The red camellia was hung inside the shrine by a red thread.
Luo Yuan confirmed that the clan deity truly seemed to like red camellias, so she gathered all the red paper from the incense sticks, folded a large bundle of red camellias, and even rolled the paper into stems to make flower branches — this was one of the tricks she used to coax her younger sister when they were little.
The sisters’ parents had passed away very early. As the older sister, she was several years older than her sibling; when her sister was in sixth grade, she was already a college freshman, so at that time she often used little things like this to coax her. For a long period, the vase in her sister’s room was always filled with colorful decorative paper flowers folded by her.
The red paper used to wrap the incense sticks had very good texture, with gold powder sprinkled on it, so folding camellias with it made them look beautiful. Although presenting such a huge bouquet of red paper flowers to the Clan Deity looked indescribably strange, as if it were some old-fashioned courtship scene, Luo Yuan herself didn’t feel anything. After all, she didn’t dare have any thoughts toward a god, and of course that god didn’t feel anything either, but judging from the curve of his smile, he didn’t show any sign of rejection and accepted it happily.
That bouquet received the same treatment as the previous one — hung in the shrine by a red thread. And it was placed on the innermost layer, far better treatment than Luo Yuan herself, who only slept on the outermost edge of the shrine at night. Because of such a small matter, Luo Yuan strangely felt less afraid of those red threads.
At first, she thought the Clan Deity only liked red camellias, but after being taken out to eat by him a few times, seeing him pause to admire other flowers along the way, he also seemed to like those.
“You like these flowers? If you do, why not have someone plant them in your courtyard?”
“A Clan Deity will not favor any particular thing.” The Clan Deity answered her like this.
Luo Yuan didn’t really understand, but from the deity’s smile, from his curved eyes, the drifting hair, the gathered sleeves, she carefully read only one word.
— Want.
On the offering altar in the shrine, there was now a small bottle with two fresh flowers plucked from the roadside outside the courtyard.
The shinu had no awareness at all of the extra flowers on the altar; only when the Clan Deity sat upright on the altar would he occasionally gaze at those two ordinary flowers. They would usually wither within a day or two, but before they wilted, the one who quietly placed them there would replace them, putting in fresh flowers.
Compared to the expensive fruits beside them, carefully cultivated and selected, this was truly a shabby offering.
Luo Yuan felt very ashamed about her “borrowing flowers to offer to the Buddha” behavior. The flowers were picked from the roadside, the glass bottle was a small drink bottle taken from the kitchen — she was too embarrassed to call it a gift, and could only silently mix it in as an offering among the fruits and pastries.
Facing a god, she was always afraid as an ordinary person, but on the other hand, the god always behaved so gentle and harmless, and she could only rely on him. She was often deceived by his appearance, which looked too human, making her feel he was just a boy around her younger sister’s age.
She had already been pulled by the sleeve and taken to eat many times, and Luo Yuan could face it calmly now. Most of the time, they would avoid going when many people were in the dining hall, but occasionally they wouldn’t. So Luo Yuan carried her food and shrank into a separate room with the fewest people — only two people were eating inside.
Those two elderly shinu would drink tea after eating and chat for a while. Luo Yuan ate while listening to them.
“These past two days, when going to the shrine to offer incense to the deity, it seems like I smelled a foul odor.”
“I smelled it too, faint but there. What’s going on?”
“I think maybe that escaped sacrificial offering from before died in some corner of the courtyard and has started to rot, so there’s a stench?”
“Possible. After hiding for so long, it’s about time to starve to death. We should hurry and follow the smell to find the corpse and deal with it.”
“The smell is near the shrine. Could that person be hiding under the shrine?”
“How could an ordinary person not fear the deity? They must be insane.”
Luo Yuan ate quietly, feeling that these two old women sounded like they were talking about a dead mouse in some corner of the house.
