After hearing the midwife’s words, Sakurako held the baby herself and began to nurse him with her blood. The child sucked for a moment, then seemed exhausted, spat out a finger, closed his eyes, and slept.

The midwife, seeing that Sakurako showed no lingering fear, felt much relieved herself. She began tidying the clothes and sheets soiled during the delivery. The sensational things she had just said seemed to evaporate into the air as if they had never been spoken.

A moment later, the doorbell rang. Uncle Ou went to open it and found Li Xiaohao standing outside, drenched and looking like a drowned rat. He glanced up at the sky through the door—it was still perfectly clear, with no sign of rain—and asked curiously, "Young Master, where on earth have you been?"

"Looking for the mermaid," Xiaohao replied casually. "How is Sakurako?"

"Congratulations, Young Master! You have a boy!" Uncle Ou said with a wide smile and a respectful bow.

Xiaohao quickly took a shower in the bathroom and changed into clean clothes before rushing to the bedroom. He saw the midwife about to carry out a bundle of bloody clothes and sheets, while Sakurako lay nestled by the headboard, holding the baby and dozing vaguely. He tiptoed to the bedside, sat down quietly next to the mother and child, and gently wiped the sweat from Sakurako’s face.

This touch startled Sakurako awake from her light slumber. Seeing Xiaohao by her side filled her with delight. She immediately sat up straight, presented the baby to him, and said happily, "Look, this is our child."

Xiaohao took the baby, cradling him in his arms and rocking him gently. "Little darling, you’re finally here. Daddy waited for you so long. We’ll call you Xing’er." Upon hearing the name Xing’er, the child, who had been sleeping soundly with his eyes closed just a second before, suddenly snapped his eyes open and stared blankly at Xiaohao, as if the name had touched upon some profound secret.

That stare genuinely startled Sakurako. She stole a glance at Xiaohao and, finding no trace of surprise on his face, dismissed it as her own overreaction. She leaned back against the headboard, closed her eyes, and drifted into a deep sleep.

She didn't know how long she slept. When she awoke, the room was empty—the midwife, Xiaohao, and Xing’er were nowhere in sight. Sakurako called out, but the sound drifted away without any response. Even Uncle Ou, who was usually ready at a moment’s notice, had vanished without a trace. A chilling sensation rose uncontrollably from the depths of Sakurako’s heart, climbing up to her throat, as if about to burst from her lips.

She hastily threw on her dressing gown and got out of bed, intending to walk out. But as soon as she stood up, a wave of dizziness, like dark clouds pressing down, washed over her. She quickly steadied herself by holding the bedpost for a moment. Once the blood returned to her brain and her vision cleared, she moved slowly to the doorway.

The entire Original Shadow Villa was eerily quiet, steeped in a strange atmosphere that seemed both present and absent. Following her intuition, Sakurako walked into the hallway. The tap-tap of her footsteps echoed beside her, measured and steady. They were her own steps—she had paced this very hallway countless times while carrying Xing’er, her gait then heavy and slow. Now, without the burden of ten months of pregnancy, her steps were much lighter, the sound surprisingly crisp, almost unfamiliar even to her own ears.

As she focused on listening to her footsteps, a single drop of fresh blood unexpectedly caught her eye. The drop, shaped like a comet’s tail—broader at the head and tapering behind—splattered conspicuously on the pale yellow solid wood floor. Following that trace, she took two more steps: one drop, then two, then three… A continuous string of blood droplets looked like a string of broken beads, marking the floor one after another. Sakurako looked up. The blood trail stretched along the corridor, stopping abruptly just outside the study door.