Volume 2, Chapter 24 – Beggar

As evening approached and she went out again, Bai Xiang didn’t go to the Jobs Directorate.

This time it was just her and Ma Yue. First, she had Ma Yue drive the car to the intersection opposite No. 1 High, then got out ahead of time and stood outside the alley, studying it carefully.

Not many people noticed her, because this time she was wearing a baseball cap, her distinctive white hair tucked away under it.

The alley across from No. 1 High was called “Pear Tree Alley.” It was one of those fairly wide alleys. They said that back in the day this area had been very prosperous—first choice for all the village farmers nearby when they came into town to set up stalls.

Because it was close to the central district, and the alley itself was a shortcut, for people living in the south side who didn’t drive, this was the route they had to take.

And directly opposite the alley was No. 1 High. Every day when parents came to pick up their kids from school and saw the stalls, they’d casually buy some ingredients to take home and cook. Business had been unbelievably good.

But as the Circuit City kept developing, the urban villages were gradually swallowed and merged. Slowly, the number of stall owners dwindled.

By now, aside from a few people who still chose to come here to sell handicrafts, there weren’t many ground stalls inside the alley. Instead, a large number of storefronts had been sold off by the original owners and converted into street-facing service windows.

Marinated dishes, roasted meats, noodles, desserts—you could find everything here.

Deeper in, the area had become a destination for school fieldwork and research projects.

That wasn’t some random choice, either. The place really did have a lot of old tile-roofed houses with histories over a hundred years. Some hadn’t even had any modern renovations; there were still wells in the courtyard.

As far as she remembered, the first time Bai Xiang came to No. 1 High, on her first night boarding at the school, she’d gone out to fetch water and heard some girls in the corridor telling ghost stories.

“Have you heard the legend of Pear Tree Alley?”

“Huh? What legend?”

“It’s like… if someone gets in trouble and the teacher makes them stay really late, and they head home through the alley at that time, there’s a chance they’ll run into ‘being walled in by ghosts’!”

“‘Walled in by ghosts’? Isn’t that just when it’s too dark and you can’t tell directions? An alley can ‘wall you in by ghosts’ too?”

“Hehe… that’s exactly what makes it creepy~ I heard quite a few people have run into it. It’s when you’re walking here at night, watching the red lanterns on both sides go by. If your vision blurs for a second and you realize you’ve seen the scene ahead of you just a moment ago—that’s ‘being walled in by ghosts’! If you keep going, you’ll find that no matter how far you walk, both sides look the same, and you don’t see a single person. You can only hear your own footsteps. Super scary!”

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“What happens then?”

“Nothing much, supposedly. They say Teacher Gao ran into it once. According to what he said in class, if it really happens, you just have to keep your wits about you. Keep walking forward, don’t look around and don’t look back, and you’ll eventually get out.”

“And what if you do look back?”

“Then you pass out, probably. That’s what several of the stories say… But I don’t think it’s that simple. I heard something new last time—they said the ones who faint get swapped out…”

This was the kind of bedtime story that circulated in most schools at one point or another.

In any life, at any age and regardless of gender, people had an overly strong curiosity about the mysterious and unknown. It was no surprise such stories spread.

Bai Xiang had no intention of going deeper into the alley. She was here for Shenhuai Inn.

A month late.

Before this, the whole section had been cordoned off by the Inspectorate. They’d said they were investigating demonic aura pollution, and she hadn’t had any chance to get inside and look.

If she hadn’t come to No. 1 High today, then turned and seen that the fencing across the road had been taken down and the alley seemed lively again, she wouldn’t have thought to come here at all.

From what she remembered, Shenhuai Inn was right at the alley entrance, on the left. The storefront used dark-brown, large glass panels, and the sign above was a deep green, with the inn’s name written in big white characters.

Now there was no more fencing, but when she looked up, she saw that the green sign had been taken down and was leaning diagonally against the wall. Two renovation workers were squatting on the ground, apparently on a smoke break.

Tools and hammers were laid out beside them. The glass door on the left side of the shopfront had already been removed by them, and through the opening she could see the walls inside had been smashed up.

So it was changing hands and getting a full renovation.

It felt to Bai Xiang like this was the Inspectorate acting on the owners’ behalf.

After a moment’s thought, she walked toward the two chatting workers.

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“Excuse me,” she called them back to themselves. “Do you know what happened here?”

There were two workers, one older and one younger. The older one froze for a second when he saw her, while the younger one’s breathing suddenly grew quicker. Even his dark skin couldn’t hide the flush on his face.

In everyday life, Bai Xiang preferred casual clothes. Today she was in very ordinary blue jeans and white sneakers, with a plain white hoodie on top.

