Chapter 7 Shadows at Elder Qiu’s Door
The night air felt sharper as Lian Hua and Shen Wei hurried through Willow Moon Town, lantern light bobbing in the young villager’s trembling hand. The streets were nearly empty only the faint creak of wooden signs and the rustle of bamboo broke the silence.
Lian Hua clutched her medical bag close. Beside her, Shen Wei walked with a controlled tension, every sense alert. She could feel it in the way his arm brushed hers: protective, steady, but wound tight like a drawn bow.
“Elder Qiu collapsed inside the tea house,” the young man gasped. “He said he felt… something cold touch his shoulder before he fainted.”
Lian Hua exchanged a glance with Shen Wei.
Cold.
Exactly the same eerie sensation she had felt at the moon gate.
They reached the tea house a small, warm place usually filled with laughter. Tonight, it was silent. The door hung half open, lanterns flickering unnaturally as if struggling against an unseen breath.
Lian Hua stepped inside and immediately felt the shift in the air. A chill slithered along her spine, sinking cold fingers into her chest.
Shen Wei noticed it too. He gently touched her elbow.
“Stay close.”
She nodded.
Inside, Elder Qiu lay on a woven mat, his face pale and glistening with sweat. Two villagers knelt beside him anxiously.
Lian Hua lowered herself beside the elder and checked his pulse.
Her breath hitched.
It was normal, too normal.
But his skin… ice cold.
“Elder Qiu?” she whispered, touching his temple. “Can you hear me?”
His eyelids fluttered not from consciousness but from something deeper, trapped. His lips trembled, forming breathless, broken sounds.
“G....gate… the gate… it opened again…”
Lian Hua felt her heart lurch.
Shen Wei stiffened. “What gate? Did you see something?”
But Elder Qiu’s eyes rolled beneath his lids, the faintest wince crossing his features. “Red… red string… around the moon… she’s calling…”
Lian Hua grabbed his hand instinctively.
“Who’s calling?” she asked gently.
The old man sucked in a sharp breath.
And whispered “Her.”
The lantern beside them sputtered violently as if someone had blown across the flame.
Lian Hua felt the temperature drop further, seeping into her bones. The two villagers shivered, hugging themselves. Shen Wei stepped closer to Elder Qiu, brows drawn, jaw tight.
This was not an illness.
This was something else.
Something old.
Something watching.
Lian Hua prepared a warming tonic, placing the cup by the elder’s lips but the moment she tipped it, Elder Qiu’s eyes snapped open.
Not fully, just enough.
And he stared straight at her.
“Don’t go near the moon gate,” he croaked. “Not when the veil thins.”
Lian Hua’s fingers froze.
Shen Wei stepped in front of her, blocking the elder’s direct gaze, his voice steady but edged with steel.
“What veil?”
Elder Qiu’s breath rattled. His hand lifted weakly, gesturing toward Lian Hua but halfway through, his arm fell, and he slumped back into a deep, unnatural sleep.
The room fell silent, too silent.
Finally, Shen Wei exhaled, slow and controlled. “We should take him to your clinic. It’s safer there.”
Lian Hua nodded, but her hand trembled around the medical bag.
She whispered, “Shen Wei… what did he see?”
Shen Wei didn’t answer right away. Instead, he glanced toward the entrance where the lanterns continued to flicker with no wind.
His voice lowered, soft and grave.
“Not what,” he said finally.
“Who.”
A cold shiver swept through her.
“Who… then?”
Shen Wei looked at her, eyes dark like ink under moonlight, filled with a truth he wasn’t ready to give.
“Someone who should have stayed in the past.”
Lian Hua’s chest tightened.
“Are you saying she’s… back?”
Shen Wei’s gaze drifted toward the tea house door, where a faint red thread thin as a hair lay on the floorboards.
He picked it up carefully.
“No,” he murmured. “She never left.”
The thread crumbled into dust between his fingers.
And somewhere outside, carried by the wind, a woman’s soft whisper seemed to glide through the bamboo calling a name neither of them wanted to hear.