Chapter 180

Lin Shuyou held a map in his left hand and a compass in his right. After wandering around in circles for quite a while, he finally found his destination.

Each of them carried a compass as standard gear, but aside from Tan Wenbin, who could use one to read a bit of feng shui with some semblance of skill, the compasses in Ah You’s, Mengmeng’s, and Runsheng’s hands were basically just oversized directional guides.

The coordinate point was in a village under a rural township. Lin Shuyou took off his hiking pack, hugged it to his chest, and sat down by the roadside.

Beside him was a house. Next to the main building stood a separate little brick shack that served as the toilet.

Not long after Lin Shuyou sat down, an auntie came out of the house to use the toilet.

There was no curtain. She turned her body, faced outward, stuck her rear back, half-squatted, tugged down her padded trousers, and sat directly onto the wooden toilet seat with armrests.

Lin Shuyou only felt a huge flash of white pass before his eyes. He immediately turned his head away and flushed red.

“Whose kid are you?”

The auntie, having nothing better to do while relieving herself, decided to question Lin Shuyou.

“I’m not from around here.”

“Oh ho, you speak standard Mandarin. Hehe. So where’s your hometown?”

“Fujian.”

“Fujian, huh? Aren’t people over there all in business and rich?”

“No.”

“I heard you Fujian people are all loaded, and your houses are all several stories tall.”

At that moment, the auntie sat there like an empress dowager on a dragon throne, while Lin Shuyou looked like some pale young eunuch being interrogated in court.

Lin Shuyou had originally planned to just keep sitting there and wait quietly until she finished.

After all, the coordinate he had found was right here. It was afternoon now, and once night fell, the malevolent spirit would probably emerge.

But the auntie’s loud voice attracted several other aunties from nearby houses. A few came out and gathered here, chatting away.

As they chatted, two of them began looking increasingly urgent, as if they also needed to use the toilet.

From time to time, they would even deliberately call out to Lin Shuyou and ask about him.

A handsome young outsider hugging a bag and sitting by the roadside for so long was indeed enough to make anyone curious.

In the end, Lin Shuyou admitted defeat. He gave up that most precise location and moved farther off, heading to the front of a one-story house.

Farmland stretched around the house. A small creek ran in front of it, and beside the creek stood a persimmon tree.

Lin Shuyou sat with his back against the roots. Though he was now a little farther away, the plain was open and flat, so he could still clearly see the previous coordinate point.

And so he sat there quietly until dusk.

Smoke began rising from the chimney of the one-story house. An old man came back along the small path outside, carrying a toolbox over his shoulder and a saw in his hand.

He was a carpenter who picked up odd jobs in nearby villages.

His children had all split off and started their own households. He did not want to go live with them, thinking life was freer on his own, so only he and his wife remained in the old house.

The old man was very warm and came over on his own to talk to Lin Shuyou.

The problem was, the old man could not speak standard Mandarin, and seemed to have difficulty even understanding it.

During his stay at Li Daye’s house, Lin Shuyou had thought he had picked up a bit of the Nantong dialect, but he had never expected that simply moving from one county to another would leave him completely unable to understand the old man’s local speech.

One old man and one young man sat under the persimmon tree talking past each other for quite a while.

Then the old man shouted a couple of times toward the house. The old woman came out from the little kitchen door, smiled at Lin Shuyou, took one look at him, and went back inside.

The old man reached out and patted Lin Shuyou on the shoulder, then tried to pull him to his feet.

Lin Shuyou understood. The old man was inviting him to dinner.

He had supplies in his hiking pack and hurried to refuse, saying there was no need, but the more Ah You declined, the more enthusiastically the old man insisted. Before long, it was on the verge of turning into a physical tug-of-war.

They could not speak the same language, but warmth needed no translation.

In the end, Lin Shuyou truly had no choice. He bowed in thanks and accepted.

Dinner was not eaten inside the house, but outside, with two square stools set together as a table and three little stools to sit on.

That habit of eating was actually quite similar to Li Daye’s household.

Except on rainy days, Li Daye’s family also basically set up a table out in the yard to eat. When people passed along the village road during mealtime, it was easy to chat with them too.