It was an outfit easy to move in, but she was standing and they were sitting. From that angle, her baseball cap couldn’t hide her face, and the younger worker recognized her at once.

Bai Xiang raised a finger to her lips. The young worker nodded hard, glanced around, and felt a swell of pride.

“You’re that…?” The older worker looked at her, thoughtful, then said, “You’ve come late. This family already fell prey to demon folk. They’re all dead. Even the shop’s going to be confiscated.”

“All dead.” Bai Xiang frowned. “So not a single relative survived?”

“They were outsiders to begin with… What relatives would they have here?” the old worker sighed. “Their family name was Shen. Years back they fled to here from outside the Circuit City. When they opened this place there wasn’t even a hospital around here yet. Truly a pity, a pity—heaven’s got no eyes…”

“Then do you know how they died?” Bai Xiang pressed. “Any details. If you know them, please tell me everything.”

Facing someone older, she instinctively used polite address. She hadn’t expected that to scare the old worker out of his wits. He waved his hands again and again, saying he couldn’t accept it, and nervously glanced toward the street. Only when he confirmed no one had heard did he relax.

“Miss, don’t go cursing Old Jia’s years of life!”

He shifted from sitting to kneeling in one smooth motion, as if he’d practiced it countless times.

“If those people see you treating Old Jia like this, Old Jia might not live long afterwards!”

“Master Jia!”

The young worker looked stunned too. He stared at Old Jia’s knees, then at the girl in front of them, and his expression went flat. The happy grin he’d had was gone.

Seeing this, Bai Xiang could only speed things up—finish asking as fast as possible, then get off the steps so she wouldn’t cause them more trouble.

According to what Old Jia told her, the owner of Shenhuai Inn was surnamed Shen. They’d originally fled from between Chuanyun Circuit and Daze Circuit in Qizhou. There were no elders in the family; rumor had it they’d been killed by demons on the road.

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The family of three—the couple chose to settle here and opened an inn.

Their child was sent to study at a nearby school. When his future didn’t turn out so well, he simply came back to help with the inn.

They all died inside the inn. Died in the bedroom they lived in. Died in the bed they rested on.

The Inspectorate hadn’t released the case details, but Old Jia said he’d seen a lot of people in black carrying things out.

Cabinets, beds, all kinds of furniture… Even with sheets over them, you could still see the dark-brown bloodstains on the corners.

Later they brought his crew in to repaint the place. As soon as he went in, he smelled heavy blood, and he could see plenty of bloodstains on the white walls and floor.

And that was after the inspectors had already cleaned the scene.

He didn’t dare imagine what it would’ve looked like before cleaning.

This did sound a lot like Shenli’s way of doing things…

Bai Xiang thought.

The remnants of Demon-Immortal Dao still had a Demon Pool in their hands, one with wide-range spread and pollution capability. No wonder Zhang Daoming didn’t dare make the information public.

If Old Jia hadn’t decided she was someone with backing too, he probably wouldn’t have dared say any of this.

She stood where she was for a moment, then turned her head to look into the alley.

A line of old awnings ran along the entrance. These had some years on them; they’d once been used to shield vendors from wind and rain. Now they were ragged and half-broken, converted into a temporary bike shed.

At one end of the shed sat an auntie with an armband, eating an apple while she fanned herself.

What Bai Xiang was looking at was the outer end.

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There, an old beggar sat huddled in the corner where the wall met the bike shed’s railing, hugging a long wooden stick. His face was sallow and gaunt, his hair and beard completely white. In front of him sat an empty bowl, with only a few scattered square-holed copper coins inside.

“Old sir.”

Bai Xiang walked over and looked down at the beggar from above. “You’ve been staring at me since just now, haven’t you?”

“Ah…?”

The old beggar opened his mouth, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, and lifted his bleary eyes toward Bai Xiang. “Staring at you what?”

Bai Xiang said nothing. She just quietly held his gaze.

The beggar’s expression grew increasingly serious.

In his vision, the air around Bai Xiang was starting to twist and darken.

When he focused on her, a pair of golden eyes would surface in the darkness behind her.

But when he tried to look carefully at the scene around her, he saw no twisting shadows, no golden eyes. None of it existed. It was nothing but his hallucination.

Snapping back to himself, he saw only Bai Xiang’s back as she walked away.

Then he looked at the bowl in front of him. Inside, there was now a five-yuan note and three square-holed copper coins.

“That youngster… something else…”

The old beggar muttered under his breath and somehow produced a brand-new phone from who-knows-where.

“Trash assignment from Little Peach.”

“They call this level ‘newbie’?”