And then… she stretched her arm out and sniffed herself. It did seem a little smelly. That was really shameful. She had thought about bathing, but there was no place to bathe in that courtyard. To leave the courtyard she needed the deity to take her, and she didn’t dare trouble him, so she kept putting it off.
It really couldn’t wait any longer; if she didn’t clean herself now, she would end up suffocating the venerable Clan Deity.
“Bathe?” The Clan Deity seemed only then reminded, and said with a gentle smile, “Yes, humans need to cleanse their bodies.”
Hearing that the deity didn’t find it troublesome, Luo Yuan finally let out a breath of relief. The deity drifted in front, she followed behind, and they found a bathhouse. Like the dining hall, the bathhouse looked ancient from the outside, but once inside, it was built comfortably to modern standards, with more than ten partitioned shower rooms and even a bath pool.
Being able to finally take a long, thorough hot bath really was comfortable — except the process was nerve-racking. Not because the deity was floating nearby, but because midway through, other people came in… and she finally realized this was a men’s bathhouse.
She was in the innermost stall. People entered the neighboring stalls, and while washing, they chatted. These men seemed to be the ones guarding the courtyard of the shrine. Although they appeared stern and cold on the surface, they turned out to be very chatty while bathing.
Luo Yuan listened as they talked about their shift rotations, about where they would go after their leave ended, and then they moved on to the Clan Deity.
From the bits she had overheard in the outer courtyard over this period, Luo Yuan already knew the deity was the Clan Deity of the Qin clan — a large and prosperous family under divine protection. These people were all selected from the Qin clan; aside from the two shinu, everyone else would rotate in shifts.
“I heard from the shinu that the Clan Deity who awakened this time has a very gentle temper. Even though Qin Minglang and Qin Mingcheng made such a big mistake earlier and were negligent with the sacrificial offering, he didn’t strip them of their surname, just sent them to the border area.”
“Then our guard duty this cycle should be pretty easy. At least no one will die.”
“The cycle two years ago was the worst. The Clan Deity who awakened then had a cruel temperament. Any Qin clansman who made mistakes while he was awake met bad ends, and even two guards died because he sensed they behaved improperly. And that one was especially fond of ‘punishment’. The infants sent to the main house back then to receive his ‘blessing’ will probably all grow up to be ‘strict enforcers’.”
“Speaking of that, there was another time too. You know Great-Uncle Qin Feijun, right? He’s the current Chief Judge, praised as a ‘walking law code’. They say the year he was born, the deity who awakened had an extremely harsh and cold temperament, so the children blessed by the deity that year were all influenced. They revised and drafted strict laws, and all the cases Great-Uncle judged — the criminals all received the harshest sentences.”
Listening to this gossip, Luo Yuan kept lowering her head. These people had no idea that while they gossiped about their Clan Deity, the deity himself was sitting on the partition wall of the neighboring shower stall, quietly listening with a gentle smile.
Luo Yuan lifted her eyes slightly and saw the deity’s white sleeve hanging down, and hurried to finish her bath.
Before the others finished bathing, she quickly changed into a clean bathrobe, slipped out, grabbed the deity’s sleeve again, and followed him back. The corridor she walked during her first visit — still dimly lit — no longer felt frightening. She even felt like chatting.
“Do you fall asleep every once in a while?”
The deity smiled and nodded.
“Then… does each awakening show a different temperament?”
The deity smiled and nodded.
“Do you remember the things that happened in the past?”
Her three consecutive questions echoed softly down the corridor, her footsteps the only sound.
The deity finally stopped replying with a smile and nod. His tone sank slowly like the sunset: “A Clan Deity does not forget anything. Every family’s Clan Deity is a clan genealogy and family chronicle that only grows more bloated with time.”
Luo Yuan was surprised. “Every family…? Does that mean there are other clan deities besides you?”
The deity tilted his head, the smiling expression like a mask frozen on a statue. He said, “This world is not as simple as it appears to ordinary people.”
Wind howled through the corridor and through the loose sleeves of her bathrobe, making her feel a little cold.
