His words were polite, but his actions were impatient. The head was already battering Nan Ying’s belly, thrusting left and right.
Nan Ying had never vomited up a ghost he’d swallowed before. This was a first. He didn’t know how to do it, no rolling eyes, no sticking out his tongue, no dry heaving.
Besides, he’d eaten so much over the past few days. Whether he could even vomit it up was another question entirely.
His small belly was bulging and stretching, first round, then pointed. If they waited any longer, “Mr. Head” was going to gnaw through Nan Ying’s stomach from the inside and force his way out.
“Open your mouth!” Gu Daosheng grabbed Nan Ying’s face. As Nan Ying patted his stomach in terror, wailing for help, Gu Daosheng didn’t even have time to reach for a talisman from his golden rope. He bit his fingertip and traced several strokes in the air.
The golden lines instantly formed a seal, condensing into a beautiful “Vomiting-Inducing Talisman.” With a whoosh, it shot into Nan Ying’s mouth and slid down his throat into his stomach.
Gulp. Nan Ying choked for a moment, then patted his chest to catch his breath, though ghosts didn’t breathe, so he wasn’t sure what he was even trying to catch. Maybe he was just doing it out of habit.
Once his breath came back, Nan Ying pounded his small chest. He still couldn’t accept that the ghost whose head he’d bitten off was still alive, and even without a mouth, it was still speaking from inside his stomach.
This is truly ghostly.
When he’d come to the Lou family years ago, the head hadn’t tried to come out of his stomach.
Nan Ying threw his head back and wailed, “Waaah, I’m gonna die young, no, be scattered to the winds! Waaah, Mama, ”
Gu Daosheng: “…”
“Bleh, ” Nan Ying retched.
A pile of thoroughly chewed skull fragments sprawled on the floor, each piece wriggling frantically, desperate to piece itself back together.
Fortunately, ghosts lacked digestive systems. Their stomachs were merely decorative, unlike a human’s.
There was no nauseating digestive mucus on the “body parts.” They were in the same condition now as they had been when swallowed.
Though they were, admittedly, shattered beyond all reason.
At first glance, the patches of hair looked like a plucked brush. The white bone resembled the dry, peeling bark of a birch tree.
“Uh… eyes, where are the eyeballs? Oh, here they are, here they are… Where do they go? They should go on either side of the nose. Where’s the nose? Here it is… Where does it go? Above and in the middle of the mouth. Oh god, where’s the mouth? Where am I speaking from…?” Teacher Cheng was frantically busy. Without a body, he had no hands to help him find his parts, and the flesh and bone spun around in a chaotic whirl.
The eye sought the nose, using it as a guide to settle itself on the face, only to end up on the chin. The nose hurriedly shifted toward the center of the face, aspiring to be a proper landmark, but instead landed on the ear. The ear, having its spot stolen, found itself inexplicably serving as an eyebrow.
In the end, the face was a mess, the eyes weren’t where eyes should be, and the nose wasn’t where the nose should be.
One of Teacher Cheng’s eyes scrambled and rolled to Nan Ying’s feet. The eyeball darted up and down, scanning him, as the mouth followed close behind and croaked, “Little Mr. Malevolent Ghost, your teeth are truly impressive.”
With a single eye and a mouth here scaring ghosts, Nan Ying grinned in a loud sob, revealing a row of teeth that did indeed look quite impressive.
A defensive instinct kicked in, and fearing the eye might spring up and snap at him, his teeth even grew sharper.
This only made them look even more impressive.
Only vengeful ghosts were truly terrifying; a corpse, no matter how hideous, posed no threat. Gu Daosheng separated the two, shielding Nan Ying, who was clutching his hem. With his index finger, still stained with fresh blood, he drew a ritual circle around the pile of minced flesh.
The eye and mouth, which had just been complaining, suddenly flew back into the heap of broken bones and worked together to mold a head-like shape.
They had finally taken their proper places.
“Why are you messing around with ‘induced vomiting’ and ‘clay’ again?” Nan Ying asked, his voice shaking with sobs. “What have you even been learning? Is this what a Heavenly Master is supposed to study?”
No, it wasn’t.
But who could blame Gu Daosheng for his love of play?
When it came to drawing useful talismans, he had to think for ages, and if necessary, even flip through books to copy the answers, and even then, he wasn’t sure if they were correct. A single wrong stroke could blow himself up.
As for the useless talismans, he didn’t even need to be taught; he learned them all instantly. When he couldn’t find any in the books, he just invented his own.
