The beating didn’t happen. Whether or not it had learned its lesson, this time the earthbound spirit refused, no matter what, to come out from under the road.
He Yu snorted and went back into the house. Time to sleep!
He’d already pulled two all-nighters!
The next day, after He Yu got up, he started researching his own abilities. Sooner or later he had to deal with that earthbound spirit!
He Yu could sense that his current exploration of Bronze Mask’s power was still just the tip of the iceberg. There was nothing to be done about it — in his past life he’d been an ordinary person and hadn’t learned any of this.
He Yu didn’t have any cool body-based special effects, but correspondingly, whereas spirit exorcists couldn’t attack incorporeal ghosts and monsters unless they used spiritual power or a ritual tool, He Yu could attack them directly. He didn’t necessarily need to use a ritual tool either — as long as it was something he held in his hand or threw, it could hit ghosts and monsters.
But if these ordinary objects left him for a period of time, they’d lose the property of being able to attack incorporeal ghosts. It was as if He Yu carried some strange magnetic field on him — ordinary objects, after being affected by this field, could briefly affect incorporeal ghosts, and once the field faded, that property would disappear too.
Besides this, He Yu had already tested the kinds of power, speed, bodily strength, and so on that an ordinary person could understand and experiment with. At the time he’d been surrounded by people from the Seven Parts Association, so a lot of things had been inconvenient to do, and he hadn’t been able to test his limits. He Yu planned to try again.
After a while, He Yu finished testing. To avoid causing damage, he still hadn’t reached his limits.
This was a bit of a hassle. Given the environment at home, he could hardly uproot a tree in the residential complex just to test how strong he was, could he?
He Yu sighed.
Moreover, while his current strength was indeed strong, it was also quite limited — as long as he couldn’t “strike the ox through the mountain,” if he wanted to deal with the earthbound spirit he’d inevitably end up destroying the road surface.
Sensing that he was in a bad mood, Little Coal Ball crawled out from the shadows and went biu~, blooming a flower to show him.
He Yu couldn’t help but laugh, and picked it up.
In his palm, Little Coal Ball shrank back into a small ball, soft and bouncy, with excellent resilience.
“Can you burrow underground?” He Yu asked.
Little Coal Ball nodded. Underground was also the domain of shadow, so it could go down there — but it still wouldn’t be able to beat the earthbound spirit.
Little Coal Ball drooped in dejection, dissolving out of He Yu’s palm, turning into an ink-colored shadow that flowed down through the gaps between his fingers.
“It’s fine, you’re still small.”
Little Coal Ball covered the shark-shaped plush pillow, went om and ate it, then crawled back into He Yu’s arms and spat the pillow back out.
He Yu hugged the pillow, and his mood improved quite a bit.
Little Coal Ball’s shadow space could only hold inanimate objects. Besides the amaryllis, he’d also once kept a garlic sprout — after he’d experimented with putting the garlic sprout into the shadow space, he was left with only the amaryllis.
Thinking of this, He Yu remembered the still-empty backyard, and so decided to go take a look at the flower-bird-fish market.
The weeds in his backyard had already been cleared out along with the renovation work, and a small pond had even been dug in the process, but nothing had been planted yet. He planned to tend to it slowly himself. The past couple of days he’d been in no mood for it, what with the earthbound spirit causing trouble, but today was a good day to go out and clear his head.
Today was a rest day, so the market had quite a few people.
The flower-bird-fish market was divided into zones by flowers, birds, fish, and pets, though many shops sold a bit of everything together — for instance, hanging a few birdcages in the flower section, or keeping a few fish in the pools of aquatic flowering plants. Plants surrounded him on all sides, the air moist and fresh, and occasionally he heard birdsong, like bird-calls deep in the mountains.
He Yu was in high spirits.
He discovered that the plants, too, each had their own spirit-light. Some looked like they’d bloomed with many flowers, but their spirit-light was faint and unstable — clearly forced into bloom with chemicals, and they’d die within a few days of being brought home. Some flowers looked roughly the same on the surface, but their spirit-light varied in strength, meaning their root systems must be different too.
