---
In the following days, a strange silence began to fall over the Shen residence—one that felt less like calm and more like the stillness before a storm. Servants whispered behind closed doors. The lanterns in Orchid Courtyard, Shen Yulan's residence, burned longer into the night. And the ever-graceful Madam Su, known for her composed elegance, had begun to lose sleep.
It started with the scripture.
The yellowed, centuries-old copy of Records of Spirits and Shadows, a text once donated by an old monk from the western province, had always sat quietly in the Shen family shrine. Unread. Unnoticed.
Until now.
Madam Su had ordered it removed and locked away the day after Shen Yuhan's visit.
But it was too late. Word had already reached the ears of more than one curious maid, and the tale they pieced together was frighteningly simple.
"The possessed child hears things no one else can," read a line scrawled in the margin of the ancient pages. "She will weep without knowing, smile without reason. Her soul unsettled, her shadow flickering, she begins to wander in places she once feared. She looks at her family and sees strangers. She becomes two."
Simple. But too fitting.
Madam Su, in her effort to suppress the scripture, only lent it weight.
When Shen Yuhan had come to her, frightened and fragile, whispering her fears about the haunting, about being accused, Madam Su had played the role of the worried stepmother. But now… now she found herself unable to sleep, her nerves frayed.
She kept glancing behind her shoulder.
Because Shen Yuhan hadn't wept in the night. Shen Yuhan hadn't smiled without reason. Shen Yuhan hadn't wandered or whispered to herself.
But Shen Yulan had.
"She was sleepwalking again last night," whispered one of her maids to the other.
"No—really?"
"She went into the ancestral hall. Just stood there. Smiling."
Madam Su had silenced them both—too late.
By the third day, she was summoning the family physician under the excuse of checking her own health. Then a monk. Then a private Taoist priest from the outskirts of the capital.
All in secret.
Each night, she'd go to Orchid Courtyard with new charms, new amulets, new incense. She said it was for Yuhan. But the scent of the incense lingered thickly around Yulan's room. Shen Yulan, once ever poised and talkative, had begun to fidget in daylight and avoid mirrors after dusk.
It was working.
Inside the Osmanthus Courtyard, Shen Yuhan sat calmly brushing her hair by the window, watching the shifting light reflect off the small copper mirror.
"She's asked for charms to ward off spirits from the capital's Celestial Temple," Ming'er reported, biting back a smile. "She says the evil is too close to home now."
Ah Zhu gave a mock gasp. "Is it inside the home already?"
Shen Yuhan smiled without turning. "Madam Su thinks ghosts are her worst enemy."
She paused, setting the brush down and gazing at her reflection. "She has no idea I'm the one haunting her."
---
Later that evening, after the sun had dipped below the walls of the Shen estate and Osmanthus Courtyard was cloaked in soft candlelight, Granny Zhang arrived with the old storybook wrapped in a faded brocade cloth.
Shen Yuhan sat cross-legged by the brazier, flipping through the yellowed pages with delicate care. The cover read The Ghost Bride: Records of the Spirit-Married in half-faded ink, the edges worn from time and retellings. Ah Zhu lit a stick of sandalwood incense, and its faint, spicy fragrance curled through the air as Shen Yuhan read aloud.
"In the third lunar month, the daughter of the Zhao family began speaking in tongues. She wept at night, sang to the shadows, and spoke of a husband no one had seen. The servants whispered she had been married in the spirit world—bound by a vow to a dead man whose soul would not rest."
She turned the page slowly, letting the silence hang.
"First, it was dreams. Then came the scent of funeral incense in her chambers, despite no one lighting any. The maidservants said she smiled too sweetly at nothing, and the more people watched her, the more her gaze turned hollow… possessed, they said. By a groom buried without rites."
Ming'er, standing behind her, hugged herself. "That's… creepy."
Shen Yuhan smiled faintly, but her eyes didn't lift from the page. "It's a story, Ming'er. But stories shape belief. And belief, when carefully guided, becomes truth."
She set the book down and reached for a folded slip of parchment she'd tucked between the pages earlier—an old scripture written in archaic verse, copied from a forgotten Daoist scroll Granny Zhang once shared with her long ago.
Ah Zhu leaned closer. "That's the scripture that was recited in the story, isn't it?"
Shen Yuhan nodded. "It was used to cleanse the 'possessed' girl. But here's the clever part." She opened it and read aloud, slowly and clearly:
'If a soul lingers in the mortal realm, it will attach itself to the purest vessel. The one most admired, praised, and beloved. It will wear that face, and corrupt it from within. The one who smiles brightest may be the most haunted.'
She let the final line echo in the room.
Ah Zhu's eyes widened. "That… that sounds like…"
"Exactly," Shen Yuhan said, her voice low. "Who in this manor fits that description more than Shen Yulan?"
Ming'er gasped. "But if people hear that scripture—if they remember that part from the story—and you… nudge the right ears…"
"They'll connect the dots themselves," Shen Yuhan finished. "No need for lies. Just the gentle suggestion of a pattern."
She stood, smoothing the front of her robes. Her voice was as soft as the falling petals outside. "We'll begin tomorrow. Granny Zhang still tells stories to the laundry girls in the afternoons. I'll ask her to read The Ghost Bride again—perhaps to the younger maids in Orchid Courtyard."
Ah Zhu gave a low chuckle. "Let them listen, then run whispering in the dark."
"And once they start to whisper," Shen Yuhan said, her gaze distant but razor-sharp, "we'll slip the scripture beneath Shen Yulan's pillow. Or maybe hang it behind her dressing screen."
Ming'er swallowed hard. "She'll think the ghost's after her."
"She will," Shen Yuhan murmured. "And so will everyone else."
Outside, the wind picked up again, rattling the window lattices. The scent of osmanthus mingled with incense and story, while in the shadows of Osmanthus Courtyard, the true haunting had already begun.