Conan was getting frustrated. At first sight, the case seemed fairly straightforward; someone killed the first victim, and whoever did that had likely killed the second victim. Based on Wei Ying's reaction to the necklace, the victim's friend who had died before was connected to the motive of the murders, but the exact details there were blurry. The confusing things were both the method of death (because truly, what could have broken her neck like that?) and how this place was handling it. Put them in their rooms—okay, fair enough. Play music? Eccentric, but he didn't know the customs here for the dead. Maybe playing music to the corpse was some sort of superstition. But the person who'd been guarding the building Conan's room was in had put papers on the doors and walls. The same papers had been scattered around the room with the second victim, a few even placed on the victim.
It hinted at a lot of superstition, which felt at odds with the large library—even accounting for their supernatural references. Given how people dressed and the location, though, maybe this whole place was some kind of cult? But how did that factor into the murders?
Conan gripped his chin, thoughts running together. Kid seemed to be more in the know. But then, he'd been using the library that apparently needed a waiver signed to access. Then there was the mysterious disappearing—and appearing now that Conan thought about it—instrument earlier. Lan Zhan had clearly been playing it in person, not just using a recording, and it hadn't been a small instrument. Where had it vanished to? Conan couldn't think of a clear place it could have been hidden in the room or returned to.
Too many questions, and not enough answers yet.
Conan pulled his attention back together as they approached a paper-studded building. One of them was placed close to his height, so Conan studied it as Lan Zhan spoke quietly to the white-robed person guarding the door. (To keep people in or out?)
The characters were unfamiliar—Conan could read Kanji just fine, but the original Chinese characters were often a lot different or simplified in ways that the Japanese characters hadn't been. At best guess, it said something about stopping something, but like heck if he could get anything else out of it.
A tap to his head had Conan flinching away from the touch. Kid looked down at him, one eyebrow raised.
"We're moving on," Kid said.
Oh. Right. The odd papers—wards? Talismans?—were set aside.
*O*O*
Wei Ying had a headache. Part of that headache went by the name of Edogawa Conan. The rest was the malicious spirit running around playing havoc in the Cloud Recesses.
He would think that, being in the middle of a great sect, one of the last few remaining in China, that it would be incredibly simple to catch a ghost. And yet there they were, minus one body, up another victim, and still no spirit caught…
The connection, he was sure, had to do with the beads. How was a question he didn't have answers to yet. Like, was it the spirit possessing the bead, and then using it to hide, or to possess a victim? Had it used it to control the corpse of the first victim and kill the second? Or had the first victim become a fierce corpse all on his own, the talismans meant to prevent that somehow mysteriously vanishing from the body?
Ah, mysteries were not Wei Ying's forte. He was the go-to resentful energy person, not the person you went to for solving murders. Not that he was incapable of such; in all honesty, cultivators ended up solving a lot of odd crimes. It simply was that they were not specifically trained for that, and Wei Ying called bullshit toward the universe for this improbable string of events that had landed him in the middle of a murder mystery in what should have been his nice, safe home.
"If I were an angry spirit smart enough to evade cultivators, where would I be?" Wei Ying muttered to himself. It would be great if he had his evil-seeking compass finished, but that was still in the planning and testing phases. It was about as likely to point to Chenqing as it would be to point to the fierce corpse of the first victim, or wherever the ghost was.
In the field, Wei Ying would call up spirits to help. There were a surprising—or maybe not too surprising given the last few hundred years of history—number of spirits lingering most places that could be used as another set of eyes. In the Cloud Recesses, on the other hand, there was basically nothing to work with.
Between the amount of cleansing the mountain regularly got and the taboo on killing animals in the sect walls, Wei Ying had to practically scrape up resentment to use from anything dead. There was the current circumstances, of course, but the ghost of their latest victim wouldn't be much help here. She'd be too busy trying to pull herself together after a violent end. Her corpse could have helped, but Wei Ying would get in so much trouble if he animated it for anything less than an army trying to murder everyone, so he was going to not do that.
The best he could do was try to call on whatever scraps of resentment he could find lingering, and try to follow them back to their source. Then, maybe he'd find the body or ghost and have a chance to try to force it calm.
