Chapter 90: Girl

"Hehe, you broke the rules." The voice was thin, somewhat resembling a woman's but not quite. The moment Li Huowang heard it, he was inexplicably reminded of the small-footed woman who had once called out the God of Joy; her voice had been similar.

As Li Huowang and the others cautiously stepped from the house into the courtyard, they saw a small head peeking over the left wall of the building. Perched high on the wall was a blond little girl, seemingly no older than five or six. She giggled as she looked in, her pigtails tied with red string standing high and perky.

"Red!" Li Huowang's heart lurched the moment he saw the red string in her hair. "Could this child be the 'Eighteenth of the Twelfth Month'?"

Watching the girl continue to giggle, Li Huowang pondered for a moment before slowly asking, "I broke the rules, but you're no better. Aren't you not supposed to be out at night? Why are you still out here?"

"I'm a child," she replied. "You adults aren't allowed out, but of course we children can come out and play." The child displayed no hostility toward Li Huowang and his companions. She shifted her head slightly, then continued with a giggle, "If you give me some candy, I won't tell anyone."

The others' eyes widened as they watched the child's head shift. The Wu family compound wall was incredibly high, at least six meters tall. Yet, this little girl moved so effortlessly along the top of the wall, which meant she wasn't on a ladder—she was simply standing there! Li Huowang stared at the small head and the dusty, towering wall beneath it. He couldn't begin to imagine the body structure of a child with an ordinary-sized head who was six meters tall. A stick insect, perhaps?

"Hehe, are you going to give me candy or not?" the little girl on the wall pressed. "If you don't, I'll call someone."

"Yes, of course, I'll give you some. Don't rush. I don't have any candy on me right now, I need to go get it first, don't I?" After speaking, Li Huowang then turned to Gouwa beside him and whispered something.

Hearing Li Huowang's instructions, Gouwa's face immediately contorted in fear. But when Li Huowang slipped the Taoist bell into his arms, Gouwa finally nodded, turned, and walked back into the house.

"Alright, he's gone to get the candy. Just wait a moment. Since we're bored, why don't we chat for a bit?"

"Okay, okay, I love chatting," the little girl said, sounding very innocent. Li Huowang maintained a very gentle tone toward this entity of unknown alignment. "Whose child are you? How come I haven't seen you around the village before?"

"I don't know whose child I am," the girl replied. "Everyone says I'm the Kitchen God's child, but I look nothing like the Kitchen God's image posted on the wall."

"Oh? You don't look like the Kitchen God?" Li Huowang mused. "I think you're quite similar, being so fond of candy. I remember my grandfather used to smear pastries on the Kitchen God's portrait during worship." As Li Huowang spoke, his right hand subtly settled on the red bamboo slips behind him.

The girl's pigtails swayed back and forth as she shook her head. "You're talking nonsense. The Kitchen God clearly has four pairs of eyes and five hands, and he doesn't have any feet. How do I look like that?" Listening to her innocently reveal such details sent a chill down everyone's spine; this was utterly unlike the Kitchen God they knew.

"Little girl, are you making that up? How could the Kitchen God have five hands? And if he has no feet, how would he walk?"

Hearing Li Huowang's deliberate skepticism, the little girl instantly grew agitated. "How am I making it up? I saw it with my own eyes! Besides, who says you can't walk without legs? The Kitchen God can clearly make his red intestines come out of his navel and use them as feet!"

No sooner had she finished speaking than Gouwa's terrified, almost tearful voice echoed from the other side of the wall. "Senior Brother Li!! This wretched girl has no body!! She's just a head!"

With a swift "whoosh," the girl's head vanished below the wall, immediately followed by Gouwa's agonizing scream.

"Ring the bell!" Li Huowang gritted his teeth and dashed toward the entrance of the Wu family compound. When they reached the other side of the wall, they found Gouwa trembling, crying, and frantically kowtowing on the ground, his pants soaked.

Li Huowang scanned the dark alleyways, then went to Gouwa, pulled him up, and retrieved his bell. "Stop kowtowing! Quickly, tell me! Where did that head go?" Seeing Gouwa's trembling hand point eastward, Li Huowang let go of him and gave chase, sword in one hand and lantern in the other.

In the pitch-black environment, everything around them seemed to transform into ravenous monsters, clawing and baring teeth in the interplay of darkness and light. Despite running frantically for a long time, Li Huowang didn't catch the girl's head. Instead, he found himself in unfamiliar surroundings, seemingly at the very edge of the village, with a bamboo forest visible in the distance.

Finding nothing, Li Huowang muttered a curse under his breath and turned to regroup with the others who were hurrying towards him, lanterns in hand. Whatever that girl was, it was reasonable to assume that even if she wasn't the "Eighteenth of the Twelfth Month" herself, she was closely connected to it. He hadn't been wrong; the "Eighteenth of the Twelfth Month" was definitely here.

As Li Huowang approached the lanterns, he froze. These were his companions, yet they stood rigidly still, holding their lanterns, all uniformly turned away from him. "What are you doing?" Li Huowang cautiously stepped back, tightening his grip on the Taoist bell.

The moment he asked, everyone simultaneously turned around. Their faces had changed! Every single face now bore the features of that little girl! All these identical faces smiled at once. "Hehehe, you broke the rules again. You didn't give me candy, so I'm going to tell the others, and they'll come for you."

"Jingle, jingle, jingle~~!!" The moment the piercing bell rang, the figures vanished as swiftly as darkness recoiling from light. The jarring sound of the bell was undeniably attention-grabbing in the dark. Before long, Li Huowang saw his other fellow disciples gathering around him. This time, however, their faces had not transformed into the little girl's. After cautiously verifying their identities with information only disciples of Qingfeng Temple would know, Li Huowang finally breathed a sigh of relief. These people were real.

"Senior Brother Li, what's wrong? What just happened?"

"Nothing, just an illusion," Li Huowang said, shaking his head. He scanned the surrounding darkness, and finding no further anomalies, led the others back the way they came.

However, shortly after they departed, a pair of blood-red eyes opened in the darkness.