After realizing that cross-species attraction, Su Kun was in a daze for the entire afternoon due to his own heavy taste.

From afternoon to evening, a voice kept echoing in his mind: Damn it, Comrade Su Kun, that's a ghost!! No matter how good-looking, how nice the figure, how compatible the personality, it's still a ghost... and a ghost with uncertain size that may shrink in the long-term. _(:з」∠)_

Everyone just felt that his state was a bit off. He was lively and active in the morning, but after making lunch, he suddenly wilted. The number of times he spaced out and was lost in thought almost caught up to the number of times he usually spoke. Except for the pensive Geng Zimo, everyone else asked him the reason, but unfortunately they were all dismissed by Su Kun with a "hehehe".

Gu Yan frowned slightly, his expression carrying a hint of doubt. He sized up Su Kun countless times from head to toe.

He, who was usually taciturn and poker-faced, kept circling around Su Kun the entire afternoon, uncharacteristically finding various topics to get Su Kun to speak. But he didn't get to the bottom of it, and instead made it seem like Su Kun was intentionally or unintentionally avoiding him a bit.

Of course, the root cause was that General Gu simply didn't know how to coax people to talk. He was always silent and rarely took the initiative to speak. His tone was consistently low, without much fluctuation. Coupled with that eternally deadpan face, he twisted chatting into a courtroom interrogation.

Inquisitor Gu asked: What happened in the kitchen?

Suspect Su Kun answered: N-nothing...

Inquisitor Gu asked: Why are you constantly in a daze?

Suspect Su Kun answered: N-nothing...  

Inquisitor Gu asked: You think I'm stupid?

Suspect Su Kun answered: N-no...

...

Until it was time to leave the old house, Inquisitor Gu, who had been brushed off dozens of times like this, finally gave up. Keeping a straight face and holding back the slightly twitching corners of his mouth, he silently turned around and took the lead in floating into the dark, long alley. His small back looked especially desolate.

Unfortunately, Su Kun didn't notice any of this. He only felt that his brain had been trampled into mud by the galloping alpacas, in urgent need of cleansing. So after returning home, when Geng Zimo went back to the bedroom and Gu Yan entered his coffin, in the dead of night with the moon hidden and the wind high, he held his crumbling heart and dragged out a box of magazines and adult books he had bought during college from under the bed.

At that time, he had just been liberated from the draconian, maddening management of a boarding high school. His always suppressed sexual orientation issues and strong curiosity also gushed out like they broke free from reins, filling his mental world. During that period, he frequented many forums and bought some male erotica magazines and books, but in most cases, he would just take a glance and quietly back away.

Those forums were a mixed bag, and the most active batch held no attraction for Su Kun. He wasn't sure if it was because his parents had both passed away when he was young, always leaving him with a lack of a sense of security, but his preferences had always leaned towards the steady, reserved type. Unfortunately, this type was hard to find in places like forums.

And sometimes the pictures in those magazines were too explicit, each one more hardcore than the last. For a newbie like Su Kun, the impact was a bit much. Plus, the possibility of being discovered hiding these things in the dorm was too high, so he only flipped through a few pages of each one before tucking them away with a pounding heart and putting them under the bed.

Even after he and Geng Zimo rented this house together and he had his own bedroom and private space, he only stuffed those things under the bed. On extremely rare occasions, he would take them out to flip through, then hurriedly go to the bathroom to take advantage of the sound of running water to solve his problem while showering.

After all, this was ultimately a house in someone else's name. Letting him relieve his desires on a bed someone else had used was quite a psychological challenge.

But tonight he went all out, planning to use the tall, muscular male models in the magazines to drive away the image of Gu Yan swaying in his mind, to pull himself back to the world of normal people.

Why not like something else, liking a ghost... Su Kun muttered to himself while flipping through the magazine he relatively liked more.

The few male models in there had broad shoulders and long legs, and their muscles were just right. The resulting images were sexy but not vulgar. Usually Su Kun would turn red from excitement after just a few pages, but it lost its effect tonight.

Looking at those few male models, he would subconsciously compare them to Gu Yan in his mind. The azure blue eyes that he used to find very beautiful, now no matter how he looked at them, they didn't seem as steady as black ones. The muscles that he used to find very well-proportioned and beautiful, some of them no matter how he looked, they didn't seem powerful enough, while others the more he looked, the more he felt they were too buff. This one's eyebrows weren't as sharp as Gu Yan's, that one's Adam's apple wasn't as prominent as Gu Yan's...

After flipping through a magazine, Su Kun did indeed turn red like before, but it wasn't from being hooked by the models inside.

He whimpered and collapsed on the bed, covering his face with the open magazine as if deflated. In the darkness, a pack of wild dogs howled to the tune of "Ode to the Yellow River": I'm - beyond saving! I'm - doomed!

There's a saying that when it rains, it pours... Just as Comrade Su Kun was filled with grief, beside him on the nightstand, Gu Yan quietly pushed open the coffin lid.

