There was one more thing I needed to do, which was to burn a few sheets of ghost money as a sign of respect to the deceased. This was a rule that had been passed down in the Song family, and it had to be followed.

Dali didn’t like the sound of that at all. He kept pestering us to leave.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “What if that ghost comes back to haunt us?”

“You know,” said Huang Xiaotao, intent on teasing Dali, “ghosts love people like you the most. Miss Xia Mo used to be a very pretty girl when she was alive. I guess you and her would be the perfect match!”

Huang Xiaotao and I walked into the building while Dali was a few steps behind us. He stopped and hesitated for a while, but quickly shouted for us to wait for him and followed us in.

Once we reached the third floor, we all heard a sound that creeped us all out. Dali gripped my arms instantly. Even Huang Xiaotao looked a bit pale.

“What is that, dude?”

“You know,” I said, “I think ghosts aren’t half as scary as humans are.”

“That’s deep, dude,” said Dali. “But I’m still scared…”

“There’s a Jay Chou song that perfectly describes a man like you, Dali,” said Huang Xiaotao.

“What song?” asked Dali.

“What Kind of Man!” answered Huang Xiaotao, who then chortled.

We soon reached the music room. The white curtains at the windows fluttered in the wind, casting shadows on the piano that was a witness to both passionate love and intense hate. The atmosphere was extremely gloomy. The sound that we heard just now was probably the wind blowing at the piano lid, causing it to fall.

I was about to go inside, but Dali held on to my arms tightly and refused to let me go.

“Dude, let’s just leave,” he said. “If the piano suddenly starts playing, we’re doomed.”

“It’s all just a rumor,” I reassured him.

“But that night the two girls saw it with their own eyes…”

I pointed at the four ceiling fans above our heads. Although I didn’t climb up there to examine them closely, I had a pretty good idea as to how Deng Chao made the piano wires fly around the room.

“Deng Chao just bought some piano wires, cut them into various lengths, and tied them to the fan blades. He then turned on the fan and bingo! You’ve got flying piano wires that fill the whole room!”

“Shit, now that you explained it to me, it sounds so simple I can’t I believe I hadn’t thought of it!”

I told both of them they could wait at the door if they were too scared to come inside. I then walked to the front of the piano, and soon after, the two followed me there too.

I lit up the ghost money in my hand and recited the Reincarnation Mantra, hoping that it would soothe Miss Xia Mo’s miserable soul. The ghost money slowly burned and turned to ashes, then a cold breeze carried the ashes away.

Suddenly, I heard Huang Xiaotao gasp. I turned around and saw Dali collapsed onto the ground, foaming at the mouth and convulsing. I was taken aback but quickly went down on my knees to help him. After pressing on his chest for a while, Dali suddenly opened his eyes and sat straight up.

“Dali,” I said. “Is everything all right?”

I suddenly found his expressions strange, and Huang Xiaotao probably did too, because we both simultaneously backed away from Dali.

“Why would he do that to me?” asked Dali, but his voice sounded more like a woman than a man. “I loved him so much, he was everything to me! I gave him all I had! Why did he kill me? I’ve been waiting for him here for so long!”

Both Huang Xiaotao and I were stupefied. We hadn’t expected anything like this to happen.

“Miss Xia Mo,” I said, “that’s not how love works. Just because you gave him everything you had doesn’t mean that he can give you back just as much.”

Wang Dali suddenly tripped on his own feet and fell to the ground.

“But I love him!” he cried. “I love him with all my heart! Yet he told me that he was stressed and unhappy, and that he felt miserable when he was with me! He even killed me and dismembered my body and stuffed me into the piano! All I wanted was true love! Why can’t I have it? Why is this world so unfair?”

“He was suffering because you gave him too much,” I said. “So much that he felt trapped.”

Dali glared at me and gritted his teeth with anger.

“So you’re just like him!” he said. “You men are all evil! I’m going to kill every last one of you!”