It was best to go somewhere… less occupied to do this though. Fewer people to complain about him later, and less chance of scaring anyone if there turned out to be a lot of resentment.
Wei Ying double checked his pockets for talismans. His stock was down after the need to use so many, but his offensive talismans were still plentiful, and there were a few capture ones left as well.
"A probable ghost that died from a large fall, killed one victim with another fall, and the other a broken neck." Not exactly subtle. Wei Ying was willing to bet that any other deaths—which hopefully there wouldn't be—would be something along similar lines; things that could kill a person from a high fall. Maybe a bashed in head if the ghost was aiming for variety, or trying to reflect all of its wounds.
If Wei Ying took that into consideration…
His ghost probably went somewhere with a large drop. If it was possessing the first victim's corpse, it'd probably escaped somewhere secluded. There were a lot of sharp drops on the Cloud Recesses, but the largest that Wei Ying could think of nearby was a waterfall in the back of the complex where the earth rose sharply. A lovely place to go and meditate by with the white noise of the falls, but it was just far away enough from the buildings to be somewhat secluded and was a lot steeper than it looked at first glance. Not something easily climbed, full of little hollows where water washed away minerals along the stream path, not all full at the moment as it wasn't a rainy season or full of snowmelt.
Plenty of places to hide.
Plenty of places, he thought grimly, that a vengeful spirit could kill someone too. Wei Ying hoped that none of the younger disciples had searched this direction.
It was unlikely; they tended to patrol the public areas, not deeper into Lan territory, but this wasn't a weak spirit. It had to be strong to get past so many barriers and talismans and still have the power to kill.
Wei Ying took a less than direct path to the falls. No one was going to like what he was going to do.
Hell, Lan Zhan wouldn't like what he was doing even if he let him practice less than approved cultivation methods. Wei Ying tried to draw as little attention as possible to himself when doing this kind of thing.
It took a few notes for the energy laying mostly calm—calm by the force of the barriers and seals placed around the Cloud Recesses—to build. Resentment calmed had to struggle to come back alive. It was wild and wicked and hard to control when left alone, but it tended to stay calmed once effort was made to do so. Wei Ying's song was just reminding lingering scraps of resentment what they were resentful about in the first place.
The eerie sound of his flute paired strangely with the rush of water. Once, long before the Lan took over these lands, it might have been a place of turmoil.
There were bits of resentment buried deep, victims of the falls' thunder or maybe from some other natural disaster, so long ago that they didn't hold any imprint of their cause, just restlessness left unresolved.
Resentment responded readily to Wei Ying. Always did. Always would probably, something in him matching it. He knew darkness. He knew anger and hate and fear and cruelty. He knew how to not let them eat him alive too though, which was necessary for working with resentment. Let it, and it would devour as readily as a spark near tinder.
Now, it gathered and built, tendrils reaching, like seeking like. Something at the top of the falls stirred, a hint of recognition in the feeling. Something responding to the call.
Anger and fear. A desperation of time cut short and pain, pain, pain that lingered even after death. Something like hurt. Something like betrayal. Wei Ying dug into those emotions and pulled, music swelling as the resentment tried to lash out.
In the end it broke, though. It always broke to Wei Ying's will, and the corpse at the top of the falls came down with supernatural speed, still broken and bloodstained from its fall earlier, the eyes blank as ever.
Corpses never got less creepy, but he did stop feeling quite so horrified after a certain point. No matter who he had been in life, now he was just another dead man.
Wei Ying let his music die out. The corpse kept standing, not aggressive for the moment. "Hmm, and how did you even get here?" he murmured. Instinct? Was it directed here? He reached out and caught the corpse's wrist.
The corpse didn't resist as Wei Ying pulled it closer, the resentment in it a contained, circular system with Wei Ying cutting off its ability to escape at the moment. The thread, the one with the prayer bead, was no longer around the corpse's neck.
"Shit." That was bad, right? It felt bad. If the bead wasn't here, if the ghost wasn't possessing the corpse through it, then where did it go? What else could it influence the way it had likely urged this man to his death?
