Being the protagonist means endless trouble. For a salted fish whose goal was to lie flat, this is simply life’s greatest enemy!
But shouldn’t Xiang Yang be causing a ruckus at the Paranormal Affairs Bureau headquarters? Why did he run all the way to this remote little city, Jinnan City?
Xiang Yang was still asking with concern, “I remember this place has been empty before—when did you all move in? This building isn’t quite right. If you feel anything off, remember to call me.”
“We only moved in a few days ago.” He Yu asked tentatively, “Have you always lived in Jinnan City? Have you never been to another city?”
Xiang Yang nodded, then showed a small look of longing. “I’ve always lived here. I might go to Songyin City in the future.”
Songyin City was precisely the city where the Paranormal Affairs Bureau headquarters was located.
He Yu understood. He had transmigrated too early.
When that paranormal novel’s plot began, the protagonist Xiang Yang had just been transferred to Paranormal Affairs Bureau headquarters because of his excellent record. But the current Xiang Yang was still just a green rookie, mixed in at the Jinnan City branch.
He Yu felt a bit of a heart attack coming on.
He’d tried every possible way to avoid the plot, and instead had run straight into the biggest source of trouble.
Chen Shi was quick on the uptake and smoothly took over the conversation, fobbing Xiang Yang off and sending him away. It was a pity that a possible long-term customer for the future was gone, but he thought about how his own boss’s biggest goal was to lie flat and retire, and surely wouldn’t want any contact with people from the Paranormal Affairs Bureau.
Heaven and earth are vast, but the boss is the biggest.
……
After returning to the room, He Yu had Little Coal Ball spit out the mannequin.
Little Coal Ball dawdled for a long while before spitting out the mannequin.
“You ate it?” He Yu discovered the mannequin had turned into an ordinary plastic mannequin.
Little Coal Ball dodged left and right as if it had done something wrong, afraid He Yu would get angry.
It didn’t know its boss still wanted this monster—it had already eaten up all the yin-baleful qi on the mannequin’s body.
He Yu wasn’t angry. This monster was useless to him; he just didn’t want to keep it in the shadow space forever, and was planning to deal with it. He picked up Little Coal Ball and examined it over and over, and seeing nothing seemed wrong with it, breathed a sigh of relief. “Don’t eat random things in the future, it’s unsanitary.”
Little Coal Ball nodded obediently.
After dealing with the mannequin, He Yu began to ponder.
There were always endless troubles around the protagonist. He really didn’t want to get involved, especially since he was also carrying the identity of the villain boss.
He Yu was deeply resentful. That paranormal novel never wrote that Xiang Yang was holed up in this small place, Jinnan City, before the plot began.
Jiang Xian had told him that there existed some kind of invisible, intangible gravitational pull between paranormal things. He had now inherited the identity of Bronze Mask; even without Xiang Yang, he would still run into all sorts of paranormal incidents—there was always something he couldn’t avoid.
But it was still so infuriating!
When midnight came and he confirmed there was no one outside, He Yu carried a small stool out to the road, rolled up his sleeves, and sat down.
“Come on out, let’s have a chat.”
He didn’t know whether the earthbound spirit had understood him or had simply been drawn out, but the color of the road surface grew deeper and deeper, gradually forming a twisted humanoid shape.
“Why do you keep following me?” He Yu asked.
The earthbound spirit emerged from the ground and leaned in close to He Yu. “Fragrant… so fragrant…”
He Yu retreated a few steps with his small stool. The earthbound spirit kept getting closer, so he kept retreating, until finally he retreated onto the pedestrian path. The earthbound spirit couldn’t cross over, and could only cling to the edge, staring at He Yu.
“What’s your name?” He Yu asked.
“Fragrant…”
“Why did you become the earthbound spirit here?”
“So fragrant…”
“Why do you keep following me?”
“Gulp…” The earthbound spirit started staring at him, swallowing its saliva.
He Yu: ……
He couldn’t stand it anymore!
He grabbed the earthbound spirit and gave it a thorough beating.
“Fragrant my ass!”
“Keep following me and I’ll beat you to death!”
Chen Shi, watching from inside the shop, marveled. “The boss beat me just as fiercely back when he first started!”
The little plush doll quietly moved a bit further away from him.
The earthbound spirit was held down and beaten. At first it tried to resist, but after finding resistance useless, it tried to run, only to find it couldn’t run away either. It whimpered a couple of times, then suddenly, with a poof, voluntarily dispersed its ghost body.
Earthbound spirits were different from other ghosts and monsters—their ghost body was something manifested, rooted beneath the road. Even if the ghost body dispersed, it could reform again.
He Yu viciously cracked his knuckles. “Know to be afraid now? Keep following me and I’ll beat you again tonight!”
He snorted, picked up his small stool, and went back into the shop.
“I’m getting up later tomorrow morning.”
Tonight, in order to take advantage of the empty streets to deal with the earthbound spirit, he’d stayed up until midnight, well past his usual sleep time.
That night was likewise very quiet. He Yu slept straight through until nearly ten the next morning.
The next day was overcast, and there were hardly any customers all morning.
Just as afternoon arrived, the shop—a rare occurrence—had a visitor walk in: a girl with a high ponytail, expressionless and not saying a word. She didn’t seem particularly interested in the items in the shop, yet she stared at the window display for a long time, and kept lingering by the various shelves.
