Chapter 191: Ghostly Stories

Today, a new female tenant moved into Wuji Slope in Chengxi, and as the property manager, or what is called the graveyard steward, Xu Qing had to perform some welcoming rituals before her move-in.

Paper money fluttered down, and the ten-perfect burning of the living was lively and bustling; next door at the graves, the Wang couple, the lame old man, and the Wang matriarch also benefited, with an extra stick of incense added to each family's grave.

When Xu Qing previously went to Wanshou County to relocate the Wang couple's grave, he happened upon the lame old man's corpse and brought it back along with them.

At that time, he even opened the Scripture of Delivering Beings to read about the old man's past.

The old man was a veteran from the early Tianmen Pass campaign; back then, when Tianmen Pass resisted foreign invasion, many died, and the generals and soldiers guarding the pass from top to bottom were almost entirely replaced, and even those who survived to the end rarely had all four limbs intact.

The veteran lost a leg in that campaign, becoming one of the few witnesses to the Tianmen Pass battle.

Since then, the veteran and some other disabled soldiers entered Changting Wang Fu together, took on some idle posts, and spent their old age in the mansion.

These veterans appeared physically disabled, but they could not be underestimated.

Those who could survive from the start of the Tianmen Pass campaign until the end must have possessed extremely formidable skills.

Otherwise, Zhu Huai'an would not have kept a lame veteran at the Wang residence.

The veteran knew nothing else, but Xu Qing learned some battlefield killing techniques from him; simply put, they were pure methods of killing.

The combat experience born from such battlefield slaughter was far more vicious than those street tricks.

In street gang fights, the most poisonous and ruthless tactics were merely low-level tricks or scattering lime powder or pepper; they looked fierce, but in the eyes of a true hundred-battle veteran, they were nothing but child's play.

In the veteran's memories, Xu Qing saw a fierce soldier who severed his own arm to escape a predicament and rejoin the fray, and he also saw the lame veteran without hesitation cutting off his own leg, throwing it far to strike an enemy general and rescue trapped comrades.

Xu Qing felt somewhat enlightened; perhaps the true essence of these battlefield killing techniques was not the method of killing, but the calmness in the choice between life and death.

Like a gecko shedding its tail to survive or a blue sheep breaking off its horn to heal itself, when such calmness becomes instinct, whether seeking survival or killing the enemy, one will always find the fastest path to resolution.

Xu Qing admitted he could not yet achieve such calmness, but once the Unmelting Bone was cultivated, let alone shedding a tail to survive, even if he were asked to cut off his own head and use it as a weapon, he would not even blink.

On Wuji Slope, pines, cypresses, and willows formed shade; occasionally, a wild wind blew, and the entire graveyard was filled with a rustling sound.

Where pine needles moved, the rubbing sounded like ghostly whispers; where willow branches brushed, green and white robes appeared and disappeared; when wild grass swayed, it sounded like a filial daughter weeping at a grave, sobbing and whimpering.

Even though they stood under the same sky and the same sun overhead, Shang Shaoyang clearly felt this place was much colder and more yin than others.

And this was still under the bright blue sky and white sun; what would the scene be like after sunset?

"Brother Xu, do you not fear coming here alone usually?"

Xu Qing, repairing the newly raised grave mound, replied without turning his head: "Fear? Why should I fear?"

As a zombie, coming to a graveyard was just like returning home; he had never heard of anyone being afraid to return to their own home.

"Remote places are not suitable for going alone. I heard people at the tea house say that quiet, secluded places are the easiest to breed ghosts and strange creatures; moreover, since this is a graveyard, perhaps there are hanging ghosts, soul-reaping ghosts, or wronged ghosts waiting here for a substitute to take their punishment, allowing them to escape and enter reincarnation."

Xu Qing was stunned by this, but when he heard the words "tea house," he suddenly asked: "Could the tea house you mentioned be the Fulai Tea House?"