Yes — the true appearance of this hidden world had only just revealed one corner before her. Luo Yuan did not try asking further questions. Seeing a cluster of blooming chrysanthemums by the roadside, she plucked two stems and held them in her hand, preparing to replace the soon-to-wilt flowers in the shrine.
“I feel like the offerings we replace lately are occasionally missing a little.”
“That faint stench has disappeared too.”
“The escaped sacrificial offering still hasn’t left a trace. Where in the world did they die? We haven’t found them — could it be the Clan Deity already handled it?”
“To make the deity personally deal with such a trivial matter… we truly feel ashamed.”
Hearing the two shinu’s routine nagging, Luo Yuan felt nothing at all. After finishing her meal, she left. She lived in this ancient residence like a living ghost. Compared to the fear she had at the beginning when they scared her, now it felt like it should be the opposite — if she ever left a trace, she would probably scare the two shinu instead.
Several young girls studying under the two shinu seemed to be raised as the next generation of shinu. Although the shinu emphasized that serving the Clan Deity must be their sole purpose in life and hoped the successors would study diligently, two of them were always inattentive and would secretly hide away to play on their phones.
It had been a long time since Luo Yuan last saw a phone. Once, by chance, she ran into the two girls playing on their phones, and she couldn’t help approaching to take a look. The deity followed her intention and drifted over as well. Luo Yuan stood beside the two girls, craning her neck to see their screens, while the deity floated nearby, watching.
The girls were playing a game. Luo Yuan had never played it, but she remembered her younger sister seemed to have played this one. Watching them, she couldn’t help feeling a sense of closeness.
The game had high-quality graphics, and the two were focused on controlling the little characters in battle. After watching for a while, the deity asked, “What is this?”
“It’s a phone. They’re playing a game.” Luo Yuan hesitated. “If you’re interested in this, you could have the shinu offer a phone.” She actually had a bit of selfishness in saying that — she had been away from the life she knew for too long and wanted to reconnect with her familiar world.
The deity’s tone was gentle: “A Clan Deity will not favor any particular thing.”
Luo Yuan: “…” That sounded familiar.
He wouldn’t ask for it, but if you placed it before him, he would accept it — was that what he meant? Luo Yuan guessed, relying on her experiences communicating with her teenage sister.
Should she say the deity was like an elderly person who wasn’t good at expressing what he wanted and preferred others to guess, or like a youthful boy who wanted things but wouldn’t say it and waited to be guessed?
Although she couldn’t obtain a phone, during the times they went outside the courtyard, if she paid attention, she could see many people secretly using their phones. Making calls, chatting, reading news, playing games — all kinds. Every time Luo Yuan spotted one, she would tug lightly on the deity’s sleeve; if the sleeve moved, it meant he permitted her to approach.
He permitted her every time.
Through this little habit, Luo Yuan gradually felt connected to the real world again. Occasionally, some familiar news would pop up on those phones.
Without anyone in the residence realizing, Luo Yuan, with the deity in tow, had practically seen everything on their phones. Thus, some secrets had nowhere left to hide — such as one male guard who was secretly dating several lovers behind his wife’s back.
The man put down his phone to fetch something. Luo Yuan stood by, looking at the phone with a hesitant expression, then turned to the deity, wanting to speak but stopping.
The deity smiled and nodded.
Luo Yuan instantly felt the deity understood what she was thinking, and was even encouraging her. So she picked up the phone, swiftly added the man’s wife and all his lovers into a group chat, shared all the screenshots of his messages, then, before the man returned, quickly put the phone back in its original place.
After doing all this, she looked at the deity and couldn’t help showing a smile.
The deity still had that unchanged, gentle smile, but after a moment, he tilted his head slightly in mild confusion, as if asking:
“What are you doing?”
Luo Yuan unconsciously tilted her head in the same way, showing the same puzzled expression:
“…?” You… didn’t know what I just did? That nod, wasn’t it agreement?