Damn, Wei Ying needed to get the corpse back, get it sealed and purged of resentment, and find out what happened to the bead—not necessarily in that order.
"Let's get you back to the clinic…"
Naturally, the corpse didn't respond. The resentment in it churned sluggishly, like an angry, drugged wild animal. Wei Ying pulled his flute back out and began playing a coaxing tune. It was a long way back to walk, and it wasn't like he was going to be able to rest more tonight. As soon as all of this was over, he was taking a nap. Someone else could deal with problems; Wei Ying was more than meeting his duty here. And now he had a corpse to question about a certain ghost.
*O*O*
The worst part, Kaito thought, about dead people—besides the bodies—was the crying. It was pretty much guaranteed that someone would end up crying when someone wound up dead and it never got any less uncomfortable. Perhaps that was just him though, because Edogawa just looked solemn as the group shed tears over Chen Xinyi's demise.
"I don't understand," Li Zihan said, face blotchy and voice stuffy from tears. "How could she have died? She was just here—she had to have just gone to look at the body. You don't think someone is just… just picking off guests, do you?"
"We are still looking into the situation," Lan Zhan said, his face a cold, blank barrier.
Kaito would think he didn't care at all except he could read faces well enough to tell that it was all a mask to try and hide how uncomfortable he was. Not the best person for sympathetic explanations, but someone had to give them.
"You think they're targeting us, not random guests," Wan Haoran said with a frown, "am I right?"
"As two of your group have been victims, there is a possibility that you are being targeted," Lan Zhan said, "and so we must ask that you stay here under watch for your own safety."
"What's being done to find this person?" Wan Haoran asked, looking more upset by the moment. "Is there anything even being done, or are you just keeping everyone locked up on the off chance one of us is the killer?"
"The best way to ensure safety is to keep everyone in their rooms for the moment as the compound is searched," Lan Zhan said with a frustrated line between his brows like he couldn't imagine how this would be hard to understand. "Until more is known, this is the best route."
"Excuse me," Edogawa cut in with wide—fake—innocent eyes. The English was jarring in the middle of the Mandarin conversation, but a relief because Kaito's ability to understand was being pushed to its limit. "When did Miss Chen leave?"
Both of the victim's friends blinked at him.
"So we know more to find out who did it," Edogawa said. "We really want to help."
"Who is this child?" Li Zihan asked, scrubbing her tears away. "And the other? Not more people from here."
"The child is here as a guest, and Kuroba is studying here as a researcher. Both have experience with solving crimes from what I have gathered," Lan Zhan said in Mandarin, this time with a slight wrinkle to his nose like he wished he could just send them back to their room. But since Wei Ying allowed them to be there, he wasn't fighting it. It was funny how a man Kaito had seen be terrifyingly stern about rules of his own clan could crumble like a sandcastle at a few words from his boyfriend.
"The child does?"
"He's very good at it," Kaito offered. "Very smart." His Mandarin speaking ability wasn't good enough to properly express just how terrifyingly good Edogawa was at solving mysteries, and they wouldn't believe him if he could. No one expected a child to have the amount of experience Edogawa did with murder.
"Can you please speak English," Edogawa said in Japanese, like a hypocrite.
Kaito rolled his eyes. "Anyway," he said, in English now, "he's right that it would help to know the time between when Chen Xinyi left and she was discovered dead. Did either of you notice her leave?"
Li Zihan sniffled and glanced at Wan Haoran. "I did… I thought at first she was going to the bathroom, but when she didn't come back, I knew she had to be going to see Shen Ming…"
"You should have woken me up," Wan Haoran said unhappily.
She shook her head. "It was almost two in the morning. You needed your sleep."
"Hmm," Edogawa murmured. "That's almost two hours in between when she left and was found…"
If it was a human being who'd killed her—correction, a living human being—then that would be a pretty large time gap for how many people were in this place.
Unfortunately, they weren't dealing with a normal human murder here. Any of Edogawa's deductions were going to be skewed by personal bias. It was clear to Kaito that the first victim—or his body at least—killed the second. The how and why weren't clear at all, but that knowledge still put him at seeing the whole picture better than Edogawa could.
