It was too late to say anything, for everything had already happened so quickly.
Song Cheng's Divine Soul had left his body and drifted aimlessly outside, witnessing many scenes of the dark night, yet in reality, he had only wandered for about the length of half an incense stick's burning time.
On the bed, the little lady of the house squirmed in her sleep, as if she couldn't feel her husband's touch and subconsciously reached out to both sides.
Only when her little toes brushed against Song Cheng's calf did the little lady, as if sleepwalking, turn over and lean against him.
Even though there was fully half a bed's distance behind her, she still stubbornly and instinctively squeezed toward Song Cheng's side.
As a result of this leaning, the little lady felt like she leaned against a block of ice, which woke her from her dream. Confused, she reached out to touch Song Cheng's body again, and this time she was completely awoken by the cold.
She suddenly opened her eyes, fully aware that her husband's body was cold.
Tong Jia was so shocked that she hurriedly checked his pulse and his breathing.
"Alive."
Song Cheng said.
The little lady of the house asked in a panic, "What's wrong with you?
You were lying there just fine... did you go outside, or what?
No, that's not right. If you went out, wouldn't I know about it?"
Song Cheng said, "If I said that I can do Out of Body Divine Soul, would my lady believe me?"
The little lady of the house, though petite, was like a bundle of warm fire, completely turning over onto the young man. Then, she crawled into his embrace and said, "Hold me for warmth."
Song Cheng held her tightly, as if he had grasped a bunch of sunlight.
The little lady of the house, her teeth chattering from the cold, did not utter a word about it; she just clung to the young man tighter, putting her hands on his cold parts to warm him up, and said, "Dream a little less, will you? We both know each other well. A few days ago, I went along with it when you said you could see filthy things. And now you're talking about Out of Body Divine Soul. Are you ever going to stop? Have you been hexed, or do you have hysteria?"
Song Cheng thought for a moment, then decided not to hide anything from Tong Jia.
Traversing across realms, energy panels, everlasting life stuff—naturally, he wasn't planning to speak of these, firstly because they were his biggest secrets, and secondly because Tong Jia wouldn't be able to accept them anyway. But Night Wandering and seeing ghosts were not worth hiding.
In this Chaotic World, he and the little lady of the house relied on each other for survival.
And the little lady was also affectionate and loyal to him.
"To keep growing stronger by myself while treating the person by my pillow as a fool, keeping her in the dark about everything concerning me, and then silently watching her act the clown"—he couldn't do such a thing.
So, Song Cheng said, "Wait until my body is warm, then let's give it a try."
Tong Jia said with a laugh, "Try what?"
Song Cheng said, "You take a piece of paper, write something on it, then secretly place it outside the room. I'll go out with my Divine Soul to see what you've written, then come back and tell you."
The ability to have his Divine Soul leave the body for a few breaths, as long as the weather wasn't extremely harsh, was still quite easy for Song Cheng.
Tong Jia said, "Alright! If you guess wrong, you must stop all this wild thinking and never talk again about seeing filthy things or your Divine Soul leaving your body. Let's live our lives properly!"
Song Cheng said, "It's a deal."
Tong Jia sighed silently.
Her body was warm, radiating heat everywhere. After she had shared quite a bit of her warmth with Song Cheng and considering that Song Cheng himself had very precise control over the timing of his Night Wandering, his body too began to warm up after a while.
The little lady of the house felt it too, so without caring about the darkness, she got off Song Cheng's body and rustled out of the bedcovers. When she reached the edge of the bed, she lightly kicked his thigh and said fiercely, "I was sleeping well until you woke me up, and now I can't get back to sleep! If we're going to try this, let's do it now!"
Song Cheng said, "Okay."
The little lady of the house quickly wrapped herself in her coat, grabbed paper and brush, ran outside, and with a few swishes, drew a large turtle and wrote two characters on the turtle's shell, "Song Cheng."
After doing all this, she picked up a small stone and pressed the drawing into the mud, then quickly returned, sat by the bed, and tapped Song Cheng lightly, saying, "Hey, I've written it.
I'll give you a hint, I wrote a line of poetry, from that poem you know.
But that poem has eight sections, so guess which one I wrote."
Song Cheng searched his memory.
In the memory of his former life, after being taken in by Rejuvenation Hall, he had learned some elementary characters and could recognize simple numbers.
He couldn't write, but he had studied alongside Tong Jia with the old Physician so he wouldn't make mistakes while dispensing medicine.
The only exception was once when the old Physician had treated a scholar who, to express his gratitude, gifted him with a poem he had written.
He and Tong Jia had then learned it by the way.
Song Cheng sensed his physical state.
