Pain!
Pain! Pain! Pain!
Chen Qing looked down at the blade tip jutting from his chest, then up at the ring of familiar, snarling faces before him.
He didn't understand. He couldn't believe it.
These were the neighbors, the friends he had sworn to protect!
How had their knives turned on him?
"Why?"
Chen Qing staggered, then slid slowly down the wall until he was sitting.
"Why?" Chenkun sneered. "You hoarded a whole room of food, going on about 'sharing it out equally'—and eight parts in ten went straight down your own throat!"
He was wearing Chen Qing's paper armor.
Holding Chen Qing's paper blade.
In the Hundred Ghosts Apocalypse, that gear had been Chen Qing's single greatest asset.
How had it... ended up on him?
It was Chenxi!
Tonight she had clung to him, coaxed him into bed, and with her own hands peeled off the paper armor he had never once removed.
"Chenxi..." Chen Qing turned his head with effort and found her in the crowd.
Meeting his eyes, she faltered—but still forced the words out, stubborn. "I told you again and again, give the armor to my brother! He's the only brother I have! Why did you have to push me this far?"
And then she was crying. "I begged you so many times to give us a little more food, and every time you said there wasn't any... It's you! You're the one who drove me to this!"
"Stop wasting your breath on him!"
"Search the place! We split it all!"
The familiar faces surged into the room one after another, scrambling over each other.
"Nothing!"
"Nothing here either!"
"Just two cases of instant noodles and half a sack of potatoes left."
"Where the fuck did he hide it?"
"Chen Qing, where'd you stash the food?!"
Chen Qing smiled.
Food?
It had run out long ago.
If he hadn't rationed it so strictly, they'd never have lasted this long.
"Talk, or we fry your brother alive!" Liu Yanhong grabbed a chubby little boy by the hair, her face twisting as she snarled the threat.
This was Chen Man.
Chen Qing's little brother. His only living kin.
"Chen Qing, does it hurt?" Chen Man asked, staring blank-faced at the knife in his brother's chest.
Born short one soul, the chubby boy had never learned to cry, never learned to smile.
"Bring... bring him over here, and I'll... I'll talk."
Liu Yanhong beamed and shoved the boy across.
Chen Qing gathered him in gently.
"Xiao Man," he whispered, "they won't let you go. Don't hate your brother for this."
And he pressed the boy down onto the blade tip rising from his chest.
Chen Man looked down at the point sinking into his own heart, and only held Chen Qing tighter.
"My boy, my boy..." A blind man came stumbling in, half-sobbing.
He blundered into people again and again before his groping hands finally found Chen Qing.
A handful of hot blood.
"Fuck your mothers! Fuck your mothers!!" The blind man wailed until it seemed his heart and lungs would tear loose. "Is there a shred of conscience left in you?! Every other block has lost more than half its people! Ours hasn't lost a single soul! And this is how you repay him?!"
"Get lost!" Someone kicked the blind man aside.
He sprawled, howling.
His cries tangled with the terrible shrieking of the ghosts outside.
Chen Qing's strength was bleeding away fast. With the last of it, he moved his gaze from face to face.
Each face. He fixed every one in his memory.
His good brother Monkey wasn't among them—but Yue Yangfeng was holding Monkey's blade, so he'd likely been killed too.
"Everything is... in... in..." The words came out of Chen Qing in broken pieces.
Chenkun rushed to lean close—only to hear Chen Qing sneer softly against his ear: "You're... still that stupid."
Chenkun went stiff.
Chen Qing's voice lifted, just slightly. "There's enough left to last a month. Don't... waste it."
And with that, he went completely still.
Chenkun stood there, stunned. What did that mean?
What was there that could last a month?
But a scar-faced man beside him barked at once, "Where is it? Where's this stuff?"
"I heard it too—enough for a month! We can make it now!"
Chenkun finally understood.
In the apocalypse, Chen Qing had just handed him a death sentence.
His face contorted, and he drove a heavy fist into Chen Qing's face.
Chen Qing seemed beyond all feeling now.
In his final moment, he watched blood-qi ignite across Chen Man's body—was the boy... was he awakening?!
***
"Turn me into a vengeful ghost!"
"Please, let me become a vengeful ghost..."
"Xiao Man... Xiao Man... your brother is so sorry..."
"Chen Qing, what did you say?"
The six-year-old chubby boy stood at the bedside, holding out a cup of hot water and a pill, his face blank.
Chen Qing was burning with fever.
He stared, dazed, at everything so achingly familiar, and asked, "What's the date today?"
"Don't know."
"Bring me the phone."
Chen Man handed over the battered phone. The time on the screen read: July 16, 2055.
Twenty-nine days before the Blood Moon!
He'd been reborn?!
He worked his mouth soundlessly for a long moment, then ground out through his teeth, "Good! Good! Good!"
"Heaven has eyes!"
A month until the Blood Moon. If he couldn't seize this month, then all that time clawing through the apocalypse would have been for nothing.
There had been two Ghost Tides. The first, thirty years ago, broke out in the south—nine houses in ten left empty.
It had also opened the age of ghost mastery for mankind, and the road of cultivation.
The north, by comparison, stayed relatively stable.
Ghosts existed there, but their reach was small.
Of course, there were plenty of stray ghosts. Now and then you'd hear a rumor—a whole family hanged in the east of the city, or the ghastly end of some sugar-factory owner.
But that calm would shatter soon enough.
Because the second Ghost Tide was almost upon them.
It would be a catastrophe far more terrible than the southern Ghost Tide of thirty years ago!
On the night of August 15, the Blood Moon would descend, and the Hundred Ghosts Apocalypse would begin.