"Ne, Mr. Lan," Edogawa said, head tilted to the side. "There was someone watching the body, right? How did Chen Xinyi get past them with no one noticing?"
"Chen Xinyi took advantage of distraction when the shifts changed," Lan Zhan said. "We will be changing the procedure to prevent future issues of a similar nature."
Taking advantage of a shift change was something Kaito did on the regular. It was amazing how distracted people could be when they thought they could finally rest.
"Do you know when that was?" Edogawa asked.
"I am unaware of the exact time, but the change was scheduled for three AM." Give or take a few minutes, in Kaito's experience.
Hmm. Victim gets there at two, waits? Then sees the guards changing and takes the chance to sneak in. Somewhere in there, the victim takes off some crucial talisman from the corpse and gets killed… And the corpse escapes. There had to be multiple talismans removed. Would the victim have done that herself? Or had she been influenced?
"So no one noticed her be killed," Edogawa said with a frown. "If the guard changed at three, wouldn't they have looked and seen in there? Or heard her be killed? There had to have been a struggle."
There had been one, Kaito thought, because the victim had signs of fighting before her neck was broken. It had to have been a short fight though.
"I will look into the exact times and individuals on the shift changes," Lan Zhan said solemnly. "We will get to the bottom of these deaths and ensure their spirits are at peace," he said with the kind of conviction that you had to believe in.
Wan Haoran shook his head, not mollified by the promise. "Someone is trying to kill us. There needs to be some kind of justice for that."
"We will get to the bottom of it," Lan Zhan repeated, "whatever that result might be."
Yeah, good luck arresting a ghost. Kaito sighed internally. Edogawa was probably going to overanalyze and go down the wrong track.
*O*O*
There were too many questions, Conan thought, and not enough answers. It was like digging into a puzzle bin and coming up with a handful of pieces, but not knowing if they were even to the same puzzle. From what Conan could tell, this all centered around the first friend's death. Unfortunately, no one was talking about said friend, or if they did, it was in a language he couldn't understand. A friendship important enough to wear a memento of them, but closest to the two dead here if he was gathering the threads correctly.
Unfortunately, Conan couldn't tell how either of the people here would have killed them. Li Zihan could have followed Chen Xinyi without her boyfriend knowing, but he couldn't explain how Chen Xinyi's neck had been broken the way it did. Then there was the missing body—why would it be moved? How would it be moved with so many people on high alert? The weight of a dead body wasn't easy to move and Li Zihan wasn't a large person.
Unless she and her boyfriend were lying and had snuck out together? And yet their grief didn't look faked, and it didn't feel like they were lying. Conan usually had a pretty good gut for telling when he was being lied to, and everything in the exchange felt genuine.
Honestly the only thing he could think of was that somehow there was another party in play, but who or how he didn't know.
Maybe it was someone here at this place that did it. Certainly one of the robed people that worked here would be able to access the body to move it, or know the paths for a perfect place to push the first victim from. Without seeing the scene of the first murder or the body up close, he didn't have enough clues to find commonalities and point him in the right direction.
He glanced toward the door. If he could get to the scene of the first crime, or even examine the second scene closer…
A hand landed on his head.
"Don't even think about it," Kid murmured out of the corner of his mouth. His expression stayed relaxed, the tone of his words light. Add to that the Japanese which none of the others spoke, no one would guess that Kid was giving a warning.
"Don't what?"
"Don't play innocent, Tantei-kun, it doesn't suit you. You're obviously thinking about sneaking away on your own again. Trust me when I say it's better not to wander alone right now."
"Like that ever mattered to you before," Conan said, failing to sound as relaxed as the thief. "You've let me go after murderers before."
"That doesn't mean I agree with you throwing yourself at danger. We still don't know what we're dealing with. I do know, though, that something that could mangle a woman's neck like that could crush you just as easily." Kid glanced at him, sidelong. "You're a pain, but I don't want you killed."
