Chapter 193: Finding Yuanzheng's Obsession

After Pangzi left, I kept sitting in the room waiting for a long period of time.

The vengeful spirit that just fought did not appear again; I don't know if I startled him or if his appearance was merely a coincidence.

In short, after that fleeting fight, the room no longer had a trace of resentful or murderous qi.

The old madman woke up twice midway, still looking crazy; from his expression, he didn't seem genuine. I tried many times, and although I eased some of his wariness, he kept saying irrelevant things, shouting grievances, or muttering incessantly.

"Old sir, can you tell me about your father Yuanzheng?" I tried making one last effort.

But this effort earned me even more violent punches and kicks from the old madman, so I could only resentfully give up.

In the evening, I sat dazedly on a stone in front of the dilapidated old house, and Pangzi slowly walked over from the village's end.

I stood up and anxiously asked Pangzi: "How did things go?"

Pangzi gave a wry smile and said: "The willow wood tablet has been dug up, the dwarf ghost has been pacified. Uncle and the opera troupe brothers have also been soothed. But I can't delay much longer."

He paused, then asked: "By the way, you've been here so long—any progress?"

I shook my head and likewise gave a wry smile: "No progress at all—I couldn't get any information, and that vengeful spirit hasn't appeared either. I don't know if he's become wary or truly left."

"Sigh," Pangzi sighed, "what should we do now?"

I was equally dejected, at a loss, and Pangzi and I stood there dumbly, racking our brains for a good plan.

"Perhaps we have a method we can try!" After a long silence, I hesitantly spoke up.

"What method?"

I didn't answer, just glanced at Pangzi and then countered: "Do you really think Yuanzheng is a deserter? If he truly were a deserter, his death would surely be self-inflicted, and after death he couldn't harbor such great resentment. If not..."

"Then there must be a grievance..." Pangzi slapped his palm, then rested his chin in thought: "Actually, I've also pondered this. Since the incident on the stage, I've noticed a common factor in these events: the wounded are without exception those playing Japanese soldiers. Meanwhile, actors portraying the Red Army or National Army, even if they suffer some bumps, sustain hardly any injury."

"If Yuanzheng truly were a deserter, he couldn't be so brave. What is he lingering in this world for, what obsession does he refuse to let go of? We cannot know any of that."

"Since we can't know, why don't we try to find the cause?"

"What do you mean?"

Under Pangzi's somewhat doubtful gaze, I nodded firmly, looked at him, and said word by word: "I want to perform a soul summoning."

The soul summoning I speak of is not to summon Yuanzheng's spirit. Although the Daoist Sect's soul summoning technique can open the yin-yang pathways and draw ghosts to Yangjian, it has significant limitations. First, one must know the birth date and time of the person whose soul is to be summoned, using an item of their close-fitting clothing. Second, the person must have died not long ago, and one must know where they died, in order to call back their soul.

But for Yuanzheng's vengeful spirit, no one knows where he died, let alone find his personal clothing and birth data. Thus this soul summoning technique cannot find any relevant medium.

The only thing we can do is lure Yuanzheng out.

"You mean you want to use the Paper Man Pointing Soldiers Technique to summon spirits from the underworld, stage a play, and draw out Yuanzheng?" Pangzi isn't foolish; he knows ordinary soul summoning wouldn't work on Yuanzheng at all. Being familiar with each other, he quickly grasped the meaning.

I nodded in agreement: "Exactly, Yuanzheng seems sensitive to anti-Japanese dramas. Whenever the stage performs a play, he appears promptly. Therefore, this anti-Japanese drama must be related to Yuanzheng's obsession."

It's like moving into a haunted house. At first everything might be fine, but after a few days, ghosts often come out to cause trouble. Or else, you live peacefully, while others who move in end up being possessed by ghosts.

The factor could be that you touched one of his beloved objects placed before him, slept in the spot where he died before, offending him. Or perhaps you did something reminiscent, triggering his resonance.

Pangzi and I had encountered such a thing when we first started out.

That was a beautiful female university student who rented a dormitory in Shenzhen University Town. When she first moved in, everything was fine, and she noticed nothing strange.

But when she picked up the comb from the dressing table, washed her hair at night, and combed it while looking in the mirror, the house would inexplicably lose power, and then she saw in the mirror another version of herself.

A figure with bulging eyes, a deathly pale and eerie face, dressed in white, sat silently before the mirror combing hair. Every motion of her combing matched her own exactly.

One evening, the female student's boyfriend suddenly ran over to celebrate her birthday with her. At night, he stood behind the mirror and gently combed her hair for her.

But in an instant, through the mirror's reflection, she saw standing behind her not her boyfriend, but a strange woman in white whose neck was bleeding.

That woman's appearance was exactly what she usually saw when combing her hair! As soon as she came to her senses, her neck was suddenly choked violently—that hand was her boyfriend's, no mistake. Yet through the mirror, she saw only that eerie woman, the hands choking her neck being those pallid, bloodless hands.

This situation lasted several minutes until the female student struggled hard and broke free from her boyfriend's vein-bulging grip. Afterwards, the boyfriend fainted. However, when he woke up, he completely forgot what had happened.

Pangzi and I once questioned the landlord and discovered that someone had died in the house before—a dance girl who often liked to sit before the mirror combing her hair with that old wooden comb.

That dance girl's identity was a mistress who had fallen for a civil servant with a proper job. She always harbored an obsession: she wanted her boyfriend to stand behind her dressing table, apply her eyebrows once, and comb her hair once. But after their affair was exposed, that thought became a fantasy; after her death, the fantasy turned into resentment.

The principle is actually simple. The female university student triggered the ghost's lingering object by touching it, and by doing what the female ghost loved most in life, she caused a mutual resonance! The female ghost's obsession was to have her man give her a makeup and comb her hair. Thus, when the female student's boyfriend combed her hair, it also stirred the deep resentment of the female ghost.

Therefore I suspect that something similar in the anti-Japanese drama triggered Yuanzheng's vengeful spirit to resonate. Hence his ghost appeared and possessed the bodies of the opera troupe brothers, injuring some of the actors.

As for what that obsession is, I have no way to know; to clarify the twists and turns, I conceived a bold idea in my mind.

Using soul summoning to draw underworld yin soldiers to Yangjian, employing the Bone-Weighing Method to craft paper men, having these yin soldiers pose as the living to perform an anti-Japanese drama, thereby luring Yuanzheng's ghost to appear.

I dare not use living people to perform the play, for one, it would become common knowledge; two, the risk is too great, as the killing qi of military spirits is not something everyone can bear.

I slowly related the idea in my heart to Pangzi; after a moment's pondering, he also thought the method feasible.

"Since that's the case, let's get moving—right now let's hurry to the paper craft shop at the village head to buy some paper men." Having said that, Pangzi prepared to set off running toward the village head.

"Wait..." I grabbed him back: "Go fetch Brother Songlin, I'll go to the paper craft shop to buy paper. We'll split up and meet at the mid-slope of the rear mountain."

Pangzi was surprised, scratching his head in confusion, asking me: "Why are you looking for Songlin?"

"Stupid, if you don't find him, who will teach the ghosts to act? Do you really expect me to summon a few actor ghosts?" Looking at his dazed, half-asleep expression, I flew into a rage. Damn, I don't know what's wrong with his brain—usually he seems sharp, but at crucial moments his mind turns rusty.