The story begins from the night three days ago.

That night, Master Qin returned home from a social event, feeling tired and drunk. Just as he was about to rest, he heard a knock on the door.

Someone was knocking hard on the door of the Qin Mansion.

The servant who was guarding the courtyard asked in a daze, then got up and went to check with a lantern. Just as he was about to ask, the person knocking on the door suddenly seemed to have gone mad and banged on the door furiously.

It really was a collision. The door bolt creaked, and it felt as if ten steel claws were scratching at the door panel at the same time.

The noise was so loud that soon the yard was filled with servants who had been awakened. They held oil lamps, leaned on sticks, and carried lanterns, looking at each other in bewilderment, and finally waited for the master who walked into the yard wearing only an outer coat and holding a sword.

Master Qin drew out his sword with a clang and shouted, "Who is it?"

Immediately, the sound of the sharp claws scratching the door became louder.

A servant was sitting in a corner holding a broom. Master Qin pointed at him and said, "Climb up and look outside."

The servant did not dare to disobey. With a sullen face, he crawled slowly while looking back at Master Qin in embarrassment, only to be urged impatiently in return.

Finally, he placed his hands on the eaves with trembling hands, leaned forward, took a look, and then fell headfirst with a thud.

Young Master Qin said, "He said that the person knocking at the door was a monster in shrouds. His hair was disheveled and his body was covered in blood. He was not a living person."

Hearing this, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji looked at each other.

Lan Sizhui asked, "Master Qin, don't you have a more detailed description?"

Young Master Qin was not a member of the Xuan Sect, and he found the right person by accident. He only knew that the people in front of him were members of the sect, but he did not know their identities and names. However, Lan Wangji had an extraordinary demeanor, Wei Wuxian looked smart and confident, and although Lan Sizhui was young, his every move was quite elegant, so he did not dare to neglect him and said, "No, that stupid servant was timid and fainted after taking a look. I pinched his Ren Zhong for a long time before he woke up. How could I expect him to see clearly and carefully?"

Wei WuXian said, “Let me ask you a question.”

Young Master Qin said, "Excuse me."

Wei WuXian asked, “Master Qin, you only let others see it at that time, didn’t you see it yourself?”

"No."

"pity."

"What's a pity?"

Wei WuXian said, “According to what you said, the one that came to your door was a vicious corpse. When a vicious corpse comes to your door, it is most likely coming for someone. If you take a look, you might find that it is an old acquaintance.”

Young Master Qin said, "Maybe I am one of the ten or twenty. Besides, even if they are targeting someone, that person may not be me."

Wei WuXian nodded and said with a smile, “Okay.”

Young Master Qin continued, "That thing kept scratching the door until dawn. When I went out to check in the morning, the front door of my house was completely unrecognizable."

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walked around the door.

Lan Sizhui followed them and observed carefully. He saw that the gate of Qin's house was covered with hundreds of terrible scratches, five in a group, some several feet long, some several inches short, it was really unrecognizable.

Although there is no doubt that these are traces of human hands, no matter how you look at it, they don't look like they could be made by the fingernails of a living person.

Young Master Qin said, "Let's get back to the point. Since you two are from the Xuanmen sect, do you have any way to drive away this evil creature?"

Wei WuXian said, “That’s not necessary.”

Lan Sizhui was quite surprised, but he didn't say much. Master Qin also felt surprised and asked, "Is it necessary?"

Wei WuXian affirmed, “That’s not necessary.

"The so-called 'house', from the moment it is built and owned by someone, has the mission of providing shelter from the wind and rain and resisting external objects. The door of the house is a natural barrier that can not only keep out people, but also keep out non-people.

"Since you are the real owner of this house, then as long as you don't open your mouth or invite evil spirits in with your actions, they will not be able to invade. Judging from the evil spirit left on this door, the one who found your house is not a rare evil spirit that only appears once in a hundred years. One door is enough to resist it."

