Originated from mountains and seas, life never ends

"How come he's so big and can't even drink porridge?"

After a heated discussion among the ghosts, Mang Ling made an exception for two of them - allowing them to touch real objects.

These two are the female ghost in red and the male ghost in armor.

Because the male ghost had no head, the female ghost in red had to dress him up and run to the nearby town to beg for food.

Several ghosts who had not eaten for hundreds of years got together and tried several times, and finally brought out a bowl of white porridge.

The female ghost took a spoon, scooped a spoonful of thick porridge and put it to the boy's mouth: "Ah——"

The boy obediently opened his mouth and the porridge took a bite. Instead of swallowing it like an ordinary child, he held it in his mouth.

"Why didn't he swallow it?" The ghost girl frowned and looked at him in confusion, "Hasn't he not eaten for two days?"

"Yeah, if we don't eat today, we'll probably starve to death." The male ghost echoed.

Female ghost:......

The female ghost covered her face and said, "This is the first child I raised. I'm not going to raise him to death, am I?"

"Can't he swallow?" the male ghost analyzed.

"That shouldn't be the case. You're already that old, and shouldn't you be able to swallow naturally?" The ghost girl held up her chin. Although she said so, she still taught him, "Come, learn from me. Lift your head like this, and then - swallow."

The female ghost pointed at her pale throat and demonstrated to the boy.

Seeing this, the boy frowned, imitated her, and finally swallowed the first mouthful of porridge.

The female ghost was overjoyed: "Great, great! I won't starve to death!"

As he spoke, he fed him the bowl of porridge spoonful by spoonful.

The boy swallowed the last mouthful of porridge and licked his lower lip gently.

"Huh? You can lick your lips now. That's great." The female ghost said happily again.

Mo Hanyu could understand why she was so happy. These days, except when the ghosts asked him to do something, the rest of the time the boy would sit on the ground motionless, in a daze, without any extra movements except blinking and breathing.

When the boy heard the ghost girl's strange words, he shrank back, thinking he had done something wrong, and fear appeared in his eyes.

"Hey, I'm not yelling at you... Why is he so scared of me?" The female ghost wanted to explain, but she saw fear in the boy's eyes, so she quickly took a half step back to keep a safe distance from him. This time she saw the boy's expression relaxed.

The female ghost scratched her head and looked at the male ghost in confusion.

"He's not afraid of you, even though you're so fierce, so why would he be afraid of me?"

The headless male ghost did not reply but reached out to the boy. As expected, the boy did not show any joy, but he was not afraid either.

"Maybe your smile is too creepy." replied the male ghost.

"Ah?" The female ghost held up an umbrella, incredulous, "I'm creepy? Then you, a headless creature, aren't you creepy too?"

No, you're both creepy...

Mo Hanyu thought to himself that this was the kind of person who would scream no matter who he met at night.

Although Mo Hanyu complained like this, he agreed with the male ghost in his heart. Maybe it was because the boy's mother would smile when she did those scary things, so the boy would always be particularly nervous when he saw the female ghost smile.

But this female ghost just loves to laugh.

Although it is scary at first glance, it is okay once you get familiar with it.

"Did someone smile at him like that before, leaving a trauma in him?" the ghost next to him guessed.

Mo Hanyu: ...

The guess was so accurate, it would be a waste of your talent if you didn't solve the case.

...No, it's a genius.

"This child is really different from other children... He is too quiet." The female ghost touched the umbrella handle, stared at the boy, frowned and thought.

"You didn't have a good life before, did you?" A male ghost with half his head missing touched his chin. "When I was a kid, I was always climbing up and down, running around in the trees. My mother chased me with a stick all day long...haha."

The male ghost couldn't help laughing as he spoke.

Female ghost: “…Is this something to be proud of?”

"By the way, this child doesn't have a name yet, right?" The one-armed female ghost held her head and leaned against the tree, "Our mountain god hasn't given him a name either."

"...Why did you pick him up when he doesn't want to do this or that?" The female ghost couldn't help but cover her face.

"The ghosts all over Mangshan are already busy enough, and now there's a child..." The female ghost said with her tongue hanging, "Is it to find something for us to do?"

The red-clothed female ghost covered her face and made up her mind after a moment: "Let's go, I'll take you to find him to give you a name."

"Wait." The headless male ghost stopped her from pulling the boy's hand, "Don't you think he will let us name him then?"

"How can it be possible--" The female ghost was about to say it was impossible, but suddenly she remembered the "master and apprentice" thing. She was stunned for a few seconds and turned to look at him, "What you said makes sense."

"Why don't we come up with a few nice names first and let him choose when the time comes."

Several ghosts gathered together and discussed for a long time, and finally chose two nice names.

"My name is Ye Lanshu. The child will have the same surname as me, Ye, and will be called Ye Qingyun." The female ghost in red pointed at the name on the ground.

"Why not Liu? Liu sounds better." The headless male ghost retorted.

Neither of them was willing to back down, and finally decided to see what Mang Ling would choose.

Then--

"What's your name?" Mang Ling was a little surprised and looked at the boy.