Conan glanced at Lan Wangji who was speaking soft, serious words in Mandarin to the grieving friends of the victims. Frustration curled in his gut. "Well, I don't want anyone else killed either. The faster we catch who is doing this, the better. I can't just sit and do nothing. They don't even have any detectives or police here besides me."
"And your Sleeping Mouri Kogoro," Kid said, though there was an undertone on how useless he found that fact. "Though you don't have to be a detective by trade to have basic deductive reasoning, you know. The people here aren't stupid."
There was a knock on the door and Wei Ying poked his head around with a smile that was more than a bit strained at the edges. "Lan Zhan," he said before saying something in rapid Mandarin.
Lan Zhan hummed under his breath before nodding to the grieving guests. "One moment," he said, in English, likely for the rest of their benefit. Lan Zhan glanced to the side, meeting Kid's eyes. "Please stay here, I will return soon."
Conan almost shot to his feet in protest, bristling as he reigned himself in. "But we were going to help!"
"Hahaaa," Wei Ying laughed with a strained sigh. "Ah, this is something only Lan Zhan can help with, so if you don't mind?"
"We'll stay here," Kid said, like a traitor. Conan scowled at him and Kid pretended not to feel the hole burning in the side of his face at the force of it. Jerk.
"Don't worry; none of us will be wandering off into trouble."
"He clearly found something!" Conan hissed in Japanese.
"And clearly it's something we're not allowed to know about!" Kid replied in kind. "Here's a chance to ask questions without supervision."
Conan looked at the door sliding shut and then back at the two people wiping tears and clenching hands like they were at the end of their ability to cope.
Dammit. "I thought you liked breaking the rules."
"I still have to finish my research. I can't go around angering my hosts."
Conan wanted to point out that it had never stopped him before, but then again, it was a bit of a different scenario being in a different country in a closed community like this place seemed to be. Kid could probably still impersonate someone and do his research that way, but there had to be a reason he was bothering to do all of this in a more legitimate fashion than normal. Still, it was annoying. What good were gray morals when Kid wouldn't use them toward solving a murder?
He sighed.
"Ne," he said to the others in the room. They looked at the child with all the wariness he deserved considering how he burst into the conversation earlier.
"Could you tell us more about your friends? Maybe something will help things make more sense."
Li Zihan sniffed and rubbed her red eyes. She looked like she needed a long nap, and maybe a week's vacation to recover from all of this. Ironic considering the location. "Which one? Shen Ming or Chen Xinyi?"
"Either. Or your other friend that died before you came here."
"You think that's related then?" Li Zihan's brow pinched, but she sighed. "Maybe it really is related… I don't even know what to think anymore."
Wan Haoran touched her arm.
She gave him a watery smile. "I was closest to Chen Xinyi. She was dating Shen Ming and introduced me to Wan Haoran, and we hit it off… The others had more history I suppose… Wan Haoran, you knew Shen Ming and Huang Fang from before university, right?"
"I did." Wan Haoran looked down at where his hand rested on his girlfriend's arm. "We were in the same club in high school. We made a pact to get into the same university. But Shen Ming and Huang Fang were inseparable…"
Conan hummed, latching onto a thread of thought. "Did that change in university?"
Wan Haoran grimaced. "They were still close. We were all close. But."
Kid's fingers tapped a beat along the floor. "Let me guess," Kid said. "You met new people. And then dynamics changed."
Wan Haoran's eyes flicked toward Li Zihan. "Shen Ming met Chen Xinyi. He fell fast, and next thing we knew it was four of us, and then I started dating Li Zihan."
"Huang Fang felt like a fifth wheel?" Conan guessed.
"That's…"
Li Zihan frowned. "Huang-ge was always friendly and cheerful. He'd tease us if we were romantic, but he never looked uncomfortable. That's why it was such a surprise…"
"Huang Feng and Shen Ming were close," Wan Haoran said with cautious stress on the last word. Li Zihan and Conan both frowned at him but Kid let out a soft sound of comprehension.
"Shen Ming and Huang Fang dated," Kid said. "Or at least were involved at some point, and Chen Xinyi messed that up."