He Yu had just walked out of one such shop when he suddenly heard a “Hello!” ring out from the shop across the way.
He Yu turned to look. The shop wasn’t big; at its entrance sat a large potted spider plant, and beneath its lush leaves was a very lively bit of spirit-light.
He walked over and pushed aside the spider plant’s leaves. Underneath hung a birdcage, with a mynah bird inside. It hopped on its perch and tilted its head, looking at He Yu with round, jet-black eyes:
“Welcome!”
“What’s your name?” He Yu leaned in to tease the bird.
The mynah hopped a couple of times, opened its beak, and enunciated clearly:
“I’m your second uncle.”
He Yu: ?
The shop owner came out from inside, laughing. “Its name is Second Uncle. Here to look at flowers?”
Uncle hopped about and called out. “Buy flowers, buy flowers! Wishing you fortune!”
Other customers were drawn over by Second Uncle too, gathering at the entrance to tease the bird.
He Yu went into the shop and glanced around — the plants here were all pretty good. He couldn’t be bothered to keep browsing elsewhere, and decided to just buy from this shop. The flower shop he’d looked at earlier had also opened for business. That shop was called Old Hu’s Flower House, and although all the plants inside had been forced into bloom with chemicals, their spirit-light faint and unstable, on the surface they looked like clusters of gorgeous blossoms, which really did catch the eye. The person buying flowers there seemed to be some big boss, wanting to order a batch of plants to decorate his company.
After the big boss finished picking out plants for the company, he called someone to bring a car to pick them up. The shop owner seized the moment to introduce some more precious flowers, suitable for decorating an office.
The big boss hesitated in the shop. He’d specially had someone check the feng shui of his office, and was short one feng shui plant — ideally rare, luxurious, and flourishing; aside from a few taboo plants, anything else would do. He hadn’t yet decided what to grow.
Old Hu’s shop had a prized orchid kept in a large pot, which had bloomed in several clusters, its flowers golden-yellow, with the petals below shaped like a little pouch — beautiful, rare, and priced high too; one pot cost over a thousand.
Old Hu, with his glib tongue, first said the golden color of the orchid symbolized wealth and fortune, then said the pouch-shaped petals beneath the orchid gathered fortune from all eight directions and brought peace and security, talking the big boss into being quite tempted.
Just then, the car he’d called arrived, and the driver, outside, was on the phone asking which shop it was.
The big boss told the driver to wait at the main entrance and said to Old Hu, “I’ll take this pot of orchid — hold it for me. I’ll go out and bring him in first.”
Old Hu happily agreed, and once the big boss left, he swaggered over in a self-satisfied square-stepped gait to the shop across the way, saw He Yu picking out flowers inside, and said to the shop owner, “Oh, you’ve opened for business too.”
The shop owner gave an “Mm” and wasn’t too keen on dealing with him. They’d known each other a long time and understood each other well. This Old Hu just liked to put on airs, acting like he was lecturing everyone from on high, showing off.
Old Hu acted as if he hadn’t noticed the cold reception, and craned his neck to look at the few pots of flowers He Yu had picked out. “Tch, small business, no fun. These flowers of yours need to be grown more lushly to attract big customers!”
“Growing flowers is just for looking at, isn’t it — if you don’t let it bloom to bursting and instead fuss over it all day just to see one or two blossoms, what’s the point?” He then went on at length to the customers gathered around watching Second Uncle, expounding on his own flower-growing experience. “So petty and stingy, no fun at all.”
As he spoke, his eyes kept glancing over at He Yu, in a sarcastic, mocking manner. Earlier, He Yu had gone into his shop too, but hadn’t bought anything.
He Yu ignored him.
It wasn’t as if he’d never grown flowers before. He liked flowers blooming to bursting too, but no matter how well you took care of a pot of flowers, you could get it to bloom to bursting for a while, but you couldn’t make it bloom to bursting three hundred sixty-five days a year. Flowers were like people — they needed rest. For a flower shop, it was normal for some plants inside to be in good bloom and others to be past their season and blooming less. If every single pot bloomed to bursting, the flowers couldn’t take it — never mind continuing to bloom once bought and brought home, whether they’d even survive would depend on skill.