There were simply too many useless, flashy tricks.
The “Induced Vomiting” Talisman was a method Gu Daosheng had devised as a child to avoid drinking bitter medicine. Later, his Master found out and would sit right in front of him, watching him drink it all, remarking that “good medicine tastes bitter.”
After all, everyone needs to know what sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy taste like.
The “Adhesion Talisman” was another one of his great childhood achievements.
Gu Daosheng loved playing with dirt. Clay could be molded into all sorts of things, flowers, birds, but it tended to crack when it dried, which wasn’t very pretty.
His Master forbade him from playing with dirt, not because he found it dirty- any muddy monkey fished out of a mire could be cleaned with a single Cleansing Talisman- but because Gu Daosheng ate dirt.
He would stuff it into his mouth the moment he saw it, only finally breaking the disgusting habit when he was seven or eight.
When he had nothing else to do, he would use his hands, which could barely even hold chopsticks, to pick up a small twig and draw talismans on the ground. They were so crude they looked worse than a dog’s crawl. He would draw them one by one, experimenting on the clay.
He kept at it until the clay could bond on its own and dry without cracking, forming a neat row of attractive toys.
Though he was still a child, he had already spent over a decade outwitting his Master.
Recalling his mischievous childhood with a shudder, Gu Daosheng lifted his chin and declared, “What I learned is none of your business. All that matters is that I’m powerful.”
Nan Ying rubbed his own stomach. If Gu Daosheng hadn’t spoken up, he might have really had to slice open a head to get a look inside. If you walk by the river often enough, you’re bound to get your shoes wet. The Ghost Path truly led to no good end. Only mothers are omnipotent in this world, he thought sincerely. “You’re indeed powerful, Mother,” he said aloud.
Gu Daosheng: “…”
“If you dare call me that again, I’ll flip your skull open and engrave the correct concept of gender into your brain. Men cannot be mothers!” he snarled.
“Fine,” Nan Ying said, his shoulders slumping. He then pointed to Teacher Cheng, whose head had just changed. “Why is his head covered in cracks?”
It looked like a shattered vase that had been glued back together.
A face “sprouted” from the front of Teacher Cheng’s head, and features were “painted” onto it: eyes where eyes should be, a nose where a nose should be.
He finally had a face to show the world.
But Gu Daosheng barely recognized him.
The ugly man he’d seen at the door had a waxy, yellow complexion and a withered, gaunt appearance. His two front teeth jutted out one behind the other, pushing up his upper lip in a truly hideous sight.
If he’d been spewing filth from his mouth, it would have been nauseatingly disgusting.
The man before him was still thin, his cheekbones high and sharp. Yet, the skin didn’t sag; instead, it stretched taut, dryly clinging to the bone. His front teeth had retracted, and because he was so thin, his face had almost lost its shape; his nose seemed to have risen from a flat surface to a towering structure, making his features even more three-dimensional.
If he gained a few pounds and his cheeks filled out, no longer appearing to have “eyes as large as lanterns,” this would be a quite passable, clean-cut face of a middle-aged man.
Lou Ling hadn’t been wrong to call him “Teacher Cheng.” Teacher Cheng must have taught for at least twenty years, and in school, he would have been the kind of teacher with a good temperament and no temper, thoroughly marinated in the role.
His eyes were filled with the gentleness of a teacher who must maintain a proper character and patiently explain lessons.
Having been taught by his own Master for so many years, Gu Daosheng was most familiar with this kind of gaze; it was the polar opposite of when his Master was infuriated to the point of raging.
Teacher Cheng’s face was covered in a dense web of cracks, like a fine-meshed fishing net that had left countless irregular, indented lines across his skin. It was a sight that severely marred his appearance.
The “Bonding” Talisman had performed poorly.
Even with the most successful repair, the lines of the cracks remained visible. After all, a head was not made of clay. It wasn’t a toy to be played with.
“Can you do it again?” Teacher Cheng asked blankly, his face turned toward the mirror behind the entryway. He looked as if he didn’t recognize himself, as if he hadn’t seen this face in ages. “That… that clay-like game you just played. Can you mold me again? Erase all these scars.”
The state of a person’s body at the time of death determines the state of their soul. No matter how beautiful one was in life, if they were disfigured before death, they would have to appear as a ghost with a disfigured face.
Gu Daosheng had just realized why Teacher Cheng’s face had changed. He was like a clay toy that had been dropped on the floor before it could dry, smashing its features flat. It was impossible to restore by hand; the slightest error would make him look like a different person entirely. A hair’s breadth of difference could lead to a thousand miles of error.