"That implies they ever put a label on it. As far as I know, Shen Ming saw it as friends who slept together. Huang Fang…"
"Was this still happening while Shen Ming and Chen Xinyi were dating?" Li Zihan asked, fingers knotting together in distress. "The whole time?"
Wan Haoran looked away, uncomfortable. "I assumed they had some kind of arrangement, but maybe they didn't. Maybe it was too much for Huang Fang. Maybe…"
Conan frowned and Kid grimaced. Conan could almost understand it. People were attracted to what they were attracted to; you couldn't always control the heart. But Conan couldn't imagine ever going behind a lover's back, or pursuing someone if it hurt the people involved. He might have lies heaped on lies, but cheating was something he'd never understand. Shen Ming should have either never started dating Chen Xinyi, or he should have cleanly ended things with Huang Fang.
"How could he?" Li Zihan asked, tearing up again. "If they'd just talked things out, maybe they wouldn't all be…"
Wan Haoran shifted, hands clenching in his lap. "I don't know what happened the night Huang Fang died. The only one who would know is Shen Ming. I just know that everyone wasn't as happy as they looked from the outside."
There was reason for why their friend died, and Conan could extrapolate a cause for killing Shen Ming, if he really had been selfishly ignoring how his desires impacted the people around him. But killing Chen Xinyi? Conan would have thought Wan Haoran had the most motive in all of this simply because he was central to the friend group, but neither him nor Li Zihan seemed to have had the opportunity to kill either person.
This whole case was more questions than answers.
"Was there anyone else close to Huang Fang?" Conan asked. "Or anyone else that knew about his relationship with Shen Ming?"
Wan Haoran shrugged, arms curling around himself. "He had family. A mother and an estranged father… We haven't heard from them since the funeral, and I don't know if they knew about Shen Ming. Maybe his mother knew something… She would scold him to cut his hair when she called, in between reminding him to eat more."
"His hair?"
"Oh. Huang Fang had his hair longer." Wan Haoran gestured about shoulder length. "I think maybe his mom was worried someone would realize he liked men and use it against him. He didn't have his hair long because of that, but people make assumptions once they know that sort of thing."
So the mother probably knew, or guessed her son was gay. But she couldn't be a suspect if she hadn't been in contact. That left Conan back at square one.
Unless someone was lying and he just hadn't caught them in the act yet. Hmm.
He had a few more questions to ask…
*O*O*
Wei Ying fiddled with his hair, picking at split ends as his boyfriend followed him. He was fine, definitely fine, not stressed at all, hahaaaaa.
"Wei Ying." Lan Zhan said as they exited the building, all loving concern because he was great that way. "What is wrong?"
"Ah, so." He stepped into the shadows of the building, away from prying eyes. "So, good news and less-good news. Haha. Ah. Good news is that I found the missing corpse!"
"The bad news?"
"…the cursed bead he had is missing."
Lan Zhan frowned. "Inconvenient, but not worrisome unless it can affect cultivators."
"Theoretically. Practically speaking, we don't have any real idea what is going on with that bead or how it got enough resentment to influence people, possess them, or, I don't know, become corporeal enough to push a man off a cliff, Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, I can't even use my compass prototype because there's too many active sources of resentment between the corpses and my flute that it wouldn't register the muted level of it not putting off death threats."
"Wei Ying. Breathe."
"I am breathing!" Wei Ying huffed. This was stressful, that was all. "And I questioned the first victim about his friend. Or I tried to at any rate. He got really upset and kept repeating apologies, which didn't really help anything. I wanted to force an empathy on it, but that seemed like a bad idea to do alone."
"Good," Lan Zhan said emphatically, because he was always pushing Wei Ying to be more careful. 'Don't use too much resentment' and 'experiment with someone nearby' and 'no unsupervised empathy.' Nearly get stuck in memories once, and Wei Ying would never live it down.
"Anyway, the bodies are back in the infirmary. I put on new seals, and they shouldn't be able to come off unless a cultivator takes them off." He sighed. "I still don't know how or why she took those talismans off."