The dishes were simple: a bowl of braised potatoes and a bowl of greens stewed with vermicelli.

Perhaps because they were hosting a guest, the old woman had also specially peeled three preserved eggs and put them in a bowl of vinegar, then sliced a plate of homemade sausage.

The old man wanted to pour Lin Shuyou some wine, but Lin Shuyou quickly refused.

He explained that he still had to catch ghosts that night and was afraid drinking would ruin the job.

Of course, the old man did not understand. Seeing Lin Shuyou lift his rice bowl and start eating, he assumed the young fellow simply did not drink, so he poured himself a bowl of yellow wine.

The old woman used her chopsticks to split a preserved egg, picked up half of it, dipped it in vinegar, and placed it in Lin Shuyou’s bowl.

Lin Shuyou raised his bowl to receive it and said thank you.

The potatoes had been stewed until soft, and the sausage was fragrant. Both went very well with rice.

As a martial artist, Lin Shuyou naturally had a big appetite. Without noticing it, he finished two large bowls.

By the time the old woman served him a third bowl, the old man, having finished his wine and gone into the kitchen for rice, came back to find only the crispy rice crust left in the pot.

Lin Shuyou knew he had eaten too much.

By then, it was already dark.

At the earlier coordinate point, a stage had appeared at some unknown moment.

Banners hung on both sides of the stage, and a large loudspeaker was mounted at the top.

The food had been fragrant, but Lin Shuyou was sure he had not let his attention wander. That stage had simply appeared out of nowhere.

Performers began acting onstage.

“Clang clang crash! Clang clang crash!”

From the loudspeaker came the sound of Child Spirit Opera.

Lin Shuyou had heard Tan Wenbin mention this local opera before. Its formal name was also Tong Opera.

Binbin had said it sounded awful and that only old people liked it.

But just from this opening section, Lin Shuyou was unexpectedly struck by how good it was. It was full of emotion and rich in flavor.

Art was always like that. A thousand people saw a thousand different faces in it. It all came down to personal taste.

If he had not known the stage was built by a malevolent spirit, Lin Shuyou would honestly have wanted to carry the little stool he was sitting on over to the front of the stage and enjoy the show properly.

At that moment, the old man and old woman who had been eating froze stiff in place, their eyes clouded and muddy.

Lin Shuyou closed and opened his eyes once. His pupils changed slightly, dispelling the influence.

He knew what this was.

Ghost opera.

Folk opera generally had two forms. One was performed for the living, and one was performed for ghosts.

Back in his hometown, on certain fixed days, people would specifically hire performers to sing all night in the ancestral hall. The stage would run till dawn with not a single person in the audience.

Besides those two mainstream forms, there was a third special kind.

Ghosts performing for people.

This act reversed yin and yang. When the audience gave their “reward,” what the ghosts wanted was the lifespan of the living people below the stage.

Right now, there were probably many people in nearby homes, just like the old couple in front of him, staring blankly in a daze. Before long, they would each pick up stools from their homes and walk over to sit by the stage and watch the ghost opera.

This thing really was a little fierce. It must have been eyeing this place for a long time.

Lin Shuyou opened his hiking pack, began changing clothes, and then started painting his face.

Since the stage was already up, if you can sing, why can’t I?

When he finished painting his face, his full Officers of the Command Banner regalia stood complete.

Ever since he had started following Little Yuanhou, Ah You’s changes were not limited to simply extending the duration of his spirit-writing.

Under Little Yuanhou’s relentless pressure, each time the child medium descended, the support given had gradually increased as well.

It could be said that both time and quality had improved together.

The old man and old woman had already picked up their stools and looked ready to walk over to the stage.

Lin Shuyou moved first, stepping out with Three-Step Praise.

To ordinary eyes, he was clearly moving very slowly, yet somehow his figure would casually cross a great distance in a single stride.

He arrived beneath the stage.

For now, the place was still empty of any audience. There was a group of performers onstage, but only the “King Tang” figure in the middle was relatively complete.

The other “actors” were nothing but drifting costumes in motion. No heads, no hands, no feet. They were all floating.