The female ghost nodded, ready for Mang Ling to ask them to name something, and then she planned to say the name before the male ghost.

Unexpectedly, Mang Ling did not wave his hand to let them stand up as they had imagined. Instead, he stared at the boy for a moment, and then looked at the crow perched on the branch.

"Howling owl." Mang Ling pointed at the crow perched on a branch and said to them, "Do you know how to write that word?"

Female ghost:......

She had never been so disappointed.

"...Yes." The headless male ghost was also a little disappointed, but still replied.

"Then he will be called Xiao, without a surname." Mang Ling said calmly, "You can just teach him how to read or something."

After saying that, he disappeared again.

"...It's so sad." The female ghost frowned, and two bloodstains looked like tears flowing from her heart.

The headless male ghost sighed.

"My name is Ye Lanshu, which means these three characters, and your name is Xiao, which means this character."

No matter how disappointed you are, you still have to teach me how to read.

Mo Hanyu looked at the words Ye Lanshu had written on the ground with a branch. These words were indeed different from those in their world.

"Come, read with me, Ye Lanshu." Ye Lanshu was very patient. She pointed at the ground with a branch and taught him word by word.

The boy learned quickly and knew hundreds of words in just a few days.

“…I have a question.”

The half-headed male ghost who was watching asked abruptly, "How long have you been dead?"

"What a presumptuous question." Ye Lanshu closed her eyes, "I also forgot, how many thousands of years has it been?"

"It has been thousands of years. Will human characters...change?" the male ghost asked the fatal question.

Ye Lanshu: ...

The headless male ghost who had been watching and thought there was nothing wrong said: …

Ye Lanshu suddenly realized: "Wow."

"And they have many languages, and their scripts are also different—"

The male ghost wanted to say more, but after looking at Ye Lanshu's expression, he closed his mouth.

Ye Lanshu was silent for a while, then forced a smile: "It doesn't matter, I'll teach him one first, it's better than not knowing anything at all."

"That--"

"Shut up!" Ye Lanshu was furious. "If you keep talking, I'll dig out your bones and make soup for Xiao."

Male ghost:......

Mo Hanyu: ...

This is not to the extent that...

At this moment, the boy suddenly laughed.

Although the smile was shallow and the voice was small, it reached Ye Lanshu's ears.

Ye Lanshu turned around suddenly and stared at the boy.

The boy paused and immediately put away his smile, lowering his eyes.

"Why are you bowing your head?" Ye Lanshu held up his face, slid her thumb, and pulled the corner of his mouth to force a smile, "You look so good when you smile. Don't look so sad."

The boy looked at her, and instantly forced an ugly smile.

"You scared him." The headless male ghost said slowly.

Ye Lanshu: ...

The owl not only needs to learn writing, but also martial arts.

"If you only have ideas but no strength to match them, you will only become a target of bullying." The headless male ghost said this, and he found a spear and a short sword from somewhere and wanted to teach Xiao martial arts.

So, every day before dawn, Xiao would follow the male ghost to run in the mountains, and after running, he would do some training movements according to the male ghost's instructions.

Mo Hanyu looked at those movements and felt inexplicably familiar. After thinking carefully, he realized that those were the training movements that Qin Xiao had them do.

The headless male ghost obviously had not thought about the consequences for such a young child if he did so much exercise but did not take in enough nutrition.

After a few days, the child's steps became weak, his expression became dazed, and his lips turned blue.

"Is your physique so weak?" The headless male ghost was still confused.

Ye Lanshu beside her was also puzzled: "Why is this happening?"

Mo Hanyu felt sorry for the child. You only give him one meal a day, and that's just a bowl of white porridge, and you make the child follow you and learn this and that with an empty stomach all day long. Isn't this torture?

But even so, Xiao did not object.

Finally one day, when Xiao was running in the mountains, his eyes went dark and he fell to the ground.

Fortunately, although the male ghost was a little nervous, he was quick to react. As Xiao fell, he put his arm around him and picked him up with one hand.

"What's wrong?" The male ghost was still confused, looking at Xiao's pale face.

After Xiao fainted, Mo Hanyu's eyes went dark as well. When it became clear again, he found himself in a clinic, surrounded by the smell of medicine.

"Doctor, what happened to this child?"

Mo Hanyu turned his head and saw that the familiar red umbrella was hung with a circle of black gauze, covering Ye Lanshu's face. Not only that, she was also wrapped in a black cloak, vaguely covering the wedding dress underneath.

"...Are you the mother of this child?" The bearded old man stared at her strangely.

"Of course, otherwise I wouldn't have rushed here." Ye Lanshu raised her sleeves. "Why do you ask?"

"How many meals a day does this child have?" asked the old man.

"A meal." Ye Lanshu replied without hesitation.

Old man:......

Mo Hanyu understood the old man's eyes: perhaps he had never seen a woman who could speak so openly and calmly about child abuse.

After Xiao woke up, he looked at the strange man beside him.

The reason why he was said to be strange was that the man's head and body looked like they were pieced together.

