Chapter 452

Fortunately, Liu Guozhong, who is my uncle-in-law, also seems to know that this nephew is rather unreliable, so he didn't take Pangzi's words to heart; as long as he knows about this, that's fine.

It seemed he wanted to have a quiet moment with Pangzi, so Liu Guozhong waved his hand and had the other young apprentices leave. The room now held only four people: besides him and Pangzi, there were also me and Song Lin.

"Mm, not bad, Xiaoqiang, you've gotten stronger again." Liu Guozhong patted Pangzi's shoulder, smiling kindly.

"Actually I've lost weight, I've been eating less lately." Pangzi scratched his head, rarely feeling embarrassed as he lowered his head. To be honest, I've never seen Pangzi show such an expression before.

The two relatives caught up for over half an hour, and finally got down to business.

"Uncle, where are the troupe's brothers now? I want to go see them with Hai Sheng right away." Pangzi eagerly asked Liu Guozhong.

Liu Guozhong, who had been smiling all along, suddenly frowned hesitantly, puffing on his dry pipe, and remained silent for a while.

"Uncle, what's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?" Noticing the strange expression on Liu Guozhong's face, Pangzi asked cautiously.

"No… nothing?" Liu Guozhong set down his dry pipe, lifted his head, and said: "Xiaoqiang, you just need to look into this matter. If you're not confident, absolutely don't take risks."

"Palm and back of the hand are both flesh; uncle only hopes you act within your limits and never hurt yourself!" Liu Guozhong patted Pangzi's hand back, urging him earnestly.

Pangzi lowered his head and replied: "Don't worry, uncle. I may not be as capable as my father, but I've inherited some of his skills. Even if I can't handle it, those things won't hurt me!"

"Mm… alright then, go check on those young fellows. If you can cure them, the Liu troupe will leave soon, so don't go digging for details. Having enthusiasm is good, but you should also think more for your father and uncle." Liu Guozhong waved at Pangzi and said: "Come back quickly after you're done; uncle wants to have a couple drinks with you tonight."

"I got it, uncle, I'll go with Hai Sheng and be back soon." Pangzi said, smiling and following Liu Guozhong's lead, then he and I followed behind Song Lin as we went out.

Song Lin led us along the bumpy village road, winding around for over half an hour, until we finally arrived at the clinic they had mentioned.

Looking closely, I honestly don't know if this even counts as a clinic—the whole building is just a poor family's small kiln; the walls have had a large layer of plaster washed away, the interior light is extremely dim, there's no ventilation, and just waving a hand brings a strong medicinal smell.

Seven or eight elderly men lay in a small room under forty square meters; their shaky beds and yellowed quilts together made do as a sickbed.

As I and Pangzi followed Song Lin inside, we almost couldn't breathe from the stuffiness. The space for us to move in this room is extremely narrow, especially for Pangzi's build—one person takes up the room of two, making this already crowded house feel even more cramped.

"Brother Lin..." Seeing Song Lin leading us in, a young man with a slightly sallow complexion struggled to sit up from the bed. As this young man rose, the other patients on the beds also gasped and greeted Song Lin.

"Everyone stay lying down; I'm just bringing two friends to have a look, so don't get up! Yangzi, hurry and lie back down." Song Lin, flustered, hurriedly soothed the injured person who was struggling to sit up, then pressed down the one who was about to do the same.

"Brother Hai, what do you think of them?"

Just as Song Lin was about to ask, I waved my hand, pointed to the young man whose complexion was sallow but whose condition was the best among the injured, and then told Song Lin: "Let's help this brother outside first; out there we can see him more clearly."

Everyone without hesitation helped the injured man named Yangzi to the bench outside the clinic and sat down.

As soon as Yangzi sat down, Pangzi eagerly took his pulse.

Everyone reacted differently; Song Lin and I looked at Pangzi with anticipation, while Yangzi appeared utterly bewildered.

As for Pangzi, who was acting as the doctor, his facial expression was varied—going from contemplation to gradual solemnity. Afterwards, Pangzi's hands roamed all over Yangzi's body, and it seemed that wherever he touched, Yangzi would grimace and cry out in pain.

"Besides pain, do you feel anything else?" Pangzi, now assuming the air of a professional doctor, pointed to the spot he had just felt and said to Yangzi: "Tell me, when did it hurt, what sensations did you feel when it hurt, and what unusual things do you normally experience?"

Yangzi described the sensations during pain and the timing of the episodes to Pangzi, then after carefully recalling once more, he scratched his head, lowered his head, and said embarrassedly: "Besides feeling pain, I sometimes feel quite strange. It's as if there's always a force inside me that makes me want to grab a knife and slash people, and I also get angry very easily…"

"Don't you feel like the whole world is against you, that anyone who looks at you seems displeasing, and when you look at the people around you, even if nothing's wrong you sometimes just want to beat them up badly!" I couldn't help interjecting.