The opera being performed was called King Tang Tours the Underworld.

King Tang stared blankly at Lin Shuyou below the stage and forgot his lines for a moment.

No matter what, it had never expected that the stage had only just been erected, the performance had only just begun, and such a being would appear immediately.

Lin Shuyou leaped upward and landed on the stage. With one sweep of his trident, startled cries sounded from inside the surrounding opera robes, and all of them recoiled.

King Tang raised a hand. Black mist spread out from his body, and soon clusters of little shadowy figures like tiny ghosts appeared all over the stage.

According to the opera’s plot, these little ghosts should originally have been there to arrest King Tang, but now they were all under his command.

Lin Shuyou’s gaze sharpened as he swept his eyes across the stage.

The little ghosts chattered and shrieked continuously, but not one dared come close.

It had to be understood that Lin Shuyou had not yet entered spirit-writing.

King Tang grew angry from embarrassment and kept muttering furious curses, but Lin Shuyou could not understand a word.

Then King Tang pulled off his belt and began whipping the little ghosts. Their screams rose as they were driven toward Lin Shuyou.

Holding his trident, Lin Shuyou twisted and turned across the stage, tangling with the little ghosts, blocking a couple of attacks before seeking chances to strike back. The trident was originally an ordinary weapon, but after being used many times by the descending White Crane Child, it had long since been stained with the aura of a yin god. Against these little ghosts that did not even qualify as proper minions, it was a lethal tool.

“Ah!”

“Ah!”

Wave after wave of screams rang out. One little ghost after another was pierced by the trident, dropped to the floor writhing, and then began crumbling into black ash.

A pity, really. The villagers from the nearby homes were still in the phase of carrying stools and walking this way, so there was no one in the audience to appreciate it.

Otherwise, this exceptionally brilliant martial scene alone would have been enough to make people pound the table and cheer. The night would not have been wasted.

And truthfully, a spectacle like this was not something one could usually see.

In Child Spirit Opera, King Tang battling the White Crane Child of the Officers of the Command Banner.

It was practically like Guan Yu fighting Qin Qiong in a new era.

Seeing that the little ghosts could not bring Lin Shuyou down, King Tang finally could not hold back any longer. He drew the sword at his waist and thrust at Lin Shuyou.

This was exactly the chance Lin Shuyou had been waiting for.

The malevolent spirit that had built the stage and sung this opera was not all that powerful, but Little Yuanhou had said it had to be dealt with cleanly. It was not enough to defeat it. He had to make sure it died completely.

Afraid it would turn and run, making it hard to chase, Lin Shuyou had deliberately refrained from entering spirit-writing.

Now that King Tang had come at him on his own, Lin Shuyou first used the trident to catch the sword.

The malevolent spirit was very strong. After a brief stalemate, King Tang began forcing Lin Shuyou downward. Their weapons gradually tilted toward Ah You’s side, and Ah You himself was pressed until one knee hit the ground.

It was at that very moment that Lin Shuyou’s eyes widened.

His vertical pupils opened.

The aura around him changed abruptly as the White Crane Child descended.

What the Officers of the Command Banner were best at was dealing with ghosts and malevolent spirits. After all, they had once been ghost-king-level beings themselves, only later brought into service by Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva.

King Tang was horrified. He even dropped his sword and tried to flee.

How could the White Crane Child let that happen? One arm shot out and pierced straight through King Tang’s chest, then pulled back, yanking King Tang bodily in front of him.

His palm turned, releasing a spell. A phantom white rope bound King Tang’s entire body. No matter how he struggled, he could not break free, much less use any method to escape.

With his other hand, the White Crane Child raised the trident and drove it down toward King Tang’s head.

“AAAH!!!”

King Tang let out a scream as black mist boiled from his body.

In the White Crane Child’s vertical pupils, there was a trace of satisfaction and excitement.

Ever since this spirit medium of his had started following that young man on river walks, almost every descent had involved facing powerful enemies, and around that young man there often appeared terrifying great beings even he himself could not bear to look at directly.

At long last, a normal little nobody had finally come along, something he could easily crush and pulverize.