I froze in shock for a few seconds and broke out in cold sweat. I suspected that Dali had listened to the story of the ghost in the white dress too much, and coupled with the special environment of the music room, he temporarily lost his mind and forgotten his real identity, then believed himself to be the girl who died in this room years ago.

This kind of phenomenon had happened before. Years ago, Grandpa encountered such a case himself. It was on the eve of Tomb-Sweeping Day, and a farmer’s widow was cleaning her late husband’s grave when she was suddenly possessed by her dead husband and violently dragged a neighbor of theirs to the police station, claiming that it was this neighbor who had pushed the dead husband down a river and killed him. After some investigation, it was found that the widow and the neighbor had an extramarital affair with each other and they both worked together to kill the dead husband. The widow likely always felt guilty and shameful for her deed, so all the suppressed emotions exploded when she was cleaning her dead husband’s grave and became ‘possessed.’

Usually, when someone was under this condition, they would lose all reasoning. It was very likely that they might seriously injure or even kill someone.

But then Huang Xiaotao slowly inched towards Dali.

“Don’t go near him!” I whispered.

Strangely enough, however, Dali did not react to her approach. As Huang Xiaotao moved closer and closer to him, she reached out her arms and held Dali in her bosom.

“Poor girl, I know how much pain you must’ve gone through,” she comforted. “Your life has been tough since you were little, but you finally found a man who loved you, so you held onto him tightly, afraid that you’d lose him too. But even he betrayed you in the end. What a tragic, tragic life!”

Streams of tears fell from Huang Xiaotao’s eyes.

“Don’t be sad,” she said, patting Dali’s back. “That bastard is dead now, so you must move on to your next life. Go find a warm and happy family to be born into where you’ll find true love and friendship. Remember this: we women must always remain strong and keep our heads clear. If this guy turns out to be useless, then just move on and find a new one! You might have to kiss a bunch of frogs before you meet the real prince, you see.”

“But I can’t forget him!” said Dali, now sobbing.

“He’s a bastard and a moron!” said Huang Xiaotao. “You’re way out of his league! You’re smart and beautiful and gentle; you’re the most popular girl on campus. You’ve been through enough; it’s time for you to move on and meet the right man for you!”

Dali’s sobs turned to bitter wailing. He wept and wept, then suddenly the look in his eyes changed, and he fainted.

Huang Xiaotao gently put Dali down onto the floor, then wiped his tears.

“I wasn’t bad at all, was I?” she asked with pride on her face.

“What?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “Was that all an act?”

“It’s much more convincing with tears, after all,” she said, wiping the tears dry. I was seriously impressed with her ability to turn her tears on and off at will.

“You’re really bad at this, you know?” she added. “Did you really think that reasoning with someone who’s so overcome with emotions would help?”

“You’ve got a point!” I said, nodding humbly.

At that moment Dali suddenly drew a breath and sat up, his face blank full of confusion.

“What happened just now?” he asked. “Why is my face all wet?”

Huang Xiaotao and I looked at each other. I worried that if I told him he’d just been possessed by the ghost of Xia Mo he would be so shocked that he’d faint again. So, we both wordlessly agreed to keep it a secret and just told him that he fainted out of shock.

Whether Dali was really possessed by the ghost of Xia Mo or not, I really couldn’t say. But I was more convinced of the view that he’d just been influenced by the eeriness of the atmosphere and temporarily lost control of his mind and hypnotized himself.

Dali urged us to quickly leave the place, but I said I still had something to do. I pulled out two sheets of ghost money and burnt them on the floor. The two asked me what that was for.

“One for Ma Baobao and one for Zhang Kai,” I said. “Examining dead bodies is always an act of desecration. I must at least burn an offering for them as an apology.”

“Ma Baobao, Zhang Kai,” I said. “I hope you move on to your next life peacefully. I’ve cleared your names, so you have nothing more to worry about.”

Under the clear moonlight, a gentle breeze lifted the ashes into the air and carried them out through the window and up towards the night sky.