...No, it's just pieced together.

Mo Hanyu's eyes revealed shock, because he realized that the reason why the doctor hadn't cursed yet was because the image of this male ghost was too terrifying.

The male ghost pulled out a not-very-rotten human head from somewhere, casually put it on his neck, wrapped it with a few strips of cloth, and put on a high-collared, wide robe.

The man's eyes were half open, his face was ashen, his lips were dark purple, and there were even a few corpse spots on his face.

...Honestly speaking, the fact that this doctor dared to let such a person in is really worthy of the four big words "Doctor's Heart of Benevolence" hanging on the door.

"..." The old man was silent for a moment, then glanced at the male ghost, as if he had forced himself to swallow the curse words, and said patiently, "This child is less than six years old. He has weak blood and qi, a weak spleen and stomach, and cold qi sinking into the Shaoyin meridians. His heart and kidney yang are weak, and he hasn't been well taken care of. It's a miracle that he can hold on until now."

"What?!" Ye Lanshu screamed, "He's going to die?!"

Old man:......

The old man quickly glanced at the boy, and seeing that the boy did not show any strange expression, he stared at Ye Lanshu with trembling lips.

"you……"

Mo Hanyu couldn't bear to watch it anymore.

Ye Lanshu looked at Xiao with melancholy: "Why don't we hurry up and choose a grave? Reserve a spot first and come back later——"

"You are indeed not the biological mother of this child! Tell me! Where did you steal it from?!" The old man finally couldn't help it. He slammed the table, stood up, pointed at Ye Lanshu and said harshly.

Male ghost:......

Mo Hanyu: ...

Such a serious scene...

Why does he want to laugh so much?

Mo Hanyu covered his eyes.

"Then...doctor, can you tell us how to treat it?" The male ghost pressed Ye Lanshu next to Xiao and walked forward to communicate with the doctor.

When the doctor saw him coming, he took a few steps back and said, "Just stand there and don't come over!"

Seeing this, the male ghost had no choice but to stop.

The old man walked around several times, grabbed some medicine from the medicine cabinet, packaged it into dozens of portions, and tied them up.

"This is for treating his heart and blood deficiency." The old man pointed to a pile on his right hand side. "One dose a day, simmer over medium heat... Forget it, why don't you bring your children here every day and I'll make it for you."

The old man said, putting away the three piles of herbs in front of him: "Every night, wait for the moon to rise, and bring the child here to drink the medicine. The child is young and in the period of growth, he needs to eat some meat, eggs, etc., three meals a day. You must eat more meat! Three meals a day! If the child is hungry, you can add more. He is too thin now. Do you understand?"

When the old man was talking about the three meals a day, he almost bit off his tongue, using such force that it seemed like he was grinding his teeth, and he looked at Ye Lanshu intently.

Ye Lanshu didn't understand yet, but nodded obediently.

The old man looked at Xiao, was silent for a moment and asked them to wait.

Ye Lanshu and the male ghost didn't know why, so they waited in the empty pharmacy for a while. The old man went out and came back with a bowl of soy milk and a plate of big meat buns, which he handed to Xiao.

"Let's eat first." The old man said, ignoring Ye Lanshu's surprised look. He walked to the counter with his hands behind his back and wrote something in a book.

Xiao looked at Ye Lanshu, and after getting her approval, he slowly started eating.

The male ghost was facing the direction of the owl, as if looking at him, but because it was not his own head, it was impossible to tell what he was doing.

The owl took small bites at first, but when he saw that they showed no disgust, he began to stuff his food into his mouth in large gulps.

The old man had no intention of doing anything until he saw the child stuffing himself so hard that his face turned blue, and the two adults next to him did nothing to stop him.

Old man:......

"What are you doing?!"

The old man walked quickly to the boy and patted him on the back. The boy's mouth was full, but he refused to spit it out.

Ye Lanshu finally sensed something was wrong.

Seeing this, the old man had no choice but to press the acupoints on the boy's neck and pour soy milk into his mouth. After a while, he finally made Xiao swallow everything in his mouth.

"This kid can't chew, right?" The old man grabbed the boy's wrist and glared at Ye Lanshu angrily, "You watched him with a bad look on his face and didn't even think of stopping him?"

"what……?"

Ye Lanshu's tone was full of confusion.

Male ghost:......

The boy's eyes moved timidly among the three people, as if he knew that it was because of him, Ye Lanshu, that he was being scolded, and he could not help but curl up in fear.

The male ghost seemed to notice his movements, moved his fingers, and placed his hand on the boy's shoulder as if to comfort him.

Xiao trembled all over, his body became stiff, and he was at a loss.

The old man took a deep breath, glanced at them unhappily, and broke open the meat bun. The white and soft outer skin was broken open, and the fresh meat filling inside exuded an enticing aroma.

The old man broke off a small piece and put it in his mouth, chewing it exaggeratedly for the boy to see: "Like me, chew it until it is soft before swallowing it."

As he said this, he put most of the remaining half into the boy's hand.

"Eat slowly, no one will compete with you."