"How did Brother Xu know?"

Xu Qing said with deep seriousness: "Listen less to storytellers' nonsense; how can there be ghosts and monsters in this world? If there are, they can only be the result of human hearts!"

"Human hearts causing trouble..." Shang Shaoyang found this strange and unconsciously asked: "What is meant by human hearts causing trouble?"

Xu Qing stopped his repair work, leaning on his iron shovel and said:

"At the street corner of Jingxia Street, there was once a Mr. Hu who said this: most demonic mists in the world are caused by humans.

Without human conflict, demons do not act on their own. When people do not do good deeds and harbor accumulated resentment and fear, the earth's qi becomes turbid and heavenly patterns become irregular, allowing demons to take the opportunity to enter the world and do evil, repeatedly difficult to dispel. If heaven and earth are clear and humans do not act on their own, under a peaceful and prosperous age, demons will naturally hide their forms and not enter the mundane world."

After saying this, Xu Qing smiled and looked at Shang Shaoyang: "Young Master Shang, do you think there are any evil spirits on Wuji Slope now?"

Shang Shaoyang looked around left and right; besides Xu Qing, a kind-hearted shopkeeper of the yin trade, there was no one else, so where could any monster come from?

"These words seem to have some depth; it shows that the Mr. Hu in Brother Xu's mouth is also a wonderful person, and I ought to visit his door to pay my respects."

Visit his door? Xu Qing blinked; this was not something to be visited!

"Then Brother Shang has no such fortune; Mr. Hu returned to the netherworld half a year ago, and I was the one who conducted his funeral."

Shang Shaoyang felt a slight regret.

"Brother Xu, having run the funeral business for these years, have you ever encountered ghosts or monsters?"

Xu Qing countered: "Has Brother Shang ever seen any?"

"I have heard elders in my family speak of them, but I have never seen them."

Then you have seen one now.

Xu Qing smiled slightly and said: "I have never seen them either; ghosts and monsters are all things made up by storytellers to grab attention, and I have never believed in them."

"We must believe in investigation and inquiry; investigating things to acquire knowledge is the only hard truth."

Shang Shaoyang frowned and said: "Better to believe they exist than to believe they do not. The talk of ghosts and gods has existed since ancient times; although I have never seen them, I have heard of them, so this matter must be true."

Shang Shaoyang, alone at the graveyard, discussed ghosts with ghosts, and when the conversation grew exciting, he even wanted to spend the night on Wuji Slope to see if there were really any ghosts.

Xu Qing, a zombie from a poor grave background, had to run his shop and spirit hall every day to earn incense money to support his family; where did he have the leisure time to accompany a wealthy young man to waste time here?

Besides, his own home already had ready-made ghosts to watch, ones that could sing and dance; why would he go far to find other ghosts for entertainment?

Xu Qing ignored Shang Shaoyang; after handling Yu Qiulan's funeral affairs, he hurried the spirit carriage back to Linjiang County.

Shang Shaoyang had no choice and could only follow back with a lackluster mood.

On the second day, Xu Qing arrived at the new Yaofang where the refugees were settled, and with him came the Constables from the government office.

Someone was needed to maintain order during the distribution of money and grain; otherwise, unrest was inevitable.

Xu Qing was not afraid, but in the eyes of outsiders, he was after all a Licentiate with no strength to bind a chicken; how could he resist refugees driven mad by hunger?

In the government office, Master Tang, having received instructions from the county magistrate, also came to the new Yaofang.

Relief tents were set up, and the clerks from the grain shop and the constables from the government office coordinated to transport the grain from the coroner's shop into the tents.

In Linjiang County, one tael of silver could exchange for about one hundred and fifty jin of rice and flour; Xu Qing's two hundred taels of silver, plus the five hundred taels added by Shang Shaoyang, purchased no less than one hundred thousand jin of rice and flour.

Master Tang's eyes turned green with envy: "With so much grain, how much silver must it be? Even if I worked as a Master for ten years, I might not be able to save this much silver."