Now, if the “clay” were kneaded back into its original state, a single “Bonding” Talisman could restore him perfectly.
“So that means…” Teacher Cheng’s nasal bone and facial bones had been broken, and they had healed crookedly, resulting in his hideous appearance.
Now, he had been “molded” back into his original, “whole” features.
Gu Daosheng couldn’t bear to imagine how Teacher Cheng’s face had been shattered. He replied dryly, “I’m not playing around.”
“…I can only do this once. My abilities are unstable. The fact that you’ve been restored to this state is already the best possible outcome under the circumstances.”
“It’s alright.” Teacher Cheng didn’t push him. With his neck still resting on the floor, he pressed his forehead against the boards in a deep bow to Gu Daosheng. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to find my daughter now. I’ll come back for you later and let this Little Mr. Malevolent Ghost eat me; he worked so hard to chew me up so thoroughly, after all,” Teacher Cheng said.
Nan Ying: “…”
He’s mocking me!
Teacher Cheng’s expression was utterly serious. “You’ve already eaten several people. I know people are spreading rumors that the Lou family manor is haunted. You are a ghost who despises evil, and you’ve eaten all those lecherous bastards who gossiped about my daughter.”
“I knew you were there the moment you slapped me across the face and kicked me.”
“I’ve finally waited for you to eat me. I didn’t want to live anyway.” Teacher Cheng’s neck bobbed up and down like it was mounted on a spring. He spun around to leave, bouncing three feet high with every step. “I’m going to find my daughter… my daughter… oh, my daughter…”
Nan Ying pointed to himself, his voice filled with grievance. “I wasn’t the one who slapped you…”
Gu Daosheng clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Ah! Ahhh,! AHHHHHHHHHHHH, !!”
Suddenly, a scream of absolute terror ripped through the air, nearly lifting the roof off the house.
Lou Ling cowered in the corner, his face drained of all color.
When Gu Daosheng had grabbed a handful of empty air and commanded, “Open your mouth,” Lou Ling’s brow had furrowed in understanding. He’d thought to himself that this meddlesome Young Master Twelve was finally going “crazy” after learning so much.
He had witnessed this before, so this time he didn’t panic; he remained quite calm.
Then, Gu Daosheng’s hand flashed. A “seal” Lou Ling couldn’t recognize glowed golden and shot straight into a mouth.
The mouth, pursed and pinched into a pout by Gu Daosheng’s hand, revealed the seal. Just like that, a single mouth materialized out of thin air.
It all happened in a flash, leaving Lou Ling wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Teacher Cheng’s mouth was still there, floating in mid-air, incessantly berating Nan Ying. The sight was so terrifying that the little ghost tried to scramble away on all fours, hiding behind its “mother” and refusing to come out.
Lou Ling was alone. To suddenly see a disembodied mouth crying and screaming, the sheer shock of it was unimaginable. That he hadn’t died on the spot to reunite with his great-grandmother in the underworld was a testament to his courage.
But it wasn’t over. Just as his own mouth clamped shut, his body convulsed as if in a spasm, and he felt an irresistible urge to scream. Lou Ling couldn’t bear to look at the scene before him any longer; every extra glance felt like a death sentence. His gaze darted away wildly.
And it landed straight on the mirror.
Since ancient times, there has been a saying that mirrors are impure objects, portals between the living and the dead. Ghosts invisible in the Living World can be seen in a mirror.
Such tales were always trotted out by bored adults to scare ignorant children.
Lou Ling had never believed them.
But now, in the mirror, he saw Teacher Cheng’s face, his head, admiring itself.
And that was all. Just a head. Nothing else.
Teacher Cheng seemed dissatisfied with his own face, his mouth moving and pointing, though no sound came out.
Lou Ling looked at the mirror: a head. He looked in front of the mirror: no head.
That sharp, explosive scream finally caught in his throat, triggered a switch, and burst out: “AAAAAAAAAHHHH, !!”
“A ghost! A ghost! A ghost, a ghost, a ghost, there’s a real ghost AAAAAAAAAAHHHH, !!!” Lou Ling scrambled outward on all fours, not in water but as if he were, his limbs flailing wildly in the air as he “swam” away in a zig-zagging, serpentine path.
Even in this life-or-death moment, he still remembered to scoop up Lou Mingzhang and flee with him.
He shrieked for his savior: “Eldest Young Master, Eldest Young Master, Eldest Young Master! Eldest Young Master, come quickly, Eldest Young Master!!!”