.

Perhaps the thought of a fairy like Luo Yao, who seemed to have stepped out of a myth, playing online games was just too much of a dimension-break.

Under the faintly lit sky of six in the morning, the four people hiked to Yunshan Village.

In fact, before this tidal surge arrived, Yunshan Village was a famous tourist spot in Cangzhou City—an isolated, ancient village known for the “Birthplace of the Sea God” gimmick.

As they entered the village, smoke was rising from a few small houses.

Yi An looked around and spotted two girls, about ten years old, not far away. She went up to greet them: “Hello, little sisters, where are the adults in your village?”

One of the girls flinched and hid behind the other.

Yi An thought to herself, Do I look that fierce? Then she saw Luo Yao, who had approached at some point, take out a handful of candies from her pocket, and smile with her eyes, saying, “I’ll do it.”

Yi An came to her senses and quickly stepped back, leaving the stage to her. After all, Luo Yao was a natural magnet for children; whether it was the teacher’s kids at school or the kids at the kindergarten next door, they all loved her.

“Hello there, my name is Luo Yao.” She slightly squatted down to be at their eye level, opening her palm to show the candies, “In exchange, could you tell me your names?”

One of the girls stared at the candy, dazed for a moment, and hesitantly said, “I, I’m called…”

“A-Xue!”

An old voice suddenly came from behind the group.

The two girls instantly closed their mouths, their eyes reluctantly moving away from the candy, and they said in unison, “Grandma Mi.”

—It was an old woman in her sixties or seventies, her completely white hair tied into a bun, wearing local ethnic bell hair ornaments. She lifted her wrinkled, drooping eyelids and looked at the four people without any emotion. Strangely, her gaze lingered on Luo Yao for an especially long time.

“Hello, elder. We are students from Baihua University. We came here to ask you a few questions.”

For some reason, Si Yin, who usually preferred to lie down whenever possible, cleared her throat and took the initiative to speak, and her tone was surprisingly polite and normal, making Yi An’s face a full “What the ***.”

“It’s about the tidal surge a few days ago; we’d like to know some details.” Si Yin shot a look at Yi An and continued, “May we come in?”

However, Grandma Mi did not look at Si Yin at all. She stared straight at Luo Yao and said in an old, hoarse voice, “The great flood drowns, the blue and white resent… You are very brave to come to Yunshan Village now.”

Yi An suddenly felt a chill down her spine.

—This was exactly what the B&B owner had said last night!

Luo Yao, however, was very calm. She just smiled faintly and said, “The line before ‘The great flood drowns, the blue and white resent’ is ‘Yin evil is summoned, human disaster emerges.'”

“Does everyone say this because everyone knows that Yin evil was summoned?”

Grandma Mi’s hunched body stiffened. She stared intently at her with her cloudy eyes.

Even though she didn’t understand what the two of them were talking about, Yi An instinctively felt the atmosphere was very tense. Just as she was thinking this won’t end with her telling us to scram, right? Grandma Mi suddenly moved aside.

“Please,” she said hoarsely.

“Yunshan Village has lived by fishing for generations, for over three hundred generations now. Our ancestors would worship the Sea God when they went out to sea, praying for calm winds and waves. Over time, worshipping the Sea God became the custom of Yunshan Village.”

Grandma Mi said this while lighting a few incense sticks and bowing low with her head down.

This was five minutes later, with the group sitting in the Yunshan Village sacrificial hall. Everything Grandma Mi was saying could be found on Baidu. Yi An watched her worship and felt something was off, subconsciously saying, “But what about this tidal surge? The Sea God didn’t protect you this time.”

This earned her a judging look from all five pairs of eyes.

Fortunately, Grandma Mi didn’t seem angry. She just glanced at her faintly, turned around, and inserted the incense sticks. “When the guardian star in the east is dim, one must never go out to sea, lest the Sea God be angered. A few boats failed to furl their sails and return to port that day, breaking the taboo.”

The four people quickly exchanged glances.

The unified thought was: Bullshit.

“Regarding what you said, we have a video that I think you might be interested in.” Luo Yao said, taking out her phone. Yi An held her breath, a little excited: she was about to unleash her killing move.

Two seconds later, the familiar opening narration rang out in the dilapidated little room: “Folks, what you are seeing now is the once-in-a-century biggest tidal surge…”

“…Turn back? Turn back from what…”

“Ahhhhhhh!!!”

The screaming stopped abruptly, and the room was dead silent.

Luo Yao said calmly, “Who this person is is not important. What’s important is the video he left behind before he died—in the center of the storm, there was a woman, correct?”

Although Yi An was very nervous, she also noticed that Luo Yao had said “woman.”

But she also clearly remembered that, up until now, not a single person online had been able to discern the gender from that grainy footage. Grandma Mi had also never mentioned whether the Sea God was male or female.

So, how did Luo Yao know?

“…They shouldn’t have angered the Sea God,” Grandma Mi tacitly acknowledged Luo Yao’s words, slowly turned around, and muttered, “The Sea God believes we are guilty, and so she brought down her punishment… Yin evil is summoned, human disaster emerges, human disaster emerges indeed…”

Then, as if she had forgotten the existence of Luo Yao and the others, she just kept repeating those same few phrases, continuously kowtowing before the old shrine.

“Um, Luo Yao, this…”

Yi An was a bit hesitant. They weren’t some intelligence agency, and there was no need to pressure the old woman like this. She was just about to say, “Maybe we should just drop it,” when Luo Yao next to her moved.

She stood next to Grandma Mi, dressed in her cinched black trench coat, with her long hair reaching her waist, gazing for a long time at the statue inside the shrine. Suddenly, she let out a soft laugh.

“…What are you laughing at?” The old woman stared straight at her.

“Didn’t you say the Sea God keeps you safe,” she looked down, overlooking the old woman, and said faintly, “—Isn’t there one extra stick of incense?”

At that moment, Yi An finally realized what was wrong!

Shen San Gui Si Gods get three, Ghosts get four. This means worshipping a god requires three sticks of incense, but worshipping a ghost requires four.

But now, the white smoke gently drifting up from the shrine was from exactly four sticks of incense.