Xu Qing believed this; a Master was an assistant in the government office, with a monthly salary of at most three or four taels of silver, totaling at most fifty taels a year; if one did not engage in side dealings for ten years, one truly could not save seven hundred taels of silver.

"I heard that since you had both a son and a daughter, you reformed your heart and began to do good deeds diligently to accumulate virtue for your children; how come you are now greedy for worldly silver again?"

Upon hearing this, Tang Zhou's two mustache hairs twisted to one side, and in his shame and anger, he spoke in the dialect of his hometown in Guanzhong: "What kind of words are these? What do you mean by 'reformed your heart'? It sounds as if I was corrupt and embezzling before!"

Xu Qing was taken aback: "Is the Clerk not a native of Jinmen?"

Tang Zhou pouted and said, "My hometown is Guanzhong. I fled there as a refugee back then. Fortunately, I knew a few characters and had some basic literary knowledge, so I managed to put down roots in Jinmen."

While the two chatted idly, after the constables finished transporting all the grain, Zhao Zhonghe walked over, his hand resting on his sword hilt.

"You two certainly have the leisure, while we are left to suffer the hard labor."

"Look at what Constable Zhao is saying. Helping Shopkeeper Xu distribute aid to the people is a good deed that accumulates blessings. How can it be considered hard labor?"

Zhao Zhonghe bared his teeth and said, "It's easy to talk when you're not doing the work. The Clerk speaks so beautifully, yet why don't we see the Clerk carrying rice and grain?"

As he approached the two, Zhao Zhonghe was about to speak again when he suddenly sniffed the air.

"What is that smell? Why does Brother Xu smell more fragrant than the young ladies and wives on the street?"

Xu Qing's face darkened; this constable's mouth was truly a match for the Golden Tied Escort of the Tai'an Escort Agency.

Clerk Tang laughed and said, "Do you think everyone is as smelly as you? Shopkeeper Xu is a Licentiate by background, a genuine scholar, so naturally, he is more refined than you, a mere brute."

Hearing this, Zhao Zhonghe sniffed his own sleeve. Under normal circumstances, he would have smelled nothing, but now, with the strange fragrance of Xu Qing's scent as a comparison, the smell of his own sweat seemed particularly obvious.

"It does seem there is a bit of a smell after all. Perhaps another day I will go to Jade Face Pavilion to buy some powder and apply some."

"Constable Zhao, please stop making jokes. What's the difference between you applying powder and a bear wearing flowers? That would just be wasting good things!" Clerk Tang reasoned, "The money spent on powder would be better used to treat the brothers to wine."

After the two bickered for a while, when they turned their heads, they found that Xu Qing had already run to the relief shelter and set up a notice board.

Zhao Zhonghe glanced over and saw: "The Mortician Shop's Charity Activity for the People of Jingxia Street has officially begun. For life's major events, choose the Xu Shop first."

Beneath the easy-to-understand slogan was written the Mortician Shop's business philosophy: "Offering care to the widowed and childless, extending a helping hand to refugees and the hungry, accumulating hidden virtues, and bestowing blessings upon descendants."

"This Shopkeeper Xu truly cannot forget his business." Tang Zhou seemed quite accustomed to it.

Zhao Zhonghe laughed and said, "Speaking of which, Clerk Tang and Shopkeeper Xu are acquaintances. If the Clerk ever visits the Mortician Shop in the future, perhaps Shopkeeper Xu will even offer some discount."

Hearing this, Tang Zhou's face darkened. He said in a bad mood, "Keep that discount for yourself, Constable Zhao! This old man has little fortune and cannot afford to enjoy it!"

Inside the relief shelter, Xu Qing held a small, broken bowl, constantly transferring rice and flour into a bushel measure.

Once he filled a bushel, he would lift the cloth curtain and distribute the grain to those refugees whose faces were as pale as vegetables.