After doing high-difficulty work for so long, suddenly getting a low-difficulty job really was enjoyable.

King Tang’s shrill screams spread outward through the loudspeaker above the stage.

Bang!

The loudspeaker could not withstand it. It burst into distorted static and scattered outward.

The surrounding residents, each of them holding a stool, gradually regained clarity in their eyes, as if they had only been lost in thought and had just awakened from a dream.

The White Crane Child twisted the trident.

King Tang’s head exploded.

The opera robes drifted down.

The stage vanished.

What remained was still the same stretch of farmland.

In front of him was a rat the size of a cat. Its head had already been shattered, and the trident stood planted in that end.

Besides that, next to the rat lay a broken loudspeaker and two or three old opera costumes.

The White Crane Child pulled out the trident, lifted his foot, and stomped on the rat’s corpse.

“Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!”

The headless rat corpse could still scream.

This thing had actually been trying to fake death and escape, but how could that sort of trick possibly fool the child medium’s vertical pupils?

Amid its final screams, the child medium tipped back his head, his face full of enjoyment.

Now this was a truly beautiful singing voice.

Bang!

At last, the rat’s body exploded completely.

The child medium lowered his head and glanced at it, still not quite satisfied.

Compared with usual river walks, this time was not one, and the target had only been such a low-level thing, so the merit gained was not high.

But after the child medium looked up into the air, he noticed another new sign, or perhaps a trend.

That young man wanted to establish a ritual ground here and raise up a proper religious seat.

Folk tradition had an extremely strong regional character. Every area had its own customs and features. Humans had their territories, and gods had their own incense domains as well.

The child medium began to think to himself: if only a temple to the Officers of the Command Banner could be built here.

But that thought was quickly discarded.

For one thing, he did not dare bring it up to that young man.

For another, even if a temple to the Officers of the Command Banner were established and all the others invited over, he would still rank at the very bottom. Wouldn’t that mean he had worked hard only to benefit everyone else?

Suddenly, another thought sprang up in the child medium’s heart.

If not a temple to the Officers of the Command Banner, then could he have a place of his own alone inside that young man’s ritual ground?

Better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix.

At worst, he could go independent and strike out on his own.

The vertical pupils vanished, and the child medium departed.

Lin Shuyou stood where he was. As the possessed spirit medium, he could “hear” the White Crane Child’s earlier thoughts. Or rather, the child medium had intentionally conveyed them to him that way.

“This...”

For a moment, Lin Shuyou did not know what to say.

The next time he went back, how was he supposed to explain this to his grandfather and master?

Was he supposed to just tell them directly that the great White Crane Child wanted to jump ship?

…

Crash, splash! Crash, splash! Crash, splash!

Late at night, in this high school teaching building, all the faucets in the bathrooms on every floor turned on by themselves.

Yin Meng sat on the rooftop with a bag of pepper-salt peanuts in her hand, tossing them one by one into her mouth.

Li Daye would always buy lots of snacks for Little Yuanhou, but Little Yuanhou himself hardly ever ate them.

Runsheng and Tan Wenbin did not really have a habit of eating snacks either.

Afraid they would go stale, they all ultimately ended up in Yin Meng’s mouth.

Back at the shop in Haihe University, her mouth had not exactly stayed idle either.

Lu Yi had even had to deliberately set aside part of each restocking run as Yin Meng’s snack-loss expense, just so the bookkeeping would make sense.

As someone from Sichuan-Chongqing, a love of life was carved into her bones. She could endure hardship, but she was also much more willing to eat well.

At most construction sites and factories, when work ended and meals were served, the workers from Sichuan-Chongqing usually had the best food.

So ever since Yin Meng came to Nantong, she had always felt life here was not very interesting. It was rigid and dull.

After nightfall, apart from schools and factories that still had lights on, it was hard even to find a proper night-snack street of decent size in the city.

So after being stifled for too long, problems would naturally start to brew.

Yin Meng had come to this school early and waited there. It was now eleven at night. The students had just finished evening self-study and left the teaching building, and all the classroom lights and streetlights had been switched off, leaving the place cold and desolate.

And the filthy thing could no longer wait to begin feeding on this fresh resentment.

