Chapter 2

Ding-ding-ding-lang!!!

Amidst the sound of wind chimes, Boss Li had one foot inside the door and one foot outside, freezing there.

Although his expression was unusual before, it could still be considered within the scope of poor rest and anxious worry.

Now, under the stimulation of the wind chimes, his expression became increasingly abnormal, his neck stretching forward with great force, and the blue veins under his skin could be seen.

His temples bulged, the skin on his forehead tightened, his eyes were full of bloodshot, his eyeballs protruded, his chin was also stretched, his lips parted, revealing scarlet gums.

And while his head stretched forward, his shoulders hunched up, his back arched, and his breathing became heavier and heavier, like pulling a broken bellows.

"Class, class... hard study, imperial examination..."

Boss Li's mouth became more and more indistinct, his eyes changing between confusion and ferocity for a while, his turbid scarlet eyeballs rolling, his gaze falling on Li Xu's back.

"Unfilial son, the tutoring class I signed you up for, the books I punished you to copy are still too few. Yes, you should hang your head by the beam and prick your thigh with an awl, thorn vines..."

Li Mother and Mr. Qiao outside the door both felt something was wrong.

"Husband, what's wrong with you?"

Li Mother was about to step forward, but was pulled by Mr. Qiao and retreated further away.

Li Xu's possession was fake, but his father seemed to have run into a real one!

The sound of the wind chimes became more urgent.

Seeing Chu Tianshu stared at Boss Li, his gaze not avoiding him at all from beginning to end, and in the depths of his pupils, a needle-like light appeared instead.

"Is there a delivery service now?"

Seeing Chu Tianshu smiled, his expression somehow carrying a hint of excitement, but his left hand quietly touched something on the table.

"Brother, to be able to be revealed by my wind chime Bagua, your cultivation is not enough; you possessed someone else's body, and you can't even speak clearly."

"I conclude that you must have been a failure when you were a human, and even more of a failure as a ghost."

He took a step to the right, walked out from beside Li Xu, his right hand pinching a handful of silver needles.

"Come, bump into my silver needles; being reincarnated as a dung beetle earlier would be more promising than you are now!"

That was too dirty.

Boss Li's eyes flickered, unable to help but move away from Li Xu, growling at Seeing Chu Tianshu, making a gesture to pounce.

But when he pounced, before his feet left the ground, his eyes suddenly turned bright white, and he couldn't see anything.

Boss Li subconsciously raised his hand to cover his face, then felt a pain in his chest.

Seeing Chu Tianshu took a big step, already in front of him, his right hand silver needles stabbing urgently, straight into his chest.

Holding more than a dozen needles in one hand, twisting his fingers to stab into the person, each stab only one needle, stabbing more than a dozen times in a row, divided into different acupoints.

Just for this skill, Seeing Chu Tianshu had practiced for more than half a year.

In the blink of an eye, Boss Li's chest, shoulders, and forearms were all inserted with silver needles.

He had just covered his face with both hands, and now he couldn't do any other movements, only feeling his limbs numb and his whole body stiff.

Mr. Qiao outside the door was watching nervously, and only then did he see clearly that Seeing Chu Tianshu's left hand was a flashlight.

After a person is possessed by a dirty thing, they will appear to have the strength of an ox and be tireless.

In fact, this is just an illusion formed after the body's senses are affected by the dirty thing.

For example, when an ordinary person scratches a wall or someone else's clothes, if the fingernail is slightly damaged or lifted, they will be unable to help but reduce their strength due to pain.

A possessed person does not know pain, is not afraid of bruises or fractures, dares to pounce and smash hard, and can exert deadly force, which makes them appear much stronger than a person in a normal state.

It's as if the person has been turned into a beast.

But the weaknesses belonging to the beast have also been magnified.

For example, people in this state often don't know how to use tools, and for example... they are afraid of light!

Boss Li's appearance just now was creepy even from the back, and from the front, he was like an evil ghost.

But Seeing Chu Tianshu used a few words to taunt him, flashed the flashlight, and stabbed with the silver needles, and the opponent was subdued without causing any damage.

"Ah!!"

Boss Li suddenly screamed, and the clothes on his back split along the midline of his spine.

A cold wind blew out from behind him for no reason.

The thin fog outside was rolled violently by this wind.

Boss Li's voice was rough, and Li Mother was used to it, but the scream just now was clearly like a strange man with a very thin voice.