The shop owner couldn’t stand it anymore and said stiffly, “What kind of flowers someone likes is their own business.”
Old Hu curled his lip. “Well, however much wealth you’ve got determines how much money you make, I suppose.”
Just then the big boss came back with the driver in tow. Old Hu returned to his own shop and put on a beaming smile for the big boss. “Look at your style, so grand and impressive! Look how nice this flower is! You’ve got a good eye — anyone can tell you’re someone who does big business! You’re sure to strike it rich! As a person, you can’t be stingy — the stingier you are, the poorer and more miserable you get. Take this pot of orchid home, and it’s guaranteed to bring rolling waves of wealth!”
Just as the big boss was about to carry the flower off, he suddenly heard a voice beside him. “I’d say this is a mountain-dug orchid, wouldn’t you?”
A “mountain-dug orchid” referred to an orchid dug up from the mountains — many such orchids were illegally poached wild orchids.
Old Hu’s face stiffened. “What do you know? Can you tell at a glance whether it’s a wild orchid or not?”
He Yu glanced at it. “Its origin is unclear — who knows where it was dug up from?”
He couldn’t actually tell whether it was a wild orchid or a cultivated one, but he could see spirit-light. All the other plants had vibrant green spirit-light, but that pouch-orchid’s spirit-light was a mix of gray and green. With such heavy yin-baleful qi, it wouldn’t be surprising if it had been dug up from a grave mound.
After He Yu finished paying, he walked off carrying the flowers he’d bought, without another word.
Old Hu’s face flushed green, then white.
The big boss was also a shrewd one — seeing Old Hu’s expression, he laughed it off, saying the car was full and they’d talk about the orchid next time.
What he wanted to grow was a feng shui orchid — who knew where a poached orchid had really come from? He didn’t want it ruining his office’s feng shui.
The shop owner across the way had watched the whole spectacle for nothing, but seeing Old Hu’s expression, thought to himself that this pot of pouch-orchid might really be a poached wild orchid — Old Hu was probably staying quiet for fear of being reported, otherwise, given his temperament, he’d have already cursed the man out.
Old Hu, in a bad mood, glared over at this side.
The mynah, preening itself comfortably in its cage, said, “I’m your second uncle.”
“Sooner or later I’m going to pluck all your feathers out!” Old Hu muttered bitterly.
The shop owner happily added a scoop of feed for the mynah. “Good bird! Good bird!”
……
Jinnan City Paranormal Affairs Bureau, branch office.
An expressionless girl with a high ponytail walked in.
A staff member came up to greet her. “Ji Shanyao, did you catch it?”
Ji Shanyao shook her head, saying seriously and methodically, “I scattered the ghost’s body. But it’s an earthbound spirit — I couldn’t find its root, so it’ll show up again.”
Her trip to the outskirts of Jinnan City this time had been to hunt down a ghost. That ghost had been wandering around, and it was only after Ji Shanyao had fought it that she discovered it was an earthbound spirit.
“How is that possible? Its range of activity already far exceeds that of a normal earthbound spirit.” The staff member was astonished.
Ji Shanyao sat down at her seat to write her report, chewing on her pen as she said, “I suspect it’s found something to attach itself to.”
Although an earthbound spirit is confined to the place where it died, if it has something to inhabit, it can move along with that object.
“I found this.”
She dug around in her pocket, rummaging, and pulled out an evidence bag containing a dead bee.
“Using a living creature as its host?” The staff member frowned. “I’ve never seen a ghost like this before…”
If it really was using the bee as a host, then the significance of this matter would be completely different. It would mean a new type of ghost — the difficulty of dealing with earthbound spirits would increase many times over. What’s more, it was possible that someone behind the scenes was carrying out ghost-refinement.
Ji Shanyao made an “Mn” sound. “It’s not a living host. I suspect it’s pollen.”