Actually, to say "quietly", the wooden coffin lid still made a bit of noise as it rubbed against the coffin of the same material. It's just that Su Kun, who was collapsed on the bed like a dead dog, had his heart pounding like war drums at the moment and didn't notice at all.

At this time, the bedroom door and windows were locked, and the curtains were pulled tightly without any gaps. The main light wasn't on, only the wall lamp by the bed was lit, spilling a dim, warm yellow light over half the bed.

Gu Yan looked at the person on the bed who currently had no movement like a dead dog, and for a moment couldn't figure out if he was asleep or just closing his eyes to rest while covering himself with a book. However, after seeing his chest rise and fall significantly with his not very steady breathing, he silently chose the latter.

He glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. After Su Kun's guidance the past few days, he could read this timekeeping device now. He also figured out the difference and conversion between the old-style time telling and the current hours.

From the time he entered the coffin until now, it had been two hours, right at midnight. Usually at this time, if Su Kun had nothing going on, he should have been asleep already. Let alone today he had been busy at the old house for an entire day, helping everyone not only move out his own home, but also move all the things Aunt Zhang wanted to take with her into the house they temporarily rented. Logically, he should have been even more tired and fallen asleep earlier.

Gu Yan chose to come out at this time because during the day, Granny Camphor and Comrade Mo Bao* had systematically explained to him a method of converting absorbed ghost and demon souls into cultivation, and the master had even directly given him a stack of talismans, each of which could temporarily restore his physical state, but the duration depended on his own condition. With his current level, relying on a talisman, he estimated that he could last for one or two hours.

*T/N: Mo Bao means treasured painting.

During the two hours he spent inside the coffin, he tried the method they taught him and found that his body indeed felt different, but after all, that coffin was quite special. While inside, he couldn't truly discern the substantial changes in himself, so he wanted to take advantage of the quiet night, when Su Kun was already asleep, to come out and see if there were really obvious effects.

In case it was like last time at the hospital, where he thought there might be changes but still passed through walls and remained unseen, at least he wouldn't lose face. If there were really changes, that would naturally be the best outcome.

If Su Kun knew about Gu Yan's current thoughts, he would definitely say smugly: See! I wasn't wrong, the poker-faced ones are all closet perverts!

However, Gu Yan's plan obviously didn't go as expected. When he saw Su Kun lying on the bed like a stiff corpse, he felt a moment of hesitation, wondering whether he should still continue with his experiment. He hovered in the air, silently looking at Su Kun's appearance for a while, and finally decided to put aside what he had planned before.

Taking the book off Su Kun's face and letting him sleep properly in a normal posture was the right thing to do. Otherwise, if he closed his eyes to rest and ended up falling asleep like this, he would wake up the next day with a twisted neck, crying for his parents.

He pursed his lips, floated two steps forward, and stopped beside Su Kun's head. He lightly coughed, about to speak, when his gaze swept over the cover of the book Su Kun was using to cover his face—

On it, a muscular male model was lying naked on a bed, one hand covering his crotch just right, his eyes fiery and seductive.

Gu Yan choked on the breath he was using to clear his throat: "...Cough cough!!!"

Su Kun, who was originally struggling and fighting with the poker face in his mind, heard this bout of coughing. After a moment of stunned silence, he sprang up from the bed, crawling and rolling to the side, standing there with a panicked and horrified expression, staring at Gu Yan who had returned to his poker face.

Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, he stammered: "Y-y-you, why did you come out?!"

Gu Yan silently stared at him for a while, then slowly moved his gaze to the bed. The blanket that had been flipped to the side revealed the magazine that had fallen from his face. Because of Su Kun's exaggerated movements, the magazine, which originally had its cover facing up, had been flipped over, with the cover facing down and the inner pages facing up. One of the pages in the middle was even sticking up, swaying slightly.

From Gu Yan's angle, he could clearly see the image on that raised page—two very sexy male models were entangled on the ground, forehead against forehead, nose tip against nose tip, lips slightly parted, about to kiss but not yet kissing.

Su Kun, who was standing right next to the wardrobe by the bed, followed Gu Yan's gaze to the magazine. After a moment of stupefaction, his mind went "boom," and his face, which had finally returned to its fair complexion, once again turned blood red: "..." The heavens want me dead, save me! QAQ

Gu Yan's dark eyes stared unblinkingly at the image on that page, his expression momentarily blank, as if he couldn't understand the meaning represented by that image.

Su Kun had an expression that seemed to say "I want to ride the wind and leave," inwardly howling: Fuck, can I hope that he really doesn't understand?!

Unfortunately, the heavens rarely let things go his way—Gu Yan's expression went from blank back to poker-faced, then slowly cracked... After a few seconds, he raised his head and moved his gaze back to Su Kun, his face full of shock.

Su Kun, who had already given up, said in a sleepwalking manner: "Ah, I can't believe you can open your eyes this wide..."

Gu Yan: "..." That's not the point. =_=