The body was warm, ready for the soul to leave.
He closed his eyes, visualized the nine-tiered pagoda, and his Divine Soul rapidly left his body, like a gust shooting toward the door.
After squeezing through the door slit, he saw the piece of paper outside that the stone was pressing down on.
He didn't linger and quickly returned.
Coming and going was but a matter of breaths.
Tong Jia originally sat in shock at the sight of Song Cheng's breathlessness, but in an instant, his breath returned, and her astonishment and doubt intensified.
Song Cheng laughed and said, "You didn't write a poem, instead you drew a turtle, and on its shell you wrote the name Tong Jia."
He didn't recognize many characters, but he could still recognize his own name.
Tong Jia instinctively spat out, but after spitting, she stared at him in utter shock, her single-lidded eyes round and bulging, as if she couldn't believe it and couldn't accept this reality.
Out of Body Divine Soul?
She'd seen a ghost!
After her shock, her first reaction was to run off the bed to grab a clothes beater, then she quickly turned around and said, "You really are haunted!"
Song Cheng sighed, recalled the poem, and recited, "A cold hue envelopes the solitary village, the mournful wind heard throughout the wilderness. The deep stream resists the snow, the frozen mountain does not flow with cloud. Gulls and herons fly indistinguishably, sandy banks extend beyond sight. A few plum trees by the rustic bridge, all are covered in white."
Then, he began to mention things that only he and Tong Jia knew about.
After he finished, he said, "That day I was unconscious, perhaps I had an epiphany, and suddenly I mastered this skill."
Tong Jia asked him for a long time, and finally put aside the clothes beater and ran back to the bed, saying, "Then... you can see what I look like now?"
Song Cheng said, "More beautiful than a heavenly fairy!"
Tong Jia giggled and murmured non-stop, "I never thought my man had such a skill."
So, Song Cheng moved closer and repeated "the incident of Ding Family's eldest brother threatening Yune with a knife" and his speculation about "the second Ding brother's investigation" that day.
Tong Jia paused, then said, "It can't be. Those three brothers are still children, the youngest only fourteen, and the two older just turned fifteen."
Song Cheng said, "I could tell, Ding Siyu has practiced martial arts, and he has a good knife, too."
Tong Jia fell completely silent, suddenly feeling a chill of fear.
If Song Cheng had indeed been unable to get out of bed that day, would Ding Siyu have broken into her room in the middle of the night and humiliated her with a knife to her throat?
"Let's go, call everyone to come and see!" Tong Jia said angrily.
Song Cheng pulled her back and sighed softly.
In a village mostly full of the old, weak, sick, and disabled, where the power dynamic skewed toward "zero," Ding Siyu, with his murderous skill and heartlessness, might scare everyone into not meddling.
Moreover, Ding Siyu was the Village Chief's nephew, with deep roots in Tang River Village. Compared to Yune and outsiders like him, Ding Siyu was considered one of their own.
Although he was angry, at this moment, he didn't know how to proceed.
The little lady of the house thought for a long while, then sighed deeply and asked, "What do you think we should do?"
Song Cheng said, "Doesn't the village have a blacksmith shop? The blacksmith may have been conscripted, but the tools are all still there; we'll go buy some tomorrow."
The little lady of the house said, "But they are just a bunch of rusted junk."
Song Cheng said, "I'll know how to choose."
The little lady of the house lay on his chest, propped up her chin to look at him, her eyes twinkling, as if she was seeing him for the first time. After a while, she said, "Song Cheng really didn't have this ability."
Song Cheng was startled, feeling as if he'd been exposed.
The little lady of the house continued, "I've heard about the possession of lonely souls and wild ghosts. You're not something that attached to Song Cheng after he died, are you?"
Song Cheng said, "Nonsense!"
The little lady of the house said, "Here we go, here we go. Song Cheng wouldn't say something like that, right?"
After saying that, she sighed softly again and said, "But you know everything about me and Song Cheng... and besides, if you really possessed him when Song Cheng fainted, then the one who slept with me was you."
Song Cheng gave a wry smile and said, "My lady, isn't there a possibility that a ghost tried to possess me but ended up being absorbed by me instead? And then I absorbed his memories, which led to these changes."
Tong Jia blinked, her heart in turmoil.
Song Cheng started to whisper sweet nothings.
Gradually, within the bedding, the young couple found their passion again.
It's hard to keep secrets at the head of a bed, especially from someone you share each day with.
But no matter what, the two were now in the same boat, dependent on each other for life.
After a bout of passionate love, Tong Jia had come to accept it.
And besides, her man was clearly an upgraded version of Song Cheng, which was quite good in her opinion.