Not long ago, several people had probably jumped from the building here as well, which had made the feng shui layout of this place extremely taut and eerie.

Hurry up. Hurry up.

Yin Meng was growing impatient from waiting, because the snacks in her bag were almost gone. She could not exactly gnaw on compressed biscuits for fun.

Finally, in the bathroom directly beneath her, the lightbulb began flickering on and off, and a pitch-black figure gradually took shape.

At that moment, a male student ran back into the teaching building. He had a love letter tucked in his arms and planned to slip it into the desk of the girl he liked while no one was around.

No matter how oppressive the academic atmosphere was, it was hard to completely suppress a young heart in restless bloom.

After placing the love letter, the boy decided to use the bathroom while he was there.

The moment he approached the bathroom, he saw a soaked figure in school uniform step out, grinning viciously at him.

“Come down and join me... come down and join me... come down and join me...”

“Ahhh!”

The boy screamed in terror, his body jerked stiff, and with a thud he collapsed to the ground and fainted.

“Pfft...”

Yin Meng could not help spitting out the peanut in her mouth.

At the very least, you could scream a little more, or turn and run, or try to escape. But to get scared unconscious at first sight with such weak nerves, what the hell are you doing trying to date?

Still, no matter what, she could not just watch that boy become the resentful ghost’s first offering.

Little Yuanhou had already calculated the coordinate position in advance precisely so that any malevolent spirit entering here would not even have time to commit a single evil deed.

Her whip lashed out. Her body swung down from it, and midway she snapped the whip loose and bound it again. In an extremely nimble motion, Yin Meng landed right in front of the male student.

After surviving two serious poisonings, her physical strength had not changed much, but her speed and agility had improved very clearly.

The resentful ghost in the school uniform saw Yin Meng and advanced toward her with both hands raised.

Its feet did not move, but liquid constantly streamed from its body, as though it were gliding.

“You finally came out. I’ve been waiting forever.”

Yin Meng raised a hand and, imitating Little Yuanhou’s usual habit, snapped her fingers.

Snap!

Nothing happened.

She snapped again.

Still nothing happened.

Yin Meng frowned.

She was very unhappy.

The resentful ghost kept approaching. It was now less than three meters from her, and Yin Meng could already feel that biting cold aura.

She gave up on the finger snap and looked up toward the corridor overhead.

The resentful ghost continued forward without even glancing up. It could sense that there was no one above.

There really was no one.

But there was a bug.

Yin Meng shouted, “Release the poison!”

The gu insect rapidly clacked its mouthparts together and secreted a corrosive toxin. The dose was tiny, practically useless by itself.

But that was never the point. It quickly crawled along the jars and bottles stuck overhead.

Thin sealing film had been pasted over the mouths of the jars. Once the corrosive gu poison ate through them, all the poison jars that had been arranged in advance at the bathroom entrance opened at once and poured down like a curtain of rain onto the resentful ghost below.

In an instant, shrill screams rang out.

The resentful ghost threw up its arms in agony as pustules began swelling all over its body. Once the boils grew large enough, they burst open on their own.

Its appearance had already been horrifying before, but at least with the school uniform on, it still vaguely looked human. Now it had become a complete mass of tumorous flesh.

Yin Meng dragged the unconscious boy away into a corner.

The gu insect scurried quickly along the ceiling above, then spread its limbs and dropped down onto Yin Meng’s shoulder.

Bang!

The flesh lump exploded, splattering a huge pool of pus.

Seeing that the reaction had gone on long enough, Yin Meng stepped out and took out a jar of highly toxic but strongly volatile poison liquid, which she flung around the area.

Using poison to counter poison, she completely neutralized the remaining toxins here.

After finishing all that, Yin Meng clapped her hands.

Then she looked up again at the densely packed little jars stuck overhead.

She was thinking about whether there might be some way to gather a large number of different toxins together while keeping them stable.

If she could figure that out, the efficiency of the space in her backpack would increase drastically whenever she went out. At the very least, she could pack a lot more snacks.

That was worth trying.

But Yin Meng suspected the others probably would not agree to let her test something like that at home.