Zhao Zhonghe and the others wanted to help, but he sent them outside the grain shelter on the grounds of maintaining order.

At first, Xu Qing was somewhat slow filling the small bowl with rice and flour, but as the amount of grain distributed increased, his speed became faster and faster.

To the point where this small, broken bowl could hold a hundred bushels, even a thousand bushels of rice and flour.

In the end, Xu Qing had no choice but to ask the constables to help distribute the grain, while he remained inside the tent to transfer grain from bags into wide-mouthed large jars that were easier to scoop from.

Zhao Zhonghe was a Pulse-Opening Martial Artist; a large jar weighing four or five hundred jin was lifted by him with ease.

After continuously distributing aid for two days, the hundred thousand jin of grain and rice ran out.

At this point, the grayish-brown small bowl in Xu Qing's hand gradually transformed into a pale yellow, and the space inside had expanded to the size of a room.

On the final day when the shelter was being dismantled, Shang Shaoyang, dressed in white robes, arrived before the relief shelter.

"I originally thought you were just talking. Even if you really went to aid these common people, you wouldn't give away all your grain and money. Now it seems I was judging others by my own standards."

Xu Qing, who was in the middle of packing up, had no leisure to listen to a wealthy Young Master discussing his feelings here.

"Stop talking nonsense. If you have nothing to do, help me gather those grain bags over there and sweep the floor. Can't you see I have urgent matters to handle? How can a Young Master from a wealthy family be so lacking in common sense?"

"..."

Shang Shaoyang's eyelids twitched slightly. He had grown up, yet no one had ever dared to order him around like this, let alone ask him to do the rough work reserved for servants and slaves.

After a moment of silence, Shang Shaoyang put down his sword and walked over to the grain bags covered in rice and flour dust to start working.

Only after the grain shelter was dismantled and loaded onto the cart did Xu Qing finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Public charity was truly not work suitable for a zombie; he was better suited to secretly distributing grain.

As a zombie whom everyone feared and who could only hide beneath human skin, maintaining a sense of stealth was very important.

After finishing all the matters, Xu Qing looked at the runner from the Second Master Feng's residence and said, "It is still early. I will go to the Second Master's place later this evening."

The runner, who had been pressed into service as a laborer and had spent half the day doing dirty work, wiped his sweat and said hesitantly, "Mr. Xu, that thing is most active at night. Will this work?"

"That is exactly why we need the night. If we went during the day, would it come out?"

Xu Qing could not say that he himself also liked to cause trouble at night. After pondering for a moment, he continued, "Just tell the Second Master this. The Second Master knows the trade; he will understand."

After the runner left, Shang Shaoyang, whose white robes had turned into dirty clothes, asked, "What riddle are you two playing? What matter must be handled at night?"

Xu Qing glanced sideways at the ever-curious Shang Shaoyang and said, "It is no big matter. I am just going to Flower and Bird Street to perform a ritual. This is actually the main business of my Mortician Shop."

"Flower and Bird Street?" Shang Shaoyang's eyes suddenly lit up as he said, "I heard that Flower and Bird Street is haunted. I went to take a look yesterday, but I discovered nothing abnormal."

"If you are going to perform a ritual at Flower and Bird Street at night, are you not afraid of encountering that ghost?"

Xu Qing said indifferently, "What is a ghost? When a person dies, they become a ghost. When it was alive, it could achieve nothing; now that it is dead, what should I fear of it?"

"If I truly encounter a ghost, I will fight it. Winning is certainly good. If I lose, I will be no different from it."

"In the end, it is just death. What is there to fear?"

Xu Qing, being a zombie, spoke with such toughness.

Shang Shaoyang did not understand the situation but felt his blood boil with excitement; his spirit surged straight to his brain. These words truly suited his heart perfectly.

"If Brother Xu does not fear death, how can I fear it? Tonight, I shall go with you, Brother!"

(End of this chapter)