Lan Zhan put a warm, supporting arm around him and Wei Ying melted into the touch. Just let Lan Zhan take his whole weight because he wanted to stay there forever. Or go back to sleep. Or just go back to sleep in the arms of his boyfriend, that sounded lovely. "Perhaps she removed the one on Shen Ming's face to better look at him, and it weakened the others enough to be overpowered."
"Hmm." Sounded probable. It could even account for how there was a slight struggle, the scratches he found on the corpse's arms and face. A struggle could have knocked more talismans free too. "Lan Zhan, I think we need the rest of the beads all in one place to catch our resentful spirit. It's either spread out in pieces, or it can hop between them or something."
"Mm, we can ask for the beads."
"You really think they'll hand them over?" he asked into Lan Zhan's shoulder.
"We will convince them."
He made it sound so simple, but the number of times they'd had to argue over the years to get cursed objects away from their owners was honestly far higher than Wei Ying liked to think about. People didn't like to part from their belongings, especially not if they were sentimental.
"That still leaves us having to find the missing bead."
"We can have juniors scanning the ground between the infirmary and where you found the body."
"Ugh." Wei Ying pushed his face harder into Lan Zhan's neck. "About that. He was all the way up the far cliffs. That's way too much for anyone to cover for something as tiny as a prayer bead."
"Hm." He could feel the rumble of displeasure in Lan Zhan's chest and knew he had to be frowning.
"We could just forget about it and wait for it to cause trouble?" Wei Ying joked. "With how fast everything has happened it'll take, what, half a day?"
"We will have someone look all the same."
"Yeah. Good plan." Wei Ying didn't want to move, but he really should. He levered himself out of Lan Zhan's comfortable hold and rubbed at the bridge of his nose where a slight headache was starting. "What do we do with the problem kid?"
"Return him?"
"To his guardians? Who've completely failed to keep an eye on him." Wei Ying gave Lan Zhan a flat look. "Also, any luck feeling out the curse on him?"
"I could not determine its cause or anchor," Lan Zhan said, ignoring the part about the guardians. "Kuroba Kaito could continue to watch the child."
"Hmm, they do know each other even if they act like siblings that barely tolerate being in the same room. Somehow I doubt even Kuroba-ge will be enough to control the kid." Still, send them both back to the guardian and then set an extra guard, maybe that could contain the cursed child until the whole vengeful spirit thing was resolved and Wei Ying could shove the tiny murder magnet at Lan Qiren and the Lan curse experts to figure out how to neutralize whatever he was doing to his surroundings. "If we can keep him far away from the ghost, maybe things can be contained…"
Lan Zhan stilled.
Wei Ying realized that they'd left the kid in the room with two people with cursed beads. Alone. With only a non-cultivator to mitigate any damages. "Shit."
They both turned back toward the door at the same time only for a scream to come from the direction of the animal pens.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Wei Ying asked whatever power that was potentially watching. "Really?"
"Wei Ying."
"Yeah, you go check on that while I get the problem before—"
Like the universe was intent on making things impossibly frustrating tonight, a small body shot out the door, the grasping hands of the disciple on guard duty and Kuroba missing by a hair's breadth as the creepy kid hurled himself off into the night.
"Fuck."
Lan Zhan didn't even pretend to get offended at the profanity, which showed just how bad this situation was.
Kuroba staggered from the dorm building, clutching his gut. "Shit. He kicks hard," he said, an explanation and excuse all in one.
"I can see that," Wei Ying said humorlessly. "Well, Lan Zhan, it's probably the bead, so might as well grab the other liabilities and get everyone in one place.
Can't get much worse than having all the cursed items at one place at the same time."
"…I will see if they will part from the beads."
"Great. Great… I'm just gonna…" Wei Ying gestured toward where the screaming was turning into shouting.
"I'm with you," Kuroba said instantly, straightening out of his pained hunch.
"Fine, whatever, let's go." Wei Ying took off running without looking at who might or might not be following. Everything was a mess and he just wanted this day to be over. Please don't be another dead body, he asked of any deity that might be listening. He didn't think he could handle if a corpse of one of the junior disciples cropped up or something. The universe, as always, didn't give him any hints of what he was going to find.