On the first night alone, at least half of all people would die.
The blood-red moon would hang for half a month. Then came half a month of daylight, and so on, over and over.
The most terrifying part: after every Blood Moon, the Ghost Tide returned twice as strong as before.
Without the awakened relics, mankind would have gone extinct long ago.
These so-called relics were cultural artifacts—antiques, old curios.
When the Blood Moon descended and its ghost-qi stirred to life, most relics awakened.
A square-holed coin from a fallen dynasty, a grand carved armchair, a family genealogy—any of them might do.
People had worked out a rough rule of thumb: the older the object, the stronger it tended to be.
Especially old things that many people had once venerated.
And Chen Qing's targets were the Seven-Treasure Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, and the Zhong Kui Ghost-Quelling Painting.
The former held Ximing City's strongest attack: the pagoda could suppress and command twelve ghosts. Even the finest Ghost Master could command only five.
The latter held Ximing City's strongest defense. The Wu family, who owned it, were known as the Unbreakable House, and they had used it to gather a following of people willing to die for them.
With those two in hand, he'd have the means to walk the Hundred Ghosts Apocalypse as he pleased.
He wrote down every famous relic he could remember, straining to recall where each one was now.
The Seven-Treasure Demon-Suppressing Pagoda sat in the Ghostless Pagoda of the Ghostless Temple.
—That much nearly everyone knew.
The Zhong Kui Ghost-Quelling Painting should still be with the Wu family for now.
During the Ghost Tide, that image of Zhong Kui, looming visible over half the city, had burned itself into the memory of all Ximing.
Chen Qing wanted to set out right then, but his head swam; even sitting up was a struggle.
"Don't move." Chen Man's face was blank. "Take your medicine first."
Chen Qing looked at the chubby little boy born short one soul, and his eyes prickled.
He could still feel the warmth of Chen Man's blood on his chest.
"I'm sorry. I didn't take good care of you last life."
"It's okay." Chen Man's face didn't change as he tidied the cup away and went off to do his homework.
Chen Man didn't understand why Chen Qing was apologizing, but Chen Qing had taught him: when someone says sorry, you say it's okay.
Chen Qing watched his small back for a while, then gathered himself.
Both super-relics—he was taking both!
Beyond that, he had to stockpile enough supplies.
Anyone who hadn't lived through the apocalypse would never understand the bliss of a single mouthful of food sliding down your throat when you were starving to death.
The one problem was, he was badly short on money right now.
Where to get it?
His first thought: sell the apartment.
No matter the era, most of a Great Tang family's wealth was tied up in their home.
But how to wring the most out of it?
He thought for a moment, and the answer came at once—loan sharks!
Get a few more property deeds, take out a few more high-interest loans, and it was done.
"Xiao Man, go copy down the loan-shark numbers in the stairwell for me. Uh—forget it. Here, use the phone and snap a photo."
This was an old six-story walk-up. On the walls of a building like this, you could find a contact number for just about every kind of crime.
Petty debt-collector harassment? That was the mildest of the bunch.
Chen Man was back quickly.
Chen Qing opened the photo album—and before he could even look, an eerie voice suddenly rang out:
"Jin Bu~huan, Jin Buhuan, Jin Bu~huan, Jin Buhuan..."
A ghost had appeared in the room: half a meter tall, gaunt and stunted, dressed in filthy rags, hauling a giant sack a full meter across on its back.
That huge sack was crammed with gold ingots—at the density of gold, the thing had to weigh tons.
"Jin Bu~huan, Jin Buhuan, Jin Bu~huan, Jin Buhuan..."
The ghost bounced and hopped, and amid the clinking two gold ingots tumbled out of the giant sack.
"Jin Bu~huan, Jin Buhuan..."
Still hopping, it suddenly sprang onto the dining table, onto a whole roast duck—and abruptly vanished.
As if it had leapt inside the duck.
Chen Qing stared at the roast duck, his eyes going straight.
The roast duck had turned into a gold duck!
"Chen Qing, the duck can't be eaten now."
Chen Man said it flatly, rapping the gold duck with a blank face.
But Chen Qing was frozen.
This was... Jin Buhuan.
Malevolent Ghost rank!
Wandering Soul, Malevolent Ghost, Evil Spirit.
"Malevolent Ghost" was a noun, a rank one step above "Wandering Soul"—it did not mean Jin Buhuan itself was evil.
Chen Qing's thoughts churned, and a tremor of awe ran through him.
Ghosts were divided into good and evil, and Jin Buhuan was the most mysterious of the benevolent ghosts.
In legend, when a person died believing they owed a great kindness left unrepaid, and that fixation ran deep enough, they became a Wandering Soul-rank 【Debt Ghost】.
Also called a 【Repayment Ghost】.
Jin Buhuan was the Debt Ghost's advanced form. It would appear around someone who had shown it great kindness, turning random objects nearby into gold.
Just like the gold duck before him.
But...
Who could possibly owe him a great debt?
If it were his previous life, that would be easy enough to understand—Chen Qing reckoned he'd saved half the block.
But in this life he was still just an ordinary high-schooler.
If a kindness from the last life had come back to be repaid in this one...
That idea was a little terrifying.
It meant Jin Buhuan could cross time itself!
He pushed himself up, went over, and hefted the duck—forty or fifty catties, easily!
Chen Qing's mouth fell open. In other words—this could sell for around ten million?!
TL Notes:
TL Note: Zhong Kui — a figure from Chinese folklore renowned as a queller and commander of ghosts, whose image is traditionally hung to ward off evil.
TL Note: Jin Buhuan — the ghost's name literally means "won't trade it for gold," i.e. priceless, which suits its power to turn nearby objects into gold.