She was at a loss and didn't dare to step forward, hurriedly shouting: "Master, what's wrong with my husband?"

As soon as the words fell, Li Mother couldn't help but retch.

Mr. Qiao beside her also covered his nose.

After that cold wind blew past, the courtyard in front of the door seemed to be filled with a stench.

It was the smell of inferior ink.

There was a calligraphy class in junior high school, and the school canteen sold that kind of smelly ink to students.

But to be this smelly, it was estimated that it was the smell of dozens of bottles of ink boiled and heated.

Fortunately, this stench came quickly and went quickly; in just a few seconds, it had faded rapidly.

Seeing Chu Tianshu also smelled this stench, held his breath, walked to the table, and quickly took out a silver needle that was twenty centimeters long.

He held the head and tail of the silver needle with both hands and stabbed it into the top of Boss Li's head, who still couldn't move, straight to the tail, twisting it slightly, and after a while, pulled out a section.

The tail of the needle was left seven or eight centimeters, standing on Boss Li's head.

The other silver needles were removed, and Boss Li's hands suddenly dropped, his eyes dull, his face blank, as if he were sleepwalking.

Mr. Qiao leaned over: "What's wrong with this?"

"The thing that possessed him has run away."

Seeing Chu Tianshu said, "That thing hasn't formed any climate yet; to be able to possess this person, it must have been in long-term contact unknowingly."

"After leaving this person's body, it can't possess anyone else and must return to the vicinity of its own corpse."

"Taking advantage of the fact that it's daytime and it's heading towards noon, I'm going to find it directly."

Mr. Qiao was shocked: "So urgent?"

"To deal with this kind of ghost and evil spirit, you have to seize the best opportunity; once missed, it will add a lot of trouble."

Seeing Chu Tianshu reached out and placed his hand on Boss Li's shoulder, turning him in a direction; without using much effort, Boss Li turned around like a puppet and walked out.

"Mrs. Li, your son's needles need to stay for more than half an hour. You stay here and accompany him, don't walk around randomly. I'm going to solve the problem on your husband."

Li Mother was a bit hesitant looking at her husband and son, but hearing Seeing Chu Tianshu's arrangement, she nodded immediately: "Okay, okay, okay!"

This was a little trick: strike first to gain the upper hand, and when the client is panicked, taking the lead will make everything go more smoothly.

Exorcism business is not common, and if you are sure to take the order, you can often make a big supplement to your account balance.

However, Seeing Chu Tianshu didn't like the situation where clients repeatedly questioned him, and he had to explain a lot, find ways to gain trust, and then find the trace to exorcise.

Doing it that way might miss the opportunity and add twists and turns.

Therefore, when he encountered this kind of business, once he made a judgment and entered the working state of making big money, he would be swift and decisive, trying to take the initiative.

"Declare in advance, my fees are not cheap."

Seeing Chu Tianshu dropped this sentence, raised the client's psychological expectations, and walked onto the bridge. "Mr. Qiao, I remember you have a driver's license, help me drive."

Mr. Qiao used to like to hang around Chu's grandfather and had been an assistant for a long time, which could be considered as having caught the first pot of gold in his youth.

Today's scene gave him a familiar feeling, so he didn't talk nonsense and followed Seeing Chu Tianshu across the bridge.

Boss Li was stuffed into the passenger seat.

The car keys weren't pulled out either, so Mr. Qiao started the car and asked: "Where to?"

"There is still the evil spirit of that thing in his body that hasn't been cleared, just right for a sensing."

Seeing Chu Tianshu sat in the middle of the back seat, able to see the scenery in front of the car through the gap between the driver and passenger seats, his eyes sharp, his lips moving, reciting an incantation, and pointing at the back of the passenger seat.

"Mr. Qiao, just watch the needle on his head."

On Boss Li's head, the seven or eight-centimeter silver needle swayed slightly, as if a bit of dark cyan luster had been added, slowly bending towards the front right.

Mr. Qiao drove along the cement road to the high slope on the east side of the village, turned, and got on the road.

The tail of the needle on Boss Li's head, like a special compass, constantly adjusted its direction during the journey.

Based on this, Seeing Chu Tianshu judged whether to go forward or turn, or reverse back to the previous intersection, reminding Mr. Qiao in time.

In just over half an hour, Mr. Qiao drove the car to the suburbs.

There was a government-returned farmland area here, and there were also many factories.

Beside the road where the car stopped was a magnolia forest, and on the south side of the forest, one could see the classic white-walled and blue-tiled large factory buildings, with blue corrugated stainless steel roofs.

The direction pointed by the needle tail on Boss Li's head was between the factory building and the forest.

There was a large open space there, which could be considered the back door of the factory, piled with a lot of alloy waste, as well as broken plastic buckets, and worn-out mops and brooms.

More eye-catching was a stone tablet covered with moss.

To ordinary people, that was just an old stone tablet.

Seeing Chu Tianshu stared at it for a while, but could see that there was a kind of ink smoke on the stone tablet, swaying.

Whether it is spirit communication or martial arts, the first threshold is called "opening the aperture."

This opening of the aperture, of course, does not mean truly opening a certain aperture, but a state where the senses of the seven apertures are overall sublimated.

It is as if the seven apertures were covered with dust before, and all the colors and scenes seen were dim and unclear; once the aperture is opened, the universe is like being washed by water, bright and extraordinary, colorful and varied.

Those who learn martial arts open their apertures to hear the sound of their own internal organs wriggling, and begin to grasp the fine tempering of flesh, blood, and bones.

Those who communicate with spirits open their apertures to purify their minds through various means such as holding incantations and drawing talismans according to their own schools, and see those non-human ghosts, wandering souls, and evil spirits.

The depth of a spirit communicator's cultivation often depends on the total duration they can maintain the state of opening the aperture within a day.

Seeing Chu Tianshu had practiced until now, and within a day, he could maintain the opening of the aperture for more than five hours.

Purely in terms of cultivation, looking at the Jianghuai region, he could be considered a small master.

It's just that he had the root of illness, what he learned was only a side door, and he didn't have many powerful ritual implements, so his reputation was not obvious.

Staring for a while, Seeing Chu Tianshu had already seen that the corpse of that ghost should be buried under the stone tablet, at a depth of less than two meters.

Seeing Chu Tianshu didn't rush to get out of the car, first saying: "Call Mrs. Li and ask if this factory is hers?"

Mr. Qiao dialed the number, and the other side answered quickly.

Sure enough, that factory was Boss Li's factory.

Li Mother also knew about the stone tablet behind the factory.

It was an old tablet that had been standing there before the site was selected, and no one maintained it. It was said to be from the late Qing Dynasty and had no cultural value, so it could have been pushed flat.

But Boss Li saw that what was said on it seemed to be the deeds of a prodigy, and felt that keeping this tablet was also a good omen.

In the two years since Li Xu entered high school, Boss Li even set up an incense burner in front of the prodigy tablet and often went there to burn incense, praying for Li Xu to be admitted to a good university.

"The words on the stone tablet are basically mottled and unclear; he could only recognize a few sentences in total. He wouldn't have just recognized the two words 'prodigy', right?"

Seeing Chu Tianshu shook his head and smiled. "Daring to burn incense to something of unknown origin, Boss Li is quite brave."

Mr. Qiao said: "It is estimated that he doesn't deeply believe in this kind of thing, and of course he doesn't understand the taboos, just hitting a pole if there are dates or not, and as a result, he hit a moldy date."

Mr. Qiao paused and said, "Since the location is confirmed, why not just call an excavator to push the stone tablet down and expose the corpse to the sun? When I was with your grandfather, we handled it that way once, and that time was the most worry-free."

Chu's grandfather believed after his prime that the best way to exorcise spirits was not to meet them at all.

As long as you meet them, there will be some risks.

"The situation is different. The one possessing Boss Li still has some thinking ability. If you don't give it a few ruthless ones, and just want to dig its grave, it will provoke deeper resentment and erupt. If the person operating the excavator is harmed, it will be hard to end."

Seeing Chu Tianshu explained a few words and got out of the car.

"Mr. Qiao, you stay here, I'll go take a look."

He walked through the forest towards the open space.

Although there was a lot of trash piled up in the open space, the two or three meters around the stone tablet were clearly specially cleaned, and several pieces of iron sheet were laid on the ground around the base, creating a relatively tidy place.

A golden craft incense burner the size of a clay pot was placed in front of the stone tablet, with a lot of incense ash and incense sticks accumulated inside.

Seeing Chu Tianshu squatted down halfway, pinched a handful of incense ash, looked at the color, and raked it twice in the incense burner; the incense ash on the surface was basically all new.

Burning incense so diligently is like a human bowing and asking a ghost, no wonder that thing didn't have much ability, but could travel in Boss Li's body during the day.

Looking at the handwriting on the stone tablet again, most of it was mottled and unclear; it was clearly just set up in the late Qing Dynasty, but the weathering was already quite serious.

Only the first few paragraphs were relatively easy to identify.

"Versed in classics from a young age, able to write poetry at seven, praised as a prodigy in the village, went to take the exam when grown up..."

Boss Li must have judged that this was a tablet praising a prodigy based on this.

After all, except for praise, other situations related to prodigies would generally not be commemorated with a tablet.

Unfortunately, this Boss Li encountered an unusual one.

Seeing Chu Tianshu pressed his fingers on the stone tablet, looking at this tablet inscription from the perspective of a spirit communicator.

Analyzing the trend of the former characters on those mottled cyan stone surfaces.

Reading the full text, it can be seen that this was a scholarly family in the late Qing Dynasty. After the family fell, they pinned their hopes on the prodigy in the family, but the prodigy failed to pass the scholar exam time and time again.

The family did not allow him to be distracted, still only wanting him to study hard. At the age of forty, he failed in his studies and achieved nothing else, withered away, and died in depression.

"... Yet he spent twenty years in the examination hall, and could not even get a scholar's collar. Your father urged you day and night, added the rod to your body, scolded you endlessly, hoping you would be honed into a vessel..."

"Who would have thought that you would be even more stubborn, wasting your youth, and finally dying of madness..."

"Unable to serve the Qing Emperor, this is unfaithful; unable to support parents and relatives, this is unfilial; unable to be famous in the county annals and glorify the hometown, this is unrighteous..."

"Such an unfaithful, unfilial, unrighteous, and unbrotherly person actually wanted to die to escape it. I am now engraving this tablet as a warning to future generations..."

This tablet inscription, a full seventy percent of it, was all scolding people, scolding the useless scholar buried under the ground.

The person who set up the tablet was the scholar's father, who scolded the scholar for a lifetime and still wouldn't stop, even after the person died, he had to continue scolding.

He actually used a tablet that scolded people as his son's tombstone.

"No wonder there is such deep resentment."

Seeing Chu Tianshu stood up. "Boss Li's high expectations and high-pressure education for his son must have reminded you of your father."

"You are also a pitiful person."

"But, after you possessed Boss Li, it wasn't to punish this father, but to target Li Xu!"

Seeing Chu Tianshu lowered his eyes and looked at the ground.

"Instead of punishing a similar father, you want to urge this father to intensify his efforts to harm his son."

"You didn't even dare to find the right target for revenge. You are so weak even after becoming a ghost. Then you... lived as a ghost in vain!!"

As soon as the words fell, the surroundings seemed to be silent for a moment.

Inside the forest, the sound of insects suddenly disappeared; these little guys are always particularly sensitive in some aspects.

After a blink of an eye, a gurgling sound came from the ground, as if boiling water.

Black smoke surged up along the stone tablet, from wisps to clusters, like cotton wool.

Ghosts with residual thinking are easy to hook.

Seeing Chu Tianshu was wearing a shirt and long pants today, with a denim jacket draped over him, his eyes unchanged, and his hand reached into his jacket pocket.

Actively leaving the corpse and coming to the surface, in this state, giving you a few more ruthless ones, and then asking an excavator to come over, there will be no problem.

Whoosh!!!

The cold wind blew, black gas lingered on the stone tablet, and white fog rose on the ground.

Between the soil of the surrounding forest land, as if a curtain was lifted, a layer of white fog floated up.

Seeing Chu Tianshu's face changed slightly, and he looked up.

This stone tablet was originally only a dozen meters away from the factory building.

Now he couldn't see the factory building at all, only a layer of white fog as thick as silk.

He didn't need to look back to know that the scenery of the forest and the car behind him had also been cut off.

The sky was also thick white, as if a large amount of white cloth had specially surrounded this open space.

Only the various sceneries in the open space were relatively clear.

"This is... an overflow zone?!"

The needle-like light in Seeing Chu Tianshu's eyes seemed to expand by a circle, staring tightly at the stone tablet in front, his body slightly bent, ready to go.

"Whoa! Can you really encounter this kind of thing!"

(End of chapter)