Chen Shi understood the moment he saw her like this—this was probably someone with shopping social anxiety, the type very afraid of being enthusiastically sold to. But since she’d been looking for so long, that meant she was tempted, and had intent to purchase. Selling to this type of person required skill.
“Just browsing? If there’s anything you’re interested in, I can introduce it, or recommend some things.” Chen Shi didn’t stand too close to her, maintaining a comfortable distance.
He reached out and picked up a small rabbit plush slightly bigger than a palm, showing the bottom, where there was an opening. Chen Shi put his hand inside, with his thumb and pinky going into the rabbit plush’s left and right hands, while the other three fingers split into two groups and went into the rabbit’s ears. As his hand moved, the little rabbit plush began to bow, clap, and its two ears spun round and round.
The high-ponytail girl still didn’t say a single word, but her eyes stayed fixed on the little rabbit plush, sparkling.
“Many of the plush toys in our shop have little hidden tricks like this,” Chen Shi said. He was prepared to introduce a few more, but his attention was drawn outside the shop.
He Yu had gone to mooch a meal at Granny Sun’s place across the street, and was now walking back. As he crossed the crosswalk, the earthbound spirit had actually caught up and followed him again!
Chen Shi couldn’t help but feel a surge of awe toward the earthbound spirit. To have taken a beating from the boss and still dare to keep following—impressive!
The earthbound spirit pressed closer and closer, swallowing its saliva behind He Yu again!
He Yu: ……
There were too many pedestrians on the street in broad daylight, so he endured it!
He Yu’s fists clenched tighter and tighter. When he got back, he went straight to the back of the shop with a dark expression.
The high-ponytail girl watched He Yu’s retreating back and suddenly spoke up, “Is that your shop owner?”
“Yes,” Chen Shi hurriedly came back to his senses and began introducing again, “This oversized plush doll is also very popular—it can be placed on the bed as a hugging pillow, the quality is excellent and it doesn’t lose its shape easily. Its belly can be opened from here, and things can be hidden inside; there’s also a matching version with a built-in voice recorder.”
But the girl seemed to have lost interest. She gave a perfunctory “mm-hmm” twice, wandered around a couple more times, paused at the window display by the door, and then left.
Chen Shi sighed, and said quietly to the non-for-sale little plush doll on the counter. “A customer finally showed up, and she got scared off by the boss’s dark face again.”
The little plush doll didn’t move.
Chen Shi continued, “How is that earthbound spirit so bold, do you think? Doesn’t it hurt when it gets beaten?”
The little plush doll said nothing. She’d never been beaten before, after all.
Chen Shi sniffed, suspicious. “Do you feel like there’s a strange smell in the shop?”
The little plush doll shrugged its nose along with him, sneezed, and nodded heavily.
Chen Shi searched for a long while but couldn’t find the source of the strange smell, and didn’t dare disturb the boss, who was clearly in a bad mood.
The longer time went on, the stronger the strange smell got. By the time they closed the shop and cleaned up in the evening, the smell was already quite obvious.
Chen Shi followed the scent to the shop entrance. He’d already searched through here before, but hadn’t found anything.
At the shop entrance, for visual appeal, there was an oversized plush doll on display. Chen Shi picked up the plush doll and leaned in to sniff it.
It was coming from it!
Chen Shi flipped the plush doll over, opened the zipper on its back, and pulled out a small sachet from inside the doll’s belly.
Chen Shi lifted the sachet and sniffed it: ……
Ugh!
He Yu took the sachet that Chen Shi handed over, opened it, and spread the contents out on a cloth.
Inside were various Chinese herbs—mugwort leaf, patchouli, calamus, and so on.
This was a ghost-warding recipe. Among the materials Jiang Xian had sent him before, there were many methods even ordinary people could use to ward off evil and dispel inauspicious energy, and this sachet recipe was among them. However, at most this smell would make ghosts and monsters dislike it and stay away, similar to how people are put off by someone’s breath right after eating garlic and chives. If you truly provoked a ghost or monster to the point where it was single-mindedly determined to kill you, this sachet would be useless.
He Yu turned the sachet inside out. The sachet’s surface appeared to be just plain-colored fabric, very simple and unadorned, but the inside was embroidered with patterns in silver thread. These embroidered patterns were extremely intricate, and didn’t look like common decorative patterns—they looked more like some kind of talisman, used to strengthen the effect of the herbs inside the sachet.
Chen Shi, smoked to the point of tears, crouched to one side covering his nose, and in a stuffy, nasal voice talked about that strange high-ponytail customer from today.
“Only she touched the plush doll at the entrance today—this thing must have been left by her!”
“She left right after she saw me come back?” He Yu asked.
Chen Shi nodded. “She’d originally already been getting ready to buy something. After she saw you come back, boss, she wandered around a couple more times and then left.”
He Yu looked thoughtful.
For this customer to be able to produce a sachet like this, she must know what she’s doing. Her sudden decision to leave the sachet behind meant she’d sensed there was a ghost or monster nearby. If she’d recognized Chen Shi as a ghost or monster, she wouldn’t have left just one sachet to startle the grass and alert the snake. Looking at it this way, it was more likely that she’d seen the earthbound spirit trailing behind him at the time.
Was she an ordinary person who’d had contact with paranormal incidents and knew a bit about them? Or someone from the Paranormal Affairs Bureau? Or perhaps… someone from another organization?
Whatever the high-ponytail customer’s background was, in any case, it was all brought about by the earthbound spirit.
Tonight, another beating!