Young Master Qin was half-believing and half-doubting: "Is it really that powerful?"

Lan Wangji said, “Really.”

Wei WuXian stepped on the threshold again and said, “Really? Besides, the threshold is actually a barrier. The corpse has no blood circulation and can only jump stiffly to move. Unless the corpse had amazing leg strength when it was alive and could jump three feet high, otherwise, even if the door is wide open, it can’t jump in.”

Young Master Qin was still worried and asked, "Is there nothing else you need me to buy? For example, a talisman to protect the house, a sword to drive away evil spirits, etc. I am willing to pay you a large sum of money. Money is not a problem."

Lan Wangji said, “Get a new bolt.”

“…”

Seeing that Master Qin looked unconvinced, as if he thought this proposal was just a perfunctory one, Wei WuXian said, “It’s up to you whether to change it or not, Master Qin, just decide for yourself. If there is any follow-up, please feel free to ask me again.”

After leaving the Qin residence, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walked side by side for a while, chatting with each other as they strolled leisurely.

Now the two of them can be considered as semi-retired. If there is no important matter, they will wander around aimlessly outside, for a month or a half, or two or three days. Wei Wuxian had heard of Lan Wangji's reputation of "going out whenever there is chaos" before, and he didn't think it was difficult, but now that he followed Lan Wangji in person, he found that it was really trying. It's not difficult, on the contrary, it's because it's too simple. When he hunted at night in the past, he liked to pick those strange and dangerous places, and experience all kinds of adventures, which naturally had many twists and turns. But Lan Wangji was not picky, and he would do what he had to do. This inevitably led to some night hunting targets that were common to Wei Wuxian. For example, this time, the fierce corpse came to the door, and compared with the things Wei Wuxian hunted in the past, there was really nothing interesting. If others saw it, they would probably think it was a waste of talent and not worth a trip.

However, because I was with Lan Wangji, even if the event itself was not so attractive, it was relaxing and comfortable to have each other's company.

Lan Sizhui followed quietly with Little Apple by his hand. After thinking again and again, he couldn't help but ask, "Hanguang-jun, Senior Wei, is it okay for Young Master Qin's family to just leave it alone?"

Lan Wangji said, “It’s okay.”

Wei WuXian laughed: “SiZhui, did you think I was just talking nonsense to deceive people?”

Lan Sizhui said hurriedly, "No way! Well, Sizhui doesn't mean that. What I meant was that although the door of the house does have the effect of resisting evil spirits, the door is about to fall apart. If you don't even give me a talisman, will there really be no problem?"

Wei WuXian was surprised and asked, “Is there any need to explain this?”

Lan Sizhui: “Oh…”

Wei WuXian: “Of course something will happen.”

Lan Sizhui: "Ah? Why?"

Wei WuXian said: “Because that Mr. Qin lied.”

Lan Wangji nodded slightly. Lan Sizhui was slightly surprised: "How did Senior Wei know that?"

Wei WuXian said, “I have only met this Young Master Qin once, so I cannot say that I can be sure of his true nature, but this man…”

Lan Wangji said: "He is stubborn and cold."

Wei WuXian hummed, and said, “That’s about right. He’s not a coward at all. The situation that night was strange, but according to his description, it wasn’t so strange that it could scare people out of their minds. Was it difficult for him to climb up the eaves and look outside?”

Lan Sizhui realized, “But he insisted that he didn’t even look at it…”

Wei WuXian said, “Right. If someone knocked on your front door late at night, everyone would be curious. You are quite courageous, so it would be normal for you to take a peek secretly. Wouldn’t it be strange if you insisted that you didn’t look?”

Lan Wangji said, “I totally agree.”

Wei WuXian said, “What do you mean by similar views?”

Finally, he smiled again, touched his chin and said, "Also, the scratches left by the evil corpse on the door look scary, but the evil spirit and blood are not strong. It definitely did not come to the door to kill people for revenge. I am sure of this. So we have to wait and see what is going on."

Lan Sizhui said, "If that's the case, why don't Senior Wei just summon the evil corpse and ask him?"

"No."

"ah?"

Wei WuXian said confidently: “Drawing a Yin-summoning flag doesn’t require blood? I’m weak.”

Lan Sizhui thought he was really too lazy to bleed, so he said, "Senior Wei, you can use my blood."

Unexpectedly, Wei WuXian burst out laughing.

He said, "Si Zhui, the problem is not about this. We are bringing you out here to gain experience, right?"

Lan Sizhui was stunned, and Wei Wuxian said, "Of course I can summon the evil corpse and tell it to go away. But, can you do it?"

Hearing this, Lan Sizhui immediately understood.

After a series of events, he and the younger generations of the Gusu Lan Clan were a little too dependent on Wei Wuxian. Although summoning and questioning, turning corpses into generals, although this is the fastest method, not everyone can use it, and he does not practice ghost arts, so for him, this method is not suitable for too much learning. If Wei Wuxian also uses his old method that he is good at to get through it in a few moves, what experience can he talk about.

This time, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji wanted to take him through the ordinary ways and see how to solve this problem in the usual way.

Lan Sizhui asked, "So, what Hanguang-Jun and Senior Wei mean is that Young Master Qin is unwilling to tell the truth, so they should just ignore him and scare him?"

Wei WuXian said, “Yes. Just wait and see. That door bolt can only last for two more days at most. Your HanGuang-Jun asked him to get a new one. This is a very practical and conscientious suggestion. It seems that Master Qin doesn’t care. But if he really hides something important, even if he gets ten new door bolts, it will be useless. It will come back sooner or later.”

Unexpectedly, the door bolt didn't even hold up for the whole night. The next day, Master Qin went to visit Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji with a gloomy face again.

The Xuanmen family has many foreign properties in various places. After the three of them arrived, they rested in a small elegant building called Xiaozhuxuan under the Gusu Lan family. Young Master Qin arrived very early and ran into Lan Sizhui pulling a rein and pulling a donkey. Poor Lan Sizhui tried very hard to pull the little apple that was grinding its teeth on the bamboo out. When he turned around, he saw Young Master Qin's mouth twitching at him, his face slightly red, and he threw the rope and invited Young Master Qin to come in.

He carefully knocked on the bedroom door of the two seniors and saw Lan Wangji, who was dressed neatly, open the door silently. He shook his head and knew that Senior Wei would not be able to get up for a while. Lan Sizhui was very embarrassed. In the end, he still bit the bullet and violated the family rule of "not telling lies" and lied to Mr. Qin that Senior was ill and was still resting. Otherwise, he couldn't say such a big truth as "Senior Wei wants to sleep, Han Guangjun asked you to wait by yourself"...

Wei Wuxian slept until the sun was high in the sky, and after being rubbed and hugged by Lan Wangji, he barely managed to get up. He closed his eyes and went to the bathroom to put on Lan Wangji's undershirt by mistake. The sleeves under his outer shirt were several inches longer and rolled up, which was really inappropriate. Fortunately, Master Qin had no time to notice whether he was in a good mood or not, and dragged the three of them away.

The door of the Qin Mansion was closed. Young Master Qin went up to knock on the door, but without exchanging pleasantries, he said, "After receiving the advice from the two immortals yesterday, I felt relieved a little, but I still couldn't sleep. I stayed in the lobby to read at night and stayed inside to keep an eye on the movements outside."

Soon, a servant opened the door and welcomed the three people into the courtyard. As soon as they stepped down the stairs, Wei Wuxian was slightly startled.

I saw large patches of bright red footprints scattered across the courtyard, which was shocking to the eye.

Young Master Qin said sinisterly, "Last night, that thing came again. It scratched and banged at the gate for nearly half an hour. I was getting annoyed by it when I suddenly heard a click and the bolt was broken."

The moment he heard the sound of the door bolt breaking, the hairs on Master Qin's back stood up.

He rushed to the door and peeked out through the crack in the wooden door of the lobby.

The moonlight was dim, and from afar I could see the gates open. A figure was standing in front of the gate of the Qin Mansion, like a wooden stake with springs under its feet, bouncing around at the door.

After playing for a long time, it still didn't bounce in. Master Qin breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that it looked like this thing was just as Wei Wuxian said during the day, with blocked tendons, stiff body, and legs unable to bend, and it would definitely not be able to jump over the high threshold of his own front door.

However, before he could breathe a sigh of relief, he saw the figure jumping around at the door suddenly jump up high - and jumped into the door in one go!

Young Master Qin turned around abruptly, his back pressed against the door.

The evil creature jumped over the gate, entered the courtyard, and leaped straight forward. Plop, plop, plop, plop, in just a few leaps, it pounced on the lobby door.

Young Master Qin felt the wooden door behind him shrug, and was shocked to realize that the thing was only separated from him by a door, so he hurriedly ran away.

Young Master Qin said, "The shadow of the evil creature was reflected on the paper window by the moonlight. It couldn't get in, so it circled around the hall. All the footprints in the yard were left by it! My two young masters, it's not that I don't believe you, but you clearly said that this thing couldn't jump in."

Wei WuXian stepped on the door sill and said, “Master Qin, generally speaking, a rigid corpse cannot jump in. A dead person’s tendons and blood are not alive, so naturally he cannot bend his legs or knees. You can ask any immortal family stationed in any place, and they will tell you the same thing.”

Young Master Qin opened his hands, as if to show him the bright red footprints all over the yard, and said, "Then how do you explain this?"

Wei WuXian said, “The only explanation is that the thing that entered your house is not ordinary. Master Qin, you might as well think about it. When you secretly looked at the vicious corpse last night, did you find anything wrong?”

Young Master Qin thought for a while with an unpleasant expression, and then said, "Come to think of it, the posture of that thing when it jumped was a little weird."

Wei WuXian asked: “How is it so weird?”

Young Master Qin said: "It seems to be..."

At the side, Lan Wangji had walked around the courtyard and returned to Wei Wuxian, saying in a calm voice, "He's limping."

Young Master Qin immediately said, "Not bad!"

Then he asked suspiciously: "How did this young master know this?"

Lan Sizhui was also thinking about this question in his heart, but because he had always believed that Han Guangjun knew everything, he was just curious and had no doubts, waiting for the answer.

Lan Wangji said, "Footprints on the ground."

Wei Wuxian leaned down, and Lan Sizhui squatted down with him, carefully examining the footprints. Wei Wuxian looked at them for a while and then looked up and said to Lan Wangji, "One-legged corpse?"

Lan Wangji nodded. Wei Wuxian stood up and said, “No wonder it was able to jump over here. These footprints are all one deep and one shallow. This walking corpse has a broken leg.”

He thought for a moment, then asked, "Do you think it was severed before death or after death?"

Lan Wangji said: "Before he died."

Wei WuXian said, “Yeah. If you’re dead, it won’t matter if anything is broken off your body.”

They were communicating without any obstacles, but Lan Sizhui could not keep up and had to stop them. He hurriedly said, "Wait, Hanguang-jun, Senior Wei, let me sort it out. Are you saying that this corpse has a broken leg and limps, and because of this, it is easier for it to jump over this high threshold than a two-legged... uh, healthy corpse?"

Young Master Qin was obviously also thinking about this question, and said, "Did I hear it correctly?"

Lan Wangji said, “I heard it right.”

Young Master Qin looked ridiculous and said, "Aren't you saying that a person with one leg can run faster than a person with two legs?"

The two people over there were concentrating on discussing, Wei WuXian took a break and smiled at him: “You got it wrong. But if I put it this way, maybe you will understand. Some people are blind in one eye, so they take extra care of the remaining eye. So even though he is blind in one eye, his eyesight is not necessarily worse than that of people with two eyes, and it may even be better. Similarly, if a person loses his left hand and can only use his right hand frequently, then in the long run, his right hand may become extremely powerful, and one hand can be twice as strong as an ordinary person…”

Lan Sizhui understood: "And this evil corpse had one leg broken when it was alive, so it has been jumping on one leg for years after its death. So its jumping ability is stronger than that of a zombie with two legs?"

Wei WuXian said happily, “That’s exactly it.”

Lan Sizhui found it quite interesting and secretly took note. Young Master Qin said irritably, "It's my fault that I quarreled with my wife yesterday and stayed up too late to deal with household affairs. I didn't have time to rebuild the gate. I'm going to reinforce it now and make it as strong as an iron barrel!"

However, Lan Wangji shook his head and said, "It's useless. 'Don't set a precedent.'"

Young Master Qin was shocked, feeling that this was not a good thing, and asked, "What does this 'precedent should not be set' mean?"

Wei WuXian said, “He was using a term in our jargon. It means that against evil spirits, some defensive measures can only be used once, and they won’t work the second time. If you had rushed to rebuild it yesterday, you could have held out for a while, but as long as you let it in once, it will be able to get through unhindered in the future.”

Young Master Qin was shocked and regretful: "Then! What should I do?"

Lan Wangji said, “Just sit down.”

Wei WuXian said, “Don’t panic. You can get through the main gate, but not the second gate. Your mansion is like a city. Right now, only the first gate has been breached. There are still two more gates to come.”

"Two more? Which two?"

Lan Wangji said, “A door that gathers guests, a door that keeps you private.”

Wei WuXian said, “Your lobby, your bedroom.”

As they were talking, the group had already passed the courtyard and entered the lobby to sit down. No one had served tea for a long time. The servants had gone somewhere. Master Qin called out to someone and someone came up. He kicked the person away. After venting his anger, Master Qin's expression eased a little, but he was still unwilling: "Can't you give me some talismans to suppress it? Please rest assured, the two gentlemen, the reward is really not a problem."

He didn't know that these people went out hunting at night and didn't care about any reward. Wei Wuxian said: "It depends on how you want to suppress them."

"How to say?"

Wei Wuxian began.

He said, "Suppression is only a temporary solution. If you just want to keep the evil spirits away, then it's easy to say. You can change a talisman every half a month, but it can still come to your house and knock on the door. I estimate that by then you will change your door more frequently than the talismans. If you want the evil spirits to stay away, you have to change it every seven days. Such talismans are complicated and expensive to draw. And the longer the suppression time, the greater its resentment will be..."

Lan Wangji just sat there quietly listening to Wei Wuxian's nonsense without saying a word.

It is true that suppression is not a good idea, but the production and use of suppression and repulsion talismans are not as laborious and cumbersome as Wei Wuxian said. But when it comes to this, no one can talk more than Wei Wuxian, and even Lan Sizhui, who is excellent in his studies, was stunned and almost believed it. Master Qin heard him say that it was very troublesome, as if there would be endless troubles if he chose to suppress. He couldn't help but murmur in his heart and kept looking at Lan Wangji who was sitting beside him with his head down and drinking tea. But because Lan Wangji's face never showed the look of "he is exaggerating", he couldn't help but believe it, and could only say: "Is there no way to solve it once and for all?!"

Wei WuXian changed the subject and said, “Whether it is possible or not, it depends on you, Master Qin.”

Young Master Qin asked, "Why are you looking at me?"

Wei WuXian said, “I can make a talisman specifically for you, but that depends on whether you are willing to answer my questions truthfully.”

"what is the problem?"

Wei WuXian asked, “Did you know this evil corpse when he was alive?”

After a long silence, Master Qin finally said, "I know him."