Moonlit Reunion [子夜归]

Chapter 4

Disguised as a tabby cat, Wu Zhen silently padded along the rooftop. After walking a bit, she paused to examine her front paw, still faintly stained with ink. Although Young Master Mei had washed it, the ink hadn't fully come off, leaving a slight trace.

She lowered her paw and continued, but after a few steps, she heard voices coming from beneath the eaves. A few officials, likely from the Ministry of Justice, were gathered in a corner, speaking in hushed, conspiratorial tones.

Curiosity always got the best of her, so Wu Zhen stopped and perked up her ears.

"Are you saying all of you have encountered it?" one of them asked.

Another answered, "I did, once. My mind felt muddled, like I didn't know what I was doing. I just stood there in a daze until Officer Song passed by and snapped me out of it. Only then did I realize I'd been standing there for over an hour."

A different voice chimed in, "Same here. It was like I'd lost myself somehow. Officer Zhao even scolded me for neglecting my work, though he had no idea I couldn't help it."

Someone else hesitantly asked, "Am I the only one who... saw a woman?"

After a brief silence, one of the previous speakers replied with an odd tone, "To be honest, I also saw a woman, though her face wasn't clear."

"I did too."

Listening for a while, Wu Zhen understood. These officials were talking about a storage room at the Ministry of Justice headquarters. The room was tucked away in a secluded corner, so dark that no sunlight reached it after noon. Recently, people entering that room had been experiencing strange incidents, just as they described—entering and inexplicably losing their senses, with no memory of what they did. Some even claimed to have seen a blurred figure of a woman.

Nobody had been harmed by it, so Wu Zhen typically wouldn't bother with such 'hauntings' and was about to leave. But after a brief thought, she changed her mind and turned towards the storage room.

"Well, since I'm already here, might as well do a good deed," she thought, admittedly a little bored lately.

She quickly found the room, detecting a faint trace of something unusual within, glowing in her eyes like a lantern in the night.

The storage room was locked, and nobody was inside. After a quick look around, Wu Zhen leaped to the windowsill and nudged the supposedly locked window open, creating a small, shadowy gap. She slipped in, and after a brief survey among the shelves, she easily located the source of the odd energy.

Just as she'd suspected, it wasn't anything particularly powerful—not even a true spirit. It was more like a tainted energy called nühuo, or 'woman's resentment.' This kind of energy forms near places where ten or more women have died.

After some thought, she remembered that just beyond a palace wall, there used to be a confinement chamber where palace maids were punished and, likely, some had died. Being so close, and given the room's poor position, it had become a breeding ground for such yin energy.

This nühuo wasn't truly harmful; it merely clouded people's minds. Typically, it wouldn't affect healthy men, only the weak, who might then catch a glimpse of a shadowy woman—the lingering resentment of the departed.

Wu Zhen opened her mouth towards the shadow, which emitted an inhuman shriek before being drawn into the tabby's mouth. The cat's ears twitched as she opened her mouth again, exhaling a faint wisp of white smoke that dissipated cleanly, leaving no trace.

As silently as she'd come, the tabby slipped out, having taken care of the little disturbance.

As Wu Zhen stepped out of the Taiji Palace, evening had fallen, casting a golden glow over the entire city of Chang'an. The streets were nearly empty, and Wu Zhen rode her horse back towards the Duke of Yu's residence. Before she arrived, the curfew drums began to sound, each powerful beat echoing from one part of the city to the next, reverberating across the hundred and ten District of Chang'an.