Chapter 1: Snow sorrow

March 16, 2024, evening, Qingtan City.

The wind picked up five minutes ago, swirling plastic bags and dust off the ground, arriving in front of Xueqiu before the bus.

Xueqiu’s gaze rested on a sanitation worker rummaging through a trash bin across the street, then shifted to the bus slowly pulling up, his hands clutching two copies of Wu San and a stack of math practice tests.

Eighty-two days until the college entrance exam.

Like the tens of thousands of high school students in this city, unremarkable Xueqiu, up until the evening of his eighteenth birthday, had neither received an invitation from the so-called Cassel Academy nor encountered a dazzling senior who’d take him under her wing, only trudging through the daily grind of school, home, repeat.

Xueqiu didn’t envy the world-saving heroes in novels, nor those lovesick types who’d toss everything aside for teenage romance.

Of course, he’d once dreamed of such a life, as if middle school exams, mock tests, and the college entrance exam would vanish, leaving only friendship and bonds.

At least, until his parents passed away, he’d indulged in those fantasies for quite a while.

“Yo, what a coincidence, Xueqiu! I just came from cram school with Qingyuan.”

The quirky, springy voice didn’t belong to Xueqiu—he wasn’t outgoing or lively, but he wasn’t gloomy either.

His personality, in the trendy term from four years ago, might be called “chill.”

Sure, “chill” differed from the “slacking” or “lying flat” that popped up in the two years after, but that wasn’t something a high schooler like him needed to nitpick.

“Yeah, Jiang Cheng, quite a coincidence,” Xueqiu said lightly, his focus still on the stack of study materials.

Jiang Cheng knew Xueqiu’s personality—quiet, almost unboyish. He even thought that if Xueqiu wore a pretty dress, a snowy wig, and white stockings, his looks could rival the airbrushed, leg-slimmed, wrinkle-free streamers on that pink TV-head app.

“What, you’re already used to the nickname Xueqiu?”

Xueqiu couldn’t recall if he’d been called “Xueqiu” since his first or second year of high school, but he didn’t mind the moniker—it highlighted that he wasn’t that frail, just as he’d never minded the painfully simple name “Xueqiu.”

It was a gift from his parents.

Study hard, get into a good university, and leave this small city far behind—that’s what Xueqiu cared about.

But that also meant leaving his only family, his grandmother, who’d been taking care of him in the old town ever since his parents died abroad.

Seeing Xueqiu’s usual cold demeanor, Jiang Cheng aimlessly scanned the bus, from the driver at the front to the elderly man in the back, finally glancing at a passenger in the priority seat—a punkish girl with a lip piercing and white-dyed hair.

She shot him a nasty glare, but Jiang Cheng just gave a cold grunt and looked away.

“Oh, Xueqiu, ever heard of the ‘Snow Woman’?”

Xueqiu shook his head slightly. “Is that a character from an anime or game?”

At the word “game,” Jiang Cheng’s expression flickered briefly but returned to normal in a blink.

“Nah, it’s a legend, like an urban legend, right here in Qingtan City.”

Xueqiu knew about urban legends. As a kid, his dad told him stories of Kisaragi Station, Slender Man, the Goatman, and the like.

But he’d never heard of Qingtan City, a backwater with a GDP second-to-last in the province, having its own urban legend.

Rather than listen to Jiang Cheng ramble, Xueqiu wanted to relax and get home to tackle a few more biology genetics problems.

“They say, like, three years ago, someone saw a blood-covered woman in the mountains outside Qingtan City, hair all white, looking half-dead. Apparently, she was fighting some bear-like monster…”

Jiang Cheng casually spun the tale, tossing in extra details about the “Snow Woman’s” outfit, as if he’d been there, as if he’d invented the ghost himself—or maybe was the ghost.

“Actually, this Snow Woman even had a lip piercing…”

The bus stopped by a bridge, and Jiang Cheng raised his voice on purpose. Xueqiu finally caught the real intent behind his words.

“You’re sick!”

The punk girl in the priority seat cursed at Jiang Cheng before storming off the bus. He made a face at the door, only to notice Xueqiu standing, clutching his books, and passing by him.

“Your place is still five stops away, isn’t it? Why get off now?”

“I’m staying at my grandma’s for a while. See you tomorrow, Jiang Cheng.”

The old town’s buildings were as worn as dead trees, their walls faded from decades of wind and rain, leaving only an ugly, yellowish white.

Xueqiu walked through the old street, flanked by aging houses—unevenly built, mostly from last century’s worker dorms and self-built homes. Rumor had it some were slated for demolition years ago, but disputes over compensation stalled everything.

He was ordinary, so ordinary that even the old folks sitting on stools outside the shuttered storefronts didn’t spare him a glance.

Not being gossip fodder was just fine.

“Meiosis one, homologous chromosomes pair, crossing over in tetrads; meiosis two, align at the equator, homologous chromosomes split…”

By the time Xueqiu finished reciting biology, he was less than a hundred meters from his grandma’s place. The sky had gone completely dark, and the newly installed streetlights flickered on in twos and threes, their orange glow making him uneasy.

‘Will I get scolded for coming back too late?’ Xueqiu thought.

Since his parents’ death, his grandmother was his only family. Xueqiu wasn’t a troublemaker, but he still worried—his grandma, diagnosed with heart disease last year, might one day leave him too.

Would I cry then?

It’d hurt, probably, like when he learned his parents were gone forever.

Xueqiu didn’t dare think further. These days, the college entrance exam was suffocating him.

Kicking aside a few pebbles, he turned into a narrow alley under the diagonal glow of an orange streetlight. His grandma’s place was right at the alley’s entrance.

Unlike the glaring lights moments ago, the alley was pitch black, but he didn’t need to venture deep.

Creak.*

He inserted the brass key engraved with “Shangqiu Excellence” into the lock, opening the old wooden door with its outer iron plate as usual, but something felt off.

The house was dark—no lights on.

Was she not home?

Xueqiu pulled out the key, stepped inside with his books, and reached for the light switch in the dark, only to step into a wet, slippery patch.

During humid spells, his grandma’s floor often gathered water, slick like it’d been smeared with lotion.

But today was clear.

Two more steps, and Xueqiu reached the wall, ready to flip the switch, when his hand brushed something soft and sticky, like jelly, but firm, pinning him in place.

A thick, rancid stench flooded his nose.

Like spoiled shrimp, stinky mandarin fish, rotting mud, blood.

Then, the overhead bulb flickered twice and turned on. Xueqiu saw his hand pressed against the wall by a massive black tentacle.