Yangzi stared for a moment, then nodded while recalling: "Seems, that's really how it is—not just me, it seems like everyone else is the same. These past few days in the ward we almost started fighting, but luckily we're all fellow disciples from the same sect, otherwise we would have couldn't helped but come to blows."

After Yangzi said that, I became even more certain that he was affected by yin qi or hostile qi.

The reason I asked this is actually based on my own reasoning, which is also common knowledge in the field. First, a spirit body can not only influence a person's brainwaves, making them emotional, but also affect their aura, causing the possessed to be out of sync with the entire environment and rejected by everything around them.

In other words, if a person is entangled by a spirit body carrying resentment, they will unknowingly be infected with that resentment. At that point, those around them will have the illusion that seeing him makes them angry, seeing him makes them displeased, and in severe cases they even want to beat him badly. But afterward… when they suddenly look back, they don't know why they were angry, can't find the cause of their anger. At the same time, this subtle influence also makes the victim develop a cynical worldview.

Put bluntly, it's actually resentment at work, affecting a person's vital spirit; while being rejected by the environment, they also reject everyone around them.

Yangzi's condition now is extremely similar to that of someone eroded by resentment. However, his situation is somewhat different; it seems that what has invaded him is not merely simple resentment, and I have never heard of resentment being able to, beyond affecting a person's emotions, actually manifest as physical pain.

After Pangzi finished asking these questions, everyone helped Yangzi back to the ward together.

After we came out to the outside of the clinic, Song Lin handed me and Pangzi a cigarette; while smoking, I asked Pangzi whether the diagnosis had been concluded.

Pangzi exhaled a cloud of mist and said slowly: "It's definitely resentment invading the body, no mistake."

I was puzzled, so I said that resentment invading the body doesn't seem to work that way; even if it can affect a person's spirit and cause the surroundings to reject them, it shouldn't be able to lurk inside the body and cause substantive harm.

Pangzi shook his head and said: "You only know one side, not the other."

While I and Song Lin were doubtful, Pangzi took a puff of smoke, then said to me: "You only know that ghosts have resentment, but you don't know that ghosts also have will."

"After death, a ghost may have unfinished business—this is called obsession; if it's hatred, it's called grudge. But if someone held a belief in life, and even at the moment of death still clung to that belief, or was carrying out something for that belief, then after death their grudge will carry with it that tenacious will from life."

Pangzi's lengthy discourse was not clear even to Song Lin, and I myself didn't fully understand it; it was rather vague.

"Put simply, it's like a religious fanatic, the kind with a problematic, obsessive mind—his brain filled with faith, and even at the point of death he's still killing people for his mistaken belief. After being struck down, he still retains his obsession, and within that obsession there remains fanatical faith and willpower—do you understand?" Pangzi spread his hands and patiently explained this to us.

I and Song Lin exchanged a glance, and in the end we just shook our heads in bewilderment.

"Brother Xiaoqiang means that the ghost haunting our troupe in life was a fervent religious believer?" Song Lin asked weakly.

Pangzi: "……"

"Let's get back to the point!" Pangzi said with a defeated expression, dejected: "I was just giving an example. In short, the possessing ghost, in life, was either a soldier loyally serving the country, or a thug who licked blood off the blade… Of course, such a tough guy must belong to an organization and be deeply devoted to it!"

Pangzi explained in his wording: "I just examined Yangzi's condition and found the resentment inside his body extremely fierce. The reason it could seep in through the wound and linger in his body is because these emanations carry the ghost's will. Thus this formless resentment can turn into tangible force, flowing within the body. If not expelled, it will remain forever inside the person, damaging their organs—this is the same principle as internal martial arts' inch power! And those who can possess such stubborn, overbearing willpower are either gangsters or soldiers."

Willpower truly is something terrifying. Take the fallen Wen Tianxiang, for example: though he died, his spirit has been passed down through the ages, and later generations all flock to it.

Likewise, the seniors who fell under enemy gunfire during the War of Resistance—even though they died on the battlefield, their will still wanders across every inch of our Chinese land. Any battlefield tempered by gunfire and fire, the later generations with hot blood still can feel that deep-seated sorrow.

This is willpower, this is faith; even after giving up one's life, they still use their unwilling obsession to play a final, resounding melody, driving later generations to inherit this will and, with their lives, accomplish the great deeds that their predecessors left unfinished.

Pangzi gazed at the somewhat desolate village and sighed softly.

At that moment, Pangzi, moved by feeling, looked toward the not‑far‑away manor ahead, where the seniors had once driven out the Japanese invaders, a battlefield stained with blood.