Jing Minghe's eyes felt tired reading, and he wanted to rest. He looked at Chi Hao and asked, "Have you finished this?"
"I haven't," Chi Hao replied.
"..." Jing Minghe thought, *How dare you be so righteous?*
Jing Minghe pulled out a stool and sat down, saying speechlessly, "You brought this to me without even looking at what's inside?"
Chi Hao glanced at Jing Minghe from the corner of his eye. "Can't I?"
Jing Minghe chuckled twice and said, "You can. You're the elder brother, you have the final say."
"However," Jing Minghe jiggled the small notebook in his hand, "where did you find this?"
"The room I was staying in," Chi Hao paused, then added, "inside the pillow."
Upon hearing this, Jing Minghe put down the notebook, got up, and walked to his bedside. He felt the pillow on his bed and indeed found something inside.
He slipped his hand into the seam of the pillowcase and carefully took out the object. It was a small piece of kraft paper, clearly torn from a larger sheet, with a rough edge.
Jing Minghe brought the kraft paper closer to the candlelight. The back was blank, but the front was covered with strange symbols and a character, "诡" (guǐ - meaning "strange" or "ghostly").
"It seems we need to find all the pieces to understand the full information on it."
Thinking that everyone else should be resting by now, and not knowing what awaited them tomorrow, he decided it was best to let everyone rest well. He then put away the small piece of kraft paper and continued reading the notebook.
When he turned to the third page, Jing Minghe squinted, bringing the notebook closer. Knowing Chi Hao hadn't read it, and rather than finishing it himself and then repeating it to Chi Hao, he decided to read it aloud to him.
Jing Minghe cleared his throat and read in a monotone voice, "Yin and yang overlap, I have turned my hometown into a place infested with evil spirits. It's too hateful, why is this happening? I must find a way, I cannot let more people die. I couldn't save him, but this sin must be imposed upon him. This is unfair. It was me, it was my fault!"
"Tsk, infested with evil spirits," Jing Minghe put down the notebook and rubbed his stinging eyes. He joked with Chi Hao, "Looks like this instance will be quite lively. What do you think, Brother Chi Hao?"
Chi Hao was accustomed to Jing Minghe calling him by different titles. Unfazed, he handed Jing Minghe a small bottle of water. A slight curve touched his lips, but his tone was as usual, revealing no particular emotion. "Wet your throat and keep reading."
Jing Minghe responded with an "En" and unceremoniously took the water from Chi Hao. After gulping down more than half of it, he suddenly realized something.
"That's not right, Chi Hao, where did you find this water?" He remembered that when they checked the kitchen earlier, there was no bottled water like this, nor was there any in the thatched hut.
"Don't you recognize it?"
Jing Minghe looked closely and finally identified it as bottled drink from the round table at the banquet in the previous instance's first floor. He asked with surprise, "How did you bring it out?"
Chi Hao explained, "I originally put it in my pocket to drink in the room later, but then I forgot."
"..." Jing Minghe's suspicious gaze swept across Chi Hao's face. "Do you think I'd believe that?"
"You would."
Their eyes met. Although Jing Minghe felt he couldn't quite decipher Chi Hao's intentions at that moment, he decided not to pursue it. He simply shook the water bottle and said with a smile, "Thanks."
The water had moistened his throat, and Jing Minghe picked up the notebook again, turning to the fourth page, and continued reading, "I finally found a way. As long as the Blood Jade Pestle is thrust into the hearts of those eight evil spirits at the change of day and night, but I cannot do it. They keep replacing themselves, mistake after mistake, too many people have died by my hand. They stole my Blood Jade Pestle and hid it. I can't find the Blood Jade Pestle, I can't destroy them."
Upon reaching this point, Jing Minghe looked at Chi Hao again, guessing, "This should be the mission for this instance, right? Eight evil spirits, and the hidden Blood Jade Pestle."
"Agreed."
Jing Minghe flipped another page and read, "They are here, I am going to die. Who will save my hometown?"
After this page, only blank pages remained.
Jing Minghe threw down the notebook, about to rub his eyes again, but Chi Hao stopped him.
Chi Hao somehow produced a handkerchief and, after wetting it with the remaining water Jing Minghe had drunk, handed it to him. "Wipe with this."
As Jing Minghe wiped his eyes with the handkerchief, he pretended to be displeased and chided Chi Hao, "Brother Chi, this is too wasteful. Don't you know how precious half a bottle of water is in a place like this?"
Chi Hao simply smiled faintly, ignoring Jing Minghe's teasing.
Jing Minghe silently grumbled in his heart about how boring Chi Hao was, but outwardly continued his analysis, "As for finding clues to these eight evil spirits, it should be related to the small piece of kraft paper I found under my pillow. Other thatched huts should have similar pieces of kraft paper. Once everyone has rested well tomorrow, we can find them all."
Chi Hao gave an "Mm" sound and stood up, saying to Jing Minghe, "You should rest too."
"Okay," Jing Minghe agreed, tapping the notebook on the table with his finger, and asked, "What about this? Do you want to take it back to study, or leave it here with me?"
"Leave it with you..." He stopped halfway and abruptly changed his mind, "Never mind, I'll take it."
With that, he picked up the notebook from the table and turned to leave. After exiting, he didn't forget to close the door for Jing Minghe.
After Chi Hao left, Jing Minghe yawned. Without extinguishing the candle, he went straight to bed. As he slept, he even placed Chi Hao's wet handkerchief on his eyes. The cool sensation was somewhat like how Chi Hao felt when he was silent, but it was quite comfortable.
Back in his room, Chi Hao sat by the bed, holding the small notebook. After a long while, he opened it. Chi Hao hadn't told Jing Minghe that it wasn't that he was too lazy to read it after finding it, but rather that he couldn't see the words on it at all. To him, it was a blank notebook, completely devoid of text.
"Is there something wrong with me, or with him?"
Chi Hao murmured to himself. He regretted showing it to Jing Minghe tonight. He should have waited until morning. Because he had seen that after Jing Minghe finished reading the words in the notebook, his eyes suddenly turned crimson.
Closing the notebook, Chi Hao sighed and looked in the direction of Jing Minghe's room, saying in a low voice, "I hope he's alright."
The next morning, when everyone emerged from the thatched huts, just as everyone thought they were all accounted for, Chi Hao suddenly walked back into a thatched hut, but not the one he had been staying in.
Ke Wuwen's words reminded everyone. He asked, "Where's my idol? Why hasn't he come out? Did he not rest well last night?"
It was then that everyone noticed Chi Hao had entered the thatched